Work Text:
When Dream comes downstairs late in the evening, his teenage daughter is sitting at the kitchen table, computer open in front of her.
“Hey, Rory,” he says, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. “Are you working on your homework?”
“I’m doing it, leave me alone,” she grumbles.
Dream blinks. “Excuse me?”
“I said, leave me alone! I’m doing it, okay?” She wipes at her face, and Dream suddenly notices how red and puffy her eyes are. “APUSH is fucking lame, and I hate high school, and I’ve been sitting here for three fucking hours–”
“Rory.”
“Three freaking hours,” she amends, sniffling. “And I haven’t even done anything. I hate this.”
Dream’s heart sinks. He puts his water down. “Okay, honey. We are gonna have a conversation about how we speak to other people. But for now, why don’t I get you a snack?”
“Okay,” Rory says. “Sorry,” she adds, deflating a little.
He sets a water bottle, a box of tissues and a bowl of pretzels down next to her, and pulls up a chair. “Okay. What are you working on? When is it due?”
“There’s, like, a million questions.” She grabs a tissue, wiping her eyes. “The answers are supposed to be in the textbook, but I can’t find any of them. And I have to be done by the beginning of class tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Dream isn’t quite sure where to start. “Is this the only thing you have to do tonight?”
She nods, turning her computer towards him. “Yeah, just the one assignment. It’s just–” she tips her head back til it thuds against her chair– “so annoying. I have to, like, look at the question, then switch to the textbook, then switch to my answer sheet.”
“Can you show me the questions? We can print them out so you only need to switch between two tabs, not three,” he suggests.
She opens the page with the questions. There are almost a hundred. “Jeez. You were right,” Dream says as she prints the page. “APUSH is fucking lame.”
She cracks a smile at this, elbowing him. “Dad!”
He just laughs and ducks away, grabbing the page off the printer. “Where’s your answer document? How many questions have you done so far?”
Wordlessly, she switches tabs. There are only a few words on the page:
AP US History - Aurora
1.
“Okay,” Dream says slowly. “Uh. Can– can you turn it in late?”
“She doesn’t take anything past the due date,” Rory says miserably. “It’s now or never.”
He almost asks, Why didn’t you start it earlier? but he stops himself at the last second. “That’s okay,” he says instead. “Let’s get as much done as we can before you have to hand it in. Sound good?”
Rory nods. “Sounds good.”
They answer the first few questions together, but Rory quickly gains momentum, and Dream lets her keep going by herself while he sits next to her, working on some lyrics for his next song. He thinks about the first few songs he wrote. But the fact is, I need help, I’m failing all my classes, he remembers.
He was so young then, barely a few years older than Rory is now. He was so alone.
He looks across the table at his beautiful, wonderful, clever daughter. I will never let you feel the way I did, he silently pledges, but it feels hollow even to him. He can’t stop the system from hurting her any more than he could stop it from hurting himself.
It’s there, at the kitchen table, that George finds them almost three hours later. “Still up?” he asks.
“Rory has a big history assignment,” Dream tells him.
“I’m almost done,” Rory says, sounding a lot less frustrated than she was earlier.
George looks over her shoulder, taking the mouse and scrolling through her document. “This is a lot of words.” He squeezes her shoulders and gives her a kiss on the top of her head. “Well done, darling.”
“Thanks,” Rory says. “You should buy ice cream tomorrow. Since I’ve been working so hard tonight.” She bats her eyelashes up at him, and Dream has to stifle a laugh. She might get her blonde hair and green eyes from him, but she gets her powers of persuasion from George.
“You’re right,” George says. He’s as powerless against their daughter’s requests as Dream is against his. “I’ll pick some up on the way home. I need to go pick up new litter for Bink and Bonk anyway.”
“Are you going to bed?” Dream asks.
George nods. “Will you be long?”
Dream glances at Rory. “I don’t think so. You only have a few left, right?”
“Yeah. Six more.”
“Okay.” George squeezes his shoulders and kisses the top of his head, just like he did to Rory. “Goodnight, you two. I love you both.”
“Love you too,” Dream and Rory reply in unison.
George is still awake when Dream finally slips into their bed that night.
“Were you two sitting there all evening again?”
“Yeah.” Dream sighs. “I found her crying because she hadn’t started her history homework and it’s due in the morning.”
“How long ago was she given the assignment?”
Dream shakes his head. “I couldn’t ask her. I’m sure it was weeks, though. I feel so….” He can’t help it; his eyes well up with tears. “I just– I remember being her age. School was so awful. It was awful. And I had no idea how to fix it. And now… now Rory is going through the exact same things I went through, and I’m so much older, and I still don’t know how to fix it.”
George pulls him close, brushing a hand over his hair as tears start to stream down his face. “Oh, Dream.”
“I just feel so helpless.” Dream sobs into his husband’s shirt. “Like, there’s nothing I can do to– to make it go away. Our kid’s life is always gonna be just a little bit harder than everybody else’s because of my stupid genes.”
“Baby.” George puts a hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing slow circles into his back. “She’s also clever and funny and so, so loving. You gave her all of that. You don’t have to fix everything for her. You just have to be there.”
“But–” Dream sniffles.
“You are so patient,” George whispers, “so full of love. Sure, she’s going to struggle with things, but she’s so lucky, you know? She’s got something you never had.” He brushes Dream’s tears away with practiced ease.
“What?”
“The best dad in the world.”
Dream laughs wetly, catching George’s hand before he can pull it away and planting a kiss to the inside of his wrist. “You mean the best dads in the world.”
“Exactly.” George cups Dream’s cheek, holding him close. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna get through this. Together.”
“Together,” Dream echoes.
“Tomorrow, we can talk to her about getting organized. And then I’ll make you a steak dinner. Okay?”
“Okay.” Dream lets his eyes flutter shut. “I love you so much, George. I love our family.”
“I love you, Dream,” George murmurs back. “Sleep now.”
They talk about it the next day, when Rory gets home from after-school soccer practice and pokes her head into Dream’s office. Before she says anything to Dream or George, she bends down to pet the black cat winding circles around her ankles. “Hi, Bink,” she coos. She glances up at them. “Hey, guys.”
Dream saves the file he’s working on and turns his desk chair around to face her. “Hey, kiddo. How was school?”
“Good,” she says. “Can I talk to you guys?”
George sits up on the bed in the corner. “What’s up?”
“I wanted to say–” she squirms, clearly uncomfortable. “I wanted to say thank you,” and she turns to Dream, “for helping me yesterday.”
“You’re my baby,” Dream says. “I’ll always help you when you need it.”
Rory makes a face. “Okay, you don’t need to get all mushy on me. Plus… I don’t actually want it to happen again. That’s what I’m here to talk about.”
“Do you want our help?” George asks. “We can sit down and make a plan together for you to get on top of your schoolwork.”
Rory nods. “Yeah. I think that would be– yeah.”
“We’ve got three options,” George says, all-business.
That’s something that has surprised Dream over the years: how easily he takes charge in a crisis, how willingly he takes the lead when Dream and Rory falter. My rock, Dream thinks, silently vowing to pull George aside later and remind him how much he adores him.
Oblivious to Dream’s planning, George continues, “We could come up with some organizational strategies as a family, we could find someone for you to talk to—like, a therapist, if you want—or we could look at medication.”
Rory is silent.
“You can pick one of those, or two, or you could try all of them. It’s completely up to you.”
“We know it’s a lot to think about,” Dream chimes in. “I take meds now, but I wasn’t ready for them yet when I was your age.”
She sighs. “I don’t know. I just want someone to tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
“You don’t have to decide now,” George says. “We can do a bit of research if you’d like.”
“Can we do it after dinner? Practice was so hard today. I’m starving.”
“Good,” Dream says, “because your dad promised he’d make steak.”
George laughs. “I did say that, didn’t I?” He stands up. “Come on, then. Rory, it’s your turn to empty the dishwasher.”
Rory groans. “Da-ad, I emptied the dishwasher last week.”
“And then you ate off the plates and drank out of the glasses, and now you’ve got to empty it again this week,” George says as she follows him into the hallway. “Funny how that happens, isn’t it?”
Dream trails behind them as they bicker the whole way to the kitchen. He thinks back to when he was Rory’s age again, and he knows with absolute certainty that he will never let his daughter live the way he did. His life is so much brighter now, full of love and laughter and light. He has George now. And Rory has both of them.
Everything’s going to be alright. Everything is alright. Everything–
“What do you mean you forgot to buy ice cream?” Rory screeches from the kitchen, and Dream hurries to catch them up.
Everything’s going to be alright, after he runs to the store to pick up some ice cream.