FicWad

“Baby?”
He barely even looks up from the flayed body. “Mmm?”
She hesitates. Right now, their city is being overrun with cases of Wendigo Syndrome, causing hundreds of people to go insane, flitting through the cities and biting other people, spreading the disease. The body of the eighteen year old was a carrier, and the two of them are searching for a cure, a cause, anything that could help find a cure.
“I’m pregnant.”

That makes him look up. “Pregnant?” he repeats.
“Yup.”
“With...a baby?”
His hands have stopped moving, stopped searching for cures, and he’s completely still, watching her. “That’s usually what pregnant means, Charlie.” Her tone is sarcastic.
“I know, honeybunch, but it’s a lot to deal with right now. God. A baby, Charlotte?” he asks, then looks suddenly serious. “I’m gonna be a dad?”
Charlotte nods, red hair waving in agreement.
Charlie pulls the gloves off his hands, and runs those pale, hard-knuckled contraptions through his hair. Then he moans. “What’ve I done?”

___________________________________________

Charlotte is now three months pregnant, stomach barely beginning to swell. “At least we got married, right?” Charlie says, nervously. He’s not sure how well his business of monster-hunting will mesh with a small human wandering around doing...whatever it is that small humans do.
His best friend, newly minted Doctor Winston Olivier, is thrilled. Both men worked together during the Wendigo Fever outbreak, Olivier working the front lines and ferrying bodies back from the slums where the infection ran rampant. Olivier’s adopted a small three year old boy whose parents died from the Wendigo Fever, and Winston’s perfectly happy with him.
“His name’s Constantine!” he tells Charlie, eyes wide with happiness behind his glasses. Charlie pulls a face. “Unusual name for a boy, I know. I’ve started calling him Connie. Or just Con. We’re gonna be awesome parent buddies!” Winston prattles, throwing his arms around Charlie’s neck.
“I’m not ready to be a dad,” states Charlie flatly, shrugging off Winston.
Winston shrugs, unperturbed. “Con’s gonna be a genius one day. I just know he’s gonna be great.”
“He’s got the right dad, that’s for damn sure,” Charlie agrees, and the two men laugh.

__________________________

Winston’s voice is tinny over the phone line. “I stole your baby results. From the ultrasound.”
Charlie freezes, hand wrapped tight over the receiver. “Really?”
“You betcha, Charlie! Put Lottie on, I wanna tell her first!”
Charlie hands the receiver over to Charlotte, who’s shaking so badly she nearly drops the phone. “Winston? Tell me! Yes! Please?” she waits, wrapping the thin cord around her finger, biting her lip. She then drops it to cradle her massive stomach, the same stomach that’s making it hard for her to work, or bend, for that matter.
When she gets the news, she squeals, screaming down her thanks, hanging up immediately. “Charlie! Baby!” she kisses him, nearly crying. She can’t stop kissing him.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, stomach twisting.
“Oh, nothing! Everything’s wonderful! Twins, Charlie! We’re having twins!”

_____________________________

Charlotte’s water breaks three weeks early. The two of them are prepared, although the whole thing happens far too fast for Charlie’s liking. But the delivery isn’t nearly as bad as he heard it could be. The first child born is a girl. The second is born ten minutes later, a boy. His wife gets to hold the girl, and he’s stuck holding his son. He seems greyish, and light, like his bones are hollow. He’s got a shock of black hair, sort of like him. The girl’s got the same shock of hair, the same darkness, but she looks nearly exactly like Charlotte.
Touching the edge of the sleeping boy’s eye, Charlie starts talking softly to it. “Hey. Hey, you. I’m your dad. I’m Charlie. Hi. It’s okay. Shh. I love you so much.”

____________________________

The boy is named Alvinius Jareth Freck, after Charlie’s grandfather. The girl is named Kayleelin Charlotte Freck, after a sister of Charlotte’s Charlie has never particularly liked.

________________________

Constantine pokes Alvin in the face. “He’s teeny. And useless.”
“Be nice, kid. Or I’ll lock you down in the Solarium with all my samples,” Charlie threatens, kind of enjoying the way Con’s face pales. Winston is passed out on the couch, proving to be the worst Godfather ever elected. “How come he gets to stay with you guys and my parents are dead?” Constantine asks, big hazel eyes fixed on Charlie.
Charlie doesn’t know what to say, and is thankful when Alvin starts to cry. He's become completely taken with both of his children, and often takes them down in baby carriers when he works on monsters in the basement.

______________________

Constantine is fourteen, and Alvin and Kaylee are eleven. Constantine is going through a weird adolescent phase, which means his hair is extremely pink and his eyeliner is extremely thick. He also only wears black and has started sneaking cigarettes behind Winston’s back.
“Ever wonder what makes boys and girls different?” he asks, gaze leveled at Alvin. He’s managed to trap the smaller boy by himself, while Kaylee has wandered off by herself to Winston’s library to read the medical books about flesh-eating diseases.
Alvin shifts, uncomfortable already. “No...”
“Want me to tell you?”
“Leave me alone, Con.”
“Trust me, it’s better to get it from your Godcousin than from your parents.”

Alvin jerks his head to the side, eyes fixing on a corner of the room, almost obsessively. He doesn’t respond. It feels like the room is crushing him. It always feels this way around people.
Constantine misinterprets this reaction, and continues on, almost viciously. “See, girls are different down here,” he pauses, reaching down to tap the metallic teeth of his zipper. “Than boys are. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Kaylee naked, but trust me when I say that she’s lacking some certain parts, get it?”
Alvin clamps his hands over his ears. By this point he can’t hear what Constantine is saying, but it’s more because dopamine levels in his brain are wreaking havoc than the subject matter.
“And girls get boobs, right, I’m sure you know about that, little-boy-bright-as-you-are. Want to hear about sex?”
Alvin shakes his head, then says the one thing that could help him.
“Do other people hear voices and see stuff that’s not there?”

Constantine abruptly turns serious. “What do you mean?”
“There’re bugs on the ceiling, right? I can hear them. They’re saying things.”
“Alvin, what kinds of things?”
He fidgets, light blue eyes refusing to make contact with Constantine’s hazel ones.
“Upset things.”

___________________________

Alvin is admitted into Bluefinch Mental Asylum at age fifteen for an attempted suicide. He is diagnosed with schizophrenia, and his mother stops talking to him, not entirely sure how to interact with a boy who needs medication to function.
“Y’know what, Alvin, I’ll love you no matter how crazy you get, okay?” Charlie tells him. Alvin smiles a little. Kaylee is completely taken with Alvin’s schizophrenia, and starts looking up alternative diets for him to try and other habits that may help socialization issues and his feelings of constant paranoia.
Constantine is eighteen, and has run away from home, living on the streets, denouncing his father, and partying like he’s got a brain tumor and could die any minute.

___________________________

Alvin and Kaylee are eighteen, and they are both dressed in all-black. So is Constantine and Dr. Olivier. Connie sobered up for this, scraped his life together, and is working on getting training to become a junior archivist. Dr. Olivier looks miserable, and cannot stop crying. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he tells Kaylee. She doesn’t cry. She is the oldest; the family business will now go to her. Alvin will get the land it resides upon. The rest of the funeral passes slowly. Charlotte and Charlie are buried in closed caskets, so that the rest of the people there will not see the fingernail marks on Charlotte’s neck where the Siren held her under, or the blue skin around Charlie’s eyes, from where he swam out to try to save her.


___________________________________

(A.N. Was in the mood to write something sappy and melodramatic. So why not write babies and families?)