A/N: This was requested anonymously as more in the tattoo artist universe (which you can find here or on AO3 under the title 'Leaving the Villa for the Deaf' and thus the identifier on the title!) and specifically a thing that I promised way back then but never wrote because I'm a terrible person. More kid-fic because, well, that's what is currently being requested and I simply can't keep up with old ones at the moment :(

I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!

The moment her phone rang, April was already frustrated. Andy had promised that it was just going to be a really boring Thursday and that nobody ever came in on that day, and she prepared for lying down all day, sleeping, maybe eating, and staying in bed with him the entire day while Jack was at school. Instead, what she got was him discussing a weekend job with somebody for hours on end, and with yet another for what felt like forever. She couldn't blame him, though. Everybody loved him, and wanted more of him, and sure it made her feel weirdly needy to simply want him all to herself, but he was doing the right thing for them; for his family. After all, she wasn't exactly making any money at the moment from her own art.

But this phone call really didn't need to happen.

"Ms. Ludgate?" a surly voice on the other end crackled at her.

"Yeah," she sighed more than said. "What's it this time?"

"Would you be available for a conference with me? Today, that is. If you can get around to it, of course," the man's voice was laced with poison, but in a way that meant he thought was clever rather than blunt and dumb. "I know you've got better things to do than-"

"I can make it," April said and then instantly hung up. Walking over to Andy in the corner where he was hanging up prints, she wrapped her arms around his waist and pushed her cheek against his soft lower back that felt as safe and comfortable as usual.

"Who was that?" Andy asked, leaning up to reach for one of her prints.

"Mr. Jamm," she groaned. "I need to go for a conference with him or something."

"Oh, you want me to go too?" he turned around and looked down at her, inquisitive. "I totally can, trust me. I'll drop all of this. It doesn't matter about-"

"I know," she smiled and tapped his arm playfully. "Dude, you've gone to the last, like, three and they think I'm lazy. Or maybe I don't exist."

"Yeah, well you said you didn't want to go and be annoyed," he said with a shrug. "You don't have to go."

"Obviously," she rolled her eyes. "He is my son, y'know. I wanna be around when he gets in trouble and makes authority figures mad."

When she added a mischievous grin, Andy's eyes lit up and he shared her smile. All she could give at the moment was a brief kiss on the lips before sighing again, dramatically and for show more than the real feeling, and walk out to drive her dingy car to some stupid public school.

The last thing she needed was some teacher or little kid getting weird and touching her arms. Kids were half-forgiven on the spot. April knew she looked cool - she preferred badass but they're six - but if some creepy elementary school teacher or insane janitor started getting handsy she might have to evacuate the building and set fire to it with shaky hands. These thoughts preoccupied the otherwise boring drive, all while April tried to remember what the best fluid would be for ignition of a brick building and coming up short, and before long she was pulling into the small parking lot of the school.

Inside the gaudy office of the principal, Jamm, was the titular pig himself. When April entered the room, just like when she entered the building with the front desk, a wary look immediately fell on his features. This was the first time that she'd actually set foot in the place since Andy did the registration while she was threatening to kill her sister as they moved her out of their little home finally, and now that she'd made her presence known - and on second thought, wearing a long-sleeved shirt would have been nice, and keep those eyes away from her arms - it was lame and uncomfortable.

"Where's Jack?" she asked instinctively, snarling the words out and sitting down in the chair in front of Jamm's desk.

"Oh, he's currently with the nurse getting cleaned up," Jamm almost purred and April wanted to vomit.

"Why?"

"He's a little artist," he said, "and I see where he gets it."

"Ew," April grimaced and wished that there were ten more people in the room probably for the first time in her entire life.

"So, how are we going to settle this?" Jamm asked, and April wished that Andy would have just punched this guy once. It would have been so cool, and then maybe they would have taken Jack somewhere else but, supposedly, this was the best school in the district.

"I'll tell him it was wrong... wait, what did he do again?" she deflected his grossness as hard as physically possible without simply leaving, already wishing that Andy came with her.

"He drew crazy stuff all over the other children," he cleared his throat and continued, "and I think, personally, that he should be expelled."

"What!?"

"Perhaps we'll just let him out for the rest of the day. This isn't the first time-"

"Andy never told me that," she muttered and shook her head. "Look, he's a kid. Kids do dumb things."

"Please just speak to him," Jamm gestured towards the door. "And, um," he started, smiling, "consider my offer?"

April grimaced and quickly left the room, taking Jack's hand and walking him out of the school. Indeed, his arms were smudged and colored, remnants of the goofy little pictures he'd either done to himself or had someone draw on him. At this point, she was more upset at the nurse for not letting her look at them. When they got to the car, mostly without talking, she took a deep breath and crouched down to look him in the eyes.

"So bud, what'd you do today?" she asked with a smile, like she hadn't just picked him up from the office.

"Nothing," he murmured and looked down.

"Hey, I'm not gonna be mad at you. Just tell me," she reminded him. April was committed to this, and especially to being a better parent than she dreaded she couldn't be. So far, so good.

"They asked me to do it!" he defended immediately, loudly. "I was drawing on myself and he asked me to draw on him, and then Grace and then Jimmy and then-"

"Okay, I get it," April chuckled. "So you did it because the other kids wanted you to? You didn't draw on anyone that didn't want it, right?"

"No!" he half-shouted and April nodded.

"Good," she said. "Remember that, buddy. If someone doesn't want you to touch them, you don't do it okay? Got it?"

"Uh huh," he said. "But they said they wanted it! I just wanted to make them look pretty like you, mommy."

April couldn't help herself when she felt some weird, but not at all strange flame in her chest that was the same, new love that she never knew before having Jack. She made a noise she isn't particularly proud of, but to hell with it because this is her son not some lame adult, and she leaned forward to embrace him in a deep hug.

"Well, you just have to stop doing it even if they want it this time okay?" she asked, him, smiling and holding him just a little bit more before breaking apart. "Their parents will get mad, okay?"

"All right," he groaned in a low voice before going to the backseat of the car.

April drove them back to the parlour, asking what else happened during the day and what other hijinks he got into (and it turns out, the only thing that really constituted as such was basically trading lunches and playing a bit too rough in recess) and, before long, she couldn't suppress her laughter at the strange ways he spoke of his teachers and other kids. Descriptions as simple as she's cool explained every bit about his friends that April needed to hear and, frankly, it was kind-of funny. He didn't seem to get the joke, especially when Jack said Mr. Jamm was a big dummy and she snorted, but by the time they got back, she was laughing at silly jokes he told that were clearly lifted directly from his father and he promised to draw the same things he did on himself for her later that day.

In the end, April asked Andy to let her pick him up from school for a little while. It would help drive her boredom away, she told him, but he knew better. The loudest aww she'd ever heard came from him when Andy realized, intuited, that she wanted to spend more time with her son.

He was just too damn good.