Hiccups
By: Lady DeathAngel
Disclaimer: Queer As Folk belongs to Russell T. Davies, Ron Cowen, Daniel Lipman, Showtime and others. It's not mine, I'm not profiting, 'nuff said.
Warnings: er, none. Just a bit of fluff.
A/N: Yay! My first QAF fic ever!!! It's been stewing for a while. I mean, I am absolutely addicted to QAF so, of course, I had to do it. It's also my first pointless piece ever. Usually the fluff at least leads somewhere. This is just an interlude. No spoilers and there's really no set time-line, but it can assume all S4 canon I guess. The dream at the beginning, which was just a random intro that I felt like writing, is now begging to be an AU fic. So we'll see if that happens. Anyway, please read, enjoy and review!
Brian was having a strange dream. In this dream he was attending PTA meetings and school plays and he was happy about it. In this dream he was beaming as teachers and parents alike told him how well-behaved his son was and what a good father he must be. In this dream he was married to Lindsay, Mel, Ben and Mikey were some weird free-love threesome with a kid on the way and Justin was always there, his son's best friend's older brother . . . and it was really weird.
He jerked awake as some pig-tailed girl just barely nailed a soprano note in the school's Christmas Musicale.
He blinked slowly and then looked down to see Gus tugging on his hand.
"Daddy," he whispered imploringly.
He turned his palm over so that his hand encased his son's.
"What is it, Sonnyboy?" he asked.
"Some-hic-thing's -hic- wrong," he answered, eyes wide. "I -hic- can't st-hic-op doing -hic-hic- it."
He sniffled slightly and hiccuped again, looking on the verge of a panic attack. Brian sighed and sat up.
"It's just the hiccups, Gus. You're okay."
"B-hic-ut it -hic- hurts."
"What's going on?" Justin asked softly, stepping out of the bathroom and running a hand through his hair.
"Jus," Gus said, turning toward him. "I -hic- got the hic-hic-cups. I don't -hic- like the hic-hic-cups. Make 'em go -hic- away?"
Justin shared a look with Brian and then nodded, walking over and picking Gus up.
"Okay, come on."
"I'll be out in a sec," Brian said, sitting up and glancing at the clock.
It was 4:30 and he frowned, wondering who in the hell got hiccups at 4:30 in the morning. His son, apparently. But he couldn't stay upset. So he rose quickly, glad that he and Justin had gotten into the habit of sleeping in sweats when Gus was over, and made his way into the kitchen.
Justin had seated Gus on the counter and he was currently chugging a glass of water. He swallowed and wiped his mouth, his body jerking with another -hic-.
"It's not -hic- working," he said with a glare at the glass of water in his hands, as if that was the reason his hiccups hadn't stopped.
"Okay then," Brian said. "Let's try something else."
"O-hic-kay."
"Take a deep breath and hold it, okay? Like this." He demonstrated, inhaling and holding the breath for a few seconds and then exhaling. "Ready?"
His son nodded.
"Okay, deep breath and don't let it out until I say you can, okay?"
Gus opened his mouth, took in a huge breath that puffed out his cheeks, and then held it there. He lasted pretty long, swinging his legs and looking around while Justin and Brian waited to see if it was going to work. Finally he let out a harsh exhale and he smiled brightly before his body jerked with yet another -hic-.
Judging by the look on Gus' face, he was done being scared and was now pissed off. Which, when Brian stopped to think about it, was a very Kinney response.
"What else is supposed to cure the hiccups?" Brian asked Justin who shrugged.
"We could try scaring him," he answered.
"No fuh . . . freaking way. He'll never get back to sleep."
Gus wasn't paying much attention to the exchange and had, instead, lowered his head and was talking to his chest, telling the hiccups to stop now because he was sleepy and his daddy and Jus were sleepy too and none of them were ever very happy when they were sleepy and they had to get up early if they were all gonna watch Scooby Doo like his daddy had promised.
When he only hiccuped again, his look went from distinctly Lindsay to overtly two-parts Brian and Melanie. He sucked in his lips and scowled and the expression was really cute in a way. But he hiccuped again and again and left Brian wondering if they were ever going to stop.
"They have to eventually," Justin said when he voiced his worries out loud.
"But -hic- what if I -hic- have 'em for-hic- ever?" Gus said, sounding both worried and irratated.
"You won't, Sonnyboy," Brian said.
Gus opened his mouth to retort, probably to tell him that he didn't know that he wouldn't have his hiccups forever, but squealed instead and launched himself off of the kitchen counter and into Brian's arms.
"What is it?" he asked, alarmed.
"Spider!" Gus whispered in his ear. "It was on my hand."
Justin looked at him confused and Brian mouthed the word 'spider' to him. The blonde's lips formed an 'o' and he nodded. He searched for it on the counter and spotted it. It wasn't a very big spider, Brian noted, but he hated them too. They served their purpose, eating bugs he'd rather not deal with like beetles and flies, but they could be very invasive. Luckily his cleaning service tended to deal with the things before he even knew they'd been there. Apparently, though, this one had managed to escape and scare the shit out of his kid.
Brian watched as his lover used a spare napkin on the counter to kill it, wrinkling his nose as he threw it away.
"Did Jus kill it, Daddy?" Gus asked quietly.
"Yeah," he answered.
"My hiccups are gone now," he said, squirming so that Brian set him down. "Can we go back to bed?"
Brian nodded and slipped his arms around Justin as the three of them made their way back to the bedroom. Once they'd all slipped between the sheets and blankets, Gus nestled between the two of them, they all closed their eyes.
"That was kinda scary, guys," Gus said sleepily.
Brian and Justin murmured softly in agreement and pressed twin kisses to his temples.
An hour and a half later, Gus woke them both up because Scooby Doo was going to be on any minute now and they were all gonna watch it together before his mommies came to pick him up.
Brian rose without much fuss, but Justin groaned and buried his face in his pillow and mumbled something about two more minutes. Gus glared at him from where he was kneeling in the middle of the bed and then looked up at his dad.
"Can I wake him up?" he whispered.
Brian smirked and nodded.
"Have at it, Sonnyboy."
Gus grinned and leapt onto Justin's back.
"Wake up, or I'll tickle you to death!" he yelled.
"I'd like to see you try," Justin mumbled, still half-asleep.
Brian, who took that as a challenge to his son and himself, held a finger up to his lips as he crept around to Justin's other side. Gus giggled softly.
"I'm serious, Jus," the boy said, waggling his fingers even though the blonde couldn't see it.
"I'm serious too, Gus. I'd like to see you . . ." he trailed off and squealed as two pairs of hands attacked his sides, finding all of his most sensitive spots and reducing him to a squirming, giggling heap of Sunshine.
"Okay! I'm up! Stop!"
Gus and Brian considered it and after a second more dropped their hands.
"'kay!" Gus said brightly. "Will you make breakfast now? Huh? Will you?"
Justin rolled over and shrugged.
"Can't your dad do it?"
Gus regarded Brian and then shook his head.
"No 'cause he always makes breakfast and never watches Scooby Doo."
"But I always end up watching the Powerpuff Girls with you," he pointed out.
Gus seemed to consider this and then shrugged with another jubilant "'kay!" before climbing off the bed and making his way to the television set. Within seconds, Scooby Doo's annoyingly catchy theme song was sounding in the background and Brian and Justin hummed along subconsciously as they got up.
The next thirty minutes consisted of the usual relaxed morning ritual they partook in whenever Gus was over, which was basically milling around and paying attention to hygiene during commercials. While Brian cooked, something he wasn't very good at but had learned to do when he started spending more time with his son, Justin and Gus watched the Mystery Machine make its way through a haunted airport terminal while Shaggy and Scooby suffered through a never-ending case of the munchies, Fred and Daphne fought their mutual attraction for each other, Thelma resigned herself to post of indefinite virgin and some old pervert dressed up as a woman to get even with his ex-boyfriend. Or something.
Later, as they all watched Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup battle Him while eating the surprisingly good pancakes Brian had made, he thought about how domestic it all felt.
"But only in a non-canonic way unbound by the limitations of the language and the conventionality of most people's thinking, right?" Justin said with a grin when he commented on it.
Brian took a moment to think about it and then shrugged.
"It just is, I guess," he said. "And for some reason, I don't mind it so much."
Justin just smiled and picked up their used dishes and an hour later they were sending a freshly showered Gus home with Lindsay, the little boy recounting the harrowing experiences of the night before.
"So," Justin said, sliding his arms around Brian's waist and kissing his shoulder. "Wanna go to Babylon later tonight?"
Brian shrugged.
"I dunno. I was thinking we could stay in tonight . . . you can cook your mom's meatloaf and we can look at the pictures of the time we took the kids to DisneyWorld."
Justin laughed and pressed their foreheads together.
"It's only a matter of time, you know," he said. "Soon enough Gus'll start saying he wants to meet Mickey Mouse and you won't be able to say no and the next thing we all know we're on a plane to the Magic Kingdom."
Brian made a face.
"Come on, Sunshine, let's not rush things. Besides, there's no way I'm sending my kid off to breeder central for a vacation. It's bad enough he's being raised by a bunch of dykes."
"I dunno, Bri. First step domesticity . . . next step long," He kissed him. "Stressful," and again. "Vacations in Florida and California. Just us and the breeders."
Brian chuckled.
"Yeah. Breeders in animal costumes."
"And breeders serving our soft-drinks."
"And breeders snapping photos of us the minute we step into the park."
"And don't forget my personal favorite: breeders on parade."
"Urgh, all this straight talk has me feeling itchy," Brian told him.
Justin ran his tongue over his lover's lips and smiled.
"I think I've got just the thing for that."
"Mmm. But . . . if Gus ever says the words 'can we go meet Mickey?' remind me to tell him no."