Work Text:
“Good morning, my babies,” Padmé said, knocking twice before stepping into the twins’ bedroom.
Leia sat up in the middle of her toddler bed, with her arms outstretched. “Mama!”
“Leia!” She smiled, rushing over to scoop her up and smother her four-year-old in kisses. “And how are you today?”
She giggled, squirming and wiggling, tiny hands grabbing at Padmé’s face. “Stop, mama, stop… ‘m good.”
Padmé knelt down, setting Leia back in bed and brushing the hair out of her face. “Just good?”
Leia pressed a finger to her lips, tilting her head to the side before she smiled again. “Great?”
“Well, aren’t you excited to go see… grandma today?” Padmé asked, before briefly tickling her little girl.
Their weekdays were so hectic, trying to get both kids dressed, backpacks filled with the correct things for each of them because everyone knows there’s no greater disaster than showing up to pre-k with your brother’s dinosaur folder. Padmé was definitely not getting the mother of the year award for that heinous mistake. On the weekends, though, she had a second to breathe and just be with her children. No rigid schedules or jobs to be rushing off to.
“Grandma’s house!” shouted the moving lump under the navy blue and red plaid blanket draped over the race car bed on the other side of the room.
Padmé looked at Leia and grinned. “Did you say something?”
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “Not me.”
“Gonna go to grandma’s house!” A small voice called out again. Padmé sat rubbing Leia’s back, watching her son’s feet kick aimlessly at the covers while he continued to hide.
“You sure you didn’t say something, Leia? Mama could’ve sworn she—”
“It’s me!” Luke shouted, springing up and flipping back his blanket to reveal his smiling face. Her son’s blond hair was as wild as her husband’s first thing in the morning. Padmé hadn’t the slightest clue what the Skywalker men did in their sleep to get it quite that disastrous. “We’re going to grandma’s!”
“Oh, there’s my Luke!” she said, clapping both hands against her cheeks to match his wide grin. “Thought I lost you.”
Leia tugged at her shirt while her son climbed out of his bed to rush over, arms open for his morning hugs. “Yes?” She asked, kissing the top of Luke’s head while he squeezed her tight before looking back at Leia.
“Do we have to go to grandma?” she asked, toying with the thin sheet between her fingers.
Padmé raised an eyebrow, pulling Luke into her lap while she sat on the floor. While Leia was content after a hug or two, Luke still preferred a cuddle, and Padmé would oblige until he pushed her away. “You don’t want to go play with your cousins? I think grandpa has something special for you, too.” And she knew her and Anakin had a few special plans of their own during their kiddo-free day. Or they hoped to.
“I wanna go without sissy then,” Luke said, resting his face against her shoulder. She did her best to smooth some of his hair down and not laugh at the definitive tone he’d taken up while Leia crossed her arms tight against her chest.
“No one is going without anyone. Leia, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t wanna go.”
She sighed. Same issue, different weekend, except this time at least one of them was geared up and ready to go rather than trying to take them both nearly kicking and screaming. For now. “Why don't you want to visit?”
“I wanna stay with you and daddy,” she said, emphasizing her request with a ‘hmph.’
“Baby, you’re with us all the time.”
“Not daddy.”
“Wait.” Luke sat back up in her arms, and she could already tell by the look in his eye where this was all going. “With daddy? Can I stay too? I don't wanna go.”
Anakin leaves town for one weekend to visit the new manufacturing plant and everything she does in his absence is totally inconsequential…
“Luke. Leia. Daddy had to go to work. But he’s home now and he's not leaving just because you go to grandma and grandpa’s today.”
Leia crawled to the edge of the bed closest to her. “But can’t we stay here instead?”
Luke looked to his sister before nodding in agreement, pulling himself out of Padmé’s lap to take a spot next to Leia.
“Really? Now no one wants to go?”
They both shook their heads, Luke copying Leia’s folded arm pose. So much for her loving and relaxing morning with the twins. Or her husband. This, too, shall pass. And she’d keep reminding herself until it did.
“What if you spend the morning with me and daddy and then grandpa comes later?”
They looked at each other and then at her. Even when they were pretending to negotiate the contract of a lifetime, she couldn’t be prouder of their little minds at work. Not that they could quite reason at their age, but at least they were impressed with themselves.
“Okay…” Leia said sheepishly at last, swinging her feet off the bed. “I guess. If we have to.”
She covered her mouth with her hand to cover her smile. Padmé had no idea where her dramatic tone came from. It wasn’t at all like her husband's… Any agreement would work in this case, though. Attitude included. “And Luke? Do you still want to go visit grandma later?” He may have been the eldest, but Luke definitely did very few things without Leia being onboard.
“Umm…” He glanced over to silently consult his sister once more before lifting his head and nodding. “M’kay. We can play with Papa there?”
“I’m sure Papa would love it. Okay, then.” Padmé slowly rose to her feet, holding a hand out for each of them. “Now let’s get dressed so we can join daddy for breakfast.”
Rather than taking her hands, they both vaulted off the matress and scampered down the hall before she could grab them. What could they be doing now? She looked up to the ceiling and shook her head. The truth of the matter was that they could be up to anything before she chased them down.
“Leia and Luke, what are you…” Her voice faded out, seeing the two of them ransacking through the bottom dresser drawers in their room. “Hey!”
They both froze, looking up at her with their fists full of cotton t-shirts from their digging.
“What exactly are you doing? Does that belong to you?”
Luke looked down, his eyes sweeping off to the side. “No… But—”
“It’s daddy’s,” Leia said, matter-of-fact, pulling the t-shirt out of the drawer completely to hold up. “See?”
In her tiny hands, crooked and hiding her behind it, was her husband’s faded black shirt, with ‘ARMY’ across the front in big, yellow letters. Emboldened by Leia, Luke held up his as well, unraveling the navy blue, buttoned mechanic’s shirt with Anakin’s name patched on the right side from his days working in the automotive shop before he moved up to an engineer.
“Yes, I do see. But why are you digging out daddy’s things?”
“So we can dress like daddy?”
“You what?” She said, taking the shirt from Luke as he reached up.
"I wanna dress like daddy! Please, please, please?” Leia asked, her eyes as wide and pleading as ever. “You only wear daddy’s clothes!”
“At night!” Luke chimed in.
“And in the day!”
Maybe it was time for her to invest in better pajamas… Or lounge clothes, in general. The symphony of reasons she should allow them to wear Anakin’s—oversized for her, and massive for them—clothes continued while she stood there, flattening the collar of the shirt she’d been handed. Luke’s hands came together, squeezing in his most desperate pleas, and it was all she could do to contain her laughter at the both of them.
Leia trotted off to their closet and came back with his BMW hat to match the uniform shirt, smashing it on Luke’s head. Clearly, their work on not taking other people’s things without permission needed some more fine-tuning at home. She had to admit they were precious, though, in this moment.
“Enough…” She picked up the shirt Leia had thrown down during her madness and folded them over her arm. “All right, you can wear daddy’s things today. But no more playing in mama and daddy’s room! Okay?”
For the wellbeing and safety of all involved, she hoped they were listening to her this time.
“Yes mama,” they said in sync before enormous smiles stretched across their faces again when she handed them back the shirts.
With Luke deciding on Anakin’s shirt from his time in basic training, which felt like an eternity ago to Padmé, she finished buttoning the technician’s shirt on Leia, putting the large hat backwards on her head. “There. And you two look just like daddy now, don’t you?” She said, using her hair ties to hold the bottom of the shirts up so they wouldn’t trip while they evaluated their new looks in the mirror and cheered.
“Padmé? Is everything okay up there?” Anakin called out.
“Oh, yeah. We’re doing great,” she said.
“We have a surprise!” Leia yelled.
“A surprise for me? Should I come—”
“No!” both the twins shouted, causing Padmé to snicker.
She knew in her heart Anakin’s love for their children would be limitless, surpassing any imaginable expectation she may have had for the dream father of her child. But their love for him was just as strong with so much adoration. And she swore it had been like that from the first time they’d felt them move when she was pregnant.
“Okay, okay! But daddy just wanted to say your pancakes are getting cold…”
“Pancakes?!”
And like that, they were off again, with Padmé at their heels to make sure no one went tumbling face-first down the stairs.
“What’s this big surp—” He started to ask, looking up from his iPad and coffee. Padmé stood back, holding her hands in front of her and smiling while they both ran opposite ways around the kitchen table to Anakin’s side. “Are those my clothes?”
“Yes… They are.”
“And why are they wearing—”
“We want to be like you!” Luke said, pulling at Anakin’s arm until he lifted him up into his lap. “I’m hero daddy!”
“Hero daddy? And what does that make you?” He looked over at Leia, bopping her nose with his knuckle.
“Busy daddy!”
Anakin threw his head back and laughed. “Busy daddy, huh? Not… Hard-working daddy? Or… Tough? Strong? Hardy?”
Padmé walked over, trailing her fingers along the back of his neck. “Whenever I see that shirt, all I can think of is sweaty and smelly daddy.”
“Smelly daddy!” Luke and Leia declared, laughing and turning it into a song to sing to him while Padmé fixed their breakfast. And her own much-needed coffee.
“Thank you so much for that,” Anakin said over their accidental harmonizing.
She kissed her husband’s head, setting a plate for the twins down in front of him. “You’re so welcome, my love. By the way?”
"Yeah?"
"They're bound and determined to stay with you all morning," she said, taking her coffee into the front room and leaving him to be serenaded for as long as their hearts' content.