Author's Note: Hey guys! Here's a more recent request. I decided to do one that took me back to when little Toretto was mini. The teen ones are super fun though, and I'm loving all the suggestions. It gives me so much to work with! I still haven't given little girl a name. A few times I thought, god it would just be easier if she had one, but I really just want you guys to name her whatever you want in your own heads. You've all contributed a lot to these shorts, so thanks for that. Only another week and a half till the film! Yay!
A Question
"Papi? Where do babies come from?"
Dom looked up from where he was bent over the hood of a car, blinking down at his 6 year old daughter at his side. She was looking up at him seriously, her little face quite attentive. She had a picture book on cars hugged against her chest.
"What?" he asked, staring. Maybe he'd heard wrong. She was too young to be asking him about this, wasn't she?
"Marco's Mami is having a baby and her belly is all big and round. Marco said the baby is in there. How did it get there? Maggie says babies come from the stork but she's stupid so I don't believe her."
Dom opened his mouth and closed it a few times, glancing around the garage. Letty was nowhere in sight, which meant she was probably in the office dealing with a client over the phone. Brian was nearby, replacing the headlights on a car and doing his best to look totally oblivious, though Dom could see the tiny smirk on his face. He'd get him for that later.
"Uh…" he hesitated, looking down at his daughter as he tried to figure out what to say. Letty would probably be pissed if he told her that the stork really did bring babies, but he also really did not need to be having 'the talk' with his six-year old daughter, or preferably not ever.
That should definitely be her mother's job.
"Why don't you ask Mami?" he suggested, crouching down to look her in the eyes.
"Ask Mami what?" Letty inquired, stepping out of the office.
Their daughter trotted over to her, reaching her arms up and Letty raised a brow, lifting her into her arms. "What is it?"
"Where do babies come from, Mami?"
Letty blanched, then glared at Dom, mouthing the word 'traitor' to him. Her mind raced and she carried the child back over to her husband's side, leaning one hip against the car he was working on.
"Let's see if Mami and Papi can figure out a way to explain this that you'll understand," she said and Dom sighed, tossing down the tool in his hand. There was no way Letty was going to let him get out of this.
"First…" Letty began. "What do you know about babies?"
The little girl frowned thoughtfully, chewing on her lower lip. "Marco's Mami has a baby in her belly."
"Okay so you know babies come from Mommies. Right?"
The girl nodded. "But how does it get there? Does the Mami eat something?"
Letty stifled a laugh. "No that's not how the baby gets there. It's not really in her tummy. There's a special place inside the Mami that is just for babies."
The child looked vaguely confused, dropping her gaze to her mother's stomach and then poking at it. Letty chuckled, looking over at Dom like 'give me a hand here', but he only shook his head, eyes wide with fear.
She sighed. "So… when a man and a woman… or a Mami and a Papi… decide they really like each other,"
"When they love each other," Dom input, even though she made a face at him. He didn't need his daughter thinking that mere like could lead to two people having babies together. At least not until she was 50.
"When they love each other," Letty finished, though she thought it sounded so cliché. "They can decide to have a baby together. Or maybe sometimes it's a surprise."
"How?" the little girl chirped. "Is it like building a car?"
"No…" Letty replied slowly. "It's not like that." The world might be a simpler place if people had to have some knowledge in order to create babies, but she kept that thought to herself. "It's something that humans and animals can do together, to make babies. Only grown-ups can do it."
"Like kissing?" their daughter asked, peering up at them curiously. "Jamie at school says his Mommy and Daddy wrestle naked."
Dom groaned and Letty closed her eyes, letting out a long breath so that she wouldn't laugh. "Yeah well you shouldn't listen to everything the other kids tell you at school. One day you'll be older and you'll understand. Right now you shouldn't worry about it too much."
The girl tilted her head. "Okay Mami." She looked at her. "But I don't want you and Papi to have a baby okay?"
Letty laughed at that. "Oh yeah? Why's that?"
"Because I like that it's just me and Mami and Papi," she replied, as if it were obvious.
Dom chuckled, taking her from Letty and hugging her. "We're not going to have another baby," he assured. In fact, it was something he and Letty had already discussed, when their daughter had still been fairly small. They were fine with just having one child. She had her cousin and plenty of friends to play with and keep her from being lonely. The plain truth of the matter was that Letty wasn't really interested in being pregnant again, and he could respect that.
The little girl grinned, and then wrapped her arms around him happily. "Good!" She kissed his cheek with a loud smacking noise that made him laugh.
He set her down and she smiled up at them. "I help with fixing cars today?"
"Sure thing, Sweetheart," Dom replied. "Go get your tools."
When the child scurried off to pull her child's tool box out from under one of the work benches he turned to look at Letty and smirked.
"Great job explaining baby making without actually explaining it," he said.
"She's six. She'd have believed it if I said the baby came from eating a magic bean. Details are lost on kids that age."
He laughed. "If only it would stay so easy."
She grinned. "Trust me, Papi. I'm not the one who's going to be sweating when she's a teenager."
"Cruel woman. You are so cruel."
Letty laughed, wrapping her arms around him and leaning up to kiss him slowly. "Mmm I sure am. I can show you how mean I am next time we have our own naked wrestling match," she murmured.
"Letty," he complained, pushing her away. "You're a sick woman." But he was laughing as his daughter sidled up beside him with a tiny wrench in her hand. He ruffled her dark hair as Letty walked away to get back to work on a car with a faulty transmission. He looked down at his little girl and smiled. "Okay, you'll be Papi's assistant. Ready to get to work?"
She nodded brightly, blessedly having forgotten all about where babies came from. Dom leaned over the car hood to take stock of where he'd left off, then the child piped up beside him.
"Papi…what's a skank?"
Dom groaned.
