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“-you know, because of P’Way’s huge crush on P’Babe back then.” Sonic’s eyes went wide as North said that. He slapped a hand over his boyfriend’s mouth and then worriedly glanced over at where their nephew was playing in the garage. To Sonic’s horror, Martin was staring right at them, a confused look on his little face. North followed his gaze and seeing Martin, he froze up as well.
The three of them stared at each other.
“Aow, that’s- that’s all in the past now, Martin!” Sonic started to tell their nephew, quickly growing flustered. “Your mama doesn’t love P’Babe like that anymore!”
“Yeah, probably. At least he’s not super obsessed with him now.” Sonic smacked North’s arm. “Oi! What? Way was crazy in love with P’Babe. But now he’s not.”
“Don’t say it like that!” They both looked back at Martin. The pup’s face had started to scrunch up. Neither of them could tell what the boy was feeling. They hoped he wouldn’t be upset. He got loud when he was upset. Sonic went over to him and crouched down in front of the boy. “Now your mama loves your papa instead.”
He decided it was best to leave out the timeline of when Way’s crush on Babe had been a thing. Martin didn’t need to know it lasted right up until a month or so before Pete had brought him back to Thailand.
Instead of being upset, Martin just said to them like they were both dumb, “Mama wasn’t in love with P’Babe.”
The pup did not think it was true, clearly. Sonic wasn’t sure whether or not to be relieved. On one hand, he was glad the pup wasn’t getting upset. On the other hand… he was conflicted as to what to do. Should they try to move on from the topic? Pretend to be mistaken or that it was a joke? Would Way or Pete or Babe even want the pup to ever know about that?
North snorted and made the decision to try to correct Martin. “Oh, he was. Trust me.”
Martin blinked up at him. “Uh… no.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“He was!”
“Nuh-uh!”
Before North and Martin could keep going back-and-forth for ages, Sonic shuffled between them. “Now, now, don’t fight.”
“You sound like Lhung,” North snickered, and got whacked on the arm again. “Nic!”
“Martin, it was a long long time ago, that’s all.”
The pup frowned at him. “No,” he said plainly.
Having a four-year-old continue to reject them, North and Sonic lost their rational thinking and could not help but both try to correct his stubbornness.
“About ten years ago, P’Babe and P’Way met each other-”
“Here in the garage!”
Martin accepted that first part. He nodded. “Uh-huh. Mama drove racecars.”
“That’s right! And they got to know each other, and became friends with P’Alan.”
“And with each other.”
“I guess,” Martin said, and they weren’t sure how they were losing him at that point.
“They were teammates! You know that.” That got another nod. It was an undeniable fact, that Babe and Way had been teammates on X-Hunter. Martin knew that from all the race replays he’d watched where Way had been driving. In all of those, Babe was his teammate.
With things back on track, North said, “And then they became best friends!”
They lost him again. Martin gave them a bewildered look, like the idea was incomprehensible to him. “No,” he said again. “P’Babe isn’t Mama’s best friend.”
“They used to be best friends,” Sonic insisted. He looked around and spotted Babe ignoring their conversation on the simulator. “Phi! Tell Martin that you and Way used to be best friends.”
“Don’t bother me when I’m training,” Babe snapped back instead of confirming things for them.
Without Babe’s confirmation, Martin still didn’t believe them. “I swear they were best friends!”
“I’m Mama’s best friend,” the pup told them, completely sure of himself.
It would have been cute if they weren’t trying to explain things. Instead they both just sighed at how Martin was misunderstanding them. Sonic thought it was pretty clear that they meant before Martin was ever even born, but instead the pup was being stubborn about the present. North mused to himself, not helping the situation, “Actually, wouldn’t P’Way’s best friend now be Sonic…?”
Definitely not helping, Sonic thought. Martin was not happy about that at all. “No, it’s Martin! Not P’Sonic!” He stomped his little foot.
“Before you,” Sonic said, exasperated. “Before you were born! You couldn’t have been his best friend before you were born.”
Finally, Martin seemed to accept the best friends thing. “Okay…”
They tried to continue. “So, they were best friends-”
A thought occurred to Martin. He turned to Babe and yelled to him, “P’Babe can’t have Mama back!”
“You can keep him, kid.”
Martin paused. North took a breath to start speaking again. “And P’Charlie too-” the pup added.
Babe jumped out of his seat. “Charlie is mine!”
The pup pouted. Before he could say anything back, and before Sonic or North could get things back on topic, Alan came over and told them all to stop arguing. He lifted up Martin and scolded them, starting with Babe. “No arguing with Martin! Be the bigger person, Babe!”
“P’Alan!”
Then, North and Sonic next, “He doesn’t need to hear about all of that. Don’t bother him with old stuff.”
“Yeah! No lying!” Martin scolded them as well.
“We weren’t lying! P’Way really was in love with Babe!”
“No!”