Alright, here's my latest fluff piece, based on a prompt given to me by fourfivesecsfromhim: "Ted tickles his 10-year-old daughter for pulling a prank on him". That topic sat in my head for a long while, unsure of how to go about it. Until an idea came to me, but I had to tweak things a bit. There's no prank (I couldn't think of any prank genius enough) and I moved Penny's age down to 6. I was thinking back to the season 9 episode "Rally", where Penny and Luke jump on the bed with Ted and Tracy, full of hugs and tickles, so I knew I could work with that somehow. Hope you all enjoy!

January 1, 2022

Ted climbed out of bed, slowly, so as to not wake up a still-sleeping Tracy next to him.

His wife was curled up in a ball, softly snoring and covered completely by the duvet, likely to help shield the morning sun from her eyes.

The two of them had a pretty crazy time the previous night, at a joint New Year's Eve party and celebration for the launch of Tracy's new book. So the combination of ringing in a new year and celebrating Tracy's career success was the perfect opportunity to get a little bit wild.

Tracy was right: the two of them hadn't even "gone medium" in a long while—probably not since after Luke was born—so going big was quite the rarity.

So they both took advantage of the opportunity; after all, how often were they away from the kids for a night and had a limousine at their disposal? Ted was pretty tame for his standards (after all, he recalled his vow to not drink excessively after the last time he got shitfaced).

Tracy, however, was the one who went big. Ted had been the one to help her get out of the limo when they arrived home at 3 in the morning, stumbling up the walkway to their front door. Their 16-year-old neighbor, Katie, chuckled lightly as she saw Tracy in that state. Ted paid and relieved her of her babysitting duties, the teenager wishing Ted luck as she started to make her way across the street to her house.

Once upstairs, it was admittedly easy getting a slightly-frisky Tracy out of her dress, but extremely difficult getting her into the bathroom to remove her makeup. He had to do it for her, and likely did a crappy job of it. But, eventually, they were both in their pajamas and in bed, Tracy passing out immediately after her head hit the pillow.

He gazed at the lump on the bed now, then slowly crept out of the bedroom, running the list of ingredients in his head—Tantrum, bananas, bacon grease...—hoping he had all he needed to whip up Barney's magic elixir. Because Tracy was going to wake up with quite the hangover. He'd seen her both tipsy and slightly drunk before; getting smashed was something more rare, Ted probably able to count the times she overdid it on one hand. Like the elusive Bigfoot, it was something rarely seen. (And worth a mention when it did happen.)

Ted walked down the hallway and stopped by Penny's room, peeking in to see his six-year-old daughter sitting up in bed, playing with a couple of her stuffed animals. After numerous occasions where she'd barge into their room way too early in the mornings, Ted and Tracy were finally able to convince their daughter to either play quietly in her room on days off from school, or go downstairs and watch some television, and wait for them to wake up. And, thankfully, she listened to them for the most part.

"Hey, Lucky Penny," said Ted, walking into her room. "Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year, daddy!" she exclaimed, tossing her dolls aside and crawling over to where Ted sat down at the foot of the bed. She wrapped her little arms around his neck and gave him a squeeze. "Where's mommy?"

"She's still asleep," he told her.

"Oh," she said, disappointed. "Because Katie helped me make a drawing for her last night."

Penny crawled back to the head of the bed and reached over to her nightstand. Ted scooted closer and took the paper from her hands.

Her artistic skills never ceased to amaze him. Penny was pretty skilled for her age, adding depth and an amazing amount of detail to her drawings. She had drawn a picture of Tracy, impressively creating curves to her body, rather than a square- or circle-shaped torso like other kids her age would. Her brown hair was drawn with flowy curls and Penny had made sure to sketch her mother's eyes wide and round and brown. Tracy was holding a book—obviously, the one she had just published—and was surrounded by a small crowd of people. More rushed and crudely drawn, but each with their own distinct trait, with varying hues and lengths of hair, and clothing of different color.

Ted wasn't sure if she got her knack for drawing from him and Tracy, or if it was simply a God-given talent. Either way, he was impressed.

"This is mommy," she began to explain, pointing at the drawing. "And those are the poor people mommy is helping." Penny ended that sentence with a hint of pride in her voice. She idolized her mom immensely, and took great joy in the work her mom did, as well as his. When he was in Hong Kong last spring overseeing his latest project, she proudly told everyone she knew that her "daddy's in China making new buildings!"

"This is beautiful," Ted told Penny, kissing the top of her head. "Mommy will love it."

Penny beamed and carefully placed the drawing back onto her nightstand. "Can we wake her up now and have breakfast?" she asked hopefully.

Ted chuckled lightly. "We'll let mommy sleep in," he told her. "She had, er, a lot of fun at the party last night and is very tired."

"Is she hanged up?" Penny asked innocently.

His eyes widened. "It's hungover," he corrected her, wondering why he was even giving his six-year-old the proper term for it. "And how on earth do you know about that, young lady?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Mommy and Aunt Lily were talking last week about how Uncle Marshall was hunged over and in bed all day." She paused. "He must've been dancing a lot is he was sleeping all day."

Ted smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. There was still a bit of innocence left in kids nowadays. "Dancing... right. Yes, and your mom did quite a bit of "dancing" last night, too."

"I can't wait to get big and go to parties and dance so much I get hunged over!" she told him excitedly.

Ted laughed at that. He often wished he had a recorder every time the kids said something silly. He was sure he could write a whole book of the Mosby kids' anecdotes.

"That's not for a long time. For now, you're still my little Lucky Penny!"

He reached for her and she squealed, in that unabashed way that children tend to do. Ted sat her on his leg and proceeded to tickle her on her weakest spots—her neck, her underarms, the bottoms of her feet—as she laughed out in both joy and protest.

Hearing his children laugh was one of Ted's biggest joys. Thankfully, both Penny and Luke were kids with boundless delight who laughed at pretty much anything and everything. (Which was great for Ted's ego; he could still get a few guffaws out of them with his lame jokes.) He hoped this would be something that would last a lifetime; because he knew, eventually, there would come a time when the kids would just roll their eyes at his jokes, not hug and kiss them goodbye when dropped off at school, and ticklefests like this would practically become non-existent.

So Ted hoped, at least, that they would continue to find laughter and happiness in everything around them, even as they became older and jaded. Because Ted had been there. And if he hadn't been able to see the humor and beauty in his circumstances, even when things went terribly wrong, he never would've been able to open his world up to life's biggest joys: Tracy and the kids.

If there was really one thing he hoped he could pass on to his children, it was to not take themselves too seriously.

Penny now wiggled her tiny fingers and began to tickle her father's neck. Ted admittedly wasn't ticklish, but he pretended for his daughter's benefit. Besides, as she grazed the soft skin of his neck and the scruffy parts of his chin, the laughter that was coming out of his mouth couldn't even be faked. Because he was so ridiculously happy, laughing just came easy.

Ted couldn't quite believe it, how his life just clicked into place. Here he was, a house in the suburbs, a successful career, a beautiful wife, and two great kids. He had become the cliché his teenage self once disapproved of, but that pretentious kid (he himself had to finally admit he used to be a douche!) knew zilch about life and contentment. He could philosophize and spew quotes about happiness all he wanted, but until he actually lived his life and sought out that happiness, those words were just empty and meaningless.

"Do you know who loves being tickled? Mommy!" Ted continued, without letting Penny guess as to who. But the little girl's eyes brightened at that, and she nodded her head in agreement.

In actual fact, Tracy was very sensitive to tickling and loathed it. Ted had learned that early in their relationship when he tried to be cute by instigating a tickle fight, but ended up reflexively getting kicked in the face the moment his fingers petted the sensitive skin of her neck. (Billy Zabka surely would've been impressed with her move.)

Morning ticklefests with the family, however, was something Tracy could get behind. With the four of them in bed, ticking and teasing, hugging and giggling, it was pretty easy to turn her attitude around.

"We'll go and surprise her later," he vowed, setting Penny back down on the bed as he stood up. "Now, c'mon. Let's wake up your brother and I'll make you both some breakfast. You guys need to eat a lot of bacon this morning; daddy needs the grease for mommy's smoothie."

The little girl made a face as she climbed out of bed. "Why?" she asked, looking up at Ted both perplexed and disgusted.

He chuckled and placed a hand on the top of her head, guiding her out the door. "You'll understand when you're older."

END