Toys' Law II

Leaving Leah telling a bedtime story involving dragons, porcupines, a gunmetal grey robot named Clarence and a pack of rabid squirrels, Bella rushes to answer a knock at the door. She knows it's one of the pack members because Ruby isn't barking: she's wagging her tail expectantly.

Bella pulls the door in to find Embry swaying on the other side of it. Checking him once over for injury, Bella sees he's fine. Not checking him for anything, Ruby leaps against Embry's thighs in ecstatic greeting.

"Hello Roo," he slurs.

It's then that Bella sees the empty Jack Daniels bottle rolling between his feet and another on the porch steps behind him.

This is serious, she thinks. Definitely worse than an injury or a vampire, because they all know exactly how to deal with that kind of calamity. There are no instruction manuals for emotional upset though and Bella's afraid this might even be on par with Quil's unfathomably misery years ago when his then-crush Claire had dated the Weber kid from town.

"Come on Embry," Bella sighs as she moves to let him in the house. Is there never any peace around here, she wonders internally. Embry stops playing with the dog's ears and moves to cross the doorstep, trips and half falls on Bella.

"Whoops," he giggles like a girl and then the giggle becomes more of a shuddering sob. "Treasa's pregnant." And with that statement he stumbles off Bella and into her living room where he collapses on the couch.

Bella's not sure what to do. Of Jake's two closest friends she finds Embry a little harder to fathom than Quil, who's a genial, overgrown child full of laughter and ridiculousness. (Except, of course, during those few months of Claire-induced agony. Lucky for everyone in La Push who'd gotten sick Quil's lovesick lamenting, the Weber kid decided college was a better idea than a girlfriend. Lucky for Quil, he'd stepped in patched up Claire's broken heart.)

But Embry's not Quil. Dear, dear Embry is usually just as full of mirth as Quil yet there is an omnipresent undercurrent of reticence. Bella knows it's to do with his family and she also knows his girlfriend Treasa has soothed a lot of this uncertainty out of him in the past few years.

From the couch there's a snuffle and a moan. Bella jumps into action and grabs a roll of paper towel, a jug of water and a glass, some muffins and a bucket from the kitchen. She's aware Embry won't be drunk for long but she's not sure if too much alcohol has the same effect on a wolf stomach as a human one.

Sitting next to Embry on the sliver of couch not taken up by his lanky, prostrate form, she pats the nearest available bit of him and offers him a drink and a chunk of paper towel to blow his nose. Boys, she decides, are all the same whether they're five or twenty five: they don't cry neatly like girls do.

Honking loudly, Embry mumbles something about the paper towel smelling of lint. He sits up, drains the water, eyes a muffin suspiciously and starts picking at the edge of it.

Definitely serious, Bella concludes: she's never seen him not inhale his food.

"If your tummy's upset we can save the muffins for later," she suggests mildly, fearing wolf spew. He doesn't answer. She rubs his back in soothing circles and tries again, "You want to tell me about Treasa?" she asks looking at Embry questioningly.

"It is my damned baby, you know," Embry snaps at her. Bella withdraws her hand and reaches for a muffin. She's not hungry after eating the kids' leftovers from dinner but peeling the paper away from the sticky cake gives her something to do with her fingers.

A voice from the hallway says "You'd better hope I never tell Jake you spoke to his wife like that."

Leah.

Bella glances up at her. Even after years of Leah's presence, Bella is still never entirely sure when Leah is serious and when she's joking – it actually took Bella several of those years to realise Leah could joke.

Leah directs her next comment at Bella, "Kids are asleep. I left them with Clarence guarding their fort against the squirrels." She crosses the room to sit in Jake's recliner. Only she and Bella are ever granted that privilege; Charlie just eyes the chair longingly every time he visits. Bella hands Leah the unwanted, peeled muffin.

Embry blinks, momentarily roused from his misery, "I know I'm drunk but who's Clarence and where are the squirrels?" He glances around as if expecting the fireplace to begin discharging small, chattering rodents. Bella thinks it might be more peaceful around the house if that did happen.

Drawing on her inner Leah, a surprising part of her personality she's learned to channel, Bella ignores Embry's question and responds to his previous comment in a sharp voice, "I never said it wasn't your baby."

Across the room Bella senses Leah stiffening, the remaining half of the muffin frozen in mid air on its way to her mouth. Parentage issues might be Embry's brand of baggage but babies are Leah's curse to bear. Or rather, not to bear. It's the reason she spends most of her free time at Jake and Bella's and keeps nagging Seth to finish his engineering degree and marry some smart college cookie so she can babysit their smart babies.

Looking up, Embry meets Bella's eyes squarely for the first time. He's squinting less, meaning the Jack is already burning off.

Bella is pleased there won't be any wolf spew.

"You didn't have to say anything Bella, I can read you like a book. I know you meant no harm though. I'm sorry." Embry stuffs the rest of his muffin in his face and snarfles out something that sounds like "gud murfuns tho, fanks."

Bella regretfully remembers once again that because Jake can see straight through her and out the other side, the entire pack can too. It doesn't matter that Jake hasn't phased since Robbie was born – the La Push wolves rival elephants for good memories.

She thinks maybe she should take up those acting lessons Leah's always carrying on about. Although she can't imagine Leah playing anything other than a femme fatal, Bella thinks learning a poker face could be useful because Embry was right. Her first thought when he'd said Treasa was pregnant had indeed been 'With your baby?' Not that Bella has any reason to suspect Treasa of misadventure, just that it'd destroy Embry if the love of his life made that kind of mistake.

Apparently Embry is still destroyed even though the love of his life is having his child.

Ruby wanders over and licks Embry's crumbs from the floor before resting her head on his knee. Stroking her neat black head with its expressive little brown eyebrows, Embry looks near to tears again.

Leah cuts in with typical tact, "Pull yourself together man, shouldn't we be celebrating? Another little pup for the pack and all that." She glances at Bella, "Maybe now you won't have to have that little brother Lailey's been asking for. She can make do with Treasa and Embry's kid."

Bella says nothing. Ruby's been following her around the house nonstop for the past three weeks. Experience tells her Ruby's never wrong.

At the sound of 'Embry's kid', Embry shudders violently. It's not an about-to-phase shudder. It's a revulsion shudder.

Bella can't help herself and resumes rubbing his back like he's one of her own two babies. "It'll be fine Embry, you're great with Robbie and Lailey, they adore you," she coos. She's too diplomatic to mention last New Year's Day when Embry and Quil's version of babysitting involved feeding the kids most of the candy canes in Forks to keep them quiet. "Sam's boys worship the ground you walk on too."

But neither Leah's brusque statement nor Bella's comforting maternal instincts make any difference. Embry's lost inside himself. He works at finding a way to explain to these two women just what is wrong with another bringing another Quileute baby into the world. He tries the usual: it's a shock you know, Treasa's moods, her parents will hate me, we don't have the money, hadn't planned on this.

No matter what he stutters out, they both look back at him blankly.

Of course they don't get it. One of them would look after any kind of baby, (Embry wonders if that's what the reference to squirrels is about. Is Bella fostering forest critters again?) the other would do anything to have a baby.

And then he snaps. Uncoiling from his hunched position he shouts, "I don't have a fucking dad, how the hell can I be anyone's dad?"

There. It's out there now. He's terrified of not knowing what to do, not knowing how to behave, not knowing who half of himself is. Worst of all is his terror at failing so badly that his child might wish not to know him, might wish he too had just buggered off and left.

Ruby slinks away from Embry to hover near Bella's end of the sofa.

Leah barks out a dry laugh, "You're the biggest damned pussy I know Call! Hell, you can't fail as badly as your father did, whoever the hell he is. Just sticking around your kid is a step up from his actions, regardless of whether or not you're a good dad."

"But that's just it," Embry's mumbles as his anger collapses, "Maybe he was there, maybe he did stick around, only I don't know who he is to know where he was."

Bella is strangely quiet. Ruby nudges her foot. Getting no response, Ruby lies down with one patient eye trained on the front door.

Now the gates are open, Embry's tirade of self-inflicted misery continues. "I've told Treasa she can do whatever she wants, I'll pay child support, I'll help her out, she can have the house and everything in it."

"What'd she say to that?" Leah demands.

"Said I was an idiot. That's when she kicked me out. Dunno where I'm gonna stay now..." Embry trails off and directs a pleading look at Bella. "Maybe I'll just go wolf for a while." He's being pathetic now and he knows it too but doesn't care.

It's Bella's turn to snap. She doesn't snap very often but she always does it best when she's standing up. As she rises, Leah settles further into Jake's recliner, knowing they're in for a good show.

"For fuck's sake Embry, pull your goddamned head out. You've got men all around you who are great fathers. Billy and Harry half raised you along with their own damned kids. Sam, Jake, Jared and Paul are the best fucking fathers I know," Bella feels a little guilty for not including Charlie in her list, but he's different.

Storming on, she grabs the paper towel roll and brandishes it at Embry, yelling a little louder. "Jake and I had no bloody idea what we were doing when Robbie came along. Billy and Charlie were better at changing fucking diapers than we were, but we managed. Sometimes Jake was so shit tired he couldn't keep his eyes open and I was afraid to tell him Lailey was on the way but he dealt with it. Now I'm faced with telling him there's going to be another one and I know he'll be..."

"He'll be what?" A voice from the door asks.

Bella twirls around to see that her husband is home from a council meeting and is standing framed in the entranceway with a cheerful, expectant look on his face. Ruby runs and hides behind him, clearly upset by Bella's outburst.

"Happy?" Bella asks a little breathlessly, as she drops the paper towels and sinks back into the couch.

With one hand Embry instinctively catches the roll of paper towel before it hits the water jug. With the other, he steadies Bella back down beside him. She's a flushed, pink colour and panting a little.

For the first time that night Embry smiles. He looks at Bella and asks kindly, "Crazy pregnant lady hormones?"

'No," she snarls, "Pissed off at my dumb-ass, self-absorbed, mopey, pessimistic, loser of a friend hormones."

Jake is suddenly beside Bella. He shoves Embry off the couch, picks her up and nuzzles her hair. "No, not happy," he says, "Ecstatic. Three is an excellent number of kids."

He would know.

Leah shoves out of Jake's chair, "Pass me that barf bucket would you Embry? These two love birds are making me ill." That's as close as she'll come to saying congratulations.

Embry's shuffling from one foot to the other, patting the dog and wondering where Bella learned to swear like that. Probably from the pack boys, he concludes. Embry decides that if Treasa has a little girl she'll never be allowed near the pack boys. Then he remembers he's not allowed near Treasa.

At least he thinks that's what she said; Jack's making that part of the evening's events a little hazy.

Jake turns, Bella under one arm. He thumps Embry on the back, "Congrats, man. You'll be fine. But go call your woman and apologise. For the next nine months, it doesn't matter what it is, you did it and you're sorry about it. Remember that."

Embry stands up a little squarer. Bella and Leah both know he's still full of doubts but his fears aren't eating him alive anymore.

He will manage. He will be ok as a father. After all, everyone agrees he's the sweet one of the Three Musketeers. (Quil's the joker. Jake's the lover.)

Leah slinks off to check that the kids have slept though their mother's squawking. Robbie opens one eye and says something that sounds like 'porcupine'. "Clarence is on to it," Leah assures him. Lailey's cuddling the rubber squeaky-toy gingerbread house she stole from Ruby.

Returning to the living room, Leah sees that Embry is leaving. There is a little something in his step that could almost be called bounce.

"One more thing Call," Jake says with a definite laugh in his voice, "I've already got your kid's first Christmas present from me and Bella."

Embry is confused but has too much to think about to bother asking for an explanation. He just hopes the present is not a squirrel. Giving Jake a shady look and Bella a last hug with a whispered 'thanks', he picks up his empty Jack bottles from the porch and leaves.

"What are you talking about Christmas presents for, Jake? It's March." Bella asks her husband. She sees an evil twinkle in his eye and wonders if he knows how much he looks like a young Billy.

Jake yawns, pats Ruby and causally says, "Remember Bethly Hemm? After Lailey grew out of him I saved him for precisely this moment. To give to Quil or Embry's kids so they can be tortured like I was."

Bella laughs so hard she cries more messily than Embry did.

Leah smirks and on her walk home she reflects that it might be Jake, not Quil who is the joker.

After Embry and Leah leave, Jake and Bella's house really is quite peaceful – until the kids wake up at six the next morning.

XXXX

Embry names his son Jack Samuel William Harry Call.

Treasa says she's naming their next child so it'll be less of a mouthful.

A month after Jack is born, Bella has twins.

Now that Bella's had the babies Ruby decides she doesn't need guarding quite so closely. Lailey has abandoned the rubber gingerbread house in favour of eating another real one over Christmas so Ruby steals the toy back and lies in a corner gently gnawing it.

Robbie pokes his baby sister Emmylou with a long piece of Lego. Getting no response he decides robots are cooler than babies.

Lailey snuggles her baby brother Stirling and decides he smells even better than gingerbread.

Jake says he's rarely wrong, but four is a much more excellent number of kids than three.

Leah smiles one of her rare, hundred watt smiles. She now has three new babies to teach how to swear.

A/N – Randomly wrote this sequel to the Christmas-themed Toys' Law a while ago because I loved the characters and the little universe they inhabit so much. Been waiting for the 'right' time to post it and, for some reason, now seems good.
The kid's names: dunno where Robbie came from, possible a corruption of my first crush Bobby, a gorgeous boy in my year 2 class! Lailey is a one of the few other Canadians at my work. Not that I know her very well but she's tall, elegant and uber cool – all the things I wish I was! I guess she's Leah's name sake. Emmylou is after Emmylou Harris, one of my favourite singers. And Stirling: well, I love the name and Stirling Moss was one of the best race car drivers ever. He was even cute in a balding British sort of way when he was younger – I think he's over 80 now! So there you have it. Oh, and I think you can figure out where Embry got his names from!