Chapter Text
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The night was a disaster on all sides.
Ratio wasn’t the type to answer his phone while driving, but as the car slowed into bumper to bumper traffic and the notification pings started going off in rapid succession, a sense of worry began to grow in him.
Being at a standstill in traffic, Ratio risked the chance to look at his phone. The messages were all from Aventurine, a series of rapidly more panicked texts detailing their eight month old son’s battle with a fever that was getting higher instead of lower, and his decision to take baby Mentis to urgent care in the clinic to see to his health.
This was not good. Ratio was only a little worried about their son - his main focus right now was where he had been heading to when the traffic jam started. Their daughter’s first kindergarten school play, for which Luludja had been practicing her lines to play the fairy godmother for weeks, intent on nothing short of self perfection.
He wasn’t going to make it in time. Ratio texted his husband, who had already sent Lulu to the school in time for her play with the nanny. But a nanny could only hold the camera for preservation - she couldn’t be Lulu’s parents, she couldn’t cheer their daughter on with the same pride and adoration as he and Aventurine, and tonight when their five year old stepped onto the stage she would not be able to see her parents watching her in the audience.
Ratio’s heart sank. The car in front of him moved approximately half a meter forward. He’d blown off a line of students with inquiries about their next paper to get to his daughter’s school play, and by the whims of the Aeons and the traffic accident a few miles ahead, he wasn’t going to make it anyway.
Lulu was not going to be happy.
—
When Ratio arrived at the school an hour later, it was in the last fifteen minutes of the play. The princess and prince reunited, Lulu had one last closing joke that made more adults in the audience than children snicker, and the curtain closed with a final bow.
Ratio moved backstage to collect his daughter, nodding to their nanny that he had things covered from here. When Lulu caught sight of him she bounded into his arms, and instantly started bawling.
”You weren’t HERE!” She cried out. “I was on stage and I was perfect and you - you MISSED IT!”
“Shh,” Ratio patted the back of her head, petting her pinned-up curls carefully. “I know. I’m sorry,” he apologized, the tears of his firstborn child staining the lapels of his jacket. He bounced her in his arms, but her crying only got worse, the sad desperate tears of a child who’d done their best only to go unacknowledged. “There’s nothing I can say that will excuse my absence,” he admitted, not sure what to do other than let her cry out her frustrations.
Eventually, she settled down. Ratio brought her home, buckled into the backseat of his car, sniffling angrily and offering him a meaningful silence in favor of her usual excited chatter.
Lulu stomped her way into the house, tearing off the velcro back of her fairy godmother dress and flinging the garment as hard as she could, sequins jingling faintly against the wall as it hit. She stormed her way to the couch and plopped down on it, wearing only her floral print underpants and the same socks she’d had on all day as she reached for the TV remote to try to loudly ignore Ratio.
“Pajamas first,” Ratio said firmly, taking the remote from her and putting it back on the coffee table.
She rolled her eyes dramatically, crossing her arms and huffing, “Now I can’t even be naked in my own house? UGH!”
Ratio led her back into her bedroom to put on her favorite jym-jams, the pale green dress with the little blonde mermaid printed on the front. Lulu had been blonde when she was born, but her hair had started growing out into Ratio’s dark indigo after only a year, and hardly any strands of blond were left at the bottom of Luludja’s hair anymore. She still liked blonde dolls better than dark haired ones to this day, although once when Aventurine had asked if she missed her lighter hair she’d shaken her head and cheerfully explained that she liked her hair, liked that she looked like Daddy just as much as she looked like Mama now, and especially liked that the dark hair made her eyes stand out even more.
She had Aventurine’s Sigonian eyes, of course. Mentis’s were red like Ratio’s, and for now, his hair was growing in blond as well. Considering that’s where Lulu’s hair had started too, who knew what the boy would grow up to look like.
“Have you eaten dinner?” Raito asked once he’d wrestled his daughter into her pajamas, pulling the pins out of her updo to let her hair fall down to her shoulders and combing out the ironed-in curls and stale hairspray.
“I had a sandwich.”
”When?”
”Before the play.”
”Are you still hungry?”
”Kinda.”
”Then I’ll make you something. What would you like for dinner?”
”Ice cream cake.”
”That’s not dinner.” He paused. “And we don’t have that anyway.”
”I don’t care, then. I don’t wanna eat. I’m just gonna go to bed hungry and STARVE. And you’ll wake up and I’ll be a skeleton.”
”Hm,” Ratio considered. “You could do that. Or I could make blueberry pancakes.”
That gave her a pause. “…Chocolate chip.”
”Consider it done,” Ratio agreed, tying her hair up into the pigtails she favored, loose yellow ribbons tied around the hair binders.
Lulu’s mood was considerably improved upon the application of chocolate chip pancakes, and Ratio almost thought for a moment he could save this night. And then his husband came home with the baby, and everything went back to hell again.
“Hey,” A tired Aventurine greeted quietly, closing the door with his hip. He dropped the baby bag full of Mentis Supplies by the door, and set down Mentis’s carrier on the table to gently pull their son out.
“Oh, it’s YOU guys,” Lulu said bitterly.
”Shhh!” Aventurine shushed, holding Mentis close to his chest. “I just got him to sleep on the ride back, they gave him medicine but now he needs rest. Can we please keep our voices down?”
Lulu’s eyes narrowed into mean slits, and she pushed her chair away from the table, loudly declaring her ire with the single word, “NO!”
Predictably, Mentis stirred, waking up red-faced and crying. Aventurine looked like he wanted to cry himself, and Ratio took the initiative to take Mentis from his arms and into his own, rocking the baby gently.
“Lulu, Honey…” Aventurine started, even as Mentis continued his own unhappy tirade. “I know you wanted me to be at that play tonight. Believe me, I wanted to be there, too. But your little brother got really sick, and I had to take him to the hospital to get better. You know what it’s like to be sick, Lulu. Don’t you want little Mentis to feel better?”
She stomped her foot, shaking her head and scowling. “No! I don’t CARE about the stupid baby, he’s smelly and he cries all the time and ever since he showed up you stopped paying any attention to me!”
Ratio and Aventurine exchanged exhausted glances. “Honestly, Vasha,” Ratio decided, “We should probably be proud it’s taken her this long to get mad about this.”
“You’re not helping.” Aventurine said flatly. He turned back to Lulu, apologetic as he tried to explain, “I understand why you’re mad. I really do! But babies can’t do anything for themselves, and need help and attention. Just imagine being a baby again, Lulu. You can’t walk yet, you can barely hold a rattle, and all there is to do all day is watch other people. He can barely even understand what we’re saying, so he has no one to communicate with. He can’t entertain himself like you and I can yet, so to grow up healthy he needs all three of us to work together to take care of him.”
Lulu looked like she was at least leaning towards being convinced, but still pretty angry judging from her pout.
“But,” Ratio stepped in, “Your anger is still valid. You’re right, Lulu. We’re supposed to be taking care of you just the same as we take care of Mentis, and between my work and seeing to your little brother, we’ve failed you.”
She seemed like she had no idea what to do with being validated. Clearly, she still wanted to be angry. At the same time though, being told she was right and it was okay to feel mad was kind of taking the steam out of her sails.
”You missed my play,” Lulu said, and now, the anger was gone and all that was left was genuine disappointment.
Mentis was finally calming down himself, and Ratio used the chance to settle him down in the crib they had in the living room, only an open doorway away. When he got back to the kitchen Aventurine was kneeling down to one knee in front of their daughter, using the back of his fingers to wipe tears from her eyes. “Tell you what, Monster. It seems to me like we owe you a big one for missing out on your debut. How about sometime soon we give your brother to the nanny for a day, and you, me and your Dad go out and do something just the three of us again. No baby brother, something just for you and only you.”
Lulu lit up instantly. “Only for me?”
Ratio scooped her up in his arms, heavier than she used to be but still no problem to hoist her weight up on his hip. “Whatever you want. We can take you to the beach, or the theme park, or perhaps teach you to ice skate…”
”Whatever I want?” Lulu reiterated, as if she hadn’t spent four of the last five years being spoiled like a princess by her adoring parents.
“Mm-hm.”
Her pink eyes lit up. “I wanna be a beauty queen!”
Ratio blinked. Aventurine burst out in snickers he was too tired to even pretend to smother. “That is… Excuse me?”
”A beauty pageant!” Lulu’s sadness was gone in an instant, replaced by enthusiasm faster than Ratio could blink. “You said we could do whatever I wanted, and in my class there’s this girl Ashlynn who got to enter one, and she got to wear a bunch of pretty dresses and go on stage and in the end she got a tiara and a stuffed elephant!”
Ratio looked at Aventurine. His lovely husband shrugged back at him, grinning. “You said whatever she wanted, Veritas.”
Ratio opened his mouth, and then closed it again.
“Very well.”
Even if he hadn’t been backed into a corner on this one he’d have agreed just for the smile on his daughter's face as she threw her hands in the air, smacking Ratio in the chin in her gleeful outburst of physicality.
“YAY!” Lulu beamed. “I’m gonna be Princess of the Dinosaurs!”
Aventurine shot him a raised eyebrow. It was at this point they both realized, she probably had no idea what a beauty pageant actually was.
Well. It was a good thing the summer break in his class schedule was approaching. Ratio had a feeling they’d be investing a lot more time into this than the one day they’d promised her.
—