Conversations Over an Inflatable Swimming Pool
Some Robron Family fic for the @robronengagementgiftexchange for the dear, sweet @sugdenlovesdingle. I hope you like it, darling!
“What is this?” Robert asks, hands on his hips as he stares out at the giant blue inflatable monstrosity in his garden.
“It’s a pool, dad,” Seb responds, literally bouncing where he stands next to Robert.
“Yeah, it’s a pool dad,” Annalisa adds, mirroring everything her big brother does.
“Yeah, it’s a,” Aaron starts to say as he approaches from Robert’s other side, his hair matted down with sweat. But Robert stops him with a hand placed firmly over his mouth.
“Don’t you start. I know it’s a pool. I’m wondering why it’s here.”
“Daaaaaad,” Seb whines as he grabs Robert’s left hand and begins yanking on it. “It’s for us to swim in!”
Aaron raises his eyebrows and licks the palm of Robert’s hand, causing him to pull it back in disgust. “I realize it’s here for swimming purposes, I just don’t know why we… you know what. Never mind.”
He turns around to head back into the house, the last sight of the garden being one of his ten-year-old son helping his daddy get the garden hose into the pool while his seven-year-old daughter twirls around in the grass like a ballerina.
Aaron is getting an earful tonight.
Aaron doesn’t get an earful. Aaron gets an… ahem… mouthful of something else. And all of a sudden a pool doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.
It’s because they promised the kids a sea break, Aaron says. But then the entire world shut down on them and Aaron had wanted to give their kids a fun compensation.
It’s ugly. It’s gigantic. It’s likely going to ruin the grass beneath it. But he supposes that seeing the kids smiling that wide is enough of a reward.
“Aaron!” he shouts from where he’s flat on his bum at the bottom of the stairs.
Thankfully the kitchen window is open, or else Robert would have no chance of being heard over the sounds of the kids playing in the water outside.
“What, what, what’s going on?” Aaron asks, but any concern he may have been feeling seems to evaporate the moment he sees the state of Robert.
He’s on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, just like he said, but he’s also surrounded by a basket’s worth of dirty laundry. He thinks there may even be a stray sock on his head.
Aaron begins laughing so hard he has to bend over like he’s busting a gut.
“It’s not funny,” Robert says stonily as he flexes both of his ankles to make sure he hasn’t broken anything.
“Oh I think… think you’ll… find… you’re wrong there,” he manages to stutter between laughs as he approaches Robert and plucks an article of clothing from atop Robert’s head.
He holds it in front of Robert’s face, still giggling as Robert realizes that it was a pair of Annalisa’s princess knickers.
“These stairs are lethal as is,” he says forcefully as he gets to his feet, without Aaron’s help because Aaron is still laughing at him.
“Add water to them and they’re even worse.”
“I know,” Aaron says, this time trying - and failing - to keep a straight face.
“You said that if we kept the pool you’d make sure the water stayed outside,” Robert says what’s probably being construed as poutily.
“I know,” Aaron says softly, trailing his fingers gently up the side of Robert’s face before twisting them in Robert’s hair. “But that’s also kind of an impossible thing to promise.”
Robert is going to argue further, but Aaron’s lips have other ideas.
“Em, Aaron?” Robert asks as he strolls up to the pool, his eyes flitting between the pool itself and the rather intoxicating image of his husband, laid out on a pool chair in nothing but a pair of swimming shorts and sunglasses as their children sword fight across the garden with a pair of pool noodles.
“Yes, dear?” Aaron says cheekily as he slips the sunglasses down his nose so that Robert knows he’s got his undivided attention.
“Are those crisps in the pool?”
Aaron shrugs. “Probably.”
“Probably,” Robert mutters. “Well don’t you think that crisps might be bad for, say, the three hundred pounds worth of a pool filter we had to purchase for this big idea of yours?”
Aaron shrugs again. “Probably. But that’s what this is for.”
He grabs the pool skimmer from next to his chair and tosses it at Robert.
Robert doesn’t even attempt to catch it. He just heads back into the house and continues making tea, promising himself that Aaron will get a piece of his mind later.
He doesn’t, of course. He never does.
The days tick on like that, with Aaron and the kids enjoying their pool and Robert wondering if he’ll ever be able to get his roses to grow back properly after being sodden.
He knows they’re having fun, which is the only reason why he allows it. And truth be told, Robert has some fun, too, watching them from the window or from one of the pool chairs if he’s being brave enough.
He never joins in, but smiles more often than he’d care to admit as he watches Aaron play a sea monster chasing a pair of screaming children they call their own.
It’s his family. And his family is well worth it.
One day it’s eerily quiet outside, more so than it should be. And Robert wonders if they’ve finally all managed to kill each other as he walks out into the garden to investigate.
What he finds stops his heart in the best way possible.
They’re all still in the pool, all three of them, but they’re not swimming or fighting or eating crisps. They’re all lying on their backs, floating with their faces towards the sun in the most peaceful scene Robert has ever witnessed.
He just watches them for a few seconds, basking in the moment, before an idea strikes him that he just can’t seem to pass up.
He moves around the side of the house, finding what he’s looking for, turning on the water before making his way back to the pool.
The sound the three of them make when Robert turns the hose on them is absolutely priceless.
For a minute they can do nothing to stave off his attack, simply stand there screaming, covering their faces. But then Seb finds his water pistol, Annalisa finds a bucket, and Aaron just sits back and smiles as their children take the fight to Robert.
“Come on, daddy, you get him too!” Annalisa screams, but instead of joining in, he picks her up and places her on his shoulders, passing her up bucket after bucket of pool water that she chucks Robert’s way as Seb continues to fire without mercy.
They’re all laughing like lunatics, water flying everywhere across Robert’s pristine garden. But even though he may be ruining his favourite shirt with all of the chlorine, he doesn’t even care. Because he’s in love. Robert is in love with every single one of them. And Robert never in all his life thought he’d feel this kind of love.
So what hurt can a little water cause?
