babysitter slash life saver

Hallelujah for summer school.

Frank padded back from the fridge, bare foot, wearing a drab t-shirt that had been washed enough that the collar and sleeve cuffs had gone past that soft stage to the point where the fabric looked nibbled. No shirt, no tie, no need to spend every afternoon in the classroom, or his office. No questioning why he’d picked teaching out of all the other lines of work he could’ve gone into after he’d limped out of the hospital as he eyed a six inch stack of term papers in front of him. This was practically bliss in comparison.

He settled back on the couch, popped the cap on the can of soda and settled back in. Bare feet up on the coffee table, his laptop settled on his thighs. Maybe it’d been a little less ungainly when he’d still had his office set up at home, a little easier to block out the distractions of a house full of people – and the buzz of the TV in the background. He wasn’t gonna begrudge why he’d lost it though, especially not now.

His brows furrowed as he tapped his way through the first paragraph of the essay he usually would’ve printed out to save himself spending hours on end staring at the computer screen. Kit might not’ve been ready to admit it, but he needed that full house, they all did. Four people cracked and broken by the horrors of what could go on out there – supernatural or not, it was all the same, it all put a shiver down his spine that left him shrugging against the velvet soft t-shirt. They’d been holding each other together when those pieces tried to crumble, but with one set of hands gone that grip had become precarious and – fuck! Frank sighed, lamenting not pouring a couple of fingers of vodka or bourbon in the bottom of a glass instead of just swigging the undoctored coke straight from the can. Too much of that slippery slope had been revealed when Katja had left.

Those soft, greedy sounds in other voices had filled the house too often before and after she’d come back from wherever she’d gone with Bernardo. They’d left him awake too often, laying in bed, wondering how far down that slope Kit was gonna slip before she got back and hauled him back up it, away from that dark place he’d been in before. His grip was still there on Kit’s wrist, Kace’s too, but how long were they all gonna be able to hold on?

Glancing at his phone, he wondered whether he oughta reach out. Maybe she’d slam the phone down on him just be association, but he was willing to bet she’d give him a few minutes at least. If there was one thing he could do, it was plead a case and, despite the broken heart he was sure Katja was holding together, he was sure it was one she knew the circumstances of, even if they were ones she hadn’t wanted to pay close attention to when there’d been some other woman having a good time in the bed that’d been hers for a time.

Later. When he technically wasn’t on the clock. Flexible the summer was, but not that much – and fuck, yeah, maybe he was a little worried about stumbling too deep into that mine field and having it blow up in his face.

When the phone buzzed a second later, he started, grabbing for the sliding laptop as he glanced at its screen, half expecting Katja’s name to right there on screen. Freyja. Talking of mine fields. Frank set the laptop aside and answered. "Hey," he chirped, bracing himself for the verbal jab Freyja usually aimed all too well at him. ”Yeah, I’m home, just …” Working. Or he had been apparently. Maybe he ought to go and dig out his armour from the trunk in the attic, strap it on before Freyja got to work busting his balls.

Screw the clock. He wasn’t gonna manage much while Freyja was here anywhere. The house would probably be empty later, Kace closing up at the Diner, Kit … Kit working, he hoped. Frank shut it down, set it aside, well out of baby reach, although Bo wasn’t yet big enough to be the terror Hazel had been the minute she’d been able to balance on sturdy legs and get into everything they hadn’t bolted tight shut.

He’d done a cursory clean up, draining the last of the can of soda, cleaning the rest of the detritus of working from home off of the coffee table and was watching what he’d been half listening to on TV earlier – a documentary about the revolution, the taking of Fort Ticonderoga (a possible topic for his Revolutionary History class come September. Frank looked up as Freyja bustled in, immediately grinning at Bo. ”Hey bubba. What’ve you been doing to your …” Mama.

Hazel eyes went wide, his nose wrinkling as Freyja launched straight into just what his nephew had been doing without waiting for him to finish. Oh yeah, each mention of what could come shooting out of a baby added another layer to the miasma of scents that filled the house. He stood, approaching without any compunction about how his nose was gonna burn. ”It’s gonna be a real shower,” he countered, reaching out for their lil Michelin-man as Bo giggled and lit up. It was all cause he saw his daddy’s face right there, but he wasn’t gonna get butt-hurt about that. Uncle Frank appreciated the baby time, just as he had after he’d gotten over the fear that he’d somehow damage Hazel by just holding onto her.

”Why sleep when there’s a whole world of interesting things going on all around ya, huh?” he cooed, settling Bo in against his ribs, one forearm tucked under those chubby thighs as he started to bounce Bo lightly. ”Take your time up there. I’ve got the little guy. There’s clean towels.” And a scatter of more feminine things in the bathroom that Katja had left behind. He’d tucked them away, but he hadn’t wanted to box them up – this wasn’t how any of that ended. ”Let’s see if we can give mama a break, hey?” As a little fist tightened in his beard, Frank chuckled and gripped Bo’s chubby wrist, pretending to eat his fingers.

The first couple of minutes he did a slow tour of the living room, murmuring soft to Bo, bouncing him in a light rhythm that was hopefully gonna finish the job the car ride over here might’ve started. Frank peered down tentatively as he felt Bo’s head settle against his collarbone, a gentle weight that always left a warmth in his chest. Kids had never been on the cards for him, but being an uncle had put that what if in his head.

Each move after was made like he was handling live explosives instead of a dozing infant. Gently, gently, stop when a twitch had Bo snuffling against his chest. Settling down on the couch with Bo sprawled on his chest, those little rosebud lips pursing stubbornly before the adorable little face slackened in sleep. Frank kept up the light pat of his fingers against Bo’s back til he heard the quiet footsteps pad back downstairs. ”Under the sink, in the kitchen,” he called out lightly. As she slipped back into the living room, he lifted his chin, as though indicating the kitchen again. ”You can throw them in the machine if you want – if you haven’t gotta rush off.” She would at some point, Theo would be due home from work in a few hours and unless after school activities pulled Hazel away, she’d be home too.

Pride curled Frank’s lips before he took another glance down at Bo. ”It wasn’t all that hard, was it buddy?” It could’ve been though, if he’d been Freyja instead, fractious, covered in just about everything that could possibly come out of a baby. ”Door’s always open,” he promised. Amusement tugged at his lips as he looked back up at his sister-in-law. ”I read him my freshman term papers on the declaration of independence, he was out like a light before I even reached the first ‘Lin Manuel Miranda’.” And there were gonna be a lot of those. Hamilton had a lot to answer for in the way his students related everything of the period back to the show. ”Bad morning huh?” Bad week by the sounds of things. Theo hadn’t wanted to head back to work as quick as he had to, he wouldn’t have wanted to leave all this weighing heavy on Freyja, but there wasn’t much choice in the matter.

Tagged: FREYJA DAMASCA * Word Count: 1461

He’d been weak as the proverbial baby (having spent enough time with Bo and Hazel, he’d realised that the idiom was absolute horse shit, get a baby’s fist in your beard or your hair and you realised they were scarily strong) when they’d finally released him from the hospital. Being wheeled to the front entrance of Walter Reed in a wheelchair like he couldn’t make it under his own steam, which, alright, he couldn’t, but admitting it was another thing entirely. Theo had been the one pushing it, making stupid jokes he could only half remember now, grinning (past the lines of worry on his face) when he’d groaned out a laugh. All that sitting had been exhausting – much, he imagined, like taking care of a kid for any real stretch of time.

Theo hadn’t commented as he’d poured him into a shower. Hadn’t complained once in the fortnight he’d stayed with him – just to make sure he wasn’t gonna fall and not be able to get up, or worse, slip into some sort of black pit of misery and grief. Sure, it was practice for what had come afterwards with the kids, but when Theo was having to lace his shoes for him and spoon food into his mouth on those really bad days when the pain would almost paralyse him, it was mortifying for him. Apologies had spilled out every time, followed by a wave of gratitude. Every single time Theo had made it clear that he needed to shut up, it was what family did.

Coaxing a fractious baby to sleep and running a load of mucky clothing through the machine without complaint was what family did now. Theo hadn’t bitched a bit when he’d done exactly the same. Frank smoothed his hand as gently as he could manage over Bo’s back, huffing out acceptance. He hadn’t been as cute as the bub here when he was making the mess. ”You wouldn’t be clogging anything up,” he assured her. With the four of them here it’d been running daily, having a woman in the house shifting the slower domestic pace of a bachelor pad. Sheets washed weekly, puffing on a line out in the yard, clothes scooped up instead of trailing across the bedroom floor – not that he’d ever been really lazy with it. You couldn’t been when you were serving, not unless you wanted demerits.

Frank’s hand still as Freyja lowered herself down, anticipating that little head craning back up to take back up the fight against the injustice of those daytime naps. It was funny how kids seemed to spend all their time fighting them when adults longer for the days when they could just pass out for a few hours in the middle of the day. ”It’s just like opening a jar, you put in all the struggle and then someone else comes along and makes it look easy by just doing the last bit.” When Bo spent most of his time with his mama, she was probably the one that did all the exciting things. By the time anybody else showed up he was tuckered out enough to go down easy, or at least not put up much of a fight.

”You’re welcome. A curse on American history, that’s what he is.” Frank’s grumbles rolled away fast, his lips curling at her. ”An actor, he wrote Hamilton, had everybody going ape sh… ape poop for it and ever since there’s been at least one mention in every essay, every test I set on the revolution.” It’d given a lot more kids an interest in the subject, but it was one he had to wince his way through correcting every damn time.

Neither Bo or Hazel were gonna inflict that sort of thing on their college professors. They were gonna be model students. Hell, Bo’s first word was probably gonna be spreadsheet, or genetics. Something had to be filtering into that little skull while Freyja worked from home. Probably not exactly what his mama wanted him to learn, but it seemed as though Bo was already showing signs of her stubbornness. ”Oh, little man, why’d you have to torture your mama that way?” He was smothering a grin at the idea of Bo christening Freyja the minute she got him clean though. He’d learned pretty quickly with Hazel that diaper changes were just a chance for more mess to be made, literally.

Looking up from Bo to his mama, Frank shook his head lightly. Bo hadn’t been letting it happen. Past tense. At some point the streak would’ve broken anyway and he’d likely have gone back to being the total angel of a baby he appeared to be for almost anybody else. ”Sounds awful. I meant what I said though. Door’s always open on those bad mornings. I’m only teaching a couple of mornings this summer. So you come and impose any time you need to get some work done and the little stinker’s trying to make sure you can’t. Even if it’s just to get a nap … which you’re welcome to take if you want one.” He’d chosen to work from home too, instead of tethering himself to his office the way Theo had to.

”Just like his daddy,” Frank breathed, grinning down at Bo. New or not, it wasn’t easy to juggle. Breaking point would still rush up, no matter how many times you’d gone through something. Then you found yourself driving across town, covered in baby pee, looking for a helpful set of hands. He set his head against the back of the couch and grinned, looking practically beatific. ”Absolutely. It’s bliss – other than fighting the Hamilton assault. Feels like being back in school myself and getting all those summers off. I’ve been thinking about making taking a week out at the end, going to see our parents. You guys going anywhere before Hazel starts school?” They’d taken Hazel to Japan when she’d been younger, but flying with one kid had to be easier than doing it with a teenager and a baby.

Tagged: FREYJA DAMASCA * Word Count: 1013