Monkey Business (1/2)
Title: Monkey Business (1/2)
Author: Faith kennedysbitch
Pairing: Callie/Arizona, Mark/Lexie
Rating: PG-13
Choices Series
Summary: When five-year-old Jackson Sloan gets himself stuck in a tree, it’s Auntie Zona to the rescue. Set about nine or ten months before Fish Are Friends, Not Food. Stands alone.
Beta’d by the stupendously speedy clanket.
A/N: Angst plus final exams just wasn’t doable, so here’s one more fluff piece. Back to our regularly scheduled, present day programing after this.
---
The Emergency Room at Seattle Grace - Mercy West hospital was bustling with activity on this particular Friday afternoon in early fall. Ambulances rolled in at a steady pace and both residents and interns swamped the vicinity, trolling the Pit for cases that had the potential to become surgical.
It was the absolute last place Callie Torres wanted to be at the end of her shift. The possibility of getting sucked into a last-minute surgery was too high for comfort when she was planning on getting home to her family by six o’clock that evening. The page requesting her presence hadn’t been a 9-1-1, thankfully, which usually meant she could take a quick look and pawn it off on someone else.
Setting foot into the chaos drew a heavy sigh from the brunette as she scanned the area for her ortho case. The intern who’d paged found her first, rushing over while looking more than a little flustered.
It may have had something to do with the unimpressed glower plastered on Callie’s face. Everyone knew better than to cross her if she was cranky.
“I have a hot wife, two kids and a warm meal to get home to, Kartovsky. This had better be good.”
Dr. Darren Kartovsky swallowed back and replied with an over-eager nod. “I know, Dr. Torres, I’m sorry. But Dr. Sloan said to page you to Bed Two right away.”
“Sloan?” Callie cocked an eyebrow. “What’s he doing here? He’s supposed to be watching the kids.”
That’s when she felt a sudden wave of panic flood through her. Before the young doctor could get another word in, Callie shoved him aside and barreled over to curtain number two.
If Sloan was here and paging her, then one of the kids could be hurt. Thoughts of either her three year old or four-and-a-half year old falling down the stairs or off their bike or getting hit by a car flashed through her mind in the five seconds it took her to cross the ER. She immediately ripped back the curtain.
“What happened? Is it-”
Arizona sat on the edge of the exam bed, cradling her right arm and looking up with an expression resembling a punted puppy. Mark stood next to her, fidgeting nervously, then froze when Callie suddenly appeared.
Callie paused, not prepared to see her wife on the table when she’d been expecting one of their children. While she was relieved the little ones were okay, Arizona looked miserable and seemed to be in a fair amount of pain.
“What happened?” she asked as she stepped inside and yanked the curtain shut behind her, immediately focusing in on her wife.
Now that she got a closer look, Arizona had several scratches and bruises along her face - nothing too serious, but there nonetheless. She also had that famous pout of hers in place, hunched over and looking utterly defeated.
Callie’s eyes fell to her partner’s right arm where it rested gingerly in her left. The purple bruising and swelling, along with the bulge of a displaced bone in Arizona’s wrist, immediately ignited the brunette’s protective streak.
She rounded on Mark and back-handed him hard in the chest. “What the hell did you do to my wife?”
Mark recoiled. “I didn’t do anything!” he protested, shrinking away under the stern, half-crazed glare of his best friend. “She’s the one that-”
“Oh sure, blame it on me,” Arizona cut him off, grumbling under her breath. “Maybe if you had learned how to play catch at age twelve like every other male on the planet-”
“You’re not exactly a baseball, Robbins,” Mark shot back with a scowl.
Callie watched them exchange dirty looks and rolled her eyes as she gingerly took Arizona’s arm to inspect the break. She grimaced at the nasty discolouration and knew right away it was broken. “Someone want to tell me why I’m about to put my wife in traction?”
Arizona hissed when Callie touched the protruding bone, the ugly bump under her skin throbbing in protest.
“Sorry,” the brunette said immediately, moving her fingers elsewhere. She cringed in sympathy when Arizona flinched again. “Did you fall on your Heelys again? Because I swear I’m gonna take those things away from you one of these days.”
Arizona exchanged a brief look with Mark before settling her gaze back on Callie. “I...sorta fell out of a tree.”
That made her wife pause. A dark, sculpted eyebrow slowly crept toward her hairline. “Come again?”
Arizona sighed heavily and slouched over, pouting at her misfortune. “I fell out of a tree,” she repeated dejectedly, resigning herself to how ridiculous that sounded.
“And what were you doing in a tree, exactly?” Callie carefully set Arizona’s arm back down and started filling out her chart. She kept a careful eye on her wife while shooting the occasional suspicious glare at Sloan. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten Arizona into trouble. The man was a bad influence and Arizona could be way too helpful for her own good sometimes.
“She was getting Jack,” Mark offered, crossing his arms and frowning as he watched.
That made Callie pause. “Your four year old son got himself stuck in a tree and you sent my wife up to get him? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Mark scowled again, rubbing a hand through his beard. “He’s almost five.”
“Really not the point here, Mark.”
Arizona spoke up, releasing a soft breath. “It was my idea. Mark was too heavy to climb without breaking the branches, we didn’t have a ladder and Jack couldn’t get down on his own.”
Callie listened intently while she filled out an order for x-rays, briefly sticking her head out of the curtain to pass the forms off to a nurse. She looked back at her partner and felt a pang in her chest, hating how miserable Arizona looked.
“C’mere,” she murmured softly, stepping up beside the exam bed and gingerly pulling her wife into a hug. The blonde slumped into her arms with a heavy sigh, squishing her cheek against Callie’s chest. Callie rubbed a soothing hand along Arizona’s back, dropping a kiss onto her hair while looking over at Mark.
“Is Jack okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine,” the man replied. “I think he’s feeling pretty guilty about the whole thing, though. He’s home with Lex and the others.”
Lexie Sloan versus four children, all under the age of five. That had to be fun for the young doctor, especially considering she was eight months pregnant with twins.
Arizona moaned pitifully into Callie’s scrub shirt as a hard throb shot through her wrist. “I’m an idiot,” she grumbled, closing her eyes and taking comfort in her partner’s embrace.
“A little bit,” Callie agreed, dropping another kiss on top of her head. “C’mon. Let’s get you some x-rays so I can fix you up.”
***
It started as a warm day with brightly coloured leaves gradually falling from the trees, floating past a second floor window of the Sloan household. The sun was out and the sky completely cloudless, making it the perfect day to play outside.
Jackson Sloan was up well before his parents and spent an hour in his room playing before he heard anybody else stir. The moment the tell-tale shuffle of adults sounded in the other room, he was up and out the door, skittering across the hardwood floors on his sock-clad feet.
“Mommy!” Jack slid right into his parents’ closed bedroom door with a loud ‘thud’, grunting as he stumbled back. The last thing it did was deter him, however, and he reached up to grab the handle and push it open with some effort.
“Mom, can we have pancakes for breakfast?” he blurted, running across the room and diving up onto his parents’ bed. He heard his dad in the shower so he crawled up onto the empty side.
Lexie was still half buried under the sheets with a pillow over her head. She groaned loudly when Jack scrambled across the mountain of covers. “Easy, buddy. Watch Mommy’s tummy.”
Jack froze, remembering that he had to be super careful with his baby brother and sister. They sure made his mom a lot bigger than she normally was.
But when he’d asked his mom about how his brother and sister got in there in the first place, she’d just changed the subject and told him to ask his dad. When he’d cornered Mark and rephrased the question, his dad had started talking about baseball scores and gone to get one of those yucky drinks in the brown bottles from the fridge.
Grown-ups were weird.
Jack scooted up close to his mom and placed his hands on her growing belly. “Are they done yet?”
“Done what, buddy?” Lexie murmured into her pillow, not moving an inch.
“Done baking,” Jack clarified, keeping his hands in place and waiting to see if his siblings moved. “Daddy said you have buns in your oven but it’s not like the oven we made cookies in. He said your temper-ter had to be five-million for more weeks before they finished.”
Lexie peeked an eye open and lifted her head, smiling in amusement at her son. “He did, did he?”
Jack nodded, his forehead scrunching. “But I don’t know if I believe him.”
Lexie laughed and reached out to snag her mini-Mark around the waist, hauling him down into her arms. “You’re a pretty smart kid, Little Man. How’d that happen?”
Jack wiggled and fought to get comfy. “‘Cause Aunt Callie and Auntie Zona gave me their super special dinner last week,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“They gave you a what?” Lexie glanced down at her first born as he finally settled in her arms.
“Aunt Callie called it a super special casserole,” Jack informed her. “She said Auntie Zona made it and even though it tastes kinda yucky, we had to eat it anyway ‘cause it would make us super smart.”
He paused. “But I didn’t like it very much.”
Lexie barely managed to stifle a laugh. “Oh, that must be it then.”
Jack sighed heavily and squirmed again. “Mommy, can we have pancakes for breakfast? Please?”
Lexie slowly sat up with a stiff groan. She leaned her weight onto her right arm and placed her left hand over her enormous belly. “I suppose we can work something out,” she agreed after a moment. “But you’re gonna have to convince your daddy to do the hard part. All I can do is work a spatula right now.”
Jack’s excitement skyrocketed and he immediately leapt up, jumping up and down on the mattress. “Yes!”
“Hey, what did we say about jumping on the bed?” his father’s booming voice announced from the bathroom doorway.
Jack’s eyes went wide and he froze in mid-air, immediately crashing down onto his butt. “No jumping in the bedroom,” he stated, repeating the mantra he’d heard for years.
Oops. Sometimes he got a little too excited and forgot.
Almost immediately, his sheepishness morphed into excitement. “Momma said you can make me pancakes!”
Mark strode across to the walk-in closet he shared with his wife, adjusting the towel around his waist. “She did, huh?” He cast a glance over his shoulder and flashed Lexie a grin. “Volunteering me for kitchen duty, woman?”
“I told him you can do the mixing,” she replied. “All I’m capable of right now is spooning and flipping.”
“I can help,” Jack added eagerly. “One time Aunt Callie told me I’m a better cook than Auntie Zona is.”
A smug grin appeared on Mark’s face and Lexie shot him a silencing look, cutting in before he could say anything. “Sounds good, Little Man. How about you go brush your teeth and check on your sister? I’m sure she wants pancakes, too. Your dad and I will meet you downstairs.”
Jack nodded dutifully and bounced off the bed, shouting a quick “‘Kay!” over his shoulder before disappearing out the door at top speed.
Lexie shook her head and smiled affectionately at her husband. “He gets it from you, you know.”
Mark shot Lexie a lopsided grin. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
***
As promised, Jack helped his mom and dad make pancakes for him and his sister. Then he helped Mark clean up the kitchen while his mom lay down on the couch. She kept talking about how her feet and back were sore and how it was all Daddy’s fault and that he ‘owed her one after this’. Jack thought it was kind of silly because she was blaming Daddy when it was his stupid siblings’ fault. Mom always talked about how they were making her tired and cranky. Maybe she was scolding his dad because his brother and sister weren’t done baking yet and she couldn’t scold them.
At least she wasn’t mad at him or Jayden. It was no fun when Mommy was cranky.
Whatever the reason for her mood, he made sure to be extra helpful by bringing her a bottle of water from the fridge and retrieving her favourite book from the other room. He even put a DVD into the little slot machine by the TV while his mom controlled it from the couch with a remote and his sister curled up next to her.
A little while later, Jack really wanted to go outside. The sugar from the pancake syrup - and the secret chocolate chips he’d convinced his dad to put in - hit his system all at once and he nearly burned a hole in the carpet running laps around the living room.
Eventually, Lexie got sick of listening to him make airplane noises and crash into things while she tried to watch her movie. She got up from the couch long enough to open the screen door in the kitchen and release the miniature tornado into the wilderness before it could do any further damage inside.
Jack was elated. He loved being outside and did a flying leap off of the deck, crashing to the ground and somersaulting in the grass.
“Jack!” Mark called over from where he was tinkering with their ride-on lawn mower. “Be careful, you’ll hurt yourself.”
“Sorry!” Jack wasn’t in the least bit fazed. He was up and running barefoot towards his swing set in no time, doing another flying leap and crawling up the slide. He did a couple rounds of this under his dad’s watchful eye, then ventured over to see if he could help by passing Mark tools.
After a little while, Mark became aware that he was missing a particular wrench. He pushed up to his feet, a thin layer of sweat gleaming over his bare chest in the warm sun. “Stay put, buddy, okay? Don’t move a muscle; I’m just going to the garage to get something. And don’t touch anything.”
Jack nodded. “Okay.”
He watched his dad go, then shrugged and started to wander around the backyard, inspecting the various flowers and plants that were starting to wilt as the seasons changed. His mom was super into gardening and his little sister liked to help her, but Jack was much more interested in assisting Mark with other things.
Things like the clubhouse his dad and Auntie Zona were building. It was going to be in their yard because it was bigger than the Robbins’, but a custom built gate in the center fence allowed easy access between the two households. That way Jordana and Hayley could play in it any time they wanted, too.
Right now he really wanted to go over there and see if they could come outside, but his daddy had told him to wait so he was going to. Even if Mark was taking forever.
Jack went over to inspect the partially built clubhouse in the corner, wishing it was done already. It didn’t even look like a house yet; there was a floor but no walls or roof. The supplies were covered with a blue plastic tarp so they didn’t get soaked in the rain.
Just as he leaned over to inspect one of the piles, something moved out of the corner of his eye.
Jack immediately spotted a big brown squirrel staring back at him from a few feet away. He froze, the squirrel froze, and for a long moment there was a stand-off between the two.
The animal stood up on its hind legs, tail twitching as it looked him right in the eye.
Then Jack lurched forward, the squirrel took off, and a chase commenced.
For a little guy of four years, eleven months, Jackson Sloan was fast. He tore after the animal at top speed, chasing it through his mother’s flower garden.
Instead of climbing the fence looming in front of it, the squirrel surprised the boy by turning around and running right back at him.
Jack yelped in surprise and fell to the side before he could get attacked, watching the furry creature leap at the nearest tree and scamper up into its branches.
Getting to his feet, Jack made a beeline for the tree and peered up into the foliage. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a tail twitch somewhere up high, almost like it was mocking him.
Jackson Sloan was his father’s son - he didn’t like to get beaten, least of all by a stupid, furry creature the size of a soda can. The thought that a rodent had just outsmarted him was irksome and absolutely unacceptable.
He would later learn this was due to something called ‘pride’.
Grunting in annoyance, Jack rounded the far side of the tree and searched for the best way up. He was too short to reach the lowest branches and for a moment wondered if he’d have to give up completely.
It was then he realized the big lawn mower his dad had been working was parked right below the shady underside. A slow smile appeared over his face.
That would do.
---
Author: Faith kennedysbitch
Pairing: Callie/Arizona, Mark/Lexie
Rating: PG-13
Choices Series
Summary: When five-year-old Jackson Sloan gets himself stuck in a tree, it’s Auntie Zona to the rescue. Set about nine or ten months before Fish Are Friends, Not Food. Stands alone.
Beta’d by the stupendously speedy clanket.
A/N: Angst plus final exams just wasn’t doable, so here’s one more fluff piece. Back to our regularly scheduled, present day programing after this.
---
The Emergency Room at Seattle Grace - Mercy West hospital was bustling with activity on this particular Friday afternoon in early fall. Ambulances rolled in at a steady pace and both residents and interns swamped the vicinity, trolling the Pit for cases that had the potential to become surgical.
It was the absolute last place Callie Torres wanted to be at the end of her shift. The possibility of getting sucked into a last-minute surgery was too high for comfort when she was planning on getting home to her family by six o’clock that evening. The page requesting her presence hadn’t been a 9-1-1, thankfully, which usually meant she could take a quick look and pawn it off on someone else.
Setting foot into the chaos drew a heavy sigh from the brunette as she scanned the area for her ortho case. The intern who’d paged found her first, rushing over while looking more than a little flustered.
It may have had something to do with the unimpressed glower plastered on Callie’s face. Everyone knew better than to cross her if she was cranky.
“I have a hot wife, two kids and a warm meal to get home to, Kartovsky. This had better be good.”
Dr. Darren Kartovsky swallowed back and replied with an over-eager nod. “I know, Dr. Torres, I’m sorry. But Dr. Sloan said to page you to Bed Two right away.”
“Sloan?” Callie cocked an eyebrow. “What’s he doing here? He’s supposed to be watching the kids.”
That’s when she felt a sudden wave of panic flood through her. Before the young doctor could get another word in, Callie shoved him aside and barreled over to curtain number two.
If Sloan was here and paging her, then one of the kids could be hurt. Thoughts of either her three year old or four-and-a-half year old falling down the stairs or off their bike or getting hit by a car flashed through her mind in the five seconds it took her to cross the ER. She immediately ripped back the curtain.
“What happened? Is it-”
Arizona sat on the edge of the exam bed, cradling her right arm and looking up with an expression resembling a punted puppy. Mark stood next to her, fidgeting nervously, then froze when Callie suddenly appeared.
Callie paused, not prepared to see her wife on the table when she’d been expecting one of their children. While she was relieved the little ones were okay, Arizona looked miserable and seemed to be in a fair amount of pain.
“What happened?” she asked as she stepped inside and yanked the curtain shut behind her, immediately focusing in on her wife.
Now that she got a closer look, Arizona had several scratches and bruises along her face - nothing too serious, but there nonetheless. She also had that famous pout of hers in place, hunched over and looking utterly defeated.
Callie’s eyes fell to her partner’s right arm where it rested gingerly in her left. The purple bruising and swelling, along with the bulge of a displaced bone in Arizona’s wrist, immediately ignited the brunette’s protective streak.
She rounded on Mark and back-handed him hard in the chest. “What the hell did you do to my wife?”
Mark recoiled. “I didn’t do anything!” he protested, shrinking away under the stern, half-crazed glare of his best friend. “She’s the one that-”
“Oh sure, blame it on me,” Arizona cut him off, grumbling under her breath. “Maybe if you had learned how to play catch at age twelve like every other male on the planet-”
“You’re not exactly a baseball, Robbins,” Mark shot back with a scowl.
Callie watched them exchange dirty looks and rolled her eyes as she gingerly took Arizona’s arm to inspect the break. She grimaced at the nasty discolouration and knew right away it was broken. “Someone want to tell me why I’m about to put my wife in traction?”
Arizona hissed when Callie touched the protruding bone, the ugly bump under her skin throbbing in protest.
“Sorry,” the brunette said immediately, moving her fingers elsewhere. She cringed in sympathy when Arizona flinched again. “Did you fall on your Heelys again? Because I swear I’m gonna take those things away from you one of these days.”
Arizona exchanged a brief look with Mark before settling her gaze back on Callie. “I...sorta fell out of a tree.”
That made her wife pause. A dark, sculpted eyebrow slowly crept toward her hairline. “Come again?”
Arizona sighed heavily and slouched over, pouting at her misfortune. “I fell out of a tree,” she repeated dejectedly, resigning herself to how ridiculous that sounded.
“And what were you doing in a tree, exactly?” Callie carefully set Arizona’s arm back down and started filling out her chart. She kept a careful eye on her wife while shooting the occasional suspicious glare at Sloan. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten Arizona into trouble. The man was a bad influence and Arizona could be way too helpful for her own good sometimes.
“She was getting Jack,” Mark offered, crossing his arms and frowning as he watched.
That made Callie pause. “Your four year old son got himself stuck in a tree and you sent my wife up to get him? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Mark scowled again, rubbing a hand through his beard. “He’s almost five.”
“Really not the point here, Mark.”
Arizona spoke up, releasing a soft breath. “It was my idea. Mark was too heavy to climb without breaking the branches, we didn’t have a ladder and Jack couldn’t get down on his own.”
Callie listened intently while she filled out an order for x-rays, briefly sticking her head out of the curtain to pass the forms off to a nurse. She looked back at her partner and felt a pang in her chest, hating how miserable Arizona looked.
“C’mere,” she murmured softly, stepping up beside the exam bed and gingerly pulling her wife into a hug. The blonde slumped into her arms with a heavy sigh, squishing her cheek against Callie’s chest. Callie rubbed a soothing hand along Arizona’s back, dropping a kiss onto her hair while looking over at Mark.
“Is Jack okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine,” the man replied. “I think he’s feeling pretty guilty about the whole thing, though. He’s home with Lex and the others.”
Lexie Sloan versus four children, all under the age of five. That had to be fun for the young doctor, especially considering she was eight months pregnant with twins.
Arizona moaned pitifully into Callie’s scrub shirt as a hard throb shot through her wrist. “I’m an idiot,” she grumbled, closing her eyes and taking comfort in her partner’s embrace.
“A little bit,” Callie agreed, dropping another kiss on top of her head. “C’mon. Let’s get you some x-rays so I can fix you up.”
***
It started as a warm day with brightly coloured leaves gradually falling from the trees, floating past a second floor window of the Sloan household. The sun was out and the sky completely cloudless, making it the perfect day to play outside.
Jackson Sloan was up well before his parents and spent an hour in his room playing before he heard anybody else stir. The moment the tell-tale shuffle of adults sounded in the other room, he was up and out the door, skittering across the hardwood floors on his sock-clad feet.
“Mommy!” Jack slid right into his parents’ closed bedroom door with a loud ‘thud’, grunting as he stumbled back. The last thing it did was deter him, however, and he reached up to grab the handle and push it open with some effort.
“Mom, can we have pancakes for breakfast?” he blurted, running across the room and diving up onto his parents’ bed. He heard his dad in the shower so he crawled up onto the empty side.
Lexie was still half buried under the sheets with a pillow over her head. She groaned loudly when Jack scrambled across the mountain of covers. “Easy, buddy. Watch Mommy’s tummy.”
Jack froze, remembering that he had to be super careful with his baby brother and sister. They sure made his mom a lot bigger than she normally was.
But when he’d asked his mom about how his brother and sister got in there in the first place, she’d just changed the subject and told him to ask his dad. When he’d cornered Mark and rephrased the question, his dad had started talking about baseball scores and gone to get one of those yucky drinks in the brown bottles from the fridge.
Grown-ups were weird.
Jack scooted up close to his mom and placed his hands on her growing belly. “Are they done yet?”
“Done what, buddy?” Lexie murmured into her pillow, not moving an inch.
“Done baking,” Jack clarified, keeping his hands in place and waiting to see if his siblings moved. “Daddy said you have buns in your oven but it’s not like the oven we made cookies in. He said your temper-ter had to be five-million for more weeks before they finished.”
Lexie peeked an eye open and lifted her head, smiling in amusement at her son. “He did, did he?”
Jack nodded, his forehead scrunching. “But I don’t know if I believe him.”
Lexie laughed and reached out to snag her mini-Mark around the waist, hauling him down into her arms. “You’re a pretty smart kid, Little Man. How’d that happen?”
Jack wiggled and fought to get comfy. “‘Cause Aunt Callie and Auntie Zona gave me their super special dinner last week,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“They gave you a what?” Lexie glanced down at her first born as he finally settled in her arms.
“Aunt Callie called it a super special casserole,” Jack informed her. “She said Auntie Zona made it and even though it tastes kinda yucky, we had to eat it anyway ‘cause it would make us super smart.”
He paused. “But I didn’t like it very much.”
Lexie barely managed to stifle a laugh. “Oh, that must be it then.”
Jack sighed heavily and squirmed again. “Mommy, can we have pancakes for breakfast? Please?”
Lexie slowly sat up with a stiff groan. She leaned her weight onto her right arm and placed her left hand over her enormous belly. “I suppose we can work something out,” she agreed after a moment. “But you’re gonna have to convince your daddy to do the hard part. All I can do is work a spatula right now.”
Jack’s excitement skyrocketed and he immediately leapt up, jumping up and down on the mattress. “Yes!”
“Hey, what did we say about jumping on the bed?” his father’s booming voice announced from the bathroom doorway.
Jack’s eyes went wide and he froze in mid-air, immediately crashing down onto his butt. “No jumping in the bedroom,” he stated, repeating the mantra he’d heard for years.
Oops. Sometimes he got a little too excited and forgot.
Almost immediately, his sheepishness morphed into excitement. “Momma said you can make me pancakes!”
Mark strode across to the walk-in closet he shared with his wife, adjusting the towel around his waist. “She did, huh?” He cast a glance over his shoulder and flashed Lexie a grin. “Volunteering me for kitchen duty, woman?”
“I told him you can do the mixing,” she replied. “All I’m capable of right now is spooning and flipping.”
“I can help,” Jack added eagerly. “One time Aunt Callie told me I’m a better cook than Auntie Zona is.”
A smug grin appeared on Mark’s face and Lexie shot him a silencing look, cutting in before he could say anything. “Sounds good, Little Man. How about you go brush your teeth and check on your sister? I’m sure she wants pancakes, too. Your dad and I will meet you downstairs.”
Jack nodded dutifully and bounced off the bed, shouting a quick “‘Kay!” over his shoulder before disappearing out the door at top speed.
Lexie shook her head and smiled affectionately at her husband. “He gets it from you, you know.”
Mark shot Lexie a lopsided grin. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
***
As promised, Jack helped his mom and dad make pancakes for him and his sister. Then he helped Mark clean up the kitchen while his mom lay down on the couch. She kept talking about how her feet and back were sore and how it was all Daddy’s fault and that he ‘owed her one after this’. Jack thought it was kind of silly because she was blaming Daddy when it was his stupid siblings’ fault. Mom always talked about how they were making her tired and cranky. Maybe she was scolding his dad because his brother and sister weren’t done baking yet and she couldn’t scold them.
At least she wasn’t mad at him or Jayden. It was no fun when Mommy was cranky.
Whatever the reason for her mood, he made sure to be extra helpful by bringing her a bottle of water from the fridge and retrieving her favourite book from the other room. He even put a DVD into the little slot machine by the TV while his mom controlled it from the couch with a remote and his sister curled up next to her.
A little while later, Jack really wanted to go outside. The sugar from the pancake syrup - and the secret chocolate chips he’d convinced his dad to put in - hit his system all at once and he nearly burned a hole in the carpet running laps around the living room.
Eventually, Lexie got sick of listening to him make airplane noises and crash into things while she tried to watch her movie. She got up from the couch long enough to open the screen door in the kitchen and release the miniature tornado into the wilderness before it could do any further damage inside.
Jack was elated. He loved being outside and did a flying leap off of the deck, crashing to the ground and somersaulting in the grass.
“Jack!” Mark called over from where he was tinkering with their ride-on lawn mower. “Be careful, you’ll hurt yourself.”
“Sorry!” Jack wasn’t in the least bit fazed. He was up and running barefoot towards his swing set in no time, doing another flying leap and crawling up the slide. He did a couple rounds of this under his dad’s watchful eye, then ventured over to see if he could help by passing Mark tools.
After a little while, Mark became aware that he was missing a particular wrench. He pushed up to his feet, a thin layer of sweat gleaming over his bare chest in the warm sun. “Stay put, buddy, okay? Don’t move a muscle; I’m just going to the garage to get something. And don’t touch anything.”
Jack nodded. “Okay.”
He watched his dad go, then shrugged and started to wander around the backyard, inspecting the various flowers and plants that were starting to wilt as the seasons changed. His mom was super into gardening and his little sister liked to help her, but Jack was much more interested in assisting Mark with other things.
Things like the clubhouse his dad and Auntie Zona were building. It was going to be in their yard because it was bigger than the Robbins’, but a custom built gate in the center fence allowed easy access between the two households. That way Jordana and Hayley could play in it any time they wanted, too.
Right now he really wanted to go over there and see if they could come outside, but his daddy had told him to wait so he was going to. Even if Mark was taking forever.
Jack went over to inspect the partially built clubhouse in the corner, wishing it was done already. It didn’t even look like a house yet; there was a floor but no walls or roof. The supplies were covered with a blue plastic tarp so they didn’t get soaked in the rain.
Just as he leaned over to inspect one of the piles, something moved out of the corner of his eye.
Jack immediately spotted a big brown squirrel staring back at him from a few feet away. He froze, the squirrel froze, and for a long moment there was a stand-off between the two.
The animal stood up on its hind legs, tail twitching as it looked him right in the eye.
Then Jack lurched forward, the squirrel took off, and a chase commenced.
For a little guy of four years, eleven months, Jackson Sloan was fast. He tore after the animal at top speed, chasing it through his mother’s flower garden.
Instead of climbing the fence looming in front of it, the squirrel surprised the boy by turning around and running right back at him.
Jack yelped in surprise and fell to the side before he could get attacked, watching the furry creature leap at the nearest tree and scamper up into its branches.
Getting to his feet, Jack made a beeline for the tree and peered up into the foliage. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a tail twitch somewhere up high, almost like it was mocking him.
Jackson Sloan was his father’s son - he didn’t like to get beaten, least of all by a stupid, furry creature the size of a soda can. The thought that a rodent had just outsmarted him was irksome and absolutely unacceptable.
He would later learn this was due to something called ‘pride’.
Grunting in annoyance, Jack rounded the far side of the tree and searched for the best way up. He was too short to reach the lowest branches and for a moment wondered if he’d have to give up completely.
It was then he realized the big lawn mower his dad had been working was parked right below the shady underside. A slow smile appeared over his face.
That would do.
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