#also obviously Bobby Jr and Harry are equally as important… but we’re talking specifically girl dad 🥹

[athenagrantnash]

What do you think about girl dad Bobby because it makes my heart melt 🥺

Omg girl dad Bobby has my ENTIRE heart!!! I mean dad Bobby in general has my entire heart, but GIRL DAD BOBBY!!!

He’s been preparing to be a girl dad literally from the second that his 15-years-his-junior sister who is totally canon and I absolutely did not make up was born. He took one look at that squawling red-faced little baby and decided that she was is. His parents already got to raise him and his older brother… this one was HIS!!

He insisted on teaching her all the most important things that his parents taught him. He’s the one who taught her to cook, and by the time she was 4 she was good enough to make (slightly singed) cookies all by herself! And Bobby had never been more proud. He also was the one who taught her to ride a bike, and who kissed her scraped knees better when she fell. Mama Nash and Dad Nash insisted that he at least sometimes be a normal teenager, but Bobby was just too enamored with his tiny sister to want to be a normal teen. More than once, Mama Nash or Dad Nash would walk to the nursery in the middle of the night to soothe the crying baby only to find Bobby had beaten them to it, gently rocking his sister to sleep while singing under his breath.

When little Brook was born, his sister gave him the warmest, gentlest hug and told him that she knew he was gonna be the greatest girl dad in the world, because she gave him all the practice he needed. So really, he should be thanking her.

And before his injury and the subsequent dependency on pain killers and alcohol, Bobby’s greatest joy was in spending time with his kids. He dusted off the skills he learned as a teenager, and no little girl had prettier braids than Brook did (when her hair was long enough). When she got a little bit older she started to be a bit of a tomboy, so Bobby (a little sadly) put away the ribbons and bows and instead bought her a whittling knife. Marcy was concerned about giving a 6-and-a-half-year-old a knife, but Bobby and Bobby Jr were busy arguing over who was gonna get to teach Brook. “You already taught me, dad! It’s my turn!”

(As a side note, if Bobby Jr had survived, he would have also had the biggest dad energy).

At Brook’s funeral, Bobby pulled the tiny little bow that he always carried around in his pocket (even during the worst of his addiction)… the very first bow he had ever put into her hair… and tucked it carefully into her hands. He didn’t deserve even that little reminder of the joyous times he had spent with her. He had lost his wife… lost his son… lost his daughter… and it was all his fault. He didn’t deserve joy anymore.

His entire family tried to help him, and his sister… the one who made him decide from the time he was a teenager that he would someday have kids of his own… was the closest to being able to get through to him. But he was too caught up in his guilt and his grief. He didn’t deserve the unwavering love and forgiveness she offered him. She was the last one to get a text from him, a fleeting “I’m sorry” before the Nash family lost track of him and eventually had to assume that he had drunk himself into an early, and unmarked, grave.

He truly believed his time of being a dad should have ended there, but then he met Athena and her beautiful family. And he would never presume to claim May and Harry as his kids… not out loud. But they were his. May was his daughter just as much as if he had been there from the start, braiding ribbons into her hair like he had done for Brook. But he would never never presume.

“I have two dads, and you’re one of them”.

And with those words, another part of Bobby’s heart… a part he didn’t even realize was still aching… healed just a little bit more. Because May saw herself as his daughter just as much as he did. Because that was the first time anybody had called him dad since that horrible night where he lost his family.

And maybe… maybe after his much needed vacation cruise with Athena… maybe he’ll reach back out to his sister again. Maybe he’ll say to her “Sis, I want you to meet my daughter, May.” And maybe his sister will smile, eyes shining with unshed tears, hugging him tighter than she ever has before. “I knew you could find yourself again, Bobby”

Because being a girl dad? That’s as much a part of who Bobby Nash is as being a firefighter.