Okay so if you haven't been paying attention to the other chapters, I do not own Hetalia okay? I thank all of those who reviewed, faved and read this story. It really keeps me going and this started out as a feeble idea to see where it went. Anyway, enough of this A/N, on with the fic!
"Okay, now we all saw the little kids, let's give them a break and move our attention to Matt and Katy, okay?" Gilbert sighed.
"Yes please..." Natalya said as she noticed that Dmitri and Nikita were busy munching on chicken nuggets while Ivan and Alfred were trying to get them to limit their intake. Also she did not want them to steal the show from Katyusha as well. Sure she did want to get to know her niece and nephew better but this was also for Katyusha and Matthew.
"Now you don't need to fuss over me..." Katyusha said as Antonio took her hand and sat her down.
"Nonsense Senora, you are the star as well as the little kids today, they got a little bit of attention and you need to get some too." Antonio said. "Francis talked us into this, although it can be quite a challenge. Most of our parties are a little less family friendly." At this Alfred and Matthew looked away, thinking of what they did for their bachelor parties.
Natalya headed over to the snack table to grab herself something to drink and a snack while Antonio and Francis sat Katyusha down and headed to give her the gifts that they had piled up. Apparently they were from all sorts of people that Antonio, Francis and Gilbert knew and apparently had pull to talk them into giving someone they did not know a gift. She could see Gilbert talking the people he worked with into giving gifts for a baby shower and house warming as he was the manager of the station Matthew worked at and he would be a coworker, but people that Francis and Antonio knew weren't in a similar spot. But rather than pay attention to those three overgrown party animals in her mind, she did want to get to know her niece and nephew. Sure, the paperwork was not finalized but after talking with some of her classmates who were going to law school when they graduated and some of the legal professors, unless there was a case where the parents had legal rights then often it was just a wait time. It was pretty much assured that the adoption would go through when she had asked about it. "Hello there." She said looking at Dmitri who jumped up as he was grabbing a cookie despite what Alfred and Ivan were telling the twins, not to eat so much.
"Who are you?" Nikita said looking at her startled brother.
"I'm your Aunt Natalya." She smiled. "I am your papa's younger sister."
"I am the older of us." Nikita smiled proudly.
"You know your daddy is a twin himself?" She motioned to Matthew and Katyusha as Gilbert thrust a gift into his hands and motioned for him to open it up.
"Uh huh. Unkie Mattie is his brother." Dmitri said as he put a chicken nugget in his mouth.
"You must really like those nuggets." Toris said as he joined Natalya.
"Toris!" Natalya said jumping up.
"Is that your husband Aunt Nat-tail-eeee-yeah...?" Nikita asked as she dropped her cup.
"Oh god!" Toris said as he quickly grabbed a napkin and wiped up the spill of fruit punch. "Thank god they put the food in the kitchen with a charcoal grey tile floor."
"You sure know a lot about flooring..."Ivan said as he picked up the twins. "Be more careful Nikita. You could make a mess if you don't hold your drinks tightly. You two are getting too old to have sippy cups."
"Okay Papa... Sorry..." Nikita said.
"It's alright, as long as you learn." Ivan said. It was in a loving manner but it was still stern causing Nikita to look down sad. "Be sure you thank Toris for cleaning up the mess."
"Thank you Mr. Toris, Aunt Nat-tail-yeah's husband..." Nikita said holding tight to Ivan's leg in embarrassment.
At this Natalya dropped her cup on the floor. "Looks like you need a sippy cup yourself." Dmitri laughed.
"Now do not make fun of her, that's not nice. Accidents happen to anyone when you are careless." Alfred said. "Come on Vanya, Dad and Papa want the twins in the living room. Said something abou for them..." Alfred spelled so that they would not get overly excited and remain calm.
"I understand." Ivan nodded and guided Nikita along. At this Toris followed behind while Natalya wiped up her spill ranting to herself in Russian. "So just how did you learn that, I thought you were studying medicine?"
"I worked as a housekeeper my freshman year and in a hardware store the recent few years." Toris explained. "I figured even though I had good financial support from home, it would be good to have a work history here in case I were to stay in America."
"Seems smart." Ivan said as the twins entered the living room and gazed at a mountain of presents and started to run over, causing Alfred to dive and catch them.
"Hold on, those aren't all yours!" He said. "Here, let's sit and see who gets what, huh? Like Christmas in a way. Vanya?" Alfred said as he motioned for Ivan to join him and Dmitri sat in his lap, Nikita in Alfred's as Gilbert headed over to the pile to begin the distribution.
"Yes you two." Gilbert said. He grabbed a box. "This is from Bob in accounting. Bigger than I'd expect out of him. He's normally a cheapskate when it comes to lunch. I've seen him steal left overs from other lunches or old chili from the break room fridge."
"Explains a lot..." Matthew sighed. He ripped at the paper and found a box of diapers from the local warehouse store. "Because my brother's son outgrew these and they had a huge box and it was past the return date. So I give these to you." Matthew read with a sigh.
"What's the matter?" Katyusha asked. "Your coworker was right, these would be useful."
"But he didn't have to say he is pretty much regifting something from his brother and admit he's cheap." Gilbert sighed.
Things like this had continued as the pile grew smaller. Most of the early gifts were for Matthew and Katyusha and a mix of various baby supplies, many sets of girl's clothes and some toys, which led Katyusha to remark they would hardly have to buy clothes for a good long while now that they were given so much. There were a few housewarming gifts of small appliances, bath towels, just little every day things that people thought that Matthew and Katyusha would need when they set up housekeeping, despite the fact they had a lot of these items themselves they had pulled out of storage and had set up around the house. Arthur looked over and saw the twins were getting restless and bored and Alfred and Ivan were both trying to calm them down. "Okay okay, there's still some thing for Matthew and Katyusha but let's give Nikita and Dmitri a chance to open a few of their gifts."
"Can't they wait?" Gilbert sighed.
"Come on Gil," Francis said, "The twins are only three. Let's give them a little bit of a break when it comes to things like that."
"Pppppft" Gilbert sighed. "Mein Vater was not like that..."
"I know he was a very strict disciplinarian. Must explain both you always trying to stand out and Ludwig being such a stick in the mud that ended up with a overly energetic Italian. I am expecting that poor man to have a heart attack all over national news one of these days if he does not learn to relax." Francis sighed moving boxes around to find the ones they had gotten for the twins.
"Oh I don't know, from what Lovino tells me, his brother keeps Ludwig very relaxed even if he seems to drive him crazy." Antonio laughed as Natalya stomped on his foot and Arthur punched him in the shoulder. "Ay!" He yelled as he grabbed his shoulder and hopped up and down.
"That is very inappropriate and you promised me that you would keep your rather uncouth attitudes to a minium. There are children present." Natalya said.
"Exactly what she said." Arthur sighed.
"Oh you're just mad I got to play Jack Sparrow at the 2003 Halloween party and you were stuck with Will Turner." Antonio said as Alfred sighed.
"I remember that year and the year after..." Alfred said as Matthew sat beside them as well.
"God yes..." Matthew said. "Not like Papa didn't mind playing Elizabeth Swan twice." Ivan looked confused. "You see, as proper as Dad can be sometimes he had a fascination with pirates and loves the Pirates of the Caribbean series, even if it isn't entirely accurate historically."
"He even loves the ones without Jack Sparrow. He made that movie series." Alfred said.
"Yeah, that's not even talking about his punk music or time spent at the Bat Cave in London when he was in college." Ivan looked even more confused. Matthew continued on. "A goth club in London and there's pictures, Dad will deny they exist but they do, of his first year in University he had the whole look of the time." Ivan looked over at where Arthur and Antonio were arguing and then imagined that man as a 70s London goth and shuddered. "Yeah it's weird. I will show them to you one of these days." Matthew smirked. "And that Halloween of each year. in 2003 it was Antonio as Jack Sparrow, Dad as Will Turner, Papa as Elizabeth Swan and Gilbert was just a random pirate."
"Please tell me you and Fredka had a more normal costume." Ivan said.
"Yes, I was Batman and he was Wayne Gretzky." Alfred said.
"Okay." Ivan sighed.
"See what I told you about your grandpas." Alfred said to Nikita as she laughed. "Silly."
Natalya had had enough. She worked with Francis and his friends who were known for their parties to keep this one relatively family friendly and make sure that both Ivan and Katyusha were out of the way until the time they needed to be. At this argument going from dirty to petty, she headed forward between Antonio and Arthur. "Dostatochno! Vy vedete sebya kak sborishche idiotskikh izbalovannykh detey!"
"Huh?" Arthur and Antonio replied with slight fear, looking at the anger on her face.
"It means, Enough! You are acting like a bunch of idiotic spoiled children! I know for a fact that Nikita and Dmitri got into sweets when they shouldn't have and had more sugar than children their age should behind their father's backs." With this Ivan and Alfred looked at the twins sternly. "But even then, they acted better than I could have expected out of three year olds. You two are god knows how old and can't even keep it together for your grandchildren. And poor Katyusha never really says much but this is her and Matvey's house. Grow up!"
"Sorry..." Arthur said looking ashamed.
"Lo Siento..." Antonio replied.
"You had better be." Natalya said. "Now to the children's gifts. Normal grandfathers want to spoil the grandchildren by giving them more than their parents would, not scare them by acting foolish."
"I like your style missy." Gilbert said as he laughed at his friends' misfortune of being scolded by Natalya and placed his arm around her shoulder.
"Back off sir." Toris said. Ivan noticed that he had stood up to Gilbert even though he knew that Natalya could handle herself and smiled.
"It seems that Aunt Nat-tale-ye's husband doesn't like other guys touching her." Nikita laughed causing Natalya and Toris to both blush.
"No, no we're not married..."Toris said. "Just dating. Maybe someday..."
"Yeah, we're not quite ready yet..." Natalya blushed as she found two presents from Arthur on the table and handed them to the twins, making sure they got the right ones. "Here, from your Grandpa Arthur..." She ran behind Ivan blushing.
"So the idea of possibly marrying Toris causes you, my indomitable little sister to blush?" Ivan smirked.
"It's not like that..." Natalya said. "Shouldn't you be paying attention to your son?" She said pointing to Dmitri who was unwrapping his gift.
"A book?" Nikita and Dmitri said at the same time as they looked at the thick book they were each given called Children's Classic Fairy Tales.
"Yes, I had something much like this for your dad when he and your Uncle Matthew were growing up and they loved them." Arthur said proudly.
"Oh poo. You will not encourage a child's mind that way." Francis said as he gave the twins a gift. "Here mes petits-enfants, I got you each a play set that will encourage imagination."
"It's not that weird block of wood off Gwenyth Paltrow's website is it?" Alfred sighed.
"Absolutely not! My grandchildren will not have an overpriced bunch of scrap wood that would be what a child in one of your father's dickensian novels would have played with because that is all they had!" Francis said insulted. As Nikita and Dmitri opened their gifts, they smiled. "It is a play knight set, one for each of them as I figured that from what you told me Alfred, Nikita was no damsel in distress."
"She certainly isn't the little slugger. I will have to ask ugghhhhh Allen if he's having a tee ball team to coach this year or not..." Alfred sighed.
"Who's Allen?" Ivan asked. "Sounds familiar?"
"He's one of the guys on my baseball team. Really good with kids, even if he's a big jerk sometimes and makes us have veggie dogs as well as normal hot dogs at the concession stand because he's a vegetarian." Alfred said.
"Oh him." Ivan said simply. He had no real personal opinion on the guy himself as he didn't interact with him as much as Alfred did and from what he did see, he wasn't that bad of a person.
"As annoying as he can be, I know that he would have the kid's best interests at heart when teaching them." Alfred admitted. "He better or I'll beat his head in."
As the day went on, the stack of gifts piled up for the children as the night set in. Antonio had given the twins toy mariachi sets, complete with guitars and maracas, Gilbert had given them a construction set to build with but insisted that they keep it in a box because stepping on one of the pieces would be a nightmare barefoot and there were various dolls, clothes, stuffed animals and balls in the pile as well. And at the end Matthew had given Alfred and Ivan a gift card for the local home improvement store. "Because I know you need to covert two rooms into kid's rooms and that would involve a lot of paint and redecorating." He smiled as Alfred looked at his watch.
"Sorry to bail guys, but we have to go. Got to take these two little sleepy heads home before it gets too late." Alfred said as he noticed Nikita and Dmitri holding onto some of their new toys napping on the floor. "Besides, they aren't totally in our care yet."
"I understand." Matthew smiled as he took one of the boxes and put the twin's presents in there and helped carry it to the car. "So we're finally out and the twins will be in soon. You guys must be so happy."
"If something happened door's always open bro." Alfred said as he and Ivan made sure each of the twins were secure in their car seats despite being fast asleep. "We'll make room for you."
"Family needs to be there for each other. Life is lonely without them." Ivan said as he shut the door quietly and headed to the driver's seat.
"I'm thankful you guys helped us like we did. I don't know what I'd do if you both weren't there to help us out in your own ways, even your disdain of my situation Ivan. Don't act like I didn't notice. You wanted Katy to have the best and I know you're super protective of your sisters." Matthew said as Ivan looked at him annoyed. Although I don't think Natalya needs much help..." Matthew said as he looked at the window to the living room where he could tell that Natalya had put Francis, Antonio, Gilbert and even Arthur to work cleaning up after the party. "She must have some force if she can get that trio to clean up after their parties..."
"She is quite forceful." Ivan agreed. "But Francis and his friends did plan this surprise party so it is only good manners they clean up after. And I will say even with the few rather adult jokes they did make, it was nothing too bad and they kept it clean."
"Well as clean as they can be." Alfred and Matthew said as Ivan looked on curiously at the brothers.
"They planned both our bachelor parties, I think I told you before." Alfred said as Ivan nodded. "And trust me, they held nothing back." he shuddered.
"Well then." Ivan nodded. "I am glad they did not extend the tradition to me as well."
"Yeah I was nearly spending our big day on the toilet from some of Antonio's ideas of fun. Using his son's fresh ingredients at his cantina...uggh..." Alfred moaned, haunted by the memory.
"Oh Antonio has a son named Enrique who runs this place called Tortilleria Y Taqueria Martinez, famous for it's homemade authentic food and sauces made from his specially grown peppers. He has hot, spicy and flavorful. You name the spice level, he has the perfect pepper. So despite his and Antonio's shaky relations, he got some of his sauces and peppers and well..."
"Oh. I see." Ivan said, not being one for more than paprika when it came to spices.
"Yeah." Matthew said. "I got along with him when we ran into each other growing up but he and Al, well..."
"I am sure once Antonio dropped my name, he was more than willing to make the sauces." Alfred groaned.
"You see..." Matthew shrugged with a smile.
"I see." Ivan laughed as they headed back to Sherrie and Tom's and took the sleeping twins back, assuring their foster parents they were well taken care of and kept in line and behaved themselves and tucked them in as they stirred awake.
"Daddy? Papa?" They each asked.
"You're back at Ms. Sherrie and Mr Tom's place." Alfred said. "Don't worry once the people say we can, you'll be living with us soon enough."
"I wish we could make this go faster but one must wait for very good things." Ivan said.
"And having you two for us to care for is the goodest of the good." Alfred said. "Sleep tight."
"Spite krepko, malyshki. Sladkiye Mechty." Ivan said as the twins pulled their blankets up, Nikita sucking her thumb and fell back asleep. Once they shut the doors to their room, Sherrie and Tom greeted them.
"You two seem to be naturals with kids." Sherrie smiled. "I have full confidence when the adoption is final, those two will have the best parents one could ever ask for."
Ivan blushed and looked away as Alfred put his arm behind his back. "I don't know about that... I mean I just remembered what worked that my dads did and what I didn't like and..."
"Spasibo..." Ivan said as Tom looked at him curiously. "It means Thank you in Russian." At this Tom nodded.
"No parents are perfect. No child is perfect." Tom said. "You do the best you can. And I think you are the best that Nikita and Dmitri could hope for."
"That means a lot." Alfred said.
"Well it is getting late. I cannot wait until next weekend to see you two again. I know the twins will be wanting to call you every day." Sherrie smiled.
"Well let them know next weekend we will be starting to decorate their rooms and would like their help picking paint. My brother gave us a gift card to the hardware store." He smiled.
"They'll love that." Tom smiled.
"Take care. See you later." Ivan said as he took Alfred's hand and headed home. He was rather tired himself and just wanted to cuddle with Alfred, knowing soon they'd have a family of their own that couldn't come fast enough. If it is like this most of the time, I would be so happy. And once the twins are asleep I can hold Fredka so tight to me... Ivan thought as he pulled into their driveway, noticing Alfred had fallen asleep himself and carried him up to the bedroom himself and laid him down.
Translation Guide:
(Obtained Via Google Translate)
Senora-Spanish-Madam
Mein Vater-German-My father
Dostatochno! Vy vedete sebya kak sborishche idiotskikh izbalovannykh detey!- Russian- Enough! You are acting like a bunch of idiotic spoiled children!
Lo siento-Spanish-I'm sorry
mes petits-enfants-French-my grandchildren
Spite krepko, malyshki. Sladkiye Mechty- Russian- Sleep soundly my little ones. Sweet Dreams
Spasibo-Russian-Thank you
So how was that? Good? Bad? Short? Long? Let me know in a review. I figured this could be a fun fluffy chapter and soon Katyusha and Matthew may find childcare issues of their own. Hint for future chapters. Anyway, I may be able to update better as all I have is school work and some of the courses so far seem pretty easy. So anyway remember to read (well you just did) and to review. Ciao for now,
otherrealmwriter
aka
Realm.