Who: Pete & Lina, with cameos of her parents and their mutant-crawling spawn What: Discussing the investigation on Pete's mother When: Tonight Where: The Ifraimov Household Rating/Warnings: Lina's parents are pervs and so are the Wisdoms, but that's it Status: Complete!
Amelia was mobile now. Mobile. Crawling, scootching, getting around. And the little button-nose was fast too, as Pete had come to learn. He’d be sitting on the sofa, eyes trained on his laptop, then he’d look up three seconds later and she’d have made her way across the rug and to her playpad, where all her toys were. Ah, how he remembered the days when all he had to worry about was her rolling around on her belly. Now if she decided something looked shiny, she just went straight to it.
His little girl. Growing up so fast.
He and his lovely wife brought plenty of toys and things to keep Amelia occupied with them in the diaper bag, when they went to visit the grandparents. Pete always liked seeing Mr. and Mrs. Ifraimov - they were bloody fucking hilarious, first of all (he was surprised he hadn’t had to bail his father-in-law out of jail after being held for public indecency), and most important, they also genuinely cared about him. They welcomed him into the family, both he and Romany. That was something neither of the Wisdom siblings would ever forget, and it made them all the more fond of their in-laws.
It also always smelled good when he visited, like a seafood boil, usually, white pepper, cayenne, thyme, whatever was reminiscent of the bayou. Just, thankfully, without the swamp smell to go along with it. He could hear Lina’s parents chattering in the other room (his knowledge of Russian had him picking up the word orange more than a few times - must be a Trump conversation), and Amelia was busy showing off her crawling skills for her father.
“Can you get it, pumpkin?” he asked the baby, referring to the plushie that lay across the room. Amelia squealed and gurgled, scootching along on her hands and knees. Clearly that was a yes - she was determined to get her soft toy, while Pete filmed the experience on his phone.
How could it not be a political rant in the Ifraimov household? Putin’s involvement lita fire beneath their asses, an angry one, then toss in the immigrant and refugee debacles erupting throughout the news - the Ifraimovs had colorful things to say about Humpty Trumpty and their home country’s involvement, considering they were immigrants that came from the Federation and landed in the American Bayou like many did from that side of the world. They went through loops for legal status, some that left them in such a steep debt that drove their youngest into dipping her fingers into illegal channels of earning money.
They had opinions, you see. Opinions they were very loud and vulgar about, and while Lina didn’t disagree with them she also didn’t think there was enough home-brewed vodka in this house to drink away the headache they were giving her. Time to step away from the kitchen for now - her mother was stirring a pot of andouille gumbo (there was an entire argument on whether or not it’d be a good idea to add beets into the mix, the hell?), filling their abode with warm and spicy scents in preparation for dinner.
Amelia’s, of course, would be a bowl of pureed sweet potatoes - it was healthy, and they noticed it was becoming a favorite. Strange to think that their kid was developing all sorts of preferences now aside from what boob she liked best.
“You’re going to be catching their entire bitchfest in the background about Fuckface von Clownstick,” the sorceress groused, and then immediately pursed her lips in an attempt to silence herself once she realized that entire string of profanity would also be recorded on that crawling video. Good job, mom.
Oh well. Time to be pleasantly distracted by the cuteness of their combined genes!
Hands to her hips, her hair was done up in that messy, styled sort of bun with strands of fire framed around her face. Parenting and dealing with her own parents was also a frazzling combo, and she didn’t have to get all fancy for the two nutjobs responsible for birthing her. She’d walk barefoot, in leggings, and an off-the-shoulder light sweatshirt. Amelia could throw food at her now. This was the safest thing too wear.
About that toy, though. “So did you look for a Garrus plushie or did he give one of himself to you as a humble gift? She’s going to chew on his eye, you know.”
“I saw it in the toy store one day,” Pete smirked. Yes, he went there fairly frequently - it was considered a hotspot when you had a young child, what of it? He would happily spoil his daughter rotten. She was definitely a daddy’s girl, and if anyone didn’t like it they could sod right off. “So I just had to get it. She’ll chew on his eye and rip off that visor thing most likely - “
“Baah! Daaa!” said Amelia, and sure enough, she’d grabbed the plushie by the visor and managed to separate it from Garrus’ head. Alas. Pete quickly scooped up the spare cloth piece, making sure it didn’t reveal anything on the toy for Amelia to hurt herself on, then gave it back to her. He’d gotten most of her crawling on video anyway - and also, yes, the Russian bitchfest about Mango Mussolini.
It’d be an amusing historical anecdote, provided they weren’t all nuked off the map in the span of this administration. Anyway.
“Smells good in here,” he continued, lifting Amelia while she held onto the plushie - and drooled on the talon-like fist of her new favourite toy. “Why would they put beets in gumbo though?” Maybe it was a New Orleans thing.
How much profanity was accidentally recorded on those sentimental videos, she wondered? Probably enough. They’d have to be careful soon enough because before they know it, she’d be reciting all those naughty words right back at them and making them both proud and horrified.
Mostly proud.
“It’s a Russian thing,” she told him, right before leaning in to make gobble-gobble sounds into the baby’s belly - the squeal and giggles in response were happily loud. “It’s an awful idea, but mom’s sobering up from her day drinking so she managed to realize it too. Dinner would have been takeout otherwise.”
The Ifraimovs. Hot, loveable messes.
Speaking of, the manly half of that marriage stepped into the living room - her father had that long, rockstar sort of hair that only worked because his hairline wasn’t receding yet, and he was tattooed from wrists to shoulders. Parenthood came to them when they were young with the arrival of their two girls - polar opposites in just about everything - and they proudly wore their grandparent status attractively. “Beets are common in Russian dishes, and your mother is the only one in this family that likes them,” Mr. Ifraimov snorted, words somewhat accented from his native tongue, and his face contorted into something silly meant for his granddaughter. “Mind if I take her? It almost seems like the next time you bring her by she’ll be running into walls.”
“Of course not,” Wisdom chuckled, giving Amelia a kiss on her sweetly-soft cheek - to which she made a sound that was the baby equivalent of yaaaaaaaaaaaay! Though that could have been because he mentioned the word ‘grandpa.’ Grandpa, yaaaaaaaay! The precious tiny cargo was then handed off to Mr. Ifraimov. “Don’t worry, I side with the rest of you. Beets are ungodly.”
Alright, now with hot hands free, he slipped an arm around Lina and playfully bopped at the hairstyle she had going on there. “Let us know if we can do anything to help with dinner though,” he added. He wouldn’t want to interrupt his mum-in-law’s flow, but desired to be useful while he was technically visiting family.
Any jolly sound from Amelia could make the grandparents melt, it was just a given. “We’ve got this little helper,” Papa Ifraimov play-grunted when the kiddo was hoisted into his arms, and she seemed to excited to get her grubby fingers into that salt-and-pepper hair. He was happy to rob them of her as often as it was allowed - soon enough he’d be table to take her on those fishing trips he’d taken his daughters on, although Lina was the only one that ever really enjoyed them. “I’ll give her tour around the kitchen, you two lovebirds can help yourselves into the cabinet - got some bacon-flavored vodka I distilled if you want to try it out before dinner.”
Jesus, dad. “That’s, uh, that’s pretty well-noted, pops.” Bacon, huh? That piqued Lina’s curiosity tenfold. “You can give her some sweet potatoes in there so she’ll be too full to want any of our stuff and cry about it, by the way.”
Her father paused, and then turned his attention back to Pete for a sympathetic look. “We dealt with one blackhole of a stomach for eighteen years, and you’ve got two to deal with for the majority of your life. Sorry, son.”
“Hey, Amelia. Have diarrhea all over your grandpa. Make mommy proud.”
Father and daughter did the affectionate thing of flipping one another off - it was a common ritual between the two of them, but it was obvious they were very close - before he went off to distract the wife with an armful of cute baby. It gave she and Pete a rare window of just them, and an opportunity to raid the bar cabinet for that bacon-infused liquor because what.
Lina unscrewed the top for a whiff, and daaaaamn. “Hey, take this. It smells like breakfast.”
Of course Grandpa Ifraimov would have bacon-flavoured vodka. Pete assumed it was typically potato vodka with actual bacon soaking in it for weeks, to really get that infusion happening, but he wasn’t an expert like his father-in-law. He imagined the difficult part would be separating the finished product from the globules of fat that floated to the top. Bless it.
“A clean taste - “ Because vodka usually had that stinging bitterness to it, “...with salty meat. Hmmm.” He took the bottle and gave the contents a sniff. “I don’t know about breakfast, love. Smells like a vodka tonic - though I suppose that could be breakfast too, depending on who you are.” Guilty confession: In the past, sometimes it had been him. “Your father should really sell his brews though, he’s quite good at it.”
Someone out there would drink this - maybe not Pete, however. He took a quick taste from the bottle and coughed right away. “....huh, alright then,” and there went a crinkle of that British nose.
Hahaha, aw. “I see someone crosses the line at bacon-flavored vodka, huh,” Lina grinned, undoing the wounded knot of her hair now that their grabby child wasn’t in the vicinity. It fell over her shoulders and she pushed her fingers through it, combing it some, but it really looked all sex-rumpled and debauched as if they had one of their infamous in-public-but-still-hidden escapades. “Actually, I wanted to ease you up a little bit…”
Nothing like a sip of booze to do it, right? A whiff of it was personally enough for her. It always smelled better than it tasted, anyway, and she slid her arms around her English husband to powder kisses against that oh-so manly jaw. “You’re….honestly good with going forward on finding out what happened to your mom, right?” Her hold on him tightened, protectively. “There’s a chance that there’s a loose end that needs to be tied, permanently, and if that’s the case, that’s your call, babe.”
Pete would need more than a sip of booze for this conversation; he was tempted to break into more of Lina’s father’s stash, but that probably would not be polite. He sighed, his arms wrapping around her in turn - and she was such tiny cargo, he just lifted her a little bit and walked with a wife attached to him to the sofa, for a sit-down.
And he liked the sex-rumpled look to those ginger locks. His fingers dragged through for a moment, no rhyme or reason or attempt to really fix anything, but more to distract himself and come up with some kind of response. “I’m alright with it,” he promised. “It’s been too long, not knowing what happened.”
His mum wasn’t the best mum, no. But he still wouldn’t be here without her, when you thought about it, and so for that he was grateful. She deserved a proper funeral, a proper send-off. She deserved justice. “We’ll tackle it together, hm?” Not like he could do this on his own.
No protests in getting comfy for this conversation, and she made his lap her home. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do with you, or for you,” she told him, giving him an adorably obnoxious nuzzle to the side of his face. Lina loved him - more than he’d ever know - and she knew the kind of wound this was to his family. Her family. Whatever happened needed to brought to light and finally put to rest.
Killian wasn’t against getting his hands dirty and neither were they. They did spend the early parts of their relationship committing violent acts when gang activity flooded the area, after all. So whatever they had to tackle together, if it had to do with a little blood and fire? The tiny sorceress was on board.
“Have you mentioned anything to Rom? Or your dad about...this?” Would it better if they waited? Lina didn’t know what the right decision was - if there even was one when dealing with a situation like this.
“I’ve mentioned it to Romany, but mentioning it to my father will just bring up all that old anger again, probably. And we were finally beginning to move past it.” Amelia being born had helped - she was really the olive branch, the peacemaker, since even curmudgeonly old Harold Wisdom couldn’t stand the thought of never knowing his own granddaughter.
His hands found a resting place on Lina, while she was in his lap - slotted there nicely, if he did say so himself - and of course she was wearing leggings. But he would keep it mostly clean in her parents house, just patting her thigh and letting one hand sit in between her knees. “I’ll wait a bit longer before telling him, but not too much longer. I want him to have the peace from it too, to know what happened - I’m just not sure how much time I have left with him,” Wisdom sighed. “He’s not well.”
He’d been past ‘typical’ child rearing age when Romany was born, and then Pete a couple years later - plus all that stress on the job with Scotland Yard took its toll as well. Harold’s mind wasn’t as sharp as it used to be. Now it was at the point where Pete wondered, when he saw his father, if it’d be the last time.
Mrs. Ifraimov didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she managed to anyway, standing by that frame between living room and extra-warm kitchen. Lina’s tiny frame had come from her, and she had chestnut hair with segments of natural red. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but…”
In the background they could hear Amelia’s baby babble (her brilliant attempt to converse with her grandfather, most likely), and she was wiping off the remnants of seasoning off her hands with a small towel. “If you’re worried about your father, why don’t we fly him out here - for good? He’d be too much to handle with Amelia at your house, but he’s more than welcome to stay here. If you’re concerned about time, then...he at least wouldn’t be far.”
Lina blinked blood-colored eyes. Not that she could ever be mad at her mom for contributing to the conversation (you know, until she kept asking whether or not Zatanna was seeing anybody, swingers), but that was an offer she didn’t expect. “Um -” Well. Her mom sounded sober, so it’s not like this was a drunken offer? Still, she glanced at Pete. “What’cha think?”
Details would need to be ironed out, it wouldn’t likely be an immediate thing (yes, she did catch that part where they were investigating the disappearance of the original Mrs. Wisdom), but family helped one another out. And they’d do anything for their son-in-law. Pete had done enough for them, bringing them out here to be there for their first granddaughter’s birth, and to just be closer overall.
Amelia would likely end up being compact ike the Ifraimov women - she had small bones, the chin of her mum, and her father’s colouring. Wisdom was biased though, in that he thought she was the prettiest little sweetheart in the whole wide world - he was just fond of the Ifraimov women in general (even Luna), and really, he’d lucked out when it came to in-laws. Like now. Because he really wasn’t expecting an offer like that.
“Are...you certain?” he asked, because he knew his father was a grumpy Brit that fueled the fire of stereotypes. His mouth was perpetually in a frown, he was often irritated by many aspects of the modern world such as mobile phones, along with prices he considered a rip-off and young chavs who committed fashion blunders. So moving across the pond? To live here?
Perhaps it’d be good for him. He seemed to get along with Lina’s parents when he was here before. Long-term though, who knew.
“If he drives you mad, I’ll figure out something else for him,” Pete chuckled. “Provided that he even agrees to moving overseas. But I’ll talk to him about it. And thank you. I know he’s got a stick up his bum but he’s still my father and I don’t want him to be entirely alone.”
Mrs. Ifraimov couldn’t help but smile, and her daughter knew what came with a smile like that. “I’m a little experienced in the matters of the ass,” she alluded, the entire sentence sounding so weird with that trace of Russian origin. “I will take find a way to take the stick out, do not worry.”
“Yeah she is and yeah she will,” contributed her other half with a grumble and a baby in his arms (whose face was covered in mashed yams, yum) as he re-entered the living room. How could he not add his two cents after the butt play talk? “We will make it work, somehow.”
Gods. Did they really make some underhanded references to anal sex while discussing the possible housing of her father-in-law? Don’t mind her; she had to stifle a quiet little laugh into Pete’s neck before saying anything. “I mean, stranger things have happened - and honestly, I don’t know if he’ll want to run out willingly after he finds out what they do with poprocks.”
Her mother huffed. “What is the slang? ‘Don’t knock it until you try it’?”
“Mom, that’s how you get ants down there.”
Matters of the ass. Pete paused for a moment, those eyes went blinkblink in surprise, and then he just started laughing. Of course he, at some surface level, expected comments like that from his in-laws but then when he actually heard one it somehow managed to catch him off guard. “I doubt he’s familiar with that sort of thing,” he wheezed, and associating both Harold Wisdom and butt play in the same sentence just made him want to scrub himself with a brillo pad and take a dip in bleach. “But who better to teach him?”
Just. Not when Pete was around, because he didn’t particularly want to hear about what his father did with his bum or with poprocks. At all.
Not when Lina was around, either, because she didn’t want any insight on the sexual prowesses held by her parents but she never really did get that luxury, did she? Nope. They were an open book, which was refreshing to people that were not directly related to them.
“Ughhhh, can we not have this discussion? At least with that kind of talk - you guys do know I can lose my appetite, right? We’ll be there in a second, by the way,” she told them with a shoo of her hand. Dinner was ready, but give her a minute to smooch at her husband in private, please. They didn’t get a lot of those private moments lately.
Mr. Ifraimov smirked and poked Amelia’s pot belly. “Let’s go, malyutka, your parents are going to discuss how they’re going to give you a little brother.”
If he wasn’t holding her spawn, Lina would throw something hard at him. No, dad, no.
Oi, a little brother. Maybe in a few years, but definitely not now - specifically not now, this moment, on the sofa, in Lina’s parents house. As sexually liberated as Mr. and Mrs. Ifraimov were, Pete still doubted they wanted to hear their daughter shagging her spouse.
“It’s a wonder you don’t have more siblings,” Pete teased, tugging Lina a bit closer on his lap - his hands were warm, his whole body was that way thanks to his mutation, and he buried his face along the side of her neck. That may have been him nuzzling too, like he was just a big cat - very rarely did he have those moments, but if he could be something besides a prickly British cactus around anyone, it was definitely the person he was married to.
He was grateful for what she’d done to help him find answers about his mum; she knew how important it was to him, even after all this time. “I love you, Red,” he told her. “We’ll practise later, for when we want to give Amelia a brother.”
Just the practise though. Not the actual fertilisation, though the act of getting there was always fun, wasn’t it?
Like hell there was going to be any babymaking on this couch (it was best that they never take a blacklight to any inch of this household, ever), or any babymaking decisions. All she wanted to do was make some damn kissy faces to her husband without an audience considering they were talking about, you know, serious stuff!
Up until her mother came in making comments about taking it up the ass, anyway.
“I think they didn’t want to risk another me,” she groused. They lucked out with the angelic Luna as their first and then probably questioned their life decisions when they birthed a little hellion two years after, but hey - at least she was cute? Shrug. Anyway, point was, she wanted a moment to just kind of...lovingly smother Pete, with arms wound tight around him so tight that she’d hopefully hear a bone crack under the pressure, or something equally romantic.
Not to mention the storm of kisses. Those were definitely happening. “I love you too, and we’ll figure this out like we always do - either drunkenly, violently, or both,” she snickered. “Now let’s eat and hope they don’t actually kill our appetites with their tall tales of fartbox sex, alright?”
No family was without their complications, but at least the one he gained loved him plenty with all their innuendos and vodka.