You Set My Heart Aflutter (Dad/Tavros)

Robert pulled back with a little chuckle. "Are you alright? I didn't mean to frighten you, its just something I used to do when John was a baby. He would put his hands on my face and I would pretend to eat his fingers. Its mostly an old habit"

"O-oh! Okay, geez, wow," Tavros sighed with relief, pulling his hand away from Dad's face and cupping it in his other hand securely. "I didn't know why you were doing that." However, despite Mr. Egbert's explanation, Tavros wasn't entirely convinced that Dad was telling him the whole truth.

John had to at least be nineteen now! So that meant he had been a baby a pretty long time ago. How could Dad still have something like that so firmly ingrained into him that he didn't even consider who he was doing it to? Maybe when Tavros was a grub, that would have been alright, but he wasn't. He was an adult, or at least, he was pretty close to being one.

"You remember I'm a, um, grown up, right? And doing that, to a grown up, is a kind of weird thing to do?" That is, unless they were flirting, but he was too nervous to point out the mixed signal the older man had been sending him so he didn't bring it up.

Robert's face flushed slightly. "Well, initially, we played like that until he was seven or eight. And then he stopped for a while, until he picked it up again teasingly. He, um, he still does it on occasion, just to mess with me, and I play along, and really its just a force of habit by this point."

Tavros had to admit, that still seemed like a pretty odd thing to do with another adult when John was at the age he was currently. But humans were odd creatures in general with equally unusual quirks about them like the innocent, though aggravating, guardian-to-child competition held in the LaLonde's or Strider's household. "So it's a, uh, family thing?"

"Yes" Robert replied, ducking his head in embarrassment. "I'm sorry"

Tavros gave Dad a confused look. "Why are you, apologizing?" He rested the side of his head against Dad's chest where a bit of the towel prevented the human's shirt from getting damp as he did so. Admittedly, he was starting to develop a goofy grin as he watched the older man show signs of bashfulness.

He probably shouldn't be smiling so much when Dad clearly thought that he had done something wrong that was worth apologizing over, but he couldn't really help it for some reason. Dad just didn't seem the type to ever be perturbed by much of anything and seeing him like this, if for a moment, was pretty entertaining, actually.

"Well, You're too old to for me to do that and so is John but we play like that still anyway and you've called me out on it and now I'm just so flustered!" Robert replied, sitting on the bed with Tavros in his lap. "I can't help but apologize"

Tavros fidgeted when Dad took a seat on the bed with him in his lap while he was still wet from the bath. Thankfully, the towel prevented him from soaking Dad's lap while he was seated there, but the trunks absorbed quite a bit of water and the towel was dampening rapidly under him. "But there's really no reason, to apologize," Tavros replied with a smile. "It's kind of sweet, actually, the connection you have with your child."

"You think so?" Robert asked, glancing up at him.

"Mhm," Tavros hummed, brushing the front of his drenched hair back so that it would quit getting water all over his face. "I guess it's just me who's making this, uh, weird." The troll's eyebrows slanted upwards in apologetic arches as he explained. "It's just that, it's harder to figure out humans and their guardian relationships, they, um, vary a whole lot. Like, you and John, are the same species and are old enough, to mate, but humans don't mate, with their offspring I mean, I guess, because of that gene pool that holds the parents back from making more kids, with their kids, even though they aren't kids, any more, a-and, um, geez, you probably already know all of this stuff, what am I saying."

Tavros had just been going on a nervous tangent of thought, trying to fill in his uncomfortableness (Wow, that's an actual word?) with something to say, even though now he had probably just made matters worse by admitting his surprise that Mr. Egbert wasn't getting it on with his son. NO, not getting it on, oh, no, that's not what he meant at all, that's something Dave would word it as, not Tavros, no, he should clear that up right away that that was NOT what he meant at all. If only he could process the words in his head in a more orderly fashion that wasn't filled with gaps of stuttering and timid interjections of sputtering protest.

Robert laughed. "Well, for one, its kind of impossible for men to reproduce with other men. So there's that" He smiled softly, the flush in his cheeks lightening. He set Tavros down on the bed and sat next to him. "And the term you want is Incest. That's what its called when family members breed or 'mate' with each other. See, its a big no since it brings out more recessive genes that could be and usually are very bad for the offspring"

Tavros bopped himself on the head, giving Dad a goofy smile of relief when he looked back at him. "Oh, yeah, that's what I meant, sorry, I keep forgetting that's such a big deal with humans. Not that all humans are the same, I mean! Just, um, generally speaking, many of them seem to frown on that, kinda stuff." Tavros rubbed the back of his head, adding, "But, since you can't reproduce with another male, then, um, there's no real reason to worry, about the recessive genes, since there's no offspring."

Okay, Tavros, think carefully now, where are you going with this? "And, um, making more offspring, d-doesn't always seem like the goal of human intimacy." So what's the set back? It was a moral thing, right? He was pretty sure that's what it was, at least that's what Rose told him when he asked the same thing of her and her mother. He had mostly just assumed it was because neither of them could stand one another, so much so that they couldn't even fit into a caliginous area of romance.

But Tavros lived in a world once where Imperial Drones would have killed him if he didn't have his quadrants filled by the time he was of age to start filling buckets with other trolls. And thus was the reason relationships were such a 'big deal' with trolls, especially when they started approaching that condemning date and their quadrants began to look more and more barren. Tavros was well past that age, he should have been dead at least three times now for having no one in any of those quadrants, so if he seemed a bit pushy, well, blame his currently useless Alternian survival instincts.

"That's right" Robert smiled. "Humans don't really kill each other off as much as trolls so there's not a desperate need to repopulate. And we're not really space concerers either so we sort of just are? I don't know I think I just confused myself a little" Robert chuckled.

"Your species is pretty confusing," Tavros agreed with a goofy grin, leaning back on his hands on the bed. "So, if you're mating, not for reproduction, what's the point?"

"Well..." Robert hesitated, the blush returning to his cheeks. "Its pretty pleasurable for both parties"

"Oh," Tavros started, looking up at Dad with interest now. "I guess your species, is a lot more similar to mine than I, uh, thought." Okay, now it was time for him to change the subject before he pounced Dad, or at least to the best of his ability considering his handicap. Woah, woah, wait, where did that come from? Why would he want to do something like that? The longer he looked at Mr. Egbert in this new light, the less he questioned his reasoning.

"When's the last time, you, u-um, did something, like that?" Tavros, you aren't changing the subject, you're headbutting right into it with a full blown invasion of personal space. Back off alert, starting now. "Geez, that's, uh, that's none of my business, I don't know why I asked that, sorry, eheh...hehhhhh." That's right, laugh it off, because he sure as hell can't walk it off, which he would, if he could, just storm right on out of there to get away from all of this awkward sex talk he started.

"I think John was sixteen." Robert replied. "but I'm not positive. Parents do do things like that, much to their children's horror"

Well, if Dad wasn't dropping the topic on his own accord, why not pry a little further? "S-so, uh, how come you haven't found someone else since then?" Tavros asked, his tunnel vision on the man's expression distracted momentarily by one of the birds flying by his head.

"Well, I had been seeing Miss Lalonde, but that had been our last Hurrah as it were and we mutually decided that we should part ways. I just really haven't had much time for dating or anything of the sort after that" Robert admitted

"Wow, you and Ms. Lalonde were a thing?" Tavros's eyebrows rose in surprise. That's when he made his move, not very subtly, but he went in for it anyway.

"M-maybe, you could, show me some of this 'hurrah'ing you do, some time?" Tavros slowly slid a hand towards Dad's on the bed, not reaching out and grabbing it right away as he awaited the inevitable 'no thanks' or 'fuck no', or some other similar, negative answer. Maybe he could play it off as a joke. After all, isn't it hilarious when crippled trolls hit on humans twice their age? Yes, what a riot.

Robert blushed and stared at Tavros in surprise. "I-huuh-what?" he sputtered, completely and totally unprepared for this line of conversation.

Keep going, keep going, he's not running away just yet. Wow, that didn't sound like the line of a certain, desperate sea dweller Tavros had once known. Just collect yourself and don't be demanding, if he says no, it's not the end of the world. There are still plenty of hot, older men who make fantastic food and treat you like family out there...

No there aren't.

So don't mess up.

"Uh..."

Great going, now reel him in.

"Um..."

Dave, step aside, there's a new mayor in Cooltown USA.

"What I mean is, um, you're a pretty awesome, not pretty, I mean, um, really awesome, guy, and I just thought, that you know, maybe, we could, uh, do something, some time? It doesn't have to be right now, it can be any time, if that's okay with you. I'm not that good at this, uh, at this whole, kind of thing," Gee, he probably would have never figured that one out, "But I just thought that since you're not seeing anyone, and, I'm not, seeing anyone either, maybe we could, try it out, for a bit a-and see how it works out?" Flirting, brought to you by the socially handicapped.

"Um, I-I... Tavros, I don't know. I mean, I'm not really the most, well, suave person when it comes to things like that. I-I mean wouldn't you be happier with someone your own age?" Robert asked

"I'm not so suave either, for my age, so, that's okay!" Tavros assured Dad, grinning over at him. He wasn't being rejected, that meant that the notion still held some appeal to the other party.

"I mean, I know this sounds sudden, and, it is, kinda sudden, but I don't ask someone unless I want it to work out, and, I think that you and me, I think that's a ship, that could make water." Some how, Tavros doubted that this was a ship that Nepeta ever had in mind on her wall, but he wasn't concerned about the feline-fixated troll's predictions, he just hoped that this ship wouldn't be imaginary, like Rufio. Maybe that was part of why he had a 'thing', as Dave put it, for older men?

Robert looked away from Tavros nervously. "I-I don't know, Maybe?" he stammered uncomfortably.