Who: Molly Walker Barnes, Lance, and Colin What: Ice Cream! When: Friday afternoon Where: In Town Warnings: TBD Status: Partial Gdoc TBC
For a six year old, Colin was pretty freaking cool as far as Lance could see. It was super weird that he was some sort of possible future kid of his and Molly's, but it was fun hanging out with him. He felt more like a cool uncle as opposed to a dad since it didn't seem like any kind of real possibility that they would be together. He and Molly were just friends and considering how much she seriously needed to smile, Lance felt it was his duty to be that friend for her.
Colin clearly got that from him, too. He was a total cheeseball and 100% worth the death glares that Molly's dad kept throwing his way. Today, they were going to just hang out and stuff, and it had turned into a sort of impromptu photo shoot all over town. They were giggling and laughing and causing a teensy bit of trouble as they filled up Lance's phone. For the particularly great photos, he sent them to Molly with fun captions and then eventually when they decided to take a break for ice cream, he'd invited her along. She deserved to get the full cheeseball experience.
"MOOOOOOOOOOM," Colin clamored when she walked in the door. "Dad said I had to stop at five toppings but he got six."
"I told you, the cookie dough doesn't count because it's in the ice cream! You picked wrong, buddy." Clearly they'd been having this discussion for at least a few minutes already.
***
When she was younger, Molly had always loved when the kids had shown up. She’d loved the glimpses at her future siblings and weird worlds where her parents were with other people. But she’d liked it mostly because she hadn’t really been involved in having kids much. As she got older, that happened more, and the last time this had happened she’d wound up with a little boy and a boyfriend terrified of her dads.
That she had not missed and she was hugely annoyed that now Lance seemed to be trying to avoid her family for absolutely no good reason.
It was so hard to actually be mad though, or to hate having a kid with her friend running around, because Lance was dumb and funny and the stupid kid was cute and hilarious and they were blowing up her phone half the day with being kind of great together. It was probably because of that that she was still smiling when she joined them for ice cream.
“Uh, well, you’re wrong and he’s right,” she told Colin with a laugh. “Cookie dough is a flavour and you should have picked that.”
***
Lance wasn’t necessarily avoiding Molly’s parents. He was just showing the kid a good time and he was never going to believe that being glared at was a fun time. He knew from experience and Keith’s glares were just as intense as Molly’s two dads.
He looked pretty freaking smug when Molly sided with him and instinctively he held up his hand for her to high-five. “That’s what I’m talking about,” Lance cheered.
Colin just sighed dramatically. “You’re supposed to side with me,” he explained in that patient but not too patronizing way that only kids could really get away with. It wasn’t his mom’s fault that she didn’t know any better. “You always say we’re not supposed to encourage dad so much. Not unless it gets him to be silly or do something embarrassing. Especially in front of Grampa and Pops.” He definitely teamed up with both of his parents against the other in his time.
Lance set his ice cream down so that he could hold his hands over his heart. “You mock me! Wound me! Slay me here over my ice cream. I see how ruthless you are! No more hanging out with Uncle Keith,” he decided.
Colin just giggled. “Pops taught me that one,” he declared as he swapped his ice cream with his dad’s, quick as could be. Clearly ‘Pops’ was Bucky.
***
Rolling her eyes, Molly just gave Lance the requested high five and turned her attention to the kid. He was cute. And funny. And kind of everything his dad was without also being the absolute worst. “You know, I should know better,” she agreed with him. “I shouldn’t encourage him. He’s terrible.”
She was mostly joking though. Lance was pretty okay and he was a really good friend. Was even taking this whole kids thing pretty well despite the whole avoiding her dads thing. Which he was totally doing. And she was totally not into at all. But whatever. Things were going pretty okay with it.
“And you should always listen to your Pops. He’s not terrible.” Kind of the best and Molly definitely had a favourite right now.
Seeing the ice cream swap, she just grinned and stole the one Colin had given Lance for herself.
***
Lance blinked and he was suddenly without ice cream. “What???? You stole my ice cream?” He looked incredulously from Colin to Molly and back. There was a part of him that was impressed, absolutely, but a larger part could not believe he just got played by a freaking kid.
“Is nothing sacred?!?” Colin joined his father in unison and then dissolved into a fit of giggles.
Defeated, Lance dropped his head to the table with a thump. “I give up. You’re both against me. Clearly you don’t love me. I’m just going to sit here and be unloved and sad and without ice cream.” He was definitely exaggerating but there was a part of him that cared.
Colin just giggled. Mom would make it better and ‘soothe his ego’ as she liked to say. Whatever that meant.
***
Molly would be the very first to argue that it was not her job at all to soothe Lance’s ego. But he was pretty pathetic and it was kind of weirdly endearing in the same way literally everything about Colin was. She just laughed at her friend, reached out to pat his head.
“You’re totally unloved. But we can share. I only want like...three bites anyway.” It was too cold for ice cream, why the boys had wanted it in the first place was really beyond her, and she couldn’t eat too much unless she wanted to get fat, anyway. She walked the line of that enough as it was. No one was ever going to love her again if she just gorged herself on ice cream in addition to all the usual eating that happened during the holidays.
“Stop being so dramatic.” Said like she wasn’t constantly the dramatic one.