Work Text:
i.
Toby is used to watching while other people sleep now. He has two children and for his son sleeping through was always more a theory they were both trying out for size than a real ambition. Toby doesn't mind anymore; standing in the kitchen with bare feet and a restless five year old in his aching arms in the godless hours of the night has come to carry the sting of beauty. The last romantic neurone left in his body fires up and fizzes, lonely, in his chest. Huck sleeps because he is quietened by the presence of his daddy, and Toby goes to places he is locked out of in the daytime. They both dream.
ii.
Sam slept like a child does: his hands bunched up near his face and his legs in a loose curl, his spine a long delicate thing like a cat's tail. Toby could never hear his breathing, even from right beside him, with his palm flat against Sam's back, then the backs of his fingers brushing there lightly. Sam never woke; trusting like a child too and bearing, like a small boy does, a huge weight with his tiredness, pulling everything into orbit around it, filling the room with his yawns and making the air thick with them until Toby had to give up, take off his glasses and put down his pen and go to bed with him. And Toby would wait while Sam spent twenty minutes in the bathroom -- brushing and flossing and swilling mouthwash -- Toby feeling his eyes getting heavier, suppressing yawns that weren't his to begin with, allowing indulgence to sour into irritation, until Sam would come back out of the bathroom and stand by the bed in nothing but his underwear, embarrassed but determined, because he never lost his tenderness about Toby watching him, but neither his desire to impress.
I thought you were tired.
Not that tired.
Huh.
You were never going to put down that report.
Toby never remembers what report it was; it was all of them, all the bits of paper that were more important. And Sam would smile his best college boy smile and say I have needs too, Toby with a twinkle in his eyes, so that Toby couldn't help the warm darkness of a smile rising behind his eyes, predatory, as he knew but managed not to care. And Sam would climb on the bed and almost fall off unless Toby held his arms steady, and flash a grateful sweet boy's smile at him to say thank you and make Toby feel almost guilty for wanting to do what he had always wanted to do to Sam's body. But then they would kiss, and that part of his mind would shut down into a quiet, dull ache; and then they would fuck, and his mind would disappear completely.
But it was afterwards, when Sam was sated and Toby was not, with the lights off and the bed making the creaks and moans it only made when there was another person beside him in it, that the ache turned back into a throb; a pain to make him restless, in his temples and thigh muscles, in his fingers and his chest, swelling his cock.
iii.
Huck's bed is across the room from Molly's and as Toby opens the door and crosses the floor he sees his daughter raise her head from the pillow, just for a moment. He stops, mid-step, as though her eyes are a searchlight, but she just smiles her off-kilter half-asleep little girl smile and turns over. He smiles to himself, luminous in the dark. He carries on across the room, turns off to the left for Huck's bed, lays his other child down on the coverlet. Huck frowns when asleep; little thunderstorms break over his face. Toby brushes the boy's hair out of his eyes then lets his fingers continue in the motion, stroking passes over Huck's head and his thick glossy black hair. Toby takes in a deep breath, then lets it out, bends to kiss his son, gets up and crosses the room, and then closes the door. Huck sleeps the night through; Toby has taken in his restlessness, absorbed it through his skin.
iv.
Toby will get on a plane, sometime, maybe next month or in the fall. He will have some vacation time due and an invitation burning in his memory, and he will choose to ignore the fact that he had decided never to take it up. He will step off the plane and immediately start to hate the sun, and the beach, and California, and he will not seek to define any further the little knot of tension in his belly, pulling at him, making him walk out of the terminal and get a cab and walk up the ridiculous sand dunes, tripping over the clumps of incongruous grass, the sun beating heavily on his back through his white shirt, with his jacket over his arm.
He will not know what to say when the door opens and he looks into Sam's face and finds it almost exactly the same. A few dashes of white in his hair, a pinching of skin around his mouth and nose, soon gone once he smiles, and he will smile, and it will be dazzling. Toby will be blinking away the spots in his eyes as the door closes behind him, unable to see, or at least to see clearly. They will talk but it won't be easy, because Sam never called when the other guy won the 47th, and Toby never called when the President of the United States cut him loose for being a traitor and not a hero. They will stutter and talk over each other and wonder if they had remembered wrongly the telepathy they used to have; so much ink under the bridge.
But it will be late, and Toby will be soaked in whiskey, and they will kiss. Toby will remember the shape of Sam's bottom lip crushed between his teeth, putting both his hands up to Sam's face and shoving his thumb in between their mouths, feeling the skin snag between Sam's teeth and how painful need is, raging in his chest with every shallow breath, deprived and inflamed. And he will push Sam down on Sam's own kitchen table and pull his clothes apart and press his mouth against every uncovering of skin and let Sam's fingers curl up in his hair and Sam's fingernails scratch the back of his neck as he shoves down jeans and boxer shorts, and fits his mouth around the weight of Sam's cock, bending under Sam's writhing, his head tilting forward and back, his tongue rubbing over the shaft then his lips opening over the head, wet and desperate, gagging a little, his eyes will be closed, a sweat on his forehead. The heels of Sam's hands will push against his shoulders, then curl around them. He will whisper Toby's name over and over and over, and Toby will remember how hero-worship felt.
And still later, in the bed, Sam will sleep, and Toby will lie awake. The bed will be narrow, creaky. Sam will lie quietly, turned toward Toby with his hands bunched up near his chin. Eventually Toby will turn his head and look, then turn his body in the bed and watch. Sam will be beautiful to look at, just like always. Toby will raise a hand, to the air first, twist it around there for a little bit to test the idea he will have in his head: that if he moves the world will stop, and break open. He will let his fingers twitch in the air a little, and nothing will happen. His hand will drift down, like a bi-plane on air currents, to Sam's shoulder. He will allow his hand to stroke Sam's tanned, smooth skin and will understand that Sam will not wake. The covers will fall away under the gentle movements of Toby's hand. That hand will be pressed against Sam's hip, thigh, the muscles in his belly, the thumb will linger over Sam's nipple then the centre line of his chest. Toby will be hard, aching, his cock dark with blood, the head about an inch from Sam's belly, rising to a low angle out of tangled black hair. Toby's hand will slip away from Sam's skin and onto his own, fingers curling around his dick, loosely and then not, working himself over though knows he will be sore in the morning, letting precum glisten on his fingers and smear back across his belly, he will stare at Sam and let his head fall forward, just a little, so their brows touch as he comes, silently, semen in white spots on Sam's stomach and in his pubic hair, that Toby will wipe off with his thumb.
I thought you were sleeping.
I thought you were.
Toby ... are you okay?
Sure. I'm great, Sam.
Then go back to sleep?
Okay.
Okay.
Toby will press an impulsive kiss to Sam's hair, black and glossy, and Sam's hands will uncurl for a minute to stroke Toby's neck and chest, fingers pulling against his gold chain until Toby kisses him again to say sleep now. They will sleep, until well into the next morning, and it will be redundant to say I love you by then.
v.
"Did you sleep okay, honey?"
"I was dreaming again, daddy."
"Bad dreams?"
"Yeah, bad dreams."
"You wanna tell me about them?"
Huck shakes his head, slowly, as if he's thinking about it, then faster once he's decided. Toby can't help smiling. He looks so serious, little philosopher, with his hair all in tangles.
"You were making noise all night. He was making noise all night, daddy."
Molly has come into the kitchen and trailing from her left hand is the oversized stuffed giraffe Andy's mom got them for their last birthday (to share, no less, because Elizabeth Wyatt is so short on cash) and that makes Toby smile again, because his little girl looks impossibly dour, like her mother when he would wake her from a nap she wasn't done with yet.
"Did you sleep okay, Mol?"
"No. I didn't."
"You didn't?"
"Huck was making noise, daddy!"
"Come on, honey, you know your brother has bad dreams."
"No, daddy, I don't know that."
"Shall we not fight about it?"
"Daddy!"
"Do you want eggs, Mol?"
She stares at him for a long moment, her mouth set and annoyed, or like she's about to cry. Then she frowns at him. "Yes. Eggs, please."
And Toby has to turn away to the stove to stop himself laughing.
vi.
The kids usually know better, but sometimes Molly likes to wake them by launching herself into their bed like a bomb and exploding with giggles and small, sharp feet, because that's her idea of fun; her mother's daughter, Toby thinks, with an internal smile. Sam smiles outwardly, even though Molly's elbow is digging into his ribs and says how you doing, Molly? and she laughs, because Sam's the good guy, the one who reads them the funny stories and doesn't yell when they haven't done their homework by bedtime Sunday night. Sam used to worry: what are they thinking, is it bad for them, do they get confused? But the plain fact is that neither of them care, because they can feel the sunlight in the house and they know what brought it there, and Sam is the fun one, hands full of ice cream cones and stories about the funny things daddy did before they were born.
She lies between them for a little while, talking, yammering really, her hands waving around in the air. She is a whirling thing, a sudden storm, an uncompromising question demanding an answer. Toby allows his fingers to brush over her hair and she tilts into his hand, shy suddenly, and his heart stutters. He catches Sam's eye, and Sam's smile that says: it's okay. Molly keeps on talking until she gets tired again, all of a sudden just like a light switched off in her head, and she sleeps, curled up like a cat with her head pushed up against Toby's arm. They sleep too, he and Sam, and their hands drift together, pooled in the dip at the centre of the bed.
Toby dreams, and they are good dreams, with no restlessness in them.