Making it Official(Moreaus and Jameses)

[Andy Moreau]

Andy was confused, and he buried his face in a handful of tissue rather than respond. No one loved him, no one but Tam, who loved everyone that was nice to him. "You don't love me," he said softly. "You don't have to lie." Was that what this talk was? They needed his permission to adopt Tam, didn't they? Just because he wasn't smart didn't mean he didn't understand people.

[Matthew Moreau]

"We do love you," Matthew insisted. "We love how you are yourself without compromise, it makes you strong. You stepped in and helped Samson when you could have gotten hurt. You don't take things lying down. Rather, you fight, and that's impressive, even if I don't really say it." He couldn't stand the idea that Andy thought they didn't love him. He tried to be a good dad, despite the stumbling blocks he'd encountered. "I love you, and that isn't a lie."

[Andy Moreau]

Andy buried his face in tissues again, trying to absorb the words. He couldn't remember anyone ever telling him they loved him, it wasn't even something he and Tam said, and now Andy was really torn. He sobbed softly, trying to resist and wanting desperately to accept. He couldn't curl up any harder than he was curled right now.

He didn't want to talk, didn't want to say yes, but a few words slipped out all the same, and when he realized they were completely muffled by soggy tissue and denim, he made an effort to unbury his face a little. "I don't want to replace my mom."

[Rhys Moreau]

Rhys resisted the urge to go to Andy and comfort him, deciding it best to give him a bit of space. When he heard the words, he took another deep breath. Goodness, it was all deep breaths and sighs and uncertainties now, wasn't it? "We don't want to replace your mum," he said. "She's still your mum, she will always be your mum. You don't have to stop calling her mum, you don't have to forget her, or anything else of the sort. We just want you to be our family."

[Andy Moreau]

Family. Andy continued to sob, occasionally replacing his handful of tissues with less wet ones, but he was trying to think. They wanted him. They wanted him, and they didn't want to make him forget his mom, and he'd have a dad, two dads, and you couldn't get rid of adopted kids. It shocked him all over again to think about.

He blew his nose into the tissues, again and again trying to clear out what kept coming. He'd cried so much here, and it was almost always because something good had happened. "What about when I'm seventeen? What about when I leave school?"

[Matthew Moreau]

"My parents didn't kick me out when I was seventeen or when I left school," Matthew said, taking over again. Rhys wouldn't have much good to say about all that in terms of personal experience. "Of course you'll still have a place here. We'll still want you. You're our son, and we don't have any intentions of abandoning you." It was the first time he'd said son, so far as he knew, and he reached for Rhys' hand. It had always been kid and oldest or youngest.

[Andy Moreau]

You're our son. Andy squeezed his eyes shut, and now his silence was an attempt to remember those words exactly. He didn't want to be able to warp them in his head or wonder later if Matthew had even said them. They really wanted him. He tried to think of more arguments, tried to find a loophole, but he couldn't.

This was the longest he'd lived in one place since Las Vegas, and after all the sh~ he'd put them through, the Moreaus still wanted him. The first thing he'd done when he'd gotten here was blow up their bathroom, and they still wanted him. "Did you already tell Tam?" he asked.

[Rhys Moreau]

"No," Rhys said, shaking his head as he linked his fingers in Matthew's. They were all but certain of Tam's opinion on it all, but even if they weren't they would still have sought out Andy first. "We wanted to talk to you first. I know it's harder for you, since you're older, I know how hard it is to accept that someone loves you. Before we told Tam, we wanted to know if you wanted us, too."

[Andy Moreau]

That set off more tears, though they were quieter now. Of course he wanted them. Rhys had ridiculous rules about the internet, but only because he thought there were things he could protect Andy from, and Matthew tried so hard he was some sort of caricature of what dads should be. This was the best his life had ever been, and four years in he still hadn't found a deal-breaker.

His face was still buried when he nodded. "Okay," he said, "but... we have to see my mom. Like, all of us. You have to see my mom." He wanted to tell her, even if she didn't understand, and if Rhys and Matthew wanted to be his dads, they needed to know his mom.

[Rhys Moreau]

"We can do that, we never said you couldn't visit her," Rhys said. They had actually planned on a meeting ages ago, but things kept coming up. "Whenever you have time, we can go. We could even schedule you a day out of school." He had no issues scheduling something like that, or even taking Tam out of school for it. Their mother was in the hospital; that was certainly an excused absence. Of course, it helped that the Moreaus were friends with three Hogwarts professors.

[Andy Moreau]

Andy nodded again, and when he'd calmed down enough to face his little brother, he asked to talk to Tam alone. He knew Rhys and Matthew would want to see Tam's face light up, but Andy wanted to test the idea out privately. He visited the bathroom to clean up his face, then headed to the bedroom, head down, sock feet swift and quiet on the floor. Andy glanced back at the Moreaus the moment before he slipped into the bedroom.

The wizarding wireless was on, and Tam was very busy with a Hot Wheels set in the middle of the floor. He hadn't heard a thing until the door opened, and then the little metal cars fell to the rug. "Andy! Were you crying?"

Andy sighed as he closed the door. He'd hoped Tam wouldn't be able to tell, but Tam paid way too much attention to him. "Um, I was thinking about Mom," he said. He went to sit on the lower bunk, then patted the space next to him. "Can I talk to you?"

"Yeah!" Tam plopped down next to his brother, then leaned back against a slightly battered and much-loved stuffed shark that took up a good portion of bedspace. He could tell this was serious stuff. "You can hug my shark if you want."

"No, it's okay."

"Get your dragon?"

Andy thought for a moment, then stood and reached over the rail to grab his dragon. It had faded a little and was more pink than magenta now, helped along by having been washed a couple times. He sat next to Tam again.

"Um... would you want Matthew and Rhys to be our real dads?" he asked.

Tam sat right up. "Yes! For how long? For a long time?" He already called them both dad, but he knew it was just for pretend. Andy had told him about his real real dad.

"Like, forever. Like, even when we're grown up."

"Yes!" Tam started bouncing, and flipped over to give his shark an enthusiastic hug. "They're not our dads though, they're our foster dads."

"I know." Andy had always made sure his brother understood that even if their foster parents told them to call them Mom or Dad, they weren't really. It looked like it had sunk in. "What if they weren't our foster dads, though? What if they were our real dads?"

Tam stopped bouncing and lay against his shark. "Would we still get Mom back?"

Andy was quiet. He'd always told Tam that foster care was temporary. It had been when he'd been in Las Vegas, he'd never stayed with anyone more than a few days, and he'd held out hope that their mom would get better again and come to save them. Or maybe he'd lost hope a long time ago and pretended he still had it.

"Andy? Would we still get Mom back?"

Andy leaned the side of his face against his dragon's head. "She's still our mom," he said. "She'll always be our mom. Even if we get dads."

---

It was a while later when the bedroom door burst open and Tam ran out in raptures. His shark was halfway off the bed and Andy carried the dragon with him back to the chair he'd been sitting in before.

"Andy said we could maybe stay with you forever! And you wouldn't be our pretend dads anymore even when we're like old and wrinkly and we'd never have to have foster parents ever again and Mag would be our dog too and..." He was talking so fast it was hard to make out some of the words, but it was obvious he understood, and he made a bouncing beeline for the couch to squeeze in between Matthew and Rhys. Andy curled up, half hiding his smile behind dark pink dragon.

[Rhys Moreau]

While Matthew laughed and wrapped his arms around the wriggling kid, Rhys gave his attention to Andy. "We can set up a visitation to St. Mungo's," he said. "We could try to see her this weekend if you want to." They had tried to set visitations up before, but they had always fallen through for one reason or another, and as much as he wanted to rush forward in the adoption, he knew how important it was.

[Andy Moreau]

Andy's smile faded, but his eyes remained bright. "Yeah, this weekend," he said. He'd found reasons to get out of seeing his mom every time he'd had the chance. A special tutoring session had come up, or he'd put off his homework until the last minute, or he'd felt sick or something. But he wanted to take this chance at forever before it disappeared, and he wouldn't do it without his mom's okay.

---

It didn't matter if she didn't remember him, Andy had dressed up to see his mom. He wanted her to see him as he really was, whatever happened, and so he'd chosen his favorite jeans, men's, roses embroidered down both legs with enough tattered spots to count, a soft shirt, and a charm bracelet that had been in his backpack for two years. He'd paid special attention to his makeup and made sure that Tam's hair was wrangled into a low ponytail.

Tam didn't even remember their mother, though that didn't stop him from telling every story Andy had ever told him as though he remembered it. For once, Andy didn't stop him. He didn't want to tell them today. Tam could be excited for both of them and cover up what would otherwise have been a very long, very awkward silence with the Moreaus. Tam worked in the word Dads as often as he could.

The seven-year-old got much quieter inside the hospital. The place was strange and more than a little scary, scary for both James boys. Their medical care had been spotty at best before the Moreaus, and after, they'd been taken care of well enough not to need much. Tam had begged for Matthew to carry him, and spent most of the walk to the Janus Thickey Ward with his face buried against the man, peeking out now and then to be sure Andy and Rhys were close.

When they reached the ward, when Andy saw his mother for the first time since he was eleven, he started crying again. Tam wriggled out of Matthew's arms, excited to talk to her as though he knew her just from the stories, but Andy couldn't seem to move closer.

Tam pulled a wrinkled piece of paper out of his pocket as Andy looked around at the small space that was his mother's world. There was a picture stuck to the wall above her bed, a small snapshot of the woman still in her 20s, smiling vaguely with a serious-looking, dark-haired, dark-eyed child and a blue-eyed toddler on her lap. It had been torn apart and put back together with Spell-O-Tape, victim to a confused, frustrated woman having a bad day. There was a picture of an English gentleman with a soft smile stuck nearby, the upper corners curled from attempts to pick it off the wall. Those and the chart at the foot of her bed were really all that declared that the space belonged to anyone in particular.

Tam still hadn't caught on that his mom wasn't listening, wasn't looking at anything in particular, though she almost seemed to focus when Tam insisted on pressing that wrinkled paper into her hands. "I made you a card, see? Mom? Do you like your card? This is me, and this is Andy, and this is you, and this is my dad, and this is my other dad, and this is my dead dad..."

Andy turned and walked away.

[Rhys Moreau]

Rhys let one hand settle briefly on Matthew's arm before he went after Andy, sliding his hands into his pockets as he went. "It's hard, isn't it?" he asked when they were alone. Hospitals were hard places to be in, though he had an entirely different experience than having a mother in permanent care. "Need to talk before you see her?" Really see her, not just a glance before running away.

[Andy Moreau]

Andy shook his head, but it was a reaction, not an answer. He stared at the toes of his shoes, twisted the charm bracelet around his wrist. "I can't be like Tam," he said, as though anyone expected him to. He fidgeted. "I can't pretend everything else hasn't happened. She left us!" She'd always been forgetful, flaky, but it had been better with Carl, better until Carl had died. She'd always remembered Andy and come back for him, until Carl had died.