Note: The quote belongs to Sting; the inspiration belongs to His Brilliance Bryan Singer; the love belongs to Michael, Brandon, Robin, Ricardo, and all the rest of my silly little guys.
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The park is full of Sunday fathers and melted ice cream
We try to do the best within our given time
A kid should be with his mother
Everybody knows that
What can a father do but baby-sit sometimes?
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He floats on the thought for weeks: My son. Our son.
Most fathers have nine months to get used to the idea, and all he gets is the gap between the start and end of a sentence. But that's absolutely okay. He's happy, delighted, ecstatic, fiercely proud, overawed, humbled. He liked the kid well enough before, when he was just hers; now that he's involved, why, that boy's the smartest, bravest, most talented child on the face of the planet. (And he should know.) In short, he's a lot like all those other fathers: the most human he's ever been.
It's tempting to swoop in and claim his place as father - but there's already a dad in this equation, a good one, one he doesn't want to so abruptly and rudely and cruelly displace. That would be fair to nobody, and isn't he the paragon of fairness? So he sits back, he sticks to his scripts, and he waits to see which side falls out of the grown-ups' triangle. He really hopes it's the hypotenuse and not the cathetus.
But that's hard. If he wasn't so damn happy, it would drive him crazy, staying at arm's length from his son. Their son.
And then again - sometimes he gets lucky.
"Can you watch him for a few minutes? Thanks," she says, his agreement already taken as a given, and as he's nodding anyway and saying, of course, sure, that'd be fine, she's giving her son a quick hug and adding, distracted, "I have to get this interview before deadline - I'll be right back, I swear." Another hug, a quick kiss. "Do your homework, OK?" Gone.
He glances around. Business as usual; no one suspects a thing - not that he's an alien with superpowers, not that this small unexpected gift of time has made his day. Week. Month. He refocuses on the solemn little figure standing in front of him, backpack hanging off one shoulder, assorted papers all but spilling out.
"I already did my homework," Jason says.
"Already?"
A nod. "Math is easy." He stands on tiptoe and peers at the lone photo on the desk. "Who's that?"
"My parents." Your grandparents, he adds silently. The best people in the world. I'm going to take you to see your grandmother - she loved you as soon as I told her and she's going to spoil you rotten.
"Oh." Bored already, too. Down goes the backpack, out comes a ziplock bag of mostly-broken crayons and some slightly crumpled paper. "Can I draw a picture on your desk?"
On the desk, on the ceiling, on the Washington Monument - it doesn't matter. "Sure thing. Here -" He reaches over and swipes a chair from someone else's desk (a capital offense; he'll be yelled at later), pulls it up beside his. "How's that? Is that okay?"
"Mm-hm," Jason says, climbing into the chair and elaborately settling in, laying out his paper and crayons like surgical instruments. The reporter stuff on the desk is crowding out the artist stuff, so obviously the reporter stuff has to be moved. They get to work, side by side - although the reporter keeps darting covert looks at the artist.
"That's a good drawing," he says, but really he's watching the small sneakered feet swing back and forth and wondering if his son will fly.
"It's Superman," Jason informs him, quite briskly. "I like him."
Inordinately pleased, he smiles despite himself. "I think everybody does."
Feet swinging. "Not that bald guy."
True enough, but then Superman doesn't like that bald guy much either.
The subject of the picture is painstakingly labeled (the best handwriting, the finest composition) and the artist announces, "I'm done."
He looks at the story sitting half-finished on his computer. Son, 1; father, 0. "It's great, Jason." And it actually is. "Your mom's going to love it."
"It's for you. So you can have another picture on your desk."
"Oh." Shouting for joy, he decides, is probably inappropriate. "That's really thoughtful. Thanks. I'll put it up right now."
He takes the drawing and carefully tapes it up in a suitably prominent location, though anything less than the front page isn't good enough. And feels a flash of envy. How many drawings went to another man? Years and years' worth. It's a loss enough to make a god stagger.
They contemplate the art for a moment: Superman stands on top of the swirling blue-green-brown Earth with big yellow stars exploding all around him, the master of his crayon universe.
Very casually, he asks his son, "Do you know where Superman is from?"
Jason shrugs. "Outer space."
"Mm-hm. From a planet called Krypton."
The kid's eyes slide toward him. There's a bigger question behind them than the one that's asked: "Where are you from, Mr. Clark?"
"Kansas," he says.
He meets his son's gaze and is faintly alarmed, faintly amused, to see the flash of a smirk, a look that says, Okay, I'll pretend with you. The smartest child in the world.
"Are there bad guys in Kansas?" Feet swinging.
"Not really, no. Krypton, on the other hand..."
By the time he gets to the part where Zod and friends are trapped in the Phantom Zone, she reappears and comes to collect her son. "Time to go home, buddy. He wasn't any trouble, was he?"
"Nope. He's a swell kid."
She rolls her eyes at that, pleased anyway by the praise. "No one says that anymore. You know that, right?"
He blinks at her - perfectly bemused. "I say it."
"Say thank-you, Jason," she instructs, moving on to more important things.
"Thanks!" he says, as ordered, then surprises both adults by giving his de facto babysitter a quick fierce hug. "See you around."
And off Jason goes, trailing his backpack, headed for the elevators.
He wants to get out of the office and go fly; he feels like flying now. Feels like going really fast with the sun burning yellow overhead, cutting cleanly through white clouds, slicing through the blue sky. Stand on top of the world.
She starts to follow, then hesitates. "Really? Because lately, you know - things have been -" A vague flip of a hand.
He smiles, gently, warmly. I love you. I'm going to marry you. "Really. He has great parents."
She gives a nervous kind of half-laugh, like there's something there Clark Kent just has no idea about, something ironic only to her, and leaves.
He's happy, delighted, ecstatic. He wants to save the world now, save it a million times over purely for the sake of his son. Floating, even on the ground: I have a son, we have a son.
It'll turn out all right, this big tangled mess of bruised-up hearts. He has every confidence of that. It's his fault, actually, so he might as well be patient. In the meantime, he'll give his son their history piece by piece, store up the little gifts and moments and snatches of a normal life, watch over Jason's small corner of the universe.
And then again - sometimes he gets lucky.
Sometimes, he even gets a drawing.
-end!-