"I think she's about to start crawling any second now," Sebastian announced over dinner as he spooned mashed vegetables into Lucy's mouth. Lucy looked thoughtful, which might mean that she was enjoying herself, and might mean that she was about to grab the spoon and fling it. She was at that age. Logan silently handed Sebastian a napkin and was rewarded by a blinding grin.

"She can't be crawling yet," Logan said, doing some quick mental math and coming up with impossible numbers.

"Well, not yet," Sebastian said with a shrug. He turned back to Lucy. "Yes, darling! That's you! Eat all your vegetables and you'll be up and around in no time."

"What about the stairs?" Logan said, eyes flicking frantically around the room. "What about the drawers in the kitchen? We're not ready for her to start crawling!"

Sebastian laughed, pulling the spoon out of the way of Lucy's tiny, grasping fists. "No, sweetie. No spoon for you. Only vegetables." He raised his eyebrows impishly at Logan. "Seems like that might have been something for you to think about in the last six months."

Logan rubbed his hand across his face. "Not six months," he said plaintively. "It can't have been six months."

Cackling, Sebastian said, "So, wait, how old do you think the baby is?" Little Lucy, who had been staring intently at her fathers' faces since they began to talk, opened her mouth and laughed too. She definitely didn't know that she was making fun of Logan. It still kind of felt like they were both ganging up on him.

"The joke's going to be on you when you have to be locked in a box because our house isn't ready for you to be crawling in," Logan informed her. She laughed again, her chubby cheeks creasing with delight and her eyes almost disappearing in the roundness of her face.

"You didn't answer my question," Sebastian said, sing-song and smug as hell.

"Practically a newborn?" Logan said, tearing his eyes away from the charm of his baby daughter's smile.

"Hah!" Sebastian snorted. "You wish."

"No–o," Logan said, slow and unconvincing. "You're my big girl, Lucy-bell! My big girl!" She reached for him at the sound of her name, babbling happily.

"Now look what you've done," Sebastian said, with no heat in his voice. "You've got her all worked up so she won't finish her dinner."

"Not my fault she loves her daddy," Logan said, grinning wide. He reached out towards Sebastian. "Here, give me her mush. I've finished eating. I can finish up here."

"Be my guest." Sebastian pushed the bowl of goop across the table. "When you're done with that, you can start baby-proofing this place."

"You wouldn't learn to crawl and start breaking into everything, would you?" Logan said pleadingly to Lucy, poking the spoonful of goop towards her face. "You wouldn't pull a trick like that on your loving father?"

Sebastian laughed again, watching the two of them with a satisfied expression on his lovely face. "If that's the approach you're going to take, then I really have to step up my job-search," he said lovingly. "I'm not staying home to try and persuade a baby not to get into things."

"She's a smart girl," Logan said, wiping goop delicately off Lucy's plump little cheek. "She'll get it."

"Really have to step up my job-search." Sebastian said, leaning back in his chair and hooking his arm actually over the back. "Though you might be able to sell the footage. There's always a market for disaster awareness."

"I'll get to it, I promise," Logan said. He poked the spoon in Lucy's direction again. "Come on, darling! Open up!" He clucked his tongue at her and tried not to laugh at the suspicious face she was making at the food she'd been eating happily thirty seconds before. He really had meant to get the house baby-proofed the second they moved in, but then moving with a baby had been so much more work than anticipated, and he'd been trying to get settled at his new job. The tiny little bundle of joy dwarfed by her enormous car seat had seemed like she was never going to grow up into all the milestones that Logan had been frantically trying to memorize from the baby books they'd been given at the shower. Eight months? He could hardly have pictured her at four.

Lucy kicked her wee feet furiously, and generously allowed Logan to feed her another spoonful of puree.

"See?" Sebastian said gleefully. "Practically running. You better get on it quick or she'll be halfway down the street before you know it."

Logan wanted to joke that she sounded like she was taking after Sebastian, but he kept his mouth shut. It wasn't even true anymore, not really. For someone who had spent his whole life on the edge of flight, Sebastian was taking to domestic life – provided it was at least a couple of hours away from his parents – astonishingly placidly. It wasn't that Sebastian wasn't the same guy that Logan had known his whole life – or the guy that Logan had fallen in love with however long ago that had been. He was still Logan's Sebastian. Just a calmer version.

It was as if Sebastian had been fighting something invisible for so long that no one knew what he looked like without it. But now it was gone, and something indefinable was different about him. Some sense of peace, or maybe happiness. Logan hoped it was happiness, but either way, he wasn't going to complain.

"Mom called today," Sebastian said while Logan wrestled internally with the passage of time. "She's sending another box of stuff for Lucy." That was another change. Sebastian could talk about his mom with hardly a rolled eye or a hunched shoulder. It was a kind of miracle. "She wants to come stay with us for a while and help look after the baby."

Logan winced imperceptibly. There was the sour tone again. Perhaps he was getting ahead of himself. "Not over my dead body," he said airily, and watched the weight almost visibly slide off Sebastian's curled back. He wanted to swear that he would protect Sebastian from her interference forever, and that Lucy would never have to deal with the kind of shit that Sebastian did. But Sebastian still didn't want to hear that, still wanted to protect his mother from Logan's perfectly justified criticism. Logan took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He couldn't say it, but he could still do it. Sebastian would never have to wear that hang-dog look while he was around.

"Isn't that a little harsh?" Sebastian said. He was staring up at the ceiling now, and blinking frantically.

Logan watched him out of the corner of his eye, pretending to still be entirely enraptured by Lucy's continuing adventures in eating. "Don't think so." His voice changed as he began to coo at the baby. "Yes, you need to eat all of your vegetables, sweetie-pie! Then you can run away from me all day long, while Papa works."

"Don't think I won't take you up on that," Sebastian said, the finger he shook in Logan's direction at odds with the hiccup in his voice.

"Be my guest," Logan said. "Lucy-bean and I will have sooooo much fun without you, won't we, baby?" Lucy beat her chubby little fists against the tray of her high-chair. Logan grinned, turning toward Sebastian. "See, she agrees with me."

"Or she thinks you keep getting distracted from the all-important work of feeding her," Sebastian said drily.

"Guess you just have to be less beautiful," Logan said, refilling Lucy's spoon.

Sebastian waved him off, his cheeks flushing. He wrinkled his nose. "Well, if you want me gone that bad, I might go upstairs and check my job search again," he said, half-rising from his seat. "Unless you need me...?"

"Always." Logan blew him a kiss. "But not right now. I've got things pretty much locked down here, don't I, sweetie?" Lucy laughed, vegetable mash smeared over her face. "Yes, that's right!"

"Thanks," Sebastian said, looking fond. He stood, pressed a quick kiss to the top of Lucy's head, smooched Logan until his head was spinning, and headed upstairs.

"Anything for you," Logan called after him. Maybe he couldn't do exactly everything for Sebastian, but now, he could say it, could offer everything he had to give. It was astonishing how much of a difference it made to be able to say the things he'd been bottling up since forever. To be able to do even the fraction of them that he'd already managed.

"Do you know how happy your Papa is?" he said to Lucy in a low, voice, watching her little face with impossible fondness. "I think he's very happy, don't you?"

Her coos might just be random, but Logan thought she could feel what was going on. Her little eyes seemed to see everything and reflect it back tenfold. Right now, she was practically bouncing out of her chair, and he didn't think that was all the result of a little carrot and pea mash.

"Very happy!" he agreed. "Just like you." He fed her another spoonful of carrot and sighed with contentment. "Me too, baby. Me too."