stykera | MHA #4, Saturday Morning

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MHA #4, Saturday Morning

Summer had been very right last night about good things coming to those who wait. It had been a very good night though Stark's poor new waistcoat and shirt were going to need some buttons replaced. Waiting, it turned out, was overrated at certain times. Like once you'd gone to a friend's apartment for the remainder of the evening, for example.

There had been a distinct lack of space at the dance and afterwards. There was still a lack of space this morning in Summer's bed. Stark wasn't sure how long this was going to last but he'd fallen asleep with an arm around Summer and he was waking up in the same position. Happily waking up in the same position.

He opened his eyem let out a contented little noise, and pulled her a little closer. Maybe they could stay like this all morning. Right here.

"Morning, Summer."

Was he allowed to kiss her awake? He wanted to. He'd settle for very gently stroking her hair which had certainly suffered last night but was still extremely tempting.

[For the gently modded owner of the bed and maybe some other people who knoooows]

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"Mmmm."

Summer was registering all of this very slowly, the responses all feeling like they were being performed from a distance, while the core of her still clung to sleeping. Shifting to ease into that pull bringing her closer, an agreeing little sigh at fingers in her hair, and the process of hearing words, figuring out what they meant and who had said them, before she murmured out something that was probably something like "G'morning, Stark," but you'd have had to be listening carefully to really catch it.

She then started to wonder what time it was, and immediately concluded that whatever time it was...was too early.

Stark always listened carefully to Summer. Always.

"All right?" he asked softly, fingers working through a tangle in her hair that he was definitely responsible for. His other hand was still holding her in place against his side but those fingers were ghosting over her skin.

"Do you need anything? Want anything?"

Edited 2023-04-15 14:09 (UTC)

There was another vague, noncommittal sort of hum at that, because that was far too many questions to deal with right now. A few half-formed ideas of answers seemed to float around in her brain for a moment but there was only one that was clear and distinct enough to warrant the energy to answer Stark's questions:

"Yeah," she said, in full words and everything this time, which did not bode well for the request in general, "to go back to sleep."

"Sleep then," Stark said with a soft laugh. "It was a long night. A very good night. But long."

One of his favorite nights he'd had, if he was being honest with himself. He tried to be honest with himself.

"I'll be here when you're ready to wake up." Probably still playing gently with her hair.

Unless she told him to go but he had a feeling she wasn't going to do that while still mostly asleep, at least. He hoped not, anyway.

"It was a good night," Summer agreed. A perfect night, actually, now that she was thinking back on it, because her brain had defiantly refused to acknowledge her request to just go back to sleep and was waking up and recalling why she was so tired in the first place, and she had to give a soft, appreciative sigh. Everything had gone exactly the way she had wanted it to go, how she'd planned for it to go, how she'd expected it to, and that was so satisfying, after a long night of other little satisfactions.

But...it was over now, and Summer's brain was awake now, and she sighed again, this one slightly different. Because it was over now, and it had been perfect, and she was thinking about promises to talk and how she hadn't yet, because she wanted to have that perfection. And she was thinking about Band-Aids, and fingers in her hair, and how Stark had, essentially, pretty much just said how he was going to just lay there and watch her sleep probably, just, you know, not in those exact terms, buuuuut....

Falling back asleep was definitely out of the question now; her brain was in full scale mode, and so she shifted, pulling away, so she could turn and face him and try not to think about kicked puppies.

"Stark?" she said, bolstering herself and thinking of quick cuts instead. "I think...that...maybe...we should kinda...taaaalk about some things..."

He'd been going for more contentedly dozing than watching her sleep but other than that...

Stark tensed at those words, involuntarily, and dropped his hand from her hair. He took a deep breath before responding.

"About what?" He hated that his voice was betraying his nervousness. Hated that he felt it to begin with. He'd promised to try not to be weird about any of this and he really was trying.

Summer winced a little, at that tension, at that nervousness in his voice, but she reminded herself that if she didn't do this now, then Stark would inevitably go and say something that gave her that warm little twang in her chest, and she'd go and shove everything else aside because, like a shark in the water, she'd have tasted blood and would just want more...

"About...us," she said, and sighed a little again. "About..."

Maybe her brain was just looking for an escape route. Maybe it was just being hypervigilant for a good excuse to abort before it was too late, but, in that pause that Summer thought she was using to search for the right words, she blinking a little, and then frowned, as her attention shifted entirely toward her bedroom door.

"....did you hear that?"

It could have been a fabricated notion as part of a flight-or-fight response. It could have just been Pancakes, jumping off of the sofa in the living room, but she was ninety-nine percent sure she'd just heard something outside her bedroom that was not just a possible bullshit excuse, and she turned back to Stark with a frown, straining her ears to catch more of it.

Part of Stark wanted to ask her what about them. Part of him was going to latch onto this momentary distraction as a way to postpone Summer inevitably telling him he needed to leave and not come back. Because of course that was what she was starting to say, wasn't it? What else could it be?

"I didn't hear..."

Oh, wait. No. He did hear something, now that he was listening and not only quietly panicking.

"Oh. I...yes." He frowned. "Should...do you want me to look?"

He'd need pants first. They were somewhere in here. At least he hoped they were in the bedroom. It was possible none of his clothing was.

Summer breathed out a sigh of relief, that there was something going on in her living room and not that it was just her being an absolute fucking coward.

And then tensed right back up again because, ummm, something was going on in her living room. And were she not so focused on following through on her promise to have A Talk with Stark, she might have been able to piece a few things together, but, in that moment, she was just going through all the possibilities except for the obvious one if she just considered the fucking calander.

"It..." She shook her head a little. "Probably just Pancakes. If it's late, she probably just wants to be fe--"

The rest of that thought was cut off with a very distinct yowl and hiss from Pancakes, and, just like that, Summer was bolding out of her bed, first grabbing her little plasma pistol from her bedside drawer and then reaching for the robe hanging from the back of her door and tossing it on before charging through the door while charging up the gun--

"You touch the fucking cat, you di--"

Pancakes hissed again and went tearing through under Summer's legs to escape into the bedroom and Summer found herself pointing a gun at two wide red headed children who winced slightly and then bit their lip as they looked up innocently at her. One of them, a boy with a ridiculous amount of curly red hair, lifted up a hand almost sheepishly and said, "Hi, Mom."

Summer groaned, rolling her eyes and lowering her gun (and turning the safety back on) and then remembered what fucking day it was.

"Fuuuuuuck me," she sighed. "Fuck prom."

And she looked at these ginger-ass kids who weren't helping her at all with trying to figure out what stupid parentage she was dealing with this time, and shook her head, calling back to the bedroom, "Stark! If you come out here, please make sure you're wearing pants. I've got kids."

Which, apparently, was hilarious to the kids, who set off laughing, and joining in mockingly.

"Yeah, Dad! Put on pants!"

"Yeah, Dad, pants! Don't be gross!"

There was...a loooooooooooooong pause, and Summer was half tempted to flip the safety back off her pistol and direct it toward her own goddamn head.

"Fuck."

Yeah. Nope. No. She deserved this. This was definitely karma. She literally could not be mad at anyone but herself for this whopper of a plot twist that, really, she should have seen coming from a mile away...

Oh no.

Stark had missed out on visiting children entirely last year. He'd been in a bunker at the time.

"I...hold on."

His pants had to be here somewhere, didn't they? He didn't remember his pants coming off in the living room. There were probably some buttons in the living room though. Definitely the suit jacket was out there somewhere.

"Right. Pants!" Pants that he was very hastily pulling on before walking into the living room to see who was calling him Dad. Why was someone calling him Dad?

Because he was their dad, maybe? That was kind of how things things went!

As he was coming out, the girl of the pair was looking up at Summer with a bit of an apologetic pout. "We just wanted to play with the cat, Mom, that's all."

"Are you sure you didn't want to eat the cat?" asked Summer dryly, which, in her defense, tended to be a legitimate question for these kinds of weekends.

"Why would we want to eat the cat?" asked the boy, floppping unceremoniously on the couch, and giving the jacket that was lying across the back of it a suspicious squint. "That'd be gross."

"...she did kind of look like pancakes, though," said the girl, joining her brother with a similar flop.

"Well," said Summer, "her name is Pancakes."

"Why did you name her Pancakes if you didn't want people eating her?"

"You know what?" Summer decided, turning toward Stark and the bedroom. "They're your kids, you can deal with them, I've got to make sure my cat's not suffering from a whole new layer of PTSD."

"They're yours too," Stark protested.

And wasn't that something that he was going to need to overthink later?

"Pancakes looked fine. When she went in your bedroom. I think she's under the bed. I don't think anyone tried to eat her. Why would anyone want to eat your cat, anyway?"

Oh, that was dangerously close to a completely different sentence. Dangerously close.

Edited 2023-04-15 16:30 (UTC)

"You'd be surprised how many people have tried eating my cat."

Yeah, boy, this conversation was really treading the line of context, especially with kids in the room and everything!

But Summer sighed, gave the bedroom door a look and knew for a fact that Pancakes had been through much worse than randomly appearing ginger kids, looked at Stark with a complicated expression that didn't seem to know if it wanted to be withering or apologetic or maybe even pleading, and then turned back toward the kids after making sure the sash on her robe was firmly in place.

"Alright, then," she said, "you're my kids, so I'm sure you've got some idea of what's going on here. We should probably at least get your guys' names."

"I'm Cass," the girl offered, and hitched a thumb toward the boy, "he's Bixby."

"Bixby?"

Jesus Christ, other Summer.

"Cass and Bixby," Stark said, nodding to them both. He didn't know how to take any of this but he was always happy to see children. He'd focus on that feeling for now and try to ignore the other much more complicated feelings that threatened to overwhelm him if he thought too hard about any of this.

"You're here to visit? Us? Both of us? You're...hello. It's good to meet you."

It was good to meet them, wasn't it? He was glancing over at Summer now to see if she agreed. He hoped she did. But what if this just further reinforced her never wanting to see him again?

Summer didn't exactly look happy at the moment, no, but she didn't exactly look like she was doing anything but processing at the moment.

And both kids seemed to be watching them very carefully before Cass leaned in toward Bixby to whisper, not very subtly, "I told you it would be weird if we went through one of the island portals. They don't even know who we are, and Great-Grampa Rick says..."

"Great-Grampa Rick says a lot of things," Bixby reminded her, in a not-so-whisper back, "and is also a drunk, sooooo...."

Their attention shifted back toward their parents, with a note of expectation.

"It's good to meet you, too," Bixby then offered, conciliatorily. "Er, well, this version of you, anyway, obviously we've met you before, but not...you know...before...all...this."

He gestured between himself and Cass.

"...it's weird," Cass decided, with a nod.

"Yeah, no," Bixby agreed, "it is weird."

"They know your family, Summer" Stark observed. He just needed to fill the silence a bit.

"Of course it's weird. It's here. Everything is always weird here. You're here before you could possibly be here."

He glanced over at Summer again, nervously, wondering if he needed to add something else. Something to reinforce that he didn't think these very surprising children were an inevitability or even probable.

"Hm?" Summer turned toward Stark, blinking a little as she pulled herself out of her own thoughts, which were definitely going through reassuring aphorisms about her birth control, and tried to catch up with what was being discussed. "Right. Well."

The small twitch of her smile and the shrug of her shoulders seemed to suggest to Stark that, well, they were here now, might as well lean into it, and she turned toward the couch, clapped her hands together, and announced, "I don't know about you kids, but I could use some coffee. And I might have a box of stale Lucky Charms in my cupboard leftover from St. Patrick's Day, if you're hungry...."

"Coffee sounds good," Stark said. "Or...I could make some food? Or order something. Or we could...take them somewhere?" Show off their ginger children! What could go possibly wrong?

"But I'll need more clothes for that, I think. Not for making food. For going somewhere."

"What...what would you all like?"

"If Mom cooks," Cass pointed out, as Summer definitely disappeared into the kitchen because coffee was necessary at this point, "it'll probably be gross."

"But it's usually fine if you cook, Dad," Bixby offered encouragingly.

"Or we could get...." Cass hummed thoughtfully, trying to figure out what did sound good for breakfast. "Sushi!"

"Or tacos!"

"Ooh! Moooo~oooom!" Cass leaned back on the couch and arched back to make sure her voice followed her. "Does this dimension have ice cream with fliiiiiies?"

There was a pause, and then, "No, just frozen yogurt with bees!"

Which, of course, inspired a chorus of "Yuck!" "Grooooosss!" "Disgusting!" But they were laughing and Bixby concluded it with, "Frozen yogurt is the worst!"

Bees, apparently, though, were fine...or maybe that was the joke.

Edited 2023-04-15 18:07 (UTC)

Stark looked at both children (his children!) curiously. "Sometimes Summer makes very good things. Not just gross ones."

"We could go for ice cream...or something else, and then ice cream? But I'll need a shirt." And maybe pants that weren't missing a button?

"I...I'd rather not eat anything with bugs in it. Let me go upstairs. I'll be right back. Right back. And then we can decide on food. Is that...will that work? For everyone?"

"That sounds like a pretty good plan, Dad," said Bixby, giving him even more encouragement, this time with a confident thumbs up.

"Sure." Cass, apparently, was already distracted by her phone, which she'd pulled out so she could start checking GrubHub to see what was even available on this island/dimension. "That works."

There was a pause from the kitchen, almost as if Summer wasn't sure if she should contribute or not.

So help her, if he was just using this as an excuse to bail on her and dump her with these two kids....

But, of course, she knew Stark wouldn't, not if he could help it, so she just kept her response to a, "Yeah, okay, whatever."

Stark would never!

"I'll be right back," he said. "I promise."

And he was, several minutes later, fully dressed now complete with pants not missing any buttons and holding tightly to the hand of another redheaded child. Only this one was blue.

"I...found someone upstairs. This is, this is Ziya."

"I'd like breakfast too," Ziya said. "Portals make me hungry."

Both Bixby and Cass tilted their heads back to see the other person, realized that wasn't going to work, and then flipped on the couch so they were kneeling on it, facing the back, resting their elbows on it and smiling at the new addition.

Well, Bixby was. "Hi, Ziya. I'm Bixby. That's Cass. Stark's our dad, and Summer, our mom, is on the kitchen making coffee. We're deciding what to eat."

He liked to make sure everyone was up to speed.

Cass just held out her phone toward Ziya. "There's a place here called Mooby Burger. Have you had it? Is it any good? I'd check if people like it on RikRok, but it hasn't been invented yet."

Summer just emerged from the kitchen with two very large mugs of coffee and handed one over to Stark with a lift of her eyebrow.

"You just found her?"

"She was waiting for me," Stark said. "Upstairs."

"I knew where Papa lives," Ziya said. "I thought he'd be there." Not down here but Aunt Chiana was going to love hearing that Stark had a different companion than he had the last time Ziya had visited. "I've been here before. And yes! I've had Mooby Burger! They have french fries and Mama says Papa ought to feed me better food when I come to visit here but at least I'm not only eating cupcakes. I think there might be better burgers. And french fries. I like to go to the bakery. Do you go to the bakery?"

Summer had listened carefully to this and, now reassured that she didn't need to start wondering if Unity was actually her grandmother or that Rick had possibly gotten into some really sketch activity with some Meeseeks that would have put blue skin into their genetic codes, blew on her coffee and just focused on drinking it for a while.

"We've been to some bakeries before," Bixby offered, "but not the one here. This is our first time visiting here! This is the dimension where Mom and Dad met."

"FH-001," Cass added, importantly, turning her phone back toward Ziya with the coordinates on it as if to prove it, as if the other little girl would have doubted her on that fact.

Bixby was then looking at Stark with a speculative look on his face and then a little bit of a scheming grin as he then asked, "Do they serve anything with bugs on it, at the bakery?"

"You don't live here?" Ziya asked. "I don't live here either but I visit when I can to see this Papa. I live on Moya with Mama and my Papa and Aunt Chiana and Uncle D'Argo and Uncle John and Aunt Aeryn and Uncle Rygel and Pilot!"

"Where do you live," Stark asked Cass and Bixby, "a different Fandom? Or somewhere else?" And did they live with both parents? That was important to know! "And I don't think the bakery has bugs on anything. They don't usually. I've never ordered any. Not on purpose. But...your mother might know?"

Stark was not going to overthink the words 'your mother' either. Obviously.

"Why do you eat bugs?" Ziya asked, eyes wide.

"We don't really eat bugs," Bixby admitted, with a bit of a lopsided, almost apologetic grin. "Not really. Only when we visit the dimension where all the ice cream has flies in it because giant spiders invaded it when Great-Grampa Rick's ship was trying to protect Mom."

"It's a whooooole big story," Cass added, with a roll of her eyes interrupting the scrolling through of....something on her phone. "But it's the dimension that has the best Ball Fondlers movies out of anywhere, so we go there a lot."

"And you get used to it," Bixby assured Ziya, "the flies in the ice cream."

"They're like crunchier craisins," Cass added (helpfully?).

And, Summer couldn't help but notice, look at that absolute convenient avoidance of anything that even remotely answered any of Stark's questions.

"I've heard about the fly ice cream," Stark said. "Summer always says it's delicious. But Summer isn't always correct about food."

Fashion, obviously, she was always correct on.

"I think we should avoid flies, for today. And bees. And...other bugs. But we could have anything else? Or nearly anything else. If you like?"

He'd also noticed his questions were going unanswered. But that wasn't terribly surprising given who they were.

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MHA #4, Saturday Morning

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