"Okay." Snuggles and pets!!! So good.

She is so cute and pettable!!

"When you're petting me like this it seems profoundly surreal that you could possibly think there was anything odd about me loving you."

...he laughs.

"Well, that's one of the sweetest things anyone's ever said to me."

"Is there much competition?"

"Not a lot, no."

"If there's any that's not also me I'm kind of curious now."

"My daughter once told me I did an adequate job with her considering what I had to work with. ...which, now that I think of it, sounds downright vicious if you don't know my daughter."

"I mean it sounds kind of--context-heavy--but yeah."

"Context-heavy?"

"...I mean...coming at it from the angle of 'my daughter had a horrible childhood and I'm a bad father'..."

"Yeah."

"I'm sort of aggressively failing to have expectations of how much you'll be involved with my daughter's life growing up and it occurs to me that it would be better to instead have an adult conversation about it."

"Hmm?"

"...I mean, like...obviously you're going to be around, but...that sort of leaves a wide range of possibilities from 'Mom's weird grownup friend who I see occasionally' to 'basically stepdad' and I really don't want to assume any particular level of involvement especially given, like, your issues with your daughter, but I also don't want to assume a complete absence of involvement? Does that make sense?"

"Yeah. I - really don't want to be relied on for, uh, anything in the realm of parenting - but I don't mind helping, I don't want you feeling like you can't ask me for things."

"Okay. --Do you have any thoughts on what to do if, like, she ends up having wants or expectations regarding your involvement in her life once she's old enough."

"...I have no idea what to do about that."

"Okay. We'll cross that bridge if it turns out to exist, I guess. It'll be a while until she's old enough, at least."

"Yeah."

"Yaaaay half-dragon aging." Hug.

Hug.

"I love you. I want--I'm not stupid I know it's not that simple but if I could get everything I wanted one of those things would be--for this to be a sort of--second chance. Does--does that make sense?"

"A second chance?"

"I know it's ridiculous I just--when you said the takeaway from raising your daughter was 'I'm a bad father'--I thought, I want him to not have to feel that way--" She shrugs. "I'm not--I don't have any expectations based on that want or something. But it's sort of the same thing that I felt when you said you didn't understand why I loved you--I know you're objectively a bad person but I--I don't want you to feel like you don't deserve to have loved ones--that's not it exactly but I can't think of a better way to say it."