Chapter Text
It was a beautiful day in late August; Jack could feel the sun warming his skin as he made his way from the bus stop to the large school complex made of yellow bricks. Four three-story buildings situated around a sizeable school-yard; a couple of trees placed in clusters, a small soccer field surrounded by a wire-fence, basketball hoops, swing-sets and a jungle-gym, and everywhere kids of all sizes were running around, playing and laughing. He looked around trying to find the familiar long brown hair of his sister but he couldn’t find her in the mass of children, instead he found one of her teachers standing next to a swing-set and made his way over.
“Hi, I can’t seem to find my sister, Emma Overland, do you have any idea what she might be up to?”
The teacher in question was a woman in her mid-twenties, blond hair hanging loosely to her shoulders, golden-brown eyes framed by heavily painted lashes, she smiled at Jack and when he sent her a wide grin in return a faint blush spread across her cheeks.
“Uh, yes she’s inside, in the classroom I believe, she was drawing with a few friends when I saw her a while ago.”
“Oh, so she has gotten some friends already? That’s nice, but she’s always been easy-going so I wasn’t overly worried.” He sent the teacher another grin before turning to walk to the classroom. It never ceased to amaze him how easily he affected women – send a cheeky grin their way and they melted before his eyes. It was a useful talent to have but he tried to be more careful nowadays since he had broken quite a few hearts in his life and it wasn’t really in his interest to break any more if he could help it.
It was cooler in the corridors of the school and he quickly found his way to Emma’s classroom pausing in the doorway to watch her interact with her new friends for a little while before it was time to head home. Emma had just started at this school two weeks ago, when she entered first grade. She had stayed with their foster parents in the small town an hour-long car drive away when Jack moved to the city to attend the local university two years ago but now he had finally been able to become her legal custodian and he had bought (with the help of their foster parents and part of the inheritance from their parents) a one-bedroom apartment in a nice-enough neighborhood. They had moved in a month ago and Emma had loved it from the second that she saw her new room (she got the bedroom and Jack had his bed in an alcove in the living room).
It felt nice seeing her deeply engrossed in conversation with the girl sitting next to her, a tiny thing with strawberry-colored hair and a pale face covered in freckles; she reminded Jack of Pippi Longstocking although instead of two braids she had only one. There were five kids sitting around the table, three girls and two boys, all except Emma and the ginger girl intensely focused on their drawings. He walked over to the table and as soon as he spoke five heads looked up at him.
“Hi Ems, I’m sorry to interrupt but it’s time to start packing away your things and go home.”
Emma looked at him in annoyance and huffed.
“But I’m not done yet! Just five minutes more, pleeeease! Look, I just have to color in the unicorn’s tail then we’ll go, alright?” She grabbed a pen and quickly started coloring before he could tell her otherwise.
“Alright, five minutes.” He smiled at her and pulled out a chair to sit down and wait for her.
“Are you Emma’s dad? You’re really young!” It was the black-haired boy sitting across from Emma, he peered at Jack curiously.
“How old are you? My dad is forty-five and my mom is thirty-seven!” a blond girl with curls like a halo around her head interrupted before Jack could answer the previous question.
“Jack’s not my dad, he’s my brother!” Emma said as she continued on her drawing, switching from a pink to a purple pen.
“Wow, your brother is really old then Emma! How old is he?” It was the blond girl again.
“I’m twenty-two, how old are you?” Jack said with a laugh to the blond girl.
“I’m six, but my birthday is in two weeks so then I’ll be seven” she said, looking very proud. She looked at Jack “I’m gonna have a party and my parents have invited the whole class, and we’re gonna have it in the park next to our house, and there’ll be candy and hotdogs and cake, and soda, and candy…”
“You already said candy” the red-headed girl interrupted with an exaggerated eye-roll.
“Well, Livia, candy is important” the blond replied.
Jack stifled a giggle and tried to seem interested as the blond continued her rambling.
“Emma is invited too of course, it’s Saturday two weeks from now; can she come?”
Jack nodded “sure she can” he said and looked over at Emma who met his eyes and smiled. He let his eyes wander over the drawings the children were making; Emma was drawing a unicorn – as always, the black-haired boy was finishing what seemed to be some kind of alien viciously dismembering a…dinosaur? The brown-haired boy with overgrown bangs who had been quiet the entire time was drawing a large red truck. Jack wasn’t surprised when he saw that little miss talkative had drawn a princess in a pink fluffy dress surrounded by butterflies. But the red-head – Livia he recalled – was painstakingly writing something on her finished drawing depicting what looked like some kind of cat-dragon? Dragon-cat? Jack wasn’t sure, it was black with big green eyes and surprisingly well-drawn considering it was made by a first grader.
Emma was finally finished, putting her pens back in the pen holders and sliding out of her chair when Livia turned to her; giving her the drawing. “Here, it’s for you.”
Emma accepted the piece of paper with a big smile. “Thanks! It’s really pretty!”
Livia smiled back and hopped down from her chair to follow Jack and Emma out of the classroom to retrieve Emma’s backpack and shoes that were placed in the hallway. She was really tiny, Jack knew Emma was tall for her age but Livia must have been exceptionally small; the top of her head barely reaching Emma’s shoulder. She looked like she wanted to say something but didn’t know how to begin so instead she just stood there shuffling her feet a little and trying to blow her too long bangs out of her eyes. Jack held Emma’s backpack and the drawing of the cat-dragon as Emma put her shoes on.
“This is a very nice drawing, I must say” Jack said studying it more closely and reading the carefully written words ‘TO EMMA FROM LIVIA’.
“Thank you; it’s a night-fury”
“Oh, and what is that?” He said with an amused curve of his lips.
“It’s the unholy offspring of lightning and death, it’s a dragon” came the somewhat unexpected response.
“Uh, oh, okay…”
“My dad has one.” She looked at him, big green eyes completely serious as she said that.
“He…has?” What did she mean? Did she mean her dad had a cat that looked like that dragon or what? Was she daring him to act as if he believed her father owned a dragon so that she could laugh at him? That didn’t seem likely for a first grader but this kid seemed oddly advanced for her age somehow.
“Yes” she deadpanned.
The look on Jack’s face was one of disbelief and confusion. He didn’t know what to say now. He didn’t want to be mean if the kid actually thought her father owned a dragon.
“On his back, a tattoo? You didn’t actually think he had a real dragon did you?” he was treated to an eye roll followed by an arched eyebrow. “Geez”.
Jack couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Yeah, you had me there for a second!”
Livia ignored him and nudged Emma’s shoulder “Emma, are you gonna ask him?”
“Yeah, yeah, I almost forgot!”
Suddenly two sets of puppy dog-eyes were aimed at him.
“Jaaack, can I play with Livia after school tomorrow? Please?”
Jack chewed his lip for a moment, contemplating.
“I guess, but I have to talk to your parents first Livia, alright?”
The red-head nodded eagerly “yes, I’m at my dad’s this week so you can talk to him.”
“Okay, great, uh… I don’t have his number though.” Jack searched his own backpack for a pen and tore a piece of paper from one of his note-books. After scribbling down his name and number, he handed the paper slip to Livia. “Here is my number, you tell your dad to call me and we’ll set something up, alright?”
The ginger-haired girl nodded, a big smile on her face, and turned to Emma. “See you tomorrow Emma, bye! Bye Emma’s brother!” She skipped happily back in to the classroom.
On their way home Emma prattled on about her day and Jack listened as attentively as he could, nodding and humming when it fit into her monologue. After half an hour they were finally home, the walk home from Emma’s school usually didn’t take more than fifteen minutes but she had convinced Jack to join her for a tumble at a playground on the way.
Jack made dinner which they ate together in front of the TV watching cartoons, and then Emma played for a while in her room while Jack washed the dishes and read through his notes from that day’s lectures. He was just about to pull out a textbook to prepare for the next day when he was interrupted by his phone loudly proclaiming someone was calling him from an unknown number.
“Hello!” He never bothered to introduce himself when someone called; he assumed they knew whom they were calling.
“Eeh, hello? Is this Jack, Emma’s brother? I’m Livia’s father, Hiccu- I mean Henry!”
Jack tried very hard not to laugh at the confused voice on the other end of the line. This was not what he had imagined a guy with a tattoo depicting “the offspring of lightning and death” would sound like. Not at all.
“Hi! Yeah I’m Jack.”
“Oh, great, great. Well, Livia told me that she and Emma wanted to play together after school tomorrow, she said that they talked to you about it.”
“Yeah, they asked when I picked up Emma today, I told them I was fine with it, but the thing is I have to stay quite late at uni tomorrow so I won’t be able to pick them up until after five if they wanted to play here.”
“Well, I was planning on leaving work early tomorrow so I can pick them up at three thirty and they can play here, you can pick Emma up at seven if you want, she is welcome to stay for dinner.”
Jack was just about to reply when he heard Livia in the background shouting in glee “Yeayeyeye, Emma’s coming, Emma’s coming! And we’re gonna play!” He heard her father shushing her half-heartedly and Jack laughed at that.
“She really likes Emma” Livia’s father said and Jack could hear a smile in the other man’s voice. “She was so excited when she came home from school the first day this semester that she called me from her mom’s place just to tell me about the new girl.”
“Aww, that’s nice, I think Emma really likes it here too, and she’ll be happy when I tell her she can go home with Livia tomorrow. Seven o’clock is fine, and next time they can play here.”
“Okay, good, any allergies or something that I need to know about?”
“No, no allergies, she eats everything. So where do you live, so that I know where to pick her up?”
Jack wrote the address down in his note-book and they said their goodbyes. Emma was overjoyed when he told her that she was spending tomorrow afternoon at Livia’s and she talked about everything they were going to do on their play-date as she got ready for bed. It took longer than he had hoped but finally he was tucking in a sleepy seven year old in her bed for the night.
“You know what Jack?” voice slightly muffled from the stuffed animal she was hugging tightly Emma looked at her brother with tired eyes.
“What Ems?”
“Maybe you and Livia’s dad can be friends to! That would be awesome, right?”
“Mhm, maybe we can. Sweet dreams sis” he pressed a soft kiss on a tousled head of chocolate colored hair and she nestled deeper under her blankets.
“Night Jack”