Chapter Text
Saturday
Zeke hated making the trip down to New York.
The roads were ghastly near the border, with cars whizzing by left and right, and traffic every single time. Once they finally made it through that disaster, he’d then be driving down an endless road for the next five hours straight, slowly losing his mind. Having kids in the car did nothing to make the trip easier. They were piss-poor company, disappearing into an iPod or DS for most of the trip, only emerging to moan and groan about needing to stop. It pissed him off to no end when a six-hour drive turned into an eight-hour one because his kids had peanut-sized bladders and needed eight different types of road snacks.
He always told them to go bathroom before leaving and to pack snacks. Every dang time, without fail, they'd instead be bugging him about it halfway to Scotia. Why he even bothered speaking to his children, sometimes he really couldn't tell. It was like talking to a brick wall. In one ear, out the other.
Usually, if Emma wanted to see her kids, he'd tell her to come pick them up herself. It hardly seemed fair to make that demand that time, though, when it had been he who suggested she needed to talk some sense into the two of them.
Zeke didn't make a habit of ratting his kids out to their birth mothers. He dealt with their mischief when it came up on his own, and he hardly had the time to message every last one of them when at least one kid acted up every damn day. The youngsters had to be truly rotten for him to decide to bring in the big guns. But his twins, Artemis and Apollo, had really earned it that time. They had practically been begging for it.
In a house with nine children, plus four adult children flirting in and out, it was very tricky for a child to stand out. That is, unless they were exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. The pair in his car surely weren't falling into the former category.
There was a very thin line between balance and utter mayhem in their household, and Apollo had been using that line like a jump rope all summer long. Every rule that existed in the house, the boy had broken it. Every boundary that could be crossed, the kid had violated five times over. He had been driving his stepmother, Val, up the wall to the point she suggested sending him to a camp just to get a break from him. Lately, the boy had easily gotten into the most trouble out of all the kids.
Artemis, his spitfire of a daughter, managed to earn herself the second spot, which was the more challenged position. No one could quite reach Apollo's level, not since Hermes aged out of his worst years, but many could put up a fight for second. Thea and Dion definitely had a shot to surpass her. Against all odds, Artemis had snatched the runner-up slot the past month. And he knew that because of her own meticulous tracking.
Two days before, Val had found a very curious-looking chart in the girl's bedroom. Now, he knew going through kids' rooms would get them an eyebrow raise from some parents, but shit, if people saw the things he had found in that lot's bedrooms over the years, they'd shut up real quick. While the younger kids' rooms were far less exciting than the older group, they still had some suspicious activities going on in there at times. Val did what she often did after finding something incriminating in one of the kids' rooms, and sent the girl to her bedroom with the good old 'wait till your father gets home' threat.
Zeke had told her a million times that her stepchildren, who were all nine of the kids left in their house, would never stop treating her like a stranger if she didn't start disciplining them herself, but she was hellbent against 'crossing boundaries'. She wasn't their mother, and she didn't want to impede into their parents' role. But hell, she had raised most of them since they were babies. Far more than some of their mothers had.
They had a blended family household. It was as Zeke desired it to be, with all of his kids collected beneath one roof. It was no easy feat to pull off when he nearly had as many baby mommas as kids. After several of the kids had been abandoned by their other parent, though, their house had begun to collect all of his strays, and he started requesting primary custody from their mothers. He wanted all of his kids to grow up surrounded by their siblings. It was important for character-building and allowed them to develop strong bonds.
Many of their mothers had no issue with the arrangement, such as Artemis' and Apollo's mother, who contacted her kids twice a year if she was feeling generous. Herc's mom was a more present mother than the twins' mom, but she, too, was happy to leave him in his father's care, only asking for odd weekends or visiting him for a few hours. Perse's mom would take her for a month now and then, usually in the summer, but otherwise let her stay with her siblings, as per her daughter’s request. Only a few of his kids split fifty-fifty between his house and their mother's, those being Mina, Thea, and Jay. They still spent half of their time with the rest of their siblings, at least.
For the rest of them, especially those who had all but been abandoned by their mother, like Hermes, Dion, or the twins, Val was practically the only mother they knew. Still, she held out, insisting it was overstepping for her to discipline them. She would yell their ear off anytime, but she wouldn't even ground them, instead always revert to complaining to him when they acted up. Then complaining further that they constantly belittled and disrespected her, as if that wasn't the result of her being their stepmother but doing little of the 'mother' half of that title.
Man, he loved his wife, but she sure drove him nuts sometimes. Was that what love was all about?
Nevertheless, it had been he who had to sit with his daughter that evening and try to make sense of the strange chart.
Artemis had revealed her guilt before he could even ask what the hell he was reading. "Are you mad?" She wondered, tilting her head. She didn't sound too worried, only curious, as if she was planning on making notes on his behaviour as well.
Zeke lifted an eyebrow. "Should I be? What is this, Misty?"
"Just some data collecting," Artemis replied with a smirk.
"About your siblings?" He questioned. That was all he could really tell at that point. Their names were listed beside their ages on one side of the chart, plus a few extra columns with various amounts of tallies. "What were you keeping track of?"
"How often you spanked us," She giggled, as though he was asking a silly question. "And there is a system to divide between normal punishments and severe ones." She gestured at the sheet, "Look at the legend in the bottom corner."
Zeke was flabbergasted. "Why the hell would you track that?"
"Because," the girl chuckled, flicking her plait over her shoulder. "Pollo thought he surpassed Hermes' reign of terror now that he is old and boring, so I started keeping track to prove it. That was everything that happened between June 23rd and July 23rd."
Zeke clenched his jaw, trying not to laugh. Who is God's name would think of this nonsense? It was clear his daughter had put so much effort into it, too, with all of the legends. Hell, he could even see that she had a system to quantify how much a normal punishment weighed against a severe one, and what counted as severe for different age groups. "If only you put half this effort into your schoolwork," he scoffed, trying to keep a straight face.
Artemis shrugged, unconcerned.
Zeke tried to keep a stern dad face on, one he had mastered after getting through his first generation of ankle-biters. The second wave sure wasn't making it easy on him. "You should not be making a competition out of getting in trouble, kid."
Artemis' smug expression bled away into one of annoyance. "We weren't! That was part of the rules. No one is allowed to try to get in trouble to boost their rankings cuz then the data will be warped. And, only like, Thea and Dion knew I was keeping count. We did not tell Pollo, and he was the real subject of the study."
"Hmm," Zeke hummed. It was hard to resist inspecting the results, despite his intentions to disapprove of her work.
The bottom half of the chart was nearly empty. Neither Mina nor Perse had gotten squat the past month, which tracked. Mina was only there every other week, and she was rarely a bother those days. She was in that sweet spot where she could regulate herself, and he did not need to do much anymore. If only her older brothers had matured so nicely. As for her sister, Perse was his baby girl no matter how old she got. All she had to do was look moderately sad and apologize in a timid voice before his temper would melt away. She had him wrapped around her finger. It was not like she needed him to be hard on her. She was a saint compared to most of the rowdy bunch.
Herc had gotten one tally in the normal column. Honestly, it was a surprise he even got that much. In contrast to every other son Zeke managed to spawn, the boy was respectful and well-behaved. Every kid needed the odd correction here and there, but he definitely was far from being a troublemaker.
Hermes had gotten a measly two in the severe column, and Zeke remembered exactly what each hiding had been for. Hermes' incidents tended to be quite memorable, even then. One had been after the boy was pulled over for reckless driving, and another after Zeke caught him giving Apollo a cigarette. Oh, Hermes tried the feeble, 'but I’m eighteen' moan on him when his belt came off, as if he would give a damn. Zeke did ease up with the older kids once they moved out, but Hermes was still finishing high school that summer, since his stupidity led to him flunking a class in his last term, and he had no plans to move out yet. He was every bit a child still, as far as Zeke was concerned. One day older had not done squat. He told the boy that when he started acting like an adult, he'd treat him like one.
Hermes had mellowed with age, but old habits died hard. From the first round of kids, Ares and Hermes had both been rambunctious as boys, but Hermes had been the child who had him tearing his hair out. While Ares was hot-headed and tested boundaries with a vengeance, Hermes had been unable to so much as breathe without stirring up mischief. Zeke had hit every one of his lowest points as a parent with that boy. It was a miracle that both of them had survived to see him to eighteen.
All things considered, only two thrashings in a month was progress - for that one, at least.
The younger lot had considerably more tallies. That was how it ought to be, he always figured. He was strict with his kids when they were young, then tried to wean off that strictness as they matured and learned more from natural consequences. But the sheer amount beside some names had him in disbelief.
Thea had a few severe ticks, which made sense. When Thea got in trouble, she went big or went home. The girl was sneaky and dangerous. Her badness was always a hint darker than her siblings'. Many of them were mischievous, but only a few were as bad as hell. Thea probably was one of the latter. Don't get it twisted, he adored that he produced such an evil genius, but he knew better than to let her think she was sly enough to slip under his radar. It would be game over if he ever showed a hint of vulnerability with some of those hooligans. Especially that one, who thought herself sneaky enough to trick him.
Jay had none, which might be due to him 'babying' the boy, as the older kids accused him of. The kid could be naughty, but he was the baby of the family - and that was a stiff title when he had twelve older siblings. Only Thea shared a mom with him, but the kids disregarded that they were half-siblings after spending their childhoods together. All deemed Jay the baby.
Dion had a considerable number of checks, a lot more than Zeke would have predicted, but he still had two fewer than Artemis. And both were trumped by Apollo's abysmal tally.
"Pol did not get that many," He scoffed, giving his daughter a side-eyed look. God, if that tally was correct, Apollo would have gotten his butt scorched three times a week the past month. Now, Zeke was quite liberal in doling out a whacking - he had to be to keep that zoo under control - but he did not think he was spanking his kids every other damn day. He probably ended up smacking someone more or less every day, since his kids were bad as hell, but not the same kid repeatedly.
"Yes, he did!" Artemis insisted, flipping over the sheets stapled to the back of the chart. "I kept a record of the date and reason for why he got each, so no one could argue with the results."
She sure had, the list being extensive and well-detailed.
Zeke read off the first explanation. "Apollo and Dion went to their friend's house when Dad was at work without permission."
"That counted as one normal and one severe for Pollo, but only a severe for Dion," Artemis explained, sounding all too smug. "Since you gave Pol a smacking before the conversation about them sneaking out began, then a worse punishment later."
She was correct, even if he could not imagine how she'd know all of that. Maybe Dion had laughed about it with her. Zeke could even recall what drove him to decide to smack the kid until he ate his words, since it had irritated him so. Apollo had referred to him as dude while they were arguing, and when he told the kid to address him properly, Apollo had spat out an okay followed by a long list of overly formal titles. He could recall 'reverend' and 'your majesty' being part of the list. Apollo had been more even-tempered after he smacked that nonsense out of him, and they were then able to finish the conversation.
"And this one," Artemis pointed at an even longer explanation. "Was on the boat when you wouldn't let him sing his song, so he made up the 'father manwhore' song."
Zeke's eyes widened. "Don't say that word." He chided.
Artemis held her hands up in surrender. "That was his title!"
Zeke huffed. "That does not give you a pass to say it."
He knew exactly which incident she was referring to.
It had grown far more vile than how she had explained it, even. Apollo loved to write his spunky little songs and sing them on their karaoke machine, and he was quite good at it too, but the kid had the knack for adding words he wasn't allowed to say to every damn one. Apparently, he 'could not' skip the cuss words, and his dad was 'stifling his creativity' by suggesting he not swear. When Zeke had put his foot down about the boy cussing during a family trip, his son had chosen to freestyle instead.
Over a microphone, before his uncles, cousin, and siblings, Apollo had sung a very insulting and crude song about his father. Val had gotten worked up - no thanks to Hermes and Ares dying of laughter beside her - and tried to put an end to the scene. To top the diss track off, Apollo called his stepmother a bitch when she unplugged the microphone and bolted when Zeke approached him. They had a very unpleasant chat once he finally caught the slippery kid, to say the least. That might have been one of the worst the kid had earned in his eleven years.
Well, shit. He was starting to realize the tallies were all attached to real situations. His kids actually had gotten into trouble as often as the chart said. Zeke dropped his eyelids closed and hung his head. What the hell was wrong with his kids?
And so, Artemis' gallant efforts earned her a visit with her scary mother, alongside her twin brother, to discuss how the pair of them had managed to make waves for all the wrong reasons.
"We'll be there in an hour," He told them, glancing at the pair in the rear-view mirror. Both had been so cranky, he had not even needed to force them to sit in the back, for once. Usually, he had to hear all sorts of groaning about how they were nearly twelve and should be allowed to sit in the front. Not today. They both went directly to their seats when they got in without any fuss. In all fairness, it had also been six in the morning when he dragged their sorry butts out of bed, but it was still unlike them.
Apollo held up a half-hearted thumbs-up with a sarcastic smile. He was partially buried beneath a blanket thrown over his head. Artemis, who was playing a game on her DS, just muttered something about being able to read the GPS fine on her own.
Even Emma's kids dreaded seeing her. It'd be amusing if he weren't so annoyed with the pair of them.
Apollo and Artemis, his pair of rascals. The funniest thing was how angelic they looked, despite their devilish nature. Just like their mom. Emma was all blond and blue-eyed, sharp and witty, and possessed a doll-like beauty. She was jaw-dropping gorgeous, but also absolutely unhinged. He supposed he should have known she'd produce wild offspring. He signed up for this shit. It was no help that the twins were sandwiched between two other troublemakers who were practically the same age as them, Dion and Thea. God help him once they reached teenagerhood. He had finally survived the Ares and Hermes era, just to be slammed with a group of four at once.
"Do we have to see her?" Apollo asked, after a minute of silence. All of his usual spunk seemed dimmed that day.
"I didn't waste a whole day driving you out here for the hell of it," Zeke scoffed. Naturally, the kid wanted to argue then, once they were five hours into the trip. "I have better things to do than gallivant across the country, believe it or not."
Apollo turned to his sister. "I'll take not," he sassed quietly, though not quietly enough to avoid Zeke's detection.
"You haven't visited with her in a while," Zeke went on in a lighter tone, ignoring the backchat. "And she wants to speak to you."
"She does not," Artemis insisted with some attitude. "Emma only sends me five text messages a year. Christmas, Birthday, Easter, Mother's Day, and American Thanksgiving. Like clockwork."
Zeke shook his head, amused. "She sends you a message on Mother's Day? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"
The girl nodded her head, animated. "That is what her message is about - saying that I should have sent her a message."
Zeke scoffed. God, Emma was a piece of work. Even her eleven-year-olds seemed painfully aware of it. "She told me she wanted to speak to you in person when I let her know what you two have been up to this summer." He said in a tone that made it clear that was the end of the conversation. "That was what she said."
"You don't have to listen to her," Apollo commented, snarkily. "You know that, right? I'm so confident that you can say no."
Zeke was over the conversation, flipping through the radio stations on the dashboard instead. The change in country seemed to have warped all of the channels. His usual stations were static. "Any music requests?"
"Death metal or dead silence," Apollo grumbled out a response, "And nothing in between."
Zeke ignored that suggestion. The boy was moody as hell that day. He really did not want to see his mother, dang. He gave Artemis another chance to respond, glancing at her in the rear-view mirror. "Anything you'd want to listen to, Misty?"
Apollo started singing under his breath behind him, something that sounded suspiciously like 'Highway to Hell', but Zeke tried to zone it out and give his daughter his full attention.
She was as gloomy as her brother. "I don't care. Can we stop and get food?"
"I'm sure you'll eat with your mom," Zeke disagreed, holding onto the wheel with one hand. "It'll be noon when we get there, and she'll have you until three. I am guessing she wants to do lunch."
Apollo snorted loudly. "Bold of you to assume she eats lunch."
"Or eats at all," Artemis added.
Zeke was unable to bite back his laugh. They were such pests. He did enjoy them far too much. They would surely give Emma hell. "We'll grab lunch at the next gas station." He gave in.
They pulled into Emma's lobby fifteen minutes later than planned, but the kids had perked up after stopping by Chipotle, which, according to Artemis, was somehow better in the US. Apollo's verdict was that both were ass, and then Zeke had to give him heck for his language. Getting on his dad's nerves always gave Apollo a kick of adrenaline, though, and the boy was less doom and gloom afterward.
"Well?" Zeke turned back to the pair. "Are you ready?"
"I think imma call in a bomb threat, actually," Apollo informed him, his eyes glued to the front door of the building.
"Hilarious," Zeke replied dryly, pulling down his window in preparation. He had no intention of stepping foot out of his vehicle. The rotten kids were Emma's problem for the next three hours. He had scheduled work calls during their visit to ensure he could not be swayed to stick around.
Emma exited the building without needing to be beckoned by a text message or anything. If he didn't know better, he might even think she was excited to see her kids. She spotted them from the lobby and exited at a rapid pace, making a beeline for their car with a severe expression on her face.
"Go say hi," Zeke told the twins quickly, willing to sacrifice them to keep her from getting too close. "Let's go."
Apollo groaned and gave one final defiant huff before he unbuckled and tossed his blanket aside. Every last thing that child did was done with all the drama he could muster up.
Zeke shifted his eyes over to the other twin, giving her a hard look. One of those classic dad looks he had mastered over twenty-four years of blood, sweat, and tears. The look that should stop mischief in its tracks without him needing to say a word. He could recall having been on the receiving end of similar looks as a boy that'd make his toes curl.
Artemis held out for a few seconds before she, too, relented with an angry exhale. And not a moment too soon. The kids were only stepping out of the car when their mother was upon them, sleeves battering in the wind and bracelets rattling.
"You are tardy," Emma told him in a disgusted tone, as though he was delivering her pizza, not transporting her children across the country to see her. Such gratitude.
Zeke only offered up a charming smile. If he expected his eleven-year-olds to bite their tongues and endure her for three hours, surely he could manage the same for a few minutes.
"Hi, Mum," Apollo greeted her, a faint smile on his lips. He didn't seem entirely disingenuous, even if unenthusiastic.
Emma placed a hand on his shoulder and leaned forward, puckering up her lips on one side of his face, then the other. She never actually kissed him, though, or made any contact with the boy, only fondling the air around him. Maybe snooty folk thought the touching aspects of kissing were beneath them.
Apollo made a face that conveyed he was thinking the same. Zeke did not bother to suppress his smirk when the boy met his gaze. He knew he shouldn't be encouraging them to mock their mother, but she was such a nuthouse, it was hard to resist.
Emma straightened up to give her daughter an incredulous look as the girl slowly made her way around the car, dragging her feet the whole time. Artemis could not look more miserable.
The girl finally paused before her mother. "Pops got us McDonald's on the way," Artemis said in lieu of a greeting.
Her words had the desired visceral reaction. Emma's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets as they fled to meet his. God, he'd need nerves of steel to endure that look.
"It was not McDonald's." Zeke corrected quickly. He scowled at his daughter. "Quit torturing your mother, Misty."
Artemis made a pouty expression in his direction, but plastered an innocent smile on her lips when her mother glared at her.
Emma's severe expression was soon shooting daggers his way. She placed her hands on her hips, ever so dramatic. She was definitely the source of where the twins got their flair for the dramatics. They came by that shit honestly. Her voice was shrill. "You know that I do not want her to be eating at McDonald's."
Zeke scoffed in disbelief that Emma would fall for the oldest trick in the book. He could see the pesky smirks on the twins' faces as they watched the argument they concocted unfold.
Annoying brats.
He waved a hand, as if batting away a fly. "She has not! Don't believe a word they say. They're both full of it."
He knew what she was really bothered about. Oh, Emma, and her endless frilly worries about her daughter being too tomboyish and unruly. She acted like they were raising a daughter in the Middle Ages. That bs she was going on about then was the worst of her tirades, though, the whole nonsense about her controlling Artemis' diet, in particular. As if the kids weren't as scrawny as their mother, all skin and bones, but Emma kept voicing that she worried her daughter would gain weight someday. Who gave a damn about that?
Artemis did eat more junk food than meals, he had to admit. It was something Val got on her case for a lot, but the kid was active. She did recreational track and field and skateboarding year-round. Her twin, on the other hand, was the lazy one. Apollo would rather die than be forced into a sport. Zeke had damn well tried. All of his other kids had at least been willing to try a sport or two. The boy had zero interest in anything that required movement. Apollo had no shortage of hobbies, though, taking up songwriting, singing, memorizing every friken musical that existed, and poetry-writing. The boy fancied himself an artist.
Emma fixed him with an acidic look between her narrowed eyelids. She probably meant to appear intimidating, but her clear disdain for him only made her more compelling - unattainable and stunning. Gods, she was a gorgeous beast. If she were open to it, he'd do it all over again with her.
Women were magical creatures, truly, and they had such a power over him. He and Val had been married for decades, but it had not always been smooth-sailing. They had phases of living apart and opening up the marriage. Still, many of his affairs had overlapped, as Val was well aware. They fought it out for years, decades even, before his wife seemed to give up on making an honest man out of him. She turned a blind eye to indiscretions more often than not, so long as he showered her with affection and attention afterward. If he ever dared to lose interest in her, however, she'd tear off some parts of him that he'd rather keep.
Val was the only woman he'd been with that he'd deem family. Some of the others had been special to him, but they weren't family. Not the way his brothers and children were family. Nothing could possibly drive him to not see his brothers or children as family anymore, even if they clashed explosively at times. That was the way it was with Val now. They were stuck with each other after decades together - it did not matter how much they fought and contemplated murdering each other at times. They were bound together for life.
"I'll be back at three," Zeke told her, not wanting to let their shared gaze linger lest it reignite something between them.
He took one final glance at the twins, both having thinly veiled pleas in their expressions, before he turned away. Sucked for them that they hated visiting their mom so much. Maybe they should have thought about that before they earned their top two rankings as baddest kids on the block.
Zeke pulled away from the curb with a smirk, leaving them at the mercy of his former lover. He was confident that they'd survive. The pair of them were goddamn invincible.