Kate Danvers | Otherworld (katedanvers) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2017-04-13 09:25:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !closed, !completed gdoc, !log, [plot] future kids take 4, ~2017 april, ~25 points, ~~nick sorrentino), ~~~~~ kate danvers (katedanvers) |
Who: Kate Danvers, Nick Sorrentino, and the Sorrentino children
What: Still kids!
When: Thursday morning
Where: The Little Pack House
Warnings: nah
Status: Closed/Complete
Nick had heard Rocco fussing, felt Kate getting out of bed, and he’d been perfectly happy to ignore it and go back to sleep, listening to her talking quietly in the other room. Letting the sound of her voice wash over him without ever actually hearing her words.
Despite his constant protests whenever she brought it up, the idea of kids wasn’t all that bad. He objected to Rocco being theirs, because he wasn’t, and Nick wouldn’t erase his Brother by pretending he was, but maybe one of their own one day wouldn’t be such a bad thing. They were pretty solid, even after last month’s issues. Though a part of why they’d made it through that was probably because Nick just didn’t deal with the fact that he was hurt by it. The way he didn’t deal with any of the things that hurt him. It didn’t matter. They were as good as ever, and he was trying to go back to sleep.
Until there was suddenly a small body crashing into him. And Nick squawked, flailed, sat up and stared.
“Why are you little?” Because it was Kate’s face he was staring at, but about five. But it wasn’t. His other senses said something was wrong. “Why do you smell wrong?”
Why was he asking a little kid those questions.
***
“DADDY DADDY DADDY,” the tiny girl screeched as she started bouncing on the bed. “Mommy said you gotta get up!”
Apparently she was just going to ignore his questions because he was being silly. “Tonio said that this is where you lived before I was borned! And Mommy said that we can go ask Grampa to make us special pancakes!”
***
Nick immediately reached out to catch the girl before she wound up hurting herself, half hoping that she’d be less loud if he did. It was too early for screeching children.
“Hold up, hold up,” he said. “Huh?”
In a moment, when he woke up properly, he’d realize what was happening, what she was talking about, but for now he was just reacting. And still staring at almost exactly Kate’s face.
***
No sooner did he catch her in his arms than she was squirming and trying to get out of them again. “You gotta get UP,” she repeated, her tone insistent and impatient. “So we can get Grampa to make us pancakes. Did you forget what I said already cause you’re so old?”
Mommy always teased him about being old so that made sense to her.
***
“Yes. That’s exactly what happened. I’m old and forgot everything.”
One good thing about little kids, Nick had learned through several experiences here, knowing people with kids at home, was that he could use things like that to entertain them. Or, if the situation called for it, get information out of them.
“Everything.” He held tighter so she couldn’t escape. “Like who you are?”
Not Kate, he was realizing. He still heard movement in the other room and the kid in his arms definitely smelled wrong. Similar, but not quite right. Sort of like how Kate smelled like…. It struck him that she’d said Tonio. Only one person had ever been called Tonio around him.
***
Holding her tighter only made her wriggle more. “Daaaaaaaaaddy, let goooooooo,” she whined. When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she gave a rather dramatic sigh.
“I’m Lily,” she said. “Your precious little flower. How could you forget me?”
The idea that her father might have actually forgotten her made her pout. Her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes got very wide. If Nick continued this charade, he was going to have a sobbing five year old in his arms.
***
“Precious little flower?” That didn’t sound like something Nick would ever say. She probably picked that up somewhere else. Wherever it had come from, whether he’d say it or not, it was pretty obvious who this kid was. Saying things like Tonio and Daddy and Grandpa, with his mother’s name? Not even Nick was that oblivious. “Lily, huh?”
Leaning back, pulling her with him, he shifted a little so he could look at her face properly. Knowing what he was looking for, he could see it. She looked so much like Kate, but there was a little him in there, too. A little in the cheekbones, a little in the length of her limbs. Little Antonio had been the same. A lot of one, a little bit of the other.
“Didn’t you talk to your mom before coming in here?” Kate was in for a very annoyed good morning kiss if she’d sent this little girl barreling in on him without any explanation.
***
“UH HUH,” Lily said. “She told me to come get you.”
The fact that Kate had also tried explaining that her parents didn’t know her yet, that they were still living in the small house on the back of the Pack property that she didn’t know, hadn’t really sunk in since she was only five. As far as she was concerned, this was all a grand adventure.
“Did you know that Rocco’s just itty bitty?” she asked. “He’s ‘posed to be big, big, big! I never had a little brother before!”
***
“I did know that, yeah.” Nick was just glad she was off the topic of him not remembering her. Upset kids were no good. Upset kids he didn’t even know? He had no idea what to do with. “I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to be that small, though, and you’re in the wrong time.”
He was pretty sure she was in the wrong universe all together. A kid one day might not be so bad, but there was no way Nick was interested in more than one. Even if he’d always really loved hanging out with Antonio, even if this new one was already growing on him. But he couldn’t just tell a kid that.
***
There was a crashing sound from the kitchen and Kate’s exasperated voice saying, “Antonio Clayton, stop that right now.” Lily started giggling. “Oooo Tonio’s in troouuuble,” she said, her tone sing-song. “Mommy only uses our middle names when we’re real bad.”
Nick might not be surprised to learn that Lily’s middle name was used rather frequently.
“Come on!” she encouraged. “I’m hungry! I’m a growing pup!” She grabbed one of his hands with both of hers and tried to tug him out of the bed.
***
Nick just sighed, rubbing his face with his free hand. “Okay, okay. Come on, pup.”
He let himself be dragged a little, glad that he was at least wearing pants to bed, scooping the little girl up as soon as he was on his feet, setting her against his hip to carry her into the other room. He’d expected to see Kate with a much smaller boy than was there.
“So...this is happening,” he greeted.
***
“Uh huh,” Kate said, cleaning up a mess on the floor where Antonio had knocked a bowl of pancake batter off the small counter. “I think we should haul them all up to the big house and make my dad cook.”
Antonio was sulking a little, but he perked up when she said that. “Yes! I bet Gramps will make our special bacon-infused pancakes.” They were usually reserved for special occasions and he figured that a surprise visit to the past from him and his sister counted as one.
Not wanting to be left out, Rocco banged his tiny hands on the tray of his high chair.
***
It was strange to see Antonio older. Nick had only known him one way, had come to like him that age, but older…he was growing up. And Nick didn't know how he felt about that.
“I don't know why you even tried doing that here.” Their little house definitely wasn't big enough for three kids plus them. It had never been meant to hold any kids at all. It hadn't been meant for anyone but them.
Nick couldn't imagine whatever them had decided to have two kids still lived there.
He carried Lily with him as he went to give Kate a quick kiss. “Chances are there are already a couple more over there.”
***
“Can we go to our house?” Lily asked. “I want my toys.” She was an active kid and was already squirming in Nick’s arms, her hands playing with his hair for something to do.
Tonio rolled his eyes. “I told you, Lils. Mom and Dad haven’t bought that house yet. We lived here until you were born.” At least one of the kids seemed to understand what was going on.
“I really hope you don’t have a baseball team again,” Kate said, her mouth twisting into something approximating a smirk in Nick’s direction.
***
“You had to bring that up,” Nick said, shaking his head, finally giving in to Lily’s squirming and setting her on the floor. “Okay, little werewolves. Go to the house. Climb on Jeremy or something.” He’d learned from previous swarms of children that Jeremy was even more tolerant than usual when it was little kids being annoying, and having a couple little ones around the house on the regular meant how much he liked them was a very poorly hidden secret.
Picking up Rocco, he handed him off to Antonio. “I like that you’re bigger now,” he decided, looking the kid over. He was probably Changing already, if Kate’s history was anything to go by. She and her brother were the only children of two werewolves around, so were the only thing anyone had to go by. “Sick your sister on your grandpa.”
Even as he said it, his alarm went off in the bedroom. He always set it early enough that he and Kate could have some time in the morning, but this really wasn’t what he’d had in mind.
***
Antonio looked really uncomfortable holding Rocco, especially when his little big brother reached out to grab his face. “This is so weird,” he muttered. “Is Cadence all little too?”
“Yes, she is,” Kate said, chuckling at his discomfort. She was the Worlds Okayest Mom. “And don’t be surprised if there’s other kids at the house. You’ve been through this before.” Knowing Nick, there would be a lot of them showing up at the door looking for him.
Lily wasn’t interested in waiting on her brothers and she was already out the door, barefoot, with her hair flying behind her head. As soon as the boys followed, Kate looked at Nick and shook her head.
“Why do I have a feeling we have our hands full with that one?”
***
Nick watched the kids go, waited for a moment until he was sure Antonio wouldn’t hear before he sighed. He folded his hands on top of his head for a second, and rubbed them over his face the next. “I’m tired already.”
It was like all the times kids had come before combined with the time Kate had been five.
“Think we can just lock the door and let the others deal with them for a while?” That felt like a great option right now, though Nick knew they couldn’t actually. He wasn’t as irresponsible as he’d once been, actually did like hanging out with almost all of the kids who showed up during these things. He actually wanted to be able to talk to Antonio, get to know the kid he’d become. He wanted to see if he could get Lily to sit still long enough to actually hold her.
Maybe he what he wanted more than to hide was to go out there and play.
In the bedroom, the alarm continued to beep.
***
“Go turn off your alarm,” Kate said. The beeping was possibly more annoying than the loudness of three kids reverberating off the walls of the tiny house. “And put on real clothes. You know damn well that my dad or Jeremy will be over here hauling us out if we don’t follow the kids.”
And they couldn’t pretend they didn’t know the kids were there since they had Rocco with them. “But give me a kiss first,” she said, walking over and putting her hands on his chest. The worst part of the kids being around was that they inevitably had a few who would be weirded out by them being together. “Love you.”
***
She had a point. The worst kind of point. Nick would have liked, for a few minutes, to pretend that they could avoid having to deal with that stuff. It was never all that bad, the sudden expansion of the Pack always brought life to the house in a way they didn’t normally have, but the whole thing inevitably seemed to bring a kid from some reality that hurt.
And everyone inevitably had to be careful who they showed affection to, in case they traumatized one of the little kids, too small to understand why things weren’t the same as home.
With a small smile, he rested his hands on Kate’s waist, leaned down to kiss her slowly. “It was nice being able to have sex again.”
Clearly that wouldn’t be happening quite as often for a while. If at all.
***
Kate gave a wry laugh before kissing him back. Once she pulled away, she sighed. “Well, at least we know we won’t do anything stupid this time,” she said. Last month’s weirdness had lingered a little, but they were mostly past it.
“All right, we need to get up to the house before mini!Me destroys it.” Kate had no doubt that her daughter was every bit as wild and potentially destructive as she had been as a child. And possibly would be worse, since she didn’t have Logan to balance her out. Even though Antonio seemed to be calmer, they didn’t have the same kind of bond that twins had.
***
Having met a smaller version of Kate, and having been crushed under the little girl calling herself their daughter, Nick had no doubt the latter would be even more trouble
“Go, save the men. I’ll be out in a minute,” he promised before ducking into the bedroom to stop the alarm and find at least a shirt, and his phone to send an email about being late to the office today. No way he was getting out on time if the house was overrun with rambunctious children.
***
“Don’t dawdle,” Kate called as she headed to the door, stopping to shove her feet in a pair of sneakers. Oh, great. She already sounded like a mom.