Chapter Text
“You adopted a child?” Katherine hissed. She wasn’t even sure who she was hissing at - both her brother and her cousin had sprung surprise children onto their family. Julia stepped forward to smack Nathan up the backside of the head, like only a mother could do, while Becky gave David a dangerously hurt look.
“Were you worried we wouldn’t support you?” Becky asked, hands waving through the air. “Or did you just think we wouldn’t care?”
David spoke first, throwing up his hands in placation. “It wasn’t like we didn’t want to call,” David said. “But things happened fast and there was a court case to deal with. By the time everything was settled- well, what I mean to say is that we were thinking- and there was- oh, gosh, I never wanted- it’s a complicated-”
Gwen put a hand on David’s elbow, stepping back into his space and giving David a bit of reprieve. David had always been a bit easy to fluster and he skipped over complete thoughts and sentences when he was like that. But thank God Gwen was there because Gwen was unshakable. It was her secret super-power. “Max’s parents left us in a very complicated and sudden situation. David has been in court and dealing with paperwork for the last four months and only just got custody settled. I really don’t think a phone call was high on our fucking to-do list.”
Nathan let out a little snort. There was something about Gwen that reminded him of Kathy, especially when she kept it together until the last second to drop an f-bomb.
“What’s so funny?” Katherine looked back at Nathan and crossed her arms. “Got something to add?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes! I think it is so nice that David is taking Max in, it’s really- hey!” Nathan stepped back and rubbed his arm where Katherine had punched him. “What was that for?”
“What the hell kind of kid did you end up with?” Kathy asked, voice raised. “And where did he come from?”
“Abaddon and I found each other in the woods,” Nathan said evenly, as though it was a rehearsed story. “He doesn’t technically exist but I have a friend who left the Children of the Waking Sun and he does identification and documents for people who maybe shredded their birth certificates for collateral in cults, so I called him and had him make up some documents for my lil’ bud, and now he’s my son!”
Nathan looked far too self-satisfied for a story with so many concerning things said at once. David gave a soft little coo of affection, as though that story was cute instead of very, very strange. Gwen gave a half-hearted and split-second delayed coo of her own, as though she was just trying to keep up with her boyfriend.
“I’m sorry, what?” Kathy asked again.
“Leave it to the two biggest losers in the family to drag home a couple of stray boys,” Great-Aunt Rose muttered. “They’re not even trained!”
“They aren’t dogs, Aunt Rose.”
But Julia and Becky weren’t really paying attention to Kathy or Rose, they were only looking at David and Nathan. Being sisters, they had nearly identical noses and cheekbones and lips. Lips which were pursed in a near identical way as they regarded their boys with disappointment.
But before they could keep up their onslaught of choice words for the boys, there was commotion in the parking lot and a van pulled up with Nathan’s dad, Frank, and Becky’s husband, Joshua, and two rambunctious kids that Nathan had only seen in photos over the last year.
But there was no mistaking the tousled, brown hair of Esther or the nervous tension in Ben’s eyes.
“Kids!” Nathan called. “Ben! Esther!”
The two kids spotted Nathan from across the park and broke into a run to catch their Uncle Nathan. It had been so long since they saw their uncle in person, and nothing beat a Nathan Freeling Hug (patent pending).
Nathan scooped up Esther into his right arm and curled his left around Ben’s shoulders, only to hear an unholy shriek from where Max and Abaddon were lighting garbage on fire.
“Unhand my father at once,” Abaddon yelled, pointing at Esther with that rageful, red glow in his eyes. “He is mine.”
Esther’s face lit up, despite the seemingly unhinged nature of the boy yelling at her. “Uncle Nathan, you have a kid?” she asked, all excitement and joy. “That’s so freaking cool!”
Esther wiggled out of Nathan’s hold, and then she was running to join Abaddon and Max around their garbage can fire, laughing in the light of the amber flames. Nathan shook his head fondly - they really were so very alike and now Davie had a son, too, who seemed to enjoy fire just the same as Abaddon. Though, as Nathan watched on with tears in his eyes, he suddenly remembered that Abaddon didn’t just like fire. Nathan remembered this as Abaddon clutched the edge of the metal trash can and began to scramble into the flames, Esther and Max helping to push his feet up.
“No!” Nathan and David both shouted together, nearly throwing themselves at their boys across the park and running full speed.
“Is Uncle Nathan’s kid like…” Ben squinted. “One of those people who don’t feel pain? I saw that on a tv show once, it was-”
“Ben,” Katherine said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I love you, but shut up.”
Gwen snorted as though she had the same thought. She watched, hand perched on her hip, as Nathan wrangled Abaddon out of the fire and into his arms to leave sooty handprints on his sweater, and as David scolded Max, who responded with an exaggerated eye-roll and a flippant hand gesture.
“Nice kid you got there,” Katherine remarked dryly. “Is he just a bastard in front of people or is he like this all the time?”
“All the time,” Gwen said easily. “But we love him.”
“Yeah,” Katherine said, eyes drifting to where Esther was cheering and pumping her fists as Abaddon got in a good kick to Nathan’s stomach and began to wriggle out of his father’s hold. She knew what a handful Esther could be, but it would seem that some cosmic punishment had conspired to ensure that Esther and her new, adopted cousins were somehow cut from the same cloth of bizarre behavior and intense, hyper-fixation on the macabre, and a certain penchant for chaos. It was a punishment, maybe, for all the wild times Katherine put her own family through. “I know about that.”
Gwen hummed a bit. “That kid is definitely a fucking demon.”
Katherine whipped her head around, about to go to the mats to defend her strange little girl from this virtual stranger, but Katherine followed Gwen’s eyes to Abaddon, not Esther. Katherine gave a short laugh. “Oh, absolutely.”
“David says that Nathan runs a haunted fucking hotel,” Gwen said. It was like they were girls again, gossiping at school. “But I looked,” she went on. “I can’t find it mentioned in any of the usual ghost hunting shows. Not even the really shitty, low-budget, two-assholes-go-walking-in-the-woods type of fucking YouTube channels.”
Katherine snorted again. “Yeah, same. I tried to find some kind of exposé or whatever when he first said it was haunted, but I couldn't find anything.”
“So maybe he just runs an ancient fucking death-trap,” Gwen said with a shrug. “Creaky, shitty floors and whatever.”
“Or maybe,” Katherine hummed. “He really does live in a haunted hotel and it came with a demon. Heaven knows that would make his little story about meeting Abaddon in the woods at least marginally less worrisome.”
Gwen laughed fully then, throwing her head back. Behind them, there was some commotion as Julia and Becky filled in their husbands on what their sons were up to lately and the newest addition of two new, adopted faces into the family. Great-Aunt Rose cut in repeatedly, but both Katherine and Gwen ignored their vile words in favor of watching Nathan and David chase their boys around - Abaddon had dropped out of Nathan’s arms and lured him to the other side of the trash can (still ablaze) where Max ambushed him. David tried to help, but only tripped over Esther’s helpfully extended leg. Nathan crashed into David on the ground, and the kids all laughed hysterically with a few well-placed curses. Literal curses and swears, of course. And somehow, through it all, David and Nathan were laughing, too. They seemed more entertained than frustrated by their young wards in a way that only Nathan Freeling and David Forrester could ever be. Both Katherine and Gwen laughed to themselves quietly.
“Do you think they understand how insane they seem right now?” Katherine asked quietly. “Or that they’re going to give Aunt Rose an aneurysm?”
Gwen let out a soft cackle. “If I know David, he thought the whole time that everyone here would love Max as much as he does, even if he is a little shit. He can’t understand how anyone wouldn’t love him.”
“And if I know Nathan,” Katherine said on a sigh. “He really does find Abaddon that charming and though we all would, too.”
Before Gwen could say anything else, there was a much bigger shriek of pain. Not from where David, Nathan, Esther, and the boys were playing by their fire, but rather from behind, where Frank and Joshua were trying to set up their barbecue.
“You get the kids,” Katherine said, jerking her thumb towards where Nathan, David, and the kids were. “I’ve got this.”
And then she strolled over to the mess of charcoal and matches and the metal pieces of a portable barbecue between her father and her uncle.