Fern is hiding in the bathroom again. He shakes his head sadly, listening to his father's door-muffled complaints to his da about the state of Fern's clothing from the day before (muddy) and of the bathroom door (locked). Fern's Papa is smart in lots of things, but he never has caught on about the important things in life. Take mud-pies, for instance. Fern's Papa thinks that mud-pies are something that somebody can make cleanly, without getting their clothes and their sneakers mucky and wet.
Fern sighs for his father's ignorance and kicks his legs against the white porcelain outside of the toilet bowl.
Now Fern's Da, he knows about mud-pies, and when Papa gets started Da just smiles and cleans up, because Da knows that country visits don't come very often so Fern has to make the best of the mud he can get to while he's there. And besides, it isn't all Fern's fault that he got muddy; the twins were helping him make the pies, and it was all Amber's fault he fell in the pond. Only thing Fern did was splash some water at Beryl, he didn't even get him too wet, and Amber had to go and push him in with that Frown on his face like he'd killed somebody or stole their cookie. Fern wrinkles his nose at the mirror and wonders why he always gets into trouble for everything. The twins start the trouble too!
Sometimes.
The visit was good, though. Fern's Tana Jessamine makes the best cake and cookies ever, and Tala Lupin and Tané Hemlock can do a lot and a lot of fun stuff, and listen to secrets without laughing or looking like they want to, and Tané Hemlock can make any scrapes, scratches, or cuts better fast as anything besides. Even Tana Birch and Tané Oak and Tana Sedge and Tané Ginger came to visit, with Mica, Topaz, Hazel, and Hyssop in tow. Hazel and Hyssop are kind of fun, even if they do go too fast most of the time. Fern wishes he had longer legs, then he could keep up with them. Mica and Topaz don't really like to play with Fern, 'cause they're too big, but once in a while when they're in a good mood they tell stories, and their stories are the best, so they aren't too bad. But Fern still likes Beryl and Amber better.
But the new cub will be better even than Beryl and Amber, Fern knows he will. Fern's parents and all his other relations don't know, 'cept for Tala Lupin and Tané Hemlock, because it's their cub after all. They don't know that Fern knows, but they want it to be a big secret, so Fern is keeping it for them-he hasn't told Beryl or Amber even. They want to make sure he heard them say, and although he wonders what they're making sure of, grownups always have been weird, so he let it go.
He imagines what the cub will look like while he waits for his papa to calm down. Maybe it will have yellow hair like his da and Tala Lupin have, and green eyes like them, or maybe it will have black hair like its papa and black eyes. Or maybe it will be mixed up from both of them. Fern hopes that if it is, it will settle for black hair and green eyes, because yellow hair with black eyes might look weird, and he wants his cub to be the most beautiful cub ever so nobody can tease it. He remembers how Mica and Topaz used to tease him about his white patch when he was little last year, and how much he hated it, and he thinks that his cub will probably be too little to bite them like he could.
Frowning, he reaches back and tugs his white patch thoughtfully. Papa likes it because his da, Fern's grandda, had white hair, and it reminds him of that, but Fern still wishes that he could have had either all white hair or all orange hair instead of orange with a patch in it. Then Mica couldn't say that he looks like a patchwork kitten.
Still, it's not so bad. Da certainly likes it, and he says that it makes Fern special, which Fern likes a lot better than being a patchwork kitten. Special is a good thing. Kittens get hugged and kissed and dressed up in doll clothes by Mica.
Slowly, Fern realises that it's quiet out in the apartment. His papa's stopped complaining. Happily, he bounces off of the toilet seat and goes to open the door.
But wait... maybe it's too quiet. His da should be washing dishes or something that would make a little noise. And Fern knows what too quiet means-they're kissing or something gross like that.
Sighing in exasperation, he gets comfortable on the toilet seat again and starts waiting for noise.
The afternoon is as hot and stuffy as only a summer afternoon in the city can be. Sineult mixes up lemonade for Fern, who he found still hiding in the bathroom only a few minutes ago, his little arms folded in a pout and his hair soaked to his head with sweat. Fern's stubbornness is worse than even Onyx's, Sineult thinks to himself, smiling at the happily gulping cub across the table.
"Y' need a thinner shirt," he tells his son seriously, leaning his elbows against the tabletop. "Else you'll sweat all away."
Fern nods. "M'purpish'm," he says through a mouthful of lemonade, and Onyx, head down in the freezer on a hunt for popsicles or ice cream or something else cold enough to keep the heat away, bursts out laughing.
"He has his da's accent," he teases, coming up with a package of popsicles and closing the freezer lid. Sineult sniffs.
"'S not an accent," he says, leveling a stare that is maybe a little more smiling than he had meant it to be at his husband. "'N accent's somethin' that happens in areas. I'm jus' original. Say it again, Fern, an' swallow firs' this time."
Obediently, Fern swallows, licking his lips. "M' purple one?" he repeats on a question. "No sleeves," he explains, before burying his face back in his glass. Sineult considers, then nods and goes to get it.
Fern's bedroom, situated on the better lit side of the building, is even hotter than the dining room, sunlight shining in through the window and baking everything in its heat. They had moved, as soon as Onyx got past the little contracts and Sineult had worked his way up in the flower shop, to an apartment big enough to house a growing toddler cub and two adults, one with a space-demanding home job and the other with a dislike for clutter. The new apartment is bigger but it's also closer to the top of their building, and the sun shines in over the tops of the lower buildings and makes things nearly unbearable in summertime.
Sighing, Sineult picks up a cluster of fallen clothing off the floor and lays it in Fern's hamper in the corner. A solitary sock meets the same fate, and two plastic cars and a wellworn stuffed blue frog go into the toybox before Sineult finally settles down to the business of searching out Fern's purple tanktop.
At sixteen, Sineult had been always afraid of losing Fern, seeing a thousand little similarities between his own cub and his mother's second baby, Sineult's little dead half-brother. He had taken every precaution he could that first year, and watched Jessamine handle Jade's twins while Jade recovered from the sickness that had almost killed them. Lupin had been a great help to everyone that year, in babysitting and housekeeping both, but most of all for Sineult, just by being there. He and Onyx together had eased Sineult out of a panic and into more natural cub-bearing instincts, like not running to Jessamine every time Fern so much as sneezed.
Spruce and Jade had gotten along pretty well too. Kindred instincts seem to be made for more than one cub at a time, and Jade never had problems with taking care of both, once he was used to it. Most of his worries had been because of his bad pregnancy; things like the cubs' health and their imagined slowness to talk or walk or crawl. He had been worried over Amber's blank stare (his only natural expression other than a glare) for weeks, even after Jessamine had assured him half a dozen times that neither of the twins were blind or anywhere near it. But he, too, had mostly gotten over the small irrational upsets to focus on the bigger picture.
Sineult still feels immensely in love whenever he thinks about the way Onyx and Spruce handled those first few weeks. Or the silly grin on Onyx's face when they woke up that first morning after the birth and he realised that he was really a father. Sineult had been more than happy to let his husband fuss over the both of them while they waited for Jessamine to come and pick them up.
The males, he recalls, had been like a pair of puppies, bewildered and proud, tripping over themselves to find new ways to get out of changing diapers. Holding fresh cubs they didn't mind, but get near them with a smelly cub and they ran. Other than that, they had been involved in everything, and most of it had been done without the least nagging.
Although maybe some of that is a little sugarcoated by five years of no more cubs.
Sineult frowns, fishing the required shirt out of its drawer and going to give it to Fern.
It's not like they haven't tried to have more cubs. Jessamine says that maybe it's just too soon yet because Kindred aren't very fertile most of the time, but Sineult is sure that his human blood should lend something to it. What good is being half human if you can't even get more cubs out of it?
"Fanks," Fern says around a mouthful of popsicle upon being handed his tanktop. He drops the fast melting treat unceromoniously on the table, swipes his rainbow stained tongue halfway across his face in a vain attempt at getting it clean, and pulls his old shirt off over his head to trade it for the other. Smiling helplessly, Sineult sinks into the chair across from his smirking husband.
Maybe he should just be happy with the cub he has.
