Work Text:
“Hey, Alan-”
“Don’t.”
The struggle behind him drew his attention away from the slow drip of the coffee pot, Alan’s patience already running thin after realizing he had forgotten to set the auto-timer the night before.
“Charlie, it’s too early.” Lily reached up again, but her brother stood on his tiptoes, holding her phone just barely out of reach.
“What is it?” To an unsuspecting visitor, Alan’s growl at the two twenty-somethings standing on the other side of the kitchen island might initially sound hostile, but after the last five months with Alan living under the same roof as their mother, the Degler children had developed a sort of fondness for the often curmudgeonly, sometimes silly, but almost always comforting presence of the elder paleontologist.
“Charlie…” Lily whined while Charlie snickered, turning around so his back was to Lily and he could better read the screen.
“What’s going on in here?” Ellie breezed through the kitchen, her frenetic presence suddenly shifting the energy in the room, the way it always did. Alan smiled to himself as Ellie brushed past him, her knuckles discretely running along his behind, before she deposited her used water glass into the sink. Alan turned and handed her his full mug. At the eyebrow raise, he gave her a small grin, and turned to the cabinet to pull out a fresh mug for himself.
“Charlie is about to make our morning 300% more annoying is what is going on here.”
“Oh, come off it,” Charlie laughed as Lily finally gave up and instead walked over to the corner of the kitchen, searching now for a breakfast snack. He looked at the phone again and frowned. “Ugh, it locked.”
“The universe is on my side.”
Charlie shot her a glare before Lily reached over to press her thumb against the screen, the phone brightening in Charlie’s hands. When Charlie looked up again, ready to finally begin his spiel, he instead breathed out a sigh of frustration, tilting his head.
“Seriously?”
Alan pulled back from Ellie’s lips with a shy grimace, while Ellie instead turned to Charlie and laughed, sticking her tongue out at him. “Go on, we’re listening,” she said, leaning forward to quickly peck Alan again before walking past him into the pantry.
“If you can manage not to touch him for ten seconds, I want to show him something.”
Curious, Alan leaned forward and pulled his glasses out of his pocket. He bent across the kitchen island while Charlie held out the phone to show him the image, trying to hold in his laugh.
“What the hell?!” Alan snatched the phone from Charlie, and Ellie’s son let out a cackle, backing towards the refrigerator. He pulled it open and snagged a can of Coke, before turning back to watch the confusion and disgust battle in Alan’s expression.
“What is it?” Ellie re-entered from the pantry, a box of pancake mix in her hands, and without breaking her stride, snatched the Coke from Charlie, placed it back into the fridge and handed him an orange juice bottle instead, a warning glare on her face.
Charlie rolled his eyes and twisted the top off the juice, before jumping up onto the counter behind him. “It’s called the Magdeburg Unicorn.”
Alan groaned, muttering to himself, and scrolled down through the posts. The image on the phone showed a skeleton in a museum that appeared to entirely consist of a thick-tail and two long legs attached to shoulder blades and the skull, which had a large tusk protruding from it, like some sort of two-legged unicorn monstrosity.
Alan’s mouth hung open for a long moment, his eyebrows furrowed together in bafflement. Charlie took a swig of the orange juice and tried not to laugh at the expression on Alan’s face. “Thoughts?”
“I’m leaving,” Lily announced, attempting to make a hasty retreat before Alan began his inevitable rant, but Charlie jumped off the counter blocking her way.
Curious, Ellie sidled up behind Alan and wrapped her arms around his waist, leaning over his shoulder to sneak a peek at the phone. “Oh boy.”
Finally Alan sighed, rubbing his fingers over his eyes under his glasses, and dropped the phone onto the counter. “I don’t even have the words.”
“Thank God,” Lily murmured as she relaxed next to Charlie, leaning forward to retrieve her phone.
“The comments are almost worse. Where did you find that?” Alan asked, turning back to the coffee pot to fill his own mug.
“Reddit.” Charlie pulled his own phone out, while Alan turned to face him.
“You read it?”
“No, Reddit.”
“Where did you read it?”
“On Reddit.”
“What?”
And with the simultaneous cacophony of Ellie’s groan and the back of Lily’s head hitting the wall behind her, the Grant-Sattler-Degler household welcomed their morning.