𝒪𝓇𝒾𝑔𝒾𝓃𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒪𝓁𝓎𝓂𝓅𝓊𝓈 𝒪𝓃𝑒 𝒮𝒽𝑜𝓉𝓈

My Number One Priority

T/W: Angst, talk about Intrusive Thoughts, Rushed Ending.

~

Ever since Bryan met his children: Atlas, Lotus, and Femi, his heart grew three sizes, perfect for the three children that now inhabited that extra space.

He couldn't believe how lucky he was.

His life was practically the dream.

A beautiful home, a loving husband, and children who were all he could ask for:

Unique and their own individuals.  

Bryan knew he loved his children more so than anything else in the whole cosmos.

So it destroyed him inside to hear of the heartache they had to endure...

~

Bryan awoke abruptly one night. He didn't know why but his newly acquired parental senses were going off.

He looked at his snoring husband, he was still fast asleep. He smiled, Inpu needed sleep, he had been running himself ragged.

Bryan delicately got out of bed and with a candle that burns as gentle as the Winter sun, he drifted across the marble floors.

He glided towards his children's room, and quickly saw that a light was still on.

He clicked open the door and Femi was laying cozily under her blankets, with a candle beside her and a book in front of her.

She looked so relaxed, and it was uncanny how similar she was to Inpu. Bryan has caught both, reading silently, unaware of the sun as it creeps into sky, beckoning the day.

"Femi?"

Femi jumped upon hearing her father's voice, she had assumed he had gone to bed by now.

"What are you still doing up?" Bryan asked, he looked at her with concern as he couldn't help but notice the darkness and the creases under her eyes.

"Umm..." Femi gestered to the book in her hands. "Reading?" She said, though it appeared more like a question.

She gave him a big, pearly-tooth smile as she said that and her father instantly knew she was lying and just sighed.

Bryan quickly learnt that his children weren't good liars. They each had obvious tells to reveal their falsehoods.

For Lotus, it was their increased confidence.

For Atlas, he would start singing his words.

And for Femi, she branded a broad smile that only a fool wouldn't recognise as fake.

They had others but these were the most common of the plethora of tells they had.

"Femi..." Her father looked at her solemnly. "Are you really reading, or more occupied by other things?" He said, looking right through her mask.

Femi's eyes widened, that would usually work on Papa. Papa was always too tired to play a game of 'Are you lying?' So he just let it be, tell her to go to bed and leave.

"Umm..." She mumbled.

Bryan sighed again before making his way towards her, taking a seat on her bed and setting her book down on her bedside table.

"Is there something wrong?" He asked. Bryan didn't know Femi as well as he did his son and child, she was much closer to Inpu than him.

He looked at her tired eyes, not just from the late night as Bryan could see pain inside them. The pain of everything she had been through.