Fic: When Two People Love Each Other Very Much...
Title: When Two People Love Each Other Very Much...
Author: kappamaki33
Characters/Pairings: Gaeta, Hoshi, OCs Nina and Tabitha; Gaeta/Hoshi
Rating: I think I may have written extremely mild NC-17! I'm oddly proud.
Summary: “Picture Perfect” ‘verse. Felix and Louis try to unwind before the big mission. Try being the operative word here.
Notes: This is not something from my what should I finish poll (thanks to all who weighed in-it's really helping me focus!). This is actually something I found in a file with another half-finished fic, only this one was already complete except for a title. I think originally I was saving it for pornbattle and/or after I’d written a story that falls around this period in my “Picture Perfect” ‘verse. So, if you’re wondering, “Wait, why are they stationed on the baseship?” and “Mission? What mission?”...more in-depth explanation is coming eventually, but I imagine you can guess from canon what’s going on.
When Two People Love Each Other Very Much...
It was stupid, but Felix found he had a much harder time pissing in heads on the baseship than almost anywhere else. He felt like he was being watched. The pulsing red light ringing the small room was too much like a giant version of the Centurions’ single eyes. Eventually, necessity and nature won out over discomfort, though. The toilet flushed (automatically, of course, like nearly everything on this damned space-faring starfish), and Felix washed his hands and turned out the light.
He was glad to see that he hadn’t woken the girls as he walked from the head through their room, back to his and Louis’s room. There were two big, billowy white beds, but Nina and Tabitha still curled up together in one of them. Felix understood; the furnishings may have been much more luxurious here than what they’d all been used to on Galactica, but everything about the baseship just felt off.
The baseship hadn’t had anything remotely like family quarters, but the Cylons had done the best they could to accommodate what they saw as odd human cultural quirks, like privacy. They’d installed a sliding door on the head and hung up a thick curtain in the archway connecting Felix and Louis’s room to Nina and Tabitha’s, at least.
Felix pushed past the curtain and hauled himself over to the bed. Louis had stolen the sheets while he was up. (Deep red satin sheets, of course. At least the Cylons had understood enough about human culture to recognize that Early Modern Porno was not appropriate décor for the girls’ room.) Even though he was wrapped in the entire bedspread, most of Louis’s upper back and one foot were uncovered. Maybe it was because Louis was leaving on the Colony mission in three days, or maybe Felix was just becoming a sap, but something about the tableau struck Felix to his core.
He set his crutches in their accustomed place next to the bed stand, then crawled into bed behind Louis, slipping his arms under the sheet so he could wrap one around Louis’s chest and pressing his cheek to his back. Louis made a pleased, muffled noise.
Felix kissed his shoulder and whispered, “You awake?”
He made another contented noise, which Felix decided to take as a ‘yes.’ He kissed a path from Louis’s shoulder up to the crook of his neck and trailed his hand down to Louis’s boxers.
“Gods.” Louis arched into the touch and breathed in sharply. There was no question about whether he was awake now. “Are the girls asleep?”
“Asleep and in their own room.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Louis said, still a little drowsy and disoriented.
Louis turned his head to kiss Felix, then rolled over to his other side. Despite his sleepiness, he made quick work of removing Felix’s tanks and more carefully pulling off his shorts over his growing erection.
Felix was about to return the favor when Louis took hold of his wrists and rolled on top of him, pinning Felix on his back. He kissed his way from Felix’s jawline down his neck, gently biting just low enough so his uniform collar would cover the mark.
Felix groaned in both arousal and surprise. When he’d started this, he’d been intending to take it more the tender lovemaking route, and he’d even been in a rare mood to top. But Felix wasn’t at all disappointed. He was flexible, and whenever Louis got into one of these hot and heavy moods, it always ended spectacularly.
In this position, there wasn’t much Felix could do to actively contribute, so he whispered something dirty in Louis’s ear. It didn’t exactly have the desired effect.
Louis spluttered with laughter. “The girls are still in the next room, you know,” he muttered, eyes twinkling. “Maybe we can do that when I come back from the mission and we’re living somewhere with a soundproof bedroom door.”
Felix’s own grin faltered. “Please, nothing about the mission tonight.”
Louis pressed his forehead to Felix’s. “Okay. Not tonight.”
Louis kissed him so hungrily that Felix knew he wasn’t the only one fearful that there might not be an “after the mission,” but Felix pushed the thought away and reveled in the kiss. He strained in Louis’s grip, but not nearly hard enough to break free-only enough to make things fun.
When Louis finally let him up for air, Felix smirked at him and said, “You have to let me go to get the lube.”
Louis pretended to be annoyed, but both of them knew they almost always lost the thread of games like that in the heat of passion anyway. Louis stripped, and Felix sat up long enough to help do the honors with the lube, much to Louis’s satisfaction. Then he lay back and let Louis position his stump with a pillow, hook his good leg as high around his back as was comfortable, and push in.
The minutes stretched out into a haze of pleasure and heat and Louis-Louis’s mouth on his throat, Louis’s back under his hands, Louis moving inside him, Louis taking him in his hand with slow strokes. Felix tried to muffle a moan against his shoulder, but Louis shifted at the same time, which made Felix not only miss his shoulder but moan even louder. He urged Louis to go faster with his hips. Louis breathed hard and thrust harder. Felix made some truly embarrassing noises as he neared the edge, but he could tell Louis was too close to his own orgasm to care or maybe even to hear him and godsdamn it who cared if he sounded like a frakking idiot when it felt so frakking good and at least he came calling out Louis’s name and Louis was so close too as he thrust in deep and shuddered as he peaked and-
“STOP HURTING DADDY!”
It’s funny, what the mind thinks of when it panics. Instead of all the things he should have been thinking, and would be thinking in a few moments, the first thought that popped into Felix’s mind was that he hadn’t thought Nina’s little voice was capable of that kind of volume.
Louis’s head snapped up from where it had been buried against Felix’s neck, though his cock was still buried balls deep inside Felix. “Oh my Gods. Oh my Gods. I wasn’t hurting him-oh Gods.” Louis scrabbled for the bed sheets and yanked them up around him and Felix before he pulled out. Felix winced a little as he did, which set Nina off again.
“STOP HURTING-”
Nina was standing at the head of the bed, so Felix leaned his head back and looked at her upside-down. “I’m okay. Dad wasn’t hurting me. I’m sure it looked funny, but Dad and I are both okay, really.”
Louis eased off Felix and pulled the sheets tighter around him. “I’m so sorry,” Louis said. Felix couldn’t even tell who he was talking to.
Felix rolled onto his stomach so he could talk to Nina properly. Her big eyes were shiny with tears, and she gripped Snuffles in front of her so tightly Felix was afraid she might rip its leg off.
He reached out and touched her cheek. “I’m okay, I promise. Dad wasn’t hurting me. You climb back in bed, and we’ll be in in a minute so we can talk, okay, sweetie?”
Nina nodded, though she clearly remained unconvinced, and she shuffled across the room and back through the curtain.
Felix sat up. “Frak.” He looked at Louis, who stared absently at the foot of the bed. “How long do you think she could’ve been there?”
Louis shrugged and shook his head. Felix sighed, cleaned himself off with the cloth in the bedside table drawer, then hunted among the bed linens for his clothes.
“Here,” he said, tossing Louis his underwear as he pulled on his own. “Louis?”
“I need another minute,” Louis said, still not looking at Felix. It was hard to tell in the dim, bluish lighting of the baseship, but Louis looked quite pale.
Felix sighed and bit back the remark that he’d like a few more minutes himself, but he wasn’t going to let Nina sit in her room terrified. “Okay. I’ll get things started, and you’ll join me in a minute?”
Louis nodded and retreated back into his own thoughts. Felix found his tanks and pulled them on, grabbed his canes from their resting place near the bed, and slowly made his way to the girls’ room.
When Felix walked in, Tabitha was awake as well, sitting up in bed and talking to Nina in a low voice. The empty bed was only about a foot away from Nina and Tabitha’s bed, so Felix sat down on it. He took a deep breath.
Before Felix could speak, Nina blurted, “Was that sex?”
“The most important thing for you to know is that Dad was not hurting me, and even though it-wait, what?”
Nina said matter-of-factly, “I told Tabby what I saw, and she said it sounded like it was sex.”
Louis had better get his ass in here now if he ever wants to have sex again, Felix thought to himself. “Uh, yes. Dad and I were having sex.”
Tabitha squeaked and covered her head with her pillow, clamping it over her ears. Yeah, that would’ve been my reaction to my parents admitting to having sex when I was thirteen, too. Helo doesn’t know what the frak he’s talking about when it comes to sexual mores of other Colonies.
Nina, on the other hand, actually looked happy. “Were you making me a baby brother?”
“What?” This was really not how Felix had envisioned having the Talk.
“Joey’s mommy is having a baby, and Joey said his mommy told him she and his daddy had sex and that made the baby in her tummy, and it’ll grow and grow in there until it’s ready to be Joey’s little brother or sister.”
“It doesn’t work quite the same way with two daddies.”
“Well duh,” Nina said, using her favorite new phrase that she’d copied from Tabitha. Tabitha was clutching the pillow over her head even harder now. “When it’s a mommy and a daddy, everybody asks about the baby, ‘Ooh, is it a boy or a girl?’ But since you and Dad are both boys, it’s gotta be a baby boy.”
Felix had to admit, strangely enough, there was some logic to that.
“Two daddies can’t make a baby,” he explained. “Daddies don’t have the place for the baby to grow like mommies do.” Yes, it was an oversimplification, but it was three in the morning, and Nina was six.
“Oh. Then why do you and Dad have sex?”
This was the first time in Felix’s life that he wished he was straight. The baby explanation was so relatively nice and simple. “Well...it’s a way for Dad and me to show each other we love each other. Like a hug. But it’s a special kind of hug that only married grown-ups do.” Another oversimplification, especially since he and Louis had been “hugging” for almost a year before they’d gotten married, but again, for three in the morning and a six-year-old, it was close enough.
“If it’s nice like a hug, why were you making all those funny noises?” Nina asked.
Felix wiped his hand down his face. “Because...oh, because grown-ups are silly and weird sometimes.”
Luckily, Nina accepted that answer much more readily than Felix had hoped. He continued, “Dad wasn’t hurting me. He would never hurt me, just like I wouldn’t ever hurt him. And neither of us would ever hurt you or Tabitha, okay?” Nina nodded, and Felix tucked her in. He tapped on Tabitha’s pillow, and she looked up. “It’s safe to listen now.” Tabitha snugged the pillow under her head, and Felix turned back to Nina. “One thing you need to learn, though, is that sometimes Dad and I need private time. I know it’s hard because it’s new and this place isn’t set up like a normal house, but if we pull the curtain between our rooms shut, you need to knock or yell for us and wait for us to say it’s okay to come in, all right?”
Nina nodded, and Felix kissed both girls goodnight. He was formulating what he was going to say to Louis to express his frustration at having to have that conversation all alone and yet not start a fight that would keep them up even later when he pushed back the curtain and nearly bumped into Louis in the doorway.
“Were you standing there the whole time?” Felix whispered.
There was no mistaking Louis’s pallor for a trick of the light now. “I couldn’t come in. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
“Why not? It’s far from the most comfortable conversation I’ve ever had, either, but it wasn’t that bad.”
“She thought I was hurting you. You didn’t see the look on her face at first. She hated me.”
“She misunderstood. Now she gets it, and everything is fine, though it would’ve been a lot easier if we’d both gone in there.” Louis looked so stricken that Felix couldn’t stay mad at him. “Is it that we’re both men that’s bothering you? Because she would’ve been just as scared if I were a woman and she’d seen that.”
Louis said, “No. You’re the one always telling me that not everything stems back to some earlier trauma. I scared my daughter, and she was sure I was hurting you. Why wouldn’t that be enough?”
Felix doubted that was the whole story, but it didn’t make much difference. He sighed and rubbed Louis’s shoulder.
“Dad?”
Both of them looked down to find Nina out of bed, staring up at Louis expectantly.
Louis swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“That’s okay. Daddy explained. But if the mommy’s the only one with a place for the baby to grow, what does the daddy do to make a baby?” she asked.
Louis laughed in relief.
Nina grabbed hold of two of Louis’s fingers and led him into the room.
“And if sex is like a hug, why were you and Daddy hugging naked?”
Louis’s laugh became a little less relieved and a little more nervous.
“And why do only boys have penises? I want to pee standing up, too.”
Felix followed Louis and whispered in his ear, “Even though I’m staying here with you as moral support, make no mistake-it’s your turn to answer her questions.”
Tabitha sat up in bed as Nina scooted back into place. Tabitha whined, “I already know this stuff, and I really just want to go back to sleep.”
Louis said, “It’s what, oh-three-thirty? We go on-shift in an hour and a half anyway. You can go sleep in our bed.” Tabitha started to get out of bed, then froze. Louis added, “I already changed the sheets.”
Tabitha nodded, grabbed her pillow, and went to the other room. Felix and Louis sat down on the other bed, and Nina sat cross-legged with Snuffles in her lap, resting her chin on its head.
“If I can’t have a baby brother, can we at least get a dog?”
Author: kappamaki33
Characters/Pairings: Gaeta, Hoshi, OCs Nina and Tabitha; Gaeta/Hoshi
Rating: I think I may have written extremely mild NC-17! I'm oddly proud.
Summary: “Picture Perfect” ‘verse. Felix and Louis try to unwind before the big mission. Try being the operative word here.
Notes: This is not something from my what should I finish poll (thanks to all who weighed in-it's really helping me focus!). This is actually something I found in a file with another half-finished fic, only this one was already complete except for a title. I think originally I was saving it for pornbattle and/or after I’d written a story that falls around this period in my “Picture Perfect” ‘verse. So, if you’re wondering, “Wait, why are they stationed on the baseship?” and “Mission? What mission?”...more in-depth explanation is coming eventually, but I imagine you can guess from canon what’s going on.
When Two People Love Each Other Very Much...
It was stupid, but Felix found he had a much harder time pissing in heads on the baseship than almost anywhere else. He felt like he was being watched. The pulsing red light ringing the small room was too much like a giant version of the Centurions’ single eyes. Eventually, necessity and nature won out over discomfort, though. The toilet flushed (automatically, of course, like nearly everything on this damned space-faring starfish), and Felix washed his hands and turned out the light.
He was glad to see that he hadn’t woken the girls as he walked from the head through their room, back to his and Louis’s room. There were two big, billowy white beds, but Nina and Tabitha still curled up together in one of them. Felix understood; the furnishings may have been much more luxurious here than what they’d all been used to on Galactica, but everything about the baseship just felt off.
The baseship hadn’t had anything remotely like family quarters, but the Cylons had done the best they could to accommodate what they saw as odd human cultural quirks, like privacy. They’d installed a sliding door on the head and hung up a thick curtain in the archway connecting Felix and Louis’s room to Nina and Tabitha’s, at least.
Felix pushed past the curtain and hauled himself over to the bed. Louis had stolen the sheets while he was up. (Deep red satin sheets, of course. At least the Cylons had understood enough about human culture to recognize that Early Modern Porno was not appropriate décor for the girls’ room.) Even though he was wrapped in the entire bedspread, most of Louis’s upper back and one foot were uncovered. Maybe it was because Louis was leaving on the Colony mission in three days, or maybe Felix was just becoming a sap, but something about the tableau struck Felix to his core.
He set his crutches in their accustomed place next to the bed stand, then crawled into bed behind Louis, slipping his arms under the sheet so he could wrap one around Louis’s chest and pressing his cheek to his back. Louis made a pleased, muffled noise.
Felix kissed his shoulder and whispered, “You awake?”
He made another contented noise, which Felix decided to take as a ‘yes.’ He kissed a path from Louis’s shoulder up to the crook of his neck and trailed his hand down to Louis’s boxers.
“Gods.” Louis arched into the touch and breathed in sharply. There was no question about whether he was awake now. “Are the girls asleep?”
“Asleep and in their own room.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Louis said, still a little drowsy and disoriented.
Louis turned his head to kiss Felix, then rolled over to his other side. Despite his sleepiness, he made quick work of removing Felix’s tanks and more carefully pulling off his shorts over his growing erection.
Felix was about to return the favor when Louis took hold of his wrists and rolled on top of him, pinning Felix on his back. He kissed his way from Felix’s jawline down his neck, gently biting just low enough so his uniform collar would cover the mark.
Felix groaned in both arousal and surprise. When he’d started this, he’d been intending to take it more the tender lovemaking route, and he’d even been in a rare mood to top. But Felix wasn’t at all disappointed. He was flexible, and whenever Louis got into one of these hot and heavy moods, it always ended spectacularly.
In this position, there wasn’t much Felix could do to actively contribute, so he whispered something dirty in Louis’s ear. It didn’t exactly have the desired effect.
Louis spluttered with laughter. “The girls are still in the next room, you know,” he muttered, eyes twinkling. “Maybe we can do that when I come back from the mission and we’re living somewhere with a soundproof bedroom door.”
Felix’s own grin faltered. “Please, nothing about the mission tonight.”
Louis pressed his forehead to Felix’s. “Okay. Not tonight.”
Louis kissed him so hungrily that Felix knew he wasn’t the only one fearful that there might not be an “after the mission,” but Felix pushed the thought away and reveled in the kiss. He strained in Louis’s grip, but not nearly hard enough to break free-only enough to make things fun.
When Louis finally let him up for air, Felix smirked at him and said, “You have to let me go to get the lube.”
Louis pretended to be annoyed, but both of them knew they almost always lost the thread of games like that in the heat of passion anyway. Louis stripped, and Felix sat up long enough to help do the honors with the lube, much to Louis’s satisfaction. Then he lay back and let Louis position his stump with a pillow, hook his good leg as high around his back as was comfortable, and push in.
The minutes stretched out into a haze of pleasure and heat and Louis-Louis’s mouth on his throat, Louis’s back under his hands, Louis moving inside him, Louis taking him in his hand with slow strokes. Felix tried to muffle a moan against his shoulder, but Louis shifted at the same time, which made Felix not only miss his shoulder but moan even louder. He urged Louis to go faster with his hips. Louis breathed hard and thrust harder. Felix made some truly embarrassing noises as he neared the edge, but he could tell Louis was too close to his own orgasm to care or maybe even to hear him and godsdamn it who cared if he sounded like a frakking idiot when it felt so frakking good and at least he came calling out Louis’s name and Louis was so close too as he thrust in deep and shuddered as he peaked and-
“STOP HURTING DADDY!”
It’s funny, what the mind thinks of when it panics. Instead of all the things he should have been thinking, and would be thinking in a few moments, the first thought that popped into Felix’s mind was that he hadn’t thought Nina’s little voice was capable of that kind of volume.
Louis’s head snapped up from where it had been buried against Felix’s neck, though his cock was still buried balls deep inside Felix. “Oh my Gods. Oh my Gods. I wasn’t hurting him-oh Gods.” Louis scrabbled for the bed sheets and yanked them up around him and Felix before he pulled out. Felix winced a little as he did, which set Nina off again.
“STOP HURTING-”
Nina was standing at the head of the bed, so Felix leaned his head back and looked at her upside-down. “I’m okay. Dad wasn’t hurting me. I’m sure it looked funny, but Dad and I are both okay, really.”
Louis eased off Felix and pulled the sheets tighter around him. “I’m so sorry,” Louis said. Felix couldn’t even tell who he was talking to.
Felix rolled onto his stomach so he could talk to Nina properly. Her big eyes were shiny with tears, and she gripped Snuffles in front of her so tightly Felix was afraid she might rip its leg off.
He reached out and touched her cheek. “I’m okay, I promise. Dad wasn’t hurting me. You climb back in bed, and we’ll be in in a minute so we can talk, okay, sweetie?”
Nina nodded, though she clearly remained unconvinced, and she shuffled across the room and back through the curtain.
Felix sat up. “Frak.” He looked at Louis, who stared absently at the foot of the bed. “How long do you think she could’ve been there?”
Louis shrugged and shook his head. Felix sighed, cleaned himself off with the cloth in the bedside table drawer, then hunted among the bed linens for his clothes.
“Here,” he said, tossing Louis his underwear as he pulled on his own. “Louis?”
“I need another minute,” Louis said, still not looking at Felix. It was hard to tell in the dim, bluish lighting of the baseship, but Louis looked quite pale.
Felix sighed and bit back the remark that he’d like a few more minutes himself, but he wasn’t going to let Nina sit in her room terrified. “Okay. I’ll get things started, and you’ll join me in a minute?”
Louis nodded and retreated back into his own thoughts. Felix found his tanks and pulled them on, grabbed his canes from their resting place near the bed, and slowly made his way to the girls’ room.
When Felix walked in, Tabitha was awake as well, sitting up in bed and talking to Nina in a low voice. The empty bed was only about a foot away from Nina and Tabitha’s bed, so Felix sat down on it. He took a deep breath.
Before Felix could speak, Nina blurted, “Was that sex?”
“The most important thing for you to know is that Dad was not hurting me, and even though it-wait, what?”
Nina said matter-of-factly, “I told Tabby what I saw, and she said it sounded like it was sex.”
Louis had better get his ass in here now if he ever wants to have sex again, Felix thought to himself. “Uh, yes. Dad and I were having sex.”
Tabitha squeaked and covered her head with her pillow, clamping it over her ears. Yeah, that would’ve been my reaction to my parents admitting to having sex when I was thirteen, too. Helo doesn’t know what the frak he’s talking about when it comes to sexual mores of other Colonies.
Nina, on the other hand, actually looked happy. “Were you making me a baby brother?”
“What?” This was really not how Felix had envisioned having the Talk.
“Joey’s mommy is having a baby, and Joey said his mommy told him she and his daddy had sex and that made the baby in her tummy, and it’ll grow and grow in there until it’s ready to be Joey’s little brother or sister.”
“It doesn’t work quite the same way with two daddies.”
“Well duh,” Nina said, using her favorite new phrase that she’d copied from Tabitha. Tabitha was clutching the pillow over her head even harder now. “When it’s a mommy and a daddy, everybody asks about the baby, ‘Ooh, is it a boy or a girl?’ But since you and Dad are both boys, it’s gotta be a baby boy.”
Felix had to admit, strangely enough, there was some logic to that.
“Two daddies can’t make a baby,” he explained. “Daddies don’t have the place for the baby to grow like mommies do.” Yes, it was an oversimplification, but it was three in the morning, and Nina was six.
“Oh. Then why do you and Dad have sex?”
This was the first time in Felix’s life that he wished he was straight. The baby explanation was so relatively nice and simple. “Well...it’s a way for Dad and me to show each other we love each other. Like a hug. But it’s a special kind of hug that only married grown-ups do.” Another oversimplification, especially since he and Louis had been “hugging” for almost a year before they’d gotten married, but again, for three in the morning and a six-year-old, it was close enough.
“If it’s nice like a hug, why were you making all those funny noises?” Nina asked.
Felix wiped his hand down his face. “Because...oh, because grown-ups are silly and weird sometimes.”
Luckily, Nina accepted that answer much more readily than Felix had hoped. He continued, “Dad wasn’t hurting me. He would never hurt me, just like I wouldn’t ever hurt him. And neither of us would ever hurt you or Tabitha, okay?” Nina nodded, and Felix tucked her in. He tapped on Tabitha’s pillow, and she looked up. “It’s safe to listen now.” Tabitha snugged the pillow under her head, and Felix turned back to Nina. “One thing you need to learn, though, is that sometimes Dad and I need private time. I know it’s hard because it’s new and this place isn’t set up like a normal house, but if we pull the curtain between our rooms shut, you need to knock or yell for us and wait for us to say it’s okay to come in, all right?”
Nina nodded, and Felix kissed both girls goodnight. He was formulating what he was going to say to Louis to express his frustration at having to have that conversation all alone and yet not start a fight that would keep them up even later when he pushed back the curtain and nearly bumped into Louis in the doorway.
“Were you standing there the whole time?” Felix whispered.
There was no mistaking Louis’s pallor for a trick of the light now. “I couldn’t come in. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
“Why not? It’s far from the most comfortable conversation I’ve ever had, either, but it wasn’t that bad.”
“She thought I was hurting you. You didn’t see the look on her face at first. She hated me.”
“She misunderstood. Now she gets it, and everything is fine, though it would’ve been a lot easier if we’d both gone in there.” Louis looked so stricken that Felix couldn’t stay mad at him. “Is it that we’re both men that’s bothering you? Because she would’ve been just as scared if I were a woman and she’d seen that.”
Louis said, “No. You’re the one always telling me that not everything stems back to some earlier trauma. I scared my daughter, and she was sure I was hurting you. Why wouldn’t that be enough?”
Felix doubted that was the whole story, but it didn’t make much difference. He sighed and rubbed Louis’s shoulder.
“Dad?”
Both of them looked down to find Nina out of bed, staring up at Louis expectantly.
Louis swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“That’s okay. Daddy explained. But if the mommy’s the only one with a place for the baby to grow, what does the daddy do to make a baby?” she asked.
Louis laughed in relief.
Nina grabbed hold of two of Louis’s fingers and led him into the room.
“And if sex is like a hug, why were you and Daddy hugging naked?”
Louis’s laugh became a little less relieved and a little more nervous.
“And why do only boys have penises? I want to pee standing up, too.”
Felix followed Louis and whispered in his ear, “Even though I’m staying here with you as moral support, make no mistake-it’s your turn to answer her questions.”
Tabitha sat up in bed as Nina scooted back into place. Tabitha whined, “I already know this stuff, and I really just want to go back to sleep.”
Louis said, “It’s what, oh-three-thirty? We go on-shift in an hour and a half anyway. You can go sleep in our bed.” Tabitha started to get out of bed, then froze. Louis added, “I already changed the sheets.”
Tabitha nodded, grabbed her pillow, and went to the other room. Felix and Louis sat down on the other bed, and Nina sat cross-legged with Snuffles in her lap, resting her chin on its head.
“If I can’t have a baby brother, can we at least get a dog?”