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“It’s your terrible genes to blame. Genetics, genetics, not jeans, don’t start with me, either of you,” Taako hurriedly amends.
“The doctor wasn’t sure if it was genetic, actually,” Barry says, mildly. “They said it could’ve been any number of environmental factors.” He washes down his bacon with a swig of coffee, gives up on trying to feed Rose, given that half of the michelin-starred restaurant-quality lobster thermidor puree Taako had made her had ended up smeared all over her pink unicorn onesie, and instead just plucks her from her high chair and sets her gently in his lap.
“And it’s rich to talk about terrible genes when you’re just a bad version of me,” Lup adds. “You didn’t get the gene of trans your gender or anything.”
“My genes are perfect. I’m not the one with a baby that needs glasses. Lup, do you realise how dorky my niece is gonna look? With the baby goggles? You’ve ruined her.” Taako sounds genuinely devastated.
“I think it’s sweet,” Lup sounds obstinate. “The goggles are cute.” In Barry’s arms, Rose burbles softly, gumming gently on a teething ring. “See? She thinks so, too.”
Taako folds his arms and scowls. “That could’ve been anything. She could’ve been saying, uncle Taako, don’t let them put goggles on me. Give me baby LASIK instead. Blast my eyeballs back into the right shape with lasers.”
“Our daughter does not sound like Kermit the frog.”
“That - that sounded nothing like Kermit!”
“Barry?”
Both twins round on him. He’s mid-sip of coffee, so they both have to wait, but as soon as he swallows he just shrugs. “Mm, yeah, sounded like Kermit.”
“What ever.”
“Told you, idiot.”
“Anyways, Taako, Ellie’s got 20/20 vision, and you promised her -” Barry covers Rose’s ears - “you promised her she’d be your favourite no matter how cool the new baby was, so it doesn’t even matter what Rose’s eyesight is like.”
“She - she twisted my arm! I had to promise that! Rose, uncle Taako would never play favourites -”
“You’d better hope Rose isn’t half as good at manipulating you as Ellie is,” he says. “You’re wrapped around her little finger.”
“I am not.”
“He’s just all sappy for kids,” Lup teases. “Honestly, I leave him alone for a decade, and -”
“How am I possibly getting shit for this when Barry immaculate conception-ed a baby?” Taako demands, cheeks burning as he folds his arms defensively. “Adopting Angus was - it’s a business decision, people like kids, he’s a brand ambassador. He ambushed me, I was hypnotised, he forged my signature on the papers. Any of these excuses landing?”
“None at all,” Lup replies, promptly. “Sorry, Ko. You’re an open book.”
“And Angus has glasses,” Barry adds. “His eyesight sucks. I watched him crawl around on the floor like Fantasy Velma that one time Magnus knocked him over when he was teaching the Bureau how to play that game from Tesseralia -”
“Shut upppp,” Taako whines. “This is bullying, now, you’re bullying me and my son.”
“You said Rose was gonna look dorky.” Lup points out, not looking remorseful at all as she slurps down the rest of her coffee.
“And I stand by it,” her terrible brother replies. “Except when I get bullied for it. Then I stand a few meters away and whistle and pretend I don’t know it.”
Lup rolls her eyes, but as she does she catches sight of the clock on the wall. “I’d better get going or I’ll be late for the fitting for her glasses.” She stands up and plucks her coat from the back of the chair, shrugging it over her shoulders.
“Just teleport,” Taako says. “You’re wizards. I never walk anywhere.”
“You’re lazy,” Lup replies. “And it’d make Rose sick. Teleportation is rough.”
“She’s sick constantly anyway,” Taako says. “Literally constantly. It’s all she does. It’s her main talent.”
“That’s not true, is it Rose?” Barry coos in baby-speak. “Your main talent is being very cute! Yes it is! Yes -” Rose’s laughter is interrupted by a huge belch, and Barry flinches, pulling his face back out of the splash zone, but she just giggles. “Alright, alright, she’s pretty good at puking, I won’t try and deny it.” He holds her out at arm’s length towards his wife, watching her (the baby, not his wife) suspiciously for any signs of a reappearance of her breakfast. She laughs delightedly, like she knows exactly what she’s doing, and he narrows his eyes at her.
Lup plucks her from his arms and heads towards the door. “Alright, loser, see you later. And you, Barry, love you, babe.”
Taako blinks. “Excuse me?”
“You heard!” Her disembodied voice wafts through the door, just before she slams it behind her.
“So, uh, interesting story,” Lup says, her feet up in Barry’s lap. “The glasses fitting for Rose went great, obvi, because she’s a perfect angel -”
“Debatable,” Taako cuts in from the other couch.
“She’s a perfect, gorgeous angel,” Lup continues, blanking him entirely. “All the opticians said she was the sweetest baby they’ve ever seen. But, anyway, they said they could give me an eyesight test, too, while I was there, and it turns out that apparently it may not have been Barry’s genes that affected Rose’s eyesight.”
Barry cocks his head. “Wait, you -”
“I need glasses,” Lup grins, sheepishly. “Apparently I’m blind as a fucking bat.”
“Mummy!” Ellie cries, from the floor. “That’s a bad word!”
Lup’s eyes widen, and a guilty look comes across her face. “Sorry, baby. You’re right, mummy won’t say it again.”
Ellie folds her arms and pouts. “You’d better not, mummy.”
Taako squawks with laughter as Lup scowls. “Go back to playing with your sister, you menace,” she orders. When Ellie does, turning back to the misshapen lego house they’re constructing, Lup continues. “Apparently elf eyes are so much better than human eyes that, like, I just never noticed. I mean, my devastating vision loss is nearly as good as your vision with glasses.”
Taako’s smile slowly drops. “Wait, wait, now not only is my niece a dork, but my sister, too? This - Lup, you can’t do this to my brand, I can’t be seen to be consorting with weedy nerds.”
“Taako, literally everyone on the planet had your life beamed into their heads, they know you’re a nerd.”
“You run a school,” Barry adds, mildly. “Pretty nerdy.”
“A cool school,” Taako corrects. “For cool kids. No dweebs allowed.”
“Rank hypocrisy from the headmaster,” Lup agrees with Barry. “No nerds, he says, while owning one of the biggest magical libraries in Faerun.”
“Magical libraries are cool! Magic is, objectively, badass -”
“How many PhDs do you have, Taako? Remind me,” Barry asks. “And, what was it the director of the IPRE said about your application for the Starblaster? Something like reading the applicant’s thesis is challenging, mostly because his understanding of transmutation far surpasses that of any professor we have on staff -”
“If Kravitz wasn’t on a mission I’d make him reap you both.” Taako pulls his hat low over his eyes and sinks back into the couch. “That pardon can be withdrawn, you know.”
“Please, like Kravitz would be able to reap the parents of his nieces. One puppydog eyes look from either of them would stop him in his tracks.”
“Plus he’s got us doing paperwork, like, all the time,” Barry adds, miserably. “Reaping us would mean he’d have to do it all on his own again. I actually have no idea how he ever had any time to reap bad guys.”
“Anyway,” Lup continues. “They magicked me up some right there and then, so - Bear, drumroll please -”
She whips a pair of glasses from her pocket and puts them on. Taako gapes. “What! Lup, you went for the dorkiest ones!”
They’ve got thick, black, circular rims, and the lenses are as thick as the distance from Taako’s fingertip to his first knuckle. Lup blinks, adjusting to the sudden HD. “I can’t believe I never realised. This is what I get for not hanging out with elves more.”
Barry’s eyes widen as he sips at his coffee, and he splutters as it goes down the wrong way. “I’m okay! I’m good,” he manages, as the coughing fit subsides. “But, wait, Lup, honey, you hang out with an elf literally all the time.”
Lup blinks at him, her eyes comically large behind her industrial-strength lenses. “Huh?”
“You’d think, y’know, if your brother had perfect eyesight, you’d have noticed -”
“Oh my god. Oh my god.”
Taako looks between the two of them, confusion written all over his face, and Barry can pinpoint the exact moment understanding dawns as the blood runs from his face. “No way.”
“Tee, my beloved brother, please try on my glasses.”
“My eyesight is perfect! This wizard’s orbs could ponder at any distance all day long,” he insists.
“Just to see how much worse my sight is than yours, then,” Lup suggests. “You used to love doing that to Barry, back on the Starblaster.”
“They’ll give me a headache,” he says, turning his nose up. “And they’re just so dorky.”
“So put them on and do a bad impression,” Lup wheedles. “You used to love doing that to Barry, too.”
“Was I being bullied?” Barry asks nobody in particular. “I’ve only just realised that’s what that was.”
“It was all done with deepest affection, babe.”
“I don’t hold any affection for either of you,” Taako scowls. “My eyesight is perfect.”
“Prove it!”
Taako and Lup’s eyes meet, and Barry leans back to sip his coffee as the two of them lean in until they’re practically nose-to-nose. It’s one of those Twin Things - they’ll stare at each other, unblinking, the air crackling with static around them and their faces set in rictus masks of concentration, for seconds, minutes, or on at least a few notable occasions when they were both truly dedicated hours at a time, until something unnoticeable to any onlooker changes. One twin will grimace, the other will grin, and they’ll act as though the argument is settled.
Before Barry can even swallow his mouthful, Lup leans wordlessly back, looking immensely satisfied. Taako scowls and holds out his hand. “Give ‘em over, then. At least I’ll get to prove you wrong.”
Lup proffers the glasses and he snatches them from her hands, slowly uncurling the handles and sliding them up his nose.
Taako looks around. He blinks. He sniffs, once, and says, in the least convincing tone Barry’s ever heard him muster, “no different.”
“You LIAR!” Lup shouts, gleefully and immediately, as Barry just laughs. Both Ellie and Rose turn to watch as the pair of them crack up, Barry practically bending double as he wheezes, Lup slapping him on the back and wiping at her eyes. Taako just watches them both with a stony gaze, but neither of them can take his glare seriously when his eyes look so huge behind Lup’s glasses.
“Daddy!” Ellie shouts from the end of the drive, running up the cobbles as fast her tiny legs will carry her. Barry squats, doing his best to brace himself against Typhoon Ellie, but she still almost knocks him flat as she jumps into his arms. Taako follows her, carrying her school bag over one shoulder, while Kravitz waits at the little wooden gate at the top of the garden path.
“Hey, baby, how was school?” He asks, and she grins.
“So good! I used that spell Uncle Taako taught me to change my milk into chocolate milk,” she confesses. “And then Sam, from my class, she wanted me to do it for her too, so I said I’d do it if she’d let me play with her truck -”
Barry’s smile never drops - in fact it freezes in place - as he looks up at Taako, intending to chew his horrible brother-in-law out, but then his mouth drops open. “Taako, you -”
Taako rolls his eyes, which only further draws Barry’s attention to the pastel-blue, square-rimmed glasses on his face. Naturally, they match today’s hat and robe perfectly, right down to the tiny golden stars bedazzled onto the frames and woven into the fabric, and Barry would bet his house that he’s got a dozen pairs at home in different colours and styles to match his other outfits. “Yeah, yeah, fine, you were right, I can’t see shit. Yuck it up, dipshit, you’ve got ten seconds before I polymorph you into something disgusting.”
“I was gonna say that they suit you,” Barry says, mildly. “Ellie, don’t you think Uncle Taako’s new glasses are nice?”
“They’re nice! I like Uncle Kravitz’s, too!” She chirps, and Barry looks past the gate at the end of the garden to see that, sure enough, his boss is wearing black-rimmed glasses as well. Kravitz waves.
“What’s happening right now,” Barry deadpans.
Kravitz seems to sense they’re talking about him, so he unlatches the gate and heads down the path. “Oh, you’re talking about these?” He self-consciously adjusts them, slightly. “They’re - I made them a part of my construct to match Taako.” Barry looks at the pair of them. Taako’s still wearing a haughty look, but he could tell from a thousand paces that his brother is still a little insecure.
“Well, I think they’re very nice,” he says, genuinely. “Both of you.”
“Ch’yeah, of course they are,” Taako scoffs. “I’m probably gonna start selling my own. Wizard lenses, maybe. Or the TaakoGlass. I’m not decided yet. But, hey, both of those are copyright Taako, don’t get any ideas.”
“I promise I’m not interested in stealing -”
“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to Ellie,” Taako interrupts. “She’s a little demon, definitely not above IP theft.”
Ellie just giggles at Taako’s pouty face, which makes her uncle erupt in a grin as he fiddles with his glasses again. “Alright, well, so long as these have got one of my favourite nieces’ seal of approval -”
“Nuh uh, you promised,” Ellie says. “I’m your favourite! No matter how cool Rose is!”
“Alright, alright, keep your voice down!” Taako hisses. “Fine, whatever, just don’t tell her, okay?” She cackles evilly and dashes inside before he can change his mind.
“Well, shit, I wish I could manipulate you like that,” Barry says.
“You shoulda been a lot cuter, then,” Taako says, and turns on his heel and walks away down the path. Kravitz ruins the drama of the gesture by smiling and waving goodbye before he half-runs down the path to catch up.