Day 4 – Dragons

No matter how cool you are, when your son asks you to dress up as dragons together for halloween, you do it.

"Daddy. Daddydaddydaaaddyyyyyy."

Soul groaned. What time was it? Four? No, three. It was three in the fucking morning and he'd gotten home late from one of those stupid solo missions. He was sure that he'd just started sleeping. That or he just hadn't gotten enough shuteye yet and it showed as he groggily sat up. He shifted under the covers, quietly, so as to not wake Maka, and turned to the voice. In the doorstep, he saw his son standing with eyes glowing from excitement and giddiness. His son that definitely should have been sleeping, for both Soul's and the boy's own health. But now that Ethan had woken him up already, Soul could just as well listen to what he had to say.

"C'mere. But quiet, don't wanna wake your mother.", Soul whispered and Ethan nodded, slowly and as quietly as he could making his way to his parents' bed. He crawled into Soul's lap when he was there, throwing his arms around his father – or at least trying to – and nuzzling his face into Soul's stomach. Soul's eyes softened. For all the anxiety he had been feeling when Maka had been pregnant, Ethan was well worth the mood swings, the cravings and the assaults from an angry Spirit Albarn (who technically didn't have a right to complain since he'd given Maka to him on their wedding day) and the fear to do something – everything – wrong. It had been one hell of a ride, but he was glad to be able to say that he'd suffered through it. He'd gotten the most wonderful son he could have ever imagined in exchange for all his troubles and he wasn't above letting Ethan know that.

"I'm back, Ethan." He could almost feel his little boy smiling into his stomach, except that he couldn't really, not with the sheet still lying halfway between them. It didn't matter though, as Ethan mumbled something between 'welcome back' and 'I missed you' into his shirt. Soul pried him off him, because there was no way he'd understand what his son was telling him if he kept speaking to his navel. "So, what was so important that you had to wake me up? Usually you can wait until the next morning."

Ethan straightened up, the glow in his eyes intensifying. "I can. I just really, really want to know something right now." He didn't go on, encouraging his father to ask on, to ask what exactly he meant by that. Soul smiled at his kid's antics before doing him the favour. "And what do you wanna ask me?"

"Well", Ethan began, "when you were away, I watched this really awesome movie with mommy. It had dragons in it and they were so cool and canwedressupasdragonsthishalloweenplease?"

Soul tried to reconstruct what his son had said. Ethan had spoken much too fast again, like at kid with his energy would. Something about dragons and a movie and something he could really not make sense of. "What was the movie called?"

Ethan almost sparkled as he proceeded to enlighten his father. "It was this really good movie named how to train your dragon. So can we pretty please dress up as dragons this halloween?" Ethan finished by making puppy eyes at Soul. He'd thought Maka's puppy eyes were effective, but that was before Ethan had been born. Ethan's puppy eyes gave a whole new meaning to the word 'effective'. "Me too, then?", Soul asked, already half anticipating, half dreading the answer.

"Pretty please?" Soul sighed. That was it then. There would go the last bit of his cool reputation. But like the unwritten Bro Code, there was also some universal rule stating that no matter how cool you were, when your son wanted you to dress up as a dragon, you dress up as a dragon. No questions asked.

"Alright. But Ethan-" his son glanced at him with an expectant expression "-go to bed now before your mother really does wake up." Hearing that, Ethan scrambled off Soul's lap and quickly disappeared into his own room, but not without whispering a last "g'night, daddy".

Soul droopily got back into the warm covers. He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

The next morning, Ethan was slightly more subdued than usually, probably from lack of sleep, and Maka had apparently decided that the fact that he was here again deserved a feast, because she made pancakes, the ones with strawberries in them, something that only happened once in a blue moon. Soul kissed her quickly before sitting down at the table. Ethan, sleepy as he was, was already eyeing the mountain of pancakes and they really shouldn't make him wait any longer, even though he very much wanted to kiss his wife some more. He'd missed Maka and she'd already been asleep when he got home, so he had a serious craving to touch her in every possible way. Not in front of their son though, that would be more than just a little inappropriate.

Shoving a load of pancakes into his plate himself, Soul began to eat, occasionally answering a question from Maka as to how his mission went.

"Ethan, did you ask your dad already?" Maka asked. Ethan just nodded and proceeded shoving the next pancake into his waiting mouth. Maka seemed content with his answer, not noticing that that meant Ethan had been up that night. Better that way. "Are you two going costume shopping later then?" They'd probably have to, huh. He wasn't really a big fan of shopping trips and he knew that his son wasn't either.

"It's okay", Ethan chimed in, "Jace said he still had some." Well then, problem solved. Marie's and Stein's son had a knack for sewing and he always liked tailoring clothes. In a way, it was like Jace's father's obsession with dissecting bodies and sewing together different body parts, only a lot more harmless. Which was good, they didn't need any more madmen.

"Alright, kiddo. Then it's a promise. On halloween we're going to be the coolest dragons around." Soul grinned at Ethan, who grinned back with the same sharp-toothed smile. He'd survive the blow to his cool persona, alright, and trick-or-treating with Ethan actually sounded nice.

He just hoped the costumes weren't too ridiculous.

"Why don't you have to dress up as a dragon?", Soul whined to Maka, who was dressed in a normal shirt and skirt (not a mini-skirt anymore, something Soul actually missed) and it was totally unfair, because halloween this year was sweltering and the dragon costumes were like massive heaters and he was almost definitely going to have a heatstroke.

Maka hmphed. "Look at your son, Soul, Ethan is perfectly fine and he is wearing the same kind of costume. I'm not dressing up because I did that last year, where you" she glared at him "were making fun of my superhero outfit." Oh, yeah, that had happened, hadn't it? He'd forgotten that little tidbit. But she'd looked really ridiculous and he couldn't help teasing her. Her reactions were just too cute, even after all those years.

"Trick or TREAT!" Together they watched Ethan excitedly run all over the place, aiming to get the most sweets in Death City.

"Sorry about the Superman thing", he murmured under his breath, "that wasn't cool." Maka looked a bit surprised at first, but then she smiled. "Me too. That costume must be heating you up something fierce." It was. But he got to go trick-or-treating with Ethan and Maka and even if the dragon costume was killing him, it was alright, because he got to spend time with his two most important people.

"You know, I really missed you", Maka quietly admitted. He nodded. He'd missed her too. He always missed her when he was away. Fumbling a little with the fingers of the costume, the temporary dragon linked his and his wife's hand. And she was smiling again, that special little smile that managed to light the whole world and turn his insides to mush. He was just about to kiss her when -

"Mommy! Daddy! Look how much candy I got from Auntie Blair!" And Soul laughed, because it was moments like these, imperfect but heartwarming, that made him love his little family so much. Maka and Ethan were his world and as sappy as it sounded, he was not ashamed to admit it. The bigger dragon reached for the smaller dragon's hand.

"Come on, Ethan. We're going home."

And they did, together. The three of them.