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In his defense, Joel’s response to the situation is largely informed by the fact that it’s the first time they’ve had a family crisis around a child that isn’t his.
With the benefit of hindsight, however, he can see how laughing in his very distressed brother’s face could be seen as being a bad older brother and a worse uncle.
“Real fucking funny,” Tommy snaps, and it’s the sharpness of his brother’s tone that lets the mirth simmer down. He straightens and tries to offer an apologetic grasp of Tommy’s shoulder, but his brother dodges, clearly irritated and on edge.
That cools his amusement the rest of the way.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” he tries to soothe him, already backing up to grab the flashlight off of the hall tree. “He just-”
“He’s under a goddamn house,” Tommy says, more shortly than he’s never heard his brother speak to him except for when he left back in Boston. “That’s not fucking fine, Joel.”
He lifts his eyebrows just slightly, safe in facing away. When he has his poker face back on, he turns, flashlight in hand.
“Alright,” he says, shutting the door, “let’s go get your rugrat out of the crawlspace.”
*
Maria seems wound equally tight when they get there, Joel having to all but jog to keep up with his brother. His sister-in-law is currently on the ground in the center of a ring of toys, all clearly brought out to be bait.
From the giggles issuing from the tiny entry into the crawlspace his nephew has apparently made his new home in, none were successful.
“Oliver,” Maria says, and he can hear the strain in her voice despite her attempt to keep it calm but firm, “come out.”
“No!” Ollie cries with great delight.
Maria tries to lunge, and there’s a squeal of delighted toddler fear as sound indicates Oliver clambering away at great speed, giggling. Maria lets out a growl of frustration and makes another reach, but this seems more about frustration than a true chance at catching her child. Tommy kneels and rests a hand on her back, and she turns, revealing a face streaked with dirt and tight with badly suppressed fear.
He thinks it says something about their relationship these days that she doesn’t bother hiding it from him when their eyes meet. He gives her a small–what he hopes is reassuring–smile. She doesn’t return it, but her face goes a little less tense, and she turns back to the hole.
“Hey, buddy,” she calls, voice brighter, more coaxing now. “Uncle Joel’s here. Don’t you wanna come say hi?”
A long pause.
“Unca Jo?” Ollie parrots.
“Yeah, kiddo,” he says, lowering himself to one knee and gently crowding Maria out of the way until she pushes herself up. “You wanna come say hi? I haven’t gotten a hug from my buddy today.”
In the beam of his flashlight, his nephew appears, absolutely filthy. He snorts, unable to help it, and Ollie giggles at a joke he doesn’t even understand. There’s dust all over him, and he must have found some sort of water source to have mud caked in a streak over his shirt, cobwebs draping his head like a veil.
He can understand, now, why Tommy’s always seemed unbothered by Ellie’s chaos. It turns out mischief is fun when it’s not your child involved in it.
*
Even the temptation of Uncle Joel wanting a hug isn’t enough to get Ollie out, and the closest he gets is managing to pull off one tiny sandal when his nephew gets just close enough to brush with his fingers, Ollie crawling away at high speed shrieking with giggles and leaving his shoe behind like a lizard detaching its tail.
Half an hour into the effort of de-toddlering the crawlspace, he can understand why his brother and sister-in-law didn’t share in his amusement upon arrival.
“Daddy!”
He looks up at Ellie’s voice and finds her running right towards him, her backpack swung over one of Tess’s shoulders, his wife following at a much more sedate pace, one eyebrow lifted. He rolls his eyes skyward. As much as Tommy teases them about being mind readers when it comes to silent communication, this is a situation that will definitely need words.
*
Even the arrival of his much-beloved cousin isn’t enough to draw Ollie out, though he sits closer to chatter at Ellie, seemingly giving her a run down of his many finds under the house. Ellie–sprawled on her belly by Maria, who’s taken up another round of trying to coax her son out–is nodding solemnly, like this toddler babble all makes sense to her.
Given the conversations he’s heard her carrying on with Ollie before, perhaps it does.
Tess is currently brushing the front of her shirt off from her own efforts at drawing Ollie out. She’d gotten close with a new toy she’d borrowed from a neighbor, but when she’d started using it to drag the toddler out, Ollie had let go and retreated, giggling once more at yet another unsuccessful attempt at evicting him.
He’d say they’re back to square one, but that would have required them progressing beyond it in the first place.
“Any other ideas?” Tommy asks.
His brother is at least a little less snappish now, like distribution of responsibility across all four of them has at least let him relax slightly. It’s a small enough accomplishment, Joel considers, but it is still something.
God knows they need at least one win.
“See if one of the bird dogs can flush him out?” Tess suggests dryly as they all look back over to Maria jerking forward before Ollie’s delighted shriek rings out once more as he evades her yet again.
It’s Maria stopping Ellie from crawling in that gives him an idea he partially wants to discard at once. All four of them are too big to fit through the tiny entrance into the space–and God wouldn’t he love to ask whoever the fuck designed it in the first place what the hell they were thinking–but Ellie…
Ellie would have no problem at all crawling right in.
*
“Okay,” he says, kneeling in front of Ellie, “you’re gonna-” Ellie immediately looks away at a child riding their bike and ringing their bell.
It’s not the most reassuring sign of imminent success.
“Ellie,” he prompts. “Focus up, baby.”
She looks back to him, squaring her shoulders a bit like a little soldier, clearly awaiting orders.
Her glance still skitters away briefly to focus on a bird swooping by in the tree a few feet away, but he deliberately ignores it. His better sense is telling him this is a bad idea. The rest of him, though, knows they’re rapidly running out of options before Ollie wanders into something that could hurt him.
“You are going to go into the crawlspace,” Tess says, kneeling at his side. “You’re going to grab Ollie, and then you’re going to come right back out.”
Ellie pauses for a suspiciously long moment.
“Right?” He prompts her. “Go in, get your cousin, come back out. You got it?”
“Got it,” she says obediently.
“Repeat it,” he tells her, not fully trusting her answer. “Go in. Grab Ollie. Come back out.”
She repeats it readily enough, but there’s an anticipatory glee he doesn’t quite trust. She can follow orders just fine when she feels like it, but it’s not as if she doesn’t have a history of going rogue when she gets excited.
Another frustrated cry from Tommy trying and failing to grab Ollie decides him, though. They’ll just have to risk it. Ellie’s six. She’s old enough for a mission of this nature. It’ll all be over soon, and then he can mock Tommy relentlessly about having made a troublemaker of his own.
With that to look forward to, he ushers Ellie over to the crawlspace.
*
Ellie’s focus on the mission lasts about 30 goddamn seconds.
“Ellie!” He hisses, trying and failing to grab one little foot as she veers sharply away from Ollie, who giggled and started crawling away rapidly when his cousin entered the scene.
“Spiders!” Ellie calls gleefully, and Tess at his side backs up slightly.
“Syrup, no spiders!” Tommy calls, his brother hovering over him to peek over his shoulder.
“Yes, spiders!” Echoes back to them as Ellie rounds a corner and moves out of sight.
All three of them drop their heads to the ground and groan.
*
“Okay,” Tess calls when Ellie’s poked her head back into view, too-big headlamp sweeping over and nearly blinding them before something else catches her attention and she crawls forward at speed, a coating of webs over her hair now, too. “Bug, you checked out the spiders. Go get Ollie now.”
“No!” Ollie says from his place in a far corner, only one leg visible around a supporting pillar.
“This is like a clubhouse,” Ellie says, and he knows he’s not the only one who knows enough to dread the excitement in that realization.
“It’s not a clubhouse,” he and Tess say at the same time, but it’s already too late, and he knows it by the way Ellie sits down and rests her back on a support, looking around consideringly, one little hand cupped around what he just knows is a spider.
Ellie looks at them and then grins.
And then she crosses her legs in a clear statement that she won’t be coming out any time soon.
*
His one condolence with being outplayed by a 6 and 2 year old with their baited trap is that at least he wasn’t the only one fooled, all four of them talking in a circle to convince each other that it would work.
As the one laying on the ground grasping in vain for the container of crackers Ellie had skittered just close enough to snatch away, shrieking with giggles that set Ollie off with shared mirth, it’s hard not to feel like the main butt of the joke.
“Ellie!” He calls in vain, his little pest of a little girl already retreating to her cousin, sitting down and sharing the spoils with him in a way she never would have two years ago.
The victory of his daughter learning to share is rather spoiled by the smugness of the pair sitting comfortably to watch him with clear amusement, both little enough that they can sit upright, though the tops of Ellie’s pigtails are brushing the underside of the house, gaining another layer of cobwebs.
“Thank you, daddy,” Ellie says in a perfect performance of manners, and he doesn’t think he’s imagining the faint taunt in it.
“Tank oo, Unca Jo!” Ollie parrots, entirely sincere and just copying his cousin.
They both take a cracker and Ellie prompts Ollie to cheers them.
He drops his head down against his bicep and tries not to bang it against the ground.
*
“Think we could get ‘em out with a hose?” Tommy asks, after a desperate attempt at lassoing had ended with capturing both of Ellie’s shoes and their empty cracker container before both of the kids crawled out of sight, Ollie following Ellie’s lead like a little caboose around the corner.
*
The hose does not work.
The hose does create a massive pile of mud for the kids to wallow in like happy little piglets, slipping and sliding and having the time of their lives.
“Any other ideas?” He asks, slinging the hose away in disgust and then leveling a look at Ellie when a clod of mud lands suspiciously close to him, his daughter giving him a look that’s all wide-eyed innocence.
He doesn’t buy it for a second.
*
It is a balm to his pride that Bill and Frank don’t have more luck than them.
It’s also a balm to his nerves to watch Bill try to get up off of the ground without accepting help from anyone, the cantankerous old bastard already wound up from Ellie’s absolute refusal to heed him.
Leveled with a glare, he manages a look of innocence that probably sells about as well as Ellie’s.
*
“There’s always a tear gas bomb,” Bill puts in.
All heads snap towards him with near-identical looks. He scowls back at all of them.
“Well excuse me for offering a goddamn suggestion,” he says, crossing his arms across his chest. “I don’t see any of you geniuses coming up with anything else.”
It’s only with great effort that he doesn’t grab the hose to turn it on a different target.
*
Backup has been brought in in the form of Sandra and Hank, brought into the circle of six after passing by on their way from walking Sam home from an afterschool program, Henry carrying his brother. They look over with interest, and he can feel his face wanting to heat at the amusement on their faces as they let themselves in through the garden gate, Sam wiggling to get put down. Tess reaches out and stops him before he gets too close before her face lights up.
“Hey bug,” she calls, and he can hear the smug satisfaction in it, “Sam’s here.”
Sam clearly recognizes the shape of his name as she speaks, and he cocks his head in question. Joel’s own ASL isn’t fluent, not yet, but he manages to sign enough to tell him that Ellie’s under the house.
The way Sam’s face lights up with interest means he shifts slightly to block the path.
God forbid they have a third kid keeping themselves hostage.
“Gonna have to come out if you wanna talk to him,” Tess says. “He can’t see you under there.”
A long moment of silence.
“Hey Henry?” Ellie calls, and Henry looks amused as he edges past Tommy to kneel next to the opening.
“Well hey there, Els,” he calls. “You raising heck?”
“Uh huh,” Ellie says, and he scowls at the clear self-satisfaction in it. “Can you tell Sam it’s really fun under here, and he should come play?”
Looking around at the forbidding faces of the adults around him, Henry clearly knows better than to obey this instruction.
“Sorry, princess,” he calls. “Think you’re on your own with that one.”
“Henry!” Ellie complains, clearly feeling betrayed.
“Henny!” Ollie echoes, likely not understanding the complaint but content enough to echo his cousin.
“Oh damn,” Henry says with a laugh. “You’ve got both of them under there?”
The looks he gets at this have him turning his laugh into a cough.
*
Five seconds.
It takes five seconds of their council of nine deliberating on the next step for Sam to edge away from his parents and dart right through the hole into the crawlspace, Henry and Tommy both making a dive for him in vain, Sam laughing when he feels fingers on his ankle and crawling in with greater speed, out of reach faster than anyone else can move to try and catch him.
The cheering that goes up from the crawlspace is almost enough to make him bring up the idea of breaking out a sledgehammer.
*
Having gone through their provisions quickly, the little trio of crawlspace gremlins is currently trying to negotiate a resupply. The utter refusal of all gathered adults doesn’t seem to be making their spirits flag at all.
“More crackers!” Ellie says, pounding her small fists into the mud and sending up a splatter. At this point, all three of them are filthy enough that they’ll be hosed off before they’re allowed into any house, so it’s not as if it’s that great a tragedy.
“Mo cackers!” Ollie parrots, bringing his own tiny fist down and then looking to Ellie for approval. She grants it with a nod and a smile. “Mo cackers!” Ollie cheers again, bolstered by his cousin’s support.
“You ain’t getting any crackers until y’all come out of there,” he says flatly, Hank at his side signing it for Sam’s benefit.
“Más galletas!” Ellie cheers, and he rolls his eyes.
“El español no te va a ayudar, peste,” he says flatly. At the time, starting to teach Ellie Spanish had felt fun and like he was sharing something of himself with her.
Now it just seems he’s made her a pain in two languages.
“Más gay-tas!” Ollie repeats.
He rolls to his back and turns to face the semi-circle of adults.
“How much do we really need kids?”
*
Henry is not the heartless stone of a teenager they could use in an ally, sneaking in close enough to toss a box of cookies to the crawlspace goblins. He quails slightly under the combined force of eight irritated adults, but he just shrugs.
“They said they’re hungry.”
The cheer of “coo-kies! coo-kies! coo-kies!” is broken only by satisfied munching.
*
It almost fucking figures that Ivy would end up under the house, too, really.
Celia had stopped by after word started spreading through town of the fucking eight stooges comedy show happening, and it had only taken a few seconds between Celia setting her down to come over and ask what was going on and Ellie calling out “Hi Ivy!” after she caught sight of her to have the four year old joining the ranks of fugitives beneath the house, squealing with giggles at Maria almost catching her foot, one little bow-toed shoe joining the pile now on the ground by the hole.
Her dress now ruined, Ivy takes the place right next to Ellie, sandwiched between her and Sam.
With the air of a queen distributing favors, Ellie passes her a cookie from the stash in her overall pocket before looking to him, tilting her head with a smug little look that says “Your move.”
“You’re gonna be grounded until you’re ninety, little lady,” he tells her.
Ellie shrugs before breaking a cookie in half and giving one part to Ollie, chewing on her portion sedately.
*
A desperation play of sending Layla the failed guard dog in after them ends only in excited yipping and giggling children being knocked over with the force of her licking their faces, the dog finally settling down laying across Ellie’s lap, still wriggling with delight as she strokes over her back, looking out at him smugly, every inch a tiny mob boss with a well-oiled machine of underlings, all heeding her leadership.
There are times he wishes she didn’t take after Tess quite so much.
*
The sun has started to go down by the time negotiations seem to actually be getting somewhere. He wishes he could say it was to do with them taking a hardline approach and all having excellent discipline of their kids.
Really, he thinks it has rather more to do with how well Ellie knows the food schedule and how close they are to supper.
Still, he thinks for the sake of their pride that they’ll all be pretending it was the former.
“- and five cookies after supper,” Ellie finishes her list of demands with a nod of her head.
On either side of her, Ollie, Sam, and Ivy copy the motion, obedient little henchmen following their leader.
“No cookies because you were all naughty,” Frank says, the current representative of the adults after Tess and then Celia’s negotiations failed. Naughty is a carefully chosen word here. Even now, being called bad makes Ellie edgy, but naughty is generally fine.
Even if she passed the limits of “naughty” a good three hours ago.
“Four cookies,” Ellie counters.
“Fo coogies!” Ollie emphasizes, waving around a stick he found at some point, Layla following the motion of it eagerly, clearly desperate for him to throw it, the dog still under there because she’s proven as difficult as the pests she was sent in to flush out, her current owner Hannah now joining in their group of adults who have lost control of their charges.
Hannah at least seems to have made her peace with the situation, accepting a beer from their little crowd of audience members.
Even with his shitty hearing, he hasn’t missed the bets being laid on how the situation will end.
“You’ve already had cookies,” Frank says patiently, “and-”
“Listen up, you little hellions,” Bill breaks in, shoving him out of the way to make space. “If you aren’t all out of there within the next five seconds, we will flood this crawlspace and float you all out.”
A long, considering pause, and then Ellie shrugs.
“I can swim.”
*
Negotiations have circled around to Tommy, and his brother has achieved the release of Layla, who Ellie sent out with demands to return her with more crackers tied to her collar.
The fact that the dog was instead taken home to get a bath seems to have broken down goodwill to some degree.
“Three cookies and no timeout,” Ellie says now. “Final offer.”
He gives a wry look to Tess that says ‘Wonder where she got that from?’
With all of the kids currently in the crawlspace, there’s no impressionable eyes to see when she flips him off.
*
Negotiations are still ongoing, but the flagging of two of her co-hostages seems to be lessening Ellie’s advantage, something she appears to realize.
Still, with Ollie asleep with his head on her lap and Ivy nodding off on her shoulder, she’s standing firm to her demands.
“Three cookies and no timeout,” she repeats for a fifth time, her clear last opinion on the matter.
“No cookies and no timeout,” Maria says, the last point something they’ve all had to discuss amongst each other and come to an agreement about.
It feels more than slightly absurd, discussing discipline as a cohort, but they all also have kids holding themselves hostage.
It’s not as if any of them is any position for a parenting high horse here.
“She’s discussing it with Sam,” Maria calls back over her shoulder for the benefit of the rest of the gathered parents while Ellie signs to her second in command.
With Ellie holding her flashlight the way it is and angled away, it’s hard to follow all of her signs, but she and Sam seem to be in some kind of disagreement. After a long moment, though, they apparently come to an accord, reaching out to shake hands in a way that makes him roll his eyes.
“Two cookies,” Ellie says in a firm, decisive way. “And no timeout.” Sam taps her shoulder, and she turns to watch him sign to her. “And Layla can come play with us tomorrow.”
Clearly ready to be done with all of this, Maria turns to the circle of adults.
“Well?” She asks, and it would almost be funny, how far they’ve all been broken in this ongoing negotiation.
In the moment, though, they’re just all ready for it to be over.
“Fine,” Hank puts in as the representative of his family unit.
“If it gets them out,” Celia says with a shrug, sitting on the ground and resting her back against Tess’s legs where she’s sitting on a patio chair.
“They have to take a bath before dinner,” Tess calls loud enough for the gremlins to hear.
A moment of pause as Ellie and Sam discuss it between themselves.
“Only bubble baths!” Comes Ellie’s voice, and Tess rolls her eyes.
“Fine,” she still says.
Decision made for them after a quick look to Tommy, Maria turns back.
“Deal.”
*
Ellie sends out Ivy and Ollie first, the toddler giggling when he’s immediately scooped up, clearly having enjoyed himself immensely today. Ivy walks over to Celia with a bright “Hi, mommy!” and lifts her arms in a request to be picked up, and though she wrinkles her nose at her filthy child, Celia grants the request.
“No timeout,” Ellie repeats before Sam joins them again, and it takes agreement from a representative of both remaining families before the little boy crawls out, mud covering absolutely every inch of him where he slipped on his way back out.
And then there was one.
“Ellie Amanda Servopoulos-Miller,” Tess says, voice as commanding as when she’s on patrol. “Get your butt out here. Right now.”
No filthy pigtailed-head appears.
“Ellie,” he says, tone warning, as he and Tess both lower themselves to peer in at their kid, closer now but still out of reach.
She doesn’t look so smug now, and it’s annoying, how pathetic she looks in the big space all alone after being a pest for multiple hours.
“Ellie, enough playing around,” Tess says. “It’s gonna be dinner soon, you wanna miss that?”
Ellie wrings the strap of her muddy overalls nervously.
“Are you mad at me?” She asks, voice small.
He and Tess exchange a look.
“Really mad?” Ellie asks, and they look back to find her with her shoulders hunched, drawing into herself.
“You have not been a good listener today, Ellie,” Tess says in a measured censure, and Ellie hunches into herself a little more.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It was really fun.” She peeks up at them from under her lashes. “Really, really fun.”
He takes a deep breath, feeling his irritation drain away to a large degree at how clearly Ellie regrets her actions now. She’s not a bad kid, after all. She doesn’t deliberately do things just to be a pest and make people worry.
She just has a mischievous streak a mile wide.
“Are you gonna make me leave?” Ellie asks, and even in the scant light of her slowly-dying flashlight, they can see her eyes go shiny.
He can’t speak for Tess, but for himself, it makes the last of frustration drain away. Ellie doesn’t do this often, after all, deliberately disobey and refuse to listen. She’s usually far too eager to please for that.
She’s just a kid who found a perfect spot to push her limits from.
“We’re never gonna make you leave, bug,” Tess says, and she reaches one arm out. “But you can’t do this again, okay?”
Ellie edges just a little closer on her knees.
“You promise?” She asks, clearly wanting to believe them. They’ve come a long way in the two years they’ve had her, but standing on her own now has clearly reminded Ellie of exactly how far she’s pushed her luck today, and old wounds have a way of living on, no matter how well the scars heal over.
“Make you a deal,” he says, and Ellie perks up. “You come out of there right now, and we forget about this. You ever do this again, though, and there’s gonna be consequences.” Seeing the question coming, he continues before she can ask. “No playing with your friends after school and no dessert for a week. I know it’s fun to go under there, but it’s not safe. Y’all could have gotten hurt today.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellie says, and one tear makes a path down her muddy cheek.
“We know, bug,” Tess says, and she’s clearly had her own frustration diffused the way he has, irritation hard to hold onto when Ellie usually tries so hard to be so good. “And nobody got hurt today. You come out right now, you promise to never do this again, and then we can get you a bath and then go to dinner. You won’t be in trouble for this one, alright?”
A moment of silence as Ellie studies them and then a tentative smile.
“Okay.”
*
Supper that night is a quiet affair, all of the freshly-scrubbed children at the table starting to droop about ten minutes after they all sat down, Ivy nearly faceplanting into her casserole until Celia lets out a soft snort of amusement and picks her up, holding her with one arm and feeding her a few more forkfuls before she lets her conk out. Ollie falls asleep around a minute after being removed from his highchair, face pressed to Tommy’s shoulder. Sam falls asleep spread across his mother and Henry’s laps, both of them exchanging an amused glance as he stretches across the bench, head barely down before his eyes shut.
And then there was one, he thinks with amusement as he watches Ellie struggle to stay awake.
“You sleepy?” He asks her teasingly, brushing her still-damp hair out of her face.
“Nuh uh,” she says, jerking her head back up from where it had been drooping towards her stewed tomatoes. “I’m-” A yawn so wide it’s a surprise her jaw doesn’t crack. “I’m awake. I gotta get my cookies.”
A round of laughs from the adults at the table.
Ellie shakes herself a bit, sitting upright in a clear attempt at outlasting her comrades and collecting on her hard-won concessions.
Still, she only gets about two bites into her first cookie when she starts slowly drifting to the side, leaning against him. Her chewing slows until it resumes in short bursts as her eyes blink open before growing slower again.
She still has half of the cookie in her hand when her eyes shut and don’t reopen, her face turning in towards him as he puts an arm around her and pulls her onto his lap.
*
None of the kids wake up by the time supper is over, and as a group, they exchange amused and exasperated glances at them all sleeping so peacefully after causing chaos for so long. He readjusts his own pest to hold her a little more securely on the walk home, and he and Tess keep their voices low so they won’t disturb her. Back at home, they rouse her enough to brush her teeth despite her whining, and she’s asleep again before they’ve even finished pulling her covers over her.
“Goodnight, you little goblin,” he says fondly, pressing a kiss to her hair.
*
He and Tommy work by flashlight to board up the crawlspace that night, Maria and Tess holding the lights for them while they secure it well enough that no little gremlins will ever be able to get in again.
Thinking that, he knocks on the wood twice before he stands.
Best not to tempt fate like that, after all.
At least not with a kid like Ellie.