Part II – Santa

 

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“I told you to turn left, but no, do you listen? Satan forbid you ask someone for directions!” Pam shrieked with exasperation when they and their minivan finally arrived an hour later in which time Sookie and Eric had managed to successfully tuck in the children they had in their care and snuggle up by the fire.

 

“Did we interrupt something?” Niall asked, not so innocently of the couple in mid make-out before the four remaining kids bound and attacked Sookie and Eric with the pent up energy of being stuck in the car with two bickering parents.

 

“Where’s Eva?” Pinnie demanded while trying to suppress a yawn and simultaneously trying to climb Mount Eric who was sprawled on the floor with Sookie. Her three, equally tired but petulantly denying of that fact, brothers followed in quick pursuit as her Sherpas to climb Eric’s tall frame while he tried to stand up.

 

“In bed, fast asleep!” Eric grinned while holding the clambering little girl up high to the pine ceiling. “Where you all belong too!”

 

“Noooo!” they all screamed from their latched position to one part or another of Eric’s body, two were currently wrapped around a leg each while the third boy hung onto his waist. With wide and uncharacteristically clumsy steps he hurried his way to the staircase before they dared let go, flying up to the children’s bedrooms.

 

“Not nice,” Pinnie pouted after he had wrestled her and the boys into their respective bunk beds.

 

“Night, night,” he grinned before kissing away the set frown on her face.

 

“Night, Uncle Ewic,” she yawned before falling to a deep sleep seconds later.

 

 

“Honestly Pamela, it’s like I’m telling you to behave more than Viggo and Eva,” Eric admonished as he swatted her hands away from the berries she was messing with on the plate, arranging them into the shape of a rather large phallus.

 

“Whatever, Mr. Mom,” she said with a roll of her eyes from her perched seat at the kitchen island. “Sorry, I’m not perfect like your other children.”

 

Eric ignored the snide comment as his eyes fell to the infantile handiwork before him. “You know Viggo doesn’t like his food touching each other on the plates,” he said quite seriously while arranging the berries back into their neat little piles with a crisp white border of porcelain in between.

 

“You should tell him to get the fuck over it,” Pam informed pointedly with a signature attitude that wreaked havoc with the other moms at preschool who insisted their children suffered all kinds of intolerances; wheat, gluten, dairy and the likes before Pam would stuff said food containing item into the child’s mouth with an ‘I told you so’ look. The only time it hadn’t gone in her favour was the child with a peanut allergy, so she had been loathed to admit that was actually a genuine one. Though plunging that epi-pen into the child’s soft flesh with force had been quite fun to the vampiress. “The world isn’t going to baby him like you do.”

 

“Pamela!” Eric growled becoming agitated with their usual verbal sprawl on respective parenting techniques. In his opinion she was too hard and uncaring, where he was too soft and indulging. Thankfully Niall and Sookie tempered the extremes to a middle ground.

 

“Pancakes are burning,” she grinned pointing at the black smoke emerging under the hob.

 

“FUCK!” he growled out, seconds before the fire alarms started to go off.

 

“I’m on it,” Pam announced with a lethargic note to his pleading expression while he tried to smother the source of the smoke under the sink. She hovered up to take out the batteries from the infernal noise maker but by the telling sound of thumping little feet above, the damage had already been done.

 

“Careful on those stairs,” Eric yelled up with worry, which was completely ignored by all the owner’s sets of impatient feet causing ruckus at the top of the stairs with a measured amount of shouting and shoving. “I said be careful!” he repeated with horror at the sight of the little ones elbowing each other to get down the quickest. His heart didn’t beat but he felt the sensation of it stopping nonetheless as the smallest child, Pinnie, began to tumble down the stairs with the violence that ensued. Within a second, an excruciatingly long second by his account, she popped out of the melee to safely land in Eric’s arms.

 

“Morning, Uncle Ewic,” she spoke shyly with a good batting of her impossibly long eyelashes as his erratic state settled to find her completely unharmed while the rest dribbled and bounced into the large living area one by one.

 

“How the? Who opened the stair gate?” he demanded, the answer of which came to him from Little Spike who sauntered down last at a leisurely pace twirling a Philips head screwdriver in his hand.

 

“Gonna have ta try harder to keep us out next time, mate,” Little Spike grinned while placing the tool in Eric’s demanding hand.

 

“Should have known it was you,” Eric grumbled at the little delinquent while tucking the screwdriver in his back pocket. “Off you go,” he commanded directing both children to the designated play area that was being overtaken by the noisy bunch.

 

“Got a fag?” Little Spike asked in imitation of his idolised namesake.

 

“Git!” Sookie admonished as she emerged from their shared bedroom with tired eyes. “The nerve of that boy.”

 

“Morning,” Eric whispered before sneaking in a stealthy kiss.

 

“Morning,” she smiled back until they were interrupted by Viggo tugging at his father’s pant legs.

 

“Can I help?”

 

“Of course son,” Eric answered cheerfully before fetching a chair to set up by the stove to follow their normal Sunday morning routine of cooking pancakes together. It had been Sookie’s suggestion in the hope that through learning to prepare a meal it would make his rigid eating habits decrease with time and, in the process Viggo often used his faery magic to restore some of Eric’s inevitable mishaps in the kitchen.

 

His eyebrows furrowed a little when placed on the chair. “I can’t fix that,” Viggo said matter-of-factually while pointing at the blackened and wet pancakes in the sink before his father emitted a tired sigh.

 

 

All but Eric’s cheeks were red and ruddy from the cold while the children glided down the hillside tumbling and falling more often than not into the soft snow between bouts of giggles while Eric hastily tried to tie their scarves just that little bit tighter, set their hats back in place and wipe their runny noses while they wiggled in his hold.

 

Sookie had reluctantly taken a seat on the large family sleigh that stood stationary after falling off one of the children’s sleds on her first glide down the low hill. Eric’s overprotective instincts had soared at the sight of her pregnant body tumbling with Eva to the side of the hill giving cause to a heated discussion till their little girl’s hands sparkled tauntingly, ceasing all further arguments.

 

“Uncle Ewic?” Bran asked from his perched position on the farm horse that pulled the sleigh around the property, his little hand pointing towards some footsteps in the snow. “Whose are those?”

 

“The Tomte in the barn,” he replied without much thought while keeping the child unnecessarily steady in the saddle. “He lives there.”

 

“Is he the baby Jesus, Momma?” Eva asked from her snuggled position against her mother’s stomach hoping to ‘hear’ her future siblings inside.

 

“I don’t think so sweetie,” Sookie answered while wrapping the warm woollen blanket tighter around them.

 

“Are you cold?” Eric demanded with worry. “If you’re cold we’re going inside. KIDS! We’re going inside.”

 

“ERIC! Stop! Continue to play!” Sookie yelled while they simply looked on, waiting patiently to see who would win this round. Little Spike sadly missed his namesake to place his usual bet of gummy bears with. “Don’t listen to him!”

 

“Are you, or are you not cold?” he demanded in a tone that would otherwise put the chill in her.

 

“Eva honey? Are you cold?” Sookie asked figuring he’d sooner believe his daughter than her, despite the revealing bond between them.

 

“No,” she whispered shyly. “Is nice an’ toasty.”

 

Sookie raised her brow, daring him to force an end to the fun the children were having before he grumbled a defeated ‘carry on’.

 

 

“You pwomise Santa knows we’re here and not home?”

 

“Yes,” Pam replied stoically, having become far too bored to be annoyed anymore with hearing that particular question come from tiny lips.

 

“But how does he know?”

 

“He just does,” she answered with a roll of her eyes. “He just doesn’t know where this little helper hid the credit card receipts.”

 

“What?”

 

“Never mind, go to sleep,” she quickly distracted before placing a soft kiss to a forehead. Adding warning to the sight of more questions orbiting in tiny eyes, “Don’t make me glamour you.”

 

 

“Go to your own bed, Spike,” Pinnie complained as he wriggled himself in the warm channel between his sister and his cousin who had soon exchanged their separate beds for one upon arrival.

 

“Lemme,” he whined with a pout. “They all snore.”

 

“So do you,” she whispered with a hiss, not wanting to wake up Eva.

 

“Do not!” he yelled, thwarting Pinnie’s previous efforts and causing the darkened room to instantly light up with Eva’s destructive light and the two little children beside her to grab onto the hairs on their head defensively.

 

“You should be nicer to your sister!” an unknown voice spoke with warning. Eva’s light show was subsequently forgotten as the three little ones screamed their lungs out in fright.

 

“QUIET!” the little man with a large unkempt grey beard and red felt hat bellowed.

 

“Meanie!” Eva cried, discharging the current building up in her hands to his beard and knocking him to the floor in the process.

 

“EVA!” Pinnie gasped as singed hair scented the air. “You killed Santa!”

 

Little Spike’s head finally dared reveal itself from its hiding place under the covers to crawl across the bed before peering over the edge to take in the still form on the floor.

 

“Get Vigí,” Eva whimpered between fat tears. “He’ll fix him. Please let him fix him.”

 

“Bugger that!” her cousin said excitedly with the prospect of the surely giant haul destined for the children he was to visit after them. “More presents for us!”

 

 

A/N: I hope you all liked! More tomorrow! Special thanks to MsBuffy for editing and Charity for the best Secret Santa gift ever 🙂 Joy to the world and all that stuff….

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