Give Me Back My Prompts - 6. 562 - A House Full

“Babe… babe….” Gethin shook his husband harder, then sighed softly as the man he loved rolled over and dragged him down into the warm softness of the duvet. “C’mon sweetie, let go. I can’t come back to bed.”

“Huh? Geth….”

“Wake up, Marc. I need to tell you something.” Gethin clenched his jaw, his mind still reeling from the details of the phonecall he’d received. Marc slept deeply, and the vibration of Gethin’s mobile hadn’t even made him stir. “Marc!”

“I’m up, I’m up!” Marc glared at the clock. “What fucking time is it?”

“Don’t matter babe. I gotta go to the hospital.”

“What? what’s going on Gethin?”

Gethin sighed heavily, and cast his gaze towards the collected set of framed wedding photos he couldn’t see in the dark, but which he knew just as well as the face of the man he loved. The two of them in their matchings suits, and their ‘best couple’ Charlie and Charly, standing either side, as happy as could be. Suddenly it seemed like a lot more than three years ago.

“Charlie and Charly’s plane went down on their way back from Kalkan.”

“They’re at the hospital?” Marc asked, his eyes full of fear in the dark.

“No, the kids are. They’re dead babe.”

*

It was the longest drive of Gethin’s life. He kept hoping, somehow, that there would be bad traffic, that all the lights would be red, that the journey would take longer than the forty minutes it was going to. Gethin wanted to postpone the inevitable, the moment where there would be no going back, and he could continue pretending he was simply driving twenty miles to get emergency nappies. But it was four am, and there was no such luck.

The plane had been due to land at three in the afternoon, and before landing everything had gone wrong. Gethin didn’t care so much about the details, but the knowledge that at least his best friend and his wife hadn’t suffered much was some tiny little spark of comfort in the world of pain in which he found himself. The kids had been staying with their grandparents, but on being called to hospital, all that had changed. Gethin drove into the hospital car park, and tried to work out how he was going to make space in his house for three young teenagers.

“How are they?”

“Asleep, mostly.”

“Exhausted from crying,” Charly’s father added. “Are you sure you boys are ready to do this?”

Gethin scanned again the copy of the letter, along with the attached Guardianship Order, Charly and Charlie had given to their children’s grandparents several years ago. It was lovely to know that his best friend had trusted him and Marc enough to appoint them guardian’s of their three children, even before he and Marc had tied the knot, though why he’d chosen not to tell Gethin was a mystery.

“We’d better be. It’s what Charlie wanted, and at least we know something about being parents now.” Gethin shrugged, and tried to smile at the people who had just lost their only daughter. He felt guilty about it.

“Teenagers are a bit different from toddlers and the terrible two’s, sweetie.”

“We’ll help out wherever we can, you know that right?”

“Thank you so much. I’m so sorry.”

“We know.”

Gethin had hugged Charly’s parents hard, then made his way to the private waiting room where Jonah, Noah, and Dinah were asleep. Jonah flinched at the sound of the door, blinked up at Gethin and hugged his little sister tighter for a moment before sitting up.

“Uncle Gethin….”

“Jonah, I’m so sorry.”

The boy looked a lot older than his fourteen years, and Gethin wondered how on earth he was supposed to make the boy’s life bearable, let alone happy, ever again. He glanced at the prone figure of Noah on the other sofa, and Dinah’s sleep mussed hair as she cuddled against her brother, and rubbed tears from his eyes with his knuckles. He didn’t want to cry in front of them; their loss was so much greater than his.

“I’ve come to take you home.”

“To our house?”

“No, bud. We’ll go there tomorrow. You’re going to come back to mine and Uncle Marc’s tonight.”

Jonah nodded solemly.

“Grandma said we’re going to live with you now.”

“Are you OK with that?”

“Yeah. We like you and Uncle Marc. Let’s go.”

Noah whimpered and mumbled incoherently when Gethin woke him, and though the twelve year old was sort of heavy, Gethin allowed the boy to climb into his arms, and kissed his hair as he carried him out. Dinah held her eldest brother’s hand and followed along with her other finger’s closed tightly around the hem of Gethin’s jacket.

He had to detach both car seats and stow them in the boot along with the dog bed in order to install the three sleepy, grief consumed children across the back seat. As he started the car, Gethin wondered how he was ever going to fit six people and an easily excited whippet into one vehicle.

Marc and Biscuit met them at the door, and the whippet bounced up and down on all four paws, his tail whipping back and forth furiously as he greeted his favourite visitors. Dinah knelt down to cuddle with her favourite pup, and Marc got each of the children a glass of milk before herding them upstairs. Biscuit followed the boys into Gethin and Marc’s bedroom, watched while they brushed their teeth with the spare toothbrushes which had been living in the cabinet, and jumped up onto the end of the bed. Gethin got Dinah settled in the spare single bed in the nursery, the one he’d spent many nights napping in after they’d moved Dai into his own room. Dinah cuddled up with one of Dai’s stuffed animals, and Gethin kissed her goodnight, then leant over the side of the cot and moved Bunny back into Dai’s reach as the boy slept soundly. Marc was waiting for him on the stairs.

“Is Sean still asleep?”

“He woke up for a little bit while you were gone, wanted cuddles and juice.” Marc smiled. “He got the cuddles, kissed Biscuit, and got back into bed with Panda.”

“Where are we sleeping?” Gethin leant against his husband, his spine suddenly melting into uselessness now that there were five children and a whippet settled sleepily into every bed in his house. Marc wrapped an arm around his husband, and steered him into the living room.

The camping airbed was wedged in between the two sofas, and Gethin slunk out of most of his clothes, and layered himself gratefully between the blankets. Marc wrapped around him moments later.

“They’d been talking about this trip for ages.”

“I know, babe.”

“A week without the kids, just a week. Five days of happy parent time.” Marc sighed in the dark. “You know they sent us pictures yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

Marc and Gethin had looked through the photos, on Marc’s phone, Sean begging to go on holiday too and Dai trying desperately with his chubby little toddler fingers to help swipe the touch screen. Gethin remembered being softly jealous of his best friend’s new tan. The big bright smile of the man he’d spent long days with in the university library and nights of laughter with in the student union bar, standing against the white lighthouse with his arms spread wide, the blue sky above, looking just as happy as Gethin had ever known him.

Gethin had always hoped the universe had some kind of fairness built in, that he and his would be rewarded with a good life for the people they were and the deeds they did. He stared at the ceiling as Marc snored noiselessly on his shoulder, and wondered if he was ever going to be able to offer an explanation to the children upstairs when they inevitable asked why their parents had to die. Gethin cried silently, and prayed his own beautiful sons would never know the heartbreak Jonah, Noah, and Dinah were suffering through.

He was just about to drift into sleep, when a strange thought lit up in his mind.

“Babe… Marc, wake up.”

“Blergh? Huh? Geth?”

Gethin soothed his husband’s sleepy panic, and felt a tiny bit guilty about waking him. When Marc’s lips brushed his neck, he knew he needed the other man to be awake, if just for a moment.

“Breakfast for seven in the morning.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Marc agreed.

Gethin sighed.

“I don’t think we have enough cereal bowls.”