“Your family?” Avi said, voice filled with disbelief. “Please, kitten.”
“How is my family abnormal?” Felix asked, head swiveling from Asa to Avi.
“Your brother met our brother while playing body part jeopardy then blew him next to a corpse,” Asa reminded.
Avi nodded. “And you told the entire office that I wasway toofriendly with horses.”
“That sounds like a Mulvaney problem, not a Navarro one.”
“Oh. Oh. Oh,” Zane said, hands waving. “You have a collection of razor sharp cat claw rings that aren’t just for decoration,” Zane added excitedly.
Felix’s expression grew more and more disgruntled with each reminder, looking very much like a cat who’d been left out in the rain. He gave Zane a hurt look. “You too, Zaney?”
“Sorry, Lix,” Zane said, doing his best to look contrite as he leaned forward to press a kiss to his shoulder.
“Okay, okay,” Felix muttered. “Both our families are weird.”
Once more, the room fell into a comfortable silence,broken only by the soft strains of holiday music in the background and the faint dialogue from the television. Asa resumed building his tower, glancing at the screen as Frosty trudged into the greenhouse carrying Karen. Avi tilted his head, his brows knitting together.
“Why didn’t Frosty just set Karen down inside the greenhouse and stay out in the snow?” Avi asked, his tone genuinely puzzled. “He could’ve avoided the whole melting thing.”
Zane made a noise of agreement. “Plot hole,” he slurred. “There’s always a plot hole. Like, why didn’t they just close the door behind her?”
Avi nodded, looking almost offended. “Exactly. And why was Karen so fragile she needed Frosty to carry her? She had legs.”
Asa huffed a quiet laugh, shaking his head. “You’re overthinking a children’s cartoon, Avi.”
Avi’s expression remained serious. “It’s a bad plan. You’d think a living snowman would be more strategic.”
Felix shook his head. “You’re the only person I know who could critiqueFrosty the Snowmanlike it’s a tactical failure.”
“That’s because itwasa tactical failure,” Avi replied smoothly.
“Da-da-da,” West babbled, abandoning the rubble of blocks to climb into Asa’s lap.
He hoisted the baby up so he could rest his head on his shoulder. They’d long since given up trying to help them differentiate between parents and uncles. It didn’t matter. They were all raising them together. The scent of lavender and baby powder had Asa squeezing just a little tighter. It was weird how much he liked the way Oscar andWest smelled. It was clearly an evolutionary thing, some biological fail-safe that allowed Avi and Asa to look at these two helpless creatures and feel…territorial…protective.
He looked around at the others, ensuring they weren’t watching before pressing his nose to West’s hair and inhaling deeply. Yeah, he’d die for these kids. He’d go pure scorched earth even. When he glanced over, Felix was watching him with those insanely feline honey eyes. Unlike Zane, it took a lot to turn Felix on. He needed to be touched, coaxed into anything like that slowly. He was a tactile creature by nature, but Asa adoring Felix’s biological babies definitely seemed to spark something inside him.
“Okay,” Felix murmured, gaze plastered to Asa’s.
“Okay?” Zane asked, confusion etched between his brows.
Felix shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant. “We can…swap teams…if you want.”
Avi’s gaze followed Felix’s, landing on his brother snuggling with his baby, smirking knowingly. Asa watched as Avi’s hand fell to Zane’s hip, squeezing softly. “What do you think, Zaney?”
Even from this distance, Asa could see his husband’s pupils were already fully blown at the thought. “Yeah, as long as I can play with Lix first.”
Asa laughed. “Nobody would ever say no to that, Lois. Literally nobody.”
“Okay, bedtime for the boys,” Felix declared.
Avi clicked off the television and Zane clumsily sat up giving Felix a sloppy back hug, before letting Avi pull him to his feet. Asa handed West to his father, then scooped up Oscarwho was just about to chuck a block out of the playpen.
Bedtime had become a well-oiled machine. It usually consisted of two people prepping the bottles and nursery, two giving baths. All of them would then wrestle them into their nighttime pull-ups, pajamas and weighted sleep sacks, before Avi or Zane attempted to read them a bedtime story complete with voice acting. The boys were just getting to an age where they would slow down to listen instead of zooming around the playroom on their chubby baby legs.
Tonight, they’d already gotten baths after Thomas and Aiden had delivered them back to the house covered in chocolate ice cream without any explanation whatsoever. They were also already in their bedtime clothes, crossing several things off their bedtime to-do list.
