loooving all of this 🙊 do you think other father-daughter relationships in their social circle like mia's friends, highlight how different theirs is?

There are definitely moments, small, glistening things, that cast their world into stark relief against the lives of others. Instances where the mirror shifts and he sees, with unnerving clarity, just how different they are.

In a clinic once. The air is thick with antiseptic, with the low hum of nervous chatter and the occasional rustle of magazine pages. Mia sits beside him, languid, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. Around them, the room is a constellation of girls and their mothers with clipped voices, with reassuring touches, with the easy rhythm of women accustomed to these visits.

Will is the only man.

A woman, polished, blonde, the sort who smiles with all her teeth, leans forward, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “It’s nice to see a father here,” she says, her voice dipped in something too warm, too pleased.

Will shifts. Shrugs. “There was no other option. I’m a single dad.”

That should be the end of it. But it isn’t.

The woman’s laughter is airy, weightless. She tucks a curl behind her ear. “That’s wonderful. Not many men would—”

Across from them, a girl scoffs, arms folded, expression twisted in something between disbelief and distaste. “I wouldn’t want my dad here anyway. That’s so creepy.”

Mia tilts her head, appraising the girl with an expression too sharp for a place like this. “If you’re afraid of your own dad seeing your body but not a random male doctor, I think you should call the cops.”

The girl blanches, her mother gasps, and Will feels the weight of a dozen eyes flicker toward them. He exhales, slow, measured, and mutters, “Mia.”

She shrugs. Unbothered. Unapologetic. She was right.

—

Another waiting room, another stark display of difference. This time, it is Will who is unwell, a sluggish weight pressing against his ribs, exhaustion coiled deep in his bones. And Mia who should have been sighing, watching the television they had there, or looking pointedly at the clock like the other teenagers around them, is not.

Instead, she is pressed against him, curled in close like she belongs there, her fingers brushing against his wrist, tracing absentminded shapes against his skin.

She watches him. Not the television in the corner, not the nurses flitting back and forth, but him.

“You’re pale,” she says, and before he can deflect, she’s tucking a strand of his hair behind his ear, her brows knitting together in a way that makes his chest tighten.

Around them, fathers sit beside their children, silent, separate. Some of the girls glance up from their phones with vague disinterest before turning away again, while others tap their feet, sigh, check the time. An obligation. A duty.

And then there is Mia.

Leaning into him. Watching him. Worrying.

And he wonders, how many of these men have daughters who would look at them like this? Like something fragile, something precious?