FIC: Oak and Reed [Timeless, Flynn x Lorena & Jiya & etc]
Title: Oak and Reed
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: NBC’s Timeless
Warnings: None.
Characters & Relationships: Flynn x Lorena & Jiya x Rufus & Iris & namedrops or cameos from most of the good guy cast + some OC babies
Summary: Time Team and company celebrate the one year anniversary of their victory. You know life is good when you gather together almost two dozen erstwhile traitors, terrorists, cult members, dead people, mad scientists, small children, and one at-risk pregnancy, and the night’s biggest complication is a little height difference. // 2908 words
Author’s Note: Enjoy!
Oak and Reed
Garcia Flynn tilted his head back, spread his arms wide, and drank in the California sunshine. At last. Justice. Freedom. Happiness. Vitamin D.
“Are you ever going to stop doing that?” Lorena asked, fond and amused.
“When the sun stops coming up -”
“I’m hungry!” Iris complained loudly. “Feed us already!”
“Not until all the guests have arrived, sweetie,” Lorena yelled back.
Iris started mutinously banging her knife and fork on the table, chanting “Meat, meat, meat, meat!”. Predictably, her younger sister followed suit. Adorably, so did little Marla Logan, from whom it sounded more like ‘weed, weed, weed, weed’.
“- or I’m dead, whichever comes first,” Garcia finished, serenely unbothered by the reminder that it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, sunrise.
“Ooh, ambitious. I like that.”
“To be fair, I was being pessimistic, what with our poor track record with time travel. But I like your version better. Let’s go with that.”
“Excellent.” Lorena elbowed him in the ribs. “Now get that salad out of my way, please, I’ve got rolls coming through.”
Garcia retracted his arms, and with them the two bowls of salad he’d meant to transport from the kitchen to the back yard before being overcome by the joy of being alive, free, retired (from fieldwork, again, and all the rest of the intelligence business, finally), and not A Self-Sacrificing Fool. Today was the one year anniversary of the official official end of their terrible time war, and it still got to him on at least a weekly basis. Lorena wouldn’t have him any other way, he knew. For all her teasing, she always used to take her own joy and comfort in the days when he reverted back to thinking of marriage and daughters as wondrous, alien things; she’d only grown more understanding since he came back from what, from her perspective, had been death, and from his, a secret war that had taken more out of him than all the open ones he’d fought in before combined.
Side by side, they descended the short path through the garden and out onto the lawn. Garcia looked around and quickly took attendance. Iris and Inez, their perfect, tireless little hellions of daughters (plural! good god. and another one on the way!), were of course right where they’d left them. Wyatt and Jessica too, her beside their own little girl, him by the meat table, preparing the grills. Anthony was making small talk with Stiv, radiating awkwardness. He still looked skittish, but nobody had twisted his arm to come, so Garcia considered his mere presence progress. Lucy, Amy, and their father, as well as Garcia’s own brother and parents, were talking animatedly to Connor, who had arrived while Garcia and Lorena were in the kitchen and had brought what turned out to be an interactive, floating fold-up table. The faces surrounding him shifted through ever-varying combinations of excitement and terror as drinks, garden toys, and potted plants were placed on and snatched off the high-tech tabletop. Every item created a new pattern of light, as well as distinct wobbling motions. And Denise was seated across from Jessica, sans wife or children - “Unaffected means uninformed means uninvited. Just because I’m inexplicably looking the other way for all of you doesn’t mean I’m going to follow your bad example and bandy about state secrets.” - because no party was complete without a party pooper.
That left only Rufus and Jiya and their families.
“Soon now, sweetie,” Lorena promised Iris, who was still loudly demanding food. She placed her bread baskets on the table, snatched the knife from Iris’s hand, and pointed with it. “Did you see what Uncle Connor brought?”
“Bo-ring,” Iris declared, contrary to the bone. Puberty was going to be a delight. “He’s always making things float or glow or jingle.”
“Yes, but unlike those skateboards and roller blades you keep asking for, your father and I think you’re actually old enough to play with this thing.”
That had Iris perking up and off like a rocket. Inez went after her, her knife and fork abandoned in the grass.
“Do we think that?” Garcia asked. He picked up the discarded cutlery and buffed it on his shirt.
“Don’t we?”
“Does Connor?”
As one, they turned their heads. Right on time to see Connor catch sight of his impending doom and go into ‘oh god, no, not small children’ mode.
“Dastardly,” Garcia whispered in appreciation, wrapping his arms around her round belly and burying his nose in her hair.
They lingered like that for a bit, letting the sun and the company warm them. Then they went back inside for an armful of sauces and other condiments, the Logans’ contributions of coleslaw and potato salad, a pot of fondue to placate Connor, and vegetable skewers for Gabriel, the night’s lone vegetarian. On the last round, they stocked the picnic cooler with soda and chilled water as Rufus and Jiya’s car pulled in. They opened the front door for them, Rufus’s mother and brother, Jiya’s parents, and their two, large bags of booze. Handshakes were exchanged, compliments on the house made, and then the entourage moved on to mingle with the rest of the guests and Lorena slunk away for her umpteenth bathroom break while the time travelers caught up.
Not that Jiya seemed very enthusiastic about that. She hugged Garcia warmly enough, but as soon as he opened his mouth to ask and answer the usual questions, she started not-quite-subtly leaning away from him.
“Our cooler is not big enough for all that alcohol,” Lorena told them when she got back.
“I’ll ask the neighbors if we can borrow theirs,” Garcia said. “They already let us use their grill.”
Garcia turned to follow after his wife - only to cry out in wounded betrayal.
“Honey, put that down!”
Heaving a beleaguered sigh, Lorena dropped the cooler back on the counter.
“I’m pregnant, not an invalid, stop worrying so much,” she said dutifully.
“You’re seven months pregnant and forty-four years old, I’m exactly as worried as I should be,” Garcia replied, slightly more animatedly.
Every screening and check-up they’d had so far said both baby Isabela and Lorena were healthy as clams. But her pregnancy with Inez had already been a ‘geriatric’ one, and she was significantly older yet now. The way Lorena told it - since Garcia remembered only the years of maddening grief, not the hotchpotch of timelines he and the team had finally managed to replace them with - the decision to have Inez had been impulsive and emotional and trauma-fueled, but definitely a decision. With Izzy, they’d been overcome with emotion, sure, but they’d also told each other, ‘Who needs birth control?’ They’d told each other, ‘Nobody gets pregnant accidentally anymore at our age.’ And now they were paying for that misconception in the best possible way.
He hardly needed to explain to Lorena the bone-deep anxiety that had taken root in him, in any case. She’d mourned her timeline’s version of him just the same as he’d done her in his. Five years or two years of carrying that kind of loss, it made no difference. The only difference was that she knew her body, lived in it, and so was aware of its needs and limits and problems, while he could only watch from the sidelines, helpless. If the danger came from inside her this time, he would be the last to know, again. And there would be nothing he could do to stop it. Again.
So Lorena humored him. When he scurried over to take the cooler away from her as if it could blow up at any moment, she even pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth before walking away.
“Go ahead and lift the oh so heavy thing for me, honey, while I update the tally.”
“We’re still doing this, so the tally’s clearly not working,” he called after her.
“He said, without a shred of self-awareness,” she yelled back, making him grin.
“Do I want to know?” Jiya asked dryly.
Turning habit into humor, he assessed her heavy hemp bag full of booze before looking her in the eye. “I hate delegating, and getting your wife pregnant is the very definition of delegating.”
Rufus snorted.
Making a face that looked almost pained, Jiya averted her eyes and took a step away from Garcia. She excused herself and darted out the back door, into the yard.
“Oh, just you wait,” Garcia told Rufus, staring after her, but first things first. “You won’t be laughing when it’s your turn.”
“If.”
“If and when.” He jerked a thumb out the kitchen window. “Was it something I said?”
“I...” Rufus peered through the glass for a moment, then shrugged. “Don’t think so?”
“Somebody I forgot to un-murder?”
“I think we’re pretty well past all that by now, man.”
“Do I smell?”
Rufus looked at him as if begging him not to make it weird. “No.”
“You sure, though? Because you know what they say about pregnant women and their sense of smell,” Garcia stage-whispered.
Rufus barked out a laugh and clapped him on the shoulder.
“She probably had a vision of you saying that and decided to remove herself from the temptation to deck the host.”
Rufus left to join his girlfriend. Garcia huffed into his hand and sniffed under his arms, just to be sure, and then made a quick dash for the neighbors.
He returned to his back yard with two coolers and impeccable timing. He didn’t quite catch the question Rufus asked Jiya, but he was right on time for her answer.
“What? No, of course not,” she said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and holding her beer close.
“Really? ’Cause I think you kind of hurt Flynn’s feelings back there.”
“It’s nothing, I just...” She lowered her voice. “I’d forgotten what he’s like. In person, I mean. When he’s doing that thing he does.”
“You know, if I ever claimed not to realize when was being an ass, that was a lie. I aim to only be an ass on purpose,” he said, right behind her.
Jiya just about jumped out of her skin.
“Like now, for example,” he added with a smirk.
Clutching her heart, Jiya half laughed and half cursed him and all his ancestors.
“Jesus Christ, dude,” Rufus panted. Garcia magnanimously pretended he hadn’t heard him shriek. “Sneaking up on people is like riding a bicycle, huh? You never forget how.”
“Which makes the current situation somewhat awkward, because I have no idea what you mean,” Garcia finished. “What did I do?”
Jiya tucked away the same lock of hair she’d tucked before and distractedly rubbed at the beer she’d spilled on herself. “Nothing.”
“Okay. Then what did I do?”
“It’s not that you’ve done anything, it’s -” Jiya gestured in powerless frustration, spilling more beer. Finally she settled on: “It’s how you do everything!”
She pushed her beer into Rufus’s hands and then grabbed Garcia. With one hand she fixated his shoulder; with the other, she took hold of his jaw, pushed his head back until he stood ram-rod straight, and tucked his chin in. Wide-eyed, Garcia let her keep him in that position and stare him down like the undersized former 1800’s bouncer she was.
“It’s your posture. You’re physically painful to look at when you stoop to talk to people like that. I know we’re all midgets to you, but it cannot be good for your spine. You’re going to turn into a hunchback in your old age. This is how you talk to shorter people, Flynn. You bend your head. Not your entire neck and shoulders. Just your head.”
“Um,” he said around her iron grip on his jaw. “Wow.”
Jiya let go of him. Garcia made sure not to move a muscle.
“You know what I used to call you behind your back? Vulture Pusture. Because you move like this.”
She clasped her hands behind her back, elbows spread, extended her neck as far and as low as she could, and walked around in a circle bouncing up and down like a chicken. Rufus’s jaw dropped. Garcia opened and closed his mouth like a fish.
“Rufus was right, this is a little hurtful,” he said in the end.
Her cheeks darkened as she straightened. “I’m sorry. But it’s true!”
Lorena appeared at Garcia’s elbow and cocked her head quizzically. “Hey, I’m back. What’s up?”
Jiya froze like a deer in the headlights. She looked at Garcia. Garcia looked at her. Lorena looked from one to the other. Rufus exited the scene, backwards and Very, Very Casually.
Seconds ticked by.
Lorena’s eyebrows crept up her forehead.
Jiya’s eyes turned pleading.
Iris ran up, attached herself to her parents’ wrists, and whined, “Mamaaa, Tataaa, all the guests are here, come to the table so we can eeeaaattt.”
I’m begging you, dude, please for god’s sake don’t put me on the spot in front of the formerly-dead wife and child who are the entire reason we know each other in the first place, Jiya’s eyes told Garcia.
Slowly, he folded his arms over his chest (Iris now dangling with both hands from the crook of his arm, like a hangry monkey), lowered his head the way he liked it, and stared at her from beneath his brows. Jiya gulped.
Then he turned to Lorena and, grinning, said: “Jiya wants to borrow one of your foot stools.”
“Oh, is that all.”
Jiya blinked rapidly.
“Lorena has a small collection of stools,” Garcia said cheerfully. He picked up Iris and flung her over his shoulder. “You know, for when we want to kiss -”
“Ewww.”
“- or argue, or need to have some other kind of close-range conversation without giving one of us a crick in the neck. Or just when she wants to feel tall.”
“Oh. Uh. Okay.”
“It’s always useful to have one on hand near high shelves, too,” Lorena added. “Short legs should never be the reason to bring a man into your house. His cooking and kissing skills should be.”
“Ewwwwww.”
Garcia patted Iris’s back. “You and your sisters only exist because Mama and Tata like to kiss each other so much, you know.”
“Nooooooooooo!”
The look on Jiya’s face cracked Garcia’s composure, and he quite literally doubled over laughing so Iris could wriggle from his grasp. She ran for the cover of her grandparents, lamenting “My ears, my virgin ears!” for the entire yard to hear.
When Garcia straightened, Lorena was patting a steadily un-flustering Jiya’s arm. “People have been telling him he’s ruining his back for as long as I’ve known him. I can’t stand it either sometimes, but so far his neck seems fine.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better.”
“I’ve tried, and I always fail in the end,” he said with a shrug. “I admire your creativity, but eighteen years worth of militaries didn’t drill it out of me, so I doubt you will.”
Jiya made a wounded noise.
Laughing, Lorena wrapped an arm around her shoulder and began leading her toward the house. “Come on. I really do have a stepping stool for every occasion. Honey, tell Iris and the rest to go ahead and start eating. We’ll be back in a bit.”
“Want me to put something on the grill for you in the meantime?” he asked.
“Yes, get me that big drumstick.”
“Jiya?”
“Oh, yeah, thanks, I’ll have a burger.”
“Will do.”
Shaking his head and smiling incredulously at how absurdly peaceful his life had become, he watched them go. Then he passed on Lorena’s message to their guests and joined Wyatt, Jessica, and Marla at the grills.
“Hello, tiniest already-born human at this party,” he greeted the little one, leaning his hands on his knees to get at eye level with her. “Did you know that where I come from, people are on average five centimeters taller than they are here in the States? So sure, I’m tall for a Croat, but I’m only really tall for an American. And other than my own kids, you are the only one who doesn’t think that makes me any more weirdly large than any of the other giant grown-ups. But the first time your mommy claimed to be pregnant with you, she wore a fake belly on her cult-y murder missions for, like, three months, so I’m not even sure you’re real.”
With admirable baby-proofed restraint, Jessica blew him a raspberry.
“Let me check.” He gently took Marla’s little nose between thumb and forefinger and jiggled it until she snort-laughed, wriggling in her mother’s arms. “Okay, I guess you are. That officially makes you my third favorite already-born person here.”
“Don’t let your wife hear that,” Wyatt teased.
“She wouldn’t be having another baby with me if she didn’t agree that children are much cuter than grown-ups.”
Lorena and Jiya returned, a round wooden stool and a barrel of laughs in tow. The sun set, ever so slowly. The food was good and the company merry. His family was safe, was well, was happy. His friends were plenty. Half of them needed to stand on a box to look him in the eye, Lorena’s ankles were swollen, the children got tired and cranky halfway through the night, and the booze was lukewarm because in all the hilarity they’d completely forgotten to put it in the cooler. But oh well.
You didn’t mess with perfection.
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: NBC’s Timeless
Warnings: None.
Characters & Relationships: Flynn x Lorena & Jiya x Rufus & Iris & namedrops or cameos from most of the good guy cast + some OC babies
Summary: Time Team and company celebrate the one year anniversary of their victory. You know life is good when you gather together almost two dozen erstwhile traitors, terrorists, cult members, dead people, mad scientists, small children, and one at-risk pregnancy, and the night’s biggest complication is a little height difference. // 2908 words
Author’s Note: Enjoy!
Oak and Reed
Garcia Flynn tilted his head back, spread his arms wide, and drank in the California sunshine. At last. Justice. Freedom. Happiness. Vitamin D.
“Are you ever going to stop doing that?” Lorena asked, fond and amused.
“When the sun stops coming up -”
“I’m hungry!” Iris complained loudly. “Feed us already!”
“Not until all the guests have arrived, sweetie,” Lorena yelled back.
Iris started mutinously banging her knife and fork on the table, chanting “Meat, meat, meat, meat!”. Predictably, her younger sister followed suit. Adorably, so did little Marla Logan, from whom it sounded more like ‘weed, weed, weed, weed’.
“- or I’m dead, whichever comes first,” Garcia finished, serenely unbothered by the reminder that it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, sunrise.
“Ooh, ambitious. I like that.”
“To be fair, I was being pessimistic, what with our poor track record with time travel. But I like your version better. Let’s go with that.”
“Excellent.” Lorena elbowed him in the ribs. “Now get that salad out of my way, please, I’ve got rolls coming through.”
Garcia retracted his arms, and with them the two bowls of salad he’d meant to transport from the kitchen to the back yard before being overcome by the joy of being alive, free, retired (from fieldwork, again, and all the rest of the intelligence business, finally), and not A Self-Sacrificing Fool. Today was the one year anniversary of the official official end of their terrible time war, and it still got to him on at least a weekly basis. Lorena wouldn’t have him any other way, he knew. For all her teasing, she always used to take her own joy and comfort in the days when he reverted back to thinking of marriage and daughters as wondrous, alien things; she’d only grown more understanding since he came back from what, from her perspective, had been death, and from his, a secret war that had taken more out of him than all the open ones he’d fought in before combined.
Side by side, they descended the short path through the garden and out onto the lawn. Garcia looked around and quickly took attendance. Iris and Inez, their perfect, tireless little hellions of daughters (plural! good god. and another one on the way!), were of course right where they’d left them. Wyatt and Jessica too, her beside their own little girl, him by the meat table, preparing the grills. Anthony was making small talk with Stiv, radiating awkwardness. He still looked skittish, but nobody had twisted his arm to come, so Garcia considered his mere presence progress. Lucy, Amy, and their father, as well as Garcia’s own brother and parents, were talking animatedly to Connor, who had arrived while Garcia and Lorena were in the kitchen and had brought what turned out to be an interactive, floating fold-up table. The faces surrounding him shifted through ever-varying combinations of excitement and terror as drinks, garden toys, and potted plants were placed on and snatched off the high-tech tabletop. Every item created a new pattern of light, as well as distinct wobbling motions. And Denise was seated across from Jessica, sans wife or children - “Unaffected means uninformed means uninvited. Just because I’m inexplicably looking the other way for all of you doesn’t mean I’m going to follow your bad example and bandy about state secrets.” - because no party was complete without a party pooper.
That left only Rufus and Jiya and their families.
“Soon now, sweetie,” Lorena promised Iris, who was still loudly demanding food. She placed her bread baskets on the table, snatched the knife from Iris’s hand, and pointed with it. “Did you see what Uncle Connor brought?”
“Bo-ring,” Iris declared, contrary to the bone. Puberty was going to be a delight. “He’s always making things float or glow or jingle.”
“Yes, but unlike those skateboards and roller blades you keep asking for, your father and I think you’re actually old enough to play with this thing.”
That had Iris perking up and off like a rocket. Inez went after her, her knife and fork abandoned in the grass.
“Do we think that?” Garcia asked. He picked up the discarded cutlery and buffed it on his shirt.
“Don’t we?”
“Does Connor?”
As one, they turned their heads. Right on time to see Connor catch sight of his impending doom and go into ‘oh god, no, not small children’ mode.
“Dastardly,” Garcia whispered in appreciation, wrapping his arms around her round belly and burying his nose in her hair.
They lingered like that for a bit, letting the sun and the company warm them. Then they went back inside for an armful of sauces and other condiments, the Logans’ contributions of coleslaw and potato salad, a pot of fondue to placate Connor, and vegetable skewers for Gabriel, the night’s lone vegetarian. On the last round, they stocked the picnic cooler with soda and chilled water as Rufus and Jiya’s car pulled in. They opened the front door for them, Rufus’s mother and brother, Jiya’s parents, and their two, large bags of booze. Handshakes were exchanged, compliments on the house made, and then the entourage moved on to mingle with the rest of the guests and Lorena slunk away for her umpteenth bathroom break while the time travelers caught up.
Not that Jiya seemed very enthusiastic about that. She hugged Garcia warmly enough, but as soon as he opened his mouth to ask and answer the usual questions, she started not-quite-subtly leaning away from him.
“Our cooler is not big enough for all that alcohol,” Lorena told them when she got back.
“I’ll ask the neighbors if we can borrow theirs,” Garcia said. “They already let us use their grill.”
Garcia turned to follow after his wife - only to cry out in wounded betrayal.
“Honey, put that down!”
Heaving a beleaguered sigh, Lorena dropped the cooler back on the counter.
“I’m pregnant, not an invalid, stop worrying so much,” she said dutifully.
“You’re seven months pregnant and forty-four years old, I’m exactly as worried as I should be,” Garcia replied, slightly more animatedly.
Every screening and check-up they’d had so far said both baby Isabela and Lorena were healthy as clams. But her pregnancy with Inez had already been a ‘geriatric’ one, and she was significantly older yet now. The way Lorena told it - since Garcia remembered only the years of maddening grief, not the hotchpotch of timelines he and the team had finally managed to replace them with - the decision to have Inez had been impulsive and emotional and trauma-fueled, but definitely a decision. With Izzy, they’d been overcome with emotion, sure, but they’d also told each other, ‘Who needs birth control?’ They’d told each other, ‘Nobody gets pregnant accidentally anymore at our age.’ And now they were paying for that misconception in the best possible way.
He hardly needed to explain to Lorena the bone-deep anxiety that had taken root in him, in any case. She’d mourned her timeline’s version of him just the same as he’d done her in his. Five years or two years of carrying that kind of loss, it made no difference. The only difference was that she knew her body, lived in it, and so was aware of its needs and limits and problems, while he could only watch from the sidelines, helpless. If the danger came from inside her this time, he would be the last to know, again. And there would be nothing he could do to stop it. Again.
So Lorena humored him. When he scurried over to take the cooler away from her as if it could blow up at any moment, she even pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth before walking away.
“Go ahead and lift the oh so heavy thing for me, honey, while I update the tally.”
“We’re still doing this, so the tally’s clearly not working,” he called after her.
“He said, without a shred of self-awareness,” she yelled back, making him grin.
“Do I want to know?” Jiya asked dryly.
Turning habit into humor, he assessed her heavy hemp bag full of booze before looking her in the eye. “I hate delegating, and getting your wife pregnant is the very definition of delegating.”
Rufus snorted.
Making a face that looked almost pained, Jiya averted her eyes and took a step away from Garcia. She excused herself and darted out the back door, into the yard.
“Oh, just you wait,” Garcia told Rufus, staring after her, but first things first. “You won’t be laughing when it’s your turn.”
“If.”
“If and when.” He jerked a thumb out the kitchen window. “Was it something I said?”
“I...” Rufus peered through the glass for a moment, then shrugged. “Don’t think so?”
“Somebody I forgot to un-murder?”
“I think we’re pretty well past all that by now, man.”
“Do I smell?”
Rufus looked at him as if begging him not to make it weird. “No.”
“You sure, though? Because you know what they say about pregnant women and their sense of smell,” Garcia stage-whispered.
Rufus barked out a laugh and clapped him on the shoulder.
“She probably had a vision of you saying that and decided to remove herself from the temptation to deck the host.”
Rufus left to join his girlfriend. Garcia huffed into his hand and sniffed under his arms, just to be sure, and then made a quick dash for the neighbors.
He returned to his back yard with two coolers and impeccable timing. He didn’t quite catch the question Rufus asked Jiya, but he was right on time for her answer.
“What? No, of course not,” she said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and holding her beer close.
“Really? ’Cause I think you kind of hurt Flynn’s feelings back there.”
“It’s nothing, I just...” She lowered her voice. “I’d forgotten what he’s like. In person, I mean. When he’s doing that thing he does.”
“You know, if I ever claimed not to realize when was being an ass, that was a lie. I aim to only be an ass on purpose,” he said, right behind her.
Jiya just about jumped out of her skin.
“Like now, for example,” he added with a smirk.
Clutching her heart, Jiya half laughed and half cursed him and all his ancestors.
“Jesus Christ, dude,” Rufus panted. Garcia magnanimously pretended he hadn’t heard him shriek. “Sneaking up on people is like riding a bicycle, huh? You never forget how.”
“Which makes the current situation somewhat awkward, because I have no idea what you mean,” Garcia finished. “What did I do?”
Jiya tucked away the same lock of hair she’d tucked before and distractedly rubbed at the beer she’d spilled on herself. “Nothing.”
“Okay. Then what did I do?”
“It’s not that you’ve done anything, it’s -” Jiya gestured in powerless frustration, spilling more beer. Finally she settled on: “It’s how you do everything!”
She pushed her beer into Rufus’s hands and then grabbed Garcia. With one hand she fixated his shoulder; with the other, she took hold of his jaw, pushed his head back until he stood ram-rod straight, and tucked his chin in. Wide-eyed, Garcia let her keep him in that position and stare him down like the undersized former 1800’s bouncer she was.
“It’s your posture. You’re physically painful to look at when you stoop to talk to people like that. I know we’re all midgets to you, but it cannot be good for your spine. You’re going to turn into a hunchback in your old age. This is how you talk to shorter people, Flynn. You bend your head. Not your entire neck and shoulders. Just your head.”
“Um,” he said around her iron grip on his jaw. “Wow.”
Jiya let go of him. Garcia made sure not to move a muscle.
“You know what I used to call you behind your back? Vulture Pusture. Because you move like this.”
She clasped her hands behind her back, elbows spread, extended her neck as far and as low as she could, and walked around in a circle bouncing up and down like a chicken. Rufus’s jaw dropped. Garcia opened and closed his mouth like a fish.
“Rufus was right, this is a little hurtful,” he said in the end.
Her cheeks darkened as she straightened. “I’m sorry. But it’s true!”
Lorena appeared at Garcia’s elbow and cocked her head quizzically. “Hey, I’m back. What’s up?”
Jiya froze like a deer in the headlights. She looked at Garcia. Garcia looked at her. Lorena looked from one to the other. Rufus exited the scene, backwards and Very, Very Casually.
Seconds ticked by.
Lorena’s eyebrows crept up her forehead.
Jiya’s eyes turned pleading.
Iris ran up, attached herself to her parents’ wrists, and whined, “Mamaaa, Tataaa, all the guests are here, come to the table so we can eeeaaattt.”
I’m begging you, dude, please for god’s sake don’t put me on the spot in front of the formerly-dead wife and child who are the entire reason we know each other in the first place, Jiya’s eyes told Garcia.
Slowly, he folded his arms over his chest (Iris now dangling with both hands from the crook of his arm, like a hangry monkey), lowered his head the way he liked it, and stared at her from beneath his brows. Jiya gulped.
Then he turned to Lorena and, grinning, said: “Jiya wants to borrow one of your foot stools.”
“Oh, is that all.”
Jiya blinked rapidly.
“Lorena has a small collection of stools,” Garcia said cheerfully. He picked up Iris and flung her over his shoulder. “You know, for when we want to kiss -”
“Ewww.”
“- or argue, or need to have some other kind of close-range conversation without giving one of us a crick in the neck. Or just when she wants to feel tall.”
“Oh. Uh. Okay.”
“It’s always useful to have one on hand near high shelves, too,” Lorena added. “Short legs should never be the reason to bring a man into your house. His cooking and kissing skills should be.”
“Ewwwwww.”
Garcia patted Iris’s back. “You and your sisters only exist because Mama and Tata like to kiss each other so much, you know.”
“Nooooooooooo!”
The look on Jiya’s face cracked Garcia’s composure, and he quite literally doubled over laughing so Iris could wriggle from his grasp. She ran for the cover of her grandparents, lamenting “My ears, my virgin ears!” for the entire yard to hear.
When Garcia straightened, Lorena was patting a steadily un-flustering Jiya’s arm. “People have been telling him he’s ruining his back for as long as I’ve known him. I can’t stand it either sometimes, but so far his neck seems fine.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better.”
“I’ve tried, and I always fail in the end,” he said with a shrug. “I admire your creativity, but eighteen years worth of militaries didn’t drill it out of me, so I doubt you will.”
Jiya made a wounded noise.
Laughing, Lorena wrapped an arm around her shoulder and began leading her toward the house. “Come on. I really do have a stepping stool for every occasion. Honey, tell Iris and the rest to go ahead and start eating. We’ll be back in a bit.”
“Want me to put something on the grill for you in the meantime?” he asked.
“Yes, get me that big drumstick.”
“Jiya?”
“Oh, yeah, thanks, I’ll have a burger.”
“Will do.”
Shaking his head and smiling incredulously at how absurdly peaceful his life had become, he watched them go. Then he passed on Lorena’s message to their guests and joined Wyatt, Jessica, and Marla at the grills.
“Hello, tiniest already-born human at this party,” he greeted the little one, leaning his hands on his knees to get at eye level with her. “Did you know that where I come from, people are on average five centimeters taller than they are here in the States? So sure, I’m tall for a Croat, but I’m only really tall for an American. And other than my own kids, you are the only one who doesn’t think that makes me any more weirdly large than any of the other giant grown-ups. But the first time your mommy claimed to be pregnant with you, she wore a fake belly on her cult-y murder missions for, like, three months, so I’m not even sure you’re real.”
With admirable baby-proofed restraint, Jessica blew him a raspberry.
“Let me check.” He gently took Marla’s little nose between thumb and forefinger and jiggled it until she snort-laughed, wriggling in her mother’s arms. “Okay, I guess you are. That officially makes you my third favorite already-born person here.”
“Don’t let your wife hear that,” Wyatt teased.
“She wouldn’t be having another baby with me if she didn’t agree that children are much cuter than grown-ups.”
Lorena and Jiya returned, a round wooden stool and a barrel of laughs in tow. The sun set, ever so slowly. The food was good and the company merry. His family was safe, was well, was happy. His friends were plenty. Half of them needed to stand on a box to look him in the eye, Lorena’s ankles were swollen, the children got tired and cranky halfway through the night, and the booze was lukewarm because in all the hilarity they’d completely forgotten to put it in the cooler. But oh well.
You didn’t mess with perfection.