Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Deke!” Omega squealed, her voice reaching a pitch that made both Batcher and Hunter flinch away from the living room and made the moonyo playing with the lurca hound’s tail cover his little green ears. “Watch out! That's my ice cream!”

“Sorry!” the softhearted cadet called back. “I can't move under here.”

“Nobody can.” Mox's words were muffled, turned to mush by the amount of pillows and blankets between him and the Batchers. “We need more pillows to make it bigger.”

Echo had been calmly stirring a pot of whatever was for dinner as it simmered on the stove, but at that, his head snapped up, nostrils flaring. 

“And just where do you think you'll be getting more pillows?” he asked flatly. He had already burned one dish due to the noisy distractions known as Omega, Lyana, and the three cadets, so he was just a tad cranky. 

Suddenly, he stopped stirring and wrinkled his nose. “And why is there ice cream in the living room?”

Hunter huffed and settled his head against the chair back again, already knowing that particular issue was a losing battle. But though the sergeant was sitting slumped over at the table, looking as if he wanted to pass out for twelve hours solid, Wrecker was as bright as ever, happily finishing off the rest of the purple ice cream right out of the blue glass container. 

“You already got everything in the whole house!” the bruiser called into the living room. “Even the blankets.”

“We can go back to my house for more!” Lyana volunteered. She poked her head out of the makeshift blanket door of the kids’ ever-growing pillow fort, her braids so askew that even Crosshair had to smother a smirk from his seat next to Wrecker. “Dad won't mind if I take the sofa cushions.”

Omega's blonde head appeared next to her friend's dark one, her brown eyes alight with mischief. “We could go to Tech and Phee's house!” she gasped, as if she had just discovered the secret of life itself. “They have pillows!”

“Yeah, we could liberate them!” Lyana giggled. 

Hunter snorted and opened his eyes long enough to give Crosshair a knowing, amused look. “Oh, I'm sure Tech will love that.”

Crosshair’s mischievous eyebrow-raise told the sergeant that he agreed.

Echo huffed, blowing a recently regrown black curl from in front of his eyes. He very much needed a trim, but he refused to let anyone touch his newly recovered locks until Crosshair was up to the task himself. “If you hooligans want to risk your lives, fine. Just don't come running back over here when a very hormonal, pregnant lady pirate is on your tails with a vengeance .”

Stak's unruly head popped out of the top of the unfinished fort, shaking wildly in a negative gesture. “No, let's not do that, actually!” he squeaked. “I wanna live. I'm only six!”

“Fine,” Omega pouted. 

“My house it is,” Lyana beamed. “Come on!”

At her rallying cry, the pillow fort suddenly emptied of children like it was a beehive that had been kicked over. All five of the small humans swarmed past the Batchers and through the kitchen like a herd of small elephants on sugar, then sped out the door. 

Batcher watched to make sure they left, then curled up beside Hunter’s chair with an exhausted sigh, her tail wagging slowly against the smooth wooden floor.

“What are you tired from?” Crosshair frowned at the dog with one of his patently false looks of irritation. “You're not the one babysitting the lot of them.”

“Neither are you,” Hunter reminded him with a glare. “You've just been helping Wrecker eat the jogan ice cream.”

Crosshair flicked his now-clean spoon at the sergeant with another smirk and pushed his chair back onto two legs, which he knew Hunter and Echo both hated. “Not anymore.”

“Are we certain that doesn't have spice in it?” the cyborg grumbled, his back mercifully turned to the chair offense. He held up a ladle of the reddish soup he was mothering and gave it a skeptical sniff. “Because that's what they act like they're on.”

“We're saving ourselves,” Wrecker insisted, ignoring the spice comment. While he didn’t particularly appreciate the over-sweet smell of the snack himself, Hunter thought that by the way his siblings were devouring it with gusto, they wouldn’t care even if it was drugged. “If we eat it, the kids can't .”

And with that, he scooped up the last bit of ice cream and held it out to Batcher. “Here ya go, girl.”

Crosshair sat up and let the chair legs hit the floor with a thump . “Hey, don't give her that!” he snarled. “It's bad for her!”

The biggest brother paused with the utensil midair halfway between him and the lurca hound, and gave his sibling a quizzical look. “ You just ate it,” he pointed out.

“I'm not a dog , di’kut ,” the former sniper rebounded. He rubbed absently at his prosthetic hand – he wasn't used to the new articulating joint yet, thus the inability to give Echo the much-needed haircut. “She'll get sick.”

Batcher had been eagerly sniffing the offered treat, but at the whitehaired man's warning hiss, she immediately recoiled from the spoon and growled at it.

“Fine.” Wrecker popped the bright violet bite into his mouth and grinned at his youngest brother. “More for me, then.”

“Hunter, more salt or not?” Echo asked. “I can't decide.”

Hunter started to ask how he should know from across the room, only for Echo to shove a spoonful of the broth directly into his open mouth when he tried.

He choked but managed to taste the boiling liquid as it burned its way down. “No,” he croaked. “That's plenty.”

The cyborg nodded in appeased satisfaction and then serenely went back to his stirring. 

“They're gonna be even more wound up when they get back, you know.” Crosshair’s eyes were weary and exasperated when he turned them back to his oldest brother, but there was a twinkle of something softer, too. “I'm sure some nice, well-meaning grandma will find a way to stuff more sweets down their gullets before they even make it past the market.”

Wrecker laughed and plunked the spoon back into the empty container. The moonyo looked disrutbingly interested in both, so Hunter made a note to keep a close eye on the little creature. He still didn’t know how Batcher and Omega had convinced him to let the thing inside. “Or Mr. Eenta'll convince ‘em to stop by the garden for a spell, and they'll come back full to the gills of lemonade and peanut brittle.”

“I know.” Hunter’s features were just as tired as his sibling’s, but they lit up with a smile nonetheless, his tattoo crinkling on a face that had mellowed out to a smoother, more peaceful appearance than it had ever experienced. “It's great, isn't it?”