DAMN LUCKY

AN: I'm working on Home Fires, but it's pretty dark so I needed a little fluff in my life and this plot bunny came to me when I was rewatching 'Charades'. It's been hopping around annoying me, so here you go. This is an AU future story. I borrowed Ivy from my earlier chapters. I had a 'magpie' talkative kid who talked in sentences before she was walking, so I obviously would love to see what Walter would do if he had the same kind of precocious child.

Rated K plus for the *gasp* swear word in the title.

"Are you listening?"

"Mm Hmm." Came the distracted reply.

"Dad-dee!" The indignant little girl stopped in her tracks and tugged on her father's hand.

Walter immediately halted and looked down at his pouting daughter. "I'm sorry, my little essential component, but we're in a bit of a hurry right now."

Ivy was used to her daddy's absurd nicknames, so that didn't faze her in the slightest. However she'd remembered lots of very important things she'd been waiting to tell him all day and since he'd picked her up from the sitter, he hadn't been attending at all. "Mommy says it's rude to ignore someone when they're talking to you." She pulled her little hand out of Walter's and crossed her arms tightly.

Ivy's expression mirrored her mother's so much when she was irritated that Walter had to bite his lip to keep from smiling. The trouble was, his little girl never stopped talking. Unless she was sick, she jabbered all day from the minute she woke up until she fell asleep at night. She talked so much it was sometimes automatic to tune her out. He crouched down so he was eye level with her. "Mommy also says we should accept and forgive people when they apologize."

Instantly, the dark clouds lifted and she brightened. "Okay." Walter stood and took her hand in his again. He slowed his gait some and the two of them proceeded toward his car without further incident. He tried his best to focus at least half an ear on her chatter.

Ivy was skipping along beside him and swinging his hand. She piped up and asked him merrily, "Uncle Toby says you only get math jokes. Is that right? Sometimes Uncle Toby gets stuff like that mixed up."

"On purpose," Walter muttered under his breath. He nodded and answered out loud, "I do understand other forms of humor. But, yes, I sometimes find math humor entertaining."

"Good. Why is six afraid of seven?" Ivy snickered behind her free hand.

Her father rolled his eyes, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "I don't know. Why?"

"Because seven eight nine! Get it? Not the e-i-g-h-t kind of 8. Like A-T-E!" His daughter burst into delighted giggles.

"Yes. I caught that. Very clever." Walter chuckled a little, more because Ivy was so cute than because her joke was actually funny. "I have one for you now. Did you know there are three kinds of people in the world?" When she shook her head, he continued, "Those that can count. And those that can't." He winked at her, dark eyes twinkling.

Ivy frowned for a minute, then the light went on and she laughed. "Oh, I get it! You're so silly! I'm going to tell Uncle Sly that one, okay?"

She kept up an endless stream of words as she clambered into her car booster seat, as Walter made sure she was buckled in securely, as he dropped her garish, blindingly hot pink My Little Pony backpack beside her and even after he shut the door. Her voice was muffled for a few seconds while he walked around and opened the driver's door.

When she noticed which direction the car was heading, Ivy interrupted herself in the middle of her anecdote about a fuzzy stuffed unicorn someone brought for show and tell including an explanation of how ridiculous it was to believe in mythical creatures. "Are we going to the garage, Daddy?"

"Yes. We have some things to do before we go home." Walter was proud he was able to formulate an answer without spoiling the surprise or lying. He might not be the perfect parent, but he always felt he shouldn't lie to his kids if he didn't want them to lie either.

Walter watched in the rear seat viewing mirror as Ivy's eyes went round. She began to almost hop with excitement. Good thing she was restrained or she might have gone into orbit. He should have known she would figure it out. He felt a sudden strong rush of affection. But he shook his head and cringed a bit as her voice went up in pitch at least two octaves.

She clapped her hands and practically squealed, "OOOOooo! It's the twins' party today isn't it?! Yay! Did you and Auntie Happy make the gigantic slip and slide like you said? Oh! Oh! OH! And did you get that dragon bounce house like they wanted?"

He wasn't about to point out the irony of a dragon being just the type of mythical beast she was calling ridiculous moments before. Instead he answered over her animated gushing, "Yes, yes and yes. To all of the above."

As the car was pulling into the parking area, Ivy was already unbuckling herself in her eagerness. Walter had to sternly remind her to stay seated and not to open the door until the car was completely stopped. The nanosecond it was, the little girl was out and running full speed toward the garage entry like a small meteor. It was absolutely no use to scold her since she probably broke the sound barrier and she wouldn't have heard a word he said anyway.

At several points during the next three hours, Walter found himself marveling at the changes in his life as his daughter, the Quinn-Curtis twins and assorted other mostly unfamiliar children first forced him to jump inside an inflatable dragon then made him run full tilt, throw himself down and slide on a heavy tarp liberally coated with baby shampoo and water. He had never done these things before even when he was a child. And he'd never imagined the garage roof being used for such a purpose. But here all the geniuses and Cabe and Paige were, the entire team acting like overgrown kids. Even more inexplicable still, laughing their heads off at each other and at their loss of dignity not to mention the lack of maturity all around. And there was Paige, his stunning wife, discreetly taking pictures and video with her phone when she wasn't sliding or bouncing herself.

Some time later, Walter was slumped in the chair by the front door, while Toby was seated beside him on the corner of the red couch tending to yet another burn on his forearm. He got this one manning the grill. All of the adults sported face paint just like the kids they'd ushered out the door minutes earlier.

Ralph, now a lanky nineteen year-old, flopped down beside Toby on the sofa and gave an exaggerated sigh. "There's a big problem with birthday parties for genius kids," the young man, his face painted like a rabbit, groused.

Toby the tiger looked over his shoulder and raised one black and orange eyebrow. "Only one?"

The boy scoffed, "I get your point. But when I watched the video on You Tube about how to make animals out of balloons, I didn't think anyone would be asking for a squid or a platypus. I must have ruined a hundred balloons. It's a good thing I don't have a latex allergy! Couldn't anyone ask for something normal like a dog or a sword?"

"Well, get a load of this guy?" Toby jerked a thumb in Walter's direction. "I'm Toby the Tiger. I'm grrrrrreat! And Ralphie here is obviously a rabbit. But what the hell are you supposed to be, 197?"

"Ivy insisted on everyone being alliterate. It was either this or a walrus. I'm supposed to be a wallaby? But I'm not sure our resident artists, aka Cabe and Allie, know what one looks like," he answered tiredly, the whiskers beside his nose were smeared slightly and looked to be drooping around his mouth.

The three of them started giggling, everything made irrationally funny by fatigue.

Walter shook his head wearily. "The garage is a wreck. It took two days to decorate and it'll take us a week to get it all cleared up. But it only took a dozen children all of three hours to decimate everything."

"And I'm running on no sleep as it is. Toddlers make horrible bedfellows. Ever since we put little 'Grumpy Pie' in her big girl bed, she gets up in the night and crawls in with us. And somehow she always ends up sideways between us while Happy and I are hanging off the edges on opposite sides. We look like a goal post. On a good night she doesn't wet the bed. Last night wasn't a good night," Toby commiserated. All three of the Quinn-Curtis children had Seven Dwarf themed nicknames since Mom and Dad were aptly called Happy and Doc.

"I found a ham and cheese sandwich closed in my laptop yesterday. When I asked Ivy about it, she said she wanted to see how long it would take to make a Panini with just the heat from a computer," Ralph griped.

"There. You're all set. I'm gonna write you a script for antibiotics too," Toby said, putting the finishing touches on the bandage covering Walter's arm. Then he added for fun, "Why am I doing that, Ralph?"

The young man answered with a mocking smirk, "Because burns cover more surface area than cuts, so they're more easily infected? I think we've played this game before. I'm a genius. I remember stuff."

"A plus, again. I just can't get anything past you, can I?"

Toby and Walter both laughed. "First we went from fixing routers to jumping out of burning planes and action hero stuff. Now we're all about potty training and birthday parties? How did that happen?" Toby asked.

"According to Cabe, whose face is currently painted to resemble a camel, we're just 'damn lucky'," Walter replied. And it set the three of them off laughing again.

But underneath all the feigned chagrin, Walter couldn't help but agree with Cabe the camel's assessment. Maybe he believed in luck after all.