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kinglearisstupidPart 4 of the fic that never ends. So, it's kind of like having children.
For dinner, they make pizza, which Emily had thought would have been a relatively pain-free experience. She’s coming to learn that with these two, there’s no such thing as a pain-free experience.
She dices ingredients while Rossi handles the dough and his own secret recipe of pizza sauce.
‘Alright, Beezus, what do you want on your pizza?’
‘Pepperoni!’ the girl yells. She’s covered in stickers from one of several packets that she’d somehow convinced Rossi to buy.
‘Anything else? Pineapple? Bacon? Mushroom?’ The last one is a bit of a stretch, but Beezus crinkles her nose at the first two as well.
‘I only like Pepperoni,’ she says, matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t like things that are green, or things that are too wet, or…’ she goes on for a bit, making it abundantly clear what she doesn’t like, which includes lizards and spiders, which is going a bit off topic.
‘Okay,’ Emily says, thinking that maybe she’ll try Beezus off with a slice of her own pizza to see how she likes it. ‘Nate, what about you?’
‘Cheese!’ he screams, in what is clearly an attempt to be louder than Beezus.
Rossi gives her a look. It’s the “I wouldn’t even bother fighting it,” look, and it’s kind of sad that she knows that after only a day and a half.
They make three pizzas – Rossi has a monstrosity with several different kinds of meat, and about half a jar of olives. Emily goes for something a little lighter – chicken, with spinach (which Beezus shrieks at) and feta (which Nate tries to eat half a block of). The third pizza is half cheese, and half cheese and pepperoni. Nate freaks out when a tiny sliver of a slice somehow makes it onto his half.
‘I don’t want to eat pepperoni,’ he screams. ‘It’s made of pig’s feet!’
‘What?!’ Beezus demands, clearly indignant that no-one has told her this before.
‘It’s not made of pig’s feet,’ Emily says, tiredly. Rossi had been smart enough to escape to the living room to watch baseball. ‘It’s made from a mixture of beef and pork. If you really want to try pig’s feet thought…’ It’s intended as a joke, but it sends them both panicking to Rossi, who apparently is now Good Cop. They come back quickly, though, because they’re not allowed to eat in the living room, and the lure of pizza is too great.
‘I don’t want to eat any kind of pig,’ Nate says solemnly, clearly forgetting that he’d eaten a Happy Meal for lunch, and ham and eggs for breakfast. Sighing, Emily cuts off the tiny piece of pizza that has been touched by salami. Nate happily eats his pizza then, but it’s another two hours before they make the discovery that he’s mildly lactose intolerant.
It’s not messy, but it’s gassy, and Beezus is suitably horrified. ‘I don’t want to be near a fart monster!’
‘My other parents don’t let me have lots of cheese on my pizza,’ Nate says happily, oblivious of the wide circle he’s being given.
The problem subsists until bedtime, whereupon Beezus refuses to sleep in the same room as him. ‘He farts in his sleep,’ she says.
‘I do not!’
‘I don’t wanna catch stinky from him!
‘I don’t wanna catch girl germs!’
With a silent look, Emily and Dave each grab a kid. Unfortunately, Emily’s the one closest to Nate. She takes him upstairs to their bedroom, vaguely hearing Beezus ask Rossi if she can microwave the leftover anchovies. Emily bites back a smirk.
Nate wants a bubble bath, which Emily immediately vetoes, because the last thing they need is another bathroom mess. Next, he demands that she use her straightening iron on his hair, and she’s a more than a little grateful that she doesn’t actually have the straightening iron with her. Her straightening iron is back in her condo, along with Sergio, who refuses to stay anywhere else. Every hour or so, she gets a text update from Garcia.
‘How about I just read you a bedtime book?’ she suggests, which he begrudgingly agrees to.
Since they haven’t quite gotten around to buying much in the way of books for the kids. Even the few things they have bought feels like too much, considering they’ll probably be gone in a couple of weeks. Rossi’s bookshelves are all non-fiction, and the ones that she’d brought with her are not exactly suitable for a five-year-old boy.
‘What do you like to read?’ she asks, not entirely sure of what to expect.
‘Everything!’ he says, resolutely. ‘Wizards, and mummies, and puppies, and dinosaurs.’
Emily finds a chewed up copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on the bottom shelf in one of the spare rooms, the name “HENRY” written in large, scrawled letters. Emily’s a traditionalist, so her copy of the book is the original, rather than the one that’s been bastardized for American audiences.
‘I like Ron,’ Nate says, excitedly, when Emily shows it to him for approval. ‘Who do you like?’
‘I like Hermione,’ Emily says, which seems to be the easiest answer to give him, considering she’s not sure how far he’s been allowed to read or watch. Nate crinkles his nose slightly.
‘Miss Palmer says we shouldn’t kiss girls, but I don’t want to anyway,’ he says. ‘When I grow up, I want Ron to be my boyfriend. He doesn’t like spiders, but that’s okay because I can show him that spiders aren’t scary.’
Emily’s brain freezes. Not because she’s surprised, or upset, but because she’s not entirely sure how to respond.
‘Isn’t he a bit old for you?’ she asks, finally, and Nate gives her a look.
‘Mommy, he’s not a real person. When I’m old enough, he’ll still be the same age.’ There’s a strange sort of logic to it, never mind that Nate can rationalize the age difference, but not the fact that the character doesn’t even exist.
‘Of course,’ Emily said, mostly just to appease him. She doesn’t argue the point, but starts reading (skipping to Chapter Six at his request). They get about a chapter in, before Emily decides that it’s bedtime. She makes him go brush his teeth, which, somehow, does not end in disaster.
The smell has subsided considerably, but it’s too late to bring Beezus back in there now. In any case, Emily is sure that the girl prefers…well…anything to sharing a bedroom with Nate. Thank god they don’t come from the same universe, she thinks, because it would have probably ended in bloodshed. Still, she’d take a pair of rambunctious, destructive, manipulative five-year-olds over no kids at all. Even if she has to share them with Rossi. Especially if she has to share them with Rossi.
The last two days has been a whirlwind of screaming and hair-pulling, and tree-climbing, and yet she’s glad that they’re here. That’s apparently the secret of parenting. The pain of their nightmarish behavior is worth the toothy grin you get when your son expresses his desire to become a magical archaeologist that shoots rainbows.
Maybe, after all of this, she and Rossi will have a talk.
*
Nate's an award-winning fart machine, which eliminates any doubt Rossi had that they were related. Fortunately, Nate likes Emily better, so Emily gets to deal with him while Rossi wrangles the pint-sized drama queen.
"I can't sleep in the same room as Nate," Beezus tells him through a mouthful of toothpaste. There's foam every fucking where; there's foam on the ceiling, Rossi realizes, how is that even possible?
"Lucky for you, there are three other bedrooms for you to choose from," Rossi tells her cheerily.
Beatrice stares at him incredulously. "I'm sleeping in the big bed," she tells him, with the kind of unwavering certainty Rossi has only heard coming from die-hard members of a cult or doctors calling out the time of death.
The big bed turns out to be Rossi's bed, which doesn't surprise him as much as he thought it would.
Of course, his daughter would try to de-throne him. Of course, in another universe, she's already done it and there's no stopping her from trying to do the same in this one.
Beezus wipes her mouth onto the duvet before he can stop her, and then climbs onto the bed, bounces five times for good measure ("Because I'm five!") and makes herself comfortable smack dab in the middle, propping herself up with all of Rossi's pillows.
"Wouldn't you rather sleep in your own bed?" Rossi asks, because even though it's a lost cause, at least he can say he fought the battle.
"No, I'd rather not," Beezus says. "I want to sleep here instead. I don't have a TV in my room."
"Just out of curiosity, Beatrice, if you sleep in the big bed, where do your parents sleep?"
"Mommy sleeps in the big bed with me. You sleep on the floor."
Nothing surprises Rossi anymore, but that doesn't mean he can't be indignant about it.
"Your dad paid for that bed," Rossi says sharply, "and if I'm right about it, the three-thousand thread count sheets as well."
"They're very comfy," Beezus says.
"I'll bet they are."
"Will you read me a story?"
Apparently, the only book Beezus wants to be read to her just so happens to be the one Emily is reading to Nate, and in order to avoid an apocalyptic meltdown, especially one at the end of the day when there are still dishes to be washed and messes to be cleaned, Rossi caves and lets Beezus watch TV instead.
He still doesn't have the Food Network, so Beezus settles on an episode of Hoarders instead. Rossi slides under the covers with her and she settles herself in his lap, one arm slung around the giant stuffed rat that she conned Rossi into buying earlier. Emile is from Ratatouille and the size of a small bear. If Rossi stumbled upon it half-asleep in the middle of the night, his first reaction would be to drop down and play dead.
This particular episode of Hoarders is a horrific anthropological study of a bird-hobbyist whose hobby was, predictably, collecting birds. Not fancy show birds either. Baby sparrows that fall out of nests, pigeons that she catches eating out of her garbage, a spooky barn owl with a broken wing that she feeds with a tank of live mice she keeps in her basement.
The worst part is when the psychiatrist and Animal Control and her husband corner her for a much-needed intervention and begin taking her birds away. If suicide by cop was an option, Rossi is certain this woman would have gone for it.
"Turn it off!" Beezus cries, when the woman starts losing her shit, so many of her words being censored that the dialogue is obscured by one long, mournful bleep. "I don't want to watch this! This is sad!"
Rossi quickly changes the channel to something less traumatizing. House Hunters. This seems to appease Beatrice, who is now curled up pitifully against Rossi's chest and sucking her thumb in terror.
Fantastic, Rossi thinks, feeling like an asshole. A negligent parent and an asshole. 48 hours in and he's managed to scar his daughter for life.
On the upside, Beezus is demanding to be held until she falls asleep, which means Rossi isn't being relegated to the floor.
"Do you hoard things?" Beezus asks, after he turns off the television and dim the lights and says goodnight to every fucking inanimate object in his bedroom, and there is a lot of them.
"I wouldn't say 'hoard,'" says Rossi. "I collect things."
"My daddy collects things too."
"Yeah? Let me guess: fine wine and cigars?"
"Yep. Lots of wines. He used to have more cigars, but not anymore."
"What do you mean, not anymore?" Rossi asks, panic rising in his throat.
"I flushed them so my daddy won't die of cancer," Beezus says proudly.
"You thought it would be better to give him a stroke instead?"
He makes a mental note to lock all his cigars in the gun safe first thing tomorrow morning. And then changing the password to the gun safe because he wouldn't be surprised if Beezus has already figured out the passcode to it.
"I want my dad to live for a long, long time," Beezus says.
Rossi softens his expression, because she's not a bad kid, really. It reminds him of when he first got Mudgie, who was almost as out of control as Beezus and Nate. He'd had to send Mudgie to training school, where a smug jackass wearing a visor and a whistle reassured him that there were no bad dogs, just dogs that did bad things.
Beezus is not a bad kid. She just does bad things and it is probably Rossi's fault anyway, here he is comparing his daughter to a dog. He feels like a shitty person. Having children seems like an endless cycle of being humiliated and then feeling shitty about feeling resentful at being humiliated. Not having kids in this universe might be the smartest thing Rossi has ever done.
"Is Mommy going to come sleep in the big bed with us once stupid stinky Nate goes to sleep?"
The question is completely innocent, but the thought of Emily Prentiss in his bed is definitely an appealing one. If only there wouldn't be a five-year-old sandwiched in the middle.
"Probably not," Rossi answers truthfully. "Emily has her own bedroom."
"Are you guys getting divorced?" Beezus asks. She doesn't seem worried, merely curious.
"No. No, we're not getting divorced. Why would you think that?"
"Then why isn't she sleeping in the big bed with us?"
"Well, Mommy ... well, this Mommy and I aren't married. So we don't sleep in the same bed."
"You guys aren't married?" Beezus looks appalled at first, then resigned, giving Rossi a look that means clearly it's his fault everything in this universe is wrong.
"I like being single, okay?" Rossi says, wondering why it is that he's trying to justify his life choices to a five-year-old he's known for less than two days.
"But Mommy is great," Beezus says. "She is the best. I feel sad for you, Daddy."
"I'm very happy with my life, thank you very much," Rossi retorts, irritated.
She sighs again, does that eyeroll she learned from Emily. Her own Emily. "If you say so."
Beezus rolls onto her other side to bury her face in Emile's belly, kicking Rossi below the stomach in the process. It doesn't take long for her to drift off, and soon Rossi finds himself alone, questioning every decision he's ever made in his life as the rat gazes at him stonily, casting judgment.
Kids, he thinks. Stupid kids. He can't wait until they're gone and he resumes his awesome, child-free existence.
For dinner, they make pizza, which Emily had thought would have been a relatively pain-free experience. She’s coming to learn that with these two, there’s no such thing as a pain-free experience.
She dices ingredients while Rossi handles the dough and his own secret recipe of pizza sauce.
‘Alright, Beezus, what do you want on your pizza?’
‘Pepperoni!’ the girl yells. She’s covered in stickers from one of several packets that she’d somehow convinced Rossi to buy.
‘Anything else? Pineapple? Bacon? Mushroom?’ The last one is a bit of a stretch, but Beezus crinkles her nose at the first two as well.
‘I only like Pepperoni,’ she says, matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t like things that are green, or things that are too wet, or…’ she goes on for a bit, making it abundantly clear what she doesn’t like, which includes lizards and spiders, which is going a bit off topic.
‘Okay,’ Emily says, thinking that maybe she’ll try Beezus off with a slice of her own pizza to see how she likes it. ‘Nate, what about you?’
‘Cheese!’ he screams, in what is clearly an attempt to be louder than Beezus.
Rossi gives her a look. It’s the “I wouldn’t even bother fighting it,” look, and it’s kind of sad that she knows that after only a day and a half.
They make three pizzas – Rossi has a monstrosity with several different kinds of meat, and about half a jar of olives. Emily goes for something a little lighter – chicken, with spinach (which Beezus shrieks at) and feta (which Nate tries to eat half a block of). The third pizza is half cheese, and half cheese and pepperoni. Nate freaks out when a tiny sliver of a slice somehow makes it onto his half.
‘I don’t want to eat pepperoni,’ he screams. ‘It’s made of pig’s feet!’
‘What?!’ Beezus demands, clearly indignant that no-one has told her this before.
‘It’s not made of pig’s feet,’ Emily says, tiredly. Rossi had been smart enough to escape to the living room to watch baseball. ‘It’s made from a mixture of beef and pork. If you really want to try pig’s feet thought…’ It’s intended as a joke, but it sends them both panicking to Rossi, who apparently is now Good Cop. They come back quickly, though, because they’re not allowed to eat in the living room, and the lure of pizza is too great.
‘I don’t want to eat any kind of pig,’ Nate says solemnly, clearly forgetting that he’d eaten a Happy Meal for lunch, and ham and eggs for breakfast. Sighing, Emily cuts off the tiny piece of pizza that has been touched by salami. Nate happily eats his pizza then, but it’s another two hours before they make the discovery that he’s mildly lactose intolerant.
It’s not messy, but it’s gassy, and Beezus is suitably horrified. ‘I don’t want to be near a fart monster!’
‘My other parents don’t let me have lots of cheese on my pizza,’ Nate says happily, oblivious of the wide circle he’s being given.
The problem subsists until bedtime, whereupon Beezus refuses to sleep in the same room as him. ‘He farts in his sleep,’ she says.
‘I do not!’
‘I don’t wanna catch stinky from him!
‘I don’t wanna catch girl germs!’
With a silent look, Emily and Dave each grab a kid. Unfortunately, Emily’s the one closest to Nate. She takes him upstairs to their bedroom, vaguely hearing Beezus ask Rossi if she can microwave the leftover anchovies. Emily bites back a smirk.
Nate wants a bubble bath, which Emily immediately vetoes, because the last thing they need is another bathroom mess. Next, he demands that she use her straightening iron on his hair, and she’s a more than a little grateful that she doesn’t actually have the straightening iron with her. Her straightening iron is back in her condo, along with Sergio, who refuses to stay anywhere else. Every hour or so, she gets a text update from Garcia.
‘How about I just read you a bedtime book?’ she suggests, which he begrudgingly agrees to.
Since they haven’t quite gotten around to buying much in the way of books for the kids. Even the few things they have bought feels like too much, considering they’ll probably be gone in a couple of weeks. Rossi’s bookshelves are all non-fiction, and the ones that she’d brought with her are not exactly suitable for a five-year-old boy.
‘What do you like to read?’ she asks, not entirely sure of what to expect.
‘Everything!’ he says, resolutely. ‘Wizards, and mummies, and puppies, and dinosaurs.’
Emily finds a chewed up copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on the bottom shelf in one of the spare rooms, the name “HENRY” written in large, scrawled letters. Emily’s a traditionalist, so her copy of the book is the original, rather than the one that’s been bastardized for American audiences.
‘I like Ron,’ Nate says, excitedly, when Emily shows it to him for approval. ‘Who do you like?’
‘I like Hermione,’ Emily says, which seems to be the easiest answer to give him, considering she’s not sure how far he’s been allowed to read or watch. Nate crinkles his nose slightly.
‘Miss Palmer says we shouldn’t kiss girls, but I don’t want to anyway,’ he says. ‘When I grow up, I want Ron to be my boyfriend. He doesn’t like spiders, but that’s okay because I can show him that spiders aren’t scary.’
Emily’s brain freezes. Not because she’s surprised, or upset, but because she’s not entirely sure how to respond.
‘Isn’t he a bit old for you?’ she asks, finally, and Nate gives her a look.
‘Mommy, he’s not a real person. When I’m old enough, he’ll still be the same age.’ There’s a strange sort of logic to it, never mind that Nate can rationalize the age difference, but not the fact that the character doesn’t even exist.
‘Of course,’ Emily said, mostly just to appease him. She doesn’t argue the point, but starts reading (skipping to Chapter Six at his request). They get about a chapter in, before Emily decides that it’s bedtime. She makes him go brush his teeth, which, somehow, does not end in disaster.
The smell has subsided considerably, but it’s too late to bring Beezus back in there now. In any case, Emily is sure that the girl prefers…well…anything to sharing a bedroom with Nate. Thank god they don’t come from the same universe, she thinks, because it would have probably ended in bloodshed. Still, she’d take a pair of rambunctious, destructive, manipulative five-year-olds over no kids at all. Even if she has to share them with Rossi. Especially if she has to share them with Rossi.
The last two days has been a whirlwind of screaming and hair-pulling, and tree-climbing, and yet she’s glad that they’re here. That’s apparently the secret of parenting. The pain of their nightmarish behavior is worth the toothy grin you get when your son expresses his desire to become a magical archaeologist that shoots rainbows.
Maybe, after all of this, she and Rossi will have a talk.
*
Nate's an award-winning fart machine, which eliminates any doubt Rossi had that they were related. Fortunately, Nate likes Emily better, so Emily gets to deal with him while Rossi wrangles the pint-sized drama queen.
"I can't sleep in the same room as Nate," Beezus tells him through a mouthful of toothpaste. There's foam every fucking where; there's foam on the ceiling, Rossi realizes, how is that even possible?
"Lucky for you, there are three other bedrooms for you to choose from," Rossi tells her cheerily.
Beatrice stares at him incredulously. "I'm sleeping in the big bed," she tells him, with the kind of unwavering certainty Rossi has only heard coming from die-hard members of a cult or doctors calling out the time of death.
The big bed turns out to be Rossi's bed, which doesn't surprise him as much as he thought it would.
Of course, his daughter would try to de-throne him. Of course, in another universe, she's already done it and there's no stopping her from trying to do the same in this one.
Beezus wipes her mouth onto the duvet before he can stop her, and then climbs onto the bed, bounces five times for good measure ("Because I'm five!") and makes herself comfortable smack dab in the middle, propping herself up with all of Rossi's pillows.
"Wouldn't you rather sleep in your own bed?" Rossi asks, because even though it's a lost cause, at least he can say he fought the battle.
"No, I'd rather not," Beezus says. "I want to sleep here instead. I don't have a TV in my room."
"Just out of curiosity, Beatrice, if you sleep in the big bed, where do your parents sleep?"
"Mommy sleeps in the big bed with me. You sleep on the floor."
Nothing surprises Rossi anymore, but that doesn't mean he can't be indignant about it.
"Your dad paid for that bed," Rossi says sharply, "and if I'm right about it, the three-thousand thread count sheets as well."
"They're very comfy," Beezus says.
"I'll bet they are."
"Will you read me a story?"
Apparently, the only book Beezus wants to be read to her just so happens to be the one Emily is reading to Nate, and in order to avoid an apocalyptic meltdown, especially one at the end of the day when there are still dishes to be washed and messes to be cleaned, Rossi caves and lets Beezus watch TV instead.
He still doesn't have the Food Network, so Beezus settles on an episode of Hoarders instead. Rossi slides under the covers with her and she settles herself in his lap, one arm slung around the giant stuffed rat that she conned Rossi into buying earlier. Emile is from Ratatouille and the size of a small bear. If Rossi stumbled upon it half-asleep in the middle of the night, his first reaction would be to drop down and play dead.
This particular episode of Hoarders is a horrific anthropological study of a bird-hobbyist whose hobby was, predictably, collecting birds. Not fancy show birds either. Baby sparrows that fall out of nests, pigeons that she catches eating out of her garbage, a spooky barn owl with a broken wing that she feeds with a tank of live mice she keeps in her basement.
The worst part is when the psychiatrist and Animal Control and her husband corner her for a much-needed intervention and begin taking her birds away. If suicide by cop was an option, Rossi is certain this woman would have gone for it.
"Turn it off!" Beezus cries, when the woman starts losing her shit, so many of her words being censored that the dialogue is obscured by one long, mournful bleep. "I don't want to watch this! This is sad!"
Rossi quickly changes the channel to something less traumatizing. House Hunters. This seems to appease Beatrice, who is now curled up pitifully against Rossi's chest and sucking her thumb in terror.
Fantastic, Rossi thinks, feeling like an asshole. A negligent parent and an asshole. 48 hours in and he's managed to scar his daughter for life.
On the upside, Beezus is demanding to be held until she falls asleep, which means Rossi isn't being relegated to the floor.
"Do you hoard things?" Beezus asks, after he turns off the television and dim the lights and says goodnight to every fucking inanimate object in his bedroom, and there is a lot of them.
"I wouldn't say 'hoard,'" says Rossi. "I collect things."
"My daddy collects things too."
"Yeah? Let me guess: fine wine and cigars?"
"Yep. Lots of wines. He used to have more cigars, but not anymore."
"What do you mean, not anymore?" Rossi asks, panic rising in his throat.
"I flushed them so my daddy won't die of cancer," Beezus says proudly.
"You thought it would be better to give him a stroke instead?"
He makes a mental note to lock all his cigars in the gun safe first thing tomorrow morning. And then changing the password to the gun safe because he wouldn't be surprised if Beezus has already figured out the passcode to it.
"I want my dad to live for a long, long time," Beezus says.
Rossi softens his expression, because she's not a bad kid, really. It reminds him of when he first got Mudgie, who was almost as out of control as Beezus and Nate. He'd had to send Mudgie to training school, where a smug jackass wearing a visor and a whistle reassured him that there were no bad dogs, just dogs that did bad things.
Beezus is not a bad kid. She just does bad things and it is probably Rossi's fault anyway, here he is comparing his daughter to a dog. He feels like a shitty person. Having children seems like an endless cycle of being humiliated and then feeling shitty about feeling resentful at being humiliated. Not having kids in this universe might be the smartest thing Rossi has ever done.
"Is Mommy going to come sleep in the big bed with us once stupid stinky Nate goes to sleep?"
The question is completely innocent, but the thought of Emily Prentiss in his bed is definitely an appealing one. If only there wouldn't be a five-year-old sandwiched in the middle.
"Probably not," Rossi answers truthfully. "Emily has her own bedroom."
"Are you guys getting divorced?" Beezus asks. She doesn't seem worried, merely curious.
"No. No, we're not getting divorced. Why would you think that?"
"Then why isn't she sleeping in the big bed with us?"
"Well, Mommy ... well, this Mommy and I aren't married. So we don't sleep in the same bed."
"You guys aren't married?" Beezus looks appalled at first, then resigned, giving Rossi a look that means clearly it's his fault everything in this universe is wrong.
"I like being single, okay?" Rossi says, wondering why it is that he's trying to justify his life choices to a five-year-old he's known for less than two days.
"But Mommy is great," Beezus says. "She is the best. I feel sad for you, Daddy."
"I'm very happy with my life, thank you very much," Rossi retorts, irritated.
She sighs again, does that eyeroll she learned from Emily. Her own Emily. "If you say so."
Beezus rolls onto her other side to bury her face in Emile's belly, kicking Rossi below the stomach in the process. It doesn't take long for her to drift off, and soon Rossi finds himself alone, questioning every decision he's ever made in his life as the rat gazes at him stonily, casting judgment.
Kids, he thinks. Stupid kids. He can't wait until they're gone and he resumes his awesome, child-free existence.
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Date: 2013-05-05 07:34 pm (UTC)