Pieces of the Memories (Drabble Set 3)
Title: Pieces of the Memories
Author: audreyii_fic
Fandom: Twilight (Team Jacob)
Rating: T
Characters: Swan Family, Black Family, Clearwater Family
Genre: Humor/Angst/Friendship
Warnings: Occasional language.
banner courtesy of lilabut
Summary:
Renee leaves Charlie and Bella. AU drabble series.
( beginning)
How Leah Made Two Dollars And Fifty-Six Cents (Harry)
"What 'bout for my birthday?"
"Your birthday was last month!"
"So what?"
A dangerous pause. "Oh, you did not just So what me, Leah Clearwater."
The most important thing Harry has learned in the past few years is to stay out of the way when his wife and his daughter are arguing. This is why he is in the living room, reprogramming the Betamax. Soon he will be asked to intervene. Volunteering is not an option.
"HARRY!"
And there it is.
Sue storms out of the kitchen and throws a stained dishtowel on the floor. "Get your child out of my hair before I toss her into the ocean to be eaten by sharks," she growls.
"I like sharks more than I like you!" Leah runs past her mother and jumps onto the couch before crossing her arms with a glower.
Harry recognizes this is not the time to point out that his daughter is a carbon copy of his wife. "I've got it," he says to Sue, still calmly working on the tape player.
Sue makes a disgusted noise and returns to the kitchen; the sound of banging pans that follows is louder than it needs to be.
Harry ignores the steaming little girl sitting next to him. If he tries to talk to her too soon she will only stay angry. After about five minutes he says, without looking up from the remote, "You have problems, Fuzzy Duck?"
A huge, world-weary sigh. "Lots of problems."
"Is that so. Which one's the biggest?"
"I wanna baby brother."
"Do you."
"Uh-huh. Mommy promised after I stopped diapers. She promised."
Harry remembers that Sue did promise. She promised him the same thing, as a matter of fact. But that was before Sarah had Jacob; Jacob's a year old but Sarah's still an exhausted shadow of her former self. It has scared all baby-making inclination right out of Sue. "Well, you have to wait for these things."
Leah groans loud and long. She'll be a nightmare as a teenager, Harry can see it now. "But I've been waiting forever. And Rach'an'Beck got a brother."
"And they're always trying to get rid of him," Harry says reasonably, turning to face her. "Maybe you can play with Jacob sometimes."
"He just wants to play with Bella. And I shouldn' steal 'cause Bella's not gonna have a brother, everybody knows that."
Harry's pride for his daughter not wanting to 'steal' is cut off quickly by surprise. "What do you mean, 'everybody knows that'?"
Leah frowns at him. "Bella doesn' have a mommy, and mommies make brothers," she explains slowly, like Harry is very small. "R'member when Mrs. Black's tummy got really fat? That was a brother. That's where brothers come from, Dad."
Harry has to look away and take several deep breaths to keep from cracking up. "That's right. But Bella might have a mommy one day, you never know." (He and Billy have been pushing Charlie to start dating again but Charlie hasn't budged.)
"Bet her mommy won't get her a brother either," Leah mutters.
"You have to wait for these things," Harry repeats. He shifts sideways on the sofa and Leah leans her head against his arm. "And you have to play outside a lot or brothers can't get started in mommies' tummies. Brothers take lots of time. Sometimes they never come at all."
"Uh-huh."
"And," he adds, "sometimes they aren't brothers. Sometimes they're sisters."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Leah pauses for a long moment, considering. "I don't wanna sister," she says finally. "Sisters braid hair." (Rachel and Rebecca have started braiding anything that sits still. Leah spends most of her time up trees to save herself from the indignity. Bella is always pigtailed.)
Harry would also prefer a boy, but not because of fear of braids. It's because Harry knows that one day he'll be in a house where Sue and Leah are menstruating at the same time, and that's a terrifying enough prospect without another daughter in the mix. "You don't get a choice about that sort of thing, Fuzzy Duck. Sometimes babies are boys and sometimes they're girls. If you want a brother, you have to risk a sister."
His daughter scowls. "Well, I'll think about it," she says, sounding exactly like her mother. Harry loves her so much that he thinks he'll explode.
"All right then," Sue interrupts. She has been watching from the kitchen doorway; Harry has been pretending not to notice. "Leah, do you want your allowance?"
Leah jumps off the couch happily. "Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes. Please."
Sue smiles, just a little. "You're funny," she says. (There is no higher compliment in Sue's eyes.) Then she takes the Swear Jar off the shelf and grabs a handful of change. (Leah starts to wiggle with excitement.) Sue opens the window and tosses the coins onto the lawn. "Go. Everything you can find is yours."
Leah's out of the house in less time than it takes to blink; the instant the front door slams, Sue pulls her shirt over her head. "That'll keep her busy for awhile. Let's get started on another rugrat."
Harry manages to keep a straight face as he stands. "Aren't you still on the pill?"
"I'll go off today."
"So this won't actually do anything."
"It's practice."
"You just want to take my pants off."
"Yeah, well, it gets me hot when you're all sweet and shit. C'mon."
Harry follows his wife into the bedroom, and they make good use of the half-hour it takes Leah to pick all the pennies out of the grass.
***
Ice Cream Perils (Billy)
Rachel and Rebecca are determinedly staying inside, even though it's a rare sunny afternoon. This sort of behavior is very suspicious.
"Come on, girls," Billy pleads. The Mariners are on network TV. "Wouldn't you like to go swing on the tire?"
"No."
"No."
"How about the garden?" Sarah is asleep in the bedroom and he really wants to watch the game instead of The Wizard of Oz for the three hundredth time. "I think some of the tomatoes are ripe."
"No."
"No."
"You could look for frogs in the creek."
"No."
"No."
Billy resists the urge to bang his head on the wall. "Why not?"
"Because."
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Because Leah played outside too much and now she's getting a baby brother." Rachel scowls. "We don't want another baby brother."
"Yeah." Rebecca shoots an evil look at Jacob, who is carefully organizing his treasures on the dining room table. How he tells all of those dried leaves apart, Billy has no idea, but damned if the kid doesn't throw a fit if a single one goes missing. "Jake's a pest."
"Don't call your brother a pest," Billy says automatically, blinking as he processes this information.
"But he plays with our stuff!"
"He eats our cookies!"
"He talks too much!"
"He's sooooo aggravating!"
Where did his five year olds learn to say aggravating? "Be nice. He's little and he just wants to play with you."
"Does not."
"He only wants to play with Bella."
Jacob looks up from his leaves. "Bells?" he says hopefully. (He's eighteen months old and he has a half dozen words -- and a nearly endless stream of baby babble -- but Bells is by far his favorite thing to say.)
Billy rolls his eyes. "It's Sunday, Jake, she's with her daddy." (Jacob is not yet clear on the concept of weekends.) He turns back to Rachel and Rebecca. "And the reason he wants to play with Bella and not you girls is because Bella isn't so rough with him." (Jacob also plays with Leah, when Leah is willing to come down from her trees. That's not often.) "Going outside doesn't make baby brothers, mommies and daddies do, and Mommy's asleep--" (unfortunately) "--so don't worry."
The twins give him identical confused looks. "Mommies and daddies make babies?"
Billy freezes. "Maybe," he says quickly. "Now go outside."
Rebecca's eyebrows come together. "Don't babies grow in mommies' tummies?"
"Yes--"
"So what do daddies do?" asks Rachel.
Oh shit. "They... uh... get ice cream and stuff. For the mommies. To help them grow the babies."
The girls stare in horror at the freezer. "Ice cream makes babies?"
"No!" Billy is hosed and he knows it. "Okay. Look. When a man and a woman love each other very much--" (is he really saying these words?) "--they... spend some time together, and afterwards they have a baby." Then he gives his daughters a severe look. "But only once they've gotten married because until then they've been very, very, very careful."
"Oh."
"Oh."
Billy sighs with relief when they don't ask any more questions. "Now go outside. Take your brother with you." When the girls open their mouths to protest he shakes his head firmly. "No buts. And don't feed him bugs this time."
"He was the baby sparrow!"
"He had to eat bugs or he'd starve!"
"No bugs." Billy sits down in the recliner and points at the door. "Out you go. All three of you. Now."
Rachel and Rebecca give theatrical sighs, then pull Jacob off his chair and out onto the porch. Within a few minutes the sounds of "Come here, baby sparrow" and "Mmm, tasty cricket!" can be heard from the yard.
Billy only makes it into the second inning of the ballgame before he falls asleep.
***
Being Careful (Charlie)
When Charlie picks Bella up from the Blacks' house she's white as a sheet. Even more so than usual.
He asks her how her day was; she stares at her hands.
He asks her if she did anything fun; she bites her lip.
He asks her what she wants for dinner; she fidgets with her pigtails.
By the time the cruiser is parked in the driveway, Charlie has gotten very nervous. He's become more confident in his parenting, but moments where something is clearly Wrong still scare the shit out of him. His high-strung little girl is his whole life.
Bella wants to be carried into the house, and she keeps sneaking her thumb into her mouth. Charlie pulls off her shoes and her backpack, takes her into the living room, sets her down on his armchair and crouches in front of her. "Okay, Bella," he says seriously. He keeps his voice nice and calm so hopefully she can't tell he's terrified that she's caught meningitis or is having a nervous breakdown or something. "What's wrong?"
Bella's face crumples. "Daddy!" she sobs, and she launches herself forward into Charlie's arms and clings desperately to his neck.
Oh, dear Christ, she is having a nervous breakdown. "What are you sorry for, kiddo?" Charlie says, rubbing her little back. His face is an identical shade of white as his daughter's.
"I wasn' careful with Jake," she manages to say through huge, wet hiccups, "and now I'm gonna have a baby!"
Charlie's mouth drops open. "You... what?"
It takes several minutes of hugging and coaxing and yes, a few jelly beans before Bella is calm enough to explain. "Me an' Jake were playing, an' I wasn' careful an' I stepped on his mud pie an' broke it." Huge tears run down her cheeks as she wails, "It was only by accident!"
"I'm sure it was," Charlie says as he strokes her hair. "Um... was he upset?"
"Nuh-uh. He just made a new one." Bella wipes her snot on her sleeve. "But Rach'an'Beck said since I spend time with Jake and then wasn' careful we made a baby and I asked Leah and she said she doesn' know about being careful but we were playing outside and playing outside makes babies and Rach'an'Beck said Jake's gonna marry me and he's suppos'd to get the ice cream an' Leah said I might get some pennies an' I like ice cream an' I like pennies an' I like Jake but Daddy I don' wanna have a baby!"
Charlie has never been more confused in his life.
( next)
Author: audreyii_fic
Fandom: Twilight (Team Jacob)
Rating: T
Characters: Swan Family, Black Family, Clearwater Family
Genre: Humor/Angst/Friendship
Warnings: Occasional language.
banner courtesy of lilabut
Summary:
Renee leaves Charlie and Bella. AU drabble series.
( beginning)
How Leah Made Two Dollars And Fifty-Six Cents (Harry)
"What 'bout for my birthday?"
"Your birthday was last month!"
"So what?"
A dangerous pause. "Oh, you did not just So what me, Leah Clearwater."
The most important thing Harry has learned in the past few years is to stay out of the way when his wife and his daughter are arguing. This is why he is in the living room, reprogramming the Betamax. Soon he will be asked to intervene. Volunteering is not an option.
"HARRY!"
And there it is.
Sue storms out of the kitchen and throws a stained dishtowel on the floor. "Get your child out of my hair before I toss her into the ocean to be eaten by sharks," she growls.
"I like sharks more than I like you!" Leah runs past her mother and jumps onto the couch before crossing her arms with a glower.
Harry recognizes this is not the time to point out that his daughter is a carbon copy of his wife. "I've got it," he says to Sue, still calmly working on the tape player.
Sue makes a disgusted noise and returns to the kitchen; the sound of banging pans that follows is louder than it needs to be.
Harry ignores the steaming little girl sitting next to him. If he tries to talk to her too soon she will only stay angry. After about five minutes he says, without looking up from the remote, "You have problems, Fuzzy Duck?"
A huge, world-weary sigh. "Lots of problems."
"Is that so. Which one's the biggest?"
"I wanna baby brother."
"Do you."
"Uh-huh. Mommy promised after I stopped diapers. She promised."
Harry remembers that Sue did promise. She promised him the same thing, as a matter of fact. But that was before Sarah had Jacob; Jacob's a year old but Sarah's still an exhausted shadow of her former self. It has scared all baby-making inclination right out of Sue. "Well, you have to wait for these things."
Leah groans loud and long. She'll be a nightmare as a teenager, Harry can see it now. "But I've been waiting forever. And Rach'an'Beck got a brother."
"And they're always trying to get rid of him," Harry says reasonably, turning to face her. "Maybe you can play with Jacob sometimes."
"He just wants to play with Bella. And I shouldn' steal 'cause Bella's not gonna have a brother, everybody knows that."
Harry's pride for his daughter not wanting to 'steal' is cut off quickly by surprise. "What do you mean, 'everybody knows that'?"
Leah frowns at him. "Bella doesn' have a mommy, and mommies make brothers," she explains slowly, like Harry is very small. "R'member when Mrs. Black's tummy got really fat? That was a brother. That's where brothers come from, Dad."
Harry has to look away and take several deep breaths to keep from cracking up. "That's right. But Bella might have a mommy one day, you never know." (He and Billy have been pushing Charlie to start dating again but Charlie hasn't budged.)
"Bet her mommy won't get her a brother either," Leah mutters.
"You have to wait for these things," Harry repeats. He shifts sideways on the sofa and Leah leans her head against his arm. "And you have to play outside a lot or brothers can't get started in mommies' tummies. Brothers take lots of time. Sometimes they never come at all."
"Uh-huh."
"And," he adds, "sometimes they aren't brothers. Sometimes they're sisters."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Leah pauses for a long moment, considering. "I don't wanna sister," she says finally. "Sisters braid hair." (Rachel and Rebecca have started braiding anything that sits still. Leah spends most of her time up trees to save herself from the indignity. Bella is always pigtailed.)
Harry would also prefer a boy, but not because of fear of braids. It's because Harry knows that one day he'll be in a house where Sue and Leah are menstruating at the same time, and that's a terrifying enough prospect without another daughter in the mix. "You don't get a choice about that sort of thing, Fuzzy Duck. Sometimes babies are boys and sometimes they're girls. If you want a brother, you have to risk a sister."
His daughter scowls. "Well, I'll think about it," she says, sounding exactly like her mother. Harry loves her so much that he thinks he'll explode.
"All right then," Sue interrupts. She has been watching from the kitchen doorway; Harry has been pretending not to notice. "Leah, do you want your allowance?"
Leah jumps off the couch happily. "Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes. Please."
Sue smiles, just a little. "You're funny," she says. (There is no higher compliment in Sue's eyes.) Then she takes the Swear Jar off the shelf and grabs a handful of change. (Leah starts to wiggle with excitement.) Sue opens the window and tosses the coins onto the lawn. "Go. Everything you can find is yours."
Leah's out of the house in less time than it takes to blink; the instant the front door slams, Sue pulls her shirt over her head. "That'll keep her busy for awhile. Let's get started on another rugrat."
Harry manages to keep a straight face as he stands. "Aren't you still on the pill?"
"I'll go off today."
"So this won't actually do anything."
"It's practice."
"You just want to take my pants off."
"Yeah, well, it gets me hot when you're all sweet and shit. C'mon."
Harry follows his wife into the bedroom, and they make good use of the half-hour it takes Leah to pick all the pennies out of the grass.
***
Ice Cream Perils (Billy)
Rachel and Rebecca are determinedly staying inside, even though it's a rare sunny afternoon. This sort of behavior is very suspicious.
"Come on, girls," Billy pleads. The Mariners are on network TV. "Wouldn't you like to go swing on the tire?"
"No."
"No."
"How about the garden?" Sarah is asleep in the bedroom and he really wants to watch the game instead of The Wizard of Oz for the three hundredth time. "I think some of the tomatoes are ripe."
"No."
"No."
"You could look for frogs in the creek."
"No."
"No."
Billy resists the urge to bang his head on the wall. "Why not?"
"Because."
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Because Leah played outside too much and now she's getting a baby brother." Rachel scowls. "We don't want another baby brother."
"Yeah." Rebecca shoots an evil look at Jacob, who is carefully organizing his treasures on the dining room table. How he tells all of those dried leaves apart, Billy has no idea, but damned if the kid doesn't throw a fit if a single one goes missing. "Jake's a pest."
"Don't call your brother a pest," Billy says automatically, blinking as he processes this information.
"But he plays with our stuff!"
"He eats our cookies!"
"He talks too much!"
"He's sooooo aggravating!"
Where did his five year olds learn to say aggravating? "Be nice. He's little and he just wants to play with you."
"Does not."
"He only wants to play with Bella."
Jacob looks up from his leaves. "Bells?" he says hopefully. (He's eighteen months old and he has a half dozen words -- and a nearly endless stream of baby babble -- but Bells is by far his favorite thing to say.)
Billy rolls his eyes. "It's Sunday, Jake, she's with her daddy." (Jacob is not yet clear on the concept of weekends.) He turns back to Rachel and Rebecca. "And the reason he wants to play with Bella and not you girls is because Bella isn't so rough with him." (Jacob also plays with Leah, when Leah is willing to come down from her trees. That's not often.) "Going outside doesn't make baby brothers, mommies and daddies do, and Mommy's asleep--" (unfortunately) "--so don't worry."
The twins give him identical confused looks. "Mommies and daddies make babies?"
Billy freezes. "Maybe," he says quickly. "Now go outside."
Rebecca's eyebrows come together. "Don't babies grow in mommies' tummies?"
"Yes--"
"So what do daddies do?" asks Rachel.
Oh shit. "They... uh... get ice cream and stuff. For the mommies. To help them grow the babies."
The girls stare in horror at the freezer. "Ice cream makes babies?"
"No!" Billy is hosed and he knows it. "Okay. Look. When a man and a woman love each other very much--" (is he really saying these words?) "--they... spend some time together, and afterwards they have a baby." Then he gives his daughters a severe look. "But only once they've gotten married because until then they've been very, very, very careful."
"Oh."
"Oh."
Billy sighs with relief when they don't ask any more questions. "Now go outside. Take your brother with you." When the girls open their mouths to protest he shakes his head firmly. "No buts. And don't feed him bugs this time."
"He was the baby sparrow!"
"He had to eat bugs or he'd starve!"
"No bugs." Billy sits down in the recliner and points at the door. "Out you go. All three of you. Now."
Rachel and Rebecca give theatrical sighs, then pull Jacob off his chair and out onto the porch. Within a few minutes the sounds of "Come here, baby sparrow" and "Mmm, tasty cricket!" can be heard from the yard.
Billy only makes it into the second inning of the ballgame before he falls asleep.
***
Being Careful (Charlie)
When Charlie picks Bella up from the Blacks' house she's white as a sheet. Even more so than usual.
He asks her how her day was; she stares at her hands.
He asks her if she did anything fun; she bites her lip.
He asks her what she wants for dinner; she fidgets with her pigtails.
By the time the cruiser is parked in the driveway, Charlie has gotten very nervous. He's become more confident in his parenting, but moments where something is clearly Wrong still scare the shit out of him. His high-strung little girl is his whole life.
Bella wants to be carried into the house, and she keeps sneaking her thumb into her mouth. Charlie pulls off her shoes and her backpack, takes her into the living room, sets her down on his armchair and crouches in front of her. "Okay, Bella," he says seriously. He keeps his voice nice and calm so hopefully she can't tell he's terrified that she's caught meningitis or is having a nervous breakdown or something. "What's wrong?"
Bella's face crumples. "Daddy!" she sobs, and she launches herself forward into Charlie's arms and clings desperately to his neck.
Oh, dear Christ, she is having a nervous breakdown. "What are you sorry for, kiddo?" Charlie says, rubbing her little back. His face is an identical shade of white as his daughter's.
"I wasn' careful with Jake," she manages to say through huge, wet hiccups, "and now I'm gonna have a baby!"
Charlie's mouth drops open. "You... what?"
It takes several minutes of hugging and coaxing and yes, a few jelly beans before Bella is calm enough to explain. "Me an' Jake were playing, an' I wasn' careful an' I stepped on his mud pie an' broke it." Huge tears run down her cheeks as she wails, "It was only by accident!"
"I'm sure it was," Charlie says as he strokes her hair. "Um... was he upset?"
"Nuh-uh. He just made a new one." Bella wipes her snot on her sleeve. "But Rach'an'Beck said since I spend time with Jake and then wasn' careful we made a baby and I asked Leah and she said she doesn' know about being careful but we were playing outside and playing outside makes babies and Rach'an'Beck said Jake's gonna marry me and he's suppos'd to get the ice cream an' Leah said I might get some pennies an' I like ice cream an' I like pennies an' I like Jake but Daddy I don' wanna have a baby!"
Charlie has never been more confused in his life.
( next)