Fake You Out - Joshler

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Josh's finally getting around to finishing the lunch dishes when he hears someone behind him, quiet sock clad feet sliding across the floor. He turns around, frowning when he sees Michael rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Michael, you're supposed to call me, you're not allowed to walk down the stairs by yourself," Josh scolds, shutting off the water and grabbing the hand towel to dry his hands.

"Sorry," Michael says, widening his brown eyes and pouting up at Josh. "I'm done sleep."

"Next time, call me, okay? You know Daddy and I hate when you walk down the stairs." Michael's pouting, brown eyes glassy as he looks at Josh, emotions high, probably because he's still tired, barely sleeping a half an hour before he found Josh in the kitchen. Josh sighs, leaning down to pick Michael up and set him on the counter, brushing his thumbs under Michael's eyes, he says, "You're not in trouble. We just don't want you getting hurt, right? We love our little Michael and stairs can be tricky, even I trip on them sometimes, but you're our baby, so we don't want you getting hurt, okay?"

Michael inhales, sucking in a deep breath. "I didn't trip," he says. "I held on."

"And that's good, that's how you do it, but next time, please call Poppy, okay? Or Daddy, if he's home, or even Gerard, so we one of us can hold your other hand."

"Okay," Michael says, nodding sadly, his eyes still trained downwards. "Can we color?" He looks up at Josh, a hopeful expression in his eyes.

"Yeah, sweetheart, we can color." Josh leans forward to kiss Michael's forehead and then helps him off the counter, patting him on the back, nudging him in the direction of the table. He watches Michael climb onto one of the kitchen chairs before he grabs the supplies, getting the coloring books and crayons out of their proper places and bringing them towards the table. "We have Ninja Turtles, farm animals, Power Rangers, Sesame Street, puppies, and this one with the cover ripped off, which would you like?" He sets them down on the table, taking a seat in the chair next to Michael and watching as he chooses.

"Puppy," Michael says, kneeling on his chair to reach across the table and pull the puppy book closer to him, grabbing a fist full of crayons and flipping it open to a random page. "You do this one." He pushes forward the one without a cover and Josh flips through it find that it's different kind of scenes from a circus.

He settles on an image of a seal balancing a striped ball on its nose. Grabbing the blue crayon, he colors, keeping an eye on Michael as he does it.

"When Daddy gets back?" Michael asks, pulling the blue crayon out of Josh's hand.

"After work, like he always is. Actually, Poppy only has time to color this one picture and then I'm going to start dinner. I want to do something special for Daddy, make him a nice dinner or something? And we can put out some candles, and make it cute, like 'Lady and the Tramp', we could make spaghetti."

Michael gives Josh a look of distaste, shaking his head. "No," he says, scrunching up his face.

"What don't you like about it?"

"S'ghetti," Michael says.

"I can make you, Brendon and Gerard the dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets with macaroni, does that sound better? You can drink apple juice, too."

Michael considers it for a moment, handing Josh back the blue crayon he stole. "We do hearts, color them," he suggests, climbing off of the chair. Josh follows him, watching to see where he's going and what he's doing. Michael disappears for a moment and when he returns he's carrying a stack of blank paper. He hands it to Josh, climbing back onto the chair and grabbing the red and pink crayons. He passes Josh the pink and grabs his a sheet of paper. He demonstrates what he means, drawing a heart to the best of his ability. It doesn't really look like a heart, one side fatter and longer than the other side, which is short and skinny.