Work Text:
He blinks his eyes open and is met with darkness.
It’s a stifling warm darkness, the kind no one can stand for long. He attempts to stretch and instantly hits his head on the wall above him.
There’s murmuring beyond the tight walls - words he doesn’t recognize, not yet, but it’s an excited muttering, coaxing him to come out. He pushes against his container and is met with a satisfying crack that tilts his world ever so slightly.
The outside wants him now, though.
He struggles harder, and shards of light pierce his vision. The mumbling is louder now, encouraging chirps in his ear that make him ache to see beyond the black.
A final sharp shove, and the light falls in.
He shakes away the shadows and glances up into two wide, milky eyes. They blink warmly at him, and he blinks back, raising his arms to reach for them.
Sharp, clawed hands lift him from the remains of his egg and he can finally take in his surroundings. He is in a large cave carved out of rock and granite, with an arched opening that reveals a midnight sky, sparkling with stars and possibility. Coal ore glistens between the rocks, and below them…
Below them there is fire.
A small pit in the cave floor that blazes with flames and heat. He can feel its warmth; its light, and he wants it, wants to swallow it whole and bask in it.
He pauses.
Not now, something deep in his chest warns him. Not yet.
He turns instead toward his saviour (the word Father flickers through his mind and he chases it, unsure of its meaning). Father has eyes like the moon and a dark face framed with a hood, with two horns protruding out from under it, and large ears that seemed to twitch with excitement. He sets the newborn into his lap and tents his wings around him, growling something low and soft that sounds almost like welcome, little one.
Father has a pouch slung around his chest, and the newborn reaches for it hungrily. Father says something that sounds vaguely amused before opening it to disclose a small stuffed panda, buried amongst a handful of other resources the newborn did not care for.
He is handed the bear and he fidgets with it for a moment before hugging it to his chest tightly. There’s an odd sort of heat bubbling in his stomach, a feeling he’d know later on to be called love.
Father rumbles with gentle laughter and the newborn glances up at him sleepily. He yawns and nestles into Father’s warmth, clutching the panda close against his tiny figure.
“Sapnap,” Father whispers thoughtfully.
Sleep envelops him once more.
-
Sapnap learns fairly quickly that love does not only need to be reserved for one.
Father, whose actual title proved to be Bad, proves himself to be kind and welcoming. He sings Sapnap gentle melodies that sound like the warm remains of a fire, and finds him wide varieties of wild berries to eat, and always manages to locate his beloved stuffed panda, even when the child is certain he’ll never see it again.
Bad was the only being in the world Sapnap had to love, and Sapnap had been more than content with that.
Until he’s a year old and he wakes up in an environment completely unfamiliar to the one he knows.
He’s in a small, round bed of pillows, surrounded by brick walls, not the dimpled walls of rock he’s used to. A small chest sits opposite to him, and crouching over it, depositing some sort of potion, is a stranger.
Sapnap starts involuntarily and the other, upon eye contact, visibly jolts as well. The stranger has dark eyes, contrasting Bad’s eerily pale ones, and tanned skin that gives way to diamond near his eyes and neck. His expression is openly curious, no aggression detectable, but Sapnap is still wary - after all, he’s never seen any living thing other than his father, if you didn’t count the disgruntled herd of sheep he and Bad had stumbled across a while ago.
The diamond-clad man tilts his head at him. “Hi,” he says awkwardly.
Sapnap blinks at him, faintly bewildered. The way this person speaks is nothing like Bad’s gentle array of chirps and growls. This is a completely polar language, one he’s only ever heard from when his father recalls a villager’s snide remark about his appearance, or when he reads aloud the letters he gets from Puffy.
“Skeppy?” Bad enters the room, and Sapnap relaxes in the familiarity of his presence. So does the stranger, too, by the way his shoulders untense and his eyes glow upon hearing Bad’s voice, like he’d just noticed the sun for the first time.
Skeppy stands up and shoves his hands in his pockets like he’s unsure what to do with them. “Your monster’s awake.”
“Don’t call him that,” Bad scolds, swatting at him, before reaching out for Sapnap. “Hey, baby. How was your nap?” Sapnap mewls and leans into the warmth he knows so well, as claws cradle him close. “Was Skeppy being mean to you? He’d never, would he?”
Skeppy scoffs and crosses his arms. “Wow.”
Bad smiles at him playfully. Sapnap reaches experimentally for one of his leathery wings while he’s distracted, but Bad keeps it well out of his reach.
“What’d you even name the little asshole, anyway?” Skeppy asks airily. “You never actually told me.”
Bad flicks his tail irritably. “Language. Not in front of the child.” He holds Sapnap a little tighter and tilts him an inch further away from the diamond man. “And his name is Sapnap.”
The other tips an eyebrow. “Sapnap?”
“Yeah! It’s pandas backwards, and he really likes pandas, so-”
Skeppy makes a guttural, disbelieving noise. “BadBoyHalo, you have made a grave mistake.”
“No, I-” Bad deflates as he runs the words through his head. Sapnap hears him mumbling incoherently under his breath before it finally clicks together.
“Panpas,” he says breathlessly, and Skeppy bursts into laughter, and Sapnap feels a sudden, brief flash of dislike towards the diamond man. He’s never heard anyone poke fun at his father before, and he isn't sure whether he could tolerate it or not.
Bad looks shattered, though, and Skeppy shuts up abruptly at the look of distraught on his face.
“It’s okay,” Skeppy says suddenly, and, oh, that’s a tone of voice that’s completely contradictory to the taunting, mischievous one from earlier. This is soft and genuine. “Hey. It’s okay. It was an honest mistake. Besides, Sapnap is a great name.”
Bad gives a small, rueful mrrrnn noise.
“Here. Can I hold him?” The other spreads his arms passively, and Bad hesitates before Sapnap can feel himself being lifted up and set into foreign arms. It’s startlingly cold against the diamond, opposed to Bad’s scaly heat, and Skeppy holds him like he’s glass capable of breaking at any given second. Sapnap hums discontentedly and shifts around, searching for a comfortable position.
Bad’s ears twitch amusedly. “You can relax.”
Skeppy brings Sapnap a little closer to him, and Sapnap can finally rest against his arm, easing into the coolness of gemstone. Skeppy’s hand comes up, and the child wraps a tiny hand around one of his fingers tentatively.
“Hey, buddy,” Skeppy breathes. Sapnap gurgles happily back at him, and Bad gushes over them both like they’re baby birds who’d just left the nest.
Sapnap considers the man holding him and wonders just how Skeppy is going to fit into their life.
-
It’s deathly dark in the nursery, and Sapnap cannot find his panda.
He’d just woken up from a particularly horrible nightmare to find his pillow charred and his stuffed bear missing. In a dazed panic, Sapnap shoves away his smoking cushion and scours the ground around him for his toy.
(Being a two-year-old cambion whose powers has just started to come in, Sapnap is prone to setting quite a lot on fire, particularly when he’s distressed. He’d discovered this ability during a very pointless argument with his father, when he’d attempted to throw his spoon away to prove a point and had accidentally melted it instead. After two months of situations similar to this, Bad had been driven to fire-proof the majority of their household. Some misfortuned objects, however, had not been so lucky.)
Breathing heavily, Sapnap stands up and walks unevenly to Bad and Skeppy’s shared bedroom. He’s still a little unwieldy on his feet, and almost stumbles into several walls on his way, which only adds to his stress.
Skeppy is already sitting up in the bed by the time Sapnap opens the door tentatively. Bad’s side of the bed is deserted, which Sapnap guesses meant that he’d gone out for some late night mining. At the worst possible time.
“Hi, shithead,” Skeppy greets him with a gentle smile. Sapnap knows he means it affectionately - he’d also come to learn that such words were only ever used out of Bad’s earshot. It was sort of thrilling, hearing language he knew his father wouldn’t approve of. “What’s up? Another nightmare?” Skeppy pats his legs, motioning for Sapnap to sit.
“I can’t find my panda,” Sapnap frets, as he leaps up to curl into Skeppy’s lap. “I woked up and it was gone and I can’t finded it.”
Skeppy makes a thoughtful clicking noise with his tongue. “Well, that’s no good, is it?” Don’t worry, it won’t have gone far.” He shifts Sapnap in his grip and gets up to walk toward the door. “Let’s go find it.”
Sapnap leans out of his arms to study his face, brow furrowed, tiny hands clinging onto the wool of his sweater. “I want Papa.”
“Me too,” Skeppy sighs as Sapnap sniffs forlornly. “But he’s working right now, so it’s just you and me, buddy.” He prods Sapnap’s nose with his free hand, issuing a startled, wet giggle from the child, and flicks on the nursery light.
The sudden brightness assaults Sapnap’s eyes momentarily before he instantly catches sight of his panda, tossed haphazardly to the side during his flailing around. Skeppy sets him down, and he scrambles to hold it safely against his chest once more, breathing a small, relieved sigh.
“Sapnap,” Skeppy grumbles, picking up the scorched pillow and dusting off the ash. “Papa’s not gonna be happy.”
“Sorry,” Sapnap says feebly. “It burnded on accident.”
The diamonds embedded in Skeppy’s face catch the moonlight from the window and glitter as he studies the child in a moment of uncertainty.
“I know,” Skeppy says softly, finally. He crouches down and tilts his chin at the bear cradled in Sapnap’s arms. “He’s a small little guy, isn’t he?”
Sapnap nods his head a fraction of an inch.
“You know, I used to have a stuffed toy like that.”
“Really?” Sapnap questions as Skeppy tucks him back into bed. Skeppy nods matter-of-factly.
“Yup. He was a little toy dog. I called him Rocco.”
“What happened to him?”
“Oh, he’s buried in a chest somewhere.” Skeppy glances away, thoughtful. “Maybe I could find him and introduce him to you sometime.” He pulls the blankets up to Sapnap’s chest and prods the stuffed bear’s nose. “Does your panda have a name?”
Sapnap scrunches his nose up, considering.
“...Panda,” he says definitively, and Skeppy barks a laugh.
“You know,” the diamond man says after a while, ruffling Sapnap’s hair. “That’s actually a great name. Like yours.”
Sapnap hides his grin in his panda’s head, and Skeppy straightens up with a small grunt. “Welp, sleep well; your dad’ll be home soon. Complaining about how late I let you stay up.” He sticks his tongue out and rolls his eyes, and Sapnap giggles. “Goodnight, buttface.”
“G’night,” Sapnap mumbles, a sleepy smile on his face as Skeppy leaves, and he contemplates the fact that, maybe, one of his dads is already home.