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There are three people sitting out on the grass by the farm house.

Three people and a cake.

Three people and a cake, and some presents.

Three people, a cake, some presents and party equipment.

One of the paper blowers is already on fire.

Say this about the Frays: They can throw a party.

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"Cause."

It's a standard answer to 'why' when Hana doesn't understand the question. She kicks happily on his hips and tries to climb onto his shoulder.

Loo starts tugging on his beard - it's new.

Mel still hasn't stood up. She's sitting, hugging her knees and watching fondly.

Hana gets a kiss on the forehead for her brilliant answer, even after she kicks him in the stomach and tries to unbalance him while Loo attempts to pull his chin off.

There's nothing more logical to do about this, of course, than to topple to the ground and let them climb all over him, laughing still.

This is the best thing ever. Hana screams on the way down and throws her arms out. Loo giggles and pulls his beard again.

"Sokka," she tells him, prodding his face.

Hana decides that whatever Loo has, she wants, so she pulls too.

Mel stands up about this time. Just in case he needs help.

"Loo!" Sokka replies, kissing her cheek.

The pulling might not feel very good but he has a way around that, too. It involves snapping his teeth at his nieces and growling. Obviously, this will terrify them into behaving, surely.

"Hana!"

Oh yeah, great plan, Sokka.

The girls pull their hands back and laugh, and Hana attempts to get her hand in his mouth.

Loo giggles and grabs onto his arm, hugging him tight.

Sokka fails to see how this is not a brilliant plan.

Especially when it dissolves into hugging/tickling fights with further growling and squealing laughter.

It's only a bad plan in that it results in more squealing and laughing and screams of utter delight from both of them, as they get more and more excited.

Right up until Loo suddenly looks mortified with no provocation whatsoever.

Well, yeah, right up until then it was awesome.

But at that awful expression on a tiny little face, Sokka stops, holding Hana up in the air with a hand on her belly and an arm wrapped tight around Loo.

"...Loo?" The growls and giggles are gone, looking at her worriedly as he lowers Hana back down beside them. "What?"

It doesn't change anything in Hana, who still laughs and wriggles and pokes at him. But Loo looks like she might cry in three... two...

Except that's when Mel swoops in, pulling the little girl up quickly and throwing her in the air.

"There it goes," she says cheerfully. "Accident, Loo?"

There are no tears, but a sullen, guilty nod.

Sokka blinks when Loo is stolen away. But when the reason for the crushed expression is dirty pants and not blood or death, her uncle's own mortified face clears into a grin.

A big grin.

"Oh, is that all?" he demands - of Loo, and then of Hana, since he has both hands free to toss the tinier girl around now. "Just that?!"

Just that. And Mel deals with the situation by removing the dirty pants in question with one hand, while holding Loo with the other, leaving little three-year old legs to kick free.

"Oh this is nothing," Mel says, throwing Loo over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. "First accident in a week, isn't it, Squirmy?"

Squirmy squirms, and holds her hands out to Sokka.

Sokka grins at her from the dirty, still tossing Hana.

"A whole week? That's great, Loo!"

The girls are so much bigger and smarter, walking and running, talking and understanding - he could have been gone a year and surprised less by all the progress they've made.

Hana gets a one-armed hug while he reaches a hand up to Loo. Not that he can reach her, but it's the thought that counts with three-year olds, right?

Well, not really. It just makes Loo bend down more and Mel has to hold her upside down just so she can reach Sokka's hand.

"I'm better," Hana informs Sokka firmly, and Mel shrugs, because Hana is better at the toilet thing than Loo, but she's not gonna say that out loud.

Sokka grins and laces his fingers with tiny pale ones, still holding tight to Hana. And since there are no protests, he sits up to make hand-holding easier, even if it means Hana has to cling to his shoulder.

"Are you?" he asks his tiniest niece, grinning at Loo but glancing to Hana. "At everything? Ever? Always?"

"Ways and ways," Hana assures him. Loo is now being held by her ankles and grinning down at them.

"You wanna get some clean pants, Squirmy?" Mel asks.

But the answer's probably no.

Pants are obviously taking second chair to family. Sokka agrees wholeheartedly with this.

For now. He'll probably feel differently when the girls are older.

He grins at Hana and kisses her forehead again, finally climbing to his feet - still with fingers linked with Loo. "I bet you haven't had a bath in months," he teases both girls, frowning suspiciously at them both - or trying to. The massive grin sort of ruins the frowning. "I bet you're both just filthy and stinky and gross."

"Like someone else we know."

Steph hurtles past him, apparently finished with clearing out the plane and thanking Sparrow, and attaches herself to Mel like a big sticky bandaid. This necessitates avoiding Loo's dangly pantsless butt, but that's OK. Besides, kisses for toddlers are coming as soon as said toddlers are done with terrorising Sokka; first Mel gets the crap hugged out of her.

See, it's all planned out.

****HUG ATTACK********

"Yes!" Loo protests. Mel is just about to point out that swimming with Spots is not the same as a bath, when she's attacked from the side by a Steph. This results in dropping Loo - who tumbles happily onto Sokka - in order to return the hug.

"...hi?"

"I missed you," Steph explains to Mel's shoulder, beaming and continuing to hug. "Hi. How's everything been? Are the crops growing proper? How's potty training? You look so much the same! Oh man I am so glad to be home!"

Mel CANNOT DEAL WITH GUSHING. Much. She detaches Staph anyway.

"You missed most of the potty fun," not all of it, as panstless Loo demonstrates. "Just in time for harvest, though."

Aww, detachment. Steph beams at her and allows herself to tumble back to where Sokka is, reaching out for a twin, any twin.

"And birthdays! I remembered!"

Sokka has both twins and they are his, dammit!

And they are being thoroughly cuddled and adored over, whispered to quietly.

That's what he thinks. Steph grins up at Mel, flopped on the ground and practically glowing with happy. "Someone's feeling guilty," she whispers, not-very-quietly. "I think maybe he missed them or something."

Hands fee of daughter, Mel pickes up Loo's soiled pants and folds them in her hands. She gives Steph one of her rare, small smiles that mean so much more than her standard wide grins.

And she shrugs.

"Who wouldn't miss them?"

"Crazy people," Steph says promptly, tugging on Mel's leg to demand she sit down with them too, because all the best birthday parties take place in a pile on the ground. "And people without brains. I missed them too, but I think I have to wait my turn, 'cause SOMEONE'S hogging."

The grin she gives the pile-of-uncle-and-nieces is entirely adoring, though. How could it not be? Lookit the happy wriggly girls!

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slayer_fray - 2009-10-29 11:22 (UTC) - Expand

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alwaysroomforhope - 2009-11-10 09:53 (UTC) - Expand

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