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"Is that a bugatti?!"
The shriek goes up loud enough that Grace instinctively flinches back, and he has to steady himself before hes knocked over by the gaggle of lanky pre-teens running past him and only half caring if they knocked him over. They add to an ever increasing knot of students clogging the front entrance of the school, all of them packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidewalk and spilling halfway into the pickup lane like a flock of particularly excitable geese. Kids are bouncing on the balls of their feet, craning their necks, talking over each other at maximum volume, and Grace can only understand half of it. It was just a car, surely it couldnt be that exciting??????
Grace slows automatically as he pushea his way through the crowd, briefcase tucked under one arm.
What on Earth…
Normally, he wouldn’t even be outside his classroom yet in the first place, as on a typical afternoon, he’d still be in Classroom 204 wiping down counters, trying to figure out which seventh-grader left a pipette in the sink again, and dismantling whatever moderately interesting penny-turning-blue experiment that passed for that days classroom activity. By the time he usually leaves, the parking lot’s mostly empty, and peace has been restored to the kingdom.
Unfortunately, today somebody had asked him to cover car duty.
Which means instead of enjoying the quiet sanctity of his classroom, he’s navigating a wall of hormonal chaos while children scream about luxury sports cars, because itd just be his luck that he'd have to deal with this when asked to cover car duty.
He continues to edge sideways through the crowd with the careful, nonthreatening body language of a man trying not to get trampled by thirteen-year-olds, and irritatingly recognizes at least three kids near the front who absolutely ride Bus 6, a bus he knows is always among the first ones to arrive.
Another collective excited gasp ripples through the crowd.
"Rev it again!"
"No, dude, that’s a Lamborghini—"
"It’s not a lamborghini are you stupid?"
Grace finally manages to peer between two students and catches sight of the vehicle in question parked illegally at the curb, low to the ground and glossy black enough to reflect the afternoon sun like polished obsidian.
And— okay, wow.
That actually might be a Bugatti.
Huh.
And its his husband leaning against it.
Which doesnt make sense, because Rocky is supposed to be at work right now. Grace knows this with certainty because they discussed it over breakfast in detail while Rocky drank enough coffee to medically concern a lesser man — or, really just anyone that wasn't Grace, who was at that same table mirroring the act. He wasn’t supposed to get off until eight, minimum, plus the commute home after that. Grace had mentally organized his entire evening around having a few uninterrupted hours to catch up on grading in miserable peace.
Instead, his husband has apparently materialized outside the school beside a car worth more than the GDP of several developing nations, one that Grace could not remember him owning at any point in his life or even making an indication of wanting a luxury sports(?) car.
Just, what???
Grace stumbles forward before his body fully catches up with his thoughts, nearly clipping a backpack sitting on the ground in the middle of the school entrance outside. He catches himself awkwardly, pinwheeling for balance in a way that absolutely destroys any remaining scrap of dignity he possessed.
Rocky notices him at the exact same moment.
Even from halfway across the pickup lane, Grace can see his face brighten immediately like spotting Grace in a crowd is the best part of his day up to now. The expression lands somewhere directly beneath Graces ribcage with lethal precision.
Unfortunately, the students notice Rocky noticing Grace.
And then the situation deteriorates catastrophically.
"MR. GRACE DO YOU KNOW HIM?!"
"ARE YOU RICH?!"
"CAN I HAVE TWENTY DOLLARS?!"
"Mr. Grace, is that your DAD?!"
That last one has him choking; heat floods up his neck so fast it feels chemical, hot and humiliating beneath the collar of his shirt. "No—!" he blurts instinctively, voice cracking in instant betray, embarrassingly in a way it hasn't since he was as old as the kids clamoring all over him. "He’s— I mean, that’s not—"
Questions fly at him from every direction with the coordinated efficiency of piranhas detecting blood in the water — somebody is tugging on his sleeve, another kid is still loudly insisting the car is actually a Ferrari, and now theres multiple kids asking for money after the first one did. Grace tries taking a step toward Rocky and promptly discovers he physically cannot because there are now approximately fourteen middle schoolers in his immediate orbit.
This, he thinks numbly, is how herding sheepdogs must feel.
Out near the curb, the only other teacher on car duty is valiantly trying to keep the pickup line from devolving into vehicular manslaughter, which means Grace is entirely alone in managing the swarm currently eating him alive.
Across the crowd, Rocky watches the whole thing unfold with rapidly growing amusement.
The traitor.
Realizing his continued stunned silence is only making this worse, Grace hastily reaches out with his free hand — the other still trapped beneath the handle of his overstuffed briefcase — and gently steers the nearest student backward by the shoulder to reclaim approximately six inches of breathing room.
It does not help nearly enough.
"Okay— okay, everybody calm down," he says, immediately proving that he has never once successfully calmed down a group of middle schoolers in his life both in and outside his classroom when the volume somehow increases. Grace pushes onward anyway, talking faster in the desperate hope he can outrun the questions. "That’s Dr. Grace. My partner. He’s— uh—"
His brain fully abandons him for one catastrophic second as Rocky, still leaning against the Bugatti, lifts a hand in a little wave toward the students, resulting in them screeching and getting even louder.
Grace closes his eyes briefly.
"He’s here for me," he finishes weakly. "I think. I actually don’t know why he’s here."
"HE BROUGHT A BUGATTI TO PICK YOU UP?!"
"It’s not—" Grace starts automatically, then glances at the car again. "Actually, no, yeah, I think it literally is a Bugatti."
The crowd erupts.
"We are not rich!,” Grace says quickly. "He just has a good job! He’s a mechanical engineer, same way I used to work as a scientist before teaching."
"Then why are you a teacher?"
Fair question. Unfortunately….
"Because I like teaching," Grace says, which is both true and somehow sounds fake even to his own ears. He likes teaching, but it isn't exactly why he started teaching…. whatever.
"Can you give me twenty dollars?"
"No."
"Five dollars?"
"Also no."
"….one dollar?"
"I have, like, eleven cents and a paperclip in my wallet right now, Brandon. And you made a 49 on your last quiz."
That actually earns a laugh from the other kids, thank God.
Grace takes advantage of the brief lull to continue barreling through the remaining concerns before anyone else can weaponize them against him.
"Yes, we’re married. No, he is not my dad." The heat crawling up his neck intensifies horrifyingly. "And no, he is not that much older than me! Im 31! And hes only 56! He barely even has grey hair!"
Thankfully, the chaos begins to burn itself out after another minute or so. Parents are pulling up to the curb in increasingly aggressive waves, names are getting shouted across the pickup lane, and enough students finally peel away toward their rides that Grace can at last slip through the loosening circle surrounding him.
It hasnt died down completely — several kids are still openly staring at Rocky from a distance like they’ve spotted a particularly handsome cryptid — but enough that Grace can finally escape with most of his sanity intact.
He exhales hard through his nose as he approaches the curb. Rocky’s expression has shifted while Grace was fighting for his life in the child trenches; the openly entertained grin has softened into something warmer, fond in a way Grace absolutely does not have the emotional bandwidth to examine right now without exploding on the spot.
So instead, he defaults to sarcasm.
"Is there a reason you’re outside my workplace disturbing the peace?" He asks.
Despite himself,and despite the residual embarrassment still cooking him alive from the inside out, he leans up to press a quick kiss to Rocky’s mouth the moment he gets within reach. Rocky immediately follows him down half an inch like he’s trying to turn it into something longer.
In front of the school.
Full of children.
Grace plants a hand against his chest and physically stops him.
"Behave," he says with the sternest tone he can get. "And answer my question."
Rocky looks entirely unrepentant.
"Can I not pick up my husband from work?" he asks, and actually has the audacity to frown a little while saying it, like he’s somehow the injured party in this situation.
"Not when you do it in a car that summons middle schoolers to eat me alive," Grace hisses back. "They’re supposed to be going home!"
Behind them, somebody yells, "BYE MR. GRACE’S HUSBAND!"
Rocky lifts a hand and waves pleasantly at the distant voice.
God damn traitor — double this time.
"I don’t know, Mr. Grace," Rocky says, turning back to him with infuriating composure. "From where I was standing, you seemed to be handling the children very well."
Grace currently feels like he got chewed up and spit back up and probably shoved in a locker too, so instead of dignifying that with a response, he instead tries his best to glare up at him to show his disproval. Unfortunately, glaring upward loses some of its intimidation factor when the other person has nearly half a foot on you.
Rocky’s mouth twitches.
Grace should make him walk home.
Instead, with all the dignity he can salvage from the smoking crater that used to be his afternoon, he turns toward the car and reaches for the passenger-side door handle. There’s a brief, horrible moment where he’s certain he’s about to publicly fail to open the stupidly expensive car in front of the several remaining students, but with all the mercy of god, thankfully, the handle unlatches normally.
Thank Christ.
Grace slips into the passenger seat with a quiet internal sigh of relief while Rocky circles around the hood to the driver’s side. The interior smells faintly like leather and coffee and Rocky’s cologne — something woodsy and expensive that Grace has never learned the name of because he usually just categorizes it mentally as Husband Smell.
The driver’s door shuts, and immediately Grace turns his face toward the window when he can feel Rocky looking at him. He refuses to acknowledge him — partially because he knows the second he makes eye contact, whatever remains of his composure is going to evaporate instantly; mostly because he can still feel heat lingering across his face and ears, and he’s already suffered enough humiliation for one lifetime.
The engine hums to life.
"I’ll call someone to get your car," Rocky says, casually, as he pulls away from the curb.
Grace opens his mouth to agree before his brain catches up with the sentence.
"…Huh?"
Rocky glances over briefly, visibly trying not to smile again.
"Your car," he repeats patiently.
No, Grace heard the words. It’s the implications currently short-circuiting his nervous system, because that had sounded absurdly rich. And now that he’s thinking about it—
Oh my God.
Was his husband rich?
Like, actually rich?
Like, obvisouly Grace knew Rocky made good money. He’d known that from the start. Some engineering position with the government that involved aerospace and classified projects and a truly alarming amount of security clearance paperwork. Grace had never pressed too hard about specifics because half the time Rocky answered questions with "I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you." and Grace had played enough resident evil to not feel like pushing his luck with it.
But apparently Grace had somehow failed to connect "government aerospace engineer" with "owns a Bugatti and casually has people available to retrieve vehicles."
Huh….
Grace slowly turns his head away from the window to stare at him.
"…Are you sure you’re not rich?"
"You mean we’re not rich?"
The flush that crawls back up Graces neck this time is less full body mortification and more pure embarrassed disbelief, but it still hits with enough force that he groans quietly into one hand.
"You know what I meant!" he says. "And when did you even get this thing?!"
Rocky looks genuinely delighted now, which is frankly offensive. Doesnt he know Grace has a "if you tease me enough Ill throw myself out this car and it'll be completely your fault and no one in America is rich enough to afford hospital bills" meter!!
"Dr. Grace is very unobservant," he says. "It has been in the garage for years."
Grace feels something inside him wither curl up and die, because now that Rocky says it, there had absolutely been a car under the cover shoved into the far side of the garage since basically forever, and Grace had apparently looked directly at it dozens of times and gone yes, that sure is a Car Shape.
He makes a small, helpless noise of understanding.
Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Rocky biting down visibly on another smile.
"Do not," Grace warns weakly, already knowing it’s too late.
"I married a scientist," Rocky says solemnly. "A brilliant man. A perceptive man."
"If you keep talking I will throw myself out of this car."
" — There is no one else I want to be with but Dr.Grace, even when hes being very very obtuse —"
"Thats not even a good usage of that word! And Ill make you sleep on the couch!"
" — And hes a man I'd love to have kids with."
Whatever retort Grace was about to come up with died a quick and sudden death on his tongue, whipping his head around to stare properly at the man, eyes bug wide behind his glasses. Unperturbed, he continued on.
"I had considered it before, of course," Rocky glances briefly toward him before returning his attention to the road. "But seeing Dr. Grace with all those children…"
Grace makes a strangled noise somewhere between a cough and hysteria.
"Rocky."
"You are very good with them."
"They were eating me alive!"
"Yes," Rocky says thoughtfully. "But affectionately."
"That’s not better!"
A smile flickers at the corner of Rocky’s mouth where he'd managed to school his expression. "You guided them well. You were patient. Kind. You answered every question even while visibly wanting to flee the scene."
"Because they’re middle schoolers," Grace says, but it sounds weak even to himself. Kids are just… kids. Loud and weird and sticky and occasionally pushed him around, but fundamentally earnest in a way adults stop being somewhere along the line. Grace had never really thought much about the fact he naturally slips into teacher-mode around them. It feels less like a conscious behavior and more like muscle memory at this point.
Grace can feel his pulse somewhere in his throat now.
"You can’t just say things like that out of nowhere," he barely forces out of the lump in his throat after a long moment, staring very hard at the dashboard.
"Why not?"
"Because!" Grace gestures vaguely with both hands, the universal sign for my emotions are currently on fire. "That’s a huge thing to say while I’m still recovering from public humiliation!"
Rocky hums, entirely unsympathetic.
"I think perhaps Dr. Grace is deflecting."
"I think perhaps Dr. Grace is considering opening the passenger door at a red light."
"Dr.Grace is being much too dramatic. Its simply something to consider."
Grace swallows.
"…I know."
"And only if you wanted that too."
"I know."
"You are being very silly."
Grace looks down at his hands, thoughts simultaneously sluggish and racing.
"…I’m not saying no," He says, barely keeping the volume above a mumble. "I just — I never really thought about it? I mean, your already in your late fifties, and Im not getting any younger either…"
"Maybe I just found the idea of my husband with children hot, hm?"
"Rocky!"