notes: Sorry about all that angst earlier, haha. Needed to get it out of my system.


picture-book perfect

Even Cobra had to admit that he liked happy endings.


"And then they lived happily ever after. The end," Erik finishes quickly, closing the book.

The toddler glares at him, very obviously unimpressed with his narration. "Mom reads the story better than you do."

"Well I'm not Mom, kid," he replies. "No one can be as fantastic as Mom, right?"

His daughter sighs and lays down into her bed. "Yeah," she agrees, sticking her tongue out at him.

"Good. We can agree on that then," he remarks, before tucking the fairytale under his arm, kneeling down, and kissing his rebellious young child—who seems to have gotten the worst of his genes. "Goodnight, Saki."

"Night, Dad."

He watches her eyes shut—admiring her resemblance to her mother—before he pulls on the lamp light next to her and retreats to the master bedroom down the hall.

His wife is already in bed, perusing a novel of her own, and he joins her, mocking and opening the picture book that he has from earlier.

Kinana looks over at the text he's reading. "You read to her before making her sleep?"

"Yep," he affirms and then flips a page. "She says you read it better."

"Well, that's because I do," she contests. "You just read it like it's a chore."

"But it is. I don't understand why you make it such a big deal to read to her every night. It's not like she's going to learn to read faster than Jellal and Erza's kid."

She purses her lips. "This isn't about a competition, Erik," she reprimands him. "I'm just trying to build a habit in her so that she is encouraged to read when she gets older. You can learn a lot from books, you know?"

But then she looks at his unamused face and snarkily adds, "Oh, but I guess you wouldn't know. You don't read a single bit."

"In my opinion, you're teaching her more than just a literature habit," he replies, baring his teeth. "She seems to have adopted your sharp tongue, too."

She replies with a sweet innocent smile. "It's not my fault that she picks up things very quickly."

He finally cracks a smile. He kisses her on the cheek and then turns back to the book, swiping through the pages until he gets to the conclusion, where the most predictable three words are printed: happily ever after.

"Happy endings are so stupid," he says, wrinkling his nose in distaste as he finally shuts the large cardboard-bound picture book. "What kind of a lesson do kids get out of that? That the world is perfect and there won't be any obstacles that get in their way?"

"I think it's more about teaching kids how to positively perceive the world and grow from all their experiences," she replies back to him, chuckling and poking his forehead. "Or are you trying to suggest that you don't like that we don't have our own little happily ever after right now?"

He blushes a tinge. She's made a fucking adorable point, and he bites his tongue back because he just can't deny against it.

"Oh stop," he says, rolling his eyes, but he knows that she sees through him.

"If you think about it, our story is a fairytale, too, you know? A girl is cursed and turns into a snake, and when she turns back into a human, she's rescued by some random handsome guy that carries her away somewhere safe so they can make a hundred kids happily ever after?"

"A hundred? I don't know if I can do 99 more after Saki."

"You know what I mean," she sighs before kissing him. She closes her book and puts it onto her nightstand, trading the book for his warm arm and cuddling up next to him.

He does the same, tossing the picture book aside and replacing it with her waist, crawling into the bed and making himself extra comfortable.

"Yeah, well, aside from that, I don't like happy endings," he continues, on their previous discussion. "They're not realistic."

She raises a sultry eyebrow.

"Well," she murmurs, whispering into his neck as she falls into the sheets and curls up next to him. Her hand slides slowly over his body, low low low into the covers. "You're not complaining about this kind of happy ending now, are you?"


end notes: Oh, you don't even know how many times I accidentally typed fairy tail instead of fairy tale.

And yeah, sorry. I couldn't help but end the story like that. Rough transition but I mean…I didn't want to get carried away with the length. xD Anyway, this will be the conclusion of all the stories related to Kinabra Fluff Week (again, thank you blackbutterfly101 for organizing it singlehandedly - although I think I was the only one that participated, lol...)! After this, will be random drabbles and stories of Kinabra that I can dump here because y'already know that I have too many stories posted, haha.

thir13enth