#he got wittle elf ears

[dragon-tidbits]

So humor me here

Pines and Friends go to Ren Fair, Stan having to hear the absolute hype while driving the RV all the way to Portland.

[conceptstage]

Survival is a Talent {Part One}

AO3

“What is it?” Beau asked, frowning down at the swaddled creature in the crook of her elbow.

Caleb stood beside her, nervously scratching his arm as he watched it squirm. “I believe, Beauregard, that that is a half-elf baby.”

“I know what it is,” she hissed.

“Then why did you as-”

“I don’t know!” The baby’s face screwed up in distress at the shouting and Beau cursed as her little lip started to wiggle. “Fuck, what do I do? What- Shh, shh, don’t cry. I’m sorry, I won’t yell.” She started bouncing quickly, rising up on the tips of her toes and then falling back down sharply. The baby had the dark purple skin of a drow and the slightly pointed little ears of a half elf. She was wearing a cloth diaper and was wrapped in a beige and red plaid blanket that was fastened closed by an elegant hair clip.

“Wait, wait, wait-” Jester said, reaching out to grab Beau’s shoulders and hold her down. “Slower, slow. Can I hold her?”

Beau practically shoved the baby into Jester’s arms. “Please.” When she was baby free, she threw up her hands and turned away to pace along the alleyway.

Jester grinned and lifted the girl up above her head. “Hello, little baby! Hello, are you having a good-” The baby burped and spit up landed with a splash right on Jester’s face. She sighed and closed her eyes to keep it from getting in and held the baby out to where she’d last seen Caleb. “Okay. I’m done now.”

Caleb hesitated but took the baby and looked back at the others who were keeping their distance. He cleared his throat and looked down into the baby’s wide brown eyes as she gummed at her own fist. He thought of the dead drow woman laying nearby, presumably the mother. “Ah. Hallo. Do you know where we can find your next of kin?” 

Beau groaned. “Oh my god…” she mumbled. “Does anyone in this fucking group know how to take care of a baby? Caduceus? You had siblings, right?”

“Older siblings. I’ve never been this close to a baby before. But I could give it my best shot.”

Beau instead looked at Fjord, who shrugged, then Jester, who was cleaning off her face and muttering angrily to herself, then to Nott. A lightbulb went off in her head. “Nott! You’re, like, a mother or something, right?”

“I’m not ‘like’ a mother or something. I am a mother.”

Beau snatched the child from Caleb’s grip and held her towards Nott. “Here.”

Nott gave the child a critical glance. “She’s… so much bigger than Luc was at this age. I don’t know if I can hold her.”

“Don’t say that, you’re gonna give her body issues,” Beau chided. “Look, just sit down or something and we’ll put her in your lap while we go get supplies and try to figure out where she came from.”

Nott sighed but sat down on the ground with her back against the stone wall of their house. Caduceus had heard the crying from the dining room while they were all eating breakfast and had come to investigate. The woman was dead when they arrived.

“I bet that she’s from a border town,” Jester said, her voice taking on a dreamy tone. “She was out picking flowers one day when she came across an injured human man who was escaping bandits in the mountains. She took him back to her little cottage and they fell in love even though they knew they shouldn’t. The made love in the moonlight and he left to go back home to take care of his sick mother but he promised to come back for her when he could but then she discovered that she was pregnant! She came to the city for medical attention but when the nurses saw that it was a half human baby they grew violent and called the guards. She ran for her child’s life and has been in hiding ever since, but tonight she was found and chased down until she was shot dead in the back!”

“Natural causes,” Caduceus said, checking the woman’s body over. “She died from pneumonia.”

Jester pouted and crossed her arms. It wasn’t nearly as romantic.

“Is the baby sick?” Beau asked, pausing as she tried to situate her into Nott’s lap. She was more than half nott’s size, almost two feet in length.

Caduceus frowned and shook his head. “I don’t believe they had enough contact for it to transfer. This isn’t the baby’s mother. She’s been dead for two days and moved here.”

Beau frowned and stood up while Nott struggled to hold the baby’s giant head up off the ground. The baby started to cry again and wiggled violently and Fjord rushed to keep her from falling down hard.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Beau asked. “Was this staged? Someone dragged her here and dropped the baby beside her... why? What do they want?”

Caduceus frowned and looked solemnly back at the baby. “So that we would find her and take care of her. Maybe they assumed we’d think this woman was the mother.  I suspect, if we investigate this woman we’ll find she had no family or anyone who would miss her body. No one who would be willing to take ‘her daughter’,” his finger quotes were clunky and odd looking. “-off our hands.”

“So this is just a convoluted way for someone to abandon their baby?”

“They wanted us specifically to find it though?” Caleb asked, moving over to check the woman for clues. “Because it is half human?”

“I suspect half human children aren’t common in these parts. The baby looks drow but it will have the metabolism closer to that of a human and will need specialized care that a drow unfamiliar with them would be unable to properly provide. We have humans in our group and the rest of us are very familiar with humans and their anatomy, they probably hoped we’d know what to do.”

“We don’t though!” Beau exclaimed. “We don’t know what to do!” She turned to look at Caleb with wide, scared eyes. “What do we do?”

“We need food,” Nott said. Beau and Caleb spun around to look at her as she gently leaned the baby back and forth. “She hasn’t been here long, she’s not cold, but it’s better to have it ready than scramble for it when the time comes.”

“We can mash up some carrots?”

Nott nodded. “We can do some vegetables. She can probably handle stuff like rice, maybe some plain, soft beans. And diapers. Not for eating, for the other end.”

Beau nodded and walked over to pick up the baby and hold her at arm's length. “Alright. Some of us should stay at the house with her and get her set up. We have some milk in the ice box but we’ll need more supplies. The rest of us will go shopping and then try to find her mom.” 

Jester turned to Fjord and found that there was some moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes. “You alright?” she asked, quietly as everyone moved out of the alley.

Fjord cleared his throat and nodded. “I-I’m fine. It’s just… they left her.”

Jester gave him a small smile and put her hand on his arm. “But now she’s with us just like you are. We’ll take care of her until she finds her family again.” She gave him a bright smile and started skipping after the others.

Fjord heard Beau call out from around the corner. “Hey Nott, how do I hold this thing!”

Jester gasped. “Don’t call her a ‘thing’, Beau! She’s a beautiful, perfect little ange- ah! Don’t give her to me! Ew, she’s got spit up all over mouth.”

Fjord sighed and started to follow.

-

Essek stared at the baby with a curious frown. “A half drow child,” he mumbled. “How unusual.”

Nott had volunteered to watch the baby and Fjord had drawn the short straw so they were both stuck at the house, Nott with the baby in her lap and Fjord pacing across the room. “So you have no idea who she could belong to?” They had called Essek over before Jester left because there was a dead body behind their house and they needed a grown up to deal with it.

Essek hummed. “Not a clue. You said the scene you found was staged?”

Fjord nodded, chewing on his fingernail. “Beau thinks it was someone’s convoluted way of abandoning her and throwing us off their trail.”

Essek looked thoughtful. “I am inclined to agree with her, though I would appreciate it if you did not tell her so.”

Nott nodded sagely. “Yeah, we get it, we won’t tell her.”

“What can you tell us about the woman?” Fjord asked. 

Essek frowned and crossed his arms, idly tapping his finger on the inside of his elbow as he pondered. “I did not recognize her but I have a group of guards coming over to collect her body. If she’s a few days dead, I imagine that she was stolen from a morgue. I’ll have someone go around and inquire about any morgues missing a body. My suspicion though?” He sighed. “There is no report with the guard’s office about a missing body. Either the leader of the morgue is incompetant and doesn’t realize the body is gone or she never made it to a morgue in the first place.”

Fjord frowned. “Then how did the real mother find her?”

Essek considered this for a moment. “Perhaps she merely stumbled across the body by chance. Perhaps she knew the woman somehow. Speculation at this point is useless, we do not have enough information.” He seemed about to turn to the door and leave, but paused and looked back at them. “Will you all be okay with taking care of the girl until we get this settled? I have no other people familiar enough with her needs that I could trust such a sensitive matter too. I will have someone begin working on finding her a suitable home but for now…” he trailed off, staring at the half-elf in Nott’s lap as she snored quietly.

“Of course,” Fjord said, nodding.

Essek nodded back and then continued towards the door. “I have much to do, I will contact you with my findings. Farewell.” Then he left them alone in the dining room of their house. There was a ruckus at the door. “Oh, Jester. How.. lovely to see you,” Nott heard Essek say dryly.

“Hi, Essek,” but she didn’t stop to bother him today and ran right for the dining room, squealing when she saw them sitting there. “We got things for the wittle baby!”

Caduceus followed her in with a small, tranquil smile and held up a burlap bag. “Diapers and milk.”

Jester gasped. “And I found her the cutiest little purple dress and I just really, really hope she doesn’t puke all over it right away.”

Nott sighed and held the baby out to Caduceus, who took her extremely carefully into his arms. “I’ll set up a diaper change station. Fjord, go get me one of your clean shirts that you don’t mind never seeing again.”

Fjord blinked and uncrossed his arms. “For… For what?”

“For cleaning up poop.”

Fjord winced. “What? Why my shirts?”

“Because you spent the entire time they were gone complaining right in my ear. Shirts, now.” Fjord groaned and sulked out of the room while Nott started pulling the diapers out of the bag. “Where are Caleb and Beau?”

“Sleuthing,” Caduceus said. “Beau said that they were going to see what they could find out about this dead woman and see if anyone knew about a half elf baby being born in town.” Nott frowned but let it go, instead focusing on find a clean enough surface to work with.

“We should name her,” Jester said, rocking back and forth on her feet at a safe distance from the baby's vomit hole.

Caduceus was holding her gently in the crook of his arm, bouncing her and swaying slowly back and forth like Nott had shown him before. “She’s several months old, I suspect she already has a name.”

“Yes, but we don’t know it and she can’t tell us. So maybe we can give her a temporary name, like a nickname. Something cute like… Matilda or Calla Lily or Sunshine.”

“Matilda is nice,” Nott said, laying the baby down on the table and undoing her clothes to change her diaper. 

Fjord was frowning as he walked back into the room. “Matilda? No way.”

Jester gasped at him. “What’s wrong with Matilda?”

Fjord handed his shirts over to Nott reluctantly. “It’s an old lady name. Seeing a kid with an old lady name is just… off putting.”

Jester pouted. “Well, I think Matilda is lovely. Do you have any ideas?”

“He has a silent ‘J’ in his name,” Nott interjected. “He shouldn’t have any naming rights at all.”

Fjord and Nott started to bicker and Jester blocked them out, turning to Caduceus so that she could make faces at the baby. “What do you think, Caduceus?” 

Caduceus didn’t answer right away but he looked thoughtful. “Suvi. She was left alone in a heartless, deadly world but she is a survivor. Suvi for short.”

“Oh, Suvi is perfect! I love it so much!” She grinned and let the baby grab her finger. “Hi there baby Suvi! We’re going to take such very, very good care of you until we find your family. I promise.”

Suvi just stared up at her with big, dark eyes and gave a little cough, shooting spit up down her bare chest and Jester’s hand.

“Oh, why does this keep happening!” Jester exclaimed, rushing over to the wash basin.

Nott finished laying out one of Fjord’s shirts on the table and then made grabby hands towards the baby. “Here, sit her down. Diaper change. I’ll show you all how to do it, but then we’ll take turns, alright? I’m not being saddled with this by myself. And I’m not doing any fucking blow outs, so you just need to draw straws or something.”

Fjord blinked at her incomprehensibly. “What’s a blow out?”

Nott snorted. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

-

Beau was getting antsy. She was sitting in the chair of the guard’s station, chewing anxiously on her cheek and tapping her foot. “Why the fuck won’t anyone talk to us,” she hissed.

Caleb sighed, tapping his fingers against his knees. “Maybe it was a bad idea for just the two humans to do this?” he suggested, watching two of the guards across the room looked at them with disdain and talk quietly with one another. “We cannot get any information if the people here are too suspicious to speak to us.”

“Goddamn it,” Beau hissed, probably a little too loudly. “Prejudice blows.”

It was perhaps the understatement of a lifetime but Caleb just shrugged in agreement. Caleb looked up when the front door opened and he sat up straight when Essek walked inside. “Ah, Essek!” he called, clearing his throat and getting swiftly to his feet.

Essek looked over at them and smiled softly. “Ah, Caleb, Beauregard. I assume that you’re here for the same reason that I am?”

Beau hopped to her feet and marched over to him, tension in every line of her body but Essek didn’t seem bothered. The guards nearby all reached for their weapons, though none of them drew yet. “We’re here to see missing persons reports from the last few weeks but these clowns keep giving us the runaround. We even flashed our badges but they won’t listen.” She snapped her head around to glare at the guard at the desk who had been telling her ‘Just five more minutes’ for the last hour and a half. “A woman is dead and there’s a baby without a family and these fuckers don’t even care cause we’re human. Fuck all of you!” Caleb put a hand on her shoulder, maybe to hold her back, maybe to calm her down, and squeezed. She growled under her breath from the effort it took to keep from yelling some more and just relaxed beside him. 

Caleb sighed and cleared his throat. “Beau is just a little high strung. She is really worried about the baby.” Beau sneered and crossed her arms but didn’t speak. “Do you think you would be able to assist us?”

Essek just smiled, seemingly unbothered by Beau’s outburst. “Of course. I'm here to ask if any of the local morgues were missing bodies, I didn’t think to check missing persons, that’s a good idea. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Essek,” Caleb sighed.

Beau was still fuming when they both walked back over to their chairs and Essek was lead inside a door across the room. “I’m not worried about the baby,” Beau said quietly. “I just want to get her out of our hair. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

Caleb pat her shoulder placatingly. “Of course.”

[yeehawbisexualold]

Prompt (thank you so much, btw ❤️❤️): okay so I have two one for angst: Killian tells Emma how he grew up in slavery? And fluff: Killian trying to cook for emma (which results in him either being fantastic or terrible at it)?

Ok, so I’m already sad af and I don’t think my wittle heart can handle any more angst so I’m gonna put a hold on that first one but the cooking one is adorable and while at first, I thought let’s make the man fabulous at everything, I decided to make him suck at this one little thing.

Emma makes the pancakes.

She’s not a great cook, was never given the opportunity to become one. Her life after prison has been one shitty microwaved meal to the next Chinese takeout.

She’s never been opposed to learning how to cook. It’s just that it’s been easier to not learn. Easier on her body to pop a lean cuisine in the microwave after a long shift, one step closer to passing out in her little bed. Easier on her wallet to get McDonald’s instead of stopping at the grocery store, spending God knows how much money on things she’s sure to burn. Easier on her spirit to read a nice book every once in a while instead of watching the cooking channel.

The internet wasn’t always like it is now. If she wanted to really learn how to cook, she would have had to take a class. And that was time she could be using working or money she could be spending on toilet paper.

Now, it’s just been so long of not knowing and she’s learned that cooking isn’t for her.

Pancakes, though, she can handle, specifically if they’re from a box. They’re not very hard to mess up: add package contents to a bowl, add water, mix, put on a stove, flip. Sure there’s always one or two that end up a little burnt or a little too soft, especially in the beginning, but for the most part, they’re edible and enjoyable.

Killian is a wonderful cook. It annoys her sometimes just how easily he adapts to damn near everything. Electricity? “Wonderful.” The internet? “So many new options for learning.” Movies? “I’m nothing like that curly haired ponce but my, are these visuals stunning. Can I put another film in the player, Henry?” Driving? “If I can captain a vessel as fine as the Jolly, I can manage your little bug, love.”

Cooking for Killian was as easy as any of the other things he’s mastered in life. But cooking pancakes has been a problem.

He’d first been curious about the food after her father mentioned them.

“Have you used my recipe with nutmeg yet?” David questioned over breakfast at Granny’s, one morning.

No, she actually hadn’t and she thought the conversation would end there. But Killian’s interest had been piqued (What are pancakes and what the bloody hell is nutmeg?) and when Killian’s interest is piqued, he’s unrelenting with his thirst for information.

So, she’d taken him home and offered a box of pancake mix to him. He turned it down, insisting on starting from scratch because he wasn’t rotting her insides any further by adding more processed crap to her diet.

They’d pulled up a simple enough recipe online and made sure to add nutmeg to it. Killian insisted on doing everything on his own, hating feeling like an invalid for his hook and his lack understanding of this realm, and proceeded to thoroughly fuck up. He got flour in his hair and on his ears, making him look like a powdered elf. He cracked egg shells into the batter. He couldn’t form anything near a spherical shape. And he burned the hell out of them.

If she’s being honest, it was enjoyable to her to finally see him fail at something. He can’t be great at everything; it’s just unfair.

Further attempts, with blasphemous boxed batter and the like, yielded just as unsuccessful results. She’s tried to offer help, showing him how to properly mix, standing behind him and guiding his arm when flipping. Hell, she even made a full batch up for him and simply asked him to take them off the stove when finished and he still burnt them. He can never get the batter consistency just right and flipping the little circles always ends in disaster.

They’re both unsure as to why he has trouble with them. He’s not a terrible baker. He can do cakes and brownies and all sorts of other sweets. He’s good with a frying pan. Sausage, eggs? No problem.

Pancakes, though, continue to evade him.

So, Emma makes the pancakes.

On mornings when she craves them, she’s forced to get up earlier than she likes (preferring to stay in bed and cuddle her pirate as long as possible. It’s easier to leave the bed once he already has and damned near torturous to leave him, warm body, soft smiles, and rumpled hair, matted against the pillow) and plow down the stairs to their kitchen. Every once in a while, when they’re decently dressed, she’ll call her father and ask him to spend breakfast with them—code for please come make me pancakes. He’s always happy as can be to join them, more than likely seeing through her ruse, but glad to spend time with his little girl none the less.

It’s possible that one day, Killian will crack the pancake code and it will be just one more thing he’s great at. But she secretly hopes he never will. She likes to have something she can do for them and she really likes to have this one little thing that she’s better at.

[dragon-tidbits]

Ford and the kids convince Stan to go to Ren Fair and the only thing that appeases him is turkey legs and jousting