Washing || Reagan & Lillie
charlie-sawyer:
~
Charlie smiled as Reagan poked at her forehead but the smile slipped at the serious question and the way Reagan scooted away from her. “Hey,” she said, a hand stretching out towards Reagan before she could get any further away, fingers brushing gently against her cheek and then nudging her chin upwards. Charlie’s first instinct was always to provide physical comfort - a hangover, most likely, from her own childhood, which had been severely lacking in comfort of any kind after her mother’s death. Sometimes she wondered if she smothered Reagan and Lillie too much - but the need to make sure her children never doubted for a second just how much she loved them always won out. That need only made Reagan’s current concern worse. Had she not been doing enough to make sure Reagan knew the answer?
“I could never be mad about having to come get you, sweetheart. Showing up when you need me is my job. There’s nothing more important to me than being there for you and Lillie.”
Reagan let herself be pulled back into her mother’s embrace. Though she was occasionally beginning to assert that she was too old to snuggle with her parents, most of the time she still appreciated the cuddles and affection, and her parents lavished on her what their teenager often rejected. “Okay,” she said softly, resting her head on Mommy’s shoulder. There was a long pause. “And you still love me very, very much?” she checked, looking up once again. She didn’t really doubt it; her parents had never given her reason to. But every so often, that voice in her head that said stuff she didn’t want to think about would say that she was being too much for her parents to handle. Lillie had said it before, too, that she was an annoying “ankle-biter,” whatever that meant. So sometimes she just had to make sure.
