a friend emailed me a link to this story saying, 'just because it's adorable,' and it so totally is. It was all fabulous - I loved watching Charlie grow up through Don's eyes, and the glimpses we got of their parents made me smile. I think my favorite paragraph was this one:
Don could see a possibility, an inevitability at the end of an unbreakable chain of causality, dominoes falling, could see it with such clarity that he wondered if this was how Charlie saw math--he saw that if he said yes, that this would become not Charlie's trial run, but Charlie's real thing, Charlie's true love until the end of time, Charlie's worst and most terrible mistake. "Nope," said Don, as if it were easy, hand on Charlie's cheek, fingers up under his curls (and oh, to slide his hands through Charlie's curls with Charlie on his knees--). "That was your demonstration. You want someone to practice on, you're on your own."

because it is so very, very Don - taking care of Charlie's future, when all Charlie can see is his now. Really lovely.