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Robby hears a shriek from the water that he more than recognizes, and his head snaps up automatically.
“Careful,” he warns, trying to keep his voice even though he raises it in volume. Quinn is half-asleep on his chest; he settles his hand over her single exposed ear, the other already pressed to his chest, and calls, “You’ve been out there long enough, haven’t you?”
“Aw, don’t ruin the party, Mikey!” Jack calls back.
Robby follows the sound of his voice, squinting through his sunglasses against the bright sunlight glaring down from the clear sky overhead. Ankle-deep in the water, the waves lapping at his shin on one side and his waterproof prosthesis on the other, Robby catches sight of Jack just as he reaches down and snatches Rowan by the ankle, hoisting her up straight into the air with another scream of delight. It’s the first time the twins are seeing the ocean— that they remember, anyway— and she’s fought against getting out since they got here.
“Papa?” Quinn murmurs from beneath Robby’s chin, and he cranes his neck to glance down at her, watching her blink sleepily up at him. “Is it morning?”
“It’s afternoon still, baby, you’re at the beach,” Robby reminds her, tucking one of her wavy shoulder-length locks back behind her ear, the same warm cinnamon-brown shade as her identical twin’s. “How’d you sleep?”
She buries her face against his chest, rubbing her cheek over the thin, soft material of his t-shirt. When he reaches up to adjust the hooded towel she fell asleep in, making sure her face is obscured from the sun, she takes the opportunity to burrow in closer; he cradles her head in his hand, kisses her forehead, can’t help but smile at the sigh she releases in response.
“Good,” she mumbles, yawning, melting back into him.
“Do you want something to eat?” he asks her, and she yawns again, jaw cracking against his chest. “Your dad packed enough for us to survive an apocalypse, so—”
“And when an apocalypse happens,” Jack cuts him off, stopping over them, his shadow elongated by Rowan on his shoulders, gripping his wet hair in both tiny hands, “I think you’ll all be grateful, don’t you?”
“Not sure how far two bags of Goldfish will get us in an apocalypse,” Robby comments.
“Pretty far when I trade you for a dozen more,” Jack shoots back. “Hey, Ro, remember what happened to London Bridge?”
“No—”
“It fell down,” Jack exclaims over her shout, hoisting her up over his head and sweeping her down to stand on her own two feet in the sand. She giggles the entire way down, pitched high with delight. “There we go. Okay, I heard someone talking about snacks—”
“Banana, please!” Rowan asks. She shoves the cooler open herself, sticking her entire head and upper body in; Robby leans over to catch her by the shoulder with one hand before she topples inside. “Quinn? You want bananas?”
“Mm…” Quinn sits up in Robby’s lap, her towel-hood slipping back and off. Her hair is a mess underneath; she shoves it backwards with the flats of both palms. “No.”
Rowan tips back out of the cooler, wet hair stuck to everything— her saltwater-tacky skin, her bright bathing suit, the side of the cooler. “How about rice?”
This, Quinn considers more seriously, a long and grave moment of consideration before she nods.
“Okay,” she agrees, and Rowan passes her one of the single-wrapped rice cakes Jack packed into the cooler, along with what felt like half their pantry and refrigerator while he was filling it up this morning. Wriggling off of Robby’s lap, Quinn claims her snack and hops down to join her sister in the sand, returning to her small canvas chair— teal next to Rowan’s matching pair in peach. “Thanks!”
“Welcome,” Rowan replies.
Over their heads, Jack and Robby exchange a glance they share often, which mostly amounts to an expression of fondness for their family.
“How you doing?” Robby asks him. Before he can answer, he continues, “You’re gonna burn up out there, get over here.”
“It’s the beach, Mikey, what’s the worst that could—”
“Stop that right there,” Robby interrupts him, earning himself a laugh. “Say that and the next thing you know, you’re getting eaten by a shark. I’m too young and pretty to be a widower, Jack, c’mon.”
“Pretty I can agree with, but young where?” Jack asks. As instructed, he takes a seat on Robby’s reclining beach chair, just beside his thighs; Robby reaches for the sunscreen first, smearing white across his hand before he’s reaching for Jack next, smooth hands spreading over his shoulders. “God, that’s cold.”
“Feels a lot better than skin cancer would,” Robby comments.
“Forever the optimist,” Jack replies. “Hey, I was thinking—”
“Daddy, I have sand in my banana!” Rowan calls over her shoulder, twisting back to look at them, holding up the offending banana, half-eaten. Quinn peers over her own chair at them, wide-eyed, observing.
“How the hell did that happen?” Jack asks, bewildered.
“Dropped it,” she replies.
“Well, take the sandy bit off and eat the rest, it’s still good,” Jack replies, and Robby lightly smacks his shoulder. “What? She’s not going to get diphtheria from a little bit of sand—”
“Would you stop saying stuff like that?” Robby accuses him. He pushes the sunscreen tube at Jack, wiping the last of the cream on his hands off on Jack’s thighs before leaning around him. “Rowan, honey, c’mere, come get a packet of peanut butter crackers instead, give me that.”
Hopping over to them, she surrenders her sandy banana and takes the plastic packet Robby passes over from inside the cooler with delight. Robby’s even more pleased to see her go over and share one of the crackers with her sister; he and Jack share the same fond expression again before Jack pinches Robby’s thigh.
“Turn over, take your shirt off,” he instructs him, and Robby raises an eyebrow at him. “Your turn for sunscreen, c’mon.” Plucking the banana from Robby’s hands, eating half of the remains in one bite, he answers Robby’s second eyebrow rising to join the first with, “What? There’s nothing wrong with it—”
“You’re a walking, talking bad example,” Robby replies.
“Oh, I am not, stop being dramatic,” Jack counters. “Now, shirt off, big guy, let’s go.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Robby says, sitting up and shimmying out of his t-shirt, draping it over the back of his chair.
“Don’t eat that!” Quinn exclaims.
They both look over just in time to see Rowan grabbing a peanut butter cracker out of the sand and shoving it whole into her mouth. She looks back towards the two of them with a grin.
“It’s still good!” she tells them, muffled by peanut butter and cracker and, presumably, sand.
Robby gives Jack a look. Jack just grins back at him, then finishes the end of the banana, rolling up the peel to toss into their little trash bag.
“Get over here,” Jack instructs him, beckoning him closer.
It’s worth sitting up and shuffling out of the comfortable position he’d found in the sunshine to let Jack start lathering another layer of sunscreen over Robby’s skin. He’s unspeakably thorough; Robby doesn’t think an inch of his skin goes uncovered. Even more— Jack plucks the sunhat off his own head, dropping it onto Robby’s.
“C’mere,” Jack murmurs as he catches Robby’s chin.
“What do you mean?” Robby asks, readjusting the hat, feeling the damp faux-straw drip a couple drops of seawater down his wrist.
“Turn more towards me,” Jack clarifies, and so Robby turns into him. Catching his cheeks between his hands, Jack starts massaging sunscreen in there, too. “All your little freckles are coming out, pretty boy. You forgot to put sunscreen on your face, didn’t you? Calling me a bad example.”
Robby, in all fairness, isn’t paying a ton of attention to the words coming out of his mouth. Jack is just— very, very close to him, all tanned and shining in the light catching his face right now. The sunbeams kissing him make his eyes bright and golden, the same shade as their daughters’, sparkling when he pushes his sunglasses up into his hair so he can examine Robby more closely, making sure he doesn’t miss any last bit of him.
“Hey,” Robby murmurs. His eyes flicker down to Jack’s lips, though Jack probably can’t see that through his reflective shades.
“Hey, yourself,” Jack replies, voice just as low, a tilted edge of amusement in it. He tips his head, eyes flickering over Robby’s face— then dropping down to his lips, too. “I’m not gonna rub aloe on you if y—”
The end of his admonishment disappears when Robby slants into him, stealing a kiss before he can finish. A breathless huff of laughter comes from Jack into him, and Robby swallows that, too, his hand slipping over Jack’s bare sunscreen-sticky side to hold him in place when he licks along his tongue.
They part for a brief breath, and Robby accuses, “Yes, you will.”
“Yes, I will,” Jack echoes, diving back into another kiss, sunscreen-slick hands cradling Robby’s jaw. He tastes like banana and smells like artificial coconut and feels like sunshine; Robby can’t help but smile.
“Papa!” Quinn shouts, breaking the two of them apart.
Robby doesn’t pull too far away, asking, “What’s up?”
“I have sand in my mouth!” comes the immediate complaint.
“Me, too!” Rowan calls; she sounds significantly more excited than her sister does. “Can we eat at the beach every day?”
Jack’s still close enough that his laugh is a warm exhalation across Robby’s lips before he turns away towards their daughters instead. “There’s sand in your mouth ‘cause you keep putting your hands in the sand while eating, buckos.”
“No,” Rowan counters. “It’s ‘cause I dropped all my crackers.”
“Oh, well.” Jack glances back towards Robby, flipping his sunglasses onto his nose again. “Guess I’m the idiot.” Clapping his hands on his thighs, rising again, he asks, “How about we try making a sandcastle instead?”
“Or a sand mermaid?” Rowan asks.
“Can you make me a mermaid?” Quinn asks, barely a breath between questions.
Jack looks to Robby again, another affectionate expression in place, and holds out a hand to him.
“You’re the one who wanted to coordinate days off,” Jack reminds him. “‘Let’s go to the beach,’ he said. ‘The girls’ll love it,’ he said.”
“I was right,” Robby points out, taking Jack’s hand, letting him tug him from his chair with a groan. “I need a vacation from this vacation, though, my back is killing me.”
“Circle of life, old man. We’ll go camping next time.” Jack yanks at him, their fingers interlocked. “C’mon, come make us mermaids, Papa.”
Robby watches Jack release his hand and drop himself down into the sand, letting Quinn and Rowan instantly push him down flat and start heaping handfuls of sand over his bare chest and stomach. The tiny granules stick to him all over; he’s going to be such a mess to clean up, they all are.
“Papa, come help, please,” Quinn asks him, reaching up to motion him closer.
For once, Robby finds that it’s not all that hard to focus on this and this alone— to not think about anything else, his regular life, his job at the Pitt, the weight on his shoulders and Jack’s both. It’s actually pretty easy to pay attention to Jack and Quinn and Rowan in the sand, like they’re the only people in the world, like they’re all that matters, because— really, right now, they are, and he likes to linger in these moments when he can.
“Papa,” Rowan insists, this time coming to retrieve him herself with a firm, sandy hand in his. “Come on.”
“Alright, I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m right here,” he says as he bends in half to let her tug him along. Kneeling in the sand with them, he notices something he has a thousand times before, and will a million times ahead still: their daughters’ smiles look just like Jack’s.
And even when they get sand in their little sandwiches, earning an unending ring of jokes from Jack— and even when Rowan destroys Quinn’s sandcastle in the pursuit of “trying to make it better—” and even when Robby has to sit them both down and try to work their hair into manageable braids, knowing the hellscape coming when they have to scrub them down later— he still would rather be here than anywhere else, he knows that much. Because this—
This is still watching Jack get tackled into the ocean by their twin four-year-olds, and this is still laying on their towels with them to rest in the sunshine, and this— This is still the four of them at the end of the day, watching the sun sink beyond the horizon and the sky light up in a multitude of warm, streaking colors. It’s Quinn asleep in Jack’s lap, curled up in a ball, and Rowan in Robby’s, sprawled-out and unconscious dead weight. It’s Jack’s hand in his, squeezing tight before he releases him and shifts his chair closer, letting his arm sling across Robby’s shoulders instead, wrapping up and tugging him close before the sunset.
“Hey,” Jack says, catching Robby’s attention, drawing him in to turn towards him again.
“Hey, yourself,” Robby replies. His eyes skim over Jack’s face; he’s got a couple sun-freckles, too, and Robby sees his own smile in the reflection off his sunglasses. “Your nose is a little red.”
“Sounds like someone didn’t do their job right,” Jack murmurs back before he catches him in a kiss.
There’s a little bit of grit in their kiss; sand still clings to the corners of Jack’s jaw, his hair, the inside curves of his ears. Robby supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, but he also finds he can’t regret it.
Jack was right before, anyway: it’s still very, very good.
