Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
It had been a relatively quiet night after he’d… gone back to bed. Although Merida had been up pretty early, coming into his room and crawling into bed with him for cuddles.
And then there’d been the whole business of feeding everyone and getting everyone off to school. Bay had managed to make eye contact with Pete once or twice and had done his best not to make it weird. He thought maybe he’d done an okay job.
Now it was just him and Merida and Flynn, waiting on Pete to get back from delivering the kids. He’d mentioned something about needing to do groceries today and Bay had offered to go with him. He figured that would prove he wasn’t making things weird, right? He sure hoped so.
He also hoped there was going to be a repeat of last night because that had been really good. He wasn’t going to assume anything, though. This was down to Pete and his comfort levels.
Flynn was lying on a blanket on his back, playing with the little halfmoon thing that had toys hanging over him.
His little legs were going and he was talking away in mostly gibberish as he chewed alternately on a teething ring and his fist. Merida was in Bay’s lap, telling him all about her princess and how she was getting ready to go slay the dragon in the woods.
“But what if it’s a friendly dragon?” he asked her.
She tilted her head, and her eyes went wide. “A fwendwy dwagon? It’s a fwendwy one?”
“Sure, why not?” He liked dragons. Surely there was an animated movie where dragons were friendly. He just had no clue; this is where Pete would have the knowledge to help him out with an example.
She lit up and nodded. “The princess and the dwagon can be friends! Like you and me, Unca!”
“There you go, that would be perfect.” He raised his hands and roared, but not too loudly. He didn’t want to scare her or Flynn.
She giggled, and then she roared for him. “Can the princess be a dragon? Can we both be dragons?”
She looked at him as if he held all the answers to every question in the world. And it was amazing and terrifying all at the same time.
“Oh, that would be awesome. Yes, everyone can be dragons.”
“Yay!” She cheered, throwing her arms up and almost falling off his lap.
He caught her before she did and pulled her back to his chest. “I’ve got you!”
“My Bay!” She kissed him happily. “Love you!”
“I love you too, honey.” He hugged her tight.
She beamed at him like he was absolutely the center of the world, and he didn’t quite know what to feel about that. Part of him was honored, part of him was tickled, and part of him was devastated because this wasn’t supposed to be his. This was supposed to be his brother’s.
He wrapped her tight, blinking hard. She wasn’t going to understand it if he started crying, but the grief had come out of nowhere and it hit him hard.
She hugged him tight and then started patting him. “There, there. There, there. Merida loves you. There, there.”
“Thank you, sweetie. I love you too.” He kissed her cheek and let her go, smiling, feeling more composed. “So we’re all friendly dragons, right?”
“Yup, we’re friendly dragons and we breathe…” She squinched her face up as she thought. “…cotton candy!”
“Oh, I like that. The pink airy stuff.” He roared a little again and breathed out, pretending it was cotton candy.
Pete walked in the house, face wreathed in a smile. “Are we roaring?”
By way of an answer, he roared at Pete.
“Now you covered in pink cotton candy!” Merida crowed. “We fwiendly dragons!”
“Yay!” Pete scooped up Flynn. “We’re friendly dragons, baby boy! Yay!”
Flynn threw his arms up. “YAY!”
Bay laughed and stood, flying Merida around too, making her squeal with happiness.
Pete glanced over at him, gaze warm and happy. “Good morning, Bay.”
“Morning.” He smiled back. “We’ve got grocery shopping this morning, right?”
Pete nodded and flew Flynn over to see them. “We do have a very exciting day ahead of us. Thought maybe we could all go have lunch, too, and enjoy the day. Pretty soon, we’ll have all four of them home during the day all day long. We should get our two-on-two time while we can.”
Bay thought it was an improvement that his first reaction to the mention of all four kids home all day long was not panic. Or at least not much panic.
“Lunch sounds good.” He’d text Will and tell him to move any meetings he had to later this afternoon.
“Yeah, so do you need to work this morning to make up for it?” Pete shrugged, pinked. “If you’re free, we can hang out.”
He liked that Pete wanted to spend time with him. “I just need to send a text and then I’m yours until this afternoon.”
Pete nodded for him. “Come on, Merida. Let’s all sit down here on the floor and draw a picture of your dragon. I’d love to see how she looks. What color do you think we need?”
Merida beamed at him. “Pink! All dwagons are pink!”
Bay felt his eyebrows go up. He was pretty sure that wasn’t quite true, but then they were all pretending to be dragons that roared and blew out pink cotton candy so who was he to judge?
“Can I please be a purple dragon? I feel purple.”
Merida seemed to ponder Pete’s words, then she nodded. “Okay.”
“I’ll be blue, if we can make Flynn orange,” Bay suggested. “Let them all be different colors of the rainbow.” Rainbows were even better than pink, right?
“Oh…” Her eyes went huge. “Wainbows! Bay! Wainbows!”
Pete started giggling, his eyes dancing.
“Yes, I think rainbows would be even better than pink.” He stuck his tongue out at Pete.
“I love rainbows.” Pete plopped down on the floor and grabbed the crayons.
Somehow this did not surprise Bay in the least.
He watched Pete and Merida color, grinning at the bizarrely shaped dragon Merida was making.
He did his texts, reorganizing his day.
“Would Will like to come to lunch?”
He blinked up at Pete, frowning. “What?”
“Will? Would he like to join us? He’s been very kind.”
“Oh. Sure, I can ask him.” It just hadn’t occured to him. He supposed that made him a bad person. He added a to his text chain.
Will sent back.
He chuckled. .
Huh. Score one for Pete.
“Where are we eating?” he asked Pete. “Will’s gonna join and needs to know.”
“Somewhere child friendly. So no white tablecloths.”
Well, that didn’t help him, but he bet Will would know somewhere.
“Will says Zak’s would be good—what do you think?” he asked Pete.
“Perfect.” Pete added eyebrows to his dragon and Merida giggled madly.
Pete grinned up at him. “I love an all-day breakfast…”
“Yeah? I’m assuming they’ve got stuff Merida and Flynn will eat?” He figured Flynn was no problem. They’d give him some fries or some bread and he’d gum them to death.
“Are you kidding? The pancake queen?”
“Pancakeys!” Her cheer filled the room.
He laughed. “Okay. Let’s go do our groceries so we can get the queen her pancakes.” Only she was also a princess and a friendly pink dragon today, too.
“Ooh. You want to go put on shoes, sweetheart?”
“Okay. I go wif Bay.”
She was so cute. “Yeah, we’re all going together, honey.”
“Uh-huh. I go wif you.” She ran off to get her shoes.
“Do we need to change Flynn or is he good to go in that onesie?” He was dressed and just needed to slip on his shoes.
“I’ll check his diaper and that will answer that question.” Pete didn’t have to look so goofy.
Of course maybe he just needed to get out of the house.
Bay stood and found his sneakers, slipping his feet in and lacing them up. Then he hunted up his wallet.
Pete took the baby up to change his diaper, Merida came down, and she was adorable, smiling wide at him.
He held out his hand and she came running over to take it. “I go wif my Bay-Bay.”
“Yep. You and me and Flynn and Pete. We’re going to meet Will for lunch, too.”
“Will? Hims nice?”
“He is. He’s been here to the house a few times to bring me papers to sign.” He wasn’t sure she remembered, though, as they were never actually introduced. “He’s also the one who organized the pre-cooked meals we sometimes have. He’s a good guy.”
“’kay. Should I bring hims a picture?”
Pete came down. “Grab your picture, honey. We’ll put it in the diaper bag.”
That answered that. And it would save them from having to add the picture to the kazillion on the walls, the fridge, the cupboards, basically every flat surface in the house.
“Are we all ready to go?” he asked, grabbing the keys to the minivan.
“We are. Let’s go have a family day!” Pete sounded so… cheery.
It looked like orgasms agreed with him. Which, yeah, was obvious.
He led the way out to the van.
“I appreciate you doing this with me,” Pete offered as he loaded Flynn into the car.
“It’s not fair that so much falls onto you.” And the business practically ran itself. Or at least, Will was able to do ninety-nine percent of it for him. It seemed all that had been needed was him letting go of some of it. He found himself inclined to let even more go every day, too.
“It’s my pleasure. Seriously. This is the family of my heart.”
“I think they’re your family of more than just your heart, Pete.” He held them together.
“I—I think so.” Pete beamed at him.
They got in the car and he started it up. “Do you have the address for the grocery store or do you just want to direct me?”
“I’ll just show you. It’s not terribly far.”
“Okay.” He headed out toward the main road. “We have a big list?”
“Define big. Mostly, it’s the basics—bread, milk, cheese, eggs, oatmeal, butter, flour, and sugar.” Pete rolled his eyes. “We’ll have the two oldest for an extra meal and a snack over the summer.”