you are my sunshine | brett & toby
Fatherhood had been pretty good to Toby thus far, despite the claims of very many who knew the Belfronts. Since Susie's birth, he had only accidentally locked her in a car once, accidentally forgot to babygate the doggy door only a handful of times, and then there had been that one rather eventful time back in Oxford when he had let Claire and Cal watch her for like, twenty minutes tops and he had come back to find his teething toddler chewing on the rubbery end of a giant dick. "What, Tobias? It's brand new, don't be such a prude." But despite all of these very minor bumps in the road of fatherhood, he had Brett by his side the entire way. Well, sometimes. Toby and Susie were currently on the same ~sleep schedule -- not by choice, of course. Every day it was starting to seem more and more like Susie was going to end up shifting on the full moon, and Toby was pretty fine with that shift coming later rather than sooner. Still, her restlessness during the week prior to the full moon wasn't something he took for granted. It might have only been 5 a.m. but how was Toby just supposed to ignore that face? Of course, this also meant that they were usually pretty hungry at the same time, too. Susie sat diligently at the kitchen table, a pink crayon in hand as she drew a picture of mommy while Toby concentrated on pancakes. Pancakes was a total dad thing, right? His dad used to flip the pancake over in the air, flawlessly, every single damn time. He probably should have picked that trait up. It was absolutely a goal of his to strive to be the parent his daughter favored more. Brett might have done the whole 'hot pink fairy princess' thing but Toby was going to flip a damn pancake and his daughter would like it! "Heeeey, Susie," Toby turned away from the stove to face her, pan in hand, shaking it back and forth as he prepped to toss the pancake. Susie's blue eyes looked up from piece of paper, almost as if to say 'What the fuck, Daddy?' What the fuck, indeed. "I'm gonna flip your pancake, check this out, kiddo." Be it severe overconfidence, brute-force werewolf strength, stupidity, or maybe a mix of all three -- one moment the pancake was prepped for take-off and the next....... Susie's cackle of delight was may more Belfront than it should have been. "Shit," he muttered, setting the pan back on the stove and quickly reaching over to shut it off. "Sh shh shh," he attempted to calm Susie's hysterical laughter down, his eyes flitting between her and the ceiling, where there was a very stuck pancake caked to it. "Shhh, Susie, don't wake mommy!" He was just about to grab a chair from the table to stand on so he could get it down when an adorably gravely voice came from around the corner, followed by the soft steps of Brett's adorably bare feet across the wood floor. "Too late." Brett was so sweet in the mornings. Well, okay, she was so sweet all of the time but especially in the mornings where her still-pink hair was a mess and one of her cheeks still had the faint outlines of her face scrunched into their pillows and her stupid silky pajama shorts with the weiner dogs printed on them were much cuter on their bedroom floor but Susie picked them out and this was his family and he loved them both so much and they were the most precious things in the world to him... and he had gotten a pancake stuck to their ceiling. Brett was still trying to get over (but still lowkey bitter) about Jackson and Toby accidentally sitting on their pizza and staining the couch. "Hey," he greeted with a smile, almost breathless as he walked over to give her a kiss. "Morning. I made pancakes and bacon, but Susie and I already ate all the bacon, so I tried to make you a heart shaped pancake instead but it came out kind of looking like a gimpy butterfly..." Also, he didn't just toss a pancake on the ceiling.
