#poor nanni you will be vindicated by time | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

goodlucktai · 4 years ago

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it’s a better place since you came along

the adventure zone taako & angus mcdonald 7k words

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“So, you must be here about the job,” the old man goes on. “To tell you the truth, I’d just about given up on finding a decent nanny. When can you start?”

Taako stares at him. There’s an alarm klaxon blaring in the back of his brain, along with a shrill inner voice advising him to “abort, motherfucker, abort!”

***

In which Taako answers a general “help wanted” ad that actually changes his entire stupid life.

There’s a baby crying somewhere.

Taako, left waiting in the foyer by a harried maid, has nothing else to do but tap a foot, twist one of the rings on one of his fingers, and count the long seconds that the plaintive wail continues to echo through the cavernous house.

Listen, he may not be a very good dude, just in general, and for a healthy plethora of reasons—but there’s a prickling sense of unease growing in the pit of his stomach, as one minute passes into two, and the sounds of distress go unheeded.

What in the fresh fuck, he thinks, when another member of the house staff drifts through the room without any sense of urgency. If he knew shit about magic beyond a few travel-handy tricks and the occasional intuitive transmutation, he’d assume this was some sort of elaborate illusion. Maybe a sort of test played on unsuspecting hopefuls who came to answer the help-wanted ad.

Unfortunately for Taako, he remembers all-too well what it feels like to be an unwanted child, outcast and always alone. As it turns out, he has a very particular Achilles’ heel and he’s not overly thrilled to discover it.

“Well, I didn’t need the job that bad,” he tells himself, as he gets up to single-mindedly fail this stupid test. And nevermind that he kind of really did.

‘Confidence is key’ and ‘fake it till you make it’ are two mantras that Taako could live and die by, so it’s with long, unchecked strides that he crosses the grand foyer and chases the miserable cries up some stairs, down a long corridor, and finally into an out-of-the-way bedchamber at what must have been the back of the house.

The cries stutter when the door clicks open, and Taako gets a glimpse of a tiny round face peering at him through the bars of an ancient-looking crib. The sudden appearance of this strange elf in his nursery seems to have surprised the little human, but not for long. After about two seconds, he screws his face up and screams with renewed vindication.

Taako winces, his sensitive ears twitching back at the onslaught. This is way above his paygrade, but he used to babysit younger kids in the caravans while their parents were busy or drunk, in exchange for a hot meal or a few coins. He’s not totally out of his depth here.

“Hey, little man,” he says by way of hello. “Trying to bring the roof down, huh? No, I dig that. I wasn’t gonna say anything, but this house of yours is ugly as hell.”

Taako doesn’t raise his voice, because what the hell would be the point? There’s no way he’s winning that contest of wills, and nobody wants some lunatic shouting at them when they’re this fucking distraught, anyway. He just crosses his arms on the side of the crib and leans down to get a good look at the kid.

The baby’s face is tacky and snotty, dusky skin flushed darker with exertion, curly hair a tangled mop. But he’s a cute little guy despite himself, probably a year old or thereabouts, not that Taako is in any way a decent judge of that sort of thing. As Taako talks to him in a conversational tone, his awful, heaving sobs peter out.

The tearful gulps are better. The way he lifts pudgy arms up to be held, not so much.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Taako says, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder. “I’m not even supposed to be in here. You have no idea how culturally insensitive people are when it comes to elves and babies. Your mama walks in and sees me holding you, and then she’s calling the guard, and I’m getting hauled off for attempting to spirit her little heir away, and we both perpetuate an archaic myth that all elves are equally capable of and greedy for voluntary childcare. Let me just say—from personal experience—that is not the fuckin' case.”

But he reaches a hand into the crib and lets the little human clutch at it. Tiny, clumsy fingers wrap around Taako’s much bigger ones and hold tight. The baby’s eyes are wide and curious now, soaking up Taako’s every word without a damn clue what any of them mean.

Taako almost forgot he knew how to do this. It’s been months since Glamour Springs, since Sazed ditched him on the road. Taako’s been living a half-life, made up of odd jobs and never staying for too long in any one place, and for all that it’s absurdly one-sided, this is the longest conversation he’s had since then, too.

“One of us is pretty fucking pathetic,” he confides. “And it’s not the screamy baby.”

“Ah, this is where you’ve gone,” a voice from the doorway says.

Taako jumps in alarm, and looks around in time to watch a man step into the nursery. He bears a striking resemblance to the baby in the crib, though he’s graying at the temples and his face is lined with too much age for him to be an immediate parent. Grandparent, probably. Distinguished, dressed in a suit that probably cost more than the entire cumulative worth of everything Taako currently owns, leaning heavily on a walking cane.

He doesn’t look as though he’s about to ring the alarm, but Taako is still a little keyed up. Given the way he’s been living, the feeling of getting caught, even for a moment, activates his fight or flight response.

“Sorry,” Taako says lamely. “I heard him crying.”

“I don’t doubt it. His parents, my daughter and her husband, died recently. An accident on the road,” the man says. There’s some sorrow there, but it’s pushed back and away. Compartmentalized. “He came to live with me, but the transition hasn’t been an easy one. It seems as though all he’s done is cry.”

Taako doesn’t melt even slightly for the poor kid, because he’s made of sterner stuff than that. But he does let him hold onto his hand for a little while longer. It’s not hurting anything.

“So, you must be here about the job,” the old man goes on. “To tell you the truth, I’d just about given up on finding a decent nanny. When can you start?”

Taako stares at him. There’s an alarm klaxon blaring in the back of his brain, along with a shrill inner voice advising him to “abort, motherfucker, abort!”

It wasn’t a nanny ad. It was just a ‘general help wanted in exchange for room and board’ type of deal. He wouldn’t have shown up to take the job in the first place if it had specified providing 1) cooking, 2) companionship, or 3) childcare, and that’s for damn sure. He believes in playing to his strengths, and while vapid charm is certainly one of them, being personable and likable for any extended period of time is not.

And Taako absolutely doesn’t know what to think of this old rich guy who seems to be operating under the illusion that thirty seconds is plenty of time to get enough of a read on some rando to then trust your child to them. For real, and from the bottom of Taako's heart, what the fuck?

He’s only been acquainted with this particular child for about five minutes, but his ears go back and his hackles go up at the idea of someone just walking in off the street to take charge of him.

Maybe there’s some crucial insanity element to parenthood that Taako just isn’t fucking picking up. Maybe total and complete willingness to just ditch your kid at a moment’s notice is part of the package. Sure would explain a few things about Taako’s childhood.

But… this old manor house is clearly in the middle of nowhere. Two hours from the nearest settlement, where the job posting was hiding beneath other flyers on the board in the square. Taako wandered the woods all afternoon and almost gave up finding the place before the chimney smoke tipped him off.

It’s remote. Safe. And, at a glance, more comfortable than any of the inns and caravans Taako has lived out of since his auntie died.

He’s not qualified for this position, but since when has that ever stopped him? It’s not like he went to culinary school, either, and for awhile he was one of the most famous chefs on the continent. A baby can't be that much work.

Fake it till you make it, he thinks, and then faces the old man with a smile.

“Hell, I’m already here. Might as well start now.”

Aside from Taako, there are three other members of staff on the books, and none of them are full-time. The maids come in every other day to do the cleaning and the laundry and bring in groceries, that sort of thing. The groundskeeper only works the weekends.

They like Mr McDonald well enough, the girls confide in Taako over tea on his first night there, and the pay isn’t bad, but he’s forgetful. Doesn’t think to eat until he feels hunger pains, that sort of thing. Don’t be surprised if you get paid twice some weeks, or not at all others.

“He’s just not interested in running a household, I think,” the older of the two imparts, ancient at seventeen for all the weariness in her eyes. “I’m glad he finally found someone to take care of the baby. I felt bad about him crying all the time.”

Baby Angus had seemed to surprise both teens by being agreeable and downright adorable, perfectly content to be tucked into the crook of Taako’s arm and soothed to sleep by the rumble of his voice.

Did any of you try, like, holding him? Taako wants to ask acidly. Seems a little fucked up that Taako, of all people, is more on top of this than anyone else. But the maids are little more than kids themselves, and it seems as though grandpa isn’t completely with it.

About a month after Taako first wandered in, grandpa proves it.

“It was before Angus was born,” Mr McDonald says, digging through the many drawers in his study, looking for some expensive rich person thing he’d acquired at auction four years ago. There’s an empty crystal tumbler sitting on the liquor cabinet, next to a half-empty decanter of whiskey. “We went to Goldcliff for a charity fundraiser. Marquis proposed to my daughter that night. You remember, Taako?”

Taako, halfheartedly poking through stuff on the desk while Angus chews on the end of his braid, replies, “Sure do, homie. Hell of a party.”

He finds a photo in a stack of letters and pauses. Two humans are pictured with their arms around each other, handsome smiles on their faces for the camera, a baby cradled tenderly between them.

At the bottom, in looping handwriting, someone wrote ‘Marquis, Angela, and Angus.’ There’s a little heart drawn under the names with such care that it, in itself, is something of a revelation.

Angus’ parents wouldn’t have let him cry himself sick in a faraway room. They wouldn’t have let some stranger be holding him now. They abandoned him, but not on purpose. Not the same way Taako’s family did.

This kid was loved. He’s due love. And all he has is an absent grandpa and a shitty elf looking after him.

“Check it out, Ango,” Taako says quietly, holding the photo up so the baby can see, carefully out of reach of those sticky fingers. “Your genes are killer. You’re gonna outshine the whole damn world.”

He pockets the photo with a sleight of hand he perfected at ten years old, and then guts some ugly painting in the service hallway in the name of repurposing the frame, and then he and Angus stage a tactical retreat.

The nursery was too depressing, just in general, so one of Taako’s first acts as nanny was to move all the baby stuff in with his. He had his pick of any of the second floor bedchambers, and he chose one overlooking the overgrown gardens, with a pretty bay window that it only took like two hours and a handful of stubborn Prestidigitations to scrub clean.

He enlarges the photo, slides it into the frame, transmutes it to look like a more professional job, and then sets it in place of pride on one of the empty shelves.

“Gang’s all here,” he says. He bounces Angus a few times, eliciting a toothy smile from the kid.

Lordy, Taako thinks, she’d be laughing her ass off if she could see me right now.

The thought comes out of absolutely nowhere and disappears just as quickly, sliding right out of his mind like water through a sieve. Then Angus makes a sudden dive to grab one of the charms hanging off the brim of Taako’s hat, and he has more immediate things to worry about.

Living in a house is weird. Having the run of the place is even weirder.

Taako is certainly not the type to sign up for extra responsibility, and he’d be the first to say as much to literally anyone who asked. Keeping himself alive has always been trouble enough, and now he has a whole ass extra person he’s in charge of, too.

But as time drags on, he realizes he’s been pretty solidly assimilated.

When McDonald forgets to give Catherine the grocery allowance before he fucks off on one of his bi-monthly business trips to Neverwinter, Taako forks over his own gold without feeling the sting of it too badly. He practically writes his own checks around here, anyway. He can make up the difference whenever.

When crotchety old Boniface came in from the gardens looking for an answer about the freshly broken fountain, he bypasses McDonald’s closed office door entirely to demand guidance out of Taako instead. Taako is in the library, laying on his stomach to supervise Angus’ painstaking and artistic destruction of a probably priceless but unfortunately racist oral history Taako found on one of the shelves, and gives Boniface the go-ahead to gut the old eyesore.

“If it dies, it dies,” Taako says plainly, passing Angus a new red crayon. Boniface, pleased that he’s allowed to demolish something, makes it a point to ask Taako about these things first from then on.

When Ezra shows up in Taako’s suite one morning with tearful eyes and an ugly burn from the temperamental furnace in the basement, neither of them stop to question why she ran all the way up here. They’re both reasonably intelligent people, after all, and Taako is quick to cast a nonverbal Helping Hand. He doesn’t need to overthink it. The burned skin on Ezra’s arm is shiny and red, but repaired.

The girl surges forward to hug him, visibly rethinks it, and then changes course and scoops Angus up for a hug and a noisy kiss on the cheek instead. Angus shrieks in bald delight, and Taako finds himself smiling.

So, yeah. It’s weird, the whole thing is weird, but he wouldn’t say it’s bad.

McDonald is a kind but largely absent presence in their lives. When he’s home, he’s shut up in his study. Angus hardly seems to recognize the man anymore, only watching him with solemn brown eyes from the comforting circle of Taako’s arms. It doesn’t really sit well with Taako—he didn’t take this job to upstage any relatives or be a replacement parent—but he’s already nanny to a precocious two-year-old, he can’t also be nanny to a seventy-something-year-old retired scholar. If McDonald wants to be a part of Angus’ life, that’s on him. It can’t possibly fall on Taako’s shoulders.

“And even if it did, I have a bad back,” Taako informs Angus. “You’ll have to do the heavy-lifting for me, sweetpea. How’s that sound?”

“Okay, Taako,” Angus says gravely. If there’s a tiny part of Taako that’s fucking delighted every time this tiny miracle says his name, he squashes it down good and hard and no one is the wiser.

It feels a little bit like nothing exists outside this spacious manor house. The extensive grounds might as well be a magic barrier between Taako and the rest of the world. It won’t last—nothing good ever does—but for now he allows himself to pretend that it will.

Taako and his little shadow swing into the kitchen around noon one day to find Catherine in tears.

This is so far from the norm that Taako actually draws up short in the doorway. Angus toddles right into the back of his leg, loses his balance, and plops down hard on his padded bottom.

“What’s this all about, darling?” Taako asks warily.

Catherine is sharp in all the places Ezra is soft, and while it makes her much easier to understand—a girl after Taako’s own black, shriveled heart—it also makes her approximately one million times more difficult to comfort, as likely to bite at a helping hand as accept one.

At the first sign of her vicious temper, he’s gonna grab his kid and bail. There’s fruit and bread in the larder that’ll see them through to dinner, and if not, he's not above bribing Ezra to run interference.

But Catherine just lifts her head out of her hands and says, “I burnt the stupid soup!”

Taako blinks. He stands still so Angus can use one of his legs as leverage to pull himself back upright, and cups the back of the boy's head in silent praise when he manages it on his own.

“Okay,” Taako says slowly. He can piece this shit together. “The soup is burnt. And you’re cheesed about it because…you feel really strongly about soup.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she snaps, but it’s without any real heat. “I just. I can’t get anything right today.”

Ah. Okay. So it’s one of those.

He hesitates for a moment, and then leans down to scoop Angus up and balances him on a hip. Angus knows not to toddle into the kitchen unsupervised, and rarely gets to toddle in at all when there’s cookery going on.

Taako himself rarely goes in. It feels too much like tempting fate. But his feet carry him forward, and he leans over the pot of thick and creamy chicken and dumplings, and right away he can smell the problem. It caught on the bottom of the pot and scorched.

He’s never worked in this kitchen—and he never will—but he remembers the steps. It’s mise en place. He reaches into the spice cabinet and withdraws a small tin shaker.

“Cinnamon,” he says at length, offering the tin to Catherine.

She stares at him, losing some of her steel for a moment. “Really?”

“Really,” Taako says, and firmly steps back. The six-second exchange has left him feeling tense and sick, his appetite fully and completely fucking out of the picture.

Angus is a perceptive little monster, and settles more heavily into Taako’s arms. He heaves a very pointed sigh, something he started doing to communicate that he’s feeling particularly safe and content. It makes Taako’s chest hurt in a much different way than impending panic attacks tend to, and he presses a kiss to the kid’s curly head.

“Thanks, angel,” he says.

“You’re welcome.”

“Holy shit, Taako,” Catherine says, looking up from the soup with awe in her eyes. As he watches, she tries another spoonful, and then she actually laughs out loud. “It worked!”

He finds himself searching her face for—sickness. Shortness of breath. Something.

It’s stupid. The people he killed in Glamour Springs didn’t show signs of death for days.

“I didn’t know you cooked,” Catherine goes on. “Could you teach me?”

“I don’t,” Taako blurts. It comes out sharper than he meant for it to, sudden and a little bit too loud. Catherine’s smile tapers. Angus lifts his head off Taako’s shoulder. Breathe, idiot, Taako tells himself. Be a fucking person for two seconds. “Cook, I mean. I don’t cook. Or, uh, teach. I’m kind of useless. Pretty, though.”

He flips his hair. It makes Angus giggle, but Catherine isn’t an easily-amused toddler, and she’s not buying it.

Her eyes are sharp, and seem to peel through layers of Taako’s bullshit like a knife. And then she scoffs, and mimics his hair flip with her wrist even though her hair is only about two inches long, and the tension drains out of the room like someone pulled a plug in the floor.

“You’ve been teaching Mango to read,” she says dryly. “And Elvish. And magic. But okay, Mr I Don’t Teach.”

“He’s my fucking protege. That shit’s different!”

“Shit!” Angus agrees cheerfully.

“Whatever. Now that I know you’re secretly a fountain of knowledge, I’m dragging you in here the next time I fuck up a recipe.” She studies him for a moment, and adds, “You don’t have to cook, Teach. If it bothers you. I just…I need help sometimes.

Taako feels himself relenting. This house is turning him into a fucking pushover.

“I know, Cat,” he sighs. “Try to find one person who doesn’t.”

“Alright, little man,” Taako says, tugging Angus’ collar straight. “What are the rules?”

“Hold your hand, don’t talk to strangers, aim for the eyes if I can reach them, knees if I can’t,” his boy recites gravely.

Next to him, Ezra stifles a snort of laughter. Boniface, waiting by the loaded carriage, looks reluctantly amused. Catherine says, “Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to give you a kid?”

“Uh, your boss,” Taako says without looking at her. He stands up from his crouch as the front door closes, and they all turn as McDonald comes down the steps to join them in the crumbly courtyard.

“Are we ready, boys?” he asks with a smile. “Neverwinter is waiting.”

Honestly, Taako has been sick with dread over this trip for the past two weeks, but he wouldn’t know how to go about explaining that. And he sure as hell isn’t sending Angus off alone with his absent-minded grandfather. The kid probably wouldn’t make it home.

It’s not as though Taako has been sequestered in the manor house for the last five years. He’s ambled into the settlement with the girls now and then, has gone farther up the road to buy from caravans for Candlenights gifts, has let himself be bullied, cajoled, blackmailed and bribed into helping Boniface lug imported plants home from the train station.

But this is fucking Neverwinter. The Jewel of the North.

“Taako? You okay?” Angus says from somewhere near his elbow.

“Just dreading three hours on the road playing I, Spy with you, boychik,” he lies smoothly. “Go pet the horses so we can get that out of the way.”

Angus looks mulish for a moment, but he does insist on petting the carthorses before they take the carriage literally anywhere, so he lifts his head and crosses the courtyard with great dignity. Taako watches sharply until Boniface rolls his eyes so hard Taako can practically hear it and hefts Agnus up in one huge arm to better reach the giant creatures without running the risk of getting fucking trampled.

“I’m making the salmon at home tonight,” Catherine says abruptly, a non-sequitur that takes Taako by surprise. “If I don’t fuck it up, I’m gonna cook it here, too. So don’t be late, Teach.”

“I’ll a hundred percent eat your share if you’re late,” Ezra adds. Her smile looks a little strained.

Taako has not been subtle. He’s been freaking out right out loud where anybody could see it. Get it together, asshole, he coaches himself helpfully.

“Cat,” he says earnestly, “your salmon is literally the only thing I have to live for.”

She groans and pushes him away from her. Angus has finished with the horses and returns to Taako at a run, even though they’re all going to be walking back across the courtyard to the carriage in like one minute anyway.

McDonald is handing out a few last minute instructions. They’re mostly things that have already been taken care of, errands that have already been run, the ushe. The girls nod along politely, but there’s a level of uncertainty lingering above them like a cloud. They look as nervous about Taako leaving as Taako feels.

Now, Taako is many things—an elf, a failed chef, a murderer, a dime-store wizard, and one lucky nanny—but he is not some mercurial fairy tale creature. He’s not going to vanish from their lives the second they lose sight of him. He could if he wanted to, and he will if he has to, but he doesn’t want to. For now, he doesn’t have to.

So he lifts a hand and says, “Back soon.”

But for some reason, it fucking hurts.

The trip is about everything he expected it would be: long and boring. Angus gets bored with I, Spy within about ten minutes, the interior of the carriage is a little too tight to practice his cantrips, and Boniface seems to be aiming for the roughest parts of the road on purpose. Taako tries reading aloud from one of the Caleb Cleveland books, but McDonald keeps interrupting every time they get to the good, mysterious parts, so Angus and Taako trade a loaded glance and wordlessly agree to save it for later.

Still, it’s not awful. Angus at six years old is bright-eyed and relentlessly clever. He wants to be a detective like Caleb, and has taken to solving little mysteries around the manor house, like who left the jam out on the counter (Taako, and what are you going to do about it, pumpkin?) and who tracked the mud inside the undercroft (Boniface, obviously, that’s where all the booze is, and he literally works in mud all day. You didn’t have to put on your detective cap for that one).

Needless to say, Taako would burn the whole world down for this kid.

With no choice but to spend time in his grandson’s company, Taako can see Angus’ innate charm going to work on McDonald. There’s something wistful in the old man’s eyes, affectionate and more than a little bittersweet. He stops interrupting as Angus starts to describe his latest case in great detail—the mystery of the missing tarts!

The tarts are wrapped up and waiting in Taako’s bag for when they inevitably get snacky during the trip, but he's not going to tell. He kinda wants to see how far the kid takes this one.

By the time they board the train, Angus is tuckered out. The excitement of a trip so far from home is wearing off after hours in a carriage, and Taako ends up carrying him into their sleeper car and putting him to bed in one of the bunks.

McDonald takes a seat at the small table and watches without commentary as Taako extracts the boy’s hat and glasses and wand without waking him, pulling the blanket up to his shoulders. And then, out of habit more than anything else, he murmurs the only Elven blessing he remembers, quite literally ‘sweet dreams.’ He remembers Auntie saying it to him, and…someone else, maybe? He remembers that it always made him feel loved to hear it.

“Hiring you was the best thing I could have done for him,” McDonald says suddenly.

Taako turns with a trademark smile on his face, only as charming as it needs to be. “Hiring me was the best thing you ever did, period.”

His boss smiles back, but there’s an edge to it that Taako can’t translate. This is the most present and aware he’s looked in the last five years. Taako isn’t sure he’s ever had this much of McDonald’s attention.

“There’s another reason I wanted to take the two of you with me this week,” he says.

It’s ominous as fuck, and as the train lurches into motion, pulling away from the station, Taako realizes that he’s effectively trapped here, in a way he never was at the manor house. Some of his thoughts must show on his face, because McDonald’s smile warms a bit, and he gestures at the other chair.

“It’s a good thing, son. No need to be nervous.”

Taako sits in an irreverent collapsing of limbs to prove that he isn’t nervous, actually. McDonald pulls a bunch of papers out of his briefcase and sets them on the table. They look official as fuck. McDonald’s signature at the bottom draws Taako’s eye—huh, so that’s his first name. After this long, it would have felt a little awkward to ask. Beneath that is the signature and seal of a notary.

“What am I looking at here, Charlie?”

McDonald’s lips twitch. He probably cottoned onto the name thing.

“Well, this isn’t an easy conversation to have, and I probably could have picked a better time for it, but.” He glances over Taako’s shoulder at where Angus is sleeping. “It’s probably better if the boy doesn’t overhear until it’s sorted.”

“I hear ya. That little bugbear is all up in everyone’s business all the time,” Taako says proudly. “Just the worst.”

“He’s amazing,” McDonald says. That sorrow swims into his eyes now, an ancient, ruinous thing. “He reminds me of my daughter every time I look at him.” Oh. “It’s been…hard to look at him sometimes.” Oh.

Taako carefully reevaluates his opinion of Angus’ absent grandfather. Not too much, because the dude still should have been around, but, you know. Some.

Taako tries to imagine losing somebody, how much it must hurt. He tries to imagine looking like somebody, a family resemblance, a belonging at face-value. He’s never experienced either, but there’s still a bitter pit in his throat, a feeling like if he swallows too hard he’ll start to cry. So he sits very still instead.

“But still, he’s my only grandson, and I want him to be taken care of when I’m gone,” the man goes on. “I’m getting on in years, and I probably don’t have much longer left—oh, Taako. It’s alright.”

Taako is certain he didn’t move. He’s still doing the sitting-very-still thing. Then he realizes his ears betrayed him, pressed back flat against his head. Goddamn things.

“No, it’s uh. Taako’s good, don’t. Just.”

It’s the human age thing. He doesn’t want to think about it. He waves McDonald on, a tight rolling gesture. They really need to power through the rest of this conversation while Taako still has enough self-control left to not do something really embarrassing in front of his boss, like have a whole emotion.

McDonald takes pity. Thank fuck.

“It’s normal to want to get your ducks in a row,” he says. “I’m not planning on kicking the bucket any time soon.”

“Alright, let’s organize these ducks,” Taako says with unwarranted enthusiasm. He’s trying to trick himself into it. “Fucking ducks, am I right?”

“Angus is my heir. When he’s of age, he’ll get the estate and everything that goes with it, as well as his parents’ properties,” McDonald says, once again reminding Taako that he’s a rich old fuck. Istus. “But that’s still more than a decade away. If something should happen to me, I don’t want him to end up a ward of the state.”

Taako blinks. In the back of his mind, he realizes that he has become one of those elves that would one-thousand-percent kidnap a human baby if it came down to it. Leave Agnes in an orphanage? His Agnes? It would literally have never occurred to him.

“Custody cases can be so long-winded. The easiest way to circumvent the whole mess would be to adopt you into the family,” McDonald says, super nonchalant about flipping the world upside down. “That way Angus has an immediate next of kin that no one would question.”

He looks up when Taako doesn’t say anything and frowns at whatever Taako’s face must look like.

“You don’t have to use the surname if you don’t want to. It’s mostly just for the sake of paperwork.”

“I can’t,” Taako blurts.

“Of course. I wouldn’t insist that you change your family name if it’s important to you—”

“Not—not that, who gives a fuck about my family name,” Taako says too loudly. Angus shifts around for a second, like he might wake up, and Taako snaps his mouth closed so hard it hurts his teeth. In a whisper, because it’s all he can manage without giving into the urge to scream, Taako forces out, “I—I’m—I can’t.”

In the nightmare scenarios that still sometimes plague him in the middle of the night, when everyone else is asleep and he’s alone with the voice in his brain that fucking hates him, the choices always boiled down to either leaving Angus behind or taking him on the run. Both choices were fucking awful for a myriad of different reasons, and left Taako pacing his room tirelessly trying to think his way out of an unsolvable problem.

The idea that he could become a legal part of Angus’ family as simply as signing a piece of paper is so far-fetched and ridiculous that he can’t wrap his mind around it.

But bringing all his shit into Angus’ life? Signing up for this only to get snatched away the second the paperwork goes through and the militia finally finds him? Leaving his dirty laundry all over the front yard like the worst fucking house guest imaginable, and then peacing out to spend the rest of his long-ass fucking elf life in jail, while Angus was left to just…deal with that?

He couldn’t. He can’t. Every single option is bad. He shouldn’t have stayed. He should have known he would fall in love with that baby on day one. It’s really fucking stupid that he stayed.

“—aako. Taako.”

Taako jerks his head up. His ears are twitching and his hands are shaking and McDonald has probably been saying his name for awhile.

The man’s eyes are bright and steely. They look exactly like Angus’ do sometimes, when he wakes Taako up from a miserable meditation, when it’s just the two of them in a huge house surrounded by a crumbling garden.

“Tell me,” the man says sternly.

At a fucking complete loss, Taako just…does.

When he’s finished, McDonald looks at him really hard for what feels like a long time. Then he pulls a pair of reading glasses out of an inner pocket of his coat, poises the business end of a fountain pen against a fresh sheet of paper, and starts asking questions.

It’s a business-like, no-nonsense exchange. Taako is wiped out, emotionally he is the equivalent of a damp rag wrung out to dry, and he has no wherewithal left to lie or deny or deflect.

When they’re done, McDonald has filled three notebook pages of blocky handwriting, and Taako is swaying in his seat. He watches somewhat vacantly as McDonald nods to himself and rummages in his briefcase for a stone of farspeech.

“We won’t reach Neverwinter until morning. Get some sleep,” he says, and his voice is kindly again, the way it was before. Taako stares at him. “And don’t tell me elves don’t need it, please. I wasn’t born yesterday, and you nap twice as much as my grandson ever did.”

Well, it would be nice to get one last unnecessary snooze in as a free man, Taako supposes, and he doesn’t hesitate to climb into Angus’ bunk. It’s a familiar ritual. The kid squirms to accommodate him without fully waking. Taako tucks an arm around him and buries his nose in that riot of curly hair.

He hears McDonald say, “You’re not much more than a kid yourself, are you?” but that might have just been part of a dream.

He hears someone else say, “That can’t be broken or lost or taken away, it’s always going to be so important,” but Taako thinks that, whoever that was, they were very clearly wrong.

Taako wakes up to a six-year-old’s warm brown eyes. They’re crinkled at the corners in an urchin sort of way, and it’s the only tell Taako needs. His kid has been up to some mischief.

“Grandpa said you were tired and I should let you sleep,” Angus reports cheerfully. “He also said that there was a nice lady selling flowers a few cars down, and I ought to go buy a few!”

Ah. Taako glances down at the ruin of his hair. It looks like about a hundred snowberry blossoms were worked into the thick flaxen braid. It’s going to be an absolute pain to brush out later. He’ll probably find bits of plant in his hair for days. He loves it.

He risks a glance in McDonald’s direction.

The man looks amused by their whole general existence, which is fair. He also doesn't look like he's about to summon the guard to have Taako hauled into the brig, which is a fucking relief and a half.

“The world changed while you were asleep,” he says significantly. “Would you like to sign the papers now or with your pardon?”

Angus says, all in one breath, “You should sign the papers first! Grandpa says then you’ll be my family! I mean, you already are, so I’m not sure what the point is, but it must be important. Look at how official they are!”

Taako feels about four cups of coffee behind this conversation. He scoots off the bed, spilling into one of the chairs at the table, and folds his hands.

“Charlie. Buddy.”

“I stepped out for two minutes,” McDonald says defensively, “and I thought he was asleep!”

“That’s the oldest trick in the book,” Taako mutters. His heart is doing something really complicated and largely unnecessary, fucking backflipping in his chest, at Angus’ thoughtless ‘you already are.’ Like it was a given. What the fuck. “Can you go back to, uh—the world changing? A pardon? What’s up with that?”

“An old friend of mine is a cleric,” he says pushing a steaming cup in Taako’s direction. “Level nine, or thereabouts. She owed me a favor from when we were in school together, when I—well, that’s not important. What is important is that she was happy to cast Discern Location to find your old stage manager.”

Taako fumbles the cup, almost drops it. He sets it down hard.

“What the fuck? No, hold that thought. Angus, I love you. Get lost.”

He’s really banking on the kid being more stir-crazy than curious, and sure enough, Angus hops right off the bunk and sprints for the door.

“Okay, I’ll be in the dining car! You’re not s’posed to take food back with you, but I’m gonna see how many pastries I can fit in my pockets so you won’t be hungry when you sign the papers that make you my family! Love you, bye!”

“A three-hour carriage ride followed by six hours on a train was the worst fucking idea,” Taako says severely. “He’s gonna be on eleven when we roll up to Neverwinter. They might not let us in.”

“He’s just excited,” the old man says, with the tranquility of someone who isn’t going to have to child-wrangle all day long. “I told him I had good news for you.”

Taako is fidgeting, turning the cup of coffee around and around in his hands. It’s leaving a ring of condensation on the table.

“You found Sazed?” he asks, and hates how small his voice sounds.

“We did.”

“He probably hates me,” Taako mutters. “I ruined his life.”

McDonald takes the cup from him and sets it down on the other side of the table with a firm clunk.

“Pardon my language, but you didn’t ruin crud.” Taako mouths ‘crud’ in bewilderment, but McDonald isn’t finished. “I was suspicious of your story when you described the way those people died. Those aren’t the typical symptoms of deadly nightshade, and I’d never heard of a transmutation spell failing in that way before. So I looked into it. Or, I should say, I had a few friends look into it.”

“Are you in a cult?” Taako asks. He can’t help it. He’s one part genuinely curious and two parts hardwired to deflect any time someone tricks him into having a serious conversation. “We frown on cults in this family. Mysterious shadow organizations are never a good thing, no matter what greater-good shit they’re peddling.”

“I’m very rich and belong to very elite social circles,” McDonald says dryly. He’s unmoved by Taako’s general everything. “This whole thing took about three calls. I wish you would have told me about this five years ago, but I do understand why you didn’t.”

Taako doesn’t have a cup to fuck around with anymore. He stopped wearing jewelry when Angus was a baby and literally everything smaller than an apple was a choking hazard, and he never really got into the habit of it again, so he doesn’t have rings to twist around his fingers, either. He wrings his hands instead.

“If it wasn’t the elderberries,” he chokes out, and doesn’t make it any farther.

“It was arsenic,” McDonald says. His voice is kind again, but not so much so that it’s painful to hear. “Sazed was questioned within a Zone of Truth. He admitted to—okay,” he cuts himself off, putting a hand on Taako’s shoulder. “We’re done talking about it for now. Just take it easy.”

Taako doesn’t uncurl from his chair until the door rattles open and Angus’ voice fills the room. He’s found a dozen things to talk about in the ten minutes he’s been gone, and is very proud of himself for all the contraband pastries he managed to make off with. There’s a cheese danish wrapped very carefully in a napkin, only slightly squished, that he presents to Taako with a showy flourish that he really only could have picked up from too much time around one particular idiot.

Taako accepts the danish, and then hauls Angus up onto his lap, and then says, “Charlie, baby. Pass me that fancy pen.”

For the first time in almost eight years, Taako is cooking for an audience again. His hands are shaking, but as long as everyone else is politely pretending like they don’t notice, he can do himself the same favor.

I fed those people their death, but it wasn’t on me, he recites inwardly for the seven millionth time, a nervous mantra. My magic was good. My cooking was good. I was good. It wasn’t on me.

He looks up from the counter where all his tools are laid out and his ingredients are arranged. Ezra is bouncing in her seat, Boniface is lingering in the doorway like he doesn’t care but he also isn’t leaving, and Catherine’s eyes are wide and moonlike and younger than Taako has ever seen them. Angus has place of pride, a seat on the counter by the sink with the best view in the house.

“Okay,” he says. “What are the rules, pumpkin?”

“No swiping ingredients, no magic in the kitchen, and no taste-testing until you say it’s okay,” Angus rattles off promptly. “Autographs at the end of the show are three gold apiece, photos are ten, and the overall experience is absolutely priceless.”

Over the sweet sound of the rest of his audience groaning at him, Taako goes on blithely, “And what are we cooking today?”

“Macarons!”

“And who’s your dude?” Taako asks, pointing a whisk at him. Angus giggles, and Taako’s hands aren’t shaking anymore.

In a month, Angus is going off to a summer camp out past Rockport. It’s Caleb Cleveland-themed, and the whole thing sounds extremely nerdy and book-cluby, and Angus is desperately excited. He’s also desperately nervous about being away from his family for three whole weeks but he’s trying to keep that on the down-low. He’s very grown up at nearly ten years old.

Taako can respect that. He also bought the kid a stone of farspeech, because actually fuck that.

And while Angus is off having his first away-from-home adventure—since the girls think that Taako’s just going to be useless and mopey the whole time, and Boniface already threatened to bury him in a flowerbed the first time he whines about literally anything—Taako is going to go do something cool, too. There’s always some interesting jobs posted on Craig's List up in Neverwinter. He’ll be able to find something to occupy his time.

But for now, he’s gonna make some goddamn desserts.

“Come on, Ango,” Taako wheedles, “who’s your dude?”

“You, papa.”

I’m good, Taako reminds himself. He looks at his kid, who only deserves the best this piece of shit world has to offer, and thinks, I can be good.

#the adventure zone #taz balance #taako taaco #angus mcdonald #taz fic #my writing #better place #ladies i dunno but i gotta work in like 3 hours and i wrote this instead of sleeping

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ganymedesclock · 6 years ago

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Regarding Dayak

Dayak’s an interesting character, and I feel like people don’t quite consider all of her facets. I made a few posts about this when the pre-s6 clip first revealed her, but, having some time to mull things over and reflect properly, I’m making a proper post about her.

Most people pick up what’s there to glean from Dayak at a first glance. She’s old-fashioned, sharp-tongued, precise and demanding; at a glance, she breathes the stereotype of a knuckle-wrapping matron at a boarding school with all the yesteryearly aftertaste that imparts. She literally carries a switch around and isn’t shy about using it, even.

And this ties in to the likely history of the character. Dayak appears to be a reimagining of a DotU character with whom she shares many qualities: Allura’s unnamed Nanny.

Like Dayak, Nanny was a stubborn old-fashioned matron who upon meeting the paladins, immediately started to criticize them and voiced intentions to whip them into shape. She’s mentioned as having raised Allura from infancy, which is significant because in DotU, Allura claims her parents were far too busy to ever spend much time with her (a far cry from her VLD self) and the mice were her only friends. And like Dayak, Nanny was a fan of corporal punishment.

However... there’s a couple of ways Dayak departs from Nanny- not just in being Lotor’s governess rather than Allura’s, and a galra.

Dayak and Lotor’s relationship doesn’t appear to be snuggly, but it’s not bad exactly

Lotor didn’t run warmly into her arms. He didn’t even seem per se happy to see her. But if there’s one thing pretty obvious... this is the third time we’ve seen Lotor greet what was functionally a parent figure to him. And there’s something he does for Dayak he doesn’t do for Zarkon or Haggar.

He drops his guard.

Lotor in front of Zarkon is insincere, fawning, sycophantic and avoids him as much as he possibly can. Lotor in front of Haggar has his hackles up the entire time, is hostile, sneering, argumentative- and that hostility also comes out once he’s not acting the poor wayward son around Zarkon.

In front of Dayak, however, we see a fairly casual Lotor, and one who doesn’t have issues with the idea of her being around the paladins. Again, he’s not thrilled to see her, but he doesn’t respond to her with wariness or hostility- if anything, his biggest response is that he’s embarrassed in a rather mild manner.

And we also get a pretty good hint of why.

Of the three people that raised Lotor, Dayak is the only one who expresses confidence in him. She’s proud of her hand in raising him, she’s proud of him, to the point that she traveled to Central Command from wherever else in the empire she was purely to congratulate Lotor on his victory, and one of the first things she does is sneer at someone for seeming to broach Lotor’s newfound authority.

That’s not a small matter considering s6e1 shows us that many people are incredibly iffy about accepting Lotor as their emperor. He’s done everything that possibly could vindicate a successor to Zarkon’s throne but there’s still active mutinies breaking out over the idea of actually accepting Lotor’s leadership.

And it’s into this context that Dayak arrives practically breathing fire at the idea that how dare someone not show the highest, oldest form of respect to the emperor, and Lotor even questions the archaic honorific she uses.

As quick-tempered and snappy as Dayak is, none of that anger is directed at Lotor, and the fact that Lotor- who’s a pretty jumpy guy- doesn’t move when Dayak’s switch passes pretty close to his face one of the times she uses it against Lance would suggest something interesting.

Lotor may not adore Dayak, per se- as a child he may not have climbed warmly into her lap (or maybe he did, and something happened between them to keep her at arm’s length now) but he trusts her.

And more noteworthy, Dayak voices confidence in Lotor destroying his enemies. She’s not talking about the paladins, who Lotor just warmly introduced as colleagues.

So who exactly did Lotor ‘crush’ on his way to the throne?

Zarkon, mostly. Sendak at the Kral Zera.

Dayak thinks that’s a good thing. She’s all in favor of Lotor tearing down his tyrant father. Which is noteworthy because while we’ve seen many galra characters due to become significant show up in backgrounds of group shots. But not Dayak. We don’t see Dayak until Lotor takes the throne. There could be a lot of explanations for this- many of her trappings could imply she’s herself a galra aristocrat that rules a sector of space- but for me I think the simplest one is, with the other evidence she had no love for Zarkon, the feeling was mutual. Either he got rid of her, or, to avoid his usual problem-solving methods, Dayak left central command.

She might have even left in protest of Lotor’s exile but that’s a bit of spitballing.

Dayak encourages people to avoid pain, even when her teaching allegedly hinges on it

When training Hunk, he at one point evades rapid strikes from the switch, to which Dayak responds with a curt, but impressed, “well done.” She also, despite blustering up a storm about Hunk dueling her to the death for affronting her honor, just lets him go with an unimpressed expression, suggesting pretty clearly she was outright messing with him.

The objective of palen-bol in Dayak’s mind is not “trust my authority to make you suffer as much as I want, and if you suffer enough you’ll become a virtuous person because you’re afraid of punishment”. That little scene with her and Hunk, and especially that she goes after him again seconds later with “Showing complacency?” gives a very different context to her training.

Dayak’s beliefs appear to boil down to “unpleasant experiences are educational because they teach you how to avoid them in the future- and as your instructor I may present you with unpleasant experiences in a controlled environment so that you are better able to defend against them.” It’s the equivalent of, in the Lion King, Rafiki clonking Simba with his staff and then pointing out he’s learned when he dodges the swing the next time.

And this is pretty significant if you consider her protege is Lotor, who, one of Lotor’s obvious standout skills...

...is evasion. In every category: personal combat, tactical espionage, piloting, Lotor relies on this ability to smoothly and effortlessly thread himself into the smallest hole in his enemy’s onslaughts. He doesn’t blink at breakneck flurries like those Throk launches in him, because he’s well used to that.

Dayak also has a fencer’s arm- she doesn’t just rap people with the switch in a way that relies on them holding skill. She’s got impressive speed and precision- I don’t doubt she’s an exemplary fighter holding something a bit sharper or weightier than functionally a stick.

This closes a nice narrative hole where we know that Lotor’s a very effective combatant, but in s4e3 it’s addressed that Zarkon never trained Lotor.

So who did? Who taught Lotor to fight- but another precision-based, quick-moving person who fences with a slender one-handed weapon.

Dayak.

And that’s pretty obviously not the only thing she taught him, either.

Dayak is a scholar, and primarily a historian much like Lotor himself

What we see of Dayak’s lesson on Hunk is pretty obviously not about the proper way to hold your elbows when dining with the empire. She opens with what Lotor points out is a positively archaic form of address and when she educates Hunk she talks about what appears to have been the stone age for the galra.

And she does so with nearly religious fervor. This is not only someone who’s poured through dusty history books but deeply enjoyed it, found intense personal connection to this.

And that’s one place we see Lotor and Dayak very keenly see eye to eye- when Lotor recommends Dayak as an expert on galra culture, and Dayak, neutrally and casually confirms this.

History, especially anthropological history, is not a small deal to Lotor. And while Zarkon’s rejection may have pushed him to seek out his Altean heritage, it certainly wouldn’t be Zarkon who would encourage Lotor to seek out whatever he could find in the dusty corners of the world.

If anything, Zarkon would probably dislike Dayak’s field- not only because he obviously devalues anything that doesn’t fuel the empire, but because Zarkon’s done some pretty obvious historical revision.

Dayak is someone who’d know that a golden age of prosperity followed Zarkon’s alliance with Alfor, who would know that Alfor’s destruction of Daibazaal was an act of mercy not an act of war, who would know that between the history of their people that Altea was not the traitor. Especially if she’s old enough to have been an adult in Lotor’s infancy, she lived through that time period, being another galra immortal.

Which would make her a living memory of what Zarkon did to his own people returning from the dead. Which, just our one glimpse of that time period?

The galra family depicted here looks just as terrified as the Alteans standing around them. These are not people celebrating the miraculous return of their emperor.

Hell, given Zarkon obviously withheld information from Haggar about her own past to flatter the idea that she was his and only his, no pesky connection to Altea... it’s suspicious Lotor even knows his lineage is Altean at all. Zarkon wouldn’t likely speak of his “greatest shame” especially where it would encourage Lotor to move away from him.

And yes, Lotor’s half-galra and by his own admission in s5e4 the whole empire knows that- but as long as Zarkon’s been alive and as often as people within the empire die or are actively killed by Zarkon, it would be easy for Zarkon to curate ranks of immortals who never knew Altea, and then spread the misinformation that Honerva, while not a galra, wasn’t an Altean- much easier for people to accept Zarkon’s attempt to hunt down and kill all of the Alteans if they don’t realize they’re hunting their deceased Queen Consort’s people.

Furthermore it’s a plot point back in s2 that it’s seemingly impossible to identify an Altean as such without being able to see the skin under their eyes. The surviving Alteans Lotor finds in s6e4 have either assimilated into or created a culture of hooded people who obscure that region.

And Lotor’s own telltale Altean markings are only visible at Oriande. So there’s really no way to know he’s Altean except if you knew exactly who the Honerva Zarkon married was.

But at the time, that was public knowledge. Knowledge that Dayak would’ve been privy to- because again, she’s a good deal older than Lotor, enough that she was a grown woman employed as a governess at a period where Lotor needed one. And while a governess typically takes on an elementary-aged protege... I’m skeptical Zarkon wouldn’t have shuffled Lotor into Dayak’s care earlier than usual. As soon as Lotor’s obvious needs couldn’t be handled by the doctor or doctors making sure the child of a complicated birth survived.

People are only so much the lessons of their parents and guardians- a good deal of someone is their inherent nature, but someone had to have fed and encouraged Lotor’s deep-seated respect of knowledge and history and his tenacious determination to go get it. No matter how curious Lotor is, if he was constantly snarled at to not ask questions, that curiosity would at bare minimum become something Lotor was terrified of expressing.

But someone, in the face of Zarkon and Haggar’s treatment of Lotor, instilled in him the idea that he didn’t deserve to be hurt- that the ability to evade pain is a virtue. That history is valuable, even vital to the development of a good person.

And considering, again, the nearly terrifying fervor and energy Dayak puts into recounting galra history... I’m just saying it wouldn’t seem out of her established character if she’d been someone to functionally commit treason by telling Lotor a more accurate perception of Altea than Zarkon’s propaganda, and his own connection to the place.

Because again, Lotor’s not necessarily thrilled by Dayak, but he trusts her, and his dry “so, to what do we owe the honor?” could well be him feeling as if she wasn’t there for him during the exile, or simply just they’ve grown distant after years of separation leaving Lotor uncomfortable with the rather intimate and vulnerable angle Dayak has on him.

Dayak was someone I suspected would exist in some form- because given the totality of Zarkon’s neglect and the combination of Haggar not recognizing her own child and the way Lotor views her as a malicious interloper in his life (not entirely undeservedly; she’s yet to really seem to mean him well) someone had to have filled that void in Lotor’s life for him to have come out even as modestly well-adjusted as he did.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Dayak #Lotor #readmore

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missblushyrose · 6 years ago

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A Good Ribbing

A/N: This is a request from @bashfulpinata for the prompt, “Thanks for mentioning that little detail”. I hope this is to your liking, Piñata! Enjoy! Fair warning: this will contain some teasy rib tickles and rib counting. Read if you must, but you may feel them tickles yourself. You’ve been warned.

It was a quiet, yet somewhat dull, Sunday afternoon within the Anderson residence. The steadily ongoing sequence of television shows - mainly consisting of cop comedies that were broadcasted as far back as the 1980s - being the only source of ambiance, as well as the snoring emitting from Sumo, who curled up on his pillow-like bed in the corner of the living room. If that wasn’t enough, there would be the constant chatter between the human and the android.

“I still can’t believe you actually did it, Connor! Did you see the look on Gavin’s face when he tasted the salt you put in his coffee?” Another chortle uproared out in the open as Hank all but fell back into the couch in a fit of jarring laughter, slamming a hand against the armrest to his right.

Almost instantly, his cackling was assimilated by the bout of laughter that resonated from Connor’s voice box. If hearing the sound of his human companion’s own laughter wasn’t the vindication for his sudden display of amusement, the mental photography of the immense abhorrence written on the detective’s face upon registering the unwelcoming bitterness administered from the salt.

“As I explained to you at the precinct, I simply misinterpreted the salt packets for sugar,” Connor managed to explain himself through his giggling, yet they both knew that wasn’t the case. “I will admit, however, that watching Detective Reed’s facial expression contort like that is humorous, nevertheless.”

Hank snorted and just about squawked in between fits of rough laughter. He couldn’t even begin to remember the last time he ever laughed so hard; the side-splitting type of laughter; the laughter that made your sides ache for what felt like hours. “Hahahaha! Hoholy shit! It hurts, it fuckin’ hurts!” He wheezed and coiled an arm over his ribcage instinctively, greedily sucking in copious amounts of air in the midst of recovering from his laugh attack.

The neutral blue illuminating from the android’s LED quickly transitioned into a concerned yellow, his laughter instantly ceasing, amusement morphing to worry as Connor fixed his gaze on the ventilating lieutenant as if scanning for any possible injury had struck him. “H-Hank? Are you hurt?” He asked anxiously.

His laughter finally subsiding, Hank turned back to the android hovering over him out of sheer habit and adjusted himself back into his natural sitting position, rubbing the sliver of mirthful tears out of his eyes. “No, Connor... no. I’m fine, just... my ribs are kinda sore. Nothing serious.”

“Would you like an ice pack from the refrigerator?” The android offered a gentle inquiry through his protective impulse.

“Jesus, Connor...” Hank sighed as he ran a hand over his own face, grabbing onto the android’s wrist and tugging him back onto the couch as he attempted to stand. “I said I’m fine. I appreciate it, but you don’t have to worry about everything I do. I may be old, but I sure as hell ain’t fragile. Besides, the last thing I need is some android nanny hovering over me.” He ended his assuring statement on a teasing note as the yellow LED spiraled back to blue.

“Right. I’m sorry, Hank-”

“Ah! What’d I say about apologizing?”

“I’m so-” The android was immediately cut off with a stern gaze from the older man that told him to shut up. “Nevermind.”

Hank flashed a smug smirk and uttered a light ‘hmph’ in response before turning his attention back to the television, intent on indulging himself further into the currently playing episode. However, much to his own dismay, he was presented with the one thing that plagued every television spectator with annoyance; the one thing that so rudely interrupted television programming everywhere...

“God, I hate these damn commercials!” Hank grumbled, resting his cheek against and closed fist, his elbow perching on the armrest, paying no attention to the images of products that would stir skepticism. He could recall observing merchandise so harebrained, he would sooner buy a $500 bottle of alcohol and not get drunk from it than something so asinine as a $50 washcloth that is claimed to be able to absorb spills and the floor is still messy. Really, who would be idiotic enough to purchase something so useless at a laughably high price?

Surprisingly, this next particular advertisement seemed to have caught his attention. There seemed to be two skeletons, presumably of a male and female human, having a medical conversation, considering the certain terms he blocked out. He could tell from the cerulean hue glowing from the bony beings that this commercial provided information regarding x-rays.

Don’t get him wrong, he didn’t care much for the ad as a whole.

He shifted his gaze from the screen and to the android sitting to his left and back. He thought about how he grew more human by the day following his deviancy, then how painstaking, and partially frightening, his appearance resembled to be that of a human, save for the flickering blue LED. And with another glimpse at the skeletal figures on the television monitor, a new curiosity had bloomed.

Hank turned back to the younger man sitting beside him, whose gaze was fixated on the television. “Hey, Connor?”

Connor returned his gaze to the older man, the blue LED gently flickering in curiosity. “Yes, Hank?”

“You know, all this talk about my ribs and that commercial got me thinkin’. I know how androids were made to resemble humans and all, and I was wondering something: do androids have skeletons?”

Connor tilted his head to the side and blinked at the odd question, but he naturally rummaged through his database in search for an answer, his LED spinning with a bright yellow before explaining to his human companion, “While we are internally disparate, in terms of organs and biocomponents, every android has an interior framing composed of polycarbonate material. Despite the durability of the matter, they can be broken, much like regular bones, but can be self-repaired within at least 24 hours. The framing is positioned within certain body parts, such as legs, arms, and hands, and can adjust to common movements, similar to a human skeleton. In conclusion, androids do possess skeletons.”

(A/N: Yeeah, my theory may not be ENTIRELY accurate? Sorry.)

”Do they include ribcages?”

“Yes, as do I.”

With that being said, Hank reached towards the android and, with a newfound stroke of curiosity, uncurled his pointer finger and pressed the fingertip into a specific area just below the underarm with a gentle prod. His confirmed his theory when he felt a hard surface underneath the artificial skin; a bone; a polycarbonate bone; a ticklish bone, given the way Connor squeaked and lightly shuffled to his end of the couch, arms enfolding around the area of his artificial ribcage protectively.

After a few seconds of awkward silence between the two, Hank, who was wearing a shit-eating grin with such mischief, leaned forward and snatched at one of the RK800′s wrists, yanking the android close to ensnare him into an inescapable embrace, his back against the older man’s chest.

Connor’s LED flashed yellow in response to the sudden action momentarily before reverting back to the usual blue, craning his neck to take a glance at his captor, but he was only able to see him from the corner of his eye. “Hank?”

Instead of responding to the address, Hank simply latched onto both sides and dug his fingers between the sets of artificial ribs, vibrating his digits to produce electric-like sensations.

Connor’s eyes flew wide open just as his sensors picked up on the aforementioned feelings, making him fall into fits of sputtering giggles as he lightly kicked his legs through some sort of reflex. “Ahahahaha! Nahahahahaa! Hahahaaank!”

Hank chuckled at the android’s giggly protests, simply curling his fingertips into the gaps of the synthetic ribcage. “Well, whaddya know? You do have ribs, and they’re ticklish!” He hummed to himself as he went on, thinking of a particular game that used to drive Cole up the wall. He wondered if it would work on the ticklish android in his grasp as well. “Hey, Connor... how many ribs do ya have, you think?”

“T-Twehehenty-fohour!” Connor squeaked at the occasional prod here and there. “Twehelve on each sihihide!”

“You sure about that? Maybe I should count ‘em for you~” Hank didn’t even spare the poor android even a second to utter a single protest, and he pressed his thumb into the lowest rib on the right side of his ribcage, kneading and circling the tip against the artificial bone. “One...” He began to slowly count aloud, remaining there for at least three seconds before he would move on to the next one. “Two... three...”

Connor squealed and lurched in the lieutenant’s arms like a small trapped caught in a trap, feebly attempting to pry himself out by pushing his own arms away from each other, but that was stopped by the older man’s tight grip. He could feel a tint of blue painted across his cheeks, having been caused by the teasing croon in Hank’s voice as he counted to tease the poor boy out of his artificial skin.

“Hahahank, pleeheheheease!” He tried to whine through his frantic cries of laughter. “I said I have twehehenty-fohohour rihihiiibs!”

“I’m still gonna check, anyway,” Hank paused his enumeration to answer the android’s plea for an instant before he immediately pressed on, “Now hold still. Twenty-four- Wait, what number was I on? Shit, I think I lost count. Guess we’ll just have to start all over again~”

Connor froze in his place, quickly realizing his mistake, and he initiated another string of pleas with a nervous, wobbly grin. “N-No, wait! Hank, pleheheheeease! Nohohohoo!” He cried out desperately, only to descend into another series of giggles with an occasional squeak as he restarted from the lowest rib.

“One... two... three... four... five... six...” Hank punctuated each number he tallied with a pinch to each rib, the prototype’s laughter becoming albeit louder the higher he went. “Seven... eight... nine... ten... eleven... twelve! Yep, twelve ribs on this side!” He emphasized his announcement with a squeeze to the inflicted side, snickering at the emitted squeak. “But what about the other side, huh? You got twelve of ‘em there, too?”

“Y-Yehes! I assure you, I- Eeek!” Connor was cut off on the spot just as Hank’s hand did so much as make contact with the left side of the artificial ribcage.

“One... two... three...” Hank nipped at each and every sensitive plastic bone with his pointer finger and his thumb as he continued this little game, grinning at the giggly pleads and squeals being composed from his android son. “Aaand twelve! Twenty-four in all! Guess you’re right after all!” He squeezed the left set after he finished, just as he did for the other side.

Connor lowered his shoulders and fell limp against the older man’s chest with soft giggles rising from his own, simply allowing him to hold him in his warm embrace. “I-I did say that, Hank...”

Hank smiled and lightly pinched at one of the prototype’s blue-tinged cheeks, keeping him in his arms for the next minute before took a glance at the side concealed by the plain tee. “And now that I know about all this, I’m actually feeling kinda hungry...” He purred, a devious smirk playing across his lips.

Connor’s eyes went agape just as his auditory processors picked up on the jest, identifying the lighthearted roguishness dripping in his tone. “H-Hank, I realize your intentions, and I advise you against this. If you are famished, you can find a proper source of nourishment in the kitchen- Aahh!” His attempt to dissuade the intent was deterred with a startled squeal as he was lightly pushed onto the couch and on his back, his father figure kneeling over his legs to prevent any venture to escape.

“Aw, c’mon, Connor! I haven’t had any ribs in a while!” Hank grumbled in a satirical manner as he slowly upheaved the fabric of the android’s casual tee by the hem and bunched it over his chest, exposing his entire abdomen. “I forgot what they taste like~”

“Hahank, please don’t do thihis! S-Surely there must be an alternatIIIIVE!” Once again, Connor’s attempt to reason with him came to a crashing halt as Hank swooped down and buried his face into the left set of ribs, gently nibbling at the artificial bones instantaneously. “AHAHAHAHAAA!”

“Mmmmm, that sure is tasty!” Hank murmured against the sensitive skin, causing the younger man to snort and jolt. “They’re so warm, ticklish, and they taste like giggles! Sounds like a pretty good snack to me!”

Connor shrieked mirthfully, startling Sumo out of his slumber in the process before settling back into his lazy doze. The android drummed his feet against the cushions and flailed his arms around as Hank continued to ‘devour’ at the sensitive artificial bones of his ribcage, switching between gently nibbling with his teeth and his lips at random moments, leaving him unable to calculate what the older man would do next until it was inflicted. The soft brushes of his beard and theatrical growls and eating noises seemed to add onto the sensations coursing through his sensors.

“HAHAHAHAAANK!” Connor wailed through his howls of laughter as he clenched his eyes shut tightly in an attempt to ease the feelings, wincing at the occasional quick raspberry administered to the horribly sensitive skin. “MEHEHEHERCY! DAHAHAAD, PLEHEHEASE! I-I CAHAHAN’T!”

As his last attempt to beg for mercy came forth, a hand ruffled the disheveled locks and the weight was lifted from his legs, allowing him to curl in on himself. The prototype sluggishly draped an arm over his eyes as if trying to hide himself as the blue tint slowly vanished from his goofily grinning face, simply lying in his current position and waiting for his leftover giggles to fade away. He pried his arm away from his face to look over at Hank, who returned the gaze with a wry, affectionate grin of his own that told him that he would surely take advantage of in the future.

“Thanks for mentioning that little detail. Now I know one more ticklish spot.”

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