An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The Last and Final Chapter of Canary in a Coal Mine!
we’ve finally made it, now onto the sequel
Excerpt:
“I never took you for someone to cry during sex,” Dabi shoots back.
Hawks blinks, but doesn’t stop his care, he hadn’t noticed that. “What can I say, I’m a crybaby.”
Dabi shoots him a look over his shoulder, “I thought I was the sugar baby in this relationship.”
The look is absolutely smug so he tugs softly at one of his piercings on his lower back, “Oh no, we’re not going back to this.”
“Why not, daddy?” he snickers but squeaks when Hawks knocks him in the head with his wing. That earns him a shoulder into his own and Hawks topples into the bathtub—thankfully, Dabi hadn’t started to fill the tub yet so his feathers don’t get wet. They were already going to be a mess from being in the humid room much less a bath.
He squawks and tries to reach out but Dabi is agile enough to hop out of his arms reach and let him fall into the tub. The other breaks his previous serious facade and bends over laughing and clutching his stomach. “I think I’ve seen a vine like this,” he wheezes out.
Barry glares at her from the bed and just gently shakes his head as he tries to not wake the two toddlers, three dogs, and Angus on their bed--all of which are sleeping
She covers her mouth to keep in her laugh and stays on her side of the room. Not daring to step any farther knowing that there is a weak spot on the floor that will definitely creak and wake Angus which will in turn wake a dog which will then wake a baby...which she could go on. All in all it will end in an angry and exhausted Barry, which, she doesn’t want.
“Cute,” she mouths to him, gesturing at the whole pile up. The two toddlers are both Magnus’, adopted after everything that the apocalypse put them through and are spoiled thoroughly by their father plus ten other extra parents.
They’re sweet as can be, but a handful and a half so that’s why Lup is thoroughly impressed that Barry has managed to get both of them to sleep on a reasonably decent schedule. Her eyes then drift to the other boy in the bed, no doubt an aid in this.
Angus had adopted the roll of older brother very easily and quickly.
It’s a sweet scene--but would be even sweeter if Magnus’ one dog Scooter wasn’t also on the bed and notorious for having shit stuck to his fur. Lup just hopes that Angus checked before letting him on the bed.
“You want one?” he mouths back at her, and both of their eyes widen at the same time. A sort of oh, uh, I didn’t mean it like that but now we’re both thinking about that, huh.
She smiles at him softly and mouths, “Move over, Barold.”
He shakes his head despite his smile, “Noo.”
She wakes Angus in the process, his bleary eyes blink at her and then he curls into her, quickly falling back to sleep. The dogs don’t even move when she toes one of them, and she’s thankful to everyone that the toddlers remain sleeping on Barry’s chest.
“See,” she grins at him, gesturing to all the still sleeping children.
He rolls his eyes and carefully puts an arm around her to pull her in and press a kiss to the side of her head, “Night, babe.”
She ghosts a kiss against his shoulder and whispers, “I’ll think about it.”
She rolls her eyes and snaps her finger to clean the crib and child in front of her. “Sure, Mags’ kids were cute as hell. I thought it’d be sweet, I mean, love the idea of a little kid looking up to me and loving me.”
“But you didn’t think they’d shit everywhere.”
“Yeah, it’s just nasty, babe.”
The baby in question coos up at her, making small crabby hands and whimpering, “Hold you.”
“Want me to hold you, Lettie? Even after you shit all over your crib and made your Moma clean it all up?”
More grabby hands, “Ma, hold you!”
“Come on, nugget, you win this round,” she coos and picks her up despite it all, pressing a kiss to her now clean cheek.
“Angus set the bar too high, didn’t he?” Barry laughs and grabs her blankie too to take it into the sitting room--where the other kids are.
Lup snorts, hitching the baby on her hip and sticking her tongue out at Barry, “You fuckin’ know it. Maggie lucked out with all three of his kids.”
In the sitting room, Lette’s older sister, Pavra, sits patiently watching the fish in their tank swim back and forth. Oddly calmer than her sister, which leaves Lup almost suspicious especially considering the mess that happened in the other room.
She may be the quieter of the two but that means nothing.
Barry scoops her up and she squeals in his arms, kicking around until she manages to hitch herself onto his hip. He blows a raspberry into her neck and the kicking starts again as she squeaks out, “Papa!” before returning the raspberry in his face.
“Come on, pumpkin, it’s nap time for everyone now.”
“But Stephen the Molly is pregnant! I want to see him have the babies,” she cries out and tries to return to her precious fish--a gift from Magnus on her third birthday.
“I promise you he will wait for you to wake up to have his babies,” he laughs and brings her to the bedroom, Lup and Lette trailing close behind.
“But Papa,” she moans and he responds with another raspberry which gets her giggling, but they can both see that she’s quickly fading just because of the mention of naptime.
She settles down quickly as Lup sits in the rocker to get Lette to settle down. It’s a system that they ironed down pretty quickly when they got the pair as each one takes their own little things to fall asleep, and to pretty much do anything.
Plus, Lup will use any opportunity to sit in the rocker.
Pavra is asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow and Barry is not to far behind. Thankfully, Lette was also not too far behind and she’s able to join them on the bed, Lette sleeping on her chest.
Barry raises one sleepy brow, “Do you want me to hold her?”
She shakes her head, “Elves don’t need to sleep.”
He snorts and curls deeper in the bed, “Doesn’t stop her,” he mumbles, obviously referencing Pavra who’s dead asleep in the bed.
“We lucked out didn’t we,” Barry murmurs, one hand tangling in Lup’s, and she can’t help but agree.
Lup freezes, even though it’s been years since they’ve been on the road, the phrase still puts her in the headspace of oh fuck they figured out I pocketed something.
It’s Magnus, however, who says it and is just glaring into a pot of boiling water, which only kinda puts her at ease. She knows she can snap him into submission—he’s got a complex! Taako had shouted at her the other night. As they attempted to make any sort of sense of the second youngest member of the group.
Lucretia, the youngest and babiest, Lup got. Girls were easy and Lucretia wore her relatively blatant emotions on her collar as she wrote them down in her journals.
Magnus was, well, a dude, a twenty year old, fresh out of university dude who could probably throw Lup over the Starblaster if she asked and run fast enough to catch her on the way down, but also spends way too much time arguing with Davenport about the positives of a team dog. Which was, well, sweet, but also something she didn’t expect to spend the rest of eternity with on a ship where they all have been bumping elbows trying to learn each other.
So, Lup doesn’t get him yet—not that she’ll tell Taako—but she’s working on it and is pretty sure he won’t charge or anything with his sudden loss of whatever.
“Uh, what’s gone?” she asks and puts down her own project of cutting butter into flower to make a pie crust for a chess pie.
“My egg.”
Lup also takes off her gloves.
She walks over and glances into his pot of boiling water and it takes her two tries but she counts a full dozen—too many, in her honest opinion. “You’re egg is right there, dude.”
“No, I had thirteen eggs in there. Now, I only have eleven,” he protests and starts counting them again.
She hums, “Uh, no you got twelve in there, but we only had twelve eggs to begin with.”
“Impossible,” he protests and goes to check the fridge. “I made four to eat for breakfast, four for lunch, and the last five for egg salad.”
“One, ew, egg salad sucks, two, I swear to you Maggie you’re wrong.”
“Lup, you don’t understand, this is like the fifth time this has happened. I need—I need to see Barry. Maybe this cycle is messing with me,” he shudders and puts the timer on the over and walks away, assumingly needing some air, which, Lup doesn’t blame him for. He seemed about five seconds and another egg from a full blown panic.
“Hey, sis, where’d beefcake go to? He’s not supposed to leave boiling water on the stove—I might just have to report him to Davenport,” Taako gloats when he comes to the kitchen. Well, Lup was pretty sure he wasn’t trying to gloat, but it’s Taako who can’t lie for shit with ears perked so high it tells her he’s really enjoying life right now.
She crosses her arms, “You.”
He grins, and nods. “A rune on one of the eggs that comes back to me at anytime.”
“You’re horrible.”
“He used my soap.”
“He’s practically a child.”
“He also spilt milk in my bed.”
“I think that’s on you for letting him have milk in your bed.”
“He used up all the eggs when I was very obviously making a lemon custard.”
“Have you considered putting that rune on all the eggs?”
Lup rolls her eyes and pats the ground for Taako to sit next to her. He glances at her for a second, obviously protesting the fact that he’d have to sit on all the pine needles and dirt—and Lup you know how many worms are in dirt—before sitting down next to her.
He licks the back of his hand and then rubs it against her face to get some of the charred hair and soot off of her from her many, really many attempts at this.
This being, well, Taako kicks the logs once and it nearly topples over, but the small flame inside remains steady, along with the couple sticks on top and the rock. “What is this?” he asks and kicks it again and some embers float out of the wholes in between the logs.
She bumps her shoulder against his, “A stove dummy.”
Taako’s eyes go wide and he scrambles to his knees to look at the very unsteady, makeshift stove that Lup had been working on for an embarrassingly long time. “No, way,” he gasps and touches the rock on top of it all only to get burned and gasp and pull his finger back.
He looks at her with amazement and tears in his eye as he puts his finger in his mouth. She hits him on the side of the head, “Dummy, you knew it was gonna be hot!”
“Uhh, I didn’t, Lu, but whatever. How’d you make a stove?”
She shrugs and kicks the logs too, “I don’t know. Just thought of somethin’ that’d keep in the heat, you know? I figured we could stay on this lake a bit since the people in town said there’s not gonna be a caravan for a bit, and well, I know you love fishing.”
He nods, suddenly, realizing where she’s going with this, “I can catch so many fish and we can fry them up here!”
She nods, too, “And it won’t cost us a thing!”
“Lu you’re so smart!” he grins and gets up, and dusts himself to try and get rid of all the pine cones. “The Danger Twins are going off-road! No caravans for us! We are self-sustaining elves and we don’t need nobody.”
“You know what, Taak, they need us.”
He gasps and slaps his chest, “Lup.”
She nods.
“We can even open up a shop in town. Lup and Taako’s fish—uh, fish?”
She shakes her head, “Needs a better name.”
“Something catchier, but we could even open up a restaurant. People would be eating out of our inspiration orphan hands.”
“I mean, it is, yes, but I want you to know Magnus, that I’m not going to protect you from Lup and Taako.”
He glances at her in the mirror and then does another once over of himself, “It looks good, though.” He smoothes it over with his hands but does not make an attempt to pull it down any.
Which provides Julia quite a view from where she is sitting on their bed.
She laughs and covers her mouth, “I’m not saying it doesn’t look good. You look great in that skirt. I’m just saying it’s short enough that well, here,” and she reaches forward to prove it does not take much to grab his ass. “I can guarantee Lup will grab your ass and I’m pretty sure Taako will.”
He makes a small oh and then swats her hand away. “Should I put on tights?”
She snorts, “Once again, babe, it doesn’t stop how short this skirt is.”
“I think I might just bite the bullet and go for it.”
She holds up her hands and wipes the grin off her face, “Do you, Mags,” and she stands up and offers her arm for him to take it.
“It’s just me and you tonight. I was thinking we could have a little fun.”
“You...you do realize how suggestive that sounds, right?”
Lup just leans against the work bench that he’s currently got part of the wing of the ship completely taken apart looking for the one screw that’s stripped and throwing off the entire balance of the ship. Something that he’s been working on for six hours that really should have only taken one.
She crosses her arms and shoves part of the wing aside--not messing anything up, though, she’s not cruel. “Well, jeanboy, it was supposed to be.”
“Oh,” he mutters and doesn’t look at her and keeps just looking at the sheet of metal that he was currently working on, wringing his hands around it. “So?”
“So?”
“Oh, do, I have to respond? What do you want me to say Lup?” he asks and spares a cautious and daring glance up at her.
She laughs a bit incredulously and slides a bit farther into his view, “You know... that you’re interested? That you wanna bone?”
“Bone?” he chokes, dropping his screwdriver.
She clears her throat, “You know what, never mind. I just thought, you know... we’re alone... I’m horny--”
“You’re horny.”
She laughs and elbows him and he seems to be doing just a bit better now. Maybe even playing a bit, but still desperately trying to catch his breath. “I haven’t had a good lay in about three cycles, which, mm, dry spots aren’t good, yeah?”
He turns in his chair just a bit to look at her, “So, you just wanna, you know? With me?”
She hums and taps his shoulder, “I think I did ask you, you know? So, uh, you good or...?”
He swallows and does a once over, real quick, “I mean, I would.”
“But you’re not gonna.”
“It’s not our third date--I don’t think we’ve even had one date, Lup.”
“Are you...you’re serious. Holy shit, you actually wait for the third date. Fuck, put a pin in this, Bearbar, I gotta call Taak. This is a great update for our wall of who’s the easiest on the ship--which is Maggie in case you were wondering.”
