A/N: I love April/Andy with kids. I love them with a lot of kids. Here's some more on that headcanon that I find completely enjoyable and great.
Requested as something about the big family and the Knope-Wyatt triplets. I hope this works, since I had to slightly alter it to make sense within the timeline.
"So, are you gonna be okay?"
April snaps her head up to look at Leslie amidst the chaos. In their already fairly small house in Washington, a stream of kids fly in and out from the front door and through the kitchen to grab food or barrel across tile and carpet with mud staining their feet. A six year old Jack and four year old Roberta were too busy destroying their tiny yard to show up that often, but the triplets had an insatiable hunger from their apparent boredom in the neighborhood.
"What?" April asks, her eyes blurring from staring down at work. "Sorry, I was just-"
"You need to relax, babe," Andy calls out from behind, carrying a plate full of bagel bites, stacked so wide and high she's sure he cooked over a hundred of them. "Right, Leslie? Isn't stress bad for the babies?"
April sighs loudly because he's right, but she doesn't want to admit it. There's things that need done, and she can't just take a break that day because she's five months pregnant with two babies at the same time - and she really would give Andy a pat on the back if it wasn't her problem - when there's so much work to be done and she's in charge of maybe her largest project in her entire career. Being given a more senior, executive role never felt right to April before when she worked for the Parks department but overseeing the workflow and employment of people that actually give a crap about the future of their clients fit her so well. She really couldn't just ignore the pay raise either if they intended on feeding the two monsters they were going to add to their family of fiends.
"Look Andy, we've had this conversation-"
"I'm just saying that you should probably take a break and go read a book and not work-" he interrupts, almost slipping on some caked mud just under his steps. One bagel bite fell to the floor and it vanished as a Knope-Wyatt triplet quickly scooped it up, uncaring about the contact with their floor. "Leslie, your kids are gonna eat all of these aren't they?"
"Yep," she nods, watching her daughter fly by to pick up the wayward snack food and grab three more from the plate Andy's carrying. "They will eat every single one of those. You might have to order pizza too."
Leslie winces when April sighs. "Do you ever feed your kids? Wait, don't answer that. I know what you feed them," she sneers as Andy puts the steaming pile of freshly baked pizza-like food on the countertop. "Or what Ben feeds them. Seriously, Leslie I told you-"
"I know. I know what you told me April and for the last time I'm not divorcing Ben," April gives her a pleading look for a moment before faltering. "I'm not even going to do what you guys did. Which, by the way, you could have always just gotten your vows renewed."
"Yeah, we know that," Andy nods happily, sitting next to April on one of the kitchen stools. "But it's way cuter, right?"
"I think Ben was right," Leslie shakes her head and makes to leave. "So, I'll be back to pick them up on Sunday. Don't worry about it this time, Andy. It's our turn."
"Sweet!" Andy exclaims. "Does that mean you'll watch ours when April's got a work trip?"
Leslie stares at them with her mouth open before turning around and bidding her kids a goodbye. Inside, Andy just laughs at the sudden escape and April joins in not much longer before groaning and slamming the tip of a pencil into the thin folder on the counter. While she continually makes a noise somewhere between intense agitation and grotesque pains, Andy scoots his stool closer and turns April so that her back faces him. Cracking his knuckles, twiddling his fingers like they always do in movies afterward, he settles his palms against her shoulder blades and gently rolls his hands up to the curves of her shoulders and kneads slowly along them with practiced ease.
"C'mon, babe," Andy chuckles while working the fatty flesh of his palm along tense muscles. "You gotta relax! Stop working just for a little bit, okay? For me?"
"Andy..." she trails off, obviously annoyed at that little trick he just pulled. Despite that, she rolls her neck in response to his strong hands working in relaxing patterns. He's gotten used to giving massages, and likewise improved ever since that first one that almost froze her entire upper back.
"How about you take a break for, like, an hour and then you go back to work?" he requests, and the worry in his voice is what really does her in.
She sighs softly when he presses harder into her neck and she can feel a little relief in her tension. "Fine," she agrees, shrugging his hands away to spin around as best her stomach allows her to. "One hour."
"One hour," he repeats, leaning in to kiss her.
"Eww!" a small voice proclaims, causing April to break away with just a brief kiss and glance over at little Roberta scrunching her nose up at them. "Gross."
"Nuh uh!" Andy bites back with a wide grin before launching himself off his stool to wrap his arms around her and lift her up with an easy swing. "Agh, bug you're getting way too heavy."
"Andy!" April laughs, getting to her feet slowly and taking one of the bagel bites to nibble on over the course of her imposed break. "Getting boring out there?"
"Jack wants to play soccer with Sonia," Robbie says with a raucous giggle fit, fighting back Andy's hand attacking her stomach in tickling twirls of his fingers. "Daddy, stop!"
"What, you don't like soccer?" Andy laughs as he talks, faking his struggle to get at her belly only because Roberta keeps laughing and smiling. April just watches on, leaning back on the countertop and watching their little exchange. "What about hanging out with your sister?"
"Gross, she's a baby!" Robbie almost shouts.
"She's three, bear," April moves over and is very happy that Andy's the one holding her. Every day passes and it seems like she gets another growth spurt. She fears for the teenage years. "You could go color with her! She's lonely."
"Sam is weird," the little girl whines, and April's smile falls.
"C'mon, let's go play with her," Andy bounces her on his arm before turning to walk towards the shared room. "Mommy can-"
"Come with you, since the triplets are about to come eat all of our food," April's eyes widen as paper plates fly into place and three exhausted teenagers suddenly form to stools and take heapings of snacks onto their plates. "Or they already are-"
"Aunt April, didn't you say you were going to go buy broccoli for when we came over?" Stephen asks with an inquisitive look as he bites into the cooling miniature bagels.
"Oh God, Ben really has ruined them," April whispers to Andy, who gives a sudden guffaw. "Yeah, well... we're poor. Blame your uncle for all the kids."
"I'm gonna have more sisters," Jack proudly points at her stomach and smiles, and April can only return it when it's so youthful and naively excited. "Hopefully they're cooler than the ones I have now-"
"Don't be rude," Sonia elbows him lightly in the side before biting into her food.
"Listen to Sonia, buddy," Andy says with a nod.
"Yeah, no being mean to your sisters. Especially when they're babies," April points out, walking over to grab her folder before leaving him a kiss on the cheek. "I hope you guys can handle him. His bedtime's-"
"At nine, we know," Sonia rolls her eyes and April can only smirk at how good she's getting at that. "I don't know why we can't stay at our house. We're fifteen!"
"What can I say, guys," April shrugs. "Your mom's kinda nuts."
She just smiles, ignoring the irony that she's the one saying that, and leaves them to go back into the shared bedroom to find Sam sitting on her bed with a pile of poorly colored drawings. All of them are vaguely shaped people with colors spilling over the outlines and sharp, indistinct mishmashes of oversaturated coloration all over the papers she writes on, and when Andy lets Robbie down she immediately goes to a pile of unused paper and hops onto the bed with her sister. Grabbing a crayon, she looks down at her fresh page and starts scribbling.
April eases herself next to Sam, looking over her shoulder at the work. One hand absentmindedly goes to playing with the long, golden brown of her hair she's thankfully inherited from Andy like Roberta, there's a moment of silence where she just sits there watching with her other hand resting on her bulging stomach. With the scribbling going on around her, and the silence around it, April only has the breaths of the four people in the room to listen to and the little sigh from Sam as she puts her crayon down and looks down at her work.
It's a little person and a much taller one, the shorter with a long bump where its stomach would be.
"Huh, I didn't realize I'd gotten that fat," April traces the outlines of the picture with her finger. She always saw Sam doing the same and when she did it her daughter smiled so brightly, so April kept doing it. It was rare to pull those smiles, and for a three year old that scared April. "Why don't-"
"Ugh, why are they still here," Jack barges into the room, bumping the door into Andy's back. He was standing across the room, watching them on the bed.
"Whoa, what're you talking about?" Andy asks, crouching down.
"They're boring. They don't even want to go and put mud in people's mailboxes," Jack slumps his shoulders.
"The old mud-in-the-mailbox gag! Classic," Andy chuckles before April raises an eyebrow at him. "I mean, you shouldn't do that dude. It's mean. Remember what I said-"
"No pranks unless they're fun," he sighs.
"Oh, duh," Robbie shouts with a wide grin. Sam looks up, surprised. "I know what we can do."
"Oh boy-"
"We can put those little stickers daddy has all over their backpacks," she says with an enthusiasm for a good-hearted goof that makes April's chest blossom with warmth.
"Too short term," April nods. "We gotta think of the long con. That's way funnier."
"And no mean stuff!" Jack points in the air, like he's just had an epiphany.
"Exactly," April agrees. She looks down at Sam. "Hey, baby, you wanna do the prank with us? It'll be fun."
Andy walks over and takes one of the bits of unused paper, leaning his back against the bed as he slides to the floor. April hands him a crayon while Sam decides and looks at her artwork, taking a glance at his rough sketches as the other two kids huddle beside him and snuggle in with him. With her daughter at her side, April doesn't really want to move. As fun as participating in a good old fashioned Ludgate-Dwyer family snuggle would be, right now Sam wanted to be alone with her mother from the looks of it. So, naturally, she's going to stay where she is.
While the others plot, the triplets must be causing all kinds of chaos outside that April just doesn't want to deal with. Or, more likely from the sounds of it, still bored and doing absolutely nothing. Sooner or later they'd ask to watch TV, and Andy's ingenious dual remote plan was going to be too good to pass up on.
As the plot unravels, and Andy figures out how to distract them from looking at Robbie while she changes the channels randomly, April looks over at the picture Sam's finishing up. Beside the people that were obviously her and Andy, there were four little figures. A short one, a tall one with long hair, and two little ones with the same smile on their faces. Nowhere was a little girl with long brown hair, and April leans over to huddle closer to Sam.
"Hey, where are you?" she lifts up the picture to look at it, speaking quietly so no one else looks up and over at their little clique. "Huh, where are you in this picture?"
Sam just shrugs, and for a second April's heart falls apart. Then she has to remember to keep it together, and lays on her back taking Sam's hand and pulling her along for the ride. With another few dozens pieces of paper behind, she takes Sam's crayon and draws in the last little figure to match the rest of the family.
"There you go," she smiles. "Little Sam."
She still doesn't speak, and it's not that she can't but it's gotten more common where she clams up and refuses to talk to anyone. It used to be that April could get her to talk to her, but now she's much more reticent in saying anything to anyone.
"Hey," April nudges her softly with her shoulder. "I love you."
Sam turns and snuggles against April's arm without a word.
"So, when are we enacting the glorious plan?" Andy says, bouncing up onto his feet with the other two children following him.
"I think I'm gonna stay in here with Sam," April explains, her free arm running through her daughter's hair again. "You guys go and screw with them just a little bit. Only a little bit, and remember-"
"It's not mean, mom!" Robbie says loudly, running out of the room in an excited rush. Jack follows not long after, but Andy stays.
He leans down and kisses April, then crosses over her to kiss Sam on the forehead. "Love you, Sammy," he says in a whisper, smiling at her. Sam giggles just a little bit, April twirling a strand of her hair but not moving. "Have fun with mom!"
When he leaves, Sam sighs and speaks in a quiet tone that's barely above a whisper. "Wanna sleep."
"You want me to go?" April asks in that same volume, tilting her neck to look down at Sam.
"No," she mumbles.
April smiles and settles back, hoping that sleep doesn't fail her now. "Sounds good," she mutters back, tilting her head down to leave a kiss on top of her head and get into a more comfortable position. Sam's hand constantly touches her stomach, and April just leaves her hand next to hers for Sam to navigate around. It's strange, having kids that know she's having another kid and, still, it's maybe the coolest thing in her whole life. At least, next to falling asleep with her daughter huddled up next to her. That's pretty freaking cool too.
a/n2: I don't care if people mostly stopped giving a shit about this fic, these characters, or me or whatever. I'm going to try and resume my schedule next week (ooh look at the fancy description update!) so we'll see how that works out for everyone.
Poorly, is my guess.