#stede knocked out drooling all over the pillow

[buumbaby]

whats he looking at?

[leupagus]

PLEEEASE any sort of modern AU, PARTICULARLY washed up rocker Ed. There are a few fics in this vein but not enough. THANK YOU ETERNALLY.

Getting Louis to sleep is fairly straightforward: a few chapters from the latest Wings of Fire book and he's out like a light, drooling trustingly into his pillow. Alva, who selects and reads her own books, ta ever so, usually needs an argument or two before she can lay her weary head to rest. Divorce is the theme for this evening, though not quite in the way Stede's been dreading for the past few months.

"Why didn't you get divorced sooner?" she demands, shoving her seventeen different Pusheens into a vaguely better arrangement so that she can sleep amongst them and suffer only mild hypoxia. "Doug is so cool, he took us to the museum and we got to paint our own versions of the portraits. And he has a cat."

"Well, if your mother and I had gotten divorced sooner," Stede points out as he settles her blanket over her shoulders, "Then your mother wouldn't have taken that art class in January, and hence wouldn't have met Doug, since he only moved here from the States in December."

Alva is only temporarily stymied by this, pointing out that perhaps Mum would've found someone even better, like someone with a dog. Stede meekly agrees, and pinky-swears that anyone he himself falls in love ought to at least have a convertible or a pony or a swimming pool.

Mary and Doug are back by nine, slightly wine-flushed and trying to tell Stede about the Lyft driver's cologne while they pull out the various desserts they'd nicked from Mary's gallery opening. "Sort of a rotted cinnamon? Flavor? I can still taste it," Mary says, dropping an absent-minded kiss on the top of Stede's head as she passes his chair on the way to the kitchen. Stede collects the essays into a haphazard pile — Frenchie's the only one getting an A thus far, with a somewhat bewildering theory about colonialism and split infinitives that is oddly compelling — and opens the boxes.

"It did kind of get into your respiratory system," Doug admits, setting out the plates quietly — any louder and the kids will be up in a flash demanding that they share, and none of them want that. "How was everything on the home front?"

"We watched Moana again, and Alva wanted to know when Disney was going to make a movie about the Heartman. I told her that's probably not a family-friendly sort of story, which she took offense at, since the Heartman only carves out bad children's hearts and there are apparently a few of her classmates whose deaths could be very funny. At which point Louis asked what the Heartman was and the evening got a bit away from us."

"Oh Christ, he's going to have so many nightmares," Mary sighs, plunking some silverware down on the table. "Stede—"

"It's not my fault! Besides, it's part of his heritage!"

"Just because we were born in Barbados doesn't—"

"You should try this chocolate cake pop," Doug says, waving it between Stede and Mary like someone in a dinghy, desperately flapping a white flag between two battleships. "Has a raspberry center that'll really knock your socks off."

Stede frowns, but he takes the cake pop. It really is delicious. "Anyway, it's fine, he got much more traumatized by what happened with Luna and the Othermind in the latest chapter."

"Spoilers!" Doug says, cheerful, as he digs into a tiny cheesecake. Stede fights back a smile, which fails completely when he catches Mary's eye. They all sit down and grab more treats, and Stede gets to tell them about his insane new client. Or Oluwande's insane old client — but until he comes back from paternity leave, it's up to Stede not to mess things up.

"So this weirdo musician offered you a job helping him write lyrics," Mary says, "And invited you to his exclusive performance tonight? And then you watered his plastic plant?"

"Please don't say that like it's a euphemism," Stede sighs. "It was a very realistic-looking fichus."

"I'm sure it was." She taps her fingers absently against her thumb as she stares into the middle distance, the way she always does when she's thinking. It used to worry him, before — about what she might be working out, what she might be trying to fix or change or realize. Now, he's startled to discover it's… cute. "If he's paying someone to mind his fucking plants, he's got to have money, right? So was he not offering enough?"

"I know I'm a mere adjunct professor right now," says Stede, sniffing a bit, "But it wasn't the money that was the issue."

"Who is this guy, anyway?" Doug asks, snagging a coconut ball. "Country music star or something? One of the Mumford sons?"

"Mmm, no, no one I've ever heard of. An Edward Teach? Used to be in a band called—"

"Blackbeard?" Doug shoots out of his chair so fast it clatters to the ground; from down the hallway Stede can hear the telltale double-thumps of small children alerted to adults having fun without them. "Ed Teach from Blackbeard invited you to an exclusive concert tonight?"

"…yes?" Stede says, glancing from Dough's round eyes to Mary's covered ones. "Should be starting in a bit, actually."

"Honey, I love you, me and your ex-husband have to go," Doug says, and drags Stede out of his chair just as Louis comes round the corner, demanding to know if there's any biscuits.