Work Text:
Babies cry too fucking much.
Too fucking much and too fucking often, Fun Ghoul thinks as he’s woken up again by the sound of cries through the walls. How many times is this, tonight? Four? Five? He flicks on his light and squints into the harsh incandescence with an irritated grumble.
He pushes his sleep-heavy body out of bed with a wobble. The fabric of his shirt is rough on his skin as he drags it over his torso, shuffling towards his bedroom door over the coarse motel carpet. The doorknob is cold under his fingers as he reaches for it, preparing himself for the world beyond his door.
If it wasn’t the frigidity of the desert midnight that woke him up, it was the sight of the door to the Girl’s room pushed slightly ajar with the harsh yellow of the lamp spilling out onto the cracked pavement that did. His stomach dives harshly into the sand and his hands, cold with fresh tremors, reach for the blaster that isn’t attached to his hip.
“Fuck,” he mutters, sidling up to the door and venturing a peek inside. She’s still crying, so whoever it is is still in there. He pushes open the door-
And he freezes.
Party Poison paces between the bed and the wall, cradling the baby girl as she wails.
“Oh, no, no, no, sugar, c’mon,” they shush, rocking on their heels and sighing. “C’mon angel, don’t you cry,” Ghoul can’t see their hands, but by the way their arm moves he can tell they’re rubbing her tiny back. Party cranes their neck to kiss the Girl’s downy curls, holding her tightly to their chest. “C’mon baby girl.”
They stop their pacing, opting instead to just rock gently, humming. Ghoul can’t place the song, but it’s distantly familiar in a way that he knows he’s heard it before. Stars, he thinks absently as he leans his hip against the door and watches, the words were something about little stars.
As Party hums, slowly, finally, the Girl’s cries begin to settle. They sigh again, relieved, as her baby noises are reduced to soft snuffling and the occasional whimper.
“Thank fucking god,” they mutter, heading back towards the crib in the corner of the room to lay her down.
“Here, let me help,” Ghoul says, pushing his hip away from the doorframe. He winces as Party jumps, startled, and whips their head around to look at him. He holds his hands up. “Sorry.”
A held breath leaves them in a whoosh and they visibly relax when their eyes fall on Ghoul. “Fuck, it’s just you.” There’s no malice in their tone, only relief. Their gaze flicks between Ghoul and the Girl. “She got you too, huh?”
“Yeah, me too. You been here all night?”
The dark circles under their eyes tell him yes, they have, and the way their shoulders slump in near defeat as the Girl starts to scream again as soon as they lay her down tells Ghoul that this has been an ongoing battle and Party can see no reprieve on their horizon. They scoop her back up and cradle her to their chest, shushing her and looking up at Ghoul with weary eyes that brim with frustrated tears.
“She just won’t fucking stop crying,” they look at her plaintively as they sit heavily on the edge of the bed, the old mattress creaking in protest. Party sighs, settling her in the crook of one of their elbows and giving her one of their fingers to gnaw on. “Jet thinks she might be teething. He was in here earlier,” they elaborate, their eyes flicking up to Ghoul for only a moment before returning back to the Girl. “Kobra too.”
“You’ve been up with her all night,” Ghoul asks softly, though it's more of on observation, sitting beside them on the end of the mattress.
“She just starts fuckin’ wailing anytime I put her down, you saw that shit! I can’t leave her, ‘else none of us’ll get any sleep.”
Their bedraggled hair and heavy eyes speak to their lack of rest and how long they’ve been awake.
“Did you do this with Kobra, too,” Ghoul asks when Party pauses in their muttering to the Girl. She’s calm in their arms as they sway gently back and forth, their shoulder occasionally brushing against Ghoul’s. He doesn’t need to explain what he means. Party knows.
“No,” they keep their eyes on the Girl as she chews on the side of their hand. “No, it was different with Kobra. I was still looking after him, but we were a little older.”
“So what’d you do with him?”
“Kobra?”
“No, fuckin’ Dr. D. Yes, Kobra.”
“Uh, we’d go sit by a window and look at the sky. We’d make up stories to tell before bed. I’d sing him to sleep, sometimes. But I just- fuck, Ghoul, nothing I’m trying is working. Every time I put her down it just starts again.”
Shakily, they sigh, brushing their knuckles against the Girl’s pudgy cheek. Her big eyes stare up at them as she jams one of her hands in her mouth.
“Aw, honey, no, you’re gonna get all slobbery,” they mumble, trying to pull her hand away, though they quickly relent and let her go back to noshing on her hand when she starts to cry again. “Okay, okay baby. Hand snack it is,” they laugh tiredly, so tiredly, as they drag their fingers through their hair.
“Looks tasty,” Ghoul laughs, picking up the Girl’s other hand and pressing a kiss to it. He smooches her chunky knuckles twice more before chomping gingerly at the side of her hand. She squeals and giggles, yanking her hand away and smacking at Ghoul’s nose. He grins at her, kissing her hand again as Party Poison stares at him.
“Will you take her,” they ask him, “just for a minute or two.”
He doesn’t know what to do with babies, and surely his apprehension must show on his face because Party pats his shoulder as they stand and pick up his hand. The pads of Party’s fingers are calloused and rough from the Fabulous Four’s life out in the Zones, but their touch is gentle as they show Ghoul how to hold the back of her head and cradle her in the bend of his arm. He wonders how in the hell they know how to be so good with babies, glancing up at them leaning over him to make sure the Girl is secure in his arms before straightening up and stepping away.
They pick up their jacket off the bed and drape it over their shoulders, slipping out of the room and drawing the door shut behind them with a soft click.
Ghoul looks down at the Girl, who stares at him with round, teary eyes as her lower lip starts to wobble again. Quickly he kisses at her hands again, and the tears quell as she smiles at him and giggles her bubbly baby laugh. His heart flutters and his breath hitches, caught together in his throat, and staring down at her with her big green eyes and her downy curls and her smile yet undimmed by the hellscape she’s been born into, he realizes how desperately he loves this tiny little wriggly person in his arms.
He would, he realizes, do anything for her.
Party slips back through the door with nothing more than the soft clicking of the room key in the lock and the bolt sliding back. They’ve wriggled their arms through the sleeves of their jacket and are shimmying it on their shoulders as they sit back down on the end of the bed beside Ghoul, the mattress dipping slightly under their weight.
“You want her back?”
“Sure, yeah.”
They do the small baby shuffle and the Girl is transferred a bit rockily from Ghoul’s arms to Party’s. She fusses as Ghoul lets go of her, grabbing for his fingers with her pudgy hands flailing in the air. Ghoul presses more kisses to her hands and lets her grab at him until Party eventually clears their throat.
“So I had an idea.”
“Oh god.”
With their free hand they shove lightly at his shoulder. “Shut up. Wanna go for a drive? You can hold shithead.”
“Sure, yeah,” he echoes their words and they grin at him.
Still holding the baby in their elbow- how is their arm so strong? -Party fishes in her crib for a blanket, deftly laying her down and swaddling her before scooping her back into his arms as she starts to wail again. She thrashes in her swaddling clothes, fighting and crying to get out of her blanket prison, and Party desperately tries to settle her back down.
“No, no, baby girl, it’s okay,” they shush, once again holding her tightly to her chest and softly bouncing her. “It’s okay, I’m sorry, I just gotta keep you fuckin’ safe in the car, sugar.”
“Dude, what the fuck,” comes Kobra’s soft voice from behind them, and when Party turns to face him, he’s still sleep-addled and standing in the doorway to the room, washed in the yellow light of the lamp.
His hair stands on end from how it had been crushed against his pillow only moments before and he squints against the light. His jacket hangs halfway off of one shoulder, his arms moving just slightly at his sides like he can’t quite keep them still.
“I thought you were going to bed, like, an hour ago.”
“Well I-” Party’s voice falters and they just look so tired as they stare at their brother from halfway across the room. They try to speak loudly enough to be heard over the Girl’s cries but not so loudly that they would upset her further. “I was fucking going to. But she just won’t stop. So I thought maybe taking her for a car ride might fuckin’ help but I tried to wrap her up so she won’t kick Ghoul in the fucking face while he’s holding her and she started flipping shit again!”
Kobra purses his lips and squints harder, if that’s possible. He takes slow and measured steps across the room before silently regarding the Girl in Party’s arms.
If it weren’t for the stress of the screaming infant, Ghoul would perhaps have laughed at the sight of him. Composed, stoic Kobra Kid stands, bedraggled and in rumpled unicorn boxers, in front of his older sibling with linen creases on his cheek and bare chest and the most severe case of bedhead Ghoul had ever seen on the blonde.
“If you tell me I did it wrong I swear to fucking god-”
Still silent and heavy-eyed, Kobra reaches out to gently rub the Girl’s head, his hands gentle against her skin despite their roughness. He quickly frees her arms from Party’s swaddling, though he leaves the rest of her securely wrapped in her blanket. Her cries fade into blubbering sniffles, and her thrashing stills as she grabs at the air, catching a fistful of the sleeve of Kobra’s jacket and another of Party’s hair.
Kobra brushes the side of her face again, the pad of his thumb collecting the fat tears still sitting on her cheeks and clinging to her eyelashes, wiping them away to be forgotten on the floor. Ghoul thinks he catches the ghost of a rare smile on Kobra’s face before he turns his eyes up to look at Party.
“She doesn’t like having her arms held down,” Kobra says simply, watching her as she lets go of his sleeve to wrap her entire hand around one of his long fingers. He leans down to gently press his forehead to hers in silent goodnight, wiggling his finger back and forth and moving her whole arm with it. “Gimme back my finger.”
She giggles at him, holding tighter and pulling at the red locks still clutched in her other hand.
“No, I said give it back,” he mutters good-naturedly, wiggling harder as she squeals, letting go of him to shove her hand back in her mouth. “Gross, but thank you.”
Kobra straightens, leaving the room without another word, his socked feet silencing his soft footsteps against the carpeted floor. The door clicks shut behind him quietly, leaving Party and Ghoul alone with the Girl again.
“So free-arm fuckin’ baby, huh,” Party frees their hair from her grip with a chuckle, replacing it with a finger like Kobra had.
“Free-arm fuckin’ baby,” Ghoul agrees as the Girl giggles again. “Does free-arm fuckin’ baby wanna go for a car ride now?”
She babbles at the two of them, yanking Party’s finger around as she makes grabby hands at Ghoul again, and as he did before, he presses noisy, exaggerated smooches to her hand and she squeals with joy.
“C’mon,” Party says through a face-splitting yawn, “Let’s go before the sun comes up.”
Ghoul gathers an extra blanket and drapes it over his arm, shivering against the midnight freeze of the desert as he opens the door.
They leave the motel and walk through the diner to where the trans am is parked, and Party unlocks the door and holds the Girl until Ghoul gets into the car and seatbelts himself in. He takes her from them and settles back against the seat, bouncing her him his arms as Party hurries around the front of the car and slides into the driver’s seat. They turn on the car and crank up the heat before they do anything else, rubbing their now-empty and cold hands together before dropping them heavily on the bottom of the steering wheel.
“Okay,” they sigh, tipping their head back against the headrest and staring blankly out the windshield as they click the headlights on. “Where are we going,” they ask under their breath, saying it more to themself than to Ghoul.
“I dunno dude. Just fucking drive and we’ll figure it out. Head towards Dr. D’s or something, I don’t care.”
“Yeah, fine,” they put the car in drive and pull away from the diner, the dust kicked up by the car turned red in the rearview mirror by the glare of the taillights.
Party Poison, crashqueen Party Poison who was known for flying through the desert and driving like a person possessed by a literal speed demon, takes the roads slowly and carefully. As they drive, the desolation of Zone 6 becomes more pronounced, the ruins and shells of abandoned buildings becoming fewer and farther between with every minute that passes. Ghoul doesn’t know where they are, though Party seems to. He leans his head against the window and looks out at the passing desert, the expanse of sand and bare hills broken occasionally only by a scruffy bush, tall cactus, or dilapidated sign that appear from the darkness only long enough for Ghoul to catch fast glimpses of them before the shadows swallow them whole again and they’re lost to the midnight void, the dust, and the taillights.
The Girl stares between him and Party, her wide eyes boring into their souls as she reaches for Party’s free hand again, gripping it tightly with both of hers and gnawing on it when it’s offered to her from across the center console. They think they can feel a tooth under her gums and realize that Jet must have been right. It hits them with a pang in their chest that she’s getting bigger. She’s only going to keep getting bigger, just like Kobra, and one day maybe she’s going to get so big that she won’t want any of them to hold her anymore.
The thought makes a sob catch in their throat and Ghoul’s head snaps over to them as they pull off the road and snake their left hand all the way across their body and the driver’s side of the car to put the trans am in park. Refusing to take their hand away from the Girl they undo their seatbelt and twist in their seat to look at her. They lean their temple against their headrest and look at the Girl, their eyes soft and adoring. It’s a side of them that Ghoul hasn’t seen much of.
“You good?”
“Just thinking.”
“So… not good?”
“Not bad. Just,” they pause, sighing heavily through their nose. They hold their hands out for her, and Ghoul hands the Girl to them without having to be asked. They cuddle her against their chest and pepper kisses on her face. “Just about her.”
Ghoul doesn’t say anything, but he does follow Party’s lead and gets out of the car after they do, taking the extra blanket he’d brought from the diner and wrapping it around the Girl still in their arms as they lean back against the hood of the car. The metal is warm through their jacket as they lay back against it, still cradling the girl against them as she resumes her gnawing on their hand.
This far out in the desert there’s no light pollution and the stars explode across the sky as they look up. It’s so dark and so quiet that they feel as though they can see stars on the other side of the galaxy and hear the heartbeat of the universe itself. Or maybe it’s just the Girl’s. They think that maybe they’re one and the same.
Ghoul scoots along the hood of the trans am, leaning back against the windshield and crossing his arms to keep himself warm. They can’t stay out here for long, Party knows, but still they can’t help but to lay there and take in the sky. How long had it been since they were able to just lay back and think about how big the sky was? They don’t have long to think about it before their eyes start to get heavier, and they’re reminded of how little they’ve slept.
Ghoul’s soft snoring from behind them brings them back to the Girl staring at them with her big eyes. She grips their hand tightly, her tiny fingernails digging into their skin as she chomps on one of their fingers, smiling at them as she does, her pupils blown wide by the dark and reflecting all the stars of the heavens back at them. Neither the lights of Battery City nor the sun in the sky had ever seemed as bright or as beautiful to them as her.
They know the future is uncertain, but they swear that hers is the brightest thing they’ve ever seen.
The heat coming from under the hood of the trans am is beginning to die down and Party shudders as the warmth drains from their back and they hold the Girl closer to them when they notice their breath forming clouds in the air above them.
“Ghoulie,” they smack lightly at his ankle. He snuffles for a second before his breathing evens back out. They shove his leg. “Ghoul. We gotta get going, c’mon.”
He cracks an eye open and slurs a confused jumble of question words, looking blearily down at Party.
“What?”
“It’s too cold for her out here, we gotta get back in the car, c’mon,” they shuffle off the hood of the car, holding the Girl to their chest wrapped in so many layers of blankets that only her eyes and her tawny curls peek out.
Ghoul begrudgingly nods and slides off the car, climbing back into the passenger seat so that Party can hand the Girl to him. They get behind the wheel, starting the car and turning the heat as high as it will go.
“We going home,” Ghoul asks from where his head is laid against the window, his voice still a sleep-slurred mumble.
“Yeah,” they chuckle as they put the trans am in drive to turn around and get back on the dusty, desolate road back to the diner and motel. “Yeah, we’re going home.”
“Cool,” he mumbles, partially unwrapping the Girl as she squirms, tossing the extra part of the blanket over his legs and shuffling the Girl in his arms until she settles.
Party reaches over to turn on the radio, and though no music comes from their turning the dials, soft white noise fills the car. Their mind wanders as they drive, and they’re parking the car in front of the green diner before they even realize they’ve made it back.
Turning off the car and turning to ask Ghoul a question, they huff a soft laugh through their nose as they see him asleep with the side of his head against the window, his mouth hanging slightly agape. The Girl lays contentedly in his arms, still staring at Party with her starry eyes, though finally she looks like she might be on the verge of sleep.
“Hey sugar, we’re gonna have to figure out how to get you out of the car, huh,” they croon, reaching over to free her hand from the blanket corner she’d gotten it caught in before she had a chance to start crying again. “No, no, none of fuckin’ that,” they sigh when her bottom lip starts to wobble.
They pick her up out of Ghoul’s arms, drawing up one of their knees to prop it against the door. They settle her in their arms and cuddle her close again, kissing her fluffy curls and sighing.
“Car rides calm you down, huh,” they mumble, heavy-eyed as they watch her jam their hand back in her mouth, no longer caring about the slobber and not entirely sure that they ever gave much of a shit about it, actually. “Me fuckin’ too, kid. We’ll do this more,” they promise, shifting around again to get out of the car. With her securely against their shoulder they step out onto the cracked pavement, bouncing her slightly as she starts to fuss again. They scoot her back to their elbow and offer up their hand once more as willing sacrifice.
“Oh, you’re back.”
Jet Star’s voice from the row of motel rooms makes Party jump half out of their skin, clutching tightly to the Girl until they realize it’s him.
“Good drive?”
Party nods. “Almost fuckin’ had her, too. Ghoul’s asleep.” They jerk their head towards the passenger side window where Ghoul’s black hair is all smushed against the window and he’s still half tangled in the blanket he’d brought. “I don’t fuckin’,” they mumble, “I don’ fuckin’ know how to get him inside.”
Jet quirks a dark brow. “Wake him up? You know he’ll be back to sleeping like the dead as soon as he’s horizontal.” He looks down at the Girl, only barely awake in Party’s arms, and shakes his head, a tiny smile curling the corners of his mouth. “You know what, I’ve got it.”
He opens the trans am’s back door, his dark curls vanishing inside the car as he snakes his arm around the front seat to shake Ghoul by the shoulder. “Hey.” Ghoul grumbles and turns more into the door, but Jet is relentless, shaking him a little harder. “Ghoul, dude, c’mon you’re gonna freeze if you stay out here.”
Curled in a ball in his seat, Ghoul painfully cracks his eyes open and cranes his head around to look back at Jet.
“You weren’t fuckin’ in the car with us before,” he mumbles.
Laughing softly, Jet shakes his head. “Nope. But you’re back, and Party turned off the car and it’s gonna get really cold out here. I don’t want you to freeze, c’mon.”
Ghoul rights himself with a loud groan and a yawn, stretching as his back pops. “Fuck,” he stretches the sound of the u as far as it will go, rubbing his eyes and blinking heavily as Jet pats his shoulder and climbs out of the car. He opens Ghoul’s door and stands back, crossing his arms.
“I’m not carrying you inside tonight Ghoul, c’mon.”
Party, standing outside the motel, watches the exchange with an amused smirk on their face, though they step into the Girl’s room when they see Ghoul get out of the car and him and Jet start making their way towards them.
The light is harsh against their eyes as they flick the lightswitch on, and they move their hand to shield the Girl from it when she whimpers. They go to put her down in her crib and she immediately starts to fuss, grabbing for them as soon as she’s laying on her back and they’re not touching her anymore. Fat tears well up in her eyes and her lower lip trembles.
Their chest falling, Party’s heart breaks for how miserable she seems, and they scoop her back up before she can start to sob again.
“No, no, baby, no more of that tonight, okay?” They sigh as they hold her to them, going around the room to pull tight the blackout curtains in the window, and turning to flick on the lamp beside the bed, they’re somewhat startled to see Kobra sitting on the bed, his back against the wall and his hands folded over his stomach. His head is down, hair over his eyes, and Party can’t fully tell if he’s asleep or sitting in silence as so often is his wont.
“Kobra,” they nudge him with their free hand, climbing onto the bed and mirroring his position against the wall, though quickly scooting down to lay against the pillow. “Kobra?”
The blonde doesn’t answer, but in his sleep he shuffles down to lay against Party, who wraps an arm around his shoulders with no hesitation, shifting the Girl- mercifully, finally asleep- against their shoulder to a more comfortable spot. It’s like when he was little, Party thinks, and they can’t help but to start humming again.
Jet comes in with an exceptionally exhausted-looking Ghoul trudging along at his side. He looks down at them.
“Staying here tonight, huh?”
“She was gonna start crying again,” Party mumbles, their eyes already heavy. “You staying too?”
“Yeah, if that’s cool,” Jet watches with bemusement as Ghoul curls up on the edge of the bed, his back to Party though still close enough to bump up against their elbow.
“Sure. I think there’s room on the other side of Kobra. Could you just,” they jerk their head at the light switch by the door, “hit the fuckin’ lights before you come over?”
“What, you’re not gonna do it,” Jet teases, shutting the door and locking it behind him.
“Oh, yeah, let me just shove Kobra away, chuck the baby, and climb over Ghoul to do it,” they laugh, a wry smile twisting their lips.
“See, now you’re getting it,” Jet laughs too, turning off the overhead lights and crossing the room. He stands beside the bed, hands on his hips as he looks at Kobra. “He waited for you after he heard the car leave.”
“And you didn’t?”
“I didn’t, actually. I heard you come back and came down to make sure everything was good. She finally settled down?”
“Almost got her with the fuckin’ car ride, but then I tried to put her in her bed and she started to flip shit again. She’s been doing it all night, I’m fuckin’ tired, she’s fuckin’ tired; this is how we’re doing it tonight.”
“Good.” Jet squeezes into bed against Kobra’s back, reaching over to brush his hand over the Girl’s curls before turning the other way to turn off the light. “Maybe we need to go out and look for something for her to have to teethe with.”
“What, like a chew toy?”
They don’t see it, but they can tell Jet shrugs. “Just something that’s not your hand.”
“I don’t mind her chomping on my hand.”
In the dark, Jet chuckles. “Not yet, maybe. But wait until she has actual teeth. You might change your tune then.”
They think he might have a point, but they’re too tired to think much on it, their mind fuzzy and blurry-thoughted. The darkness is warm and filled with the soft breathing of the Fabulous Four and the Girl, and Party can’t get the memory of her star-filled eyes out of their mind as they listen to the sounds of her even breaths and her tiny baby sounds, her gentle snuffles and barely-audible snores.
They rub her back and stare at the shapes swirling behind their eyes in the darkness, content to hold her against the night while she sleeps. It occurs, heartbreakingly, to them again that one day she might not need them to hold her like this. One day she might not have trouble sleeping, and one day she might not be afraid of the dark, and just like Kobra, she would get too big, and it would happen too fast.
They try not to think too hard about what her growing up would look like because of the prickle of tears it brings to the corners of their eyes. They cuddle her closer and their grip on their brother tightens too. Kobra grumbles against them, but he curls closer to them in his sleep.
Ghoul on their other side snores suddenly and loudly and startles the Girl, but Party just shushes her and hums her back to sleep, hearing Jet roll over like he was momentarily roused by it too. They can’t help but to softly laugh into the warm and comfortable silence that quickly descends after Ghoul twists around a few times, kicking off blankets that aren’t on him.
Kobra mumbles something in his sleep, but the gibberish is eaten by the fabric he speaks into, grabbing a fistful of Party’s shirt. Maybe he grew out of climbing into Party’s bed in the middle of the night, spurred across the rough floor of their shared bedroom in the city. Though the blackout curtains hide any light of the coming dawn, Party can’t help but to think about the way the lights of the city would sneak into their room through their threadbare curtains and how the light would fall on Kobra’s face, plaintive and scared, as he pulled back Party’s blankets and climbed into their bed because the world wasn’t so scary that way. Nothing could get him when he had his big sibling to protect him, and Party remembers promising him as much in those scary nights, when they fled the city together and chose new names, when they met Fun Ghoul and Jet Star and became the Fabulous Four, and they promise him again in the silence of the room.
Perhaps Kobra had grown out of sleeping in his sibling’s bed every night, and perhaps one day the Girl would too, but that day is far off, and Party Poison is happy to hold them close tonight as they finally drift off to sleep too, the stars still wheeling overhead as the pitch-dark sky of the desert night slowly gives way to the first distant horizon colors of the coming dawn.