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"Hold Poppa's hand now, Charles," Malcolm Reed called warningly as they turned from Madeleine's leafy residential side-street onto one of the main roads leading through her fashionable West London suburb toward the city centre. Charles Tucker the Fourth stuck out a surprisingly prominent lower lip.
"I'm okay, Daddy, an' I won't go near the road."
"I know you won't, since Poppa will be holding onto you. Now, take his hand, or we'll turn around and go back to Aunt Madeleine's"
"'kay." With a bright smile up to his taller parent, Charlie thrust out a hand, giggling as his namesake swung their linked limbs back and forth. "C'n I hold your hand too, Daddy? I wanna swing!"
"And who'll push your sister's stroller while Poppa an' Daddy are swingin' you?" Trip enquired, widening his eyes. Small shoulders heaved.
"She coulda stayed at home."
A piercing wail started up from the depths of the smart red-and-white striped buggy being pushed by the smaller man. "Don't want to be lef'! Daddy, 's not fair!"
"Now Charlie you know y' don't mean that, 'cause Lissa's gonna play chase with you in the park, right?" Helplessly, Trip waved his free hand at his truculent firstborn. "And anyway when she's with us you can't be the baby, remember?"
"Guess so." There was a blue glimmer of mischief deep in stormy eyes that looked far older than his namesake's four years of existence could, Trip considered, possibly justify. "But it's still not fair I can't hold Daddy's hand too."
"You can, if your Poppa takes the pushchair," Malcolm volunteered. Two sets of full pink lips puckered up at him.
"Malcolm, it's called a stroller."
"Trip, you're in England now. It's a pushchair, or a buggy."
"Push-cair!"
"Yes darling, a pushchair." Melissa at two had mastered a near-flawless British accent. Charlie - well, most of the time Malcolm Reed's beautiful golden son sounded as if he'd been born on the edge of the Everglades, but he could drop a hint of his English ancestry at the oddest moments. "And there are some crisps in the bag for later. Aunt Maddie's determined we'll have roast beef and Yorkshires for dinner, so it's bound to be late."
"Potato chips," Trip mumbled. Three pairs of light, bright eyes narrowed.
"Poppa we hafta call 'em crisps here, 'cause we had potato chips last night with fish from the... the..."
Helplessly Charlie waved his free hand at his native parent. "Chip shop, Charlie," Malcolm supplied. "Or chippie, if you really want to annoy Granddad Reed."
"Ah'll bear that in mind," the elder Charles Tucker growled. Malcolm clicked his tongue.
"He can't help the way he is, and he's almost been pleasant since Melissa was born. Well, pleasant by his standards," he amended hastily, seeing the full, firm lips of his spouse already twisting into argument. "We've got salt and vinegar, roast chicken and cheese and onion crisps - who wants what?"
In the excited shrieking of their children, Trip's muttered dissection of the character of his father-in-law was satisfactorily lost. Shepherding his family across the high street, past a line of weathered, mature beeches and oaks and into the wide green space of the local park, Starfleet's finest tactical officer congratulated himself on yet another crisis averted.
Not that Trip's grievance against his father's conduct wasn't, in Malcolm's opinion, wholly merited: it smply wasn't good for small children to overhear family disputes. He had ample first-hand experience of that, and he was not about to let his precious pair's innocence be blighted.
"All right - salt and vinegar for Poppa, cheese and onion for Charlie, and chicken for Miss Lissa and Daddy," he sang out, doling the bright packets accordingly. "Rubbish into the bins, remember, and no running while you eat."
"That go for me too, Daddy?"
He fixed his grinning spouse with his best stern look. "Especially you, Poppa. Yes, Charlie, you can sit on the grass - it's dry enough. D' you want to get out, Melissa?"
He thought it further proof of her pragmatic Reed DNA that his daughter chose to remain in her chair, chubby little legs swinging as she munched her snack. With a groan exaggerated for his son's benefit Malcolm folded himself onto the springy turf, legs tucked beneath him and head tipped back to catch the gentle warmth of the afternoon sun. "You look happy, darlin'," Trip rumbled, draping an arm over his shoulders. Malcolm favoured him with an adoring smile.
"Very, love,†he said simply, offering his crisp packet around at such a speed even Trip's deft fingers couldn't move fast enough. "No? Oh, well. All the more for me, then."
People passed them by without a glance: a middle-aged woman chatting earnestly to her scruffy black and white mutt; a couple of young families, the children pausing to stare at the unfamiliar cadence of Charlie's high, half-Floridian chatter; an elderly couple holding hands; and a handful of perspiring and breathless runners in too-tight, gaudy clothing. The leaves rustled in trees that lined every pathway as well as ringing the open space, keeping in the squeals of childish play and muffling the traffic noise on the streets beyond. It was, in Malcolm's opinion, everything he liked best about his birthplace condensed into a single moment.
Of course, if he was being truthful, he liked everything about everywhere better now he had Trip, Charles and Melissa to share it.
Even if their firstborn took his husband's boisterous energy and trebled it. Snack devoured, Charlie was already fidgeting. "Poppa, Daddy, c'n I go play on the climbin' frame? An' the slides?"
His fathers exchanged a tolerant glance. "Run ahead, buddy," Trip instructed, offering a hand to Malcolm as he hauled himself upright. "'s okay, Melissa, you can go play too, can't she Daddy?"
"Of course." Letting the children tear ahead to the fenced-off play area, Malcolm smiled up at his partner. "And are we not going to play, Captain Tucker?"
"Not in a public park, Cap'n Reed - oh, you're not meaning those games." The younger man's rich laughter floated on the still air, making both his offspring turn to stare. Malcolm gestured to the gated playground, subtly angling his steps toward the single narrow opening in bright red railings. Satisfied, Charlie grabbed his sister's hand and scurried on.
"Watch me on the climbin' frame!" he shouted. Trip tightened his grip on Malcolm's hand, wordlessly warning the punctilious Englishman against protesting his son's volume. Malcolm returned the light pressure and he relaxed, ambling toward the gleaming metal scaffolding structure. "I'm gonna come down the slide backwards!"
"Not if you want to go on it again," Trip shot back. "Melissa, you want us to push you on the roundabout?"
"P'ease!"
"Hold on good and tight." Leaving his husband to supervise Charles's mountaineering exploits he gave the yellow-and-blue painted spinner a hearty shove, startled into laughter by the little girl's excited squeak. Her head back, Melissa fixed wide grey-blue eyes on the azure sky, trilling for more whenever the contraption slowed down.
Her enthusiasm soon brought Charlie down from the monkey bars, which brought their other parent to help spin the roundabout hard and fast enough to make a weaker-stomached child vomit across the whole expanse of the tarmac yard. By the time they'd had enough neither child could walk in a straight line, zigzagging their way across to an equally garish seesaw and flopping onto the ends, Melissa giving vent to a piercing shriek as her brother's greater weight sent her rocketing into the air. "Poppa! Daddy! Missa's flying!"
Malcolm leaned casually on her shoulder. "I think you've been grounded, Missa-Lissa," he chortled.
Trip's hands wrapped around his son's shoulders, a gentle pressure enough to ease Charlie's end of the seesaw back to the ground. "Not for long, darlin'," he sang.
"Daddy, lemme go up again!"
Malcolm rolled his eyes at his spouse. "You realise our arms will be killing us by the time they've got tired of this?" he asked, pressing down just enough to drop his daughter onto terra firma.
Trip grinned as he lowered his end of the ride. "Yep," he said happily over the children's infectious giggles. "And I don't care."
*
In fact they had both over-estimated the boredom thresholds of their eternally active progeny. After five minutes they were off again, taking turns to clamber up the narrow ladders to the top of the climbing frame and whooshing down the metal slides and plastic chutes that shot off at each corner. Trip and Malcolm dashed from one side to the other, arms outstretched to catch whichever child chose to descend their way, oblivious to the indulgent or curious glances their rowdy game attracted. By the time Melissa staggered out from the bright pink chute, panting and demanding a drink the two men were as breathless as the children and only too glad to retreat to one of the perimeter benches where bottled water and apples could be served.
"Daddy, I wanna go on the swing now. Will you push me? Please?" Charlie tugged at Malcolm's sleeve, golden lashes a-flutter as his full lips pulled up into an appealing pout. The dark-haired man sighed.
"No peace for the wicked. Up you get, then."
"Cool!"
He could feel his husband's eyes on his backside as he leaned forward on every push, careful to keep the small boy's swinging to a modest height. Charlie cackled, throwing his short legs forward and letting his head fall back to grin upside-down at his father. "Harder, Daddy! Wanna go higher!" he trilled.
"Poppa, Daddy, Missa want swing!"
"Lissa's too little," Charlie shouted. A tiny fist banged down against the steel frame of her buggy.
"Name's not Issa! Want swing! Poppa - Daddy..."
"Charlie's right, munchkin; you're too small." Angry colour flooded the scrunched little face, and with a sinking heart Trip spied the first glint of tears clinging to his daughter's long sable eyelashes. "You want another apple?"
"Want swings!"
The indignant howl turned half a dozen heads. Trip ducked, hoping to hide his blush. "Darlin' you're too small to be safe," he explained, wishing he didn't sound so much like T'Pol patronising a human subordinate. "Poppa an' Daddy don't wantcha to hurt yourself, and Aunt Maddie'd be real cross..."
"Trip, would you take over here?" Malcolm straightened up, giving his son's swing a final absent-minded shove before stepping safely out of range. "Melissa sweetheart, don't cry! Come to Daddy; I've got an idea."
Sniffling, the little girl clambered out of her buggy and tottered into his open arms, careful to give her big brother a prod in the back as she passed that set him howling. One arm trapping her against his chest, Malcolm settled himself on the broad wooden swing next to Charlie's, caught the chain with his other hand and began, gently, to rock them.
"Malcolm, you be careful there, y' hear."
"Trip." He hadn't been looked at that way since Phlox's last physical assessment, and it wasn't a look Trip Tucker liked to see on his beloved husband's handsome face. "It's a child's swing, not a Suliban cell ship. Just keep your son's swing moving and let me worry about mine, okay?"
"Whatever you say, babe."
The endearment did its job, winning him a disruptor glare and then a reluctant smile. "This all right, Melissa?"
"Faster, Daddy!"
"Our kids are adrenaline junkies, Mal. How'd that happen?" Trip demanded plaintively, adding more oomph than Malcolm deemed strictly necessary to his push. Charlie's swing surged higher than his neighbour's, winning a triumphant whoop from the boy and a wail from his sister. Malcolm groaned.
"I dare say it's a Tucker inheritance. All right, Missa-Liss, hang onto Daddy. We'll go higher than they do!"
Trip called a halt to the contest before it could get out of hand. "Oh, yeah, you're all sedate and sensible, Cap'n Reed," he growled, a nod to their children sufficient permission to run back into a wooded patch of the rolling park to play chase around the trees. Their gleeful shrieks rebounded onto a central walkway lined with more benches and there Trip paused, tugging his life's companion down to lounge at his side. "Stay where we can see you kids!"
"Yes, Poppa. Gotcha, Lissa! You're it!"
"Just wait for the fight to break out," Malcolm drawled, snuggling into the crook of his husband's arm as Trip casually ruffled his hair. With the trees casting dappled patterns of light and shade over his even features and accentuating the sweet upturn of his nose, the brunet was convinced his gorgeous husband had never looked lovelier. Pressing a quick kiss against the throat exposed by the open collar of Trip's unusually subdued burgundy shirt, he told him so.
"Why thank y' kindly, Cap'n Reed; and might ah say, you're lookin' mighty fine yourself." A quick glance reassured Trip the kids were paying no attention, so he leaned down to flick his tongue across his husband's smile-parted lips. "They don't always fight."
"And even when they do, they're still perfect." He hadn't expected, Malcolm conceded, to feel this way. Throughout the wait for Charles's downy blond head to emerge from the artificial womb he had fretted over the horrid prospect of infant howls distracting him from his work; he'd spent the nine months before Melissa's arrival anticipating clumsy fights, scratched faces and an incessant clamour for more attention.
Not, he admitted, that his own childhood had been like that - despite a younger sister's best efforts at brother-annoyance. Reed children were seldom seen and never heard, for their own benefit as much as their parents'. He'd just known the Tuckers would operate a different system.
Yet whether he was mopping up vomit, bathing bruised knees or just brushing back hair rumpled into chaos during noisy games, he found Charles and Melissa to be creatures of absolute, impossible perfection. It made no sense, and simply to accept it went against a lifetime's training.
He didn't care. And that was why the question that had been floating through his mind all day suddenly bubbled up onto his tongue. "Trip - that thing you said last night."
Nobody else would have identified the tension that oh-so-subtly cramped the bigger man's more obvious muscles. "What thing?" Trip asked quietly, not daring to peep down into the Englishman's intent face. Malcolm sighed.
"About us having another baby." He looked up, teeth worrying his bottom lip: suddenly so very young and heartbreakingly vulnerable. "Were you serious?"
"Deadly." Eyes so many people though were cold and unyielding flooded with emotion and Trip could gladly have been washed away forever on that tide. "I know our family's perfect as it is, Mal, but - just imagine havin' a little Reed taggin' along after Charlie and Lissa! Keepin' the old family name alive, even if I'm guessing you won't lemme call him Malcolm Reed II..."
"You're dead right on that one, Yank." Three children. What in God's name was one to do with three children?
The two he already had chose that moment to pop their heads from behind neighbouring trees, poking out their tongues and waving at their parents, and the answer hit him with the blinding force of a star gone supernova. Love them, of course.
"I'd like another baby, Trip," he whispered, overcome by the pure joy that suffused his man's precious, beautiful face. Unguided, his hands came up to cup it, fingertips gently massaging the upturned lips. "Maybe we could call the biolab from Maddie's? I'm sure she wouldn't mind! We might even be able to stop off in New York on the way home: you know how thrilled they were to see Charlie when we had the DNA extraction for Melissa..."
"Aw Mal, this is just so you." Wonderingly Trip matched his husband's gesture, letting the ends of his index fingers stray up to the peaks of Malcolm's exquisite cheekbones. "When you decide t' do a thing, you don't pussyfoot about, do y'?"
"It'd hardly be practical, love." With a dreamy smile, Malcolm hauled himself upright and reached for his present baby's buggy. "Now, I expect Mads will have finished swearing at the oven; shall we take the tearaways home? It will be all right to call the lab on a Sunday, I suppose?"
"Only one way to find out." Summoning the children with a piercing whistle, Trip slipped his hand into the smaller man's while offering the other to his son. "You wanna walk back to Aunt Maddie's, Miss-Liss? Okay, hold Daddy's hand tight now. Charlie, help me fold this thing, willya?"
"Starfleet's finest engineer defeated by a child's pushchair!" Malcolm tutted extravagantly, making Charlie and Melissa snigger.
Trip was still loudly defending his mechanical prowess at his sister-in-law's front door. And because his family was laughing, he didn't mind one bit.