Chapter Nine: Come Down to Earth Again

"Should they be watching that?" Vince asked, nodding towards the two toddlers—one auburn-haired three-year-old girl, and a younger, black-haired boy, with his thumb in his mouth. Both were sitting, seemingly enraptured, in front of a movie about pirates.

Trip looked towards the half-siblings he'd been babysitting and shrugged.

"They seem to like it."

"Wouldn't Elaine prefer something about princesses and fairies?"

"Pete wouldn't," Trip pointed out. "And I haven't heard Elaine complaining."

"Fair enough; just don't let your mother find out your sister saw this. She'd say it's too violent and will cause nightmares."

Trip remembered a time when having a nightmare meant his father would come into his room and lay with him until he fell asleep. He also remembered the period after his father had been framed, when he would have nightmares about exploding trains and masked fiends. Only when he woke up from those, his father wasn't there to comfort him.

His siblings would never have to go through any of that.

"Nightmares build character," Trip said aloud.

"Philosophy won't keep your mom from grounding you, so you'd better hope Elaine sleeps well tonight.

"In the meanwhile, why don't you go do your homework?" Vince suggested.

"It won't take me long. Dad, can we talk first?"

"Sure." They headed into the teenager's room. Vince took the chair by the desk and his son sat on the edge of the bed. "What's on your mind?" Vince asked.

"Were you ever going to tell me that you're the Cape?"

The elder Faraday's eyes went wide; the air seemed to whoosh out of his lungs, so he took a deep breath before speaking.

"Wh-what?"

"No; don't make this worse! Don't pretend you're not," Trip was vehement.

"I was going to tell you—eventually, when you were older…"

"How old exactly? I'll be sixteen in a few months! Were you waiting for me to go off to college, maybe grad school?"

"I don't know! Trip, I'm sorry. I should have planned this better, but I swear I wasn't going to keep it from you forever. You believe me, don't you?"

Trip looked into his father's eyes for a moment, assessing, and then sighed.

"Yeah, I believe you." Ruvi had cast a number of aspersions on his father's intelligence over the years. Considering the nature of the deception, Trip privately had to concede that Ruvi might be onto something. (When Trip was nine going on ten, a real live superhero made sense. Things seemed very different when you were fifteen going on sixteen.)

"It's just—you've been the Cape all these years…"

"How did you find out?" Vince asked.

"You're never around when shi—when stuff is going down," Trip shook his head. "You never bothered to keep Orwell's identity a secret around here. I started to wonder how you met her and Rollo and the gang. And I figured that was around the time we thought you were dead, which was when the Cape first showed up.

"And I haven't seen you as the Cape face-to-face in a long time, but I remembered that I still have the surveillance footage from mom's old apartment building.

"It recorded sound too, you know. And you never did that good a job disguising your voice. You tried to lower it a little, I guess, but when you're listening for it, you hear the similarities." (He'd then talked to a somewhat inebriated 'Uncle' Max to confirm his suspicions, but his dad didn't need to know that.)

"Dad, long underwear and a cape, seriously?" Trip teased.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Vince defended himself. "It let me see you, speak to you again. And Peter, too, though it was for a different reason back then."

"What do you mean?" Trip asked.

"If you know about me, it's probably time you knew the truth about Peter, too." Vince bit his lip. "But—"

"You'd have to swear it doesn't leave this room," Peter interrupted, entering and closing the door behind him.

"Peter, I didn't hear you come home," Vince said.

"Clearly; really, Faraday, if he's going to know this, it should come from me."

"Maybe this was a bad idea. He'll hate you," Vince whispered.

"He's a teenager; I'm his stepfather. He's going to hate me either way. Let it be for a legitimate reason, at least." Fleming sat on the bed near his stepson and faced him.

"Trip, I am," he cleared his throat, "that is, I used to be Chess."

"What?!"

"I'd say your father's rather cured me of my villainous tendencies over the years. Why, I haven't killed anyone since—honey, do you remember the last person I killed?" Peter turned to his husband.

"You're screwing this up," Vince answered.

"Well, if there's any good way to explain a past as a serial killer—in fact, as the serial killer who wrecked your home—why don't you enlighten me?"

"I might be sick," Trip squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before opening them. No, he wasn't actually nauseous, but he was disgusted. "Dad, have you known about him this whole time? How the hell could you marry Chess?"

"Now don't blame him. We were both rather inebriated at the time," Peter explained, as if that made everything better.

"Again, not helping, dear," Vince chastised his husband.

"Well, excuse me!" Peter threw his hands in the air in exasperation. "I don't exactly make a habit of telling people about Chess!"

"Look, let me speak to Trip. You go look after the rug rats. Somebody should be keeping an eye on them."

"Fine," Peter acquiesced, heading out of the teen's bedroom.

"Dad, I don't understand," Trip said. "You hated Chess. You told me he was evil. You said you were going to get him—I didn't think you meant you were going to get him to marry you!"

"No, that wasn't what I had in mind," Vince gave a half-smile. "I know this is hard for you to digest. But Peter and I fell for each other and he's not the monster he used to be. Come with me. Let me show you something."

He lead his son back out into the living room, where Peter was holding their son on his lap. Pete Junior smiled at the face above him, gurgling, "Papa!"

"Tell me what you see," Vince said to his namesake.

"They love each other," Trip acknowledged. And he knew in that instant that he had the power to do exactly what Fleming had done to him—he could separate father and son by bringing in the (federal) authorities and telling them who Chess was. But he didn't have it in him; couldn't devastate his little brother the way he had been devastated years ago. He turned to his father.

"How's Pete going to feel when he learns the truth about his 'Papa'?"

"We'll tell him when he's older," Vince answered. "And in the meantime, we're not going to vilify Chess. I know—Chess did horrible things and we're not going to lie about them. We're not going to pretend they were justified. But you can hate the action without hating the person."

Trip looked again at his baby brother. Pete continued to smile up at his Papa. But then the smile disappeared; the boy's face scrunched up in pain and he began to wail.

"Vince!" Peter called. "Get the—"

"Teething ring," Vince finished for him, "coming right up."

Elaine, meanwhile, made her way over to Trip, scowling. It was eerie how much that scowl resembled their mother's.

"Twip! Wan' go home!" She raised her little hands over her ears to block out the noise.

"Play date's over," Vince Faraday the Third observed. "Don't worry; Mom should be picking us up soon."

"Why's your bwother so loud?" she moaned. (She accepted that the brother of her brother was not her sibling, even though she had no idea how that worked.)

"He's in pain. His teeth are coming in; you remember what it was like when your teeth were growing?" The little girl stared back at him blankly. "Of course you don't." She probably thinks she behaved like a little angel.

~VF~

Three years later:

"You're kidding," Vince said, staring at Peter.

"No, I'm not. See for yourself," he handed the newspaper to the younger man.

"They're making a movie about me?" The vigilante's expression was somewhere between confused and ecstatic.

"Don't flatter yourself. They're making a movie about the comic book you copied from." He sneered, as if saying, whereas I didn't have to steal my idea.

"Graphic novel," Vince corrected him automatically.

"Same difference," the billionaire maintained. "I suppose the kids will want to see it when it comes out."

"I don't know about Pete, but Trip won't. He's not too fond of the Cape anymore."

"That is because teenagers' parents aren't allowed to be 'cool.' He'll get over it," he still loves you. "You're still his father. Make him take his brother to the movie."

"Because ordering him around will make me seem cool?"

"No, because that way he'll have an excuse for seeing the movie, which he'll no doubt secretly want to see anyway."

"What makes you say that?" the hero asked.

"I say that because instead of hiding copies of Playboy under his bed like normal teenage males, he's stashing copies of that comic book," Peter sighed. "He's like you: Once a nerd, always a nerd."

"Hey, watch who you're calling a nerd, chess boy!"

"I call it like I see it. Just because you, Vincent, were popular in grade school—"

"While poor little Fleming must've been teased mercilessly by his peers."

"Don't be absurd. The heathens I went to school with were not my peers."

"Poor Peter," Vince slung an arm around the brunette's shoulder. "I'll bet you were cute as a kid."

"Something like Pete, I suppose," Fleming replied, "except he's had the good fortune to have inherited your smaller ears, so perhaps he won't be tormented when he starts school in September."

"So long as you don't push him to play chess," Faraday teased.

"I won't, if you'll agree not to push him to play American football in a few years."

"He's just starting kindergarten. High school's a long way off," the former high school quarterback pointed out.

"It'll go quickly, and you didn't give me an answer."

"Oh, alright, you have a deal. We will let Pete make his own decisions." Vince frowned as the doorbell rang. "Were we expecting company?"

"Not that I'm aware of. I'll go see who it is." He walked down the hall to check. "It's Jamie!" Vince heard a few moments later. "And her husband," Peter eventually added as an afterthought.

Once they were all settled comfortably in the living area and had gotten the greetings and small talk out of the way, Jamie said she had an announcement to make.

"I'm pregnant!" she grinned.

"That's great! Congratulations to both of you!" Vince exclaimed, first hugging Jamie and then fist-bumping Rollo. "Isn't that great, Peter?" Vince added, when he realized he hadn't heard anything from his spouse. He turned to look at him.

Peter was glaring daggers at his son-in-law. Vince had a feeling that, with the simple additions of a mask and a pair of contacts, you would have precisely the last image that Chess' victims ever saw.

Rollo remained unperturbed.

"Yes, wonderful news," Peter gritted out. "Congratulations!"

~VF~

"I don't get your reaction earlier today," Vince said as the two headed for bed that evening. "I thought you would have been looking forward to being a grandfather."

"I was—I am," he sighed. "I just didn't think Jarl would be the child's father. I thought Jamie might have left him for someone else. She could have done better, you know."

"She's happy with Rollo," Vince countered. "She wants you to be happy for them."

"…Then I will be."

"What about the becoming a grandfather thing—you worried it will make you seem old?" the blonde asked.

Peter decided to hold off on pointing out that the birth would also make Vince a grandfather by marriage.

"Old? I am hardly old, Faraday. I'm certainly not too old to do this." And with that, he mashed their lips together, as his hands started trailing along the hero's body.

Author's Note: And we'll end the chapter there, where we can still keep the T rating.

Thanks to IronAmerica for reviewing! And thanks to those who have added the story to your alert list!

Chapter title is from Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Ten Minutes Ago."

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