Colin was an unexpected surprise, but a welcome one.
For me, anyway.
We stopped to get food once we were out of Trinity, getting a few snacks for the long drive before we got onto the Mississippi Road, which traveled along the entire river’s length and served as a divide between East and West Campora in the north, and Claymoore and Liliport in the south, the bridges over the river a neutral spot between clans. We had to stop a couple times to use the bathroom and get something to eat, but otherwise we stayed on the road and tried to get home as soon as possible, the drive taking about the same about of time it took to get from Liliport to Trinity.
Mabel held Colin the entire ride home and she knew how to talk to him, so that made the ride far easier for everyone, but especially Colin. He was exhausted and she had him in her arms for about twenty minutes before he passed out cold, one hand holding onto the necklace she wore, the only thing she took with her down from The Wilds. After a little bit of talking, she found out that Colin was from a village in the same are as her own, and shared a lot of similar cultural aspects, including their emphasis on Woodland Fairies in their fables.
So this was a very, very good pairing, I thought. Colin would be very happy to meet his new cousins, who all knew the stories.
He woke up when it was time to eat and when it was time to use the bathroom, he refused to use the rest stops like the rest of us and instead went in the field while Mabel or I were by him.
While Colin slept in Mabel’s lap, holding onto her necklace, and Mabel was messaging Roy with her free arm, Gideon confessed that he had read in a book in Greater Lakes that the quickest way to force a bond was through sex, so that had been a big drive to trying to have sexual contact around and with me as much as possible. We talked for a while about what our partnership would look like going forward with Colin, and we came to some pretty good compromises that I think we were both happy with.
We agreed I’m be Colin’s main parent since Gideon was unsure how to act around kids or how to raise one, since he was an only child and didn’t have any cousins that lived close to him growing up.
Mainly though, Gideon wanted a cat if we were going to have a kid, and I agree that once we were settled, he could get one.
Somehow that turned into him saying at the first rest stop he couldn’t wait to get his two new kittens, because apparently kittens needed to have a friend, and then two kittens turned into two kittens and then an adopted cat at the least rest stop, because older cats needed homes to and it could show the kittens how the world worked in ways Gideon couldn’t, and that was also very important to cats.
So now I had to prepare my one bedroom apartment for a toddler, two kittens, a cat, and a man that seemed to hint that he was likely to just let stray cats into the house and keep them...and then possibly that man’s novus teenage brother as well.
And I was happy to, because I had my mate, and Colin was a welcomed surprise, and the cats -
Well, I’d get used to the cats, I was sure.
Eventually.
I’d make it work.
And Ilan...that would be a bit of a challenge, but I would happily let him think he was the man of the house if it meant having my mate and our new baby – or new, small family – all together, and happy. I didn’t know much about him, but I don’t imagine it would be hard to do research, since he was currently holding a position of MAN, which wasn’t that hard – Trinity went through male alpha novus like tissue paper, but I didn’t want to tell Gideon that.
I just wanted to get Ilan out of Trinity as fast as humanly possible so Gideon wouldn’t lose his baby brother again, not to Trinity nonsense that I couldn’t even being to rationalize or explain to help him handle such a loss.
I knew that West Campora and Victoria weren’t entirely huge on sharing matchmaker databases, but since I knew Willow so well, I was hoping I could sweet talk him into letting Ilan into his database to see if he couldn’t snag him a mate and get him down to Liliport.
Well, maybe not Liliport, no, that would be a horrible idea. Even if Mabel and her sisters rotated the position of FAN, Ilan would never be accepted here. We’d have to move back to my parent’s hometown, I think, or -
Well, we’d cross that bridge when it came, but I warned Mabel, and she warned her sisters, so word was out already among our females that we might be bringing a Trinity MAN down.
By the time we got back to Liliport, we were about twenty four hours before the first bad storm winds from the hurricane hit, so I dropped Mabel off at the Peacekeepers headquarters before I went and picked Roy.
Roy was very confused as to why there was a sleeping toddler in the backseat when he climbed in, but he rolled with the news that I had adopted him and that Gideon and I were officially going to mate, the wedding something that would just have to take place a little later once I was stabilized.
We hurried around the city getting supplies, but it quickly became to much for Colin and so I took the list from Roy so he could go sit with Colin in the truck. Roy, for his part, was very excited to have another sapien in the immediate family and was eager to get our parents on the phone to fill them in, and he spent the entire time I was running around with Gideon shopping having them talk to Colin about what our family was going to do for the upcoming holidays and what he wanted for Christmas.
After we finished shopping, I brought the truck back to Roy’s house to help unload the groceries, Roy grabbing a few of Little Lawrence’s old things so Colin had clothes. Once the storm passed and the city went back to normal I’d go and buy Colin things he needed, but right now we needed to get what we absolutely needed and then settle in for what was to come.
Now that Gideon and I were on the same page about our courtship – that we both wanted to be be mates and were committed to making it work with each other, Gideon seemed was far more comfortable with everything. He didn’t need to grope or kiss me aggressively in public, he didn’t push for sexual contact whenever he could. He still liked to keep his hands on me, but it was far more appropriate touches, like holding my hand or holding a hand on my shoulder. His favorite though was hugging me from behind, which he did whenever we had a chance, mostly while we were waiting in the line for the check out.
When we were back in my apartment after I helped unload Roy’s groceries with Gideon, I showed Colin around our little apartment while Gideon unpacked his things. Roy came over with some toys and coloring books for Colin as well as some more clothes. Colin was very unsure of things and scared, but that was to be expected, and I was happy to see he seemed very intrigued by me, though I was sure that was because he seemed convinced I was a real life fairy. He would ask me if I was a fairy from this story or that story, and so I started to tell him a little bit about me.
He had a real laugh when I told him I was going to be a dentist and Gideon declared that meant I was the Tooth Fairy.
We then rushed to the emergency clinic to get Colin’s cough checked out and that turned out to be an unpleasant experience as we learned that Colin, from The Wilds, was behind on all his shots and was likely fighting a flu since his immune system was being exposed to things it had never been exposed to before.
So by the time we were out of the doctor’s office, Colin had both arms full of colorful bandaids from several different shots and a bag full of medicine we had to give him to get rid of an ear infection and chest infection.
It was raining solidly on our way home, but Gideon and I decided to just stop to get Colin something he wanted anyway to make up for the unpleasant doctor’s visit.
All Colin wanted was socks because his feet were cold, and I felt like an ass for not having putting socks and shoes on him before we rushed to the doctor’s. I had been so caught up in running around that I hadn’t remembered his little feet were naked and that it was the end of fall. And while it didn’t get to cold here, it was still cold enough that children shouldn’t be running around barefoot, and -
And I had already fucked up, not even two days into being Colin’s father.
The guilt was intense but the emergency shot helped ease it, and it made it very obvious how deeply bonded I was to Gideon when I didn’t spiral.
This was the first time in maybe ten years I felt awful about something and didn’t immediately start scratching myself.
And what a wonder that was.
When we got home, we found out Colin was terrified of the shower because he started screaming blood murder when we turned it on him, and so he got a bath in the kitchen sink, which went terribly until Roy’s father in law came in with some products from their village that helped ease Colin enough to allow us to pour water from a cup over him while he washed up.
It took us two hours to get the grease and dirt and something Colin called ‘magic oil’ from his knotted hair. We had been close to just shaving it all off, but Colin burst into tears when he heard that so we decided to try very hard for him to keep it, and lucky we were able to clean it out.
Gideon and I then had to spend a further ten minutes getting his fingernails and toenails clean, but Colin was a good sport about it, staying quiet and watching us while we worked, and when we were done he got dressed in some of Little Lawrence’s old pajamas and socks.
After we had everything from shopping earlier put away (Roy having come over and put away anything that needed to be refrigerated) and we were all ready to sleep, I made up a nice bed for Colin on the couch, but he cried and sobbed as soon as he was alone, hard enough that he became sick with it and wet himself, so I dragged my mattress out of my room and Gideon and I just camped out there for a few days with Colin. The three of us slept on the mattress with the tv on low, playing a quite movie about kittens and puppies instead of the pirate cartoon Gideon tried to put on for him, since Colin quickly became feverish with a headache from the vaccines (as we had been warned), and while he struggled to sleep, I wanted him to just stay calm until he felt better.
Colin very much liked hearing fairy tales, and having been around Mabel and her family for several years, I had plenty to tell, though he seemed to know most of them. Mostly, he just wanted to cuddle with me, fascinated about how I looked like a sapien but had fairy eyes and claws (which I usually had filed down professionally, but Gideon liked them so I had them grow out just a little).
While our city was slammed with what was likely the worst storm we had in several generations, strange for making landfall so late in the hurricane season, we pretty much just stayed in our bed in the living room. We’d go to the kitchen and get food, Colin staying on my hip, and I had to sit in the bathroom while Colin’s used the bathtub as a toilet because he wasn’t potty trained yet and – and the toilet confused him and he was scared to go to the bathroom alone, but other than that (and me cleaning up the shower after Colin used it, of course), we stayed in bed together and relaxed.
Gideon wanted to watch what was going on outside so I set him up with a portable screen so he could watch it where Colin couldn’t see, in case it triggered Colin’s anxiety, which seemed to be trigger with the rain. So that usually meant Gideon would roll over with his back pressed to mine, watching the screen under the blankets while I laid on my side and cuddled with Colin while he watched tv and tried to play the games with Little Lawrence when he came over with his sisters to visit Colin (and let Roy sleep for a couple hours).
When the hurricane passed after a few days and broke up a couple miles north of us, we waited out as the few tornadoes trialing behind the storm came and went. Before long, the weather calmed and families with children were given the all clear to go out, and I decided to bring Colin down with Gideon to show them what damage from the hurricane looked like since Colin no longer had a fever and was feeling much better.
And while it was bad, it wasn’t to much worse than we had seen before.
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