NO KID IS SO LOVELY YOU'RE NOT GLAD HE'S GONE TO SLEEP.

Monsters don’t exist.

Timmy is almost sure about that. Or at least he’d really like to be sure about it, so he could stay in bed and try to go back to sleep. Instead, every time he closes his eyes, some noise forces him to open them again. Sometimes it’s a squeak, sometimes it’s a creak, sometimes he even hears the wardrobe's door open but he's too scared to see if it's true. Whatever it is, he gets the clear impression that something is moving around his room. Obviously, it can’t be nothing good, because nothing good moves around the house at night. Unless it's his father or Leo going downstairs to get a glass of water. But they almost never do that because they are too lazy to go downstairs and they get water from the tap in their private bathroom.

Now Timmy is presented with a big dilemma.
He can stay under his green lucky blanket – the one grandma Marjorie knitted especially for him – and hope for the best, or he can make a run for his father's bedroom and try to escape whatever lingers in the darkness of his bedroom right now. According to what the other kids say at the playschool, this is a choice every child is given in every part of the world and universe. It's like a live or die thing, where you can bet on where your best chances are. If you're a fatty, maybe you want to stay in bed and hopes for the monster to fail at seeing you beneath the blanket. But if you choose to run, then you better run fast or the monster can get you. His friend Thomas says that a friend of his bigger sister got caught one step away from his parents bedroom. He was almost there, but the monsters got him first, and then he was gone. He was fat and he chose wrong. You always have to think twice before deciding what to do.

Timmy is not fat, but he can't run very fast.
Leo always catches him when they play chase, even when Timmy stars running way before him. So maybe trying to escape is not a good idea. Still, he doesn't really believe that monsters can't see you if you hide under a blanket. When his dad hides in bed, he always finds him because his body makes a huge bulge. How can a monster not see that? The existence of magic blankets could explain this strange blindness, but he doesn't know if grandma Marjorie can knit magic blankets. So, what if he hides under his blanket, thinking that the monster won't see him, but it really can? It would be embarrassing, let alone very upsetting because then the monster would eat him.

Another creak. This time it's so close he can swear it came from beside his bed. He curls under the blanket and listens but the room is silent again. The monster is probably listening too. Timmy's heart beats so fast that he can hear it, and hiding under the blanket is proving to be of no use. He feels the monster knows where he is and it's just a matter of time before he jumps on the bed and eats him. Plus, he really wants his father now and he can't breath anymore. He must get out of here and take a risk.

He takes a long breath and counts to five, which is the longest he can count. Then he throws away the blanket and jumps out of the bed, running as fast as he can towards the door. His room is not so big but it's dark enough to seem endless. The little mushroom light on his nightstand doesn't work that much. He can never see the end of the room or the corner were the wardrobe is. That's how the monster can come out of there and never be seen.

Luckily, nothing catches him before he can reach the door but he hears another creak behind his back. So, he just runs faster and sprints out of his bedroom and into the hallway, where he stops for a moment to catch his breath. The house they have in Lima is so much bigger than the one they had in Westerville.
This one is two stores high, it has a garden, a backyard and tons of rooms, which is good when you play hide and seek, but not as much when you wake up in the middle of the night and you have a big, scary monster chasing after you and your father's bedroom is at the end of the hallway.

In the beginning, Timmy had the room right next to his father's bedroom.
It was a ten seconds trip to one room to the other and it was basically perfect. But after three months of Leo being with them, his father has made them switch rooms, saying that Leo wasn't feeling very well and he needed to keep a closer eye on him. Then, when Leo got better and he started sleeping with his father in his father's bedroom, Timmy didn't change room again because Leo's old room became Leo's study. So now Timmy's room is very far from his father and Leo's, which basically means making another long run for it and hoping for the best again.

He runs without looking back, holding Mr. T-rex against his chest with both hands, so he won't drop it. The house seems darker and quieter than it should be. All the pieces of fancy furniture his father brought from far far away look big and scary. Everything looks like something horrible is hiding behind it, making the hallway even longer. When he reaches the end of it, he pushes the bedroom's door open and slips inside. The mere presence of his father makes the room safe, so he just relaxes and catches his breath. He can imagine the monster snapping his fingers, knowing that he has lost. But he doesn't think about that too much, because the idea of a monster waiting outside still scares him a little bit.

He looks around. His father's bedroom is huge. Aside from the bathroom, there is another room where his father and Leo keep all their clothes and shoes. His father taught him that it's called a walk-in closet because it is a closet you can walk in, obviously. It's Timmy's favorite place to hide and his father never thinks to look for him there. The bed is huge too and Timmy's still to short to climb on it alone. Luckily, Leo always leaves a pile of books and comics on the ground by his side of the bed, so he can step on that first, and then grab the blankets and climb on the bed.

When he reaches the top of the bed, Leo is perfectly sleeping on his side and so is his father, which leaves him the whole central area of the bed. Timmy loves when they don't hug and smooch in their sleep because that way he can comfortably lie between them, and they only notice that when he's already been sleeping there for hours and they can't send him away. Sometimes he even pretends to be sleeping, so they leave him alone.

This time, he is not so lucky. As soon as he rests his head on his father's pillow, Blaine opens his eyes and glares at him. “What are you doing here, kid?”

Timmy has been taught to answer properly when he's been asked something, and he usually does. But he knows that he can't win an argument with his father, so this time he just curls up against him as he sleepily rubs his toy dinosaur on his face and mumbles something.

Blaine sighs. “What?”

“There's a monster in my room,” he repeats, this time louder. He hides his face in his father's neck, hoping that being all cute will stop Blaine from sending him away.

“How many times do I have to tell you that monsters aren't real?” Blaine asks, sitting up and yawning. He doesn't want to look at the alarm clock. He has to get up at six, so it doesn't matter what time it is, he shouldn't be awake.

“This one is,” Timmy insists, hiding his face even more.

Blaine sighs. “Alright, come here,” he says, placing the kid on his lap. “What did you see, exactly?”

“Nothing,” Timmy says, honestly. “But it was there.”

“And how do you know that? Can you see invisible things?”

Timmy shakes his head. “It made noises. Like, squeaks and creaks,” he says.

Blaine sighs, combing his son's hair with his fingers. “Like the ones your wardrobe makes? Those sounds that we already said it's just the wood adjusting itself?”

Timmy nods. “But there was a monster this time!” He insists against every logic. “I hate monsters.”

On the other side of the bed, Leo grunts and turns his back to both of them. If anything, the worst part of being the boyfriend of a man who has a five years old son is definitely the five years old kid. “I hate monsters too,” he grumbles. “And kids who come in my bedroom and remind me of them.”

Blaine glares at him, if even Leo can't see him. Whereas Leo, being a kid himself sometimes, knows everything about cartoons and toys and stuff that Timmy talks about all the time and he's very helpful in keeping the kid entertained for hours at a time, he is completely useless in this kind of situations because he can never be bothered with tantrums, fits or caprices. As with any other thing that he doesn't like to do, Leo gets annoyed when he has to deal with whiny Timmy. Blaine knows that Leo will have to learn how to deal with responsibilities if he's ever to become Timmy's step-father, but this is no the time to talk about that. After all, he can only deal with one kid at a time.
“Listen pumpkin,” Blaine says, “Daddy is very tired and he needs to sleep because tomorrow he has to wake up really early to go to work. You too need to sleep, because where are you going tomorrow?”


“Playschool,” Timmy answers, mumbling and then proceeding to yawn so hard that he needs to throw his head back.

Blaine chuckles. “Right. And you don't want to be sleepy, do you?”

“No,” he confirms. “I wanna play with my friends.”

“Right,” Blaine says again. “Do you remember that Leo is taking you to school tomorrow?”
Timmy nods and looks at Leo, thoughtfully. This is not the first time Leo takes him to the playschool, but his father always makes a big deal out of it.

“If you let me sleep,” Leo grunts.

“So, let's go to bed now,” Blaine proposes, and he actually starts to stand up, so Timmy will know he has no much of a choice.

“But there's a monster in my room!” The kid insists, whining.

Leo sighs in frustration and turns on his side to look at them. “Really, Timmy, do you know how it works for real? Monsters eat kids who jump out of bed and go to their parents' room. So stop whining and go back to sleep before it comes here and eat us all out for revenge.”

“Dad?” Timmy asks in panic, turning to his father.

“Leo!” Blaine hisses, glaring so much at his boyfriend that he could set him on fire.

“What?” Leo hisses back, annoyed.

Blaine is this close to kill him, but he decides for a better punishment. “There's no monster in your room because monsters don't exist,” he repeat for his son's benefit. “Now Leo will show you that.”

“What?” Leo hisses again.

Timmy keeps looking from his father to Leo, trying to catch up. “Leo will take you to your room and show you that there's nothing to be afraid of. Is it right, Leo?”

The look in Blane's eyes tells Leo that if he doesn't want to fight tonight, he better makes up for the stupid thing he has just said. It's either waste ten minutes to make Timmy feel safe or lose the whole night arguing with Blaine. So, Leo sighs and gets out of the bed, reaching out for the kid.

“Come on, T.T.,” he says as the kids crawls to him so he can pick him up. “Let's go to bed.”

The kid waves his father goodbye, his legs hanging in the air as Leo holds him in his arms and takes him away. Leo is very tall and skinny, he doesn't look and feel strong as his father does, but they have the same kind of hair, so Timmy instantly starts curling one lock of Leo's hair around his finger, which almost instantly gets him sleepy.

By the time they reach Timmy's room, Timmy's eyes are already half closed and he doesn't protest much when Leo places him in his bed. “Can you stay with me until I fall asleep?” He only asks. And since it doesn't look like it will take much, Leo nods and sits on the armchair next to the bed, curling up on it like a kid himself.

*

Ten minutes later, Blaine starts to worry.
He tried to go back to sleep but something in the back of his mind just stopped him from doing it. Leo hasn't probably closed his son in a wardrobe again, but you can't never know with him. Maybe he couldn't convince Timmy to go back to sleep and he is now telling him the monster will eat him, so Timmy will hysterically asks to sleep with them and he will have no excuse to be there and try to calm him down because it will be impossible at that point.

But this theory proves to be a plan too complicated for Leo at his hour of the night.

When Blaine enters the room, he finds both his son and Leo soundly asleep and holding hands. He can't help but smile and let out a shamefully tender sound. He contemplates the idea of waking up Leo before his back takes the shape of the armchair but he is so cute as he sleeps there with his hand under his cheek, matching Timmy's pose so perfectly, that he can't do it. So he covers him with the spare blanket at the feet of Timmy's bed and leaves the room, leaving the door ajar.

Once back in his room, Blaine looks at his bed and smirks even in the confusion of his sleep-clouded mind.

The cuteness overload he has just experienced instantly fades at the thought that he has his bed all to himself for the first time in about five years. He's so happy that his brain starts to enjoy this gift of the events long before he gets inside the bed.

By the time his head touches the pillow, he's already asleep.