bakerstreet | Papa don't preach

Papa don't preach

The Parenting Meme

HOW IT WORKS:
➔ Post with your characters, one per comment please.
➔ Others tag your muse with a number choice. Either use the RNG or pick whichever you like. For optimum fun, be adventurous! Throw random characters at each other and see what fun shenanigans you can get up to.
➔ Congratulations! Now you're parents. Hopefully you won't screw this up too much.
➔ Have fun!

01. You’ve just gotten the news, you’re pregnant. Time to tell your spouse. OR You’ve just gotten the news, you’re approved for adoption! Time to tell your spouse.
02. Oh my God, you’re in labor! OR Oh my God, time to meet your adoption prospect.
03. It’s the first night home with your new baby. Good luck.
04. Now you know why they call it the terrible twos. How are you and your spouse coping?
05. It’s your little one’s first day of school. You and your spouse are seeing them off.
06. Sitting in the stands for your kid’s big sports game. You two cheer as loud as you can!
07. The only thing worse than a two-year-old is a teenager. Time to discuss what's an appropriate punishment.
08. Hopefully you’ve got fresh batteries in your camera for prom pictures. Maybe your spouse remembered.
09. Your kid is off to college. You can’t believe the number of boxes you’ve got to fit in your car and carry to their dorm.
10. You’re older, wiser and probably going to cry at your kid's wedding. At least you two still have each other.

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((I suspect that we're going to be freaking doing this backwards or some shit. Assuming we're going to keep pulling things out of our asses re: the domesticity meme, I'll stick with Cassie as the main focus of this silliness.))

One positive trait of being married (or born) to an overpowered fire elemental who was choosing to play at having a human life, was that when situations called for it, one could bend the rules. Aaron did not have quite so many tricks up his sleeve, being a well integrated. fully functional and anatomically correct homunculus ((hunkmunculus? :D)) with a ridiculous (but well-used) computer-whisperer ability, one that had come part and parcel with the flesh-bag he'd adopted... but he complimented his partner well, especially when a cryptic note from their altogether too capricious daughter arrived one autumn day, stating that she was off to elope with some god-awful back of the woods dragon. There was absolutely no way that Aaron was willing to allow his baby girl to have relations with a person that still thought a mullet was a good disguise when blending in with the local human populous. That single word, 'elope' brought up horrendous mental images of trailer parks and beer-bellies and half-scaled grandchildren drinking kerosene out of discarded barbecue fuel canisters, and it made Aaron's heart flop around in his chest as though he'd been run through a set of Orphaner tests all over again.

At the very least, now he had a vast wealth of network at his fingertips to track the poor young fool down. All the strife of fighting down the ruthless, human-run organization with the generous aid of Kay and many others had paid off. The redhead had wanted to burn it all to the ground, and she had gotten a fair chunk... but Aaron had better uses for the prize they'd won, and ways to subvert the ill-gotten gains of the organization colloquially known as the Orphaners for his own purposes. Some of those had been to support the community of supernatural creatures (both humanoid and not so much) that had been living in fear for half a century now. Most of the rest had been to secure a foot-hold for himself this far back in the timeline of his own existence. He liked having power and the ability to scan whatever he wanted about people near and far, and to have people deal with it. In reality, the Orphaners had been ground into dust, but there was still an organization policing the world beyond human perception or practicality, it was just led and peopled with other supernaturals instead of mundane humans, now. (It also meant that he could afford the fancy mansion overlooking the river valley all he damn well liked, and that keeping a couple of maids on to take care of the extravagant place while they were summering at their clunky old acreage made life pleasant for both he and Kay.)

In any case, they'd been having a family dinner with their son, Evan, who was thankfully too stoic and snarky to attract the same sort of trouble that Cassie did. A scroll of fire erupted in the centre of the dinner table (children were always prone to showing off when they didn't know any better) that unrolled as a tongue of flame, like a ribbon, untied itself and left a sinuous scar in the middle of the highly polished antique wood. "I'm eloping with Rel and you can't stop me," the calligraphic marks appeared briefly on paper, black like soot, before burning the message to nothing but a fine powder.

Aaron set his fork and knife down on either side of his plate, dabbing his mouth with the side of his napkin as the above thoughts about mullets, trailer homes, scaled mis-cared for grandchildren and all of the other trappings of such an unplanned for life shot through his mind.

The first person to speak was Evan, who, straight-faced and unimpressed, had gone back to eating his dinner once the note had finished its little lightshow. "You knew she was going to do that."

Kay scrutinized her son keenly. "You knew she was going to elope?"

"Not as such." He was cutting his broccoli methodically. "But the signs were all there." The look he gave his parents hinted of a young person's disdain for the unobservant nature of his elders.

Kay was scowling, loathe to admit that she'd assumed Rel was just a fling, that she'd forgotten what young people were like with their newly-discovered passions and their singularly bad decisions. Cassie particularly. "Damn. Well, listen, if you ever decide to elope," she waved a fork at Evan, warning in language she'd long since stopped trying not to use, "don't send home a note that's going to fuck up our stuff." The big singe mark on the table would be hellish to get off. Kay rubbed it and frowned more deeply.

Honestly, the elemental seemed more annoyed by Cassie's choice of communication than by the note itself, but when she looked across the table to her own mate she could practically see the fury lines coming off of his straight-backed self. She quirked a gentle grin at the reversal of roles and suggested, "at least it wasn't an 'I'm pregnant' note." Like almost every parent, Kay tried to willfully forget that her kids were of an age that they were probably diving right headfirst into the world of sex, and that was made much easier by the fact that her halfbreed children at least knew that species barriers weren't a reason not to take precautions.

Anyways what worried her more about the situation was that dragons were so damn long-lived. Not that her daughter wouldn't be... but it was hard to predict, and in honesty Rel was much older than Cassie's very human age group. He wouldn't be as impulsive as her -- she didn't think so, in any case -- and if this was another whim of Cass's, something to be discarded in the next week or month or year, a divorce with a dragon would undoubtedly be one hell of a snarly affair.

In Aaron's case, almost every experience that he'd had with dragons had come to a less than satisfactory conclusion: they were proud, arrogant power-mongers, stodgy and ill-humoured in the best of times, unable to take a joke or a yoke. It was impossible to control them except via extremely pedantic kowtowing and flattery, an ever-growing chess game in which both parties entrapped one another in blackmail, gifts of knowledge or power, or heaven forbid you term it as such -- bribes of shiny and rare artifacts. Aaron loathed the lot of them because they were more or less in direct competition, but whereas the remaining dragons that had survived into current times were long-lived, extremely powerful by default, and wily, Aaron was more or less powerless without a carefully stocked arsenal, and his body was short lived. Even now he sported a few white hairs, and he had to work hard to maintain a fit figure. This body had been built to mimic life too well, in some aspects. Compared to their long histories-worth of stored information, Aaron had been more or less a complete newcomer to supernatural beings when he first arrived on the scene: certainly, no information had survived into the future. At least now he had that information. It was really the only thing that made him a competitor.

Rel, now, he was a ferocious, brawny, but ultimately brainless brute who had designs on, Aaron suspected, a continent for himself, now that the Orphaners had been subverted. He had no tact... or, at least, his tact was on a different level. He had made Aaron's blood steam from the very moment that Cassie had introduced him, and he had been looking forward to the day that he expected her to inevitably move on. "Evan," Aaron addressed his son. "Have dinner cleaned up. Kay, come with me."

Their son was not the kind of kid who rolled his eyes, though by the way he seemed to ignore the request, it was obvious that he didn't think much of the ensuing chain of events. He looked thoughtfully at his parents as Aaron pushed his seat back, but deigned not to speak. Things were going to unfold however they unfolded, and any forewarning on his part wasn't going to change things. That was one problem with having stubborn parents, among a plethora of others...

"Kay," the older man was already turning his attention on the redhead, "please come with me." He wasn't quite shaking, though it was obvious that he would only need the slightest provocation to begin that familiar old dragon rant that he launched into whenever the monster of the week had scales and wings and a mean attitude. Really, he was doing rather well, considering.

She did have to grant him that, at least. Kay took her time rising from the table, shoving one of the last bites of dinner in her mouth and following Aaron from the room while still chewing. She knew what was coming. She'd have to be implacable if she wanted to bother playing devil's advocate, and she wasn't even sure she did. Being a sounding board wherein he could let off some steam before they went to have a little chat with the impulsive youngster might be enough.

And there were, of course, other routes she could take to remedy the situation. Rel was one of the transplants from Europe, one of the kids of his generation sent over to disappear in the sparsely populated northern regions of North America. He'd been sent because he was hard to keep a handle on at the best of times, and if there had been any trouble he'd been stirring up in the meantime that could get him into hot water with the decision-making body of dragon elders back home, well, she could talk to Xaciane... maybe.

On the other hand, much of it hinged on what her daughter said when they spoke with her. She followed Aaron into the living room, not sure if he was leading them all the way to the bedroom for a private, perhaps louder discussion. Evan would be listening in wherever they ended up though, or trying to, so it hardly mattered.

"It's gonna take a bit to find out exactly where she went," Kay warned him as she ambled along beside his stiff-backed self. "I bet she's trying to hide."

If Kay had expected him to wait until they reached a more private space, she would be mistaken. "So find them," he shot back over his shoulder. "I want her back here and I want her now." It didn't matter that she'd long since moved out. She was so very grounded! In truth, he looked to be moving towards his den, rather than the bedroom. From there he'd be interfacing with the wealth of tracking technology he'd stolen or tapped into from the Orphaners or other organizations, doing the same thing.

She followed, a pensive frown growing on her face. "Hold your horses a second, Aaron," she told him when they reached the den, looking to catch the man's attention away from his fatherly rampage. "Cassie's an adult. Young, but technically an adult. Going after her like she's six years old again is just going to make her worse." That was easy enough to predict even without Evan's vast intellect weighing in. Cassie was too much her mother's daughter, and Kay could understand her; hell, if Aaron had ever tried to turn that domineering streak on her she might have been flipping him the metaphorical bird herself.

There wasn't much that Aaron did turn that domineering streak on, at least not personally. Usually he worked through other channels and got other people to deal with things for him -- he'd had enough of putting his own neck on the line in the last twenty-odd years. But Cassie was one of the few people that he'd leap in front of a train for, even if she didn't realize it was for her own good... and right now, he was convinced that she needed an intervention, fiercely. Not to mention, she needed the rant again. God damnit, she was only taking after this beast because she knew it would get under his skin, wasn't she?

Glaring at Kay, he replied, "she doesn't know what she's getting into." He cast over his shoulder. He was settling down in his suede chair, awakening his work station with a negligent sweep of his hand. "She doesn't read contracts before she signs them, and she sure as hell isn't going to know how to get out of a marriage with that dirtbag when she realizes she's better than it." Regardless of whether Cassie was like her mother, she sure as hell didn't have the same kind of limitless reserves that Kay seemed to possess. Even without the fantastic horror of raising unwitting scaly parasites on Lucky Lager and charred pink slime, Aaron couldn't see any of this ending well. Better to save his poor girl decades of ill-thought-out regret and have her go off on him for it, than to let her make such a fatal mistake.

"You want to be particularly helpful," he shot at her, "fetch me my +5 dragonhide robes, would you?"

Kay followed him to his chair and, following his moment of snark, propped an elbow on his shoulder and leaned in. "Listen, asshole," the old affectionate term put forth in the dryest of amused tones, "I'm not arguing that this isn't an incredibly stupid idea. Of course she doesn't have a damn clue what she's getting into, she's been alive for like the tiniest blip of time. This is putting together a battle plan, and Aaron, head-on assault is essentially the worst approach here. We have to try subterfuge."

She stood up again, grabbing one of the other chairs in the den and sitting down, pulling his swivel-chair workstation seat to face her. "Put your incredibly impressive grey matter to use, and put aside that shit about dragons. If she hasn't taken it to heart yet she's certainly not gonna now. Actually you know what, I almost think we should appeal to him. He's got to think it's a bit off, marrying a twenty year old. That's, like, dragon infancy."

"They don't fucking care," Aaron retorted, only able to humour Kay's dictatorial attitude for so long. "Look at the dragon kids, look at the council -- hell, you got yourself in with one of those fucking black bastards before I met you, you ought to know better than anyone what kind of bullshit some scale-faced reptile is capable of with someone like Cassie." He attempted to wheel his chair away, found her holding it too tight to allow for it. "She's got no morals," he growled, "she's going to get herself hurt."

Kay wrinkled her nose, the reminder of Razzie unwelcome as it did summon up ideas of what her daughter might be doing. Well... not every dragon was Raziel, thank god. "You're right, I did, and I know they're smarter than you give them credit for," she pointed out sharply. "I know you're dead fucking set on rending them apart one way or another but try that and she's just going to cling tighter to this stupid idea. Baby steps."

Then Kay sat back and barked a laugh, shaking her head and running a hand through her hair. "When the hell did I become the voice of reason?" Sometimes she forgot that Aaron hadn't done this before. Few things made the elemental feel old, but that fact was one of them. Aaron was flipping his shit because Cassie was his first, the first child he'd raised and loved and had to learn to let go of. If it was hard for her, it was harder for him, and she had at least the experience that in the case of children making their first adult mistakes, not often were they as dire as their parents feared.

The look she was giving her partner softened. "She's young. She'll learn. Aaron, Cassie will be alright. If she gets hurt, she'll recover and you know fucking why, because we'll help her. If we can prevent her from getting hurt in the first place, all the better."

It took Aaron several long minutes of wrestling with himself -- and with Kay's unexpected (and underhanded, he felt,) words of advice, before he could even open his mouth to speak again. His expression changed from one of fury, to sombre reticence, and onward towards a narrow-eyed, calculating grimace. Finally, he focused upon her again. "So we allow her to get pulled into this idiotic nonsense?" He looked as though he had something else planned...

Marriages, what were they good for but to take draconian measures in order to own people on as though they were property?

"Shit, no -- no. I mean, as much as we can prevent it without going all-out dictatorial." Kay shook her head, her wry frown deepening the lines on her face. She, too, had allowed the wiles of age to do their work on her body despite the thing being a little less accurate than Aaron's construct. "I've seen you argue down much more challenging opponents than a twenty-year-old girl.

"I figure if we can just prevent them getting married just now, have them put it off a few more years at least -- well. Give it ten years and either she'll long since have tired of him or we'll know it's a long-term thing. I seriously doubt that she's thought through the fact that she's talking about an actual, legal contract -- and that for a dragon, that means offspring." That thought, more than an impulsive young-love marriage, made Kay squeem. Cassie was way, way too young to be having babies, babies that'd grow up so slowly they'd eat up a huge chunk of her lifespan.

When arguing with others, usually Aaron didn't have his own daughter at the center of the agreement. He grimaced more fiercely -- that was right; even if Cassie were half elemental, any kids she might possibly have (it was too soon for him to be a grandparent! He wasn't ready! His own son was still a teenager, for gods sakes!) with this creep was going to be less human than she was.

"He has to know that. He's just got her as some kind of trophy," Aaron was angry all over again. "Oh god, what if they're being wed right now?!" It was Cassie -- chances were good that she'd shot off her message while standing at the altar or fire pit or what the hell ever it was that dragons used to sign their contracts.

"Then we break out the old draconic texts and learn us a way to nullify draconic marriage contracts and pay for a dragon-proof IUD," she told him grimly, "but that still doesn't make charging in and imposing our will any more likely to work."

Kay's frank talk made Aaron squirm. He didn't want to think about what it would mean to have to purchase birth control for his own daughter -- but then, he hadn't had to deal with that portion of her tumultuous teenagerhood; it was more likely that Kay had been a source for that sort of information, if anyone was.

He turned back to his work stations, a fierce scowl locked in place, and began hunting down everything in his files regarding draconic behaviour. ((That'd be a 15 + what the hell ever for a lore check plz~ :P)) "Find out where they are -- I'm not going to charge in," he reassured, voice half-distracted as it tended to be when he was busy with other matters.

"Roger that," she shot back sardonically, standing from the chair before she vanished. At least research would keep Aaron occupied for a bit. As she cast her net wide in search of her daughter's familiar presence, she toyed with the idea of popping in to talk to Cass for a moment alone, before summoning him out. It might go over better, particularly if the girl was doing this to tweak her father's nose. It wasn't a stretch to say that that might be part of it.

Defocused, Kay pulled back and cast her long gaze over their relative geographical location, particularly in the direction of the mountains some handful of hundreds of kilometers away. There were settlements there that were the touchpoints of the draconic community in Canada, though giving the eye to those places was a token effort at best. If Cass had been there, she'd've been disappointed at her daughter's lack of cunning, and truly there was something gratifying when she found hide nor hair of her errant offspring among the draconic signatures there.

Her search spiraled wider and thus took more time, but Kay was trending implacable today and it was south and east that she found them, landed in the middle of one of the big metropolises. A bold choice for a dragon, the elemental noted, though like all of his kind these days he could pass for human with a bad hairstyle.

She waffled for a moment, but decided that just a quick moment with just herself before bringing Aaron out wouldn't betray the spirit of parental solidity too badly. As such -- checking to make sure they were reasonably alone, and not doing anything she didn't want to see up close -- she appeared in a moment behind her daughter.

"So," she announced with little preamble, keeping her tone pretty neutral, "we got your message."

She knew she was going to have to face her parents some time after she'd sent them that ultimatum. Cassie had been waiting from the moment that she cast the letter home, expecting anything from thunder and lightning to parents storming in to demand to take her home. It would be satisfying to not only take them down a notch or five for making snap judgments, but to prove that she could do things properly and take care of herself.

She'd been leaning on her fiancees arm, grinning that fierce sort of grin that she got when she anticipated trouble on the horizon. Rel had seemed dubious about the announcement, but he was noble and understood that family was important, especially when it came down to those who cast one off of ones own continent and needed a great big middle finger (or claw, whatever the case might be) in comeuppance.

He'd gone into the butchers to pick up a part of their celebratory dinner, and Cassie was waiting outside to have a smoke and wait for the inevitable. Even so, it was a shock when her mother showed up directly behind her, and the girl whipped around at that familiar voice. "Ugh, mom," she greeted the old elemental, "what, are you here to drag me back home?"

"Give me some credit," Kay shot back at her offspring, raising her eyebrows. "We want to talk to you. Your dad is steamed as hell," she warned, "but you knew that'd be the case. If you aimed to make him mad, well, you managed that admirably." Kay's tone had grown sharp too. Seeing Cassie made Kay realize she was more troubled by this turn of events than she'd thought at home.

She regathered herself and, still frowning, subsided to merely wry. She continued before Cassie could break in, "but in any case you're an adult; if it comes down to it, this is your call, but at least pay lip service to respecting your elders and sit down and talk with us about it first."

Even that statement sounded patronizing, and Cassie threw her mom a look that said as much. "I did pay lip service: I sent you a note. You weren't invited." The young woman found her mother to be possibly the most annoying person on earth, not least of which because she had always had the feeling that Kay treated her as some kind of amusing diversion that she could shelf whenever she felt like it. Kay might think she was treating her life with some modicum of sobriety, but there was always the underlying sense that she didn't have to.

Cassie suspected that when Kay said 'sit down and talk with us about it first,' she meant 'let us decide for you.' The girl sure as hell knew her parents' opinions on Rel in the first place, it wasn't like she hadn't heard them a thousand times.

To be fair, Kay hadn't ever said much about Rel at all, neither to Aaron or to Cassie. Most of it had come from Aaron, though it said something that Kay didn't try to contradict the blonde man's rants in regards to the dragon in question, and dragons in general. She'd also never told Cassie about her own dealings with the scaly beasts, but then, there wasn't much to be gained from those old stories. She had generally doubted that Cassie would take examples of dragons from times long past as anything but anachronisms.

The older elemental shrugged, quirking her lips. "Yeah, we noticed that." She had that set to her expression that let Cassie know she wasn't really going to take no for an answer. "Left a hole in the dinnertable. Where are you two staying right now?" She looked around her, taking stock of their surroundings with more detail. "I'm going to bring your father in and I'm thinking if we're going to talk it should be indoors."

"Ugh, excuse me?" Cassie took a drag from her cigarette, her expression unconsciously mirroring her mother's. "You can't just walk in on me -- you said I'm an adult, so treat me like one. I'm more mature than him." The rant. If she ever wanted to hear that again, she could just as easily grind broken glass into her ears and have just as enjoyable a time. At least Rel ought to be done, soon. Solidarity from her husband to be would convince her mother that Cassie was doing just fine for herself.

"Whyever the hell you decided to do this now, announcing yourself in the particular way that you chose to doesn't really whiff of mature, adult decision making," Kay told her daughter more sharply again. "I'm bringing Aaron in. We'll do this out on the sidewalk if you're really that attached to the idea."

~Hey, darling, save your files and stand up,~ she called over the long distance to Aaron, her tone with that particular eroded sharpness she got when Cass was being infuriating. ~I found her.~ Giving Aaron a minute to follow her suggestions and taking surreptitious deep breath in the meantime, she told Cass, "we're not gonna force you to do anything. Like you said, you are an adult. But jesus, girl, how did you expect this to go?"

Even if Cassie had thought this through, she still felt a spike of adrenaline now that she knew the moment had arrived. She threw her smoke on the ground and stamped on it, glaring belligerently at her mother as she crossed her arms over her chest. "You are so predictable," the girl sniped. If she wanted to, she could just disappear from here: her wasn't the only one with the ability to prance across half the world in a few minutes, and that didn't even take into account Rel's fantastic repertoire of spells specific to dragon-kind.

No, this conversation was a long time in coming. If it didn't devolve into a smoking crater in the middle of a metropolis center, it would be a miracle.

"Got it," the blonde crowed to himself, a moment before Kay's voice slipped into his mind. That was one of the redhead's traits that he had never quite gotten used to. The first time she'd done it, he'd thought that perhaps he was imagining things... but this far along, he simple followed her instructions. Better to do so, than to not and wind up on his ass wherever the hell the girl had gotten to.

He was put through a moment of alarming sensory perception before he found himself adjusting to the evening coolness of the outdoors. Where the hell were they, exactly?

Actually, he'd worry about that later. Now he'd adjusted and he noticed Cassie standing with arms crossed and a look of extremely cocky pride. All of the well-formulated arguments that Aaron had set up to knock down flew out of his head at the glare she shot him. "You're coming home this instant," he growled, refraining from grabbing her by the ear. If he hadn't been fed up completely before, now he certainly was.

Straight up, Kay facepalmed. She actually put her palm to her forehead and groaned. Why did all of the people in her life have to be so bad at following simple instructions?!

"Aaron," she warned her partner, looking back up from her hand to the blonde and frowning fiercely to remind him that they had talked about this and no they weren't. To stall and allow the seething man to get a hold on his damned self, she suggested to Cassie again, "sure you aren't gonna take us inside?"

Papa don't preach

10?!

Oh gosh, old Kay!

Old everybody!

Young love~

The worst kind!

Says you.

Trololo

she ain't putting up with any of your bullshit, Dad.

>:U She has to, he's her dad, dag nabbit!

Dad nabbit more like!

Re: Dad nabbit more like!

Ha ha, 'draconian measures'

Ooh, you caught that one. Her I thought I could just slip it right by...

>.>

<.<

Hur hur.

Trying this whole 'new journal' thing that all the kids have going these days. >:U

Not all the kids, just the bad ones!

Like this bad kid? :D (I can't believe this came of a meme prompt XD)

Actually I think there's another one down the page too.

:U Oh my god, I hadn't been reading! Time to introduce the recalcitrant teenagers Y/Y?!

OH GAD let's let's let's! Meme spawn go!

Tossed one of them a PM of ":D you're awesome" in any case. ^_^" p1/2

p2/2

Re: p2/2

p1/2 (incoming old!Aaron journal! XD)

p2/2

Alright you jerks I'll jump on the bandwagon.

WAGORN! (1/2)

(2/2)

Traditional wedding feast: the parents of the bride

Just because this one is a firestarter, doesn't make her a cannibal, too!

Also, the father of the bride would take offense to that particular custom. :I

Kay likes eating barbeque or being a barbeque, not being ON a barbeque.