Work Text:
“Just leave me alone! You’re not even my real mom!”
The words had cut through her like a knife the second they left his mouth, echoing in her mind long after he'd said them. But she’d held back her tears to let him have his tantrum (if he’s gonna act like a child at sixteen she’s gonna call it what it is) and then retreated to the safety of hers and Agatha’s room. She still hadn’t cried right away, more out of shock than anything else.
She’s been in Nicky’s life since he was five and has been his mamá for practically just as long. She’s never looked at him or treated him as anything other than her son, especially once she married Agatha. Even when Daphne came along she never loved or treated him as anything less than her child. Because that’s what he is.
So his words had hit her right in the gut and it’s only been growing bigger and gnawing at her insides as the hours ticked on. She hates it. Hates that her son, a boy she’s loved as her own for so many years, doesn’t see her the way he used to. It cuts deep and roots itself inside, festering.
She hadn’t ever planned on having children, it was never part of the future she saw for herself. But then she’d met Agatha and then Nicky, fell completely in love with domestic life, had Daphne, and never once looked back, never once regretted the decision.
The four of them have built an amazing life together over the last decade and now some part of it has potentially been shattered. And she doesn’t know what to do.
She hasn’t seen Nicky since he threw such harsh words at her. He’d kept to himself in his room, not even emerging for meals, and Rio had kept herself occupied with various touch-ups for some client photos as well as spending time with Daphne. She did whatever she could to keep her daughter’s attention anywhere other than her big brother's whereabouts. It’d been a decent enough distraction from the turmoil running through her body, but it hadn’t done a complete job of it.
Now she’s simply trying to figure out how to broach the subject with her son without making things worse. The last thing she wants to do is make the rift between them even bigger. She wishes it didn’t even exist in the first place. But unfortunately, there’s no going back now. Only forward. And hopefully in a direction that’ll patch things up.
The front door creaks open but Rio doesn’t turn, making a mental note to check the hinges later. They might need oiling.
“I’m home.”
Rio barely glances over her shoulder to greet her wife with a quiet, “Hi.”
There’s shuffling behind the couch, the sound of keys dropping into a metal bowl, and shoes tumbling to the wood flooring. Then the couch dips and Agatha’s got an arm around her. “Hey. What’s the matter? You’re usually much more enthusiastic about me getting home from a conference.”
Rio desperately tries to fight back a string of tears, but it’s too late. Several fall from her eyes as she finally turns to fully face her wife.
Agatha frowns deeply. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”
“Nicky, he…” she cuts herself off involuntarily with a broken sob, quickly wiping at her eyes.
Agatha stiffens beside her. “What happened?”
Rio quickly shakes her head, resting a hand on Agatha’s leg to help assure her. “No, no. Nicky’s fine, I promise. So is Daphne.”
“Well, clearly something happened if it’s got you crying like this. Just tell me, please.”
Rio takes a deep breath to get control of her breathing and then focuses on the beds of her fingernails. “It was fine, everything was fine. The kids were going to school, I was going to work, we called you a few times. We had dinner together like always, and everything was fine.”
“Okay. So what changed?”
Her throat tightens. “I don’t know. Nicky didn’t come home for dinner last night and didn’t answer any of my texts or calls just trying to make sure he was okay wherever he was. When he finally did roll in he was all moody, and not the usual teenage moodiness we’ve gotten used to. This was different.” Rio swallows thickly. “I confronted him about it, and he just…he yelled. Right in my face. Told me not to bother him and that…that I wasn’t his real mom.” She chokes on a sob. “Something inside me broke.”
Agatha’s arms encircle her tightly, one hand cupping the back of her head. “Oh, honey, I am so…You know that’s not true at all. You are absolutely his mother. I don’t know what’s gotten into him, but I promise you I am going to find out. Okay?”
Rio shakes her head, pulling back. “Don’t make a big deal of it. It’s fine.”
“It is not fine,” Agatha insists. “You’re his mother, Rio. You have been since he was five, that doesn’t go away just because he’s suddenly decided to be an ass.”
“I know.” She wipes at her eyes again. “I don’t know why it’s even getting to me so much.”
“Because you love him. And it hurts when your kids do or say something that makes you think they might not love you back. Hopefully it’s just a lapse in judgment and he doesn’t actually feel that way. Where is he?”
“In his room. Just…just leave him alone for tonight, please? Let him cool down.”
Agatha raises a brow. “I assume you’ve been letting him cool down all day?”
Rio nods. “Yeah. I just…I don’t want to approach him about it before he’s ready. I needed some time to get my thoughts together too. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and make it worse. His words quite literally hit at the biggest fear that every non-biological parent has.”
Agatha frowns. “You don’t still have that fear, do you?”
Rio shakes her head. “No, not really, not anymore. It’s just…I know I’ve been his mother for most of his life now but sometimes there’s still that little voice in the back of my head that warns me not to overstep. It always goes away whenever he smiles at me or laughs at one of my dumb jokes or offers to help me out on a shoot just to spend time with me.”
Agatha smiles softly. “He’s a good kid, with a big heart. You two will work this out. You’ve always had a special bond.”
Rio grabs her wife’s hand and squeezes. “I know, mi amor, I know.”
Agatha lifts their hands and kisses the back of Rio’s. “I was gonna try and catch up on some stuff for work but I can put it off if you want to do something.”
Rio smiles. “No, that’s okay. You go do what you need to do. I was probably going to do some touch-ups anyway.”
“Okay. I’ll try not to be too long.”
Rio watches her wife leave with a small smile on her face, feeling a little better about yesterday’s events after having voiced them to her wife. Now she just has to hope that she and Nicky will be okay too; she can’t lose her relationship with her son. That will absolutely destroy her.
.
.
.
There’s a soft, tentative knock on the doorframe of the bedroom, pulling Rio’s attention away from her laptop. Unlike her wife, Rio has no problem using her laptop in their bed to get some minor work on photos done. Agatha refuses to do the same, always opting for a proper chair in her home office if she needs to get work done outside of her office at the university.
Her heart stutters a bit seeing her son peeking hesitantly into the room. “Nicky. ¿Qué haces despierto?”
He steps into the room but lingers. “Uh, ¿podemos hablar?”
Rio sets her laptop aside and pats the empty space next to her, her mind flashing back to all those moments when Nicky was younger and would curl up in bed with her and Agatha to simply cuddle with them. “What’s on your mind, mijo?” she asks, the term of endearment slipping past her lips automatically.
Nicky’s brows furrow tightly, his eyes on his lap. “Do you…do you remember…it was right after you and Mom got engaged, and she was away at a conference so it was just you and me at home. I think it was the first time we were by ourselves for an entire weekend.”
Rio nods, the moment in question coming back to her easily. “I remember. You got sick almost immediately after your mom left but I didn’t want to call her back so soon, I wanted to prove to her that I could do it, be a parent.”
Nicky’s lips twitch. “I don’t remember a lot because I was so young, but I do remember wanting Mom because she was always the one that was there whenever I was sad or sick, or whatever else was going on in my life. I can’t even imagine how you must have felt, hearing me whine so much about wanting her instead of you.”
Rio chuckles lightly. “You were a kid, you were used to having her be the only one to take care of you, I wasn’t going to hold it against you. Besides, you were in and out of sleep the majority of the weekend, so it wasn’t too bad.”
“I remember sleeping a lot. And eating a lot of soup. But uh, you probably don’t know this because I never actually told you, but I know you came in to check on me every time I was sleeping. I wasn’t always asleep when you did. Usually, you just checked that I was fine and had a bowl by my bed and all that. But one of the times…you sat down and talked to me. You said that you were so lucky to be getting a kid like me in your marriage, that you couldn’t have asked for a better one. That you’d never thought you’d be any good at being a mom, wasn’t sure if you even wanted to be one. But that I’m the one who made you realize that you did want it.”
Rio blinks, surprised that Nicky remembers so clearly everything she said to what she thought was his unconscious little self. She barely even remembers most of what she said. “You remember all that?”
He looks up at her then, the surface of his eyes shining. “Yeah. I think about that moment a lot; it was when I really started thinking of you as my mom, because you looked after me the way Mom always did. That’s why I asked if I could call you mamá right after you two got married. I’d already started seeing you as one." His voice wavers, "I’m so sorry for what I said, I didn’t mean it. You are my real mom. Lo siento dije que no lo eres.”
Rio smiles gently, pulling Nicky into a hug and holding him tightly, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Gracias por decir eso. But I’ve gotta ask you, mijo, what happened?”
Nicky groans. “It’s so stupid now.”
Rio pulls back and raises a brow.
Nicky sighs, leaning back and wiping at his face. “Some of the guys at school invited me to a party last night. Everything was fine until they started going on about the LGTBQIA community, some really ignorant stuff that I didn’t think people actually said anymore. Normally that stuff doesn’t get to me, but I was already a little tipsy and not thinking straight.”
Rio levels him with a look. “We’re gonna talk later about you drinking unsupervised at sixteen, but go on.”
“Somebody else made a comment about how I have two moms, so the guys all started directing everything at me and you and Mom. I defended you at first, I swear I did, but the more they kept going, the more they got in my head. They kept going on about how I only technically have one mom because two women can’t make a baby, and how there’s a man out there being deprived of having a son…and I just…I let them get in my head.”
Rio nods slowly in understanding. “And when I confronted you about getting home so late…”
Nicky nods. “Lo siento mucho, Mamá.”
“Lo sé, mijo.” She immediately wraps him in her arms and holds him close, dropping a kiss to the top of his head. “Eres mi hijo y te amo más que a la vida misma.”
“Yo también te amo, Mamá. Y lo siento mucho, mucho.”
Rio continues to hold him as he cries, rocking him in much the same way she did when he was younger. She knew there weren’t many of those left when she became his mom, Nicky already having been nearly six when Rio became a permanent part of the family. But she cherished every single hug and cuddle that she could get from the young boy.
Now he’s encroaching on becoming a young man, but she’ll always see him as the little boy who careened into her life with so much love and excitement for the world around him. He still has such a big heart, sometimes she worries that it’ll be too much for him one day and someone might take advantage of that. But she’ll protect him however she can.
Soon enough, Nicky has stopped crying, his breathing has evened out, and his body is heavy with sleep. Rio carefully lies him down on the mattress, both so he doesn’t get any kind of crick in his neck, and so that she won’t be weighed down by him. She can’t bring herself to wake him up. So she simply lets him sleep.
“¿Mamá?”
Rio smiles up at the doorway, keeping her voice low as she asks, “¿Qué haces despierta, mija?”
Daphne sniffles. “Tuve una pesadilla.”
“Ven aquí. Pero no despiertes a tu hermano.”
Daphne throws her a small smile and then makes her way over to the bed, climbing up onto Agatha’s side and snuggling in closer to her brother. “Buenas noches, Mamá.”
Rio reaches over carefully and brushes Daphne’s hair back, smiling at the way the young girl clutches tightly to her favorite stuffed animal. “Buenas noches, mija.”
Rio’s heart swells at the sight of both her children cuddled up in the bed with her. She would do anything for more nights like this.
“Well, this is a sight I haven’t seen in a while.”
Rio smiles up at her wife standing in the doorway to the bedroom. “Hey. How’d your catching up go?”
Agatha rolls her eyes, pushing off the frame to move toward the bathroom. “As excruciating as it always is. I take it you two worked things out while I was gone?” she asks, nodding toward Nicky. “And that someone else had a bad dream?”
Rio nods. “She did. And yes, we did. He told me what happened, apologized for what he said. Then he cried himself to sleep and I didn’t have the heart to wake him up and send him back to his room.”
Agatha leans over briefly to look at her from the bathroom. “You big softie. So what did happen?”
“Something similar to what happened the first time he asked you if we were going to get married.”
Agatha lets out a breath. “Wow. That feels like a lifetime ago.”
Rio snorts. “Tell me about it. I was so freaked out back then when he brought it up. You know that none of this was ever in my plans when we met, I was perfectly fine to just live my life being single and carefree with the occasional one-night stand.”
Agatha smiles, stepping out of the bathroom now fully ready for bed, and saunters over to the side of the bed where Rio is. She leans down, one hand resting on the headboard and the other on the mattress. “Kinda too late to back out now, hun.”
Rio smiles. “Then it’s a good thing I never want to.”
“Mm, a very good thing indeed.”
“If you two are gonna be gross then I’m gonna leave.”
Rio chuckles lightly, her gaze drifting down to her son. “Have you been awake this entire time?”
He flips onto his back, nearly hitting Daphne, and breathes in deeply. “No.”
“Good. Go back to sleep.”
“Fine. I’ll go back to my room and take Daph to hers so you two can be gross all you want.”
Rio rolls her eyes. “Stop it. Nothing was gonna happen.”
Agatha leans closer. “I mean…I was kinda hoping something would…”
Rio shoots her wife a look.
Agatha shrugs. “What? I would have moved things into the guest room so the kids could keep sleeping.”
Rio laughs and shakes her head, then looks back at Nicky. “You’re gonna stay right here and sleep.”
Nicky hesitates. “Aren’t I a little too old to be sleeping in your bed?”
Agatha sighs. “Kiddo, we’re your mothers. We’ll always want the stuff you think you’re too old for. It comes with the territory. Now go back to sleep.”
He lets out a big yawn and rolls over onto his stomach, eyes fluttering closed. “Goodnight, Mom. Buenas noches, Mamá.”
Agatha leans over and presses a kiss to his head. “Goodnight, kiddo.”
“Buenas noches, mijo,” Rio whispers, pushing some of his hair back. She lets out a breath and looks up at her wife. “I know I haven’t said it in a while, but thank you for giving me all of this and for loving me as much as you do.”
Agatha smiles at her, cupping her cheek in one hand. “Honey, you never ever have to thank me for loving you.” She closes the space between them with a lingering kiss. “I do that for free every single day. And I will continue to do so for the rest of our lives.”