Fic: From the Tree (Bandom/JoBros, Mike/Kevin, FRC)
Title: From the Tree
Author: allyndra
Fandom: Bandom/JoBros
Pairing: Mike Carden/Kevin Jonas
Rating: FRC
Length: about 3,000 words
Disclaimer: Fiction. Which means, not true. Please don't Google yourself.
Summary: Domestic future!fic. Paulie loves his dads, even when they're lame.
Notes: For kalimai in the sodamnskippy holiday exchange.
Dad liked to wake Paulie up by tugging gently on his curls and singing, “Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory,” until he opened his eyes and agreed to face the day. Pops liked to wake him up by yanking the covers away and hoisting Paulie’s feet into the air so that he jolted awake half-dangling over the bed. Since that was guaranteed to make Paulie sulk for at least half of breakfast, usually Pops only got wake-up duty where here was some urgent reason for Paulie to get up now.
Knowing that there was probably a good reason to wake up in a hurry didn’t make Paulie any happier to find himself cold and awake and yanked out of bed on Monday morning. Pops grinned down at him. “Up and at’em, kiddo,” he said, dropping Paulie’s feet to bounce against the mattress.
Paulie huffed out a put-upon sigh as Pops left the room. His parents sucked so much! He gave his blankets a sad look, but dragged himself away from the bed and over to his dresser. He pulled his clothes on with rough, unhappy movements, thinking bitter thoughts about cruel people who didn’t let their kids get enough sleep. They’d regret it when he passed out in the middle of the street and got run over. When the doctors slaving to save his mangled body blamed it all on sleep deprivation, then they’d be sorry.
He stomped a little extra loud on his way down the stairs, so there was no excuse for the way his parents were wrapped around each other, standing in front of the table. Dad had his arms twisted up around Pops’ neck, pressing little kisses to the line of Pops’ jaw, and Pops had his chin tilted back and his eyes closed, and ugh! Seriously, they were way, way too old to be acting like that.
Paulie paused in the doorway and cleared his throat dramatically. “You guys are going to make me hurl,” he said.
Pops dropped his hands from Dad’s hips and stepped out of the embrace, dropping into a chair. “Well, it’s a good thing you haven’t had breakfast yet, huh?”
Dad swatted at Pops’ shoulder. “Don’t encourage him, Mike,” he said. He raised unsympathetic eyebrows at Paulie. “You’re running late, little boy. What do you want for breakfast?”
Sometimes (when he didn’t have friends or cool people around) Paulie didn’t mind that fact that his dad had a hundred and one nicknames for him. But right now he was justifiably annoyed and grossed out, and he wasn’t in the mood to be called ‘little boy’ or ‘munchkin’ or anything else.
He scowled. “Just cereal. If you can stop making out long enough to pour it,” he grumbled, sitting heavily.
Maybe he should have said that last part under his breath. Pops leveled his scariest look at Paulie, and Dad frowned. “Attitude,” Dad said mildly, and Paulie looked down at the table. Pops could look super mean, but Paulie knew that Dad was the one who laid out the harshest punishments for being disrespectful. Once he’d caught Paulie mouthing off to Uncle Joe, and he’d taken Paulie’s phone away for a week. And Uncle Joe had thought the whole thing was funny.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. Dad ruffled his hair as he slid a bowl of cereal in front of him, so he couldn’t have been too upset.
“I just don’t understand how you managed to inherit your Pops’ surliness,” Dad said. When Paulie glanced up at him, Dad was smiling fondly at them both.
“Disney magic?” Pops suggested, grinning in a super obnoxious, inside-joke kind of way.
Dad didn’t think it was too obnoxious, though, because he laughed as he said, “Shut up!”
“You gonna make me, Kev?” Pops asked, and his smile went softer.
“I’m good at it,” Dad replied, leaning down to kiss him.
“Hello!” Paulie clanged his spoon against his bowl. “Sitting right here.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Dad said, straightening up and pressing a hand melodramatically to his heart. “What you must suffer!”
“I do.” Paulie nodded. “You don’t even know.”
“Lucky for you, Bill and Jeevey will be here to rescue you from your tragic plight in,” Pops checked the clock, “five minutes. So get a move on.”
Paulie wrinkled his nose, but he got a move on. He’d forgotten that Uncle Bill and Jeevey were coming to take him school shopping today, but he’d been excited about it for weeks. It was the first time he’d ever been allowed to go school shopping without his parents. Uncle Bill hardly counted as a chaperon at all, and Jeevey was just awesome. She never made him feel like a baby, and she was so cool; he was going to look so good this year if she helped him pick out his clothes.
He sped through finishing his breakfast and ran up to the bathroom to get ready. He frowned in concentration as he pulled a wet comb through his hair. He had Dad’s hair, and sometimes he hated his curls so much. He’d asked about getting a flat iron, but Dad had just laughed and said, “Trust me, this hair is not meant to be straightened.” Dad clearly just wanted Paulie to be frizzy and miserable.
He was brushing his teeth for the second time when Pops yelled up the stairs, “They’re here, kiddo. Stop primping and get down here.”
Paulie blushed bright red, but as he rushed down the stairs, Uncle Bill was saying, “For a kid who looked like he cut his hair with a lawnmower, you did a lot of primping yourself, back in the day. Remember when you were dating that one girl with the piercings, and you-”
Sometimes Paulie got sick of hearing stories about the old days, but he totally would have been willing to listen to this one. Embarrassing stories about his parents were the best kind. But Uncle Bill spotted Paulie on the stairs and cut himself off. He spread his arms wide and said, “Paul Kevin Jonas the Third! My favorite little moppet. Give me some sugar.”
Paulie let himself be pulled into a hug. Uncle Bill was pretty cool for a grownup. He was the number one, top of the list, best person to call for help on English homework, and he was good at advice about girls, too. Jeevey was standing beside Uncle Bill, wearing an awesome beret and an amused expression. She grabbed him for a hug when Uncle Bill let him go, and Paulie was excited to see that he was almost as tall as she was.
“Hey, PJ,” she said. She was the only one who called him PJ, and Paulie loved that. “Ready to get some style?”
“Take care of my kid,” Pops warned as they headed out to Uncle Bill’s car.
“Don’t worry, Mike. Genevieve and I will guard your flesh and blood with our lives.”
Pops rolled his eyes, because everyone knew that Paulie wasn’t actually his flesh and blood, but all he said was, “You better.”
Uncle Bill hung back for a moment to talk to Pops as Jeevey and Paulie climbed into the car.Even though she was practically a grownup, Jeevey sat in the back with Paulie. She grinned and said, “So, PJ. Tell me all the shenanigans you’ve been up to lately.”
Paulie ducked his head to hide his blush. “Dad’s been teaching me to skateboard?” he said, not sure that counted as shenanigans. She looked interested, though, so Paulie told her about the tricks he’d been learning and how hilariously freaked out Pops got every time Paulie or Dad fell. Uncle Bill got in halfway through the story of Paulie’s first half-pipe, and they started their trip with all three of them laughing.
Rude awakening or no, it was going to be a super awesome day.
***
Paulie got home that afternoon laden down with bags of clothes. They’d been to almost every store in the mall. Paulie was pretty sure Uncle Bill had considered taking him into Victoria’s Secret, just because he was a completionist. (And he totally was. Paulie had seen his music collection.) Jeevey had kept him in check, though, and Paulie had escaped with no lingerie.
He did, however, half five tons of new clothes and three new pairs of shoes. He was resigned to giving Dad a fashion show and answering a million questions about the day, but Dad just gave him a distracted smile when he came in.
“Did you have a good day?” And then before Paulie could even answer, he said, “Go hang up your new stuff, okay?”
Paulie frowned. He kind of wanted to feel hurt, but Dad was looking so … off. It made his stomach hurt with worry instead. He went to hang up his clothes without even making Dad tell him a second time.
At dinner, Dad was quiet and pale. Pops made his famous lasagna, but Dad just pushed it around on his plate. Pops kept shooting him concerned little glances, but he didn’t say anything, so Paulie concentrated on pretending everything was fine. He talked extra loudly about his day, reciting stories about how Uncle Bill almost spilled a whole slushie on a little kid who dashed in front of him and how the clerks in three different stores had asked Jeevey for her phone number.
Talking so much should have filled up the silence left by Dad’s weird mood, but somehow it didn’t. The lasagna sat heavy in Paulie’s gut, and he didn’t eat any dessert.
He lay in bed that night, wondering what was wrong with Dad. It didn’t seem like he and Pops were fighting, although it could be hard to tell. Paulie had seen Pops fight with guys from work or with friends, and those fights were loud, usually peppered with lots of profanity and a little violence. When he fought with Dad, though, he got quiet and hurt.
When he heard his parents talking down the hall, Paulie crept to his door and opened it a crack. They were standing at the top of the stairs, leaning against each other. Something in Paulie’s chest eased at the visible proof that they were okay with each other.
“You’ve got to tell me about it sometime, Kev,” Pops was saying. He ran a hand up Dad’s back, and Dad leaned into it.
“Yeah. It’s nothing. It’s really silly,” Dad said with an attempt at a chuckle. Pops just waited, and after a minute, Dad said, “It’s just … Frankie called. And you know how he’s been trying to plan a reunion tour?”
Pops nodded, and Dad closed his eyes. “So I keep saying, ‘Maybe when Paulie’s older,’ and Frank said, ‘Hey, Paulie’s older.’”
“What did you say?”
“I said I needed to talk to you about it.” Dad reached up and tangled his hands in Pops’ hair, staring at the way his fingers moved through the strands like it was the most fascinating sight ever. Which it wasn’t, and Paulie knew because he saw his Dad doing that all the time.
“Do you want to?” Pops asked.
“Part of me does. I used to love playing live,” Dad said. Paulie flashed on the few videos he’d seen of Dad onstage, rocking out to (lame, old) pop songs while thousands of fans screamed up at him. It did seem pretty cool.
But,” Pops prompted, tilting his head back against Dad’s fingers
“But I think about the media circus, and I don't know if I'm up for dealing with that again." Dad shifted so that he was looking Pops right in the eye. "It was worth it. So worth it. But this would be different, and I just don't know."
"Okay, well. You told Frank we'd talk about it. We're talking about it. I vote that we go to bed, and finish talking about it in the morning, okay?"
"Okay." Dad bit his lip. "I don't know if I'll be able to sleep with this on my mind, though. You might have to distract me."
"You got it," Pops said with a little smile. He pulled Dad closer for a kiss, and Paulie sat back away from the door.
He'd never wanted to know much about his parents' lives back when they were famous. Part of him felt really guilty that they'd clearly given it all up for a boring life with him, and the rest of him just found it totally weird.But suddenly he wanted to know.
He curled up under his blanket and pulled out his phone, logging into search and typing in "Kevin Jonas."
***
Paulie had barely slept by the time his dad came in in the morning. He felt the mattress dip, and then Dad’s hand was on his head, tugging lightly at a curl and singing, “Rise and shine.” Paulie opened his eyes and blinked blearily at him.
“You should go on tour with your brothers,” Paulie blurted, and Dad’s hand stilled.
"You heard that, huh?" he said awkwardly.
"Sometimes I eavesdrop," Paulie told him.
Dad grinned, lightning quick, but real. "You are definitely your pops' son, no matter what the genes say."
"Yeah, well. I'm also your son."
"That's kind of the problem." Paulie couldn't cover the flash of hurt, because Dad rushed to say, "No, no! Not like that. Like, it's a problem because I don't want paparazzi to follow you and reporters to talk about you." He sighed and curled in on himself. "When Mike and I got together, it was a mess. I was so happy and so miserable at the same time. Your Grandma and Grandpa were trying to be okay with it, but every time they turned around, there was a microphone shoved in their faces, demanding to know how they felt about their deviant of a son." He fixed Paulie with a frank stare. "It sucked."
"And when you had me?"
"We kept it quiet for a while. I mean, people knew that Nicole was pregnant, but she had a boyfriend, so they just thought, 'Hey, Nicole's having a baby.' But when they found out she was having my baby ..." He shook his head.
"Did you regret it?" Paulie's voice sounded small and stupid in his own ears.
Dad bent down and gave him a fierce, tight hug. "Not even for a second. But see, when they were hounding me about getting together with Pops, I knew I had to get through it to have him in my life. And when they hounded me about having you, I knew I had to get through it to get my baby.If I go on tour, they'll hound me, and I don't know what I'd be doing it for."
Paulie bit his lip. He'd seen a lot of videos and news stories in his search, and Dad did look stressed in all the ones where the reporters were firing questions at him while flashbulbs went off. But in the ones where he'd been talking about music, or the ones where he'd been playing ...
Paulie's dad looked happy a lot of the time. He was a smiler and a hugger, and he had never seemed discontented with his life. But there was something about the way he looked onstage in those videos, intense and free, and Paulie wanted to see it for himself.
“Do it for me,” Paulie said. “And for Pops. Do it for us, because we don’t want a bunch of dickwagons to scare you away from being as awesome as possible.”
“Language,” Dad said automatically. Then, “You think I’m awesome?”
"I said as awesome as possible," Paulie corrected. "Y'know, however low and pathetic your maximum level of awesomeness may be."
"Yeah, yeah. You think I'm awesome," Dad said confidently.
"So you'll do it?" Paulie asked.
"Maybe. I still have to talk to Pops some more, and talk to Nick and Joe and Frank about logistics." But he was looking thoughtful now, rather than wan and worried, so Paulie was totally counting this as a win.
"Can I come on tour with you?" he asked hopefully.
Dad laughed and ruffled his curls. "We'll see, monkey. But," he added, "if you don't get out of bed, you can't go anywhere. Do I have to send Pops in here to get you moving?"
"No way," Paulie said, throwing back his covers. "I'm up."
"Okay. Put on some clothes and come have breakfast."
When Paulie got downstairs, his parents were snuggling in the kitchen again, like they had no idea that people actually had to eat in there. He sighed super loudly and walked around them to get some juice out of the fridge, but he didn't grumble today.
Last night on his phone, he'd seen old talk show clips and news articles that basically said Dad was a traitor for getting with Pops and that Pops was wicked for seducing Dad. Editorials that had demanded that Grandma and Grandpa disown Dad and Paulie, and that radios stop playing music by the Jonas Brothers and TAI. After all of that, maybe they'd earned the right to grope each other in their own kitchen.
Until they started kissing up against the stove, because some things a kid just didn't need to see.
Author: allyndra
Fandom: Bandom/JoBros
Pairing: Mike Carden/Kevin Jonas
Rating: FRC
Length: about 3,000 words
Disclaimer: Fiction. Which means, not true. Please don't Google yourself.
Summary: Domestic future!fic. Paulie loves his dads, even when they're lame.
Notes: For kalimai in the sodamnskippy holiday exchange.
Dad liked to wake Paulie up by tugging gently on his curls and singing, “Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory,” until he opened his eyes and agreed to face the day. Pops liked to wake him up by yanking the covers away and hoisting Paulie’s feet into the air so that he jolted awake half-dangling over the bed. Since that was guaranteed to make Paulie sulk for at least half of breakfast, usually Pops only got wake-up duty where here was some urgent reason for Paulie to get up now.
Knowing that there was probably a good reason to wake up in a hurry didn’t make Paulie any happier to find himself cold and awake and yanked out of bed on Monday morning. Pops grinned down at him. “Up and at’em, kiddo,” he said, dropping Paulie’s feet to bounce against the mattress.
Paulie huffed out a put-upon sigh as Pops left the room. His parents sucked so much! He gave his blankets a sad look, but dragged himself away from the bed and over to his dresser. He pulled his clothes on with rough, unhappy movements, thinking bitter thoughts about cruel people who didn’t let their kids get enough sleep. They’d regret it when he passed out in the middle of the street and got run over. When the doctors slaving to save his mangled body blamed it all on sleep deprivation, then they’d be sorry.
He stomped a little extra loud on his way down the stairs, so there was no excuse for the way his parents were wrapped around each other, standing in front of the table. Dad had his arms twisted up around Pops’ neck, pressing little kisses to the line of Pops’ jaw, and Pops had his chin tilted back and his eyes closed, and ugh! Seriously, they were way, way too old to be acting like that.
Paulie paused in the doorway and cleared his throat dramatically. “You guys are going to make me hurl,” he said.
Pops dropped his hands from Dad’s hips and stepped out of the embrace, dropping into a chair. “Well, it’s a good thing you haven’t had breakfast yet, huh?”
Dad swatted at Pops’ shoulder. “Don’t encourage him, Mike,” he said. He raised unsympathetic eyebrows at Paulie. “You’re running late, little boy. What do you want for breakfast?”
Sometimes (when he didn’t have friends or cool people around) Paulie didn’t mind that fact that his dad had a hundred and one nicknames for him. But right now he was justifiably annoyed and grossed out, and he wasn’t in the mood to be called ‘little boy’ or ‘munchkin’ or anything else.
He scowled. “Just cereal. If you can stop making out long enough to pour it,” he grumbled, sitting heavily.
Maybe he should have said that last part under his breath. Pops leveled his scariest look at Paulie, and Dad frowned. “Attitude,” Dad said mildly, and Paulie looked down at the table. Pops could look super mean, but Paulie knew that Dad was the one who laid out the harshest punishments for being disrespectful. Once he’d caught Paulie mouthing off to Uncle Joe, and he’d taken Paulie’s phone away for a week. And Uncle Joe had thought the whole thing was funny.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. Dad ruffled his hair as he slid a bowl of cereal in front of him, so he couldn’t have been too upset.
“I just don’t understand how you managed to inherit your Pops’ surliness,” Dad said. When Paulie glanced up at him, Dad was smiling fondly at them both.
“Disney magic?” Pops suggested, grinning in a super obnoxious, inside-joke kind of way.
Dad didn’t think it was too obnoxious, though, because he laughed as he said, “Shut up!”
“You gonna make me, Kev?” Pops asked, and his smile went softer.
“I’m good at it,” Dad replied, leaning down to kiss him.
“Hello!” Paulie clanged his spoon against his bowl. “Sitting right here.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Dad said, straightening up and pressing a hand melodramatically to his heart. “What you must suffer!”
“I do.” Paulie nodded. “You don’t even know.”
“Lucky for you, Bill and Jeevey will be here to rescue you from your tragic plight in,” Pops checked the clock, “five minutes. So get a move on.”
Paulie wrinkled his nose, but he got a move on. He’d forgotten that Uncle Bill and Jeevey were coming to take him school shopping today, but he’d been excited about it for weeks. It was the first time he’d ever been allowed to go school shopping without his parents. Uncle Bill hardly counted as a chaperon at all, and Jeevey was just awesome. She never made him feel like a baby, and she was so cool; he was going to look so good this year if she helped him pick out his clothes.
He sped through finishing his breakfast and ran up to the bathroom to get ready. He frowned in concentration as he pulled a wet comb through his hair. He had Dad’s hair, and sometimes he hated his curls so much. He’d asked about getting a flat iron, but Dad had just laughed and said, “Trust me, this hair is not meant to be straightened.” Dad clearly just wanted Paulie to be frizzy and miserable.
He was brushing his teeth for the second time when Pops yelled up the stairs, “They’re here, kiddo. Stop primping and get down here.”
Paulie blushed bright red, but as he rushed down the stairs, Uncle Bill was saying, “For a kid who looked like he cut his hair with a lawnmower, you did a lot of primping yourself, back in the day. Remember when you were dating that one girl with the piercings, and you-”
Sometimes Paulie got sick of hearing stories about the old days, but he totally would have been willing to listen to this one. Embarrassing stories about his parents were the best kind. But Uncle Bill spotted Paulie on the stairs and cut himself off. He spread his arms wide and said, “Paul Kevin Jonas the Third! My favorite little moppet. Give me some sugar.”
Paulie let himself be pulled into a hug. Uncle Bill was pretty cool for a grownup. He was the number one, top of the list, best person to call for help on English homework, and he was good at advice about girls, too. Jeevey was standing beside Uncle Bill, wearing an awesome beret and an amused expression. She grabbed him for a hug when Uncle Bill let him go, and Paulie was excited to see that he was almost as tall as she was.
“Hey, PJ,” she said. She was the only one who called him PJ, and Paulie loved that. “Ready to get some style?”
“Take care of my kid,” Pops warned as they headed out to Uncle Bill’s car.
“Don’t worry, Mike. Genevieve and I will guard your flesh and blood with our lives.”
Pops rolled his eyes, because everyone knew that Paulie wasn’t actually his flesh and blood, but all he said was, “You better.”
Uncle Bill hung back for a moment to talk to Pops as Jeevey and Paulie climbed into the car.Even though she was practically a grownup, Jeevey sat in the back with Paulie. She grinned and said, “So, PJ. Tell me all the shenanigans you’ve been up to lately.”
Paulie ducked his head to hide his blush. “Dad’s been teaching me to skateboard?” he said, not sure that counted as shenanigans. She looked interested, though, so Paulie told her about the tricks he’d been learning and how hilariously freaked out Pops got every time Paulie or Dad fell. Uncle Bill got in halfway through the story of Paulie’s first half-pipe, and they started their trip with all three of them laughing.
Rude awakening or no, it was going to be a super awesome day.
***
Paulie got home that afternoon laden down with bags of clothes. They’d been to almost every store in the mall. Paulie was pretty sure Uncle Bill had considered taking him into Victoria’s Secret, just because he was a completionist. (And he totally was. Paulie had seen his music collection.) Jeevey had kept him in check, though, and Paulie had escaped with no lingerie.
He did, however, half five tons of new clothes and three new pairs of shoes. He was resigned to giving Dad a fashion show and answering a million questions about the day, but Dad just gave him a distracted smile when he came in.
“Did you have a good day?” And then before Paulie could even answer, he said, “Go hang up your new stuff, okay?”
Paulie frowned. He kind of wanted to feel hurt, but Dad was looking so … off. It made his stomach hurt with worry instead. He went to hang up his clothes without even making Dad tell him a second time.
At dinner, Dad was quiet and pale. Pops made his famous lasagna, but Dad just pushed it around on his plate. Pops kept shooting him concerned little glances, but he didn’t say anything, so Paulie concentrated on pretending everything was fine. He talked extra loudly about his day, reciting stories about how Uncle Bill almost spilled a whole slushie on a little kid who dashed in front of him and how the clerks in three different stores had asked Jeevey for her phone number.
Talking so much should have filled up the silence left by Dad’s weird mood, but somehow it didn’t. The lasagna sat heavy in Paulie’s gut, and he didn’t eat any dessert.
He lay in bed that night, wondering what was wrong with Dad. It didn’t seem like he and Pops were fighting, although it could be hard to tell. Paulie had seen Pops fight with guys from work or with friends, and those fights were loud, usually peppered with lots of profanity and a little violence. When he fought with Dad, though, he got quiet and hurt.
When he heard his parents talking down the hall, Paulie crept to his door and opened it a crack. They were standing at the top of the stairs, leaning against each other. Something in Paulie’s chest eased at the visible proof that they were okay with each other.
“You’ve got to tell me about it sometime, Kev,” Pops was saying. He ran a hand up Dad’s back, and Dad leaned into it.
“Yeah. It’s nothing. It’s really silly,” Dad said with an attempt at a chuckle. Pops just waited, and after a minute, Dad said, “It’s just … Frankie called. And you know how he’s been trying to plan a reunion tour?”
Pops nodded, and Dad closed his eyes. “So I keep saying, ‘Maybe when Paulie’s older,’ and Frank said, ‘Hey, Paulie’s older.’”
“What did you say?”
“I said I needed to talk to you about it.” Dad reached up and tangled his hands in Pops’ hair, staring at the way his fingers moved through the strands like it was the most fascinating sight ever. Which it wasn’t, and Paulie knew because he saw his Dad doing that all the time.
“Do you want to?” Pops asked.
“Part of me does. I used to love playing live,” Dad said. Paulie flashed on the few videos he’d seen of Dad onstage, rocking out to (lame, old) pop songs while thousands of fans screamed up at him. It did seem pretty cool.
But,” Pops prompted, tilting his head back against Dad’s fingers
“But I think about the media circus, and I don't know if I'm up for dealing with that again." Dad shifted so that he was looking Pops right in the eye. "It was worth it. So worth it. But this would be different, and I just don't know."
"Okay, well. You told Frank we'd talk about it. We're talking about it. I vote that we go to bed, and finish talking about it in the morning, okay?"
"Okay." Dad bit his lip. "I don't know if I'll be able to sleep with this on my mind, though. You might have to distract me."
"You got it," Pops said with a little smile. He pulled Dad closer for a kiss, and Paulie sat back away from the door.
He'd never wanted to know much about his parents' lives back when they were famous. Part of him felt really guilty that they'd clearly given it all up for a boring life with him, and the rest of him just found it totally weird.But suddenly he wanted to know.
He curled up under his blanket and pulled out his phone, logging into search and typing in "Kevin Jonas."
***
Paulie had barely slept by the time his dad came in in the morning. He felt the mattress dip, and then Dad’s hand was on his head, tugging lightly at a curl and singing, “Rise and shine.” Paulie opened his eyes and blinked blearily at him.
“You should go on tour with your brothers,” Paulie blurted, and Dad’s hand stilled.
"You heard that, huh?" he said awkwardly.
"Sometimes I eavesdrop," Paulie told him.
Dad grinned, lightning quick, but real. "You are definitely your pops' son, no matter what the genes say."
"Yeah, well. I'm also your son."
"That's kind of the problem." Paulie couldn't cover the flash of hurt, because Dad rushed to say, "No, no! Not like that. Like, it's a problem because I don't want paparazzi to follow you and reporters to talk about you." He sighed and curled in on himself. "When Mike and I got together, it was a mess. I was so happy and so miserable at the same time. Your Grandma and Grandpa were trying to be okay with it, but every time they turned around, there was a microphone shoved in their faces, demanding to know how they felt about their deviant of a son." He fixed Paulie with a frank stare. "It sucked."
"And when you had me?"
"We kept it quiet for a while. I mean, people knew that Nicole was pregnant, but she had a boyfriend, so they just thought, 'Hey, Nicole's having a baby.' But when they found out she was having my baby ..." He shook his head.
"Did you regret it?" Paulie's voice sounded small and stupid in his own ears.
Dad bent down and gave him a fierce, tight hug. "Not even for a second. But see, when they were hounding me about getting together with Pops, I knew I had to get through it to have him in my life. And when they hounded me about having you, I knew I had to get through it to get my baby.If I go on tour, they'll hound me, and I don't know what I'd be doing it for."
Paulie bit his lip. He'd seen a lot of videos and news stories in his search, and Dad did look stressed in all the ones where the reporters were firing questions at him while flashbulbs went off. But in the ones where he'd been talking about music, or the ones where he'd been playing ...
Paulie's dad looked happy a lot of the time. He was a smiler and a hugger, and he had never seemed discontented with his life. But there was something about the way he looked onstage in those videos, intense and free, and Paulie wanted to see it for himself.
“Do it for me,” Paulie said. “And for Pops. Do it for us, because we don’t want a bunch of dickwagons to scare you away from being as awesome as possible.”
“Language,” Dad said automatically. Then, “You think I’m awesome?”
"I said as awesome as possible," Paulie corrected. "Y'know, however low and pathetic your maximum level of awesomeness may be."
"Yeah, yeah. You think I'm awesome," Dad said confidently.
"So you'll do it?" Paulie asked.
"Maybe. I still have to talk to Pops some more, and talk to Nick and Joe and Frank about logistics." But he was looking thoughtful now, rather than wan and worried, so Paulie was totally counting this as a win.
"Can I come on tour with you?" he asked hopefully.
Dad laughed and ruffled his curls. "We'll see, monkey. But," he added, "if you don't get out of bed, you can't go anywhere. Do I have to send Pops in here to get you moving?"
"No way," Paulie said, throwing back his covers. "I'm up."
"Okay. Put on some clothes and come have breakfast."
When Paulie got downstairs, his parents were snuggling in the kitchen again, like they had no idea that people actually had to eat in there. He sighed super loudly and walked around them to get some juice out of the fridge, but he didn't grumble today.
Last night on his phone, he'd seen old talk show clips and news articles that basically said Dad was a traitor for getting with Pops and that Pops was wicked for seducing Dad. Editorials that had demanded that Grandma and Grandpa disown Dad and Paulie, and that radios stop playing music by the Jonas Brothers and TAI. After all of that, maybe they'd earned the right to grope each other in their own kitchen.
Until they started kissing up against the stove, because some things a kid just didn't need to see.