Who: Neal & Revy with a little bit of NPC!Henry What: Building a fucking babycrib while their people do a seance When: This past weekend Where: Swan-Cassidy Home Rating/Warnings: Revy's foul mouth Status: Complete!
Pad Thai, curry panang, spring rolls, drunken noodle, crying tiger (hidden dragon?), even an order of mango sticky rice. Neal planned to get it all and then some, as kind of a distraction from the ‘way cool epic seance’ going on at Regina’s place - Henry, naturally, was disappointed that he didn’t get to partake but once he played some Assassin’s Creed he seemed to be okay, and being that he was twelve and some change, was also placated by food. Always hungry, that one - the perils of being a growing pre-teen. But the reason for the feast, and the fragrant spices that Kings once traded slaves for about to permeate the house, was also to distract himself - he hadn’t seen Revy in awhile. It was nice to catch up when she wasn’t shooting at him, or shooting anything in general.
Plus, Henry thought the tattoos were awesome. He wanted to show her his comic collection, plus the sweet Assassin’s Creed parkour - for some reason, the kid just seemed to like her. She didn’t smoke in the house, at least, so Neal was fine with her corrupting his son for awhile - hell, she’d watched him during the Shattered Sight debacle too.
“Dad, can I get a tattoo?” Henry asked for the billionth time, though he was engrossed in his video games on the PlayStation in the living room, hitting buttons like a crazy person; Neal stopped pretending he knew what was going on, as he sat with his laptop on the sofa and placed the final order for dinner.
And then chuckled throatily. “No,” was the response that hadn’t changed. “You’re still growing. It’d look significantly less badass by the time you were eighteen.”
Henry sighed. “Can I - “
“No.” Whatever it was, no. He turned to Revy, trying not to laugh. “You want to see the nursery, by the way? It’s actually about done.” And it looked nice, too - the walls were a warm shade of tan, having been painted with a bright yellow sun, camels marching toward a watering hole, trees with monkeys hanging off of them, and giraffes. All of that was Rapunzel’s design come to life, and both he and Emma were pleased.
Neal’s home, was, uh. Homey? Definitely screamed happy family, and the kid was a nice touch - he was inquisitive, and actually kinda fucking amusing. It wasn’t the first time she’d been around him but as a general rule, Revy never felt comfortable around the younger crowd. Too vulgar, too uncouth for the innocent ears of the young, but for some decision of odd judgment, princess here thought it alright to have her around his almost-teen son.
At least she was making an effort to minimize the amount of f-bombs dropping from that dirty mouth of hers.
But the distraction was welcomed, considering two men she was particularly friendly with were involved in this creepy as fuck seance. Summoning the spirit of a dead pirate for answers. It sounded possibly dangerous, but Trevelyan was dead-set on helping and so was the idiot photographer. Nothing she could do but wait for news of the aftermath, and hide her concern by devouring takeout.
“I might break into hives,” she smirked, pushing back fly away hair from golden brown eyes. “But sure. I don’t know a fuc--freaking. Freaking thing about babies and what the crap’s used for, I won’t touch a thing to avoid accidentally breaking it.”
Neal sometimes dropped an f-bomb or two in front of Henry as well - he had a swear jar he’d utilized for awhile, when the kid first came to live with them, but he’d tapered off gradually. Broke himself of the habit, for the most part. “There are a lot of...diapers? That’s basically what we’ve been stocking up on,” he said, setting the closed laptop on the coffee table now that the delivery order was placed. Gotta love the age of convenience - in about forty minutes, they’d have piping hot Thai food in bags decorated with smiley faces here at their door.
“Some furniture is being handmade, some is being ordered - we haven’t put the actual crib together yet, but it’s on the to-do list.” On the way to the staircase, he grabbed two beers from the fridge and handed Revy one - may as well drink and enjoy, because there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about that seance besides speculate on how it was going.
He was nervous, yeah. That was to be expected.
Up the stairs he went, while Henry was still climbing Big Ben or whatever was going on in the game. “Emma ordered a lot of animal stuff, obviously.” Hence the plushies and the soft blankets with monkey faces on them and such.
Beer was more essential than water to her, and she gripped it in her gunfiring hands appreciatively. Seemed like yesterday the two reunited at a skeezy bar with Neal drunkenly mumbling how in loooooove he was with the mother of his child. Now they had a nest, and he knocked her up a second time. Christ on a fucking pole, he didn’t waste blowing a load and inseminating her the next change he got, did he?
“It’s...cute?” was her very awkward compliment, surveying the room with blinking eyes. It wasn’t insincere, just - fuck, had she ever really been in a nursery before? Revy couldn’t remember. “I like the theme. Would be a little cliche to do something like Peter Pan, wouldn’t it?”
Probably something he wanted to avoid at all things, too. Neal had mentioned before how he’d been in Neverland in his dreams, then there was the whole thing with Captain Hook, so. Uh. Complicated, much?
Peter Pan. Please, someone stick him in quicksand and let it snuff out the light - no way did Neal want anything to do with that particular trainwreck slash ‘family.’ It was awkward enough that the Peter Pan in his dreamscape was his actual grandfather. Um, ew?
“Cliche and terrifying,” he rumbled a chuckle, taking a swig of beer. Then he headed over to where the crib was - or actually, it was in pieces, spread out, all the parts. The box advertised that this piece of furniture was ‘everything a parent needs to set up a nursery.’ Neal was kind of skeptical, but supposedly it all amounted to a crib which was supposed to convert to a toddler bed, a daybed, and a full-size bed as kind of a four-in-one thing (how?) and also pieces for a chest, a hamper, and a changing table. The various pieces were all a nice wood finish that matched the theme of the room, a light brown.
Needless to say, he wasn’t even sure where to start.
“How good are you at, uh....engineering?” Because honestly, he felt like you needed to have a certain skill for that to be able to fit everything together. He’d even been meaning to, but shit just kept cropping up - like seances and dead pirates, for one thing.
Yeah, what the fuck was all that? Revy squinted from entrance of the room, haven’t gone in officially. Nah, she could appreciate everything this room was from where she stood, but then Neal looked to her like some lost puppy in regards to the pile of crap on the floor and an eyebrow sharply rose.
Oh, what the hell, no. That was - “That’s the crib, isn’t it,” she deadpanned, crossing an arm. Thing was, she was the handy sort. There were a lot of things she fixed in her roach-crawling Chinatown apartment with her deadbeat father in her youth, then she evolved to tinkering with cars, assembling firearms - came with the territory of being on the shitty side of the law, and efficiency was required in regards to surviving.
A crib, though. Really?
There was a rumble from Revy too, but it was more like a sigh and snarl mixed into one sound. “Step aside, princess, I wouldn’t want you hurting yourself with a drill. You do have one, right? A screwdriver’s going to take way too fucking long.”
Thank fuck - because putting the crib together was something that needed to be done, and it was also nice to be doing something with his hands. Neal had grown up in a similar fashion, that is, fixing things in the various crappy apartments he shared with his father and while he wasn’t as adept at cars and assembling firearms in .5 seconds, he had some skill - yet the crib had just been such a daunting task. Not something he wanted to tackle on his own, that was for damn sure.
“Yeah, I’ve got one,” he chuckled, disappearing into the open closet to rummage for the toolbox he kept up here - since the nursery was a work in progress, it made sense. A few pieces of furniture had been put together but he was mostly waiting for the baby shower Regina was planning to throw; who knew what they’d get from that. But in that toolbox, he did indeed have a cordless drill - and various other doodads, screwdrivers included. “I’ve got the diagram too, but it’s...”
He brought Revy the toolbox, then unfolded the entire thick packet that claimed to be a helpful step-by-step guide. Not so much. “It’s kind of a doozy. Why the hell are cribs so complicated, honestly?”
The diagram did look intimidating. So many labeled panels, little tiny pieces that were meant to go in very specific ways, making sure you had everything facing the right direction. Furniture assembling was a bitch and a half. Crib assembling was a completely different beast but not impossible, though at this rate she was going to demand his entire stash of beer for somehow being dragged into this entire mess.
Revy got comfortable on the floor, the toolbox at her disposal, and checked the goods. A charged drill, all the bits available - fuckin’ A. “You’re asking the wrong person, but did you really have to fucking get one with so much stuff in it? I think you went overboard,” she sneered. Then gathered the screws that were supposed to go with panel A, B, C and for some reason B12. “We’ll see what gets finished first. This deathtrap or the ghost session.”
“Only the best for our spawn,” was Neal’s excuse - and this crib combo thing-ah-ma-bob had gotten really good reviews. The research had been done and, sure, maybe he didn’t have the slightest clue how to put this shit together from an engineering standpoint but that mattered little to him. It would happen regardless.
He settled near Revy to help - maybe if they both started in some designated spot (her with panel A, B, C, and vitamin B12 and he went Z and X and panel YVT-27), they’d meet in the middle somehow. “You think it’s going okay?” The ghost session, that is. Crib-assembling was a whole other matter - but zzzzzz, there went the cordless drill and Henry probably could guess what they were up to. He knew his dad had been meaning to tackle the crib for a couple of weeks now - but he just would rather play video games, that was all.
Revy took another chug of beer before setting the bottle between her legs, and spreading the paper diagram open to see what was the next order of business - in theory it wasn’t that complicated. Just tedious. They’d be drilling all fuckin’ night and not in the fun way. “Fuck if I know,” she shrugged, though it was a question on the tip of her tongue, too. “You got...what, two magic users leading the bulk of it? And I know Trevelyan, he’ll do his best to help, otherwise he won’t sleep well at night. Dead people are his thing.”
Creepy as it sounded, anyway. But if things went awry she trusted those involved to fucking handle it. “I just hope they find whatever answer it is that they’re looking for when it comes to the ol’ Captain. It’s a shitty situation all around.”Really shitty. She already had gotten the gist of the curse, what it all caused him to do, how he died. More power to them for not wanting to sit back and accept the circumstances. If they had the power, why the hell not do it?
Neal nodded, “Yeah, and I mean...I trust them. To find out what we need. Then actually going to the Underworld is the nerve wracking part.” You really couldn’t guarantee a way back. At least not alive. His brow furrowed, as he made do with the ‘latch brackets’ and whatever the fuck - things needed to be slotted into holes, and pieced together, and hammered, and all sorts of innuendos. But with four hands tackling the job, they’d actually make some headway.
Newborns (and Niko would sleep in the bassinet, in his and Emma’s room for a couple of months before his happy baby ass was going to sleep here) needed a higher latch thingee, older babies needed a lower one. It just took some maneuvering and wiggling to get everything to line up. Everything had to be tight enough so that the rails didn’t shake. “But I can’t let them go on their own. At least I already dream of being dead, so I can help.” Not to mention his blood was needed to open the portal - what happened after that? It was anybody’s guess.
This whole scene was kind of making him snicker though. “Who would have thought it’d be you helping to assemble a crib?” he grinned. “Things have changed a lot, huh?”
Revy couldn’t imagine how the fuck this adventure to the diet-version of hell would be like. Sometimes it still took her a minute to wrap her head around all the things that were possible when it came to magic - cool in a way, but can screw up a lot of shit and bring upon a lot of problems on top your everyday mundane woes. The hole in Henry’s apartment, Hook’s curse. All of this was odd to squeeze in when life itself in its most basic form had a habit of ball-slapping every across the face.
Shifting to her knees, she held some pieces together and high for the next ‘bout of of drilling. Vrooooooooooom. “Go fuck yourself,” she deadpanned to Neal’s remark. Things had changed, and she was still at an adjustment period for all of it but she was going through the motions alright on her own. Figuring out things here and there, about what she wanted to do, and what kind of person she wanted to be - because there was still part of her that lusted for the adrenaline of a good gunfight and blood on the asphalt. Revy didn’t need to be cursed or turn into a monster to already feel like part of her was one, but she opted to tame her demons rather than vanquish them. It was part of her.
“I’m gonna guess your lady isn’t all that excited about you going? You know, hormones. And a second one on the way. Going to the Underworld doesn’t sound like you’ll be going to the park to get a fried oreo, princess - it sounds like one hell of a risk, and you’ve got a lot to lose if things get ugly.”
Sometimes, you couldn’t ever truly vanquish your demons for good - not when you’d grown up like she had; it had been rough for Neal too, but Revy seemed like she’d always been drowning in blood. It was no easy thing to clean yourself up, he knew that firsthand - and she’d been doing really well, even if she’d punch him in the nads if he told her he was kinda proud and all that shit.
“Not too excited, no,” he concurred, reaching for the hammer to use for the purpose of getting those screws in really good (so dirty, such connotations). “But I promised I’d come back. I’m too stubborn not to - I think between all of us, we’ll find a way. It happened in ye olde dreamscape - “ Yeah, so they didn’t know how because no one had gotten that far yet, however, did that really matter? Uh. “...it’ll happen here also. I’d just feel like shit if I didn’t help them try. Because when I died, I would have wanted my loved ones to come for me.”
No one did. And he knew how terrible that felt; Neal wouldn’t wish that on Killian here, who didn’t deserve that. Not by a longshot.
Promises, promises. Revy didn’t believe in those too much, but Cassidy and his sunshine-for-shits had a way of making you want to believe them. Could be the smooth talker in him, too - ever the fucking charmer with those doe-eyes. But there was a degree of obnoxious sincerity when it came to him; he wasn’t like the rest of the thugs they’d known before. His heart was made of the squishy things. Like gunky vaseline.
“Make sure you do,” she said, a flare of both brows. “You managed to stay alive here, you don’t want to gamble with your chances too fucking dangerously. Though I’d still say going to a place where there’s a bunch of dead people counts as ‘fucking dangerously.’” It’d suck a lot if something happened, and Neal couldn’t come back to Kid #1, or see Kid #2 get squeezed out of his lady’s twat, or help his lady with the diapers changes.
This time she took the drill, replacing the bit with another size. “But if shit hits the fan while you’re gone, I can help check on them. And you owe me drinks for the rest of your goddamn life for making me help you put together this thing.”
It was taking shape, slowly but surely. It looked more like Something Almost Functional now.
Aw, wasn’t that sweet of Revy to offer? “Wouldn’t say no to someone capable checking on them,” Neal grunted, his manly way of thanking her - he didn’t want to get too squishy all up in here. “It’d ease all our minds, I’m sure. I mean, who knows how long we’ll be gone - how long bargaining with Hades will take. If it comes to that.” And he really hoped it didn’t.
Actually, he was way impressed with how far along this crib was coming - it didn’t look like a hot mess of random wood on the ground anymore! Praise Zeus! “You’re not so bad at it - maybe you should go into business or something,” he sniggered, but he meant it. Revy the Baby Furniture Maker - had a ring to it, right?
Before he could tease her some more, the doorbell rang. Followed by Henry yelling I’LL GET IT at the top of his lungs. “Daaaaad! The food’s here!” Neal could sign the credit card receipt, while the twelve-year-old took all the bags and started chowing down. Hopefully he’d make himself useful and get actual plates though, by the time Neal got downstairs.
“Go fuck yourself round two, princess,” she scowled, raising the drill and pressing the button in his general direction. Vrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Right in the balls if you don’t watch yourself, Neal, but she was ready to take a break and stuff sustenance into her mouth.
Takeout and fucking baby cribs. It was a good distraction, she’d admit, while the people they cared about were communicating with the dead - it’d help ease constant simmer of concern for the three of them, Little Henry included.