Rick was not waitinginside the door. Kohei and James were. Xander might have been the tallest brother, but Kohei was starting to develop thick tentacles.
The second Max closed the outer door to the ship, James was tangling around Max’s legs. “Max Father. The compensation was much highly!” James sang happily. “Others like my weapons!”
“Of course they did.” Max stepped over the clump of tentacles and excited offspring under his feet. “You make wonderful weapons. I’ve told you this.”
“James’s weapon changes are not James’s alone,” Kohei said. “Max Father gives idea.”
“I work math!” James trumpeted.
“I able to math. Idea is more valuable,” Kohei retorted.
Max felt as though he’d stepped back in time to a sibling fight between him and Petey, only now Max was playing the role of mother. “Hey, be nice to each other! Kohei, James has a right to be proud of his work. The weapon is his as much as mine, and he never said I didn’t work with him.” James drew himself up a little taller, so Max shook a finger at him. “And you, young sir, need to share credit. Not only did I work with you, but Xander is risking himself to help run this con, so you have to give him credit too. And I know you had him check your math several times.”
James shrank back down, which inspired entire boat-loads of guilt. Parenting sucked. It was weird, but in the shows Max watched, the parents had to deal with slayer kids and werewolf kids and wizard kids, and those parents never seemed ready to pull their hair out. Well, usually not. Max was surprised he had any hair left, and that was on a normal day.
“Wealldid well today,” Max finished. James slid away, and Xander ran after him, leaving Max alone with Kohei. Of all the children, Kohei was the one Max connected to least. Maybe it was because Kohei never needed him, not like his brothers. “Cut your brother some slack.”
“He speaks rudely.”
“We’re family. If we can’t be rude to each other, then who are we supposed to be rude to?”
Without a second of hesitation, Kohei said, “Buttfaces.”
Sometimes the kids caught Max so off-guard that he didn’t even have a response. Flying fighter jets required less concentration than parenting. The rules were more direct and the instruments were easier to read.
“If you’re rude to buttfaces, they’re rude back,” Max said. “And sometimes that causes trouble that we don’t want. Family loves us. They have to keep loving us no matter what. So when we’re having a bad day, sometimes we take it out on family.”
Kohei blew raspberries.
“Just don’t assume the worst of your brothers.”
Kohei glided silently away, and Max felt judged. Majorly judged. It dulled some of the pride he had about how the trade had gone, but on the good side, his fear that he was a shitty father mitigated any apprehension about the con.
Max headed deeper into the family section of the ship, the part Rick still wouldn’t allow the children into. Rick wasn’t waiting in the corridor either. Max headed up to their shared quarters, and even before the door opened, a rhythmic banging greeted him. His stomach knotted. It sounded like Rick was throwing everything they owned against the walls. Max hadn’t seen that sort of anger out of Rick, and a little cowardly voice suggested he run for the hills. However, Max didn’t run from fights. Well, except for that one time when his ex had thrown all his clothes off the apartment balcony, but Max called that a strategic retreat.
When he triggered the door to open, he braced himself for a shit-throwing fit and broken possessions. Instead Rick was braced on the edge of the bed with a mechanical panel open and he was pounding a piece into the back of it. He didn’t even pause his work to announce, “I reviewed recordings. You are moron.”
“I amamoron,” Max corrected him, “and no, I am not.” Maybe he shouldn’t poke Rick’s grammar, but that felt like a safer conversation than the one Rick wanted to have. Max sat on the edge of the bed, and Rick lowered the tool he’d been using and shifted so his eyes were on level with Max’s.
“You lack logic.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Max said with a shrug. His measuring stick for logic was Mr. Spock, and he fell so far short of that mark that it wasn’t even funny. He couldn’t even match a love-pollen-infected Spock for logic. No shame in that.
Rick tilted and then rotated to consider Max through multiple eyes. “Clarify your clarification.”
Max grinned. Distraction level: master. Even now Rick’s tentacles were relaxing. “My first statement is a correction of your grammar. My second statement is truth. I am not a moron.”
“True and illogical is mutually exclusive and you are illogical.”
“I am not.”
“You am too.”
“Am not.”
“Am too,” Rick shot back.
“Awww. Are we fighting?”
