December prompts day 1
Ice skating
Dec 1st, 2030
Charlie is already up when he gets home.
Honestly, that should have been his first clue.
But he’s somewhat on autopilot that morning, and mostly glad he didn’t miss his stop on the train ride home. Even gladder that he hadn’t driven to work for that shift, because surely he would have fallen asleep at the wheel commuting on this dim Sunday morning.
He isn’t fazed when he hears someone banging around the kitchen when he walks through the front door at 6:40AM. Doesn’t bat an eye when he sees Charlie toasting Eggo waffles as he follows his usual path; keys on the entry table, dirty travel cup by the sink, upstairs to drop his bag in the bedroom. He answers her chipper “Good morning Daddy,” with an equally affectionate, “Mornin’ Charlie-girl.”
Annabeth is still asleep, leg hitched up to form a protective C around their son, whose knee is bent up to the ceiling, arm flung to the side, body mostly uncovered, and belly rising and falling in slow, steady breaths.
He figures he’ll join them, so he moves quietly, peeling off his outer jacket, toeing off his shoes, the hairs on his arms prickling at the temperature change and sheer goodness of the thought of crawling under the warm blue covers behind his warm blonde wife.
He’s just draped his jacket over the cushioned chair in the bedroom nook when he hears Charlie call him loudly from downstairs.
“Daddy!”
Annabeth stirs.
Charlie calls him again, but this time she’s closer, slipping through the open door before he can go to her. He hears a tired mumble from his wife and shakes his head.
“Daddy.” She wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her front to his.
“Charlie.” He cups her small shoulders with both hands. Annabeth is awake now, turning onto her other side to watch them. Chase stirs now.
“We’re gonna go ice skating.”
He only raises his eyebrows.
“We’re gonna go to the one where Nonnie’s birthday was at.”
“Right now?” He asks. He turns his head to look at Annabeth, who’s getting out from under the covers shaking her head. Chase is pretty much awake now, and nods when his mom asks if he needs to go potty. She helps him down from the bed.
Percy is wrestling the disappointment of the morning cuddle that never was when he looks back down at Charlie. “Is that why you’re up so early?”
“You’re too loud, Char,” Lena sleepily admonishes her sister as she trails into her parent’s bedroom.
Charlie ignores her sister. “Mommy said we could get there early so it’s not as crowded.” The ten-year-old detaches from her dad to scramble onto the bed by the pillows.
Percy sits near the foot of the mattress and Lena follows him without hesitation, climbing into the space at his left.
“How ya feelin’ Lean-Bean?”
“Gonna wear my pink tights because it’s gonna be really cold and I don’t want my butt to freeze off.” She yawns, then leans in close to his side.
“My neither.” He wraps his arm around her, patting her thigh affectionately. She burrows even closer, like she’s trying to fill the space between his ribs. “Maybe I need some pink tights.”
She nods, he feels her head bobbing up and down against his side. “Charlie said she’s gonna skate really fast but I don’t wanna go fast in the beginning. Only when I get more used to skating.”
“Mommy and I will skate fast and you can go slow like a baby with Chase and Daddy.” Charlie is playing with the lattice stitching on one of the throw pillows and only partially paying Lena mind. Percy sighs internally, he’s not mentally ready for a day of the girls antagonizing each other. On ice.
“We’re gonna need to do better than Eggos this morning then,” Percy decides. “What do we want for breakfast?”
“We got chicken nuggets last night because we went to McDonald’s because Mommy almost got into a car accident,” Lena whispers, chewing on the fraying sleeve of her pajamas.
Percy’s eyes go wide. Lena looks back at him and opens her mouth like she’s going to add something else, but she doesn’t. Her head turns and whatever she was going to say dies in her throat with twenty other details that she wants to share with her dad because Charlie hisses her name accusingly.
“Lena–”
“What?”
“You’re such a blabbermouth–”
“No I’m not–”
“You weren’t supposed to say anything–”
“I didn’t say anything–”
“Yes you did you said–”
Percy interrupts. “Okay. Okay. Enough.” They continue to bicker and he raises his voice. “Enough.”
The girls go quiet. Lena drops down from the kneel she’s lifted into in order to confront her sister.
“What is this about a car accident?” Percy asks.
Annabeth opens the bathroom door. All eyes go to her. When she realizes she’s the subject of three keen gazes, her eyebrows go up and she asks, “What?” Chase runs from her legs and Percy helps him into the empty spot on his right side.
“Lena blabbed.”
Lena protests, “No…” And now she looks near tears.
Percy smooths the tangled dirty blonde hair on her head. “Lena, it’s okay. We’re all having a talk.” He eyes his eldest daughter. “Right, Charlie?” She makes a stink face. “A conversation.”
She finally nods, but still adds, “We weren’t supposed to say anything.”
Annabeth went back into the bathroom.
Chase has picked up Annabeth’s phone from the nightstand and now hands it to his dad to unlock.
Percy is feeling simultaneously over and under informed and he can’t bring himself to think about children and screen time before he passes the unlocked phone to the three-year-old and pushes from the bed to follow his wife into the bathroom. He turns back to Charlie and Lena, yanking both of them by the ankle until they’re grabbing at the bedsheets and screaming for him to stop. He lets them go and they scramble from the edge of the bed. “Stop fighting or I’m gonna sit on you.”
They nod together, united against one common foe.
He walks through the bathroom door and finds Annabeth standing at the sink, brushing her teeth.
“What happened?”
She looks at him in the mirror, scrubbing her tongue unhurriedly. She ducks her head to spit.
“Good morning to you too.” Her tone is dry. “How was your shift?”
He pushes off of the door and wraps his arms around her shoulders from behind. “Good morning.” His cheek presses to the side of her head.
“We’re going ice skating today," he begins. "McDonald’s for dinner yesterday, Lena’s wearing her pink tights." He ticks through the morning revelations like items on a grocery list. “And you guys were in an accident?” He says the last part softly, voice cracking at the end.
“Almost in an accident,” she amends in a murmur.
He remains quiet, and after a moment she curls her hands around the forearm pressed tight against her heart and explains what happened. The car that didn’t stop. Breaking so, so hard in the middle of a left turn. Swerving to the right so the car behind doesn’t rear-end them.
He listens, emphasizes how glad he is that they’re okay, presses his mouth to her temple. Silence falls between them and he adds, “Don’t dwell on it."
“I couldn’t sleep last night.”
“I bet.” He squeezes her reassuringly. “It’s a terrible thing to think about, all the ‘what ifs’.” He presses a kiss to her temple again and reiterates. “Don’t dwell on it.”
“I took them to McDonald’s because it was right there and I was too shaken up to drive.”
He nods and offers, “At least it wasn’t a Denny’s.”
She makes a disgusted noise, “I hate Denny’s.”
She turns in his arms, “And the ice skating is because I needed them to think about something else.” She tips back to look him head on and explains, “Charlie wouldn’t stop talking about it and Chase and Lena seemed pretty scared.”
“So ice skating was part of the gag order?” His tone is teasing.
“There was no gag order. Only a promise to let me say something first.”
“Too bad Lena is… Lena,” he says with a grin.
“And I needed us to do something together, as a family,” she adds. “Something fun and memorable for the holidays. Especially after that.”
“Yeah.” He nods.
“You should bring your camera.”
He nods again in agreement. She looks into his eyes, head tilting to the side as she tries to figure out his mood.
He knocks his forehead against hers and admits, “I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight.”
Her laugh is quiet and understanding. “Hypocrite.” He joins her in laughter. “Don’t dwell on it,” she imitates his low voice.
“You traumatized me,” he accuses.
“If I’m traumatized, you better be traumatized.” She lets him go with one more lasting squeeze, heading for the bedroom door and the other three chambers of her heart behind it.
“Me and you,” he calls out. She looks back to see him tip his chin to her in a show of camaraderie. “Trauma bonded since ‘05.”
Her head falls back as she laughs.
