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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]
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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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?
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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."
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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.
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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.
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"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?
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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."
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"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.
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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...."
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"But I'll need more clothes for that, I think. Not for making food. For going somewhere."
"What...what would you all like?"
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"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.
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"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?"
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"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."
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"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."
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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?"
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"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?"
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"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?"
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"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.
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"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.
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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.