You Were Younger
"You thinking about trying out for the basketball team?" Sam asks, even though he knows that all non-high school aged kids that want to play are put on a team regardless of skill.
Yelena wrinkles her nose, "Ew. Basketball is for boys. I wanna be a ballerina!"
Natalia flinches back a little, "I, uh, I think I might," she offers.
James sets three pairs of bowling shoes on the long table in front of them. He picks Yelena up from her spot, steal the seat and settles her in his lap. "Might what?" He asks, the littlest girl tossing her shoes to the floor. Yelena pulls on the ugly, worn shoes and then holds her foot out for her father to tie the strings.
"I might try out for basketball, I think, maybe," the red head answers, doing her own laces by herself.
Sam nods, smiles and speaks both to father and daughter. "I think it's a good idea. You'd be in Cass' age group for the co-ed team and I usually help coach, so you'd already know two people. If you're not too embarrassed to talk to me, like Cass is." He jokes.
The little blonde squirms her way to the floor, darting over to the rack of bowling balls.
James nods, silently encouraging the older girl. He's hoping she'll work her way out of the shell she put herself in sooner rather than later.
The fact of Sam coaching a basketball team is new information to the both of them. Natalia's obviously impressed because she leans towards the other man to spit out nearly whispered questions. Sam raises a surprised -and slightly excited - eyebrow to her father. James smiles back at the man he'd been going out with for the last two weeks. He's dating now because that's what people do, right?
And Sam seemed like a good man. A former pararescue - it's harder to falsify military documents - and going back to school to study psychology and mental health. Despite Natalia's seemingly cold shoulder, both of the girls like Sam and-
His eye catches another little girl pointing out a pink, five pound ball to Yelena. His daughter grabs for it, he's probably over reacting but - "Lena, come back over here. I'll get them,"
He does, and that's that. They - attempt - to bowl. James loses completely. Yelena, who had never touched a bowling ball prior gets first, Sam blames it on the gutter guards that raised for her turn.
When they leave, James spots the same little girl from earlier in the day crying over a stuffed animal from the claw machines. He won't stop being overly cautious but he is, once again, grateful to be proven wrong.
••••
It takes eighteen months, eleven months officially dating Sam, for James' worst nightmares to begin.
The temperatures dropped and Sarah's already set up her tree. The Wilson's and the Belova's had made an event out of driving out to the tree farms to pick out a tree for each of their homes.
James had taken his kids over to Sarah's for dinner as was pretty usual for them by now. Nat and AJ are fighting over everything at this point.
Sam has taken to walking back to the Belova house when the trio leaves. Nat and Lena were quick to talk him into staying for movies.
"Oh my god!" James still smiles when Natalia raises her voice, "We've watched it like seven times! Let someone else-"
James rises from the sofa to check the door. Probably another neighbor but maybe Sarah as well.
James vaguely hears the woman talking but the screaming kids kind of distract from that. Sam stands to try and placate the quarreling pre-teens.
The door slams behind James and the new guest who steps directly into the living room area.
"Melina," James blinks once, like he's sure the picture will change if he does it hard enough.
The pretty brunette smiles brightly across the room. She bends at the knee to receive Yelena's hug as the seven year old cuts across the room with a shout of, "Mommy!"
"Yelena," it's a good act. Melina, knees to the ground with the young girl clutched to her chest. "Oh, my baby. How are you? Mommy missed you." But an act is all it is. "Natasha, come give mommy a hug!"
"Why are you here," Natalia had finally returned to her spite-fire self and James has to pray that this woman doesn't change that.
Melina rises to her feet, pulling the little blonde up with her. "I wanted to see you, Natasha. Is it so hard to believe that I've missed my daughters?"
Nat had pressed herself to her father the moment she recognized the woman at the door. Sam is stood still trying to pick his jaw up from the floor.
"Daddy!" Yelena calls from the woman's arms, "Daddy, Mommy's here!"
"Put her down, Melina." James' words are no less than an order but the woman scoffs.
The woman sighs. She moves a hand from Yelena to push a lock of her own hair from her face but she doesn't put the girl down. "Yasha,"
James has angled himself between where Sam stood with Natalia but he couldn't get to Yelena.
"Yasha, I wish you had thought this through. Really I do, the Wilson's seem like good people. But you can't just kidnap peoples children-"
"They're mine, Melina." It sounds all wrong to Sam's ears. "They're mine and they don't deserve that kind of life and you know that. Melina, please." There's no sound, no squeak of the floorboards that Sam can hear but James' head snaps left. "Alexi."
From the shadows of the stairway a man bigger - broader - than James appears. Sam watches Natalia run a hidden hand down the length of her fathers back.
The new man has a gun raised, sight set on James' head. "It is not my choice, just like it is not yours," his accent is heavy, Russian or something equally stereotypically 'bad guy' sounding.
"Not your choice-" James is furious but rational enough to only slightly raise his tone.
"She's a baby," Nat whispers, more to her father than anyone else. But it's so loud in the stock-still room.
"You were younger," Melina reminds softly.