Prompt - Something Lost, Something Found

[infringe]

SONG OF THE SEA ( joshua, alecto ) A selkie far from home, searching for his coat. He meets a kind, lonely, young fisherman who tends the lighthouse near the sea.

Comments

[infringe]

"I'm thinking about," he sighs, a look of guilt beginning to spill onto his brow, "how Percy is going to feel growing up so different from his siblings. I'm thinking about how he might come to...resent us somehow."

He shifts the infant in his arms, wincing slightly at the scrape of little baby teeth against his skin. He wonders, rather idly, when Percy would eventually ween and realizes he knows next to nothing about how a human child develops and what they need as they grow. Just that they need a lot more time and patience than a selkie pup ever would to do just about anything and everything.

Alecto turns into his husband's hold just a bit more (the tilt of the position makes Percy gurgle for some reason). "...I think maybe we could use some help from your sister. I remember you suggested that early on and I had been too...stubborn to consider it."

[singinthestorm]

He leans down again, accommodating the shift, presses a kiss into Alecto's dark hair, breathing him in, considering his response. After all, it was because of Joshua that Alecto was in this position, a selkie on land, married to a human and bearing him children; he has no doubt that Alecto loved Percy, even if he didn't yet know how to relate to him, but at the heart of the matter was the love they had for each other, that underlay everything about their life now, together.

"We'll just have to do our best," he replies, quiet and calm, with his usual patience and assurance. "There's only so much we can do, other than love all the children to the best of our ability, care for them, and make sure they have what they need."

He hums thoughtfully at Alecto's suggestion; it had been on his mind, but he didn't want to push. "I trust Kate absolutely, and I think she already suspects, after the commotion your family made at our wedding," he says, trying to inject some levity. "But if she comes here to help with the house and the baby, and to live with us..." There really would be no denying the truth of what Alecto and Avery and Daphne were.

[infringe]

Alecto huffs, ever anxious, prickly and stubborn in contrast to his husband’s calm, gentle perspective in times of duress. “I know. It’ll require some explaining. And she might need some time to adjust to it all. We’re not exactly a traditional family by any means - ah.” He frowns, looking down at Percy who was suddenly fussing and therefore gnawing and gnashing. Goodness, human babies were so mercurial.

“But,” he glances back up at Joshua, placing his trust in him (as he always had, for so many years now, in everything), “I think it’ll be worth it. And I think it’s about time for us to include more of your side of the family into…well, everything. It’ll be good for the children too.” For Percy’s sake especially, he thinks.

[singinthestorm]

He reaches down without looking, strokes the side of Percy's cheek to settle him down again and latch on to Alecto to finish nursing properly, maintaining the eye contact between them. "I'll write to her in the morning then," he says, by way of agreement. "But it'll take two weeks at the earliest for her to arrive. Do you want me to arrange for some help in the meantime? I could find someone from town, or change the shifts at the lighthouse. Or we could ask Pippa to watch Daphne and Avery for a little while, to give you some more time with Percy."