#now he's named corky LMAO i'm so mad at my aunt for that

[theloveinc]

I always think it's a little surprising, irritating, endearing, something when big, tough men find solace in being gentle with their daughters.

There's reason to do tough things with them, too, to make sure they grow up strong and independent, but I think of a man like Simon "Ghost" Riley, who spent a huge percentage of his life being beaten down consistently by almost all the men who were around him.

And sure, he trusts the men in his task force with his life now, no question about it, but... I think the sudden calm he experiences when he starts to raise a daughter is beyond strange for him, but also weirdly... healing, too. Enjoyable.

That's not to say he doesn't, and hasn't, enjoyed the boyish things in life, the watching sports, the playing in the dirt, the pretending to hold guns part of growing up... but he finds himself sitting through your daughter's ballet class, overwhelmed by the calm that surrounds him, actually able to focus on the intensity of her pliers, her releves, the way her pink skirt ripples when she leaps into a sauter.

It's a new realization, a new kind of war (between him and learning how to be a parent), but it's one that doesn't revolve around the consistent anxiety that warps his stomach when he watches boys, little or not, teeter the line between roughhousing and fighting, picking on one another for shedding accidental tears that, really, cause no harm.

With your daughter, he's set in charge of watching her play with her friends and finds there is no lump in his stomach when she giggles with them, no dark possibility drifting in the back of his mind that she'll reach out and get her arm broken by someone she trusts--the fights she fights with her peers all between the characters they play and not between their fists, their games of laughter and drama and screaming but not of raging violence.

There's people who ask him, people who joke, wouldn't a man like him prefer a son? He must've been so disappointed... Yet, Simon still has yet to think of the best way to tell them that he honestly enjoys having a daughter a little bit more, that she runs to him and not for a second is he afraid she's hiding a snake up her sleeve, because she's only ever greeted him with flowers.