Archive of Our Own ^beta

Wherever Harry looks, to his past or his future, to his present - all he sees is himself, on his own.

After everything, Harry goes home alone. He likes Petros, honestly, but it turns out there’s more to romance than ripping your shirt open and a few nights of really excellent sex. Who knew.

Actually, he’s fairly sure he can be forgiven for that one: he’s forty and gay and his one grand romance was both with a girl and twenty years ago. But now, at forty, escaping to Greece for the sake of a caprice is a little more difficult, especially now that he’s a banker and dog owner and stuck in his not-spontaneous ways, so Harry goes home alone.

He lets himself into his townhouse, lovingly maintained by his house sitter, drops his bags on familiar floors and is bowled over by an affectionate labrador. The house is quiet and cool and filled with nice, calm, tasteful things that are entirely his own and for a few hours it is glorious.

And then - it isn’t. He finds himself standing over his stove, dogs sleeping in the other room, telling himself that he’s happy here. Harry likes England and its weather and people and staid, reserved mood. He’s used to it. In comparison, Kalokairi is wild and fantastical and somewhat removed from ordinary reality. He eats his dinner, Radio Three quietly playing the Proms in the background, recapping the last week and wondering if it all really happened; if he really left for Greece after receiving an invitation to a wedding from a summer fling twenty years ago, if he really gained a grown-up daughter to co-parent with three other people, if he really came out to a crowd of strangers by propositioning a young man he’d known about a day - oh, god, surely not. Kalokairi cannot be real, must be some kind of carnivalesque faerie realm in which ordinarily sensible Englishmen rather abruptly become emotionally open and run around in nothing but their swimming trunks - something Harry doesn’t think he’s done in the twenty years between visits to the island and almost certainly won’t do again until - if - he goes back. It certainly all seems rather unbelievable, and the thought makes Harry rather unexpectedly melancholy. Despite his present embarrassment, some of it was rather good. He enjoyed the company of the other dads - a collective noun he’s happy to be a part of - and it was actually nice to catch up with Donna again. And, of course, Sophie - wonderful Sophie. His daughter - and he’ll never get over the joyous novelty of saying that - is, absolutely, the best thing that’s ever happened to him. There are a thousand cliches to describe how much he intensely, viscerally loves this bright, sunny girl and not a single one even comes close to good enough.

But Kalokairi and its residents don’t seem so real under grey London skies, when the only sound is the BBC concert orchestra and the occasional rumble of traffic outside. His memory makes their colours brighter, more vivid, but he can no longer feel the burning sun of his face or smell the hot pine on the hillside and a small, paranoid part of his brain begins to say: maybe none of it was real. Maybe they’ve forgotten you now.

His hand shakes when he reaches for his glass and Harry flinches when the phone rings, shrill and loud. He barely catches the glass before the red wine hits his table, cursing quietly and yelling a futile “Coming!” in the vague direction of his phone before stumbling to his feet and fetching it from the hall on the very last ring. His greeting is entirely autopilot and slightly breathless. “Bright residence.”

“Uh, Harry?” comes a hesitant voice on the other end, and with it the salt tang of the Mediterranean.

He grins, leaning back against his staircase and winding the cord of his old-fashioned telephone around his fingers. “Hello, Sophie!”

“Hi Dad!” she chirps back happily, and his heart grows about three sizes whilst simultaneously squeezing, making his chest tight. “I thought I’d messed up the time difference or something. How was your flight?”

“Fine,” he says, uncontrollably beaming at the bare wall before him. “Afraid I’m already missing your sunny skies, though.”

Sophie laughs. “What did you expect of England?”

He hums in concession. “Where are you now, anyway?”

“Budapest,” she says brightly. “Not much sunnier than England, I think, but Sky’s taking me out to a restaurant tonight and tomorrow we’re going to the Parliament. They’ve got such beautiful roofs here, all tiled, and-”

Harry settles further into his position, toes against one wall and back pressed up to the stairs, and listens to her speak. She’s so bubbly and bright all the time, giggling all through her story about their terrible Hungarian translations and consequent complete inability to hire any less than thirteen bicycles at a time. In turn, he tells her the story of how he, in full punk regalia, had given her mother an entire paragraph of unintelligible French before finding out that, a) she spoke English, b) she could not help him, and c) he had, in fact, asked her for a new door for his room, rather than a new key.

“It didn’t help the whole-” he gestures vaguely for the right word “-persona I was trying to display. Stammering in butchered French negates even the most spiked leather jacket.”

“I bet Mom liked that,” Sophie giggles.

Harry frowns. “She assured me it was cute,” he says, coating the word in scorn to make her laugh even harder. “I didn’t speak to her for the whole day.”

“What changed?” she asks. He can hear shifting and assumes Sky has joined her.

“Is that Sky? Do you have to go?”

“Oh, no. I mean, yes, it’s Sky, but dinner can wait. I want to talk to you.” She says it so simply, like it’s easy for her to outright tell someone how she feels about them and their company, and he supposes that it is - for her. It suffuses him with a warm sort of glow, and he smiles.

“I met Donna again,” he says, and that really was pretty much all it took for him to concede to liking her. “It was a Dynamos gig, just a one-off while Rosie and Tanya were in town, and up on stage she just - glowed. She found me afterwards, we went to the tiniest cafe in our glad rags and terrified the locals.”

“You can’t have been that terrifying,” Sky says, slightly distant but rather sceptical.

Sophie makes a noise of disagreement and there’s more shuffling. “Mom in glitter and platforms and Dad looking like this-” she says, and Harry gathers she’s showing him the picture he gave her: of the two of them grinning at the camera, Paris in the background and punk in the foreground. He smiles softly at the realisation that she must be keeping it with her, probably together with the equivalent photos of Bill and Sam.

“Oh,” Sky says, sounding rather surprised. “I - I get it now.”

Sophie laughs and Harry ducks his head, grinning. “You must have been quite the pair,” she says.

“I didn’t think there was much overlap between punk and disco,” Sky adds.

“Oh, yes, it was a real Romeo and Juliet business,” Harry says. “Her friends were against it, my friends all said ‘Headbanger-” Sky makes a startled choking noise. “-you’re turning to the dark side,’ but we didn’t care.”

“Really?” Sophie says.

“No,” he replies, and smiles when she and Sky laugh. “I don’t think she ever even told Tanya and Rosie about us at the time, and no-one ever told me what to do. Unless I was trying to speak to them in French, in which case I was bullied relentlessly.”

After about half an hour, Harry insists on hanging up so that they can enjoy their dinner reservations, promising to host them in a few weeks when they reach London and to pick them up from St Pancras. He’s still smiling an hour after they ring off, filled with the comforting knowledge that Kalokairi is only a phone call away.

St Pancras is bustling, even at ten at night. The trains are near-constantly moving, expelling or admitting commuters and holiday-makers and tourists alike, and the platforms are filled with people waiting for trains or for their occupants.

Harry watches a young couple leap from a train into the waiting arms of - he assumes - their parents. It does nothing to calm the twisting nerves in his gut.

The other families don’t look half as nervous as he feels, which is probably reasonable since he’s almost certainly over-reacting. It’s just difficult - Sophie and Sky know him through a mad few days and a series of phone calls, in which it is much easier for Harry to be loose and open and pretend to be whatever Sophie wants or expects him to be. In reality, the truth of who he is will be harder to conceal, and he’s not sure his heart could hold up to disappointing this daughter he hadn’t even known he had.

The tannoy distantly announces the arrival of their Eurostar and he stands too quickly, too jerkily, and thrusts his fists deep in his pockets to prevent his fingers’ compulsive, knuckle-breaking twisting. He strides down to the platform, sensible black brogues clicking on the marble floor and feels suddenly stuffy and overdressed in his suit, when earlier he had deliberately chosen it with the aim of impressing his new family with how smart he can look. Harry can’t help comparing himself to the other dads and their loose linen shirts and deck shoes, or to Sky and the island men in their shorts and flip-flops. He doesn’t think he could dress comfortably like that if he tried - but isn’t that just another way he might be all wrong, too different, all unfamiliar for his daughter?

The train pulls into the station with a hydraulic hiss and as soon as the doors open, Sophie bounces out, standing on her tiptoes to see over the mass exodus. Harry can’t help a smile as Sky follows her out, laden with their luggage, and summons all his courage to raise his arm and wave. Sophie spots him, eyes widening and mouth opening in the world’s brightest grin, and races down the platform, arms open. He catches her up and swings her about, at least partly because he’s powerless to do otherwise, what with her energy and momentum, but also because he’s missed out on a lot of hugs from this girl and he’s going to catch up if it kills him.

“Hello,” he says, grinning into her hair.

She squeezes his shoulders tighter. “Hey, Dad.” He lets her down and she beams up at him. “Thanks for this.”

“Not at all.”

Sky finally catches them up, carrying two huge backpacks and a suitcase, which he dumps down to reach out and give Harry a slightly unexpected hug as well. “You hosting us goes some way towards forgiving being so exciting that madam here can’t carry her own bags,” he says, mock-irritated and all fond as he nudges his girlfriend.

Harry is startled into a laugh and Sophie shrugs with an exaggerated ‘oops’ face. “Dad’s way more interesting than carrying a bag,” she says, wrapping her arms around Harry’s waist.

Harry doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so he squeezes her shoulders and stops smiling uncontrollably long enough to suggest that they head home. “Have you eaten?” he says, grabbing the suitcase and earning himself a thankful grin from Sky.

“A while ago, yeah - Tanya met us in Paris and took us to a five-star new wave restaurant before we got on the train,” Sky says.

“What he means is,” Sophie explains, taking the spare hands of both Harry and Sky and giving her father a conspiratorial smile, “our portions were tiny, and he’s hungry.”

Which is how Harry ends up at his kitchen table at midnight, grinning over tea and chocolate biscuits as his more-or-less son-in-law eats Cheerios and his daughter sprawls on the floor, fussing over his dogs. He’d half expected to feel old, this week, but he’s not had a midnight snack since boarding school - the effect is rather rejuvenating.

He takes them all over London so that Sophie can coo over all the landmarks and Sky can snap pictures of her at every opportunity. Harry insists on taking them both up the London Eye, and on paying for the picnic they eat in Hyde Park, and on treating them to tea at the Savoy, until Sky starts to avoid anything that might cost money and gains this uncomfortable tension when Harry gets his wallet out.

Sophie leaves them at the table for five minutes and Sky immediately leans in. “Do you want any...contribution towards all this?”

“No! No, of course not,” Harry says, startled. “My treat.”

Sky looks sceptical. “It’s a big treat, Harry.”

He shrugs, fussing over his plate to avoid the piercing eye contact. “Well, I’ve had twenty years to save up for it.”

Sky leans back in his seat, folding his arms and pinning Harry with an assessing look. “This is about proving something, isn’t it.” Harry shifts uncomfortably, which is as good as an admission. “This is what you can give Sophie, to make up for something - what? Not being there?”

Harry offers a lop-sided shrug. “It was something Tanya said. But really,” he says, leaning in and spreading his hands, “what can I give her? Bill’s sailing you two halfway around the world to give you an adventure, Sam’s married her mother and will give her the standard family support - and I can bankroll the things she wants. This,” he says, gesturing around them at their stylish surroundings, “this is what I can give her.”

Sky looks suddenly rather sad, which isn’t what Harry had intended at all. “Harry, you - you do more for her than just pay. And I’m not sure I’d subscribe to everything Tanya says about relationships and families and such: I’m fairly sure her best relationships with men are with you dads and me. Soph’s not nearly so materialistic that all you are to her is a walking wallet.”

Harry bristles. “Of course she isn’t,” he objects.

Sky raises an eyebrow at him. “And if you thought half as well of yourself as you do of her, you might see how much Soph loves you. You don’t have to prove that you’re just as good as the other dads; she knows that already.”

Harry blinks, unable to summon a suitable response. Sophie rescues him by returning to the table with a smile, and the moment is lost. The whirlwind of tourism distracts him away from his thoughts, but they’re harder to escape in his lonely bed in the small hours of the morning.

If you thought well of yourself - he does. Doesn’t he? Harry doesn’t dislike himself: he’s proud of what he’s done with the business, he thinks he’s a good person.

But.

He’s spent the whole time leading up to the arrival of the kids worrying that they won’t like him, that something about him is somehow wrong in a way that only they can pick up on. And yes, the spending is partly to match up to Sam and Bill and the things that they can offer that Harry can’t seem to manage: the openness, the desire for adventure, the curious combination of stability without being stuck in their ways.

Maybe that’s it. In comparison to the other dads and to the young punk in the picture Sophie keeps pressed in a journal in her bag, Harry feels old and dull and like an outsider.

He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed as if to stand, but thinks better of it. He wants to know if Bill and Sam ever feel this way, but Sam and Donna are on their honeymoon and Bill and Rosie are doing...whatever the equivalent for unmarried couples is called, and besides, it’s the middle of the night. And if they did pick up the phone, Harry might have to say how he feels out loud, and less than a week of Greco-American expressiveness wasn’t quite enough to have him doing that.

The week flies by too fast, moments tripping out of reach just as Harry tries to hold onto them, and before he knows it they’re on a train to Portsmouth, where Bill will pick Sophie and Sky up to sail them around the Iberian Peninsula and back to Kalokairi. Bill and Rosie are waiting on the platform to collect them, effortlessly matching their enthusiasm to Sophie’s. Harry finds himself with lipstick on his cheek, pulled down to Rosie’s height by his lapel, before he really knows what’s happening to him. Bill laughs at his doubtless startled expression and wraps him in a strong, back-slapping hug.

“I’m still getting used to it too,” he says, winking at Rosie. She scoffs and tucks her hand into the crook of Sky’s arm. “Did you have fun, little lady?” Bill says, wrapping his arm around Sophie’s shoulders and following Rosie and Sky out of the station.

Harry grabs the suitcase and walks beside and half a step behind Sophie, listening contentedly to her delighted account of her stay with him. He remains slightly out of step as they leave the bags on the boat and buy fish and chips to eat with their legs hanging over the harbour, and can’t shake the odd feeling of having been superseded; as if, now that Bill is here, he has been relegated to second fiddle.

Sky and Sophie still give him long, tight hugs before they set sail. Sky’s comes with a significant look, a reminder of their conversation, but also a grateful grin. Sophie just holds him tight, in one of the longest hugs of his life.

She pulls back, looking a little sad, and he strokes her hair with a sad little smile of his own. “Call me when you reach port tonight?” he asks hopefully.

She nods enthusiastically. “And you text me when you get home.”

He grins. “I don’t think there are many white slavers on the sixteen-forty-five to Waterloo.” Waterloo - there’s a story for another time.

Sophie shrugs. “Anyway. Oh! And come to Kalokairi when we’re all back again, and also for Christmas. Promise?”

“Promise.” He hands her onto the boat and passes the suitcase after her, and then jumps back as Bill vaults over the side onto the dock again.

“Come on, help me with this line,” he says, gesturing to one of the ropes adhering the boat to land. Harry crouches beside him and Bill fixes him with a look, hands working enthusiastically without any need for Harry to do anything. “You’d better be there,” he says quietly.

“I did promise,” Harry objects, frowning but matching his volume so that those on the boat can’t hear them.

“I know,” Bill says, waving a hand, “but you’re as much a part of this family as Donna and Sam and me, and I won’t have you forgetting that.” With that, he claps Harry’s shoulder and stands, flinging the line back onto the boat and jumping after it.

Harry stumbles to his feet as the boat drifts out into the harbour, watching Sophie and Sky kneel up on the stern and wave wildly. He returns it with slightly more reservation, and then impulsively flicks his pocket square out and waves it like a Victorian spectator. The sound of their laughter, ringing across the water, he thinks will keep him warm until he returns to the Mediterranean sunshine.

They all congregate on Kalokairi at Christmas, the whole mad family, and eat imported turkey and sing about snow and confuse the Greek Orthodox islanders, who won’t celebrate until Epiphany on the sixth of January. It’s a curious December because it’s not really cold, not like Britain can be cold, and the dads stand outside in the nine-degree winter air in their shirtsleeves, attempting to one-up each other with how cold it gets in London/New York/Stockholm while Sophie and Donna tug their jackets tighter around themselves and passive-aggressively lock them outside until they’re whining at the back door like stray cats begging for food. It’s not remotely like Harry’s usual Christmases at home, which are more traditional affairs with frosty walks and naps in front of the Queen’s Speech, but he finds himself adjusting remarkably well to baklava and honey cakes for breakfast and big, noisy present exchanges with eight people crammed around a kitchen table meant to seat four. Instead of the reserved calm of holidays with his parents, when he was a boy and all they listened to was quiet classical arrangements of carols, these carols involve competing with Sam for top volume (and losing) and with Sky, the other choir boy, for most verses (and winning).

Watching Sam and Donna crooning Elvis at each other and Bill swinging Sophie and Rosie around the makeshift dance floor of the kitchen, as Tanya, glasses perched on the very tip of her nose, reads an American magazine and Sky sets to putting together the remote-control helicopter he’s been given, Harry is vividly reminded of the wedding-that-wasn’t-and-then-suddenly-was. Sam had finished his toast, beaming down the face of his once and future love, and the bizarre nature of the situation had struck Harry all at once.

“This family,” he said, to no-one in particular, “is mad.”

Bill had nudged him in the side with a grin. “Your family too, now.”

He hadn’t really felt it, then, but he’s getting close now. There’s something in the gleam of the coloured paper, in the fairy lights around the washed-out teal windows, in the new-old combination of tradition and unfamiliarity and of Donna and Sophie. This something lodges itself in his chest, somewhere beneath his third rib, and makes a home there, big enough to fit his daughter and her parents and boyfriend and aunts. Big enough to fit his whole family.

And that’s undeniably strange, but that’s okay. It’s also undeniably pretty brilliant, too.

Meeting Donna’s mother is probably the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to him. It’s all the fear of meeting a significant other’s parents, but with additional yes madam, I quite possibly did knock your daughter up and leave her to it on a Greek island, and no, I haven’t made an honest woman of her, and no, we really can’t be sure if it was me or one of these other blokes. It also doesn’t help that Ruby Sheridan is, frankly, terrifying all on her own.

“That bastard,” Sam mumbles out of the corner of his mouth at Harry as Ruby, all shoulderpads and sunglasses, strides away from her helicopter towards them. “How the hell did he manage to wriggle out of this?”

“We’re all her dads,” Harry mutters back in a poor Scandi accent. “But I’m going to be conveniently elsewhere when her grandmother shows up.”

Sam snorts and tries to cover it up with a cough when Donna flicks her fingers to subtly swat his wrist. “Bill has a work thing,” she reminds them.

“See? Even you don’t know what it is,” Sam points out rather mulishly.

But before Donna’s mouth can do much more than twitch towards a smile, Ruby is upon them. “Donna,” she drawls. “You’re looking...healthy, I suppose.”

Donna’s feet shuffle slightly in her deck shoes. Dressed as she is in her usual indie-chic-too-busy-to-dress-up garb, she presents an image that is practically the polar opposite of her made-up mother. Sam bristles beside him and Harry launches himself into the fray before they come to blows. “Good morning,” he says, sticking his hand out, palm up. “Bright, Harry Bright.”

Ruby gives him a top-to-toe examination, taking in his patent leather shoes and tailored suit, before allowing a languid smile to grace her lips. “Charmed,” she says, laying immaculately manicured fingers onto his palm. He gives a gentle ‘shake’ which is really more him bowing slightly and carefully moving her hand to avoid snapping her nails or appearing too indelicate. Ruby looks fairly delighted with his manners, and Harry catches Sam rolling his eyes in his peripheral vision. “And yet, this isn’t the one you married?” she says to Donna, without taking her eyes off Harry.

He feels heat reaching up the back of his neck and Sam almost explodes with suppressed laughter beside him. “Harry is-” Donna begins awkwardly.

“Spoken for,” Sam interjects with a friendly smile, and Harry shoots him a grateful glance for not outing him in front of this veritable stranger right off the bat. It’s going to have to come up at some point, probably, but Harry’s still very much adjusting to being out in front of anyone, let alone Sophie’s grandmother. “I’m the second choice. Sam Carmichael.”

Ruby certainly seems less impressed with Sam’s loose linen than she was with Harry’s tailoring, but she accepts his handshake with good grace. “And where is my...your daughter?” she says, dropping Sam’s hand and gliding past them towards the hotel.

Donna points uselessly up the hill, her mother already walking that way, and sighs. “She has not changed, at all,” she mutters. “If you lot hadn’t turned out to be quite such a good idea,” Donna says, pointing at Sam and Harry as she begins to follow Ruby, “I’d never let Sophie contact anyone from my past, ever again.”

Sam and Harry look at each other as Donna hurries to catch up with her mother. “Thanks,” Harry says. “For not telling her - you know.”

“I know,” Sam says, nodding. “Thanks for charming her before I said something I’d regret.”

Harry nods back and both of them look up at the women and sigh. “Damn you, Bill Anderson,” Harry accidentally says out loud, startling Sam into a laugh.

He slings an arm around Harry’s shoulders and tugs him towards the steps. “That bastard.”

Dealing with Ruby is difficult.

She’s decided to like Sophie - about twenty years too late and without any good excuse for her absence, if you ask any of the parents - and Harry’s charm hasn’t yet worn off, so he’s in her good graces, but she doesn’t like Sam very much and, based on what she’s heard alone, doesn’t like Bill at all, so family mealtimes are less the quiet, stifling affairs to which Harry is accustomed and more buzzing with the barely suppressed urge to start flinging barbs, plates or punches and then sudden moments of pointed politeness.

Sophie’s determined, however, to wait it out and accumulate as much of a happy family as she possibly can, and the parents are, of course, powerless to resist. So Ruby is permitted to judge the island and its occupants as long as it makes Sophie happy, and Harry accepts that which he cannot change.

Ruby, however, has the unfortunate tendency to assume that the people she likes share her views - or possibly more accurately, she is accustomed to those who surround her being yes-men.

She and Harry are drinking wine at a table in the courtyard, the shutters all open behind them to the kitchen where Sam and Donna are cleaning up after yet another long, difficult dinner. Ruby puts it away with the practised ease of a seasoned drinker and Harry keeps up with her in the faint hope that mild inebriation will help him tolerate her if she should start in on his family.

Which she promptly does.

“You’re a banker, then?” she inquires archly, and Harry inclines his head. “Oh, wonderful. It’s so nice that someone in this family has a profession.”

Harry grits his teeth carefully. “Everyone in this family has a profession.” Except you, he doesn’t add. “Bill writes, Sam’s an architect, and Donna, Sophie and Sky run this hotel.”

Wine glass in one hand, Ruby waves the other dismissively, managing to encompass the whole island. “Oh, I mean a proper job, you see?”

Harry’s fists clench until his nails are pressing angry red crescents into the heel of his palm. “Those are proper jobs,” he begins, voice calm with just the slightest edge. “They are all valid professions, and they all work very hard at what they do, and what they do is very impressive. Your daughter and granddaughter are entrepreneurs, running their own business on their own, without any help from the family that abandoned them, and I don’t understand how you don’t see how impressive that is! Because I’m bloody proud of them, you-”

“Okay,” Donna says, inserting herself between Harry and Ruby. It’s at this point that Harry realises that, at some time in this impromptu tirade, he’s stood up and started yelling and that Ruby looks beyond astonished. “Okay, that will do.” Donna places her hands on his chest in an effort both to calm his heavy breathing and to gently push him backwards and away from her mother.

Harry stumbles back, allowing her to steer him out of the courtyard and around the side of the house, where he can no longer see Sam’s carefully blank face as he wipes up Harry’s spilled wine. “Donna, I’m so sorry,” he stutters, eyes wide and wildly searching for any trace of how she feels under her own controlled mask. “I - I didn’t-”

“Hey,” Donna says, offering him a gentle smile at last and rubbing her palms up and down his upper arms. “It’s okay. You didn’t need to do that, but it’s okay.”

“She shouldn’t - shouldn’t say that about you,” Harry objects, fingers trembling in their loose fists by his sides. “She has no right - no right at all - she just left you and Sophie - how-?”

“Shh.” Donna strokes her hands over his hair, brushing a loose lock away from his eyes and tilting her head until he’s forced to meet her eyes and look into her gently smiling face. “It’s okay. That’s old news.”

“But-”

She pushes herself up on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to his forehead and his eyes flutter shut. “I should have warned you against trying to keep up with my mother’s drinking,” she says wryly, and Harry huffs a little laugh and presses his spinning head against her forehead, eyes closed against his swinging vision.

Donna keeps carding her fingers through his hair until his swimming thoughts collect themselves again. “I am sorry,” he says at last, leaning back.

Donna shrugs. “I did want her to like one of you, but Sam was only two steps away from cheering you on, so I think something had to give.” She gives him a curious, amused look. “Didn’t think it would be you, though.”

“It’s something about you Sheridans,” Sam says, and they turn to see him leaning against the wall and smiling fondly at them both. “Makes men go crazy.”

Donna turns her mock-put-upon amusement on Harry, and then laughs properly when he just shrugs in concession. “You’re all suddenly filled with a desire to fight for my honour? Bit damn late.”

Sam comes up behind Harry, balancing his chin on the other man’s shoulder to grin at his wife and bring Harry’s hands up in their loose fists. “Fisticuffs in defence of a lady,” he says, shadow-boxing with Harry’s limp arms. “It’s taught at all the good British schools."

Donna laughs as Harry nods enthusiastically. “Alright, you daft bastards, time for bed.” She presses another kiss to Harry’s cheek and allows Sam to wrap an arm around his waist in a half-hug, half-haul towards his room.

“I can walk, you know,” Harry objects mildly, slinging his own arm over Sam’s shoulders.

Sam shrugs. “Maybe this is just the closest I can get to carrying you around on my shoulders, these days.”

Harry giggles, stupid and drunk, and Sam and Donna laugh, bright and silver under the shining moonlight.

And this is how he remembers her, in the end: shining, as if from within, sweet and affectionate and tolerant of his clumsy attempts to parent her daughter, caring and cared for.

He comes as soon as Tanya calls him, voice subdued and tight, to tell him that Donna has become suddenly ill, but when Harry’s feet hit the floor of Athens airport, when they pound towards the ranks of cabs, when they jiggle anxiously in the stationary traffic, it’s still too late to see her very much at all.

Her little hospital room is crammed with her family and friends; Sam on one side, Sophie on the other, Bill and Tanya and Rosie and Ruby and Sky scattered about her bedside. Harry enters silently, but all eyes turn to him anyway: seven pairs tragically bright and solemn, one smiling. Donna blinks slowly and contentedly, looking oddly pale and wan but beaming up at them all.

“Here we all are,” she rasps, voice dry and painful. “My family.”

But this is not how he remembers her; it isn’t what she would have wanted. Harry’s favourite Sheridans have always been lit from within with sheer force of will and joie de vivre, and Donna in his head is suntanned and sunbright and smiling. So he clings to this vision and holds his family together.

Tanya has Rosie in her arms as soon as Donna shuts her eyes for the last time, bawling into each other’s hair. Ruby steps out, hand to her face - since Harry’s rage, she’s been much better about her family - and Bill wraps Sophie and Sky to his broad chest, murmuring soft, meaningless things as they weep and howl.

Harry looks at Sam, and watches all the light just leech out of him.

Harry strides across the room and kneels between Sam’s knees, pressing the other man’s face into his shoulder and hugging him as tightly as he can, so that neither of them can see what the nurses and doctors are doing to the only woman either man has ever loved. Sam is horribly still for just a little too long, and then a tremor runs through him. Then another. And then Sam is just shaking, hard enough that it must hurt, and Harry tightens his grip on him so that he doesn’t shake himself to pieces.

Harry picks out a low, keening howl from the static filling his ears and realises it’s Sam, shaking and sobbing into his shoulder. He rubs tiny circles with his thumb into Sam’s back, hums little soft half-tunes, half-words, mumbles into the space behind Sam’s ear, and keeps going long after Sam has slowed and quietened.

“Oh god,” Sam says eventually, and the broken pieces of Harry’s heart shatter. “Sophie.”

“I’ve got her,” Bill says quietly, and at least one shard of his heart soars in gratitude.

Sam pulls back and Harry gives him space to stand and go to her, the two of them curling into each other. Bill squeezes Sky’s shoulders and guides him out into the corridor, tossing his head in a gesture for Harry, Tanya and Rosie to follow them.

The women slump into green, uncomfortable chairs, still crying, and Harry can’t possibly stand here and do nothing. His shoes click neatly on the lino until he finds a vending machine, and then he spends a good ten minutes distracting himself by pushing about five euros worth of cents into the somewhat erratic machine. He carries back awful coffee and worse tea and water and chocolate, which look safer, and then dispenses it mostly at random. Sophie and Sam are done with their goodbyes and Harry makes sure they get something hot to drink. Ruby has also been in to see her daughter, going by the neat trails of mascara running down her cheeks, and Tanya and Rosie leave the room in tears, but in time for Harry to unload two pockets of chocolate on them.

And then there’s really nothing left but to follow Bill’s gesture and go in.

Harry pauses on the threshold. “Come with me?” he mumbles, unable to meet Bill’s eye. He’s not superstitious or uncomfortable or afraid, but he would like some support.

Bill gives him a soft, sad smile. “Sure.”

And, standing at the foot of her bed, looking down at her still smile, Harry cries harder than he has for at least thirty years.

He chokes out a goodbye before succumbing to Bill’s hug, curving his long form to press his face against soft linen smelling faintly of wood polish and salt and cry - but this is not what he remembers, later. He doesn’t think about the things Bill had murmured into his hair, or even about the desperate, clinging hug he and Sophie had shared. Harry doesn’t remember where he stayed that night, or where he left his luggage, or even what Donna had looked like at the very end.

At the funeral, he tries to remember any of these things, snatching at glimpses, but all that he remembers of Donna is how the sun shone on her hair, how her laugh could brighten a whole day, how tightly she hugged him when he went home the preceding Christmas. Harry sits beside Bill and Sam in the tiny church where Donna had christened her baby and married her husband and sees her, wearing her daft overalls and the brightest grin, and knows he’s not really lost her. He never really will.

The wake is harder. Sky bails Sophie out early and Harry cannot blame them - his main role is to deflect the more difficult well-wishers from Sam while Bill does the same for Tanya and Rosie. It’s so normal to see Bill and Rosie together, even after things didn’t work out for them - and Harry’s never understood exactly what happened there - that Harry half expects Donna to come dancing out of the kitchen, looking for a partner. And that hurts.

It must be worse for Sam, though, so when Tanya helps Rosie to her feet and escapes to their room Bill crosses through the crowd to Harry immediately. “Shall we?”

“I think we’d better.” They turn to Sam, staring absently into the distance. “Come on, then,” Harry says. “Let’s go.”

Sam looks up and offers them a grateful, tired smile. They haul him out of his chair and place him between them, Harry acting as an excuse-making battering ram and Bill as the means of propulsion until they’re free of the crowds and up the hill in the little cottage that Donna and Sam share - used to share. Bill keeps them all moving so that they’re all inside and sets about flicking light switches until the room glows yellow.

“We’ll stay up here with you, tonight,” Bill says easily, and Sam and Harry nod, happy to let him take charge. “Get some sleep.”

Sam heads into the bedroom and Harry flops onto the sofa with a yawn as Bill stretches out in an armchair. His eyes are just fluttering closed when a cleared throat makes Harry sit up.

“I - I haven’t been sleeping well,” Sam begins. “On my own. It’s hard to - adjust.”

Bill looks significantly at Harry, but the subtlety of this flies over his head. “Do you want-” Bill gestures vaguely at himself and Harry, “-company?”

Sam ducks his head, scuffs his feet, rubs the back of his neck and mumbles something that sounds enough like “yes, please,” for Harry and Bill to haul themselves back upright.

Harry’s too tired and emotionally wrung-out to deal with this very much, so he accepts rather easily the instruction to lie on Sam’s left and go to sleep. Doing so is slightly harder; they all lie there, flat on their backs, too conscious of the other people to close their eyes of get comfortable.

But then Sam’s chest hitches beside him and Harry gives up on his last vestiges of propriety and rolls over, curling into Sam’s side and pillowing his head on his chest. Sam’s hands come up, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and breath seething with restrained sobs. Bill also rolls towards him, wrapping one arm around his shoulders and stroking his hair with the other hand until Sam turns his face into Bill’s shoulder. His other arm wraps around Harry’s shoulders and before any of them are really ready, they’re all fast asleep.

It strikes Harry that, as he sprawls in an armchair with Tanya sitting beside but more or less on him opposite a sofa with Bill and Rosie cuddled up on one end, Sam on the other and Sky in the middle with Sophie lying on her back across their laps, leaving that business meeting was the best idea he’s had in a long while. Even if the whole thing hadn’t gone as planned - actually, off the top of his head, Harry can’t think of one thing that did go as expected - he wouldn’t change a bit of it.

Well, except for the bit where he tied himself to a chair and genuinely thought he might drown. That was not his finest hour.

But even this bit is wonderful: his leg is going to sleep, and most of what his family is saying is downright slander, but-

“That’s not how it happened at all!” he breaks in.

“Yes it is,” Sam grins over his wine glass. “Donna told me.”

“You’re a bastard and a liar,” Harry says, and Sophie giggles. “That’s total rubbish. I was a punk, not some little twink, and there’s photos to prove it.”

Sam shrugs. “Sure, you had an anarchy shirt and a leather jacket to match your banker’s haircut.”

“Mom did say you were cute, remember,” Sophie, the traitor, points out before Harry can object. “When you failed to speak French to her.”

Harry sighs deeply as Bill and Sam start in on a giggly, terrible impression of a nerdy baby Harry. “Je suis locked out de ma chambre,” Bill begins in the world’s worst British accent.

“It’s alright,” Tanya says, patting his knee, when the others are too busy choking on their own laughter to continue. “I know you were cool.”

Harry looks smug as Rosie nods and Bill and Sam mock-scowl, fun spoilt. “Headbanger was rather famous, back in the day,” Rosie adds. “We never met then, but if Donna had ever told us she’d shagged him we’d have been right proud.”

Harry chokes on his drink, and is consequently too busy trying not to drown (again) to tell Sophie about his time on the island, leaving the narrative to the others. She’d wanted to know about her mother, back when she was in the same place as Sophie, only minus the huge support group, and this had evolved into a largely fictitious and entirely daft retelling of how they all met Donna. The timeline is all wrong as soon as past-Harry apparently fails to reach the island through sheer social ineptitude; but Sophie knows this, armed as she is with her mother’s diary, but is too busy finding all this hilarious to deny or challenge anything. Donna’s mother is rather watered-down in her denouncement of her child, because it’s weird to say that kind of thing when Ruby’s back in their lives, and Sam’s ultimate betrayal is somewhat glossed over, which is also fair - it’s not that kind of story, right now, and Sophie’s heard the real one before - skimming right to the epic bollocking he received from Bill’s great-aunt and Bill’s appearance on the scene.

“Wait,” Sky interjects. “So you must have met Rosie and Tanya back then, right? If you two were visiting at the time?”

“Oh, yes,” Bill says, wrapping an arm around Rosie’s shoulders and ignoring her look of bemusement. “Our eyes met across a crowded bar and after one conversation, she was lost to my charms.”

A slightly concerning glint appears in Rosie’s eye and she puts her arms around Bill’s neck in what looks suspiciously like a stranglehold. “Oh, yes,” she purrs, and Bill begins to look worried. “I immediately knew that I loved him, and wanted to have his babies, and push him around in a wheelchair, and eventually scatter his ashes.”

“They never met,” Tanya murmurs to Harry.

“You’re...scarily intense, sometimes,” Bill says hesitantly to a beaming Rosie.

“You, of course, were extremely laid back, I assume,” Harry says, eyebrow raised. “What with your whole-” He makes a peace sign with the hand not holding his drink, waving it gently as if in a slight breeze. “-thing.”

“I wasn’t that hippy,” Bill demurs, and Sam scoffs.

“Really? No hair to your waist and bright paisley prints?”

“Shoulder-length at most,” Bill says, a slightly desperate edge to his denial.

“There are pictures, Anderson; you can’t lie to us,” Sam says, triumphant.

“Oh, yes,” Harry drawls. “Like the pictures of you with hair past your shoulders and the world’s worst moustache.”

“Oh, burn,” Tanya adds languidly as Sky and Sophie howl with laughter and Sam goes suspiciously red.

“That was cool, then,” Sam mumbles.

“No-one called you Headbanger, though,” Sky points out. “Or got proud of their friends who shagged you.”

Harry toasts his son-in-law with his glass and a smug grin.

“No, but - I was a cool rocker,” Sam says, trying to salvage his dignity. Harry could point out here that rockers were pretty trendy, as a rule, but revenge is a dish best served in self-satisfied silence. “Cooler than hippy Bill over here.”

“I wasn’t really a hippy, exactly,” Bill demurs. “I just was more...in tune with my surroundings than Mr Banker and Mr Architect. Do you know,” he says to Sophie with an air of exaggeration that already has Sophie raising an eyebrow and Sam and Harry rolling their eyes at each other, “that I once went diving with your mother and got her a pearl?”

“You never did,” Harry scoffs, even as Bill swears up and down that he did, too. “Pearls in the Mediterranean are extremely rare, and - what, you just plucked one off a rock?”

“And we’ve never seen it since?” Sam points out. “Donna found a pearl, herself, and then treasured it so greatly that she lost it? Donna Sheridan, the woman who kept my bagpipes?”

“Don’t listen to them,” Bill says to his giggling daughter. “Perfect white pearl, just for your mother.”

“And of course, you had no ulterior motives in giving her this gift,” Harry says dryly.

“Oh, at least eighteen,” Bill says, grinning, and Harry has to laugh. “It’s best to be upfront about that kind of thing, you know.”

“Well, I see now where Donna was coming from,” Tanya says dryly. “When a man brings me pearls I decide to like him, too.”

“Was that husband two or three?” Rosie says thoughtfully.

“Two,” Tanya supplies easily. “Three had the chateau, remember?”

Rosie nods, pointing a finger in recognition. Sophie stretches out, dropping one foot to cross Harry’s ankles so that she’s making contact with every significant man in her life, and smiles. “I can see where Mom was coming from in loving all of you.”

Harry offers her a sappy, stupid smile and lets Tanya pat his knee again as he blinks rapidly. Sam and Bill appear to be doing much the same - it must be a dad thing.

Harry returns to Kalokairi and brings British weather with him. It’s raining so hard that he’s fairly sure that the only reason the ferry is running is because the woman felt sorry for him, with his huge suitcase, exhausted expression and all the aesthetic appeal of a drowned rat. Despite all this, though, Harry finally feels like he did when he was making this same trip twenty-five years ago - like he’s heading in the right direction. He hugs one bag to his chest and shivers at the spray, but there’s an odd satisfaction in it. Harry doesn’t believe in fate, but this is where he’s meant to be.

He doesn’t really expect anyone to be waiting for him on the jetty, considering the weather and the two hours notice he gave of his arrival, but huddled under an umbrella and wrapped in a coat are golden curls and a frown that breaks into a warm smile when Sophie sees him.

Harry gives the ferrywoman a grateful grin, rain running down his face in rivulets, and hauls his bags out, jogging through the downpour to his daughter.

“You don’t have umbrellas in England?” she chides gently, lifting the umbrella to cover them both and kissing his cheek.

Harry shrugs. “There wasn’t much forward planning, I’m afraid.”

She grins at him and slings one bag over her shoulder. “Are you saying you were spontaneous?”

“And look how well it’s gone for me,” he says, gesturing to his sodden suit.

Inside her warm kitchen, she heats up some leftovers for him while he peels off his clothes and puts on a warm jumper and jeans, and then he alternates between eating and cooing at his grandson, sitting in his mother’s lap and looking around with wide-eyed baby curiosity.

Sophie gives in and lets Harry hold him when he’s eaten, leaning back with narrowed eyes. “Why are you here, Dad?”

Harry focuses on the baby in his arms rather than look at her. “I want - I would like to stay. Here. On Kalokairi. With you and Donny and Sam and Sky. I keep - missing things. And I don’t want to stay in England.” On my own.

When he hesitantly looks up, at last, Sophie is smiling softly at him. “That sounds good,” she says.

The next morning, having been put up temporarily in an empty hotel room, Sam wanders into the kitchen where Harry is making daft faces at Donny. “Sophie says you’re staying,” he says, without preamble.

“Yes,” Harry says, looking up at the silhouette leaning against the doorway. “If you don’t mind.”

He can practically hear Sam roll his eyes before opening his arms and wrapping both him and Donny in a hug. “Took you long enough,” he mumbles into Harry’s ear, and then pulls back to grin at Donny, but with his arm still resting warmly around Harry’s waist. “Hear that, kiddo? Two full-time grandfathers. You’re spoilt rotten.”

Donny beams, because Harry and Sam are also beaming like sappy idiots, and claps his little fat hands together. There is a shutter noise from behind them and they look around.

“I regret giving you that camera,” Sam sighs.

Sophie shrugs, pulling the huge lens away from her face. “Apart from that time you stole it for a whole week and took about a thousand pictures of Donny.”

“A worthy subject,” Harry says, smiling down and offering the baby his finger to play with.

The shutter clicks again. “Sophie,” Sam begins warningly.

“You’re babysitting today,” she says cheekily, dancing away with the camera around her neck. “Sky and I are doing important hotel things.”

“She always says that,” Sam says thoughtfully as she skips out of the room. “Last week, important hotel things involved lots of swimming and sunbathing.”

Harry laughs and Sam steps away, arm sliding off and leaving a trail of warmth that he rather mourns the loss of. Donny grins at him, toothless and bright. “Babysitting doesn’t sound too bad,” he says.

Sam rubs one large, weatherbeaten hand over Donny’s blond hair, resolute to remain in a mohawk. “Well, it’s a very good baby.”

Babysitting isn’t so bad at all. It’s still raining, so they take over a barn full of stuff that Sophie hasn’t had time to clear out yet and put Donny in a bouncer while they dig through Donna’s old things.

Under two broken dining chairs and half an ironing board, Harry finds an old wooden box and a thought occurs to him. “If we find the pearl Bill supposedly found for her, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

Sam laughs from next to an enormous wardrobe. “God, he’ll be insufferable,” he says, sounding rather pleased about the prospect.

“Have you seen him recently?” Harry hazards.

“No,” Sam wheezes, coughing at the cloud of dust that comes off the wardrobe doors. “He’s wandering the world in his boat and no-one really knows where he is.”

As Harry cracks open the box, he listens to Sam’s tone and realises that maybe, even though Sam’s on an island with his kids and grandkids, he might be lonely. Or, he might be lonely too - Harry can’t muscle up quite enough denial to ignore the fact that he’s come to Kalokairi because, in England, he’s sad and solitary.

Of course, Harry has no idea how, exactly, to say I miss him too and I’m also lonely and I’m really hoping that moving here will magically fix at least some of that, so he doesn’t say anything like it. “Hah! No pearl.”

“Suck it, Anderson,” Sam says, slightly muffled. “Good grief, look at this stuff. Your grandma never really wore any of this stuff, did she Don?” The baby makes happy babbling noises. “No, that’s what I thought,” Sam replies seriously and Harry ducks his head around a chair.

“She really did, though.” Sam has glitter and spandex draped over both arms in every colour of the rainbow.

“This one has boots attached!” Sam says, flicking one suit and sending platforms swinging. “It’s all one...thing...from neck to toe!”

“Ooh,” Donny says, making grabby hands at the glitter.

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Well, he’s a Sheridan alright.”

Harry hands the baby a pink glittery glove in return for a brilliant grin and enthusiastically kicking feet. Donny stuffs some of it in his mouth and Harry frowns. “He - he can't hurt himself with that, can he?”

“No, he'll be fine,” Sam says as he crates up Donna’s old costumes. “You'll never get it back without tears unless he falls asleep first, though.”

Harry kisses Donny’s brow before going back to his pile of stuff. His brain spares a moment for curiosity about how Sam knows this kind of thing about babies, before he remembers that Sam’s been married before and has two other grown-up children. “How are your sons?” Harry inquires politely, to soothe the guilt in his chest over forgetting these boys - young men? Fully-fledged adults? He’s not sure - about whom he knows so little.

Sam’s pause mid-crate lift makes him regret it, however. “They’re well,” he says, with a sort of careful mildness that makes Harry want to sink into this pile of hard-edged miscellaneous rubbish until the conversation is over. “I don’t - don’t see them so much, these days.”

“New York to Athens is a long way,” Harry offers.

Sam hums a non-committal almost-agreement. “I’ve offered to travel instead, but. They’re very busy, it seems.” Harry wishes the earth would open up and swallow him whole. Sam offers him an entirely fake grin at his visible discomfort. “Sorry, I’ll stop making you listen to my griping.”

At this, Harry sets aside his own wishes and levels a firm stare at Sam. “Are you going to make someone else listen instead? Tell Sophie about it?”

Sam pulls a face and squirms, but Harry just keeps up his hard stare. This conversation will doubtless make them both awkward and unhappy, but if there’s one thing Harry’s learned of late, it’s that family matters. More than anything else. More than Harry’s inherent English aversion to emotion.

In the face of such determination, Sam sighs. He strokes Donny’s head in passing, though the baby is entirely caught up in the magic of the light dancing on the glove, and folds himself into the small patch of clear floor beside Harry. Their shoulders brush and Sam’s leg is a warm weight pressing into his own, grounding them both. Harry resists the curious urge to press into the contact by his side.

“Their names are Adam and Max. They’re twenty-three and twenty-one - look.” Sam digs out his wallet and leans into Harry to do so, too quickly for Harry to decide whether he wants to move into or away from Sam’s space and thus leaving him oddly frozen by the proximity. Inside the bifold, in the clear plastic, is a picture Harry didn’t know existed: him and Bill and Donna and Sophie, laughing so loudly he can almost hear it through the paper. Sam must have taken it sometime a few Christmases ago, and an odd curl of warmth wraps itself between his ribs at the thought of it sitting by Sam’s side all the time. Sam tugs the picture free and shuffles through the other photos: one of just Donna, one of Donny and his parents, and then one of two tall young men with bright grins and their arms around Sam’s shoulders.

“There,” Sam says, pointing to each boy in turn, “Adam and Max. This picture’s an old one, now; I’m told Max has grown a truly awful beard.” Harry huffs a laugh and Sam grins, a little wistfully, before becoming solemn once more. “They didn’t - take the news well. About Donna and Sophie and Bill and you.”

Harry understands, then, why Sam doesn’t talk about his sons so much. It must be horrendous, he thinks, to fall in love all over again and be happy and then be rejected by those one loves. And then he’s all confusion. “You told your sons about me? A-and Bill?”

Sam frowns. “Yes, although that wasn’t really the focus of the story.”

“S-sorry,” Harry stammers, “i-it’s just - I don’t often explain to people quite the extent to which I co-parent.”

“They are my sons,” Sam points out, quite fairly.

“I just thought...it might have been easier. A half-sister and a stepmother is hard enough without also two extra dads.” Harry shifts awkwardly.

Sam wraps an arm around Harry’s shoulders, squeezing him to his side. “Yes, but you are a part of this family just as much as anyone, and I won’t not mention you, just because it might be easier. I love you and Bill, Harry. My sons ought to know.”

Harry returns Sam’s easy but slightly sad smile, leaning briefly into his weight, and internally cursing himself as a coward. He’s almost burning with jealousy at how easily Sam says that, when Harry is too scared and ashamed to tell anyone that his daughter has other fathers too, let alone tell said fathers that he appreciates them.

Sam appears entirely unbothered by Harry’s lack of response, eyes lighting on something across the room from them. His enthusiasm is sudden and infectious as he beams and leaps up, and Harry finds himself grinning uncomprehendingly even as his skin tingles with sorrow as Sam leaves. He even has Donny’s attention as he clambers halfway up a pile of stuff and grabs a bag of tubes and pipes and-

“Oh, no,” Harry groans, fighting a laugh as Sam hefts his bagpipes triumphantly above his head.

“Oh yes,” Sam replies with a victorious grin that Harry just adores, swaying gently towards it and basking in its light. “You aren’t the only musician, Headbanger.” He wrangles the tartan under his arm and begins the apparently arduous task of inflating it.

“We should start a band,” Harry says dryly, shooting an amused look at his cheerfully uncomprehending grandson as he leans back on one elbow to better lazily watch Sam delight over his find.

“Yeah!” Sam says, enthusiasm radiating from him in warm waves that have Harry’s toes curling. “Bill can - drum, or something. We’ll be a cool dad band.”

Harry cocks an eyebrow. “Well, I’m not sure about cool. We’re also now a granddad ban-”

The rest of Harry’s sentence is cut off by a colossal shrieking honk, like an airhorn sneezing in slow-motion or a goose crossed with a vacuum cleaner. Harry winces at Sam, who is giving a similar expression of regret and horror to the - apparently broken - bagpipes.

Then there’s a wet, woeful little cough, and Harry’s latent fatherly instincts have him on his feet and arms outstretched, eyes wide with pleading fear, before he’s fully gauged what that noise really means.

“Oh, don’t cry,” he begs rather helplessly of Donny, who gives him a look of abject misery and begins to wail. “Please, Donny, it’s alright.”

“If you can get him to stop just by asking nicely, I’ll be very jealous,” Sam says, dumping the offending instrument which lets out a sad little deflating pfft. He crosses over as Harry picks up the still-bawling baby and cuddles him close. “Hey, kiddo,” he says softly, stroking Donny’s hair. “Sorry I scared you, it’s okay.”

Harry strokes up and down the baby’s back, hushing gently until Donny wriggles and mushes his face into Harry’s neck, seemingly content to stay there. His granddad presses his nose into the baby’s hair as he hiccups and whines, eyes still terrified.

As if summoned by maternal instinct alone, Sophie pushes the door open and Harry turns his fright on her. “I’m really sorry,” he blurts out. “Didn’t think. Shouldn’t have - the bagpipes-”

Sophie turns a wry smile on Sam as she approaches Harry and her son. “So this is your fault.”

Sam gives her an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”

Sophie smiles up at Harry, stroking a hand idly over his hair. “It’s okay,” she tells him. “Babies cry.”

“Yes, but-”

Sophie shakes her head. “He was going to cry any minute because he’s hungry, anyway. Your grandfather privileges have not been revoked because he cried one time.”

Harry blinks, letting the terror leech out of him as Donny quietens slightly in his arms. Sophie continues smiling softly at him until he relaxes properly. “Do you want-” he says, gesturing with his chin at the baby.

“Yes,” Sophie says, “but only because he needs feeding. Not because you’re in trouble. Okay?”

Harry gives her a half-smile. “Okay.”

Sophie steps out again under the umbrella Sky has waiting for them and Sam comes up behind him to wrap one arm easily around Harry’s waist. They stand like that for a good minute, just watching the rain drum into the earth and run in rivers down the paths. It’s tranquil and calming and just what Harry needs: this soft contact, this quiet, this stillness.

He’s so terribly glad to be here, with Sam.

“Let’s raincheck the band, hmm?” Sam says eventually, and Harry huffs a laugh, ducking his head.

“Can’t be doing without our drummer, anyway,” he offers, digging his toe into the dirt.

Sam points at him very seriously as he guides them to the door and the brief mad dash back to the house for lunch. “A very good point.”

Bill arrives, as is his wont, loudly and with a great deal of good cheer. He dances off his boat and down the jetty to music only he can hear to make them all laugh, sunshine seeming to brighten with every step he takes toward Harry. Then Sophie dances up the jetty to meet him, copying his dreadful dad dancing, and everything turns into a sudden hurricane of big, warm hugs, in which Harry somehow gets caught up twice, and everyone’s talking and laughing and smiling. Harry can’t help his uncontrollable, slightly overwhelmed grin, and he’s happy, but it’s also a lot, in a way he can’t usually handle unless he’s fairly drunk.

Sam seems to spot this and claps a large, anchoring hand on his shoulder. “Come on, come on,” he says, ushering everyone off the docks. “Let’s go.”

Harry shoots a grateful smile at Sam, who winks in acknowledgement, and they follow Sky, carrying Donny, and Sophie as she bounces excitedly around Bill. Sam’s arm slides down his back and settles about his waist, as has become habit in the month or so that Harry has lived on the island now. It’s a comforting familiarity that comes with just standing fairly still and fairly near Sam, the knowledge that a warm arm will snake around his back and press him into a solid side, often without any acknowledgement of having done so, and Harry - actually really likes it, much more than he’d ever expect or admit. Sam seems to know that he doesn’t mind it, though, even as Harry rolls his eyes and makes a thing of being trapped to make Sophie and Sky laugh. So he gives the hand on his side an affectionate nudge as they walk up the hill, and Sam squeezes his side in return.

Bill stays with Harry and Sam in what is still fondly referred to as the shack, even though it hasn’t looked like a shack for quite some time and is now a very nice two-bedroom cottage with a modern kitchen and bathroom - a bijou residence, Sam had laughingly mocked when Harry had pointed this out, with sea views and charming neighbours. Harry had pointed out that the goats should not be considered their neighbours and thrown a cushion at him.

Bill whistles approvingly, looking around. “Nice.”

“Sam did almost all of it,” Harry says, trying not to sound too proud and failing when Sam ducks his head awkwardly.

“He’s done an excellent job,” Bill says, grinning as Sam huffs and begins to fuss about in the kitchen cupboards. He looks just as proud as Harry feels, which settles some odd feeling he’d been carrying for a week or so that might almost be called nerves, were it not entirely stupid to be nervous over Bill turning up. “Aren’t Sophie and Sky cooking us dinner tonight?” Bill says to Harry quietly, as Sam continues to open and close cupboards and draws seemingly at random, pretending to be busy.

“Oh, yes,” Harry says, fondness bleeding into his words as they watch, amused.

Bill laughs and collapses onto a sofa, patting the cushions either side of him. “Come on, you’re making me tired just watching you stand up.”

And so, crammed onto a sofa that usually just seats two, pressed into each other’s sides, Bill and Sam and Harry just talk. It’s a bit like Harry and Sam’s usual afternoons, setting the world to rights and watching the sea breeze buffet the curtains gently as the sun shimmers on the trees, but with an extra element that makes every joke funnier, every idea brighter, every conversation more sparkling.

It feels like they all ought to be here, together, always. Harry thinks he’d quite like that.

Bill and Sam eject him from the shack after about three days of it becoming clear that he’s quite happy to sit about, watching Bill write his new book and Sam draw up plans for the new restaurant on the mainland, and do no work whatsoever.

“Go and help your daughter, you lazy sod,” Bill tells him fondly, hand between his shoulder blades and forcing him over the threshold.

“She’s your daughter too,” he half-heartedly objects.

“Go,” Sam laughs.

Harry trots down the hillside, smiling to himself with his hands in his pockets. It’s another day of bright sunshine, to which Harry is still getting used, and the smell of hot pine sap hangs dusty-dry in the air. He squints into the bright sun, rubbing the sore skin of his nose - he’s really not used to needing this much sun cream - and meanders idly through Sophie’s hotel, looking for its proprietors.

Sky sticks his head around a door, drying a plate absently. “Alright Harry?”

Harry offers him a smile. “I’ve been thrown out. Need any help?”

Sky laughs. “You pensioners and your need for a life of idle luxury.”

“I’m not a pensioner!” Harry objects. “Just - retired.”

“Of course, of course,” Sky grins. “Hang on.” He disappears momentarily and returns with a scrap of paper, which he passes over. “Fancy a quick shopping trip? You can practice your Greek on the poor, unsuspecting market stall owners.”

Harry gives him a withering glare and snatches the note, trying not to laugh rather more successfully than Sky is. “Very funny,” he says over his shoulder as he departs downhill.

“I thought so,” Sky calls after him.

The market is bustling and Harry wends his way carefully through the crowded streets, simply enjoying the warm, gentle buffet of moving people, like waves against him. He reaches the centre, where a calm stillness has built up around the fountain, and looks at the paper in his hand.

And frowns. It seems Sky was serious about Harry practising his Greek, since he’s given him a bilingual shopping list: half in Sky’s writing, half in Sophie’s, half Greek half English. Harry can manage the English, obviously, and he’s fairly sure that word means bread, but beyond that he’s fairly lost.

Still furrowing his brow at the note paper, Harry steps out into the traffic of the streets, and makes it most of the way to the bakery before it all goes wrong. Head down and walking with purpose, he somehow contrives to stride straight into someone and their extremely full bag of shopping, sending much of it flying.

“Damn,” Harry says, leaping forward to grab oranges and an onion, too embarrassed to look at his unfortunate victim. “I’m so sorry - I, I mean, lypámai polý, eímai - eímai, uh-”

“It’s okay,” the man laughs, and Harry turns at last to face him.

Well.

He spares a moment to wonder if he’ll ever meet someone he’s into without first failing to speak to them in another language. At this point it could reasonably be called a trend.

Because the man opposite him, smiling warmly as he collects his groceries, is extremely handsome. Almost unfairly so, with his kind eyes and strong, square jaw and stubble, his sun-lightened messy hair and olive tan. Harry’s heart stumbles and he has to swallow before he can speak.

“I really am sorry,” he manages.

He shrugs loosely, still smiling. “It really is okay.” His voice has a slight Greek accent and his English is impeccable, if Americanised. Harry’s falling for him on the spot, and he’s really got to stop doing that.

Harry stands, handing the fruit back to him. “Half my shopping list is in Greek, and-”

“Your Greek’s not that good,” the other man finishes for him.

“How did you know,” Harry replies dryly and he laughs, warm and musical.

“I’m sorry. How about I make it up to you by helping you translate?”

Harry raises his eyebrows in surprise. “You - you don’t have to. How will I make it up to you for knocking you over?”

The stranger grins and Harry melts. “You can buy me coffee.” He sticks out a hand. “Theo.”

Harry looks at the proffered hand and then back at the outrageously handsome stranger - Theo. He smiles, and takes his hand. “Harry.”

Harry manages to keep it a secret for a whole week. Considering how many people are on the island, and what percentage of those make up his well-meaning and extremely nosy family, this is fairly impressive.

“Harry,” Sophie says one evening as she serves them all dinner. “Who is it you keep going for coffee with?” They all look at her curiously, though with a side of fear from Harry and not a shred of comprehension from Donny, and she grins, feigning innocence. “You were spotted by one of the cleaners.”

“It’s nothing, really,” Harry lies as all eyes turn to him, suddenly unwilling to own up to Theo in front of Bill and Sam.

Sam grins sharkishly. “Harry has a da-ate,” he sing-songs, laughing at Harry’s glare.

Sky raises a questioning eyebrow and Harry sits up straighter, shifting in his seat and fussing with his plate. “Alright, yes, I do,” he says primly.

“Oh, Dad, that’s great!” Sophie enthuses, her grin coaxing an answering smile from Harry.

Bill frowns slightly, but Sky slaps Harry’s shoulder with a grin. “Well? Tell us everything.”

Harry sighs, resigned. “His name is Theo Anastas, he’s spending the next two months on the island to visit relatives but he’s usually a lawyer in Thessaloniki, we met last week. Satisfied?”

“How’s it all going?” Sam asks, ostensibly politely but with an undercurrent of mischief that has Harry frowning.

“Dad!” Sophie chides. “What are you, twelve?”

Sam shrugs, unrepentant. “But are you having fun?”

“Our coffee dates are - nice,” Harry says, making an effort to ignore the subtext, and Sam’s grin softens into something more happy and fond.

“So, when can we meet him?” Sky says. “I mean, we have to check he’s suitable.”

“Oh,” Harry says, alarmed. “Um. Not yet.” Something about showing Theo to his family and vice versa makes his stomach do uncomfortable flips, although he can’t quite put his finger on why it unsettles him so much.

“He does know we exist, doesn’t he?” Bill says.

“Yes,” Harry says firmly. When he had intended to bring them all up he can’t quite say, but it turns out he can’t manage more than a few sentences these days without mentioning one or all of his family. Theo had been - surprisingly calm about the whole thing, actually. “He, um, is looking forward to meeting you all.”

“Then bring him over for dinner some time,” Sam says, like it’s easy, and Harry frowns at the twisting nervousness in his gut. “We’re looking forward to meeting him.”

“Next Thursday?” Sky suggests.

“It’s a date,” Sophie says firmly, and that’s that. She claps, beaming. “Oh, I’m so pleased, Harry.”

He musters a smile for her and the conversation moves on, aided by Donny’s mimicking clap. He can’t quite help his nerves, though, or ignore how quiet Bill has been and how he seems to share Harry’s lingering sense of unease.

The introduction of Theo to his family goes wonderfully. Theo is charming to all and sundry, remarkably calm about the size/shape/antics of the family, and even lets Donny very thoughtfully jam his tiny hands in Theo’s mouth; which is especially good, because Sophie’s partner-vetting system appears to involve thrusting her son into the prospective partner’s arms and seeing how they get on. Harry thinks this is deeply unfair, as it probably would have excluded him long ago, but after Theo proves a certified card-carrying baby-charmer, he thinks much better of it. Sky gets him talking about his family on the island and Sam rescues him when it inevitably devolves into Sky’s extensive and glorious plans for the hotel; Sophie is both charming and charmed, and Harry mainly orbits them all nervously, delighted at how well this all seems to be going.

Except.

Bill’s oddly quiet throughout the evening, entirely unlike his usual ebullient self. He’s terse with everyone, but especially with Theo - Harry would say he’s shy, except Harry has never, ever even thought that about Bill Anderson, so often the life of the party.

So when Theo politely asks about Bill’s work and he responds with a biting quip about lawyers and sharks and proper jobs - and isn’t that just old-school Ruby Sheridan - Harry is not the only one who is confused.

Bill takes in the array of angry and hurt faces. He sees the way that Theo looks to Harry for an explanation, looking wounded and unsure, and the way that Harry looks cross and apologetic and injured all at once. Bill pushes back his chair. “Sorry,” he mutters and stands, “I've a headache. I'll head to bed.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Theo offers.

“Yeah, you too,” Bill says absently, waving a hand and stomping out.

Stilted conversation continues for fifteen minutes or so, before Theo collects himself and makes his excuses.

“I had a good time tonight, Harry,” Theo says, pushing a loose strand off Harry’s forehead.

“I'm sorry about-”

Theo smiles slightly. “Don't worry about it. If someone else were trying to take you from me, I'd be jealous too.”

Harry frowns up at him. “Bill’s not jealous. It's not - like that.”

Theo shrugs, still smiling. “I'll see you soon, alright?” Harry nods and Theo kisses him softly before heading down the mountain, waving behind him as he goes.

Harry's smile fades into a frown when Theo is out of sight, and keeps him occupied all the way back to the shack. Was Bill - Bill wasn't -

Bill couldn't be jealous.

He'd never given any indication of being into Harry. There had, admittedly, been some innuendo about men in the past, but nothing specific. There wasn't any reason for Bill to be envious.

There wasn't any reason for Bill to be so rude, either, his brain points out.

He tells it firmly to be quiet.

Harry enters the shack and heads straight to his room, ignoring the two men sitting in the gloom on the sofa.

“Harry-” Bill begins.

“No,” Harry snaps, crossing the threshold to his room and beginning to pull the door shut behind him. Then he thinks better and steps back a moment. “I wanted this to go well,” he says quietly, eyes fixed on the floorboards under his feet. “It was important.”

Bill doesn't say anything, and Harry sighs softly before shutting himself in his room.

He flings himself onto his bed crossly, too frustrated to bother with anything else. How dare Bill be so rude? Everyone could manage to be happy for him when he had something to be happy about for a change and he'd never been so... bitchy when Bill had been busy falling in and out of love with Rosie. Although they were currently in an 'out’ phase, so perhaps Bill was jealous of that. But Harry had still managed to be happy for them both, even as things had fallen through with Petros. It wasn't -

It wasn't fair. Harry thinks he's earned that bit of six-year-old pettiness.

Vaguely, through the blood-pounding haze of confusion and hurt, he becomes aware of talking in the other room.

“-better explain what the hell that was,” Sam says, low and angry.

“I don't see why I should have to like him just because Harry does,” Bill mutters churlishly.

“You have to try!” Sam snaps, echoing Harry's thoughts. “We're family and he's happy; don't you want that?”

“Of course I do,” Bill says crossly. “You know I want that.”

Harry can't fathom the deliberate emphasis and it gives Sam pause, too. “Yes, I know that.” Not for the same reason, apparently. “I want him to be happy, too; but Theo makes him happy, and that's what matters. Not - anything else.”

Harry frowns into the moonlit gloom of his room, silver shining through the shutters. What else? What had both Sam and Bill wanting him happy but, apparently, not with Theo?

“I know. I'm sorry,” Bill sighs. “I'll sort it out with them both tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Sam says quietly. “I'm sorry it's working out...like this.”

“Don't see how it's your fault,” Bill says with a tired attempt at levity, and Sam huffs. “But - yeah. I know.”

This cryptic conversation over, they head to their beds and soon soft snoring fills the night. The sound, now so familiar that it's comforting, usually sends him to sleep easily, but not tonight. Harry can’t shake what he’s overheard, and neither can he fathom what they could mean. It’s hard to see why Sam and Bill could be so...invested in Harry’s love life, or why neither of them seem delighted that he now has one, although Sam is certainly better at hiding it. What is the anything else they were talking about? Why were they both sorry? Unless-

Harry rolls over and punches his pillow into shape crossly. But when he drops his head back onto it, the thought still rolls around his skull.

Unless Theo was right, and they’re both jealous.

And not that Harry’s having a relationship, but that Harry’s not having one with either of them. But - well, actually they have both given indications that they may not be entirely straight, but Harry can’t see them falling over themselves to fawn at his feet. He’s not even sure that Sam’s really over Donna enough to see anyone else, and he hasn’t the faintest idea what’s going on between Bill and Rosie. Or between Rosie and Tanya, because he is getting the impression from his semi-weekly calls with Tanya that that may be on the table. Ignoring the obvious innuendo that comes to mind, Harry returns to his midnight panic. Neither Bill nor Sam have shown him that they like him - have they?

Well, there is the casual contact. All the time. The way that Sam wraps himself around Harry at every opportunity, like Sophie does around Sky, and the way that Bill’s always bumping their shoulders together or slapping his back. How Bill and Sam always check up on him and make him feel wanted and needed and loved. The way he misses them both more than most others when they go away. And the discussion of things they’d never tell anyone else - Harry thinks he knows more of their secrets than his own, and he tells them everything. Except Theo, whom he’d wanted to keep secret from them, because -

Harry stills. Because it’s weird to introduce a new lover to the two men you love most in the world. He closes his eyes in frustration - nice one, Bright.

His eyes snap open again. Well, they could have bloody said. Harry, as a Brit, has the monopoly on failure to express emotion; Sam and Bill can’t be muscling in on that. Is he a mind-reader? Was he supposed to get it from context clues and subtext?

Actually, he probably was. Damn. But still! They know he’s terrible at that sort of thing!

Harry flops onto his back, staring at the ceiling. Well, this is damned awkward. He’ll have to say something to Theo - poor Theo. At least it oughtn’t really be a surprise, but still. And then he’ll have to say something to Bill and Sam - oh god, no. He screws his face up against the idea. Harry really doesn’t think he could manage that just now - or possibly ever. But he can’t keep going as he is, knowing what he knows.

Beside him on the bedside table his phone buzzes twice. It’s an email from work; he’s still technically in charge, although most of the work is done by other people now. Within is a request for his presence in a meeting in London. Usually, he declines, and no doubt is now expected to, but he thinks he might need this. The time, the distance, the space to sort his head out and wrangle his thoughts into something vaguely resembling sense.

He taps out a quick reply, and then, in the silver half-light, starts stuffing possessions into a suitcase.

Harry leaves early, sneaking out when dew still sits heavy on the olive trees and stopping only to explain where he’s going to Sophie and Sky, say goodbye to his grandson, and break the whole sorry story to Theo. He is, as half-expected, much more good about it than Harry has any right to expect of him, but then Harry’s long thought that Theo himself was much more good than Harry had any right to expect.

“Well, they’d better look after you,” Theo says fondly. “I think they might deserve you.”

“I didn’t deserve you,” Harry says, and Theo shakes his head.

“You need to be kinder to yourself. Then it might not be so hard to tell them, and you wouldn’t have to run so far away, eh?”

Harry looks away shiftily. “I’m not running away, exactly,” he mumbles.

Theo laughs at him and hands him onto the ferry with one last kiss. “Call me if it doesn’t work out,” he says with a wink, and Harry laughs despite himself.

“I will.”

He stays a week in London, in an expensive hotel which he cannot help but compare unfavourably with Sophie’s. The meeting is fairly short and extremely dull; he didn’t need to be there at all, but his trip away does serve as a strong reminder of what he’s missing and why he has to go.

Every time one of them calls him, several times a day at first and tapering off into at least two, his heart clenches and flip-flops awkwardly in his chest, and he misses them both more than he misses the sun, the sea, the air. More than he misses anything. He misses waking up and drinking coffee with Bill, watching Sam wake up much more slowly; he misses walking with them up the mountain and picnicking at the top; he misses sitting on the decking and drinking and discussing everything under the sun. He misses how they make him feel warm and loved and he wants to go home.

But if he can’t tell them that, and he really doesn’t think he can, then he has to get over it.

Which is much harder when he finds himself wide-eyed and astonished opposite Rosie and Tanya, who appear to have gate-crashed his breakfast.

And the whole hotel, judging by the porters scrambling after them.

“Hello, Harry,” Rosie says, pinching his toast and slathering it in jam before stuffing the end in her mouth.

Harry waves off the porters. “Rosie, Tanya. What a...surprise.”

“What are you doing here?” Tanya says. She holds up a manicured hand when he opens his mouth. “Really doing here, darling, not this work line you’re feeding everyone.”

Harry straightens the cutlery on his plate. “I’m thinking,” he says primly.

“About how much you’re in love with Bill and Sam,” Rosie says matter-of-factly, and Harry almost chokes on his coffee. “There, now,” she says, patting his back and handing him a napkin, using the movement to remove a pastry from his plate.

“We know you like them, and we know you well enough to know you’re having a crisis about it,” Tanya explains, setting in on the remainder of his coffee. “So we thought we’d come and stop it.”

“We’re experts on love, now, y’see,” Rosie adds, patting Tanya’s hand.

“Congratulations,” Harry says, and really means it, even though he is also hoping to use it to escape.

No such luck; the ladies beam at each other, and Harry’s too busy with his soppy smile to use this window before they both turn on him once more. “Yes, well,” Tanya says. “The point is, darling, that the boys are going mad with pining for you, and it’s terribly cruel to leave them hanging on like this.”

“They are?” Harry says, surprised, and Tanya and Rosie both roll their eyes at him in intimidating unison.

“Yes,” Tanya says emphatically. “They’re like puppies, the pair of them, moping about without you.”

“Pining,” Rosie confirms with a nod and another of Harry’s pastries.

Harry leans back in his seat, looking rather stumped. He’d been so busy thinking about and processing his own feelings that he hadn’t really thought about what Sam and Bill might be feeling about him disappearing into the early morning mist without a word to either of them. He had not, however, ever imagined that they might be pining for him, and certainly not enough to warrant an intervention.

Rosie seems to notice this and pats his hand sympathetically. “Call them, love,” she says gently.

“I don’t know how to tell them,” he says, almost a whisper. But he wants to; oh, god, does he want to. He misses them so much and he wants to go home to Kalokairi and have everything he’s ever wanted and more but he doesn’t know how. He never learned how to say how he feels or to ask for what he wants or to tell people what he needs, and he doesn’t know what to do.

“Just say - everything,” Rosie says, quite unhelpfully.

“It gets easier,” Tanya offers, and Harry looks at her. She’s tracing the saucer of her cup with one long nail and watching its progress around the rim rather than looking up, and Harry knows that displacement. “When you mean it. It gets easier to say the things you want to. And when the people know you, then. They know what you mean, even if you can’t quite say it. And sometimes, showing helps. When it’s hard.”

Rosie smiles ever so softly and presses a kiss to the side of Tanya’s face. It hadn’t really occurred to Harry that he and Tanya are so alike in so many ways. Even when they’re different, they’re so opposite to be matched anyway: Tanya had three brothers, he no siblings at all; she’s been with many men and he with only one woman; she’s been trying to escape her over-interested parents, he trying to make his pay attention. Tanya’s got his emotional distance and he has her hidden fierce love, and they’re both just trying to reconcile the two.

Harry reaches across his pillaged breakfast to take their hands in his. “Thank you,” he says softly, watching for their reactions.

Rosie squeezes his hand affectionately. “Don’t you worry, pet.”

But Tanya looks up at him, and realises that this is him, showing, and offers him a funny and lopsided but very real smile, and rubs her thumb across his knuckles.

Sophie collects him from the jetty again. He hadn’t told anyone else he was coming back.

“I’m a bit cross with you,” she tells him matter-of-factly.

“I deserve that.”

Sophie rises on tiptoes and wraps her arms around his neck. Harry holds her tight to him, swaying gently and just breathing in her familiar smell and sense of family. “I’ve missed you, Dad,” she mumbles into his shoulder. “We all have. It isn’t the same without you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” he says. “I won’t go again.”

Sophie squeezes once and then releases him. “Go and sort things out amongst the dads,” she says firmly. “Now.”

He summons a lax salute to make her smile and then begins to haul his bags up the hill towards the shack.

He sees them before they see him, before he really sees anything else: on the decking, working in silence, in their little notebooks that they never let him look at. Bill is frowning slightly, the lines on his forehead looking more defined, to Harry, than they were when he left. He wants nothing more than to smooth them away with a thumb, or a gentle kiss. Sam’s squinting at the view, thinking about something or another, eyes fixed on the horizon, and Harry wonders if he’s waiting for him.

So he puts his bag down, lets the gravel crunch under the case, and waits for them to look up. “I hope you haven’t rented out my room,” he says, when two pairs of wide, disbelieving eyes are fixed on him.

“No, we just let Bill have it,” Sam replies absently, eyes running over him as if drinking him in, trying to get all of it.

“Harry,” Bill says, stumbling to his feet and over towards him. “I’m so sorry, about Theo - I was so terrible-”

“It’s alright,” Harry says. Bill starts to frown again. “No, really, I didn’t go because of that.”

“Why did you go?” Sam says, rising to stand at Bill’s shoulder. Looking at them now, bathed in the mid-afternoon sun and fairly glowing with it, all warmth and beauty top to toe, Harry can’t even remember the answer.

So instead he reaches out and grabs their hands, looking down at them instead of at the faces he loves so much. “I-” he begins, before cutting himself off with a frustrated huff. “I wanted - well.”

“What do you want, Harry?” Bill asks, and there’s a light tinge of hope to his voice, like a bud that might bloom into true joy. Sam rubs the back of his hand with one thumb, and Harry remembers that he’s supposed to be showing, if he cannot tell.

He brings their hands up and presses a firm kiss to the back of each. There are two surprised gasps, and then silence; Harry looks up nervously through his eyelashes.

And then his face is cradled in two large hands and he’s being kissed and it’s everything: fireworks and orchestras and swooping, stomach lurching joy, and he’s kissing back and grinning. And Sam pulls back and just laughs, and it’s so beautiful that he and Bill move forward as one to press kisses to the corners of his smile. Bill catches him easily and kisses him, too, and Harry can’t stop grinning because it’s just perfect, just what he wants and needs and loves, and Sam’s arm is wrapped around his waist and Bill’s hands are in his hair and it’s a lot, so much, and Harry just wants more.

Later, with Sam on his back and Harry’s head pillowed on his chest and Bill wrapped half-around, half-over them both, they talk.

Harry, under the cover of half-darkness, tells them the truth: that he lo- really really likes them, and that he’s bloody terrified, actually, because this feels big, and that this is why he left them, and that he’s so sorry and he missed them so much and he won’t do it again.

And Sam squeezes his shoulder and Bill presses a kiss to his shoulder and tell him that it’s okay, and for the first time in a while Harry feels like it actually might be.

Sam tells them that he loves them both, very much, but he also still loves Donna and probably always will. “I don’t want to do any of that again,” he says, as much as he ever likes to acknowledge his past mistakes.

Harry kisses the patch of chest and shoulder that he can reach. “Everyone who ever met Donna fell in love with her,” Bill proclaims confidently. “Almost all of them still are.”

Sam rubs his eyes and huffs a slightly damp laugh. “Yes, I imagine you’re right.”

“I’ll still want to sail,” Bill says, after a pause. “I’ll be here more, but I’m not good at one place forever.”

“As long as you come home,” Harry says.

“Perhaps we’ll come too, sometimes,” Sam suggests, and Bill laughs.

“Oh, yes, I love fishing inexperienced enthusiasts out of the sea,” he chuckles, opening up an age-old argument over how well, exactly, Sam can sail. (Harry has no illusions about his own skill and lack thereof.)

Sam reaches over and thumps Bill in the chest, soothing the hurt with a kiss. “I’ll show you,” he promises.

“Show us you falling off a boat?” Harry suggests with mock innocence that gets him a flick and a kiss, too.

Sam and Bill continue to banter and whinge affectionately, and Harry curls into them even more, a silly smile stuck on his face as he listens to the two bicker. “I love you two,” he says, out of nowhere, interrupting Sam mid-counter.

They both look over at him, and their surprise and, more prominently, delight warms Harry to his core. “Oh yeah?” Bill manages. “What for?”

Harry shrugs. “Not sure. But I do.”

Bill’s beaming, and Sam looks like he might cry with joy, and Harry, shy, buries his head in Sam’s chest. “No, come back,” Sam says gently, stroking Harry’s hair gently. When Harry peeps out again, Sam kisses him. “Thank you. I love you two, too.”

Bill leans over, elbow in Sam’s stomach and making him groan, and kisses Harry as well. “I love you two very much. But you should think of some reasons for loving us. Like our brilliant sense of humour, and stunning physiques, and-”

“And unfailing kindness, and-” Sam adds, until Harry, laughing, beats them both ruthlessly with a pillow until they’re all giggling.

“Don’t make me question my judgement.”

“Three tickets to the mainland, please.”

The boatmaster squints at the two men behind Harry, probably arsing about with the picnic basket, and Harry can’t decide whether to laugh or roll his eyes. He may do both. “What for?” he asks suspiciously.

“His boat’s in the harbour there,” Harry explains, pointing back to Bill.

“We’re off to have a gay old time,” Bill adds sweetly, making Sam snort and the boatmaster’s eyes narrow.

“A grand old time,” Harry corrects hastily.

“No one says grand old time, Harry,” Sam points out happily as the boatmaster gets their tickets.

Harry accepts the tickets, and gives up. “They do if they’re an old British queen like me,” he says, mock-crossly, ignoring the astonishment of the boatmaster and Bill and Sam choking on their laughter and heading for the boat.

They sail out into the Mediterranean and picnic there, in the wide empty expanse of blue. It’s easy to be who he wants to be out here, where he doesn’t feel like all the world is watching him, where no-one need exist but the three of them,

They need this time, too, to be alone; in a few days, Tanya and Rosie will descend upon the island. They are not getting married, because even Tanya has limits on that front, but they are having a big party to celebrate their relationship and there may be some speeches in which they promise to love each other forever and Tanya has bought Rosie a necklace, but it still isn’t a wedding.

(“It isn’t, Harry. Stop making that face. I can hear it over the line.”

“Of course it isn’t, Tanya.”

“Just shut up.”)

“We’ll have to baby-proof the party,” Sam points out, running his fingers through Harry’s hair.

Bill makes a face. “I hadn’t thought of that. Donny’s already destroyed three plates since he started walking two weeks ago.”

Harry beams with pride from his position, flat on his back with his head in Sam’s lap. Sam laughs. “Yes, yes, Granddad is very proud.”

“I think Gramps and Grandpa are fairly proud too,” Harry points out.

“Sky’s dad too, probably - what’s his title again?” Bill asks.

“Granddad-upon-Thames,” Harry supplies. “Great-grandma was quite excited about it, too.”

“Is she descending upon us once more?” Sam says. Bill nods as Harry hums. “Humph. Should be busy, then.”

There’s a long moment of quiet, broken only by the lapping of waves and distant calling of gulls on the breeze. “Donna would be so proud,” Sam says at last. “Of Sophie and Sky, of Donny, of Tanya and Rosie for getting together, of us.”

Harry shifts to look up at them both better, finding them looking back at him rather than at the sea. “Do you think?”

Sam and Bill share a smiling look, and lean their heads together fondly until they block out the sun and the sky, until all Harry’s vision is them. “I know,” Sam says.

And wherever Harry looks, to his past or his future, to his present - all he sees is them.