82ABSENCE~EPILOGUE part 8
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Glee or to any product/song mentioned in this story.
The next morning, the kids woke them up, which was fine with them, they were used to it. They were packed and ready to get to the airport. Quinn's aunt was meeting them at the hotel to retrieve her dress and the tuxedos and anything else that needed to be returned to the townhouse.
As they sat in the plane, getting ready to taxi the runway, Sam realized Beck, sitting next to him, was shaking.
"We'll be fine, buddy...just swallow when we take off, okay?" Beckett looked at him, nodding, and reached for Sam's hand.
Beckett nodded again and squeezed his eyes shut as the engines fired up and the plane began moving.
In front of Sam and Beckett, Quinn and Clarice were having a blast.
Once up in the air, Beckett looked to Sam, his eyes wide, and said, "That wasn't so bad."
"Not bad at all," Sam replied, ruffling his hair.
Their week spent at Disney World was busy but fun for them all. Quinn had only been when she was a child; Sam had never been at all. In many ways, he felt like one of the kids on that trip. He would occasionally catch a flash of gold and be reminded of the reason they were vacationing...his marriage to Quinn, his joining their family.
In the months preceding the wedding, he had slowly began spending more time at the townhouse and slowly began moving his belongings there. His lease was ending at the end of the year, so they planned on him moving into the townhouse and then possibly looking for a house. He also was learning how to discipline the kids, something he hated to do but Quinn assured him it was necessary, that he was their father and he couldn't let them get by with everything. On the Disney trip, he felt more at ease with disciplining them, especially after a long day when everyone was tired and cranky. He hated telling the kids no and watching them pout and stomp off. It made him feel like a terrible father and since he had missed out on their first 8 years of life he really didn't want to do anything to upset them. Quinn told him, though, that he had to be confident in his decisions and she'd support his decisions and believe it or not the kids wouldn't be mad at him forever.
They were all a bit sad to leave the sunny warmth of Florida and return to wintry Ohio but Christmas was coming up and then of course school and work would start for them all again. As Christmas approached, he had a lot of fun with Quinn planning and then shopping for gifts for the kids. He remembered the past few Christmases he had spent either alone or with his family and now it was very apparent what he had missed all those years.
Most nights, they'd start a fire and work on wrapping gifts after the kids had gone to sleep. Other nights, they sat snuggled close together and went through Quinn's photo albums. They started with the pictures as the twins when they were born. He was shocked at how small they both seemed but then Quinn reminded him that together they weighed 10 pounds 10 ounces, which was what she carried. He studied their pictures and the few pictures of her pregnant with them. He worked his way through the photo albums and she shared their baby books with him, denoting all their "firsts." He marveled at the ink prints of their tiny feet on their birth certificates. Quinn added his name to them where it asked for father. In Clarice's baby book, he noticed Quinn had mentioned him, not by name, where it asked how the parents came up with the baby's name. She had written Clarice Noelle...her father loves Rudolph and Clarice is the name of Rudolph's best girlfriend and Noelle for Christmas. In Beckett's baby book, under how she came up with his name, she had also mentioned Sam. She had written Beckett Samuel...his father likes Jeff Beck (a guitarist) and Samuel is his father's name. She caught him reading those sections.
"My frame of mind then was...kinda out there..." she said, remembering choosing their names. "I had just moved here to Cincy and just walked out of the bathroom with the positive pregnancy tests and Rudolph was on TV...I just sat there watching it, crying."
"I think you chose perfect names for them," he said to her quietly. "How'd you remember I said I liked Beck?"
"A song came on the radio one day and they said something about Jeff Beck and I remembered you saying you liked how he played guitar. I knew I was having twins but I didn't know if they were boys, girls, or what and I needed a good boy name. So, you had input with their names, indirectly."
One day close to Christmas when Quinn got home from work, Sam and the kids were standing in the living room, waiting on her to hang up her coat and kick off her shoes, all three with silly grins on their faces, the kids trying not to laugh. She immediately smelled cookies and the swipe of flour on Beck's forehead also gave that away.
"Hi Quinn!" Sam said, along with the kids chiming in hi mom!
She was wary of those three. "What's going on?"
"I was just wondering, have you ever noticed this crack in the ceiling, over here?" Sam said, suddenly serious, taking her hand and pulling her to the passway between the dining room and living room. She stood there looking up where he was pointing, not seeing any crack.
"Umm...no...what cr - "
He spun her around and kissed her suddenly.
"Gotcha!" he said, making the kids burst into laughter. "Clar and Beck wanted me to catch you under the mistletoe."
She laughed, wrapping her arms around Sam, kissing him back. "Those two had better watch out, as well! They might get caught under it too!"
"We just took the cookies out and are letting them cool...wanna help decorate?" he asked.
"Sure..."
Sam and the kids already had the icing and candy to put on the cookies and for the next hour or so they spent time in the kitchen decorating their Christmas cookies.
Living with Quinn and the twins made Sam realize that being a dad was an absolute full-time job. There was always someone who needed to be fed, who was thirsty, who needed help with their homework, who had an arbitrary question about anything under the sun. Someone always needed him to play a game with them, watch TV with them, read to them, ride with him to the grocery or to get gas. He wasn't complaining…it was just taking him a little time to get used to the constant aspect of being a parent.
He crawled into bed with Quinn one night, exhausted, after a busy day of keeping the kids occupied at home, then a visit to the library, then exercise at the Y, then holiday festivities in the neighborhood.
"I have a very newfound level of respect for all that you did the first few years of their lives," Sam told her, cuddling her close. "Being a dad is probably the hardest job I've ever done…most rewarding though."
"We have good days and bad days, thankfully more good than bad. Since you've been in our lives, I kind of wonder how I went without you for so long," she said to him, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder.
"They're great kids…I'm glad I'm getting to know them," he said.
She paused a moment. "Do you miss your bachelor days?"
He pulled her closer. "God no, Quinn! Most days, it was work, then go home and be alone. I really wasn't happy at all. When I saw you that day at the therapy department it was like my prayers had been answered. And then when you gave me your card…I literally skipped to the parking garage…ask Stevie!"
She giggled, kissing him.
"This is going to be a great Christmas, Samuel," she whispered. He kissed her in return.
xxxxx
The night before Christmas, Sam sat up late with Quinn, getting gifts ready for the twins.
"I've never played Santa before..." he told her quietly.
"It's fun but tiring," she answered. "It's nice to share it with someone finally."
She showed him how the kids liked it when Santa replied to their notes, and they nibbled on the cookies and milk.
They finished everything up at just after midnight. "It definitely goes a lot faster when there's two of us doing the work," Quinn told him. "I'm usually up until well after 3 a.m."
"Wow...c'mon, let's get some rest then..." he said, following her upstairs.
In their bedroom, she looked at their bed and acted shocked.
"How did that get up here?"
He saw the mistletoe hanging off the headboard. He smiled at Quinn and shut their door quietly.
xxxxx
Christmas morning started early; the twins were excited and ready to start the day. Quinn asked the twins to wait upstairs with her while Sam checked downstairs to see if Santa had made it to their home. His job was to turn on the Christmas tree and have the camera ready.
"Looks like Santa stopped by!" he called upstairs. "C'mon down!"
It sounded like a herd of antelope making their way downstairs. The kids were over-the-top excited. Sam remembered his little brother and sister being excited at Christmastime, but he was a teenager then and didn't pay much attention to them or what his parents did to sell the Santa Claus idea. Quinn made them sit down with their stockings first, after they checked out Santa's message to them and the big unwrapped gifts under the tree.
They both pulled out envelopes at the top of their stockings and asked if they could open those.
Sam and Quinn nodded, smiling. The kids opened their envelopes, finding the official court decree signifying their new last name: Clarice Noelle Evans and Beckett Samuel Evans. They both hopped up and hugged Sam, both saying thanks dad. He decided then that that was the best Christmas he had had to date.
xxxxx
Returning to school with their new last name was a little bit of an adjustment for the twins but like Sam had noticed early on they adapted well. He enjoyed teaching at their school, able to keep an eye on them from a distance. It helped Quinn out also since Sam was now able to bring the kids home from school. Most days, they had after-school activities while he graded papers or prepared for the next day. Being able to come home right after work was somewhat foreign to Quinn but she wasn't complaining.
One day, she asked Sam to stop at the market to pick up some ground beef for supper that night since she had a meeting after work. He waited on Clarice and Beckett and then drove to the market, taking a different route just for the heck of it. He nearly drove right past it, but the kids hollered at him so he went around the block.
"I can't believe it's for sale!" Clarice whispered from the back seat.
"It looks so spooky..." Beckett said, gazing up at the old house.
To Sam, it was an old two-story Victorian, somewhat run-down, obviously not lived in. According to legend, according to Clarice and Beckett, the place was haunted. In the dark, to Sam it did look a little eerie with the tall dark windows and wraparound porch. He could make out gingerbread trim and a roof that looked in good condition. It sat on two city lots, all enclosed with a picket fence. He decided to drive by it in the daytime to get a better look.
The next morning, he did drive by the house, on their way to school, and in the daylight it didn't look so frightening. He was sure it needed some work done to it but all in all it was a decent looking home. He noted the name on the sign in the yard and decided to get some more information on the internet. It was no secret that they were running out of space in the townhouse and finding a larger home was on the agenda. The thing he liked about this house was it was large enough, it was in the kids' school district, and it was something they'd have to work on together to make their own...at least from how it looked on the outside. He still needed financial information, exactly what kind of condition the place was in, and to take Quinn and walk through it.
A week later, Sam and Quinn walked through it, then again with the kids, and made an offer. Their offer was accepted quickly, the loan paperwork completed, and they found themselves homeowners of what was once a beautiful home in the neighborhood. After a little contractor work and a lot of painting done by themselves, they made it their own and moved in over spring break. They sided the house in gray with navy and white trim. Everything they owned from the townhouse only took up about 25% of the space they now had so at the beginning the house seemed bare.
Until the week after spring break when Sam and the kids found Quinn at home when they got home from school. She was waiting on the porch for them, a cardigan wrapped around her in the chill of the spring air. She threw her arms around Sam, startling him a bit, but then she whispered, "It was positive." And he knew exactly what she meant.