Other's Day
He had been watching Lazlo sleep when he heard someone at the front door.
"Glarn?" he tried to call out quietly.
"Not quite, Spaceman."
He hadn't had a lot of contact with his friend's mate. In all honesty he really had no idea what she thought about him, and the twins, and Glarn's pregnancy. He wasn't avoiding her, they just seem to keep missing each other.
"Glarn left you with baby duty, Spaceman?" She barely swayed, but she did. He could admit feeling nervous around her, after the stories the children had told him. Glarn never brought her up. He nodded. "Spawn are sleepening. Glarn was been calling away..."
"Shhhhh," Kitty tried to soothe him, "It's fine Spaceman. I trust you. Oh! I have something for you! Come sit with me for a while." She entered Glarn's study. Unsure, Xiren followed her.
"It's awful to say, I know, but I was relieved that it wasn't me." she confessed as she reached under the couch cushions. She couldn't help smirking at his confused expression. "He never uses this couch, so... Oh, right you weren't here... we tried for years to conceive with no luck. As soon as your friends got a hold of him, we started popping out babies like Pez."
She handed him a photo album. He opened it expecting it to just have photos of Lola and Chloe, even though he wasn’t sure many existed, let alone an album’s worth. What he found were photos of all the Curious children, with notes about their various experiences and awards.
"So thank you, Spaceman. You're the reason we have a family. But you should have found us sooner."
Xiren tucked the book away, elated but wary. “I do noting understand?”
“I’m not blaming you,” Kitty started, “But you put us in an awkward position. You left us with an incomplete family. You should have been here with us, for all of the kids. And… Glarn and I needed you, too.”
Xiren felt his face flush at her words. “No, no don’t get embarrassed. I don’t know how it would have worked out. But NONE of these children would be here if not for Glarn’s seeding- I’m guessing that's part of what you look for. But this whole time, it’s felt like something’s been missing, something important. And it’s been YOU. The three of us needed to raise these kids together. Maybe it’s not too late to start…” Kitty wistfully looked off into the distance.
Xiren started to rise from the couch, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. “You should take Laz to the cake for his transition. He thinks you hung the stars.”
“I? But I’m not…” Kitty rolled her eyes and rose to meet him. “You are as much his father as Glarn. Don’t you get it? The younger four, it took all of us to make them. And Glarn and I, I don’t think we understood what was missing, why we couldn’t quite work the same anymore. You don’t think you have a claim on the four. I felt I couldn’t have one on the twins, I couldn’t say they were my daughters, as much as I wanted to. I didn’t think I had the right. And once I realized you made the other four possible…”
She pulled him into a hug. “We were meant to be in this together, Xiren. I don’t know how we would have worked it out, but we should have raised all six together. We should have been a family, instead of you and I trying to figure out where we fit in.”
As Xiren let go and turned to leave, Kitty called after him, “Think about what I said, Spaceman. You’re a part of us. It took all three of us to do this. You have a place in this family; please, please, claim it."