WHAT: When you practice making a cake but your kid has the audacity to become mobile for the first time WHERE: Darla WHEN: Today WARNINGS: It's fluffy just like Finn STATUS: Complete
Just like they’d decided during their Horde birthday weekend, Catra and Adora were practicing baking birthday cakes. Their little one was only four months away from their first official birthday, and their moms were determined to make it the biggest deal they could manage. And, with Catra expressing that she wanted to make all the birthday cakes – for Finn and, in the future, for the twins, too – they’d determined they needed to get their practice in early.
Of course that meant Vallo had to go ahead and be a jerk with the whole portal situation. Not once but twice had people been forced to go through one of these portals to bring their loved ones home. And there had been sightings of other odd, out-of-place portals that she didn’t anticipate stopping any time soon. Compounding that with the loss of another devastating list – including Teela and Lance – their happy little family activities had been pushed off while they were handling the situation. Grayskull had vanished, leaving Marlena, Cringer, and the cubs to settle on Darla as best as they could.
Currently, as Vallo was wont to do, everything had settled down. How long it would last was anyone’s guess.
But they were taking advantage of the quiet while it was here. Marlena was off at work, and Catra and Adora had put Finn on a play mat in the kitchen while they worked together on getting the batter together, and they were babbling away, tossing in plenty of their new favorite word. It was still so sweet to hear them saying mama, but at this point, it had faded into more of a background noise sound.
The first year’s cake was a smash cake, and according to the research Adora had done, they were usually healthier than your typical birthday cake for adults. Babies weren’t supposed to get a lot of sugar, so this cake had very little sugar included. It was described as a lot more like banana bread, and as such, Adora had bananas laid out in front of her and picked one to peel.
“Can you crack the eggs?” she asked Catra. “We both know you don’t want me taking that job. Unless you want eggshells included.”
“Mmhm,” Catra sounded out, taking a moment to peek at Finn one more time (she was the helicopter parent, and she accepted no criticism) as they played with some tupperware because for some reason, that was fascinating. Their day off together had started out well: breakfast, a walk, a short family nap, and now an attempt at cake for a chill afternoon.
It was a nice bubble to be in after the past several weeks. Catra wasn’t entirely out of the fog of this is bullshit, but she was working through it.
Ingredients were set out on the counter to measure out - two eggs, almond flour, vanilla extract, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. They had an additional recipe for frosting but that would come a bit later. “Is cake without sugar actually–” An egg was picked up, and she knocked it against the counter for that first official crack. Some of the egg whites got onto her fingers, and she wiped them clean on her apron. “Any good? I’m totally up for the healthy thing, don’t get me wrong. I just feel like… I’m lying to my child.”
“I don’t know,” Adora shrugged. “I guess this is how we find out, right?” She was only going based on what she’d been reading, but she was kind of on the same line of thought. A baby going through a sugar high, when they were this tiny and didn’t know how to handle all that, sounded like a bad thing. And it wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of good treats just in the world that weren’t saturated in sugar and still tasted good.
“If it sucks, we know to find a recipe with a little sugar,” she went on. “But I do kinda agree that minimal sugar’s a good idea. They’re still so little. I don’t want to stunt their growth or something.”
“Sugar doesn’t stunt growth,” Catra drawled, tossing the eggshells into the trash before wiping her hands off one more time. Then she slipped behind her wife, arms enclosing around her waist, and she gave the nape of her neck a kiss. “I’m good with it! I am. I think the anatomy of a baby smash cake is going to be easy for the most part - it’s the decorating that’s gonna be tricky, I think. Do we even have a theme in mind?”
Unicorns? Rainbows? Space? Baby Shark? (She might scream if it’s Baby Shark.)
“Not really,” Adora admitted. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. They had plenty of things for decorating purposes, but she hadn’t gone into this venture with one in mind. “We could do a cute little sunshine? That seems easy enough to not mess up.”
“We couuuuld,” Catra hummed, squeezing her midsection for a few seconds - and giving her neck another smooch, a purr rumbling against her skin - before pulling away to grab the whisk to work on the eggs. “I’m probably overthinking it. Not like it really matters, anyway? It’s all going to end up in one pile of cake mess all over their face.”
But that’s what she got for daring to look at that bullshit Pinterest website. That whole thing had never been up Catra’s alley, and then – kind of like her TikTok phase – she scrolled through it one night. When she looked up at the time, three hours had passed.
The distraction had been nice, if anything. They had lost Teela a second time, which was a blow soothed only by the fact that she was most likely back with Adam. Lance had hit Catra the hardest, and that wasn’t a wound that was closing up anytime soon. Maybe not ever.
“Exactly,” Adora agreed with a chuckle, turning to press an extra kiss to her wife’s cheek. “But it’s still nice to make it pretty, so we can have pictures for your albums. We can come up with something. That’s what these trials are for! We’ll come up with something good.”
Finn was still mama-ing and baba-ing away while they slapped tupperware together, all good signs that they were alive and well (and Catra only peeked at them once after that, she ought to congratulate herself). Spirit came by to give the baby a lick on the cheek and then sat dutifully by their moms to see if any special crumbs would hit the floor.
“Could do one of those little corny ‘first trip around the sun’ themes,” Catra contributed, grabbing a fork to hand it over to Adora – they needed those bananas smashed up before they could toss it in with the eggs and vanilla. “Maybe make the frosting yellow and orange?”
Finn kept babbling. There were these little slappy sounds against the kitchen floor, and something brushed along her calf, but she chalked it up to the dog.
Right, she should be mashing bananas. Adora accepted the fork and got to work, nodding her agreement to Catra’s suggestion. “I like that!” she agreed. “I think that would be really cute. Gods, they’ve almost made a whole trip around the sun! I’m gonna cry, you know. Just be ready.”
She felt a nudge against her calf next and waved a hand down in that direction reflexively. She didn’t even spare the nudge a glance, assuming it was Spirit, maybe Ivy if she was feeling particularly social. “Not for you, go,” she scolded gently, moving on to peel the next banana and keep mashing.
“Duh, no shit you’re gonna cry,” snorted Catra, rolling her eyes. “I think I have at least twenty pictures of you mid-sob over something Finn did, and they’re all gonna make it into the next scrap–”
The distinct sensation of little fingers curling into her leggings was felt, with a little voice going, “Maaamaaa.”
Her eyes snapped down to the floor. Finn was by her feet, grinning with their little tooth (there were more beginning to pop in, felt right below their gums last time they did a sweep of their mouth). “How did you even–”
Finn let out a squeal and threw their hands onto the floor to help them get on their knees, and they moved. Fast. Spirit followed them to stick his nose against their butt.
Adora hadn’t completely noticed how quiet Finn had gone in the background until that little voice was suddenly right at their feet. Her gaze followed Catra, and her jaw immediately dropped when she saw Finn down there. She had just assumed it was Spirit – who was nearby enough to make Adora wonder if they had pushed them over here. That theory was quickly disproven when Finn took off crawling.
Finn was crawling.
“No way they just started doing that!” Adora gasped, looking at her wife in disbelief. “That’s so fast! I know this is crawling age, but are they supposed to be going so fast?!”
Adora vocalized everything running through her mind. Finn was literally just sitting there, playing with innocuous kitchen equipment, and suddenly they were – moving? They were moving. Finn was moving. They just decided to get on all fours and move.
Just like that.
“What the hell,” she breathed, pointing over towards their little speed demon. “No! You – you stop that!”
Finn crawled in circles, giggling, and Spirit kept on walking behind them with a wagging tail.
Adora stared for another moment, slack-jawed, before she realized what was going on fully and started fumbling her phone. She managed to pull it out of her pocket and pulled up the camera to start filming. No way she wanted to forget this, and she’d have it to send to her mom.
“Our kid’s a little speedster,” she joked, grinning at her wife. And if her eyes started watering a bit, well, who here was surprised?
Efforts to continue their cake experiments were paused indefinitely. Catra took off the apron and laid it across the counter, and dropped to the floor to sit, legs crossed in a butterfly position. Finn saw that one mom was immediately accessible and did their speedy crawl right over to her, climbing into the space like this was a nest just for them.
“One day you’re gonna move out of this spaceship,” she huffed, heatlessly glaring (her eyes weren’t wet, shut up, she was allergic to having emotions) at her own little bundle of soft baby that was growing up way too fast. “And it’s going to hurt my feelings. Who said you’re allowed to get big and do things for yourself? Because we sure as hell didn’t.”
“Agreed!” Adora exclaimed, laughing. She stopped the video but made sure to crouch down and get several pictures of her favorite two people cuddling. Spirit took his opportunity to flip down and join in on the spontaneous kitchen floor cuddles, too, which Adora also snapped pictures of for posterity. “You are way too small for big things like this, Finny. You’re gonna make your mommy cry.”
And Mama – but again, that was a given.
“I’m not crying,” Catra protested with a growl and scooped Finn up into her arms to smother those cheeks with kisses. They were happy – with cheeks a little pink still, another bout of teething on the horizon – and their giggles escalated. The sound never failed to overwhelm her with love.
Finn tolerated the love-bombing for a few seconds. They began to wriggle in her grasp, and she had to sadly unleash them back onto the floor. They toppled over Adora next, purring up a squeaky storm.
Adora fell into a sitting position with a relative amount of grace, making sure to look as if she’d been dramatically bowled over for the sake of Finn’s giggles. She stashed her phone into the pocket of her leggings and promptly used both free hands to pull Finn into her chest and press a big kiss to their nose.
“I’m on a mission to find a way to keep you this little forever now, I hope you know that,” she told them, looking into their bright blue eyes. “I’m not ready for you to be changing so much, little potato.”
Catra’s ears were damning to her mood. She was looking so pouty. Finn becoming mobile was a big thing, and they’d been talking about it – preparing for it, especially with the last sweep they made of Darla to ensure everything was properly baby-proof – but that all felt recent and she was sure that they had time. Joke’s on her.
“Time’s a thief,” she sighed, and then laid back down on the floor in a flair of dramatics. Finn went to mimic Adora and kiss her back, except their mouth was open the whole time and it was like they were trying to devour her whole nose.
Adora easily dodged that wide-open mouth with a laugh, shifting to kiss at Finn’s cheek instead before she turned them back around to see their mommy sprawled across the kitchen floor. It was a good thing it was still so clean in here, or Adora would have a lot more concerns about Finn crawling around and Catra lounging on the tile floor.
“It’s going by way too fast,” she agreed, lifting Finn and letting their little legs dangle over Catra’s face. “But we’ve seen them when they’re, like, seven and five, so I guess we should have been expecting this.”
If Finn’s cheeks ached from all the smiling and laughing they were doing, they didn’t let it bother them. They had their funny moments out in public giving strangers their judgment eyes, but when it came to family – to their moms – they were always grinning, always purring.
Hard to wallow with all of that happening.
Catra made chomping noises at their feet, as if she was a shark ready to take a nibble out of this baby. Finn loved it but it also meant they kicked her in the face. She could deal. “Guess that means we can start making cities with cardboard boxes that they can destroy,” she realized, smirking at the thought. “They’ll be asking for that She-Ra tiara before we know it.”
“Mamaaaa!”
Oops. Adora hadn’t thought the feet move through, but she pulled Finn back as soon as the foot made contact with her wife’s face. She also, very unnecessarily, brushed a glowing hand across Catra’s cheek. Healing was unnecessary for just a little kick, but she felt better doing it, even if it wasn’t making a big difference.
“Cardboard cities and probably actual play pens now,” she suggested. She was okay putting Finn down now – which she did – but only because Spirit was trailing after them like a good boy. Adora knew he would bark if there was any trouble, and she was sure she’d seen Melog lurking around here somewhere. Finn was in good paws.
Finn wasn’t going far anyway. They were excited to explore, but they were also lured back into their play mat that had stuff. Catra turned her head, watching their cute little tailed-butt on the move, and observed as their back was to them while they grabbed a tupperware lid to (most likely) chew on.
She didn’t make any attempt to get back up. Catra scooted until her head fell onto Adora’s lap, ears flickering. It was a sign that she wanted them rubbed.
“Hey Adora,” she mumbled, the way she looked at her soft. “Our kid’s gonna be an adult soon.”
“Shhhh, no they’re not,” Adora protested with a pout, reaching down to brush a few strands of hair off Catra’s face. “We’ve still got seventeen-plus years before we get there, don’t scare me.”
There was no doubt Finn was growing and much faster than Adora would have liked. She remembered what Future Catra had said – This age goes by really fast, Adora. And she was right. Sometimes it felt like she’d blinked and Finn had gone from a wriggly little thing who, frankly, didn’t do much to so much more grown, with teeth coming in, decipherable words breaking through the baby babble, and now they were turning into Speed Racer or something.
Catra moved again, this time the upper-half of her body just sprawling over her life’s lap, head bunting at her a little with an insistent touch my ears, goddamnit, don’t make me beg. Finn, for the moment, was stationary, but with this development now an official thing they were going to have to keep an eye on them like a hawk.
“Days with just me and them are going to start getting a little nuts now,” she hummed. A baby that stayed still was easy to handle, she thought. One that didn’t - and if Finn was anything like her, they’d have bursts of energy where they just wanted to move move move - was going to be an adjustment. “At least we were both here for this one too, yeah? I always get paranoid that they're gonna experience a first without us being around.”
Or more accurately, without Adora around. They caught the culprits responsible for all the portal fuckery, and one of them was the person responsible for that notifications hack that shattered her world for a whole fifteen minutes - and even now, she could remember that dreaded feeling that Adora would miss out on all of this. The first words. The first crawl. The first steps.
The first birthday.
Her mind couldn’t help but go back to Lance, and all the things he was going to miss with Yrsa, and all the kids he and Atreus were supposed to have.
Obediently, despite the delay, Adora reached out to give her wife what she was desperately wanting: ear pets and scritches. She straightened enough that she didn’t have to rely on her arms to keep her upright and went to work while she listened to Catra and her thoughts drifted to exactly what she was implying.
She remembered the disappearance scare like it was yesterday. It was hard not to; she’d panicked immediately when she’d realized her name was on a disappearance notification despite being very much in Vallo. She’d known immediately how scared Catra would be, how worried, how completely shocked. She hadn’t gotten home in time to avert it completely, but she’d managed to reverse Catra’s fears pretty successfully by just showing up and insisting she’d never been gone.
But she could have been. Any one of them could have been. Some that were on that list probably were now because that was how Vallo worked. She could have disappeared the second she stepped out of Catra’s sight and never saw Finn roll over the first time, or lift their little body off the floor, or say their first word, or crawl. Catra could have been left alone.
She wasn’t. Adora refused to let her be.
“We’re not not around enough to miss firsts,” she reassured Catra, entirely certain in that assertion. They were the main adult influences in Finn’s life. They had others to count on, even with the bout of disappearances, but Mama and Mommy’s absences were few. Not nonexistent, because they did take time for themselves when they needed it, but rare.
Catra hummed in agreement. Life changed a lot with Finn and while she occasionally missed being able to do whatever she wanted when she wanted with Adora, she wouldn’t dream of changing a thing. Her life had been a constant stream of surviving, of fighting, of running on the fumes of rage and spite, of destroying, and now – it was this.
A kitchen floor with her family sprawled on it. Cake ingredients that still needed to be mixed on the counter. A baby that turned around to look at them, blue eyes shining bright, smiling, because the two of them were their whole world. She didn’t want to miss a thing. She didn’t want Adora to miss a thing, and they were lucky that Vallo didn’t need She-Ra the way Etheria had (thanks to the ensemble of hero-types, how obnoxious) that they could focus on what they wanted.
They were lucky that their one scare was just that: a scare, and not some reality Vallo decided to rip them apart with. The thought wracked her with guilt.
It hadn’t been a scare for Atreus.
“Finny,” she whispered loudly, beckoning them over with her hand. “Come over. Mama should fluffy-check us.”
Finn didn’t know what that meant, but having a mom talk to them was enough to lure them in with an excited crawl over. They were moving like they were practiced in it, and cemented the whole idea of little people being wild, impressive creatures for Catra.
Oh, the fluffy checks, one of Adora’s favorite thing about her cat-people family. It was usually reserved for times of anxiety which, honestly, she wasn’t feeling much of right now. The thought of disappearing was never a fun one, but she had confidence that it wasn’t going to happen. Maybe it was misplaced confidence – that was more likely than not, given this place and the people it had taken from them – but she reveled in the feeling anyway.
Nothing, not even Vallo itself or the anti-Outlander jerks, were going to take her away from this life with her family. At the very least, if she went, they would all go, too. They would be reunited at home or in the next world, she was sure of that.
“All the fluffy checks,” she agreed as their little one closed in on them, still speeding along like they’d been doing this for ages. “My favorite Magicats deserve it.”
“Bababa-ahhh,” was Finn’s answer to all of those words, practically catapulting themselves onto Catra. That made her giggle, and they both purred, a loop of vibrations from child to mother, all on top of mama.
Their legs were squirmy and she had to stabilize them a little on top of her, but they ended up sitting on her stomach and bouncing their butt on her with some claps. It was cute how excited they were over just being with them. This age got them so many smiles (at least to the people they knew, Finn was very much stranger danger to others), so many funny faces, so many peek-a-boos. “You have told me before how you couldn’t wait for Finn to be here for double the fluffy,” Catra said, grinning up at her. “One day it’s going to quadruple so you better get some practice in.”
Adora made sure each of her babies got a hand rubbing their fluff. She was very practiced at knowing just the right pressure to pet with and, although she wasn’t all that stressed at the moment, it had a relaxing effect on her, too. She attributed a lot of that to the purrs, one of her saving grace from childhood onward.
“Gods, that’ll be so loud,” she teased with a smile. “I don’t think I’ll be able to walk around here without purrs vibrating from all directions.”
“You live a rough life,” Catra snickered, holding Finn by their little waist so they wouldn’t topple over by accident (she didn’t want them to conk their head on the hard floor, and she was trying to hold off that inevitable First Fall as long as she could), but they were obviously loving the attention.
Their hands went to dig into Adora’s shirt, fingers flexing like they had claws to knead with. The motion was overall familiar.
“Okay baby – we have to finish your cake! We’re trying to make a perfect one. For you.”
Mommy was small potatoes right now. Their eyes were on Adora since she was the one making them purr louder.
“Oooor we can pick up the cake making later and have playtime?” Adora suggested. The hand that had been on Catra was removed (sorry, wife) so she could reach out and scoop that baby up again, pressing a kiss to their forehead as she continued scritching under their chin with one hand. “What do you think, Mommy? We could make Finn and Molly race!”
Finn was just being the happiest, smiliest little ham. They even laid their head on Adora’s shoulder, putting fingers in their mouth to drool on a little. Catra wished her phone wasn’t on the counter now. They were both so goddamn cute that she might have to go to the gym and hit a punching bag about it.
“Guess those two eggs are gonna have to go into Spirit’s bowl,” she sighed, since it was fine for him to eat some raw protein. “Mushy bananas are gonna have to be tossed, but. Fine.”
Catra sat up and gave her wife the biggest smooch on the cheek, wrapping her arms around her and Finn. “We can play.”