Chapter Text
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Joel said, for what felt like the millionth time. He put the glass he’d just finished washing in the dishrack and picked up a plate.
“Come on, Joel,“ Tess begged, “you’d be so good at it.” She stood at his elbow, not helping as usual. Joel had long ago given up trying to argue with her about doing the dishes, but she sure as hell wasn’t winning this debate.
“Maybe I woulda been, but not anymore,” he said, hoping his tone indicated finality.
He knew Tess better than that, though.
“Will you at least come by the office with me? Maybe get some more information?”
“For what? I’m not doin’ it, like I told you the last fifty times you asked me.” He put the now-clean plate in the dishrack with a little more force than was necessary.
Tess sighed and leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms.
“What, you gonna pout at me all night?”
“I’m thinkin’ about it,” she admitted.
Joel snorted as he rinsed his hands. Tess picked up the kitchen towel and grabbed his wrist, running it over his palms. She spoke to his knuckles as she said, “I think it would do a lot of good. You know, for the kid, but also...for you.” She put the towel back and looked up at him. The concern in her eyes was familiar, and he looked away.
“Fosterin’ is a big commitment, Tess,” he said to the floor.
“I know it is.”
“Whatever kid we get -- they’re not gonna be a normal kid, you know? That system fucks you up.”
“I know. One of us has to deal with those fucked-up kids on a daily basis, remember?”
“Bein’ a cop is a lot different from bein’ a parent.”
“Joel.”
His eyes met hers, and he couldn’t help flinching. She didn’t move a muscle.
“I want to do this,” she said. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I think about it every time I have to bring some kid to lockup because he didn’t have anyone to tell him to go to school, to make him do him homework or cook him dinner at night. But I’m only doing it if you’re on board, because it’s something I’m only doing with you.”
Joel had already known all this, without her saying it. He saw the lines in her face grow deeper, felt the tension in her shoulders when he pressed his fingers into them at night. This was important to her. And she was important to him. “So, now you’re guilt-trippin’ me?” he said, not without humor.
“Maybe,” she said, running her thumb over the back of one of his large hands.
He brought her hand to his mouth and brushed it with his lips. She sighed, small in her throat.
“How late is that office open?” he asked, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw how her face lit up.
The following evening, a social worker loaded Joel and Tess up with paper: forms, pamphlets, manuals, flyers -- all sat bundled in Tess’s lap on the drive home. Even over the sound of the truck’s motor, Joel could hear her humming, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
When they got home, Tess dumped the whole load on their coffee table, and they silently sifted through the pile, wordlessly swapping pieces of paper with each other as they finished reading. As they neared the end of it all, Joel rubbed his eyes.
“Too much?” Tess asked.
“It’s a lot,” Joel admitted.
“It is,” Tess said, putting the application form down between them.
“You still wanna do this,” Joel said. It wasn’t a question.
“I do.”
“Hm.” He rubbed his hand over his battered watch. It still kept good time, almost two decades of him banging it around construction sites nonwithstanding. Even when she was twelve, Sarah had known quality. She had been like her mother in that way.
Sarah.
She would have been thirty this year, if she hadn’t...
Joel sighed. He jumped when he felt Tess’s hands on his, pulling his right hand away from his left wrist.
“We don’t have to,” she said, almost a whisper. She stared at the scratched watch face. “Thank you for at least thinking about it.”
“Tess --”
“I mean it,” she said, looking him in the eye now. They were dark with barely subdued yearning. “We don’t have to. I’m not doin’ it alone. And I’m not makin’ you.”
“You really givin’ up so easily?” he said. He was going for humor, but his voice cracked anyway.
“This is hard for you,” she said. “I get that. I thought maybe if you...” She waved a hand at all the colorful pieces of paper on the table. “But I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
Joel shook his head. “No reason to be sorry. I understand why you... I know what you deal with every day. Maybe not directly, but...” He sighed again and pulled on her hands, bringing her close enough to wrap him arms around her and lean his chin on the top of her head. “I love you.”
“I love you,” she said, her voice muffled in his neck.
His heart was in his throat when he said, “Let’s do it.”
Tess jerked away from him so quickly that she whacked him in the chin. He swore, grabbing his jaw as she laughed at him.
“Are you serious? You’re not fucking with me?”
“I’m seriously reconsiderin’ whether you’re fit to be around children,” he said, still rubbing his chin. “But yeah, I’m serious. Yeah. Let’s do this.”
Tess laughed so hard tears leaked out of her eyes as she pounced on him, planting kisses all over his face.
“You’re fillin’ out the paperwork, though,” he groused, but there was no heat behind it.
“Later,” she said breathlessly, standing and tugging his hand. “I need to thank you properly first.”
“What’re you--” He stopped short when he saw the wicked gleam in her eyes. “Well, I’m never turnin’ that down,” he said, allowing himself to be dragged toward their bedroom.
If Joel had known what a stressful month he was in for, he might never have agreed in the first place, but as it was, he had agreed, and now he was stuck.
The paperwork might have been Tess’s problem, but the interview, and the home visit, and the parenting class were on him, too.
“The fuck do I need a parentin’ class for?” he asked Tess one evening as she hopped up into the truck. It had been a long day for both of them. There were translucent blue circles under Tess’s eyes, and that worried him. “I said on the form that I -- that I had experience.” He swallowed.
“Might think you’re a bit rusty,” she said, more breezily than he knew she felt. “Might think you should start by getting ‘fuck’ outta your vocabulary.”
Joel mumbled a few more choice words as he pushed the truck into gear, which made Tess giggle. The sound was a balm on his irritated nerves.
Right before their last class, Joel and Tess both had a rare afternoon off. They lounged on the couch, Tess taking the sunny side, stretched out like a cat with her feet in Joel’s lap. Joel absently pressed his thumbs into the ball of her right foot, massaging it.
“You tired of all this?” Tess asked from her half-doze, breaking the silence.
“Pretty ready for it to be over, yeah,” Joel said, moving to the arch of her foot.
“You sorry I roped you into it?”
Joel smirked. “Not yet. Wait till the kid gets here, though, then ask me again.”
Tess laughed, let her head fall back against the armrest, and closed her eyes.
After the rush to get certified, the four months of silence that followed seemed anticlimactic.
“Maybe they decided we’re unfit after all,” Joel said one evening as Tess dusted the guest bedroom for the fifth time.
He was aiming at a joke, but he saw Tess’s shoulders slump. Joel wanted to kick himself. Instead, he went over and put an arm around her, feeling her body as it melted into his.
“Hey, don’t worry,” he said, burying his nose in her hair. “No calls is a good thing, right? Means there isn’t a poor kid out there who needs us.”
“I know,” she said, but he wasn’t convinced.
So it was almost a relief when, just after Thanksgiving, Joel came home to Tess bouncing around the living room, her phone to her ear and Child Protective Services on the other line.
“They’ll be here in an hour,” she said as she hung up. She flew into Joel arms, hugging him.
“You know, there is somethin’ perverse about this,” he said, but he let her skip around the apartment, singing low to herself.
Joel started making dinner, although the smell of the cooking pork chops nauseated him. The knot in his stomach was large enough that he thought he might never eat again. He was so distracted, he almost forgot to put an extra cut of meat on. He hadn’t had to cook for three since his ex-wife had left him, and watching the additional pork chop sizzle in the pan made his stomach give another, dangerous lurch.
He had just set all the food to keep warm in the oven when there was a sharp knock on the door. Tess answered immediately, while Joel straggled behind, wiping his hands on the kitchen towel.
The social worker they had spoken to all those months ago stood outside the door, one hand on the shoulder of a skinny, red-headed teenage girl -- younger than Sarah, he thought, too young to be wearing the world-weary, annoyed expression she had on.
Joel gulped.
“Hi, Tess,” the social worker said, before spotting Joel and giving him a small smile. He was pretty sure he looked like death, because he was feeling like death. “This is Ellie.”