Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine. Any lines from the books are hers too.

Big Boy Stuff

AN: So most of the stuff I've written lately has been pretty sad, so this is my apology for that. It's short and silly, really silly, but hopefully it makes you smile. Be warned, it's an adultish topic, but handled in my normal, ridiculous way.

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Vick is too absorbed in studying a maneuver he'd been discussing with one of the midwives he's working with this rotation and doesn't hear the plop-plop of bare little feet sneaking up on him.

"What're they doing to that baby?" A small voice asks, almost making him jump out of his skin.

Turning, he finds Glen, wide gray eyes focused on the colorful, and painfully detailed, picture at the top of his textbook's page.

He tries to snap it shut, but Glen already has a sticky palm on it as he pulls himself into Vick's lap.

Before Vick can think to stop him, Glen has flipped a page, this time to a diagram of mammary glands. His eyebrows rise and he gives his uncle a small look and a deep sigh.

"Tha's a dirty picture, Uncle Vick." His eyebrows disappear into his dark hair. "Does Grammy know you look at this?'

"Uh, yes?"

Though he doesn't exactly go to her to discuss what he's learning. There has to be a barrier, and that's it for him.

"Glen, this is school stuff," he tries to explain.

His nephew fixes him a disbelieving look.

"I don't see any tracing letters," he tells him, as though that exposes some great lie.

"I already learned how to write, Glen," Vick mutters. "This is big boy stuff."

"Imma big boy!" Glen tells him excitedly.

Oh, shit.

Flipping through the pages, excited to be included in such advanced learning, Glen starts trying to use his minimal grasp of sounds and letters to work out random words on the page.

"Va-va-g-een-ay," he triumphantly tells Vick, turning to him and smiling broadly. It slips off after a second. "Uncle Vick, what's a va-g-een-ay?"

Vick blanks. He's pretty sure Gale doesn't want him explaining the finer points of female anatomy to his preschooler, even if Vick is highly qualified and much more qualified to do so than Gale himself.

"Uh, well, see…Okay, well, uh…"

As Glen stares up at him expectantly, Vick starts to sweat and wonder why he couldn't have decided to specialize in pathology instead.

Somehow summoned by Vick's mounting panic, Rory strolls in from outside, covered in grease from head to toe and tracking it along the tile of their mother's kitchen floor.

He stops as soon as he sees Glen on Vick's lap, a little grin ticking up at the corners of his mouth. He smells blood in the water, and he's going in for the kill.

"Glen! My favorite nephew!" He starts toward the table and Vick takes the opportunity, Glen has reached out for Rory, to flip the book shut. Hopefully his idiot brother will provide enough of a distraction that Glen will forget all about the unmentionable things he's seen in Vick's Big Book of Obstetrics.

Swooping in, like an obnoxious, smelly vulture, Rory scoops Glen up and settles him on his hip.

"What are you and my sweet baby brother up to?"

Vick tries to answer, put it in Glen's head that they were about to make cookies, that's a sure bet to get his mind off of Vick's studies, but terror has slowed his mouth.

"I'm learning about big boy stuff. Like Va-gee-nays."

For a second Rory is stumped, but then his eyes cut down the book, still stupidly sitting on the table, half hidden under Vick's elbow, and his eyes light up.

"Oh, I see."

I'll bet you do.

"Rory…" Vick gives him a warning look.

"Are you going to be a lady-doctor like Uncle Vick?"

Glen's nose wrinkles up and he looks at Vick, frowning. He studies him for a minute, apparently working something out in his little mind, before turning back to Rory and crossing his arms over his chest. "Uncle Vick is a boy."

Rory snickers. "Yeah, but he doctors lady bits."

Shaking his head, Vick mouths the words 'no, Rory', but he just grins back. Clearly, he's intent on being murdered by their oldest brother.

Fine, if Rory wants to die, painfully mangled by Gale for explaining the facts of life to his son, so be it. Vick isn't interested. He's put too much time and effort into his schooling to die this close to being out, especially over something so ridiculous.

"Uncle Vick bandages va-gee-nays."

"You don't bandage va-ge-vaginas, Rory," Vick grumbles before he realizes he's being bated, dragged into the pit of doom right alongside him. Damn it.

"What do you do to them?" Glen asks, suddenly, horribly, interested.

"Yeah, Vick," Rory pulls out the seat next to him and drops down, settling Glen more comfortably on his leg and fixing Vick in a deeply fascinated look. "What do you do to them?"

They're both going to be murdered

Feeling suddenly faint, Vick takes a long breath.

"I fix them."

It takes roughly half a second for him to realize how stupid that sounds, not to mention wholly inaccurate, not even close to all the things he does, and just under that for Glen to start firing off questions.

"Why do they need fixed? Do they get broken? How do they break them?" He draws in a long breath, his eyes dropping from Vick's face to the book, still hiding shamefully under Vick's elbow. "Do they break 'cause they put babies in them? Why would you put a baby in them? That's stupid."

Frozen in horror, Vick just stares at Glen. What is he supposed to say?

He suddenly wonders how Gale didn't die of embarrassment when Vick had started asking these kind of questions.

"Well," he starts slowly, trying to explain the wonders of birth and the female body without getting his chances to procreate cut to zero by his irate brother, "that's how babies get out of their mommies tummies."

There, safe and vague. Gale can take it from there, the joy of fatherhood.

"Nu-uh, mommy said they cutted me outta her tummy," he tells Vick, lifting his shirt and exposing his own stomach, pointing to where Madge's c-section scar would be. "She has a scar right there, and that's how they got 'Vanna out too."

He sits back on Rory, crossing his arms and waiting for Vick's explanation, thinking he's caught him in a fib.

"Um," Vick frowns, his eyebrows knitting together.

"You," Rory suddenly chimes in, poking a finger into Glen's stomach, "had such an enormous head when you were born, they had no choice but to cut you out."

For a second Glen just stares at him, thinking it over, then he nods, perfectly serious. "'Cause I have a big brain."

Rory barely manages to cover his laugh with a cough.

"Yeah, 'cause of your big brain," Vick agrees, nodding his agreement. Whatever makes him happy.

A light suddenly comes on in Glen's eyes. "If my brains wasn't so big, I'd've come'd out through my momma's va-gee-nay?"

He isn't finished yet, but he waits for Vick to confirm his breakthrough before continuing.

"Yes?" He smiles uncertainly, glancing to Rory to see if he knows where this is heading, but he looks just as clueless as Vick.

Glen's smile widens. "And that's how girlses vageenays break!"

He's figured it out, and he's just so proud of himself that Vick can't help but smile back and nod. There's no reason to elaborate on tears and episiotomies, rips and lacerations, the fact that it isn't actually broken, that kind of thing is best discussed with Rory far, far, away.

Putting his hands to his head, Glen looks at Vick in wonder. "Momma was lucky."

Rory nods, patting Glen's knee. "Yep. You should warn your dad. He needs to know the danger he's putting your sweet mother in."

Vick's mouth drops. Rory is a dead man. His affairs had better be in order. He's just asking for trouble, telling Glen that kind of thing.

At the same time, Vick dearly hopes the topic comes up at dinner. Gale's face will be priceless.

Nodding somberly, Glen sighs, the weight of such an important task clearly on his mind.

In the front of the house, Savanna squeals and Vick feels suddenly sick. Gale has come for his children.

Feeling the sudden, inescapable need for fresh air, Vick grabs his book and shoves it in his bag, standing just as Glen jumps from Rory's leg and races to the tall figure emerging from the hallways.

"Daddy!" He launches himself at Gale's leg.

"Hey, buddy." Gale ruffles Glen's hair and smiles. The sap doesn't know the mini-disaster Rory has sent into his waiting arms. "Have you been good for Grammy?"

Glen nods. "I helped her with 'Vanna."

Vick squints at the mismatched socks and lopsided pigtails his niece is sporting and nods. He certainly had helped her.

"And now I'm learning big boy stuff with Uncle Vick and Uncle Rory," he tells him proudly.

Vick starts edging toward the door.

"Oh?" Gale looks to his brothers, already suspicious. His eyes drop back to Glen, smiling tensely. "What's 'big boy' stuff?"

Just as Vick gets his hand on the door handle, he hears Glen triumphantly tell Gale, "Va-gee-nays!"

Unable to do the smart thing and exit, Vick turns, grimacing.

"Va-what?" He looks up at Vick, then to Rory, his expression already certain he isn't going to like whatever new thing his son has learned.

"Girl bits, daddy," Glen sighs, dropping his arms in exasperation. "Like mommy has. You need to be careful. You might break hers."

Gale's eyebrows pull together. "Break Madge's-"

He stops cold, a look of sudden comprehension on his face.

"Yeah, Gale," Rory cuts in, taking a step back towards Vick. "Let's face it, you've been trying to break if for years."

Opening the door, Vick almost falls out, shouting that he has a study group to get to.

He doesn't, but if he doesn't see the murder that's about to occur in his mother's kitchen, then he can deny knowledge of it.

Flinging his bag in the backseat, he hears yelling coming from inside the house and he sighs.

Maybe he can just sleep in the on-call room for the night.