"You know this is the first day off we've both had together in months," Delphine huffed (she'd had plans. Plans that involved chocolate sauce and nakedness).
"I know babe, I know," Cosima consoled. "Though Sarah needed a babysitter so," she shrugged.
Delphine really wanted to be mad (like really, what part of nakedness and chocolate sauce had Cosima not understood) though she could see the excitement twinkle behind her girlfriends thick rimmed glasses and she realised she just didn't have it in her to hold a grudge. Instead she simply resigned herself to defeat, put the jar of Belgian chocolate sauce (yea, none of that cheap stuff) back in the press, and helped Cosima straighten up the apartment.
The doorbell rang fifteen minutes later, and Cosima ran to answer it while Delphine waited anxiously in the living room. She could hear Cosima and Sarah talking, then she heard the door close again and then more talking, this time between her girlfriend and Kira. She could hear them approaching then, and she could feel her nerves knot her stomach. She didn't know why she felt like this, she'd met Kira twice before – abet briefly – and she knew Cosima was great with kids, even though she wasn't.
She realised as Kira and Cosima rounded the corner into the room that it was probably the thought of spending the entire day with a child and the person she was dating that scared her so much. In all the relationships she'd ever been in no matter how serious, she'd always avoided situations like this. It was too domestic for her liking, too much like having a family of her own, which she'd known since she was a young girl she wasn't cut out to do – get married perhaps; though actually raising a child was a whole other matter.
She'd always figured without even asking that it was something Cosima just presumed would happen eventually, which is why she never brought it up – and thankfully Cosima hadn't felt the need to either just yet. Still though, she always dreaded the day she would; dreaded having to shoot her down; dreaded having to tell her no.
"Aunty Delphine!" Kira's shouts dragged her from her thoughts just in time to steady herself as the eight year old threw herself around her waist.
"Hi… Kira," Delphine replied awkwardly, patting the young girl gently with one hand while all the while resisting the urge to pry herself out of the hug.
It wasn't that she hated kids. In fact she thought kids were cute. She thought her sister's son was cute; she even thought Kira, Gemma and Oscar were cute. She just didn't trust herself around them. She didn't know what to do, how to act. Should she treat them like a child? Or should she respect them and treat them more like an adult? Patronise them or risk confusing them? What did they eat? Do you force them to eat something you choose or trust them to choose themselves? What did they do? Was colouring too boring? Was video games too violent? Was playing outside too old-fashioned?
"Okay monkey!" Cosima called, unknowingly saving her girlfriend from the young child. "You hungry?"
"Mhm," Kira nodded enthusiastically, disentangling herself from Delphine and turning back to her other aunt.
"That's what I like to hear!" Cosima smiled. "What're we having then?"
"Sweets!" Kira giggled.
"Hm, pretty sure I distinctly remember your mom telling me to feed you proper food." Cosima put her hand on her chin and looked into the sky, as if trying to recall the conversation. "Yea no, that's totes what she said," she nodded to herself after a moment. "So let's try again, what we having?"
"Uh… ham sandwich?" Kira tried again.
"With brown bread and some lettuce," Cosima added hopefully.
"Ew." Kira wrinkled her nose and recoiled in disgust.
"Fine… white bread a little lettuce, and later we can go for a walk and you can buy one packet of sweets?" Cosima bargained.
"Okay," Kira nodded, grinning widely.
"To the kitchen we go then!" Cosima announced, running over and scooping her niece into her arms, then throwing her over her shoulder before stomping off towards the kitchen door. "You coming?" She added to Delphine over her shoulder.
"Uh…" Delphine hesitated.
"Come on Aunty Delphine, we need to make sure Aunty Cosima doesn't burn anything," Kira pushed.
"We're making a sandwich!" Cosima defended. "How can I burn a sandwich?!"
"You're a scientist," Kira explained as if it were obvious. "If anyone can burn a sandwich a scientist can."
Delphine snorted at the odd logic behind the young girls comment. "Oui, then I will come to make sure nothing goes on fire," she nodded, pushing herself off the couch she'd been leaning against and following the pair into the other room.
She watched mostly in silence as Cosima and Kira prepared the lunch. Cosima let Kira do most of it, and only stepped in to cut the crusts off once the sandwich was prepared. Delphine marvelled at the pair as they worked. The way Cosima bargained with her niece to get her to put more lettuce in the bread, and the way even Kira didn't seem immune to Cosima's charm as she giggled and relented, pushing another handful of lettuce between the slices.
The idea of feeding a child seemed so easy when Cosima was the one doing it.
-.-.-.-
"Okay," Cosima announced once the three of them had finished tidying up the kitchen. "Now to find something fun to do." She looked around the room, as if the activity would be hidden behind the fridge or in one of the presses.
"I have colours?" Kira suggested. "They're in my backpack in the hall."
"Well go get them then!" Cosima insisted. "I'll print off some pictures from my laptop that we can all get to work."
Kira smiled and scampered off. Delphine smiled as she watched her go, and then smiled even more when Cosima took her hand and led her back to the living room, the pair sinking down to the floor around the coffee table. Cosima pulled her laptop towards her and quickly googled a few suitable images, printing them off on the printer in the far corner of the room.
"Got my colours!" Kira announced from the doorway, waving the impressively large pack of crayons in the air.
"Nice job monkey," Cosima grinned. "Now, you wanna get the pictures from that printer over there so we can get to work?"
Kira done as she was told, then handed out a picture each – a smiling flower for Cosima, a cat with an umbrella for Delphine and a teddy bear with a patch in its side for herself – and placed the remaining few picture sheets in the middle of the table for whoever was done first.
Kira seemed enchanted as she worked Delphine noted. She'd coloured in the teddy in only a few minutes (brown being the only real colour she'd needed for that task, aside from the bright yellow patch in his side) and once this was done, rather than start a new picture she simply began adding her own unique touches to her present work; a smiling sun in the corner, fluffy clouds floating by, red and orange and green flowers sprouting from the bottom of the page.
"See!" She interrupted the silence eventually, displaying her artwork in the air.
"Wow, awesome job dude!" Cosima gushed, taking the sheet from the young girls hands to inspect it closer. "Loving how you thought outside the box," she added, pointing to Kira's personal touches.
"Otherwise the picture's kind of boring," Kira explained.
"I see… wise choice, wise choice," Cosima nodded respectfully. "Can we pin it to the fridge?" She asked then. "You know, have an original Kira Manning piece from before you become a mega rich artist."
"Okay," Kira giggled, beaming at the compliment her aunt paid her.
"I'll hang it," Delphine interjected. "I need to get a glass of water anyway."
She rose from her spot on the floor and stretched before accepting the picture from Cosima's hand. She took her time finding a place for it on the fridge door, taking even longer to pick the perfect magnets to hold it in place (not too big or they'll cover some of the art, not too small or they won't support the weight of the sheet). The picture made her lips quirk up into a grin when she looked at it. She thought of how Cosima had praised it and how proud Kira had been of her own work. She thought of how the little girl had been so imaginative, and taken the initiative to rely on her own imagination rather than stay confined by the boundaries set out by the picture.
Delphine broke away from her thoughts when she heard her name being called in the other room.
"Babe, we have a dilemma," Cosima was explaining when Delphine re-emerged in the doorway.
"Oh no." Delphine's lips quirked into a small grin.
"I know right. Scott just called and he needs me to look over some of my old papers for some conclusions I drew on an experiment a few months back," she began to explain, her hands going into full motion as she spoke. "But monkey here wants to go get sweets and since Sarah's going to be picking her up in like an hour and a bit, and depending on how long it takes me to find this research project I may not have time to take her myself so…" she trailed off hopefully.
"Oh…" (Oh no!)
"Please take me Aunty Delphine!" It was as if Kira could see the hesitation in Delphine's eyes, because how on earth could she say no to that face.
"Oui," she nodded slowly, swallowing hard. "Just uh… just let me grab my jacket."
The shop was no more than a ten minute walk in reality, though in Delphine's mind as she stepped out onto the footpath, Kira's hand firmly in her own, that shop may as well be at the peak of Everest. The first few minutes were excruciatingly silent. When Kira finally broke it though, she sort of wished the silence would come back.
"You don't like me… do you?" The young girl questioned, not in a hurt way, just rather matter of factly.
"Pardon?" Delphine choked on the word as a shocked chill ran through her.
"You don't like me…" Kira repeated, this time looking up into Delphine's wide bewildered eyes.
"That's not true!" Delphine insisted (the last thing she needed was Kira believing this and telling her mother, because there was no way she was going to have Sarah Manning on her case).
"Then why don't you talk to me more?" Kira questioned.
"I…" Delphine paused.
Patronize them or risk confusing them?
"Honestly?"
"Mom says honesty's the best policy," Kira nodded, as if she were the adult and Delphine the child that needed that extra push.
"Because I don't know how to act around you," Delphine felt herself blush as she said the words aloud (you're a scientist; you have a PhD and yet you don't know how to behave with a child).
"What do you mean?" Again Kira gently persuaded Delphine to open up.
"I… I've never been around kids that much before," Delphine sighed an exasperated breath as she tried to form the most honest and straightforward answer possible in her head. "I mean I've been around kids, just never on my own, or not when it's in such a… a family like setting, you know," (merde, was she really pouring her heart out to an eight year old right now, really?). "And I've always just had this idea in my head that I'm not good with kids, and that just makes me even more uncomfortable, especially today because I know your Aunt Cosima would be a really great mother and seeing you two together made me realise more than ever how bad I would be at it…" she trailed off absently.
"That's not true," Kira stated, her tone matter of fact rather than comforting.
"You think," Delphine smiled down at her, presuming the girl was merely trying to be nice in light of the fact an adult was obviously desperate enough for validation she'd turned to a child for it.
"Yea… because even though Aunt Cosima's a really awesome aunty, she'd not be a good mom without your help," Kira nodded wisely.
"Oh?"
"Uh huh… she'd never be able to cook anything, and she'd never ever give out if her kid done something wrong," Kira, very validly, pointed out. "So even though you're not the same kind of aunty as her you're still a really good aunty, and even though you'd be a different kind of mom than her, you'd be a really great mom too."
Never in Delphine's entire life as a scientist, as an intellectual, had she been more blown away by a theory.
"You really think that?" Delphine was shocked by the emotion in her own voice.
"Well yea, it makes sense," Kira shrugged. "Oh! Is this the shop?" She added quickly, cutting short whatever Delphine was going to say next.
-.-.-.-
"So, today wasn't too bad then, huh," Cosima commented casually, long after Sarah had come round to pick her daughter up.
Delphine looked up at her girlfriend but didn't comment. Instead she scooted to one side to allow Cosima to drape her body over her on the armchair. Delphine placed her book on the desk, and allowed the brunette to sink into her body and wrap both her arms around her neck and into her thick curls, as she placed her own hands on the set of legs that were thrown haphazardly over the arm of the seat.
"Mm," Delphine mused after a long silence. "It was… interesting."
"Jeepers creepers, not getting broody are we?" Cosima teased.
"Mon dieu, no," Delphine replied almost too quickly. "Not yet anyway," she added after a moment.
"You're not against it though?" Delphine could tell from Cosima's tone that it was always something the tattooed girl had suspected.
"Not on one condition," Delphine replied slowly, methodically.
"What's that?" Cosima pushed herself in closer to the blonde's side, one hand falling to stroke Delphine's cheek.
"That it's you there with me," Delphine murmured, reaching up and lacing her fingers through the ones resting on the side of her face. "Because I have a theory that I'm not suited to motherhood… unless it's with you."