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It was a soft sunny day, warm and humid, unlikely for a place like this. JuLai always sounded like a furious crowd, swirling around your head, but Vash got used to it with time spent here under the eye of his brother. Though Nai was too nosy and annoying sometimes, now he really couldn’t impose anything with his heart softened. He had changed a lot through the years.
It was amazing to have a family, to live a safe and sound life without a need to run away from bounty hunters desiring to have double dollars for his head. Everything turned upside down since the moment he and Nicholas suddenly had a child. Actually, two. Six years passed like a day, when two little beans turned into a little boy and a little girl, noisy and energetic even more than anyone could ever had imagined.
So, Vash sat on the chair under the soft light sliding onto his skin, while twins were running around imitating some kind of games with guns. Oh, that was really what they had from Nicholas in their blood. Charlie, the kid they adopted some time before pregnancy was revealed, lied next to him, quiet and placid as always with his hair put on his “dear mommy” Vash’s laps. His sniffles when prosthetic hand touched his hair reminded a bird’s song. It was hard to believe he was about to turn ten already as Vash remembered him as a little nervous child stuck to him like an old gum to a shoe. Or even worse. Well, that hadn’t changed at all.
“Why are they so loud,” Charlie sighed, pretty bored with playing hide-and-seek or touch-and-run all day long. For a while he started to show more affection towards his mommy and that seemed quite interesting. He often came to read a book sitting near or to do something else he did as a routine, and his dark eyes were running from his deal to Vash so frequently that he obviously was hardly able to concentrate on his actions. He barely read a couple of pages since he started to be around. Anyway, now he smiled slightly, tossing his messy head under the warm palm going through his hair. “Little charming rascals.” He caught it from Nic, always calling their kids like that and rarely using names he actually chose. Ezekiel was named by him, a first-born, starry-white and chubby for someone who was made just four months before. Rem was his contradiction, twice smaller and twice louder, she always teased him and Charlie to run away from them and climb on Nic's shoulders to hide from the consequences of her little game.
“You say they’re annoying but you always protect them from others,” said Vash cuddling his little child tenderly, hearing how Rem started to giggle definitely playing with her daddy as he decided to show up from the station he preferred to stay in while sun was scorching the surface of the planet.
“I’d say I protect others from ‘em,” Charlie chuckled, stretching after a long time lying not moving in one pose. “But what is really important…” he enigmatically stumbled over his words, apparently, for the first time in his life. “When are you gonna say ‘em?”
“Say what?”
“Oh, this. I’m sorry, but Knives is unable to keep his mouth shut when he’s agitated with something that crucial.” Vash was about to burst with laughter, wondering how Nai stupidly hissed to all the known gods that they had let it happen again. “I mean, it starts to be very visible.”
“I was just curious if your dad can notice that before the end.”
“Nah, impossible. His eyesight is blurred with love to you. I can hear his thoughts praying for your…” Charlie suddenly stopped talking, squinting from the beam pouring its light right to his eyes. “I’ve already talked to this two,” he raised his torso and nodded to twins tugging their dad’s clothes in searching for something more interesting than just a tickle he gave them every time his hands caught a victim of this torture. “He’s really going to blow up after such news.”
“Wait, you’ve noticed even earlier than me?” Vash smiled with confusion.
“The right season to, ya know… I can count and all of this stuff and Knives is too annoying with his studies so I really do know enough to see it. It’s visible in your face, it pours the light from the inside of yours. And Rem also said she wanted someone who’d take her place as the new smallest kid.”
Vash leaned forward to put a kiss on Charlie’s forehead and turned his head to watch the game taking place behind his back. Nic fell on the floor letting Rem take over him with a funny fake rage on her little round face while Ezekiel lied a bit far from them staring at the sky with a pure happiness in his lips’ curve line. He glanced at Vash cunningly as he had already known what was going to happen. Rem noticed Kuroneko, a thick black cat they found in the desert while travelling. Vash, with his kindhearted nature, decided to take it with them and now it was the most fat animal in JuLai. Meryl even wrote a small passage about it. So, all the girl’s attention was drawn to her pet, having a promenade with one purpose: to find Vash and turn him into his bed.
“I see my Tongari and Chocolate having secrets from me,” a scent of cigarettes brough Vash again to their past young days without even a single kid and a smile stretched his mouth uncontrollably. Nic just started to smoke again less than a year ago, and now he should suffer the deprivation of nicotine again. It seemed so ironic. “Want to share?”
“Dying to tell you, Nicholas,” murmured Vash, feeling Charlie’s head putting a weight on his stomach, warm and so calm. Charlie was so overprotective about this, though they both know that a bad thing couldn’t happen at all.
“I’m all ears,” he sat down on the floor, listening very carefully, cautiously. “Is it about twins’ birthday presents?”
“Much better. I remember your complaints that Ezekiel and Rem aren’t that young anymore to be small chubby rocks in your hand, so, we’re about to widen our rocks collection with at least one more .” Vash barely could hold his giggles back, when he caught tangled emotion on Wolfwood’s face and shock mixing with understanding in his eyes.
“No,” he said. “It’s a joke. Why am I not stabbed? Knives’d definitely killed me if that happened again.” Nic shook his head with excitement filling him.
“He wanted,” Ezekiel said, holding Kuroneko in his hands.
“Really wanted,” accepted Rem, patting the cat's black furry head. “So say thank you we need daddy and he needs too,” she pointed at the Vash with her finger, “and I mean not only mommy. Our gang is growing.”
“I’m out of the game.”
“Same.”
“Ugh, boys,” Rem rolled her eyes. “I hope it’s a little sissy!”
Nic sighed. He was the only one again who missed the main thing in their family. Vash gave his cheek a little kiss. He wanted to sunbathe. And some pickles.