A/N: An anonymous request for more middle-aged A/A!

Interrelated to every other kid-fic I've written in that there's a daughter named Roberta. Somehow that stuck.

For about a week after she's gone, Roberta calls every day. At first she sounds excited, and April's trying to hold it together because no part of her is ready to admit she misses her daughter – someone that had been a bane to her independence for nearly two decades – and also because the calls start becoming more and more infrequent. Andy has much the same reaction, each day without a call just shrugging and trying not to look at his phone sadly.

So they did everything they thought they wanted to do while April was still capable of it.

Not that she'd be laid up, or at least less active, for another many months but Andy wasn't in any shape to be slowing down. They both missed when the three of them would be them and Champion, and then them and Roberta, but sitting up late and eating pizza while watching all of Andy's old reality show contestant videos was fun.

Was.

"Andy," she interrupted his laughter at the flying leap he took on the screen in front of them, "are we boring now?"

"Babe, we have pizza and I'm pretty sure we're gonna have sex after this," he pointed to the screen and another in the long line of embarrassing takes. "That sounds pretty awesome."

"We sound like old people," she turned to look at him, ignoring the irony of her words and his graying hair. "Well, you are old but all of that stuff is boring."

"Even the sex?" he asked, incredulous and grinning.

"Shut up," she bumped him with her shoulder, his arm remaining over hers, "you know what I meant."

He nodded, because he honestly had known but it was going to be hard to get jabs in when she went to term, and stood up. Turning the TV off, he faced her with his arms crossed like that was supposed to mean something to her. After a few more seconds the awkward staring, and eventual eyebrow wiggling, April just assumed they were skipping to the sex right away. That was fine by her, but then Andy took off sprinting for the utility room and she could only be afraid of where his mind was going.

"Andy?" she shouted after him when she heard a loud crash.

Then he came tumbling back to the living room. Under one arm was an inflatable pool and in the other was the video camera they had bought years ago when they were still freshly married. April thought she'd gotten rid of the thing, but apparently when she told Andy to do it all that had happened was he put it somewhere out of sight.

His cleaning skills were truly impeccable, though April couldn't be expected to do much better.

"Okay, so…" he started to walk towards the sliding doors in the back, "I got the pool and the camera."

"I feel like I should ask you what those are for," she squinted her eyes, trying to get her sarcasm across as best she could.

"Oh, duh, well we're gonna fill up the pool-"

"It's October," she reminded him, nodding towards the yard and the frosting grass.

"Okay, and it'll be even better because of that," he laughed her concern off, bobbing his head and somehow exhibiting that same childish energy that she fell in love with.

"Why's that, and why the hell do you still have that camera?" she made sure to tack on that final question, because she wondered if that SD card was still somewhere in the house and not burned like she asked.

"You think we're boring, right?" he nodded, still smiling.

"That's not what I-"

"So we're gonna audition for The Amazing Race," he interrupted.

She looked him up and down – Andy had tried to get in shape at one point, and succeeded for about two years, but then the pregnancy had sapped all of his time to go to the gym and age wasn't helping his impressive figure – and laughed. It's not like she could do it either, but especially not with him in tow, and April had to pull herself back and wonder why the hell she was considering this at all.

Then, she looked in his eyes while he continued nodding vigorously, and thought: what the hell? What was the worst that could happen?

"Sure, why not," she shrugged and shook her head.

Andy responded with even louder laughing and opened the sliding door to go fill up the small kids' pool.

A little humming vibrated in the back pocket of Roberta's jeans, and when she swiped over to the incoming message she laughed. Looking back up, the professor gave her a harsh glare before he continued. Stepping outside, partially because she was probably going to lose it based on the title of file and that still – her mom and dad standing in the small inflatable pool that she used to play around in over the summers, clutching each other more out of heat retention than any desire to be near the other – she let it play.

They were shouting almost incoherently to each other, and Roberta could barely make out what the hell they were saying. She had to make up for that by watching them run around in circles around the pool, still talking but not saying anything she could understand.

She was right, and she didn't stop that horrible, ugly cackling until she got back to her dorm. Biology could wait, this was more important.

Then, one day a few weeks later, April gets an email and a phone call along with a letter that looks way too official to be getting anywhere near her. Somehow the schedule worked out perfectly, and even more bizarrely they were qualified, and April could finish the tapings – she knew those things weren't always live, and this confirmed it – before even really showing let alone being unable to compete.

When she went home, April told Andy and both of them started at each other more confused than they had ever been in each others' presence.

This time Roberta gets an email, and the subject line is so disturbing she thinks it's just another joke like when her mother said they'd be moving to their cabin in the woods full time. Thinking that she was actually serious when that happened, and was only swayed when they had a shouting match over it, she hurriedly clicked through to the email.

There, plain as day on the headline and when she started the embedded video, were her parents on the first episode of The Amazing Race as it entered its 47th season.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," she mumbled to herself.

"What?" her roommate piped up from her bed, giving her one of the myriad confused looks they shared.

All Roberta did was sigh and point to her laptop on the desk, afraid that she would fall asleep and wake up with this being a reality.

P.S. I have never watched The Amazing Race in my entire life.