"That's the name I want to make then." Tommy grinned. "So they've got crazy pretentious names?" That was always kind of cute on little kids. "Do they know how to shapeshift yet?"
He kissed back, leaning into it and then sighing softly. "Fuck, I missed you," Tommy said, quiet but full of emotion. He slid his hand into Teddy's, dropping a kiss into his shoulder and let Teddy lead him off to dinner.
"Technically they're Princess Kathryn Anelle Sar-Vell and Prince Thomas Dorrek Bil-Vell," Teddy admits. "And they're at the age where I expect it any day. At least if they're staying on a single level to go intangible they're less likely to run into something bad. But if they're flying?"
Teddy doesn't even know that he was flying almost before he was born. There was a reason Hulkling had been so GOOD at it so fast.
"I missed you too," Teddy agrees, fingers going out to stroke Tommy's hair.
Tommy laughed, but looked touched too. He remembered that conversation, when they'd meandered around talking about a future neither of them had been convinced they had outside of captivity, and talked about kids and families. Tommy had never thought he'd be a parent, or that he should be. But if he had, he'd have wanted to name them after Kate or Billy. Teddy had remembered that, even when he didn't think Tommy would want anything to do with them. "Maybe put backpack leashes on them, so they can't fly that far, once we figure out the intangible thing." Figures it would be a power none of them had, so it wouldn't be easy to figure out.
Tommy hummed a little as Teddy's fingers slid through his hair. No one else quite petted it right - not that anyone but David really tried.
"OH fuck, that would be CUTE," Teddy laughs, pulling Tommy against him and laughing into his shoulder. This is the best idea and he loves it, so much. "I'm doing it. I'm going to have them made.'
Tommy laughed, leaning into him. God, that was so fucking good. Just ... Teddy. He was warm and right there. Tommy felt like he could practically purr. "Just little green floating kid balloons," he said with a grin. "God, Ted. We have kids. That's nuts. They've got your eyes." Yeah Teddy's eyes could be anything he wanted. But they looked just like his.
"The hair, definitely. The heart - you're the one with the big giant heart." He leaned up, nuzzling his cheek against Teddy's. "You'll tell me right? If I say something wrong to them, or do something I shouldn't?"
"Yeah ... but they weren't my kids. And not usually this little," Tommy said. But he goes with Teddy, going quiet as they left the space that was just them. He knew this was still a family thing, so it wasn't going to be some royal dining hall or anything. But still. He didn't know how to navigate kids yet, let alone how to navigate what he and Teddy were to each other in public. They'd figure it out, but they hadn't yet. Even with the nerves though, he didn't pull away at all.
This isn't that much public. It's just Teddy pulling close, an arm around his waist as he guides Tommy down the hall. There aren't many present. He guides tommy past a few doors before he gestures to some guards that open the door. A small, relatively private dining room, where the woman who collected the twins was, putting them in high chairs. Far enough apart that the two can't grab each other's hands. The doors close behind them and Teddy smiles at the woman.
"Thank you. Tommy and I will tend to them," he assures the nursemaid, who bows and walks out of the room. And look, there's already food on the table.
And when Kathryn and Thomas notice their fathers they start grinning and making grabbing hands at their parents.
"Most of the time," Teddy whispers in English. "It's you that has dinner with them. Sometimes I do. But I always say Papa is busy."
It's still more than just the two of them. Tommy and Teddy have never existed together as a couple or lovers or whatever they are in a space that wasn't just for them - at least not knowingly. Tommy's not sure how to act exactly. He just doesn't care enough to actually not stay glued against Teddy.
He smiled at the woman when she left, and then looked at the kids, who were all waving hands and big smiles. They really were cute. He nodded to Teddy and walked over, hesitantly grabbing each of their hands with one of his, swinging their arms lightly. "Hey," he greeted. "Hungry?"
The little boy - Thomas, Tommy guessed. They were going to have to work out the names. He answered with a stream of babble that it took Tommy a second to realize he wasn't supposed to be able to understand, since it was mostly babytalk with a few words of Skrull mixed in.
They weren't fully conversational yet. They were only a year old after all. But Teddy stands back and watches the man he loved with their children and wow. That's... good.
"The Little Lamb is very anti-mushy peas, but Kitty cat loves them. Lamb gets the chopped carrots, and the beefy dinner. Kitty gets chicken."
Teddy moves to the kids, kissing each on the brow in turn before picking up one sectioned animal plate and carrying it to Kathryn, scooping up some peas.
"The kids eat first, and when they're done with what they'll eat, they get little bowls of small snacks they can eat. Baby cookies. I have to get them from Earth, because they don't like some traditional Skrull foods."
"Dada," Kathryn says, hands reaching out toward the plate he has.
Tommy had been wondering about that, all the earth-centric food. He laughed though, watching Teddy and then picking up the other plate for Thomas. "I guess they don't take after me. I was always a trash can - I ate everything." As far as he remembered, anyway. Then again, growing up it'd been a definite "eat what you have" kind of house, so if he didn't like it, he didn't get anything else.
Tommy watched Teddy to see how he fed Kathryn, and then mimicked him, offering Thomas a bite of his carrots, grinning when the kid just started to babble again. "Uh huh," Tommy said, nodding sagely as if he understood.
"They're too young to eat everything just yet," Teddy coos at Tommy in Skrull. Because with the charm, he knows Tommy will understand. But he loved how quickly Tommy got the right feel of it. Teddy was mostly just proud to know he'd called that reaction properly.
"I'm told language development goes better when you just talk to them lots, encourage noises too."
He smiles and gets some of the chicken gravy and potatoes onto a spoon to feed Kate. And after she takes the spoonful he leans over to kiss Tommy's temple.
Tommy nodded, watching both kids, curious and avid, taking in the little mannerisms and the way they reached for him or for Teddy, or for each other. One would say something and the other would answer. He wondered if him and Billy would have been like that, if they'd been raised together.
"Yeah. There's a little kid in Krokoa, one of the mutant couples adopted him, but he barely talks. I think it's cause he always got told to shut up when he was little, so no one would notice him." He was cute, but he had visible mutations - lizard-looking eyes and a sheen to his skin. Tommy would watch some of the kids sometimes, to give the parents a break. Or at least he did now that they weren't as worried he'd explode time or something.
He turned when Teddy kissed his temple, startled, but smiled. Christ. They were feeding their KIDS together. Like a family. Which he guessed they were, just ... a weird one.
He was startled out of thinking about it when Thomas smacked at his hand demandingly, and Tommy snickered. "Sorry, little man." He scooped up a bite of the beef and offered it to him, wiping a dribble off his chin when only half of it went in his mouth.
"You're clearly a natural. And he's got attitude, like his Papa. But Kitten is going to be the problem when she grows up. She's going to wrap us around her little finger."
Teddy smiles and offers a clean cloth from the table behind them to Tommy.
"Papa num!" Kathryn said, hands reaching for Tommy and the food he had.
"Yeah, let's hope he's not that much like me," Tommy said dryly.
Tommy took the cloth, wiping up and then laughing at Kathryn. "She just wants what she doesn't have, probably. Grass is greener, right? See, that's our fault for naming her after Kate."
Still, he gave Thomas another bite before offering one to Kitty too, reaching to carefully brush fingers through the white hair on one small head, then the other.
Kitty, of course, just had to assume whatever her Papa had was good too, but when he held out a spoonful of carrots the girl cringed away, turning her head far from Tommy.
"Princess is just a little silly. It's okay, Kitty, I only like carrots in gravy. And chef says you can't have that yet," Teddy coos.
"Sef!" Kathryn parrots back, which Thomas is soon mimicking
"They like the chef because sometimes he gives them blueberry puree," Teddy whispers. "They like the color they turn. The only thing they can do other than wings right now is a bit of color on their hands, so when they get blueberries on it, they like to be purple like the juice and stains."
Tommy grinned. "It's 'cause they're orange, right? Orange food always looks weird," he teased her, making a show of sniffing suspiciously at the spoon before offering it to Thomas instead.
"That's really cute," Tommy answers. "Maybe let them try cherries? They'd probably like the red then." He tried to think of what else the kids back home ate - but it was a lot of junk food they probably didn't have here. They were all way older than the twins were.
"Yeah, because having them running around with red juice on their fingers won't give me a heart attack," Teddy grumbles, but Kate's giggling at Tommy's little display, so clearly the kid likes it.
Teddy just focuses on getting the girl to have more peas.
"I love you, Tommy," Teddy says into the perfection of the moment, and says it in Skrull. "Thank you."
Tommy snickered. "If they're not crying, then it's probably just juice," he reasoned. "Or them changing their color."
He looked up, startled at the sudden declaration. But Tommy smiled, leaning over between bites and kissing Teddy. It was quick and a little shy in front of the kids, who obviously had never seen their dads kiss before. But it just ... still hit him hearing Teddy say it. He'd been so sure Teddy couldn't stand the thought of him, even if he didn't hate him. Loving him back ... it was almost an impossible leap of thought to make.
"Love you too. Just ... yeah. So much." Tommy replied, awkward but sincere.
It's a good experience, Teddy thinks. Every now and then when Tommy doesn't seem to quite know what to do with taking care of the kids, he just runs his fingers over his bracelet, imparting the memories Tommy would have if he wasn't an asshole. And, eventually, the little ones had mostly eaten and been vaguely cleaned up. Teddy at last put his mostly cleaned plate from Kate back on the table and put a bowl of soft pieces of skrull fruit the children liked in front of them, to let them snack. It was all cut up very fine so they could eat it and not risk choking before Teddy could get there. But it was also clear almost instantly that a lot of it was going to get smooshed.
"And now the victorious parents get to eat," Teddy sighs as he takes a towel to wipe a bit of mushed peas off of his cheek. "But it's rewarding, knowing they're okay."
Tommy faltered each time those little nudges of new memory fluttered into his head, giving a view of what might have been. It helped him know what he was doing, and he liked seeing them, smaller or cranky or just with a version of him that they cared about.
Thomas took a little longer to finish, but Tommy got the feeling it was mostly because he was courting the extra attention from him, which made him smile. He put the plate aside when the little boy was done though, helping clean them up a bit - even if the fruit smooshing was probably just gonna mean they'd need it again - and then gave Thomas his fruit too.
As they ate and cleaned up, both kids just talked. Tommy could pick up words or general meanings sometimes, but for the most part it was just happy noise - fussy now and then when they didn't want more, or wanted something he wasn't giving them. It was sweet and kind of oddly soothing. It probably wouldn't be the first time they threw a fit over something, but for the moment, it was just nice.
He laughed, wiping another spot of peas off Teddy's chin with the tip of his finger, and then dotting that on the towel too, dropping down to sit next to him. "You did good with them. They're happy," he said quietly.
Teddys chuckles at the process of Tommy cleaning him up. No one else dared to touch him like that, and so he had more than a few instances where people tried to, clumsily, tell him that there was something wrong. It was never easy, but like this? It was. He leaned into that touch and when it was gone, he moved to sit with his former lover.
“Well, what do you think? Of the children? Of feeding them”
Tommy leaned into him as soon as he sat down, instant and easy. Natural. He didn't know how to be with Teddy and not be touching him anymore. It didn't occur to him to try without Billy or someone there to notice and make him aware of what he was doing.
"I think they're cute, and sweet. They're good kids. I think ... it's still a lot to work my head around, Ted. I've been thinking you just ... I thought I was an asshole, for liking what we had, when you had to like it and wouldn't have. You loving me, us being parents. It's hard to just figure out how to flip that around. But I'm happy, I think. Just confused still, too. And I wish I'd been here. For you." He half smiled. "Feeding them's kinda messy. But cute, too."
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He kissed back, leaning into it and then sighing softly. "Fuck, I missed you," Tommy said, quiet but full of emotion. He slid his hand into Teddy's, dropping a kiss into his shoulder and let Teddy lead him off to dinner.
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Teddy doesn't even know that he was flying almost before he was born. There was a reason Hulkling had been so GOOD at it so fast.
"I missed you too," Teddy agrees, fingers going out to stroke Tommy's hair.
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Tommy hummed a little as Teddy's fingers slid through his hair. No one else quite petted it right - not that anyone but David really tried.
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He pulls Tommy with him toward the door, and he pulls Tommy with him out of the suite.
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"Thank you. Tommy and I will tend to them," he assures the nursemaid, who bows and walks out of the room. And look, there's already food on the table.
And when Kathryn and Thomas notice their fathers they start grinning and making grabbing hands at their parents.
"Most of the time," Teddy whispers in English. "It's you that has dinner with them. Sometimes I do. But I always say Papa is busy."
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He smiled at the woman when she left, and then looked at the kids, who were all waving hands and big smiles. They really were cute. He nodded to Teddy and walked over, hesitantly grabbing each of their hands with one of his, swinging their arms lightly. "Hey," he greeted. "Hungry?"
The little boy - Thomas, Tommy guessed. They were going to have to work out the names. He answered with a stream of babble that it took Tommy a second to realize he wasn't supposed to be able to understand, since it was mostly babytalk with a few words of Skrull mixed in.
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"The Little Lamb is very anti-mushy peas, but Kitty cat loves them. Lamb gets the chopped carrots, and the beefy dinner. Kitty gets chicken."
Teddy moves to the kids, kissing each on the brow in turn before picking up one sectioned animal plate and carrying it to Kathryn, scooping up some peas.
"The kids eat first, and when they're done with what they'll eat, they get little bowls of small snacks they can eat. Baby cookies. I have to get them from Earth, because they don't like some traditional Skrull foods."
"Dada," Kathryn says, hands reaching out toward the plate he has.
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Tommy watched Teddy to see how he fed Kathryn, and then mimicked him, offering Thomas a bite of his carrots, grinning when the kid just started to babble again. "Uh huh," Tommy said, nodding sagely as if he understood.
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"I'm told language development goes better when you just talk to them lots, encourage noises too."
He smiles and gets some of the chicken gravy and potatoes onto a spoon to feed Kate. And after she takes the spoonful he leans over to kiss Tommy's temple.
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"Yeah. There's a little kid in Krokoa, one of the mutant couples adopted him, but he barely talks. I think it's cause he always got told to shut up when he was little, so no one would notice him." He was cute, but he had visible mutations - lizard-looking eyes and a sheen to his skin. Tommy would watch some of the kids sometimes, to give the parents a break. Or at least he did now that they weren't as worried he'd explode time or something.
He turned when Teddy kissed his temple, startled, but smiled. Christ. They were feeding their KIDS together. Like a family. Which he guessed they were, just ... a weird one.
He was startled out of thinking about it when Thomas smacked at his hand demandingly, and Tommy snickered. "Sorry, little man." He scooped up a bite of the beef and offered it to him, wiping a dribble off his chin when only half of it went in his mouth.
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Teddy smiles and offers a clean cloth from the table behind them to Tommy.
"Papa num!" Kathryn said, hands reaching for Tommy and the food he had.
"Oh dear, she's going to be fussy too.l"
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Tommy took the cloth, wiping up and then laughing at Kathryn. "She just wants what she doesn't have, probably. Grass is greener, right? See, that's our fault for naming her after Kate."
Still, he gave Thomas another bite before offering one to Kitty too, reaching to carefully brush fingers through the white hair on one small head, then the other.
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"Princess is just a little silly. It's okay, Kitty, I only like carrots in gravy. And chef says you can't have that yet," Teddy coos.
"Sef!" Kathryn parrots back, which Thomas is soon mimicking
"They like the chef because sometimes he gives them blueberry puree," Teddy whispers. "They like the color they turn. The only thing they can do other than wings right now is a bit of color on their hands, so when they get blueberries on it, they like to be purple like the juice and stains."
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"That's really cute," Tommy answers. "Maybe let them try cherries? They'd probably like the red then." He tried to think of what else the kids back home ate - but it was a lot of junk food they probably didn't have here. They were all way older than the twins were.
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Teddy just focuses on getting the girl to have more peas.
"I love you, Tommy," Teddy says into the perfection of the moment, and says it in Skrull. "Thank you."
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He looked up, startled at the sudden declaration. But Tommy smiled, leaning over between bites and kissing Teddy. It was quick and a little shy in front of the kids, who obviously had never seen their dads kiss before. But it just ... still hit him hearing Teddy say it. He'd been so sure Teddy couldn't stand the thought of him, even if he didn't hate him. Loving him back ... it was almost an impossible leap of thought to make.
"Love you too. Just ... yeah. So much." Tommy replied, awkward but sincere.
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"And now the victorious parents get to eat," Teddy sighs as he takes a towel to wipe a bit of mushed peas off of his cheek. "But it's rewarding, knowing they're okay."
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Thomas took a little longer to finish, but Tommy got the feeling it was mostly because he was courting the extra attention from him, which made him smile. He put the plate aside when the little boy was done though, helping clean them up a bit - even if the fruit smooshing was probably just gonna mean they'd need it again - and then gave Thomas his fruit too.
As they ate and cleaned up, both kids just talked. Tommy could pick up words or general meanings sometimes, but for the most part it was just happy noise - fussy now and then when they didn't want more, or wanted something he wasn't giving them. It was sweet and kind of oddly soothing. It probably wouldn't be the first time they threw a fit over something, but for the moment, it was just nice.
He laughed, wiping another spot of peas off Teddy's chin with the tip of his finger, and then dotting that on the towel too, dropping down to sit next to him. "You did good with them. They're happy," he said quietly.
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“Well, what do you think? Of the children? Of feeding them”
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"I think they're cute, and sweet. They're good kids. I think ... it's still a lot to work my head around, Ted. I've been thinking you just ... I thought I was an asshole, for liking what we had, when you had to like it and wouldn't have. You loving me, us being parents. It's hard to just figure out how to flip that around. But I'm happy, I think. Just confused still, too. And I wish I'd been here. For you." He half smiled. "Feeding them's kinda messy. But cute, too."
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