So. Family Discussion Time. on At Home

Bel Pierce

February 25, 2021 6:58 PM

So. Family Discussion Time. by Bel Pierce

The apartment was not well suited to having five people live in it. There weren't enough bedrooms - the Training Room was already inside of what was supposed to be a closet - and the kitchen was small with seating only for three. Reilly was conveniently small enough that Bel could just transfigure him a tiny table and chair set and have him eat in the living room, but adding a fourth stool to the bar that served as her eating surface would just make it unbearably crowded, so she just set the usual three settings there, and set a fourth plate on the counter. For breakfast at least, Bel could eat standing up.

The toaster popped and she felt a moment of gleeful satisfaction when she saw the bread hadn't turned black. She'd owned a toaster for ten years, and despite having mastered its use nine years ago, she still felt a flash of triumph every time. Part of that was the year of failure, and the total bafflement with which she had first met a toaster the summer after she'd been disowned and was encountering every muggle thing for the first time. Today, however, most of her sense of victory was because she could show off to Deidre that she was far better equipped to exist in life than David was.

Because one-upping Derwent the Second gave her life.

She distributed the toast and set a knife to buttering them. She was still scrambling the eggs and sizzling the bacon when the first of the teen's doors opened. "Morning!" she greeted, sounding cheerful. It wasn't her normal state, even at the best of times, and despite getting engaged yesterday and having her first sleepover party ever, this wasn't exactly that. But she finally had a solution to the problem that had plagued her about Mab's custody for over a year and that wasn't nothing.

Also, she hadn't burned the toast - or the bacon - and that glow was going to last until Deidre admitted her superior technology skills.

The other door opened and that was all of them. "Morning to you, too! Take your normal seats, Deidre will take mine once she finishes feeding Reilly his yogurt and cereal, and then we can talk."

Soon they were all arranged at the breakfast bar, and she spooned out eggs to each plate and floated hot bacon to join them. Propping herself up against the counter so that she could easily see them all, she opened the discussion.

"So first up and most immediate," she lifted her plate demonstrably to indicate that they were short seating arrangements and table space as things stood now, "what are everyone's thoughts on living space? Stay here and make more permanent magical adjustments, go apartment hunting for something a little bigger that we all like, or try to find a small house out in the suburbs? And do we want to invite David to join us?"

OOC: Hopefully Alexander likes scrabbled eggs, toast, and bacon. If not I can retcon it to something he does like, because Bel wants to welcome her kids home with food they enjoy.

1 Bel Pierce So. Family Discussion Time. 0 Bel Pierce 1 5

Alexander Pierce-Beales

February 27, 2021 8:49 PM

Because we're family now so all our discussions are family discussions, right? by Alexander Pierce-Beales

Alexander resisted the urge to give his foster mom - one of them! - a great big beaming grin when he came out of his bedroom in the morning. It wasn't necessarily hard to resist because he hardly ever really smiled like that, but it was definitely one of the times when he sort of wanted to and it was mostly his own hesitation to have any real hope that good things were going to keep happening that kept his expression limited to a more regulated smile. He'd put his jeans and a hoodie on and it just felt like a normal day, except that none of this was normal. And it was. All at once, everything in his life had changed and now he had a parent who made breakfast for him and his sister, while his maybe sort of other parent (he still wasn't sure what Mab thought of him thinking of her that way, or what he thought of it for that matter) got food together for the youngest sibling (again, there were questions there). And it was normal, because that was what home looked like now. And, as Bel broached the subject on her mind, it hit Alexander that home wasn't just a house now either. That he was included. He was going to go with these people when they moved, if they moved. Was that what family meant? He'd always thought maybe it was just the people who took you with them even when it wasn't convenient, but now he thought maybe it was also the people you wanted to go with.

He wasn't sure whether he necessarily was supposed to speak on the matter since it seemed like a decision adults made without kids involved, but also it was exciting and he was clearly being invited to do so, so he swallowed the first few bites he'd shoved in his mouth and considered. The only thing he was sure about was that he wasn't sure about David. The rest of the stuff was basically foreign to him, so he wasn't sure what to think or say. Transportation came to mind as a possible issue, but they were (mostly) magical, so that wasn't really something they'd need to worry about. Of course . . . that might actually be a thing he could speak on for his new second foster mom.

"Are the suburbs hard to get around from?" he asked. "If you're not magic? I think those all sound good. Really good. Perfect," he said, his smile growing a bit as his descriptions did before he settled back down and took another bite of eggs, finishing his comments around a mouthful: "I'm happy with anything." And he knew that Bel understood that it was true.

22 Alexander Pierce-Beales Because we're family now so all our discussions are family discussions, right? 1475 0 5

Mab

March 13, 2021 9:26 AM

It is looking that way. by Mab

In some ways, this was everything Mab had wanted all along. She was going to have her mom back, but she didn't have to give up the new family she had found either. Mab had a lot of respect for Bel, and she'd picked Alexander as her brother and hadn't wanted to give that up. The past year or so - however long it had been since Mom and David and Reilly had turned up at Bel's door - had been good in some ways (Mom was alive!, she got to stay with Alexander, Mom visited a lot, Bel kept Mab enrolled in Tae Kwon Do) but it was also Very Temporary, and the stress of trying to figure out who she wanted to live with, and make a choice of who to leave behind, had been paralyzing and horrible. She hadn't wanted to leave any of them behind, except maybe Reilly. She was greedy. She wanted to keep both her new family and her old family.

And now, suddenly, there was a solution. A way they could all be together. Her and Alexander and Bel and Mom. And she guessed Reilly, too. In many ways, it was just about perfect.

And then there was walking out of her room to get a glass of water and seeing Mom all over Bel and that was just nauseating and all kinds of wrong, and she really like to think she was open minded and stuff, so she was hoping the Wrongness was just because it was her mom. It was pretty standard that nobody liked seeing their parents make out with anyone, right? She was totally cool with women getting it on together. She just didn't want to see those two women doing it.

It was with extra caution she peeked out of her room the next morning, but there was no groping going on this time. Mom was feeding Reilly and Bel was cooking. It looked almost painfully domestic, and Mab felt a pang of longing for the future this could represent. Mab emerged fully from her room and took her spot at the breakfast bar.

Soon breakfast was ready and served - very magically; she wondered if Bel was trying to impress them or Mom - and then the promised family discussion began. Alexander offered that he'd be happy where-ever they lived. And while Mab could sort of understand that having everyone together was the important part, that it was the people that made a home . . . Mab couldn't imagine leaving Boston, not even to get a nice house in the suburbs.

"I want to stay in the city," she said, and Mom nodded to that as well. "But a bigger apartment would be good."

1 Mab It is looking that way. 1473 0 5