Archive of Our Own ^beta

     Barbara was not going to laugh. She wasn’t. Not yet, at least.

    Quietly as possible, she navigated the settings on her phone’s camera app and turned off the automatic shutter sound. Before her, Walter sprawled peacefully on the couch with one arm dangling over the edge, blissfully unaware of his present circumstances. Biting her lip, Barbara angled her shot and, with nary a traitorous click, captured the moment in all its 12 glorious megapixel splendor. At her feet, the culprit continued to doodle lazily on his chalkboard, finally having turned his attention back to an actual canvas.

    Well...she supposed both the chalkboard and Walter counted as canvases. One of them, she suspected, was just slightly less willing.

     Silently sliding her phone back into her pocket, Barbara admired Wally’s masterpiece, stifling another chuckle as she took in the damage. Most of the scarification tattoos on Walter’s arm and the outward-facing part of one leg were colored in, bright pinks and yellows standing out starkly against his more muted green tones. A rainbow of lazy swirls and jagged scribbles filled the spaces between and adorned the lower left side of his chest. Nothing the three-year-old could reach had been left unmarked.

     Walter was going to regret wearing that kilt today, his still-drying laundry notwithstanding.

     There were splotches of color on the carpet too, faint and smudged, like test marks made before their adopted son had found a much better surface for his chosen medium. Barbara scuffed at one with her foot tentatively, watching the color dissolve further into the fibers of the rug. It was probably due to be cleaned, given the splatters of grape juice and ground-in cheerios that had accumulated over the year since the last child in the Cradlestone had finally found her way to her permanent home. Wally’s toddler years were proving to be just as hard on the household décor and furniture as the hundreds of babies that had passed through before him had been, and it might be time to finally do a deep clean to reset things best they could.

    Particularly given his budding artistic talents.

    The chalk had been a gift from Nancy, left behind after one of the handful of times she had agreed to mind the child so that they could go out beyond their own dining room for a date. It had seen plenty of use since, from outdoor play sessions that left their walkway covered in little scribbles to more educational pursuits, wherein Walter used the aforementioned chalkboard to draw pictures for Wally to identify in language learning lessons. It left Walt’s fingers stained with chalky pastels then too, and she recalled him expressing his relief at the move to digital media and dry erase boards the school district had made in more recent years.

    He had also lamented the loss of dusty erasers to chuck at half-asleep pupils though—dry erase marker erasers apparently “just weren’t the same”, a remark that had earned him a reasonable amount of side eye. She remembered the days when her teachers used to do that to under-performing students, leaving chalky evidence in their clothing for parents and peers to observe their folly, and was decidedly less amused by her own memories than his. She kind of wished she had a chalk eraser now, though how effectively it might remove the offending substance from serpentine, and more importantly from the grooves in his stone skin seemed...questionable. But it might be fun to wake him up by beaning him in the head with it: karmic justice for his long-graduated students of generations past, their former teacher receiving his just desserts for having fallen asleep on child duty.

     Barbara smirked and shook her head. No, she would have to spare him, she supposed. Tiptoeing quietly out of the living room, she made her way to find something to address her slumbering lover’s dilemma.

---

    Walter woke to the cool touch of a damp washcloth and blinked blearily at the figure hovering over him. The ambient sunlight cast her in stark contrast against the bright window behind her, an angel limned in a halo of platinum. Walter blinked again, confused, as he fought to shake off the remaining vestiges of slumber. How tired had he been? Barbara finally came into focus, perched beside him on the very edge of the couch.

    “Barbara, what-”

“Shh shh shhh ,” She quieted him, scrubbing a little harder into the tattoo in his upper left arm. Her face screwed up in concentration as she dug her nail in behind the washcloth, tender but firm in her efforts. Once satisfied, she switched to running the cloth gently over his arm in strokes, fingers working deftly into the curves of his markings as she went. It was relaxing and lovely, and Walter was not terribly inclined to interrupt her ministrations, odd as it was to be woken this way.

    And it was odd, but entirely welcome, and who was he to rebuff her taking the lead in initiating intimacy?

    There was the matter of his former familiar turned son though, given the hour of the day and the location of their present activities. His gaze fell toward the floor, where he remembered last seeing the boy, only to find him still present and currently distracted by using a wet paper towel to clean off his (very messy) chalkboard. Chalk dust had powdered the front tuft of his hair a pale blue, and he had several smears of varying colors across his forearms and shirt. He was going to need a bath, but that was a less urgent matter. Chalk was non-toxic, even to humans, and easily washable. The matter of his cleanliness could be postponed for now.

    Walter touched Barbara lightly on her elbow to grab her attention. She smiled, amused, and raised her cloth to boop him gently on the nose.

     “Barbara, dearest heart, do you think perhaps the living room might not be the best place for this?” He urged.

     Her brow furrowed and she glanced down at the washcloth in her hand, then back up to meet his look of concern. “Maybe, but you were sleeping. And you are way too heavy for me to carry upstairs.”

    “You need but ask ,” he purred, hooking an arm around her and drawing her closer as he shifted into an upright position. She leaned in, teasingly...temptingly, following her playful touch with a gentle kiss to the tip of his nose. In one fluid motion, he ghosted one hand under her posterior and tightened his hold around the small of her back, hefting her into the air as he stood. “You know I’m always happy to oblige.”

     "The point," Barbara persisted, pressing herself against him, "was to finish before you woke dear." Her now cold washcloth, sandwiched between them, sent an invigorating chill through his chest.

     "That seems a bit counterproductive," Walter mused, trailing a slow line of feather-light kisses along her jawline.

     Barbara shook and then, incongruous to what Walter was expecting, giggled. She leaned her head against his, pressing her temple to his own as her mirth took hold and she could resist her laughter no longer. Walter frowned.

    “Sweetheart-” she started, losing the fight against her laughter and wrapping her arms around his shoulders and the back of his neck as she sputtered, incomprehensible to the bewildered changeling. The washcloth flopped unceremoniously back onto the couch. She took a few snickering breaths before finally compelling him to: “Look down .”

     He did, peaking over her shoulder to the couch and the washcloth that lay upon it, stained with splashes of bleeding colors. The cogs in his brain churned forward, finally diverted from his initial assumption, and he glanced at the arm she had been so adamantly wiping down. His upper arm was mostly clean, save for a few grooves that held touches of canary yellow in their deepest recesses. His forearm was in a far worse state, covered in an explosion of childish doodles, and his left leg worse off still. He looked like he had gotten into a fight at a Crayola factory. The chalk dust was now also smeared along Barbara’s back and presumably lower, parts along his forearm wiped off unintentionally in his fervent need to relocate her upstairs for the sake of propriety.

     “You know,” Barbara joked, laughter still ringing in her voice, “most kids go through a phase where they draw on walls, but I’ve never heard of a kid drawing on his dad.”

     Chalk is washable , Walter chanted in his head like a mantra as panic set in.

    “Could have been worse,” she continued, surreptitiously wetting her thumb and swiping it into one of the grooves that still held traces of yellow chalk. “He could have been playing with markers.”

     Walter swallowed thickly at the thought, vowing to banish even the most washable of them from the house. He had never tested marker against stone skin, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way whether ink came off serpentine with the ease it came off human skin. God forbid the child give him a sharpie mustache next time he dozed off; he would never live it down if he ended up twinning with the local Fragwa.

    “Wally!” He said sharply, fixing the child with a stern look. “We don't draw on people!”

     The small boy whined, fingers bunching in the muddy paper towel, the chalkboard now abandoned.”Aaarrrgghh lets me!”

     That was its own problem, and there would need to be words with the aforementioned troll about setting responsible examples for young, impressionable whelps, but it was a problem for another day. “Aaarrrgghh gave you permission, I assume?”

     His son nodded solemnly.

     “I did not,” Walter explained. “You mustn't draw on people without their permission.”

     “You should ask people before you touch them, sweetie,” Barbara added, “especially if they're asleep.”

     The child's brow furrowed, eyes fixed on the two of them as he processed that information. Then, slowly and uncertainly, he acknowledged, “...okay.”

     Walter nodded, satisfied. Whether on not the lesson would sink in was another matter, but wasn't that the way of teaching children? Early childhood education was an entirely different beast than teaching teenagers, Walter had come to learn, and repetition was an essential tool for managing the task. This would come up again, he had no doubt of that; it was what it was.

     As long as they avoided more permanent mediums, he could live with that.

     Barbara shifted in his arms, a poignant reminder of the other situation that needed to be dealt with.

     Walter gave her a subtle squeeze, a silent question to maneuver through the delicate dance of navigating intimacy with a child under the roof. “There's still the matter of cleaning up this mess,” he pressed, his voice low, urging.

     Barbara inclined her head ever so slightly toward their adoptive son. “You really want to leave Picasso to his own devices?”

     The simple question warred in Walter’s mind. No, he didn’t want to leave the child to draw all over their home, even if chalk was fairly easy to remove from surfaces. Or to get into worse mischief. Yes, he very much wanted to abscond away with Barbara for a delightfully spicy and much needed shower.

     Being a responsible parent, much as he had signed up for this role entirely of his own choosing, was all too often a thorn in the side of one’s love life...but he was nothing if not adaptable.

     Reluctantly placing his wife back on the couch, Walter hunted down the television remote. He often times had a hard time understanding the appeal of children’s media; bright colors and simple morals and saving the day were a far cry from what he had grown up with—and that was a good thing, but it was still unfamiliar, and he couldn’t help but mistrust the oversimplified lessons being taught to his former familiar. He had no intention of letting the child be raised by media, as so many of his students in recent decades had clearly been. Nevertheless, cartoons had their uses.

     They were distracting. They drew children in, absorbing their attention. They could grant a brief reprieve for parents in moments of need.

     ...And he very much needed a moment of reprieve, given the way in which he had been woken.

     “Perhaps we should take a break from art practice for awhile?” Walter suggested to the child, the television blinking on with a soft pop of electricity as color flooded the screen.

     The chalkboard was immediately abandoned in favor of...”BLUEY!” Wally shouted, gesturing emphatically toward the television. Lo and behold, as Walter scrolled down the streaming services’ menu, a family of pastel-colored dogs appeared, quirky bubble letters cheerfully identifying the cartoon in question. It wasn’t the worst choice—at least the show held some level of complexity, more than some of the garbage he had seen directed at children nowadays. Barbara thought the cartoon was cute. Walter thought he might need to find a memory curse to purge the ear worm of a theme song from his brain as soon as their son grew out of this phase of his life.

     He fulfilled his son’s request in spite of himself and clicked on the icon.

     It was a good thing he had other matters to attend to, he thought, as upbeat music heralded that the show was starting.

     Barbara shot him a knowing smirk as he approached her. He scooped her up before she could stand, fully intent on seeing her previous efforts to their completion. She laughed as he hoisted her into the air.

     “I do believe,” Walter started, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, a tentative ask for permissions further as he slowly made his way toward the staircase, “that we have some unfinished business, you and I.”

     “Maybe we do,” she acknowledged, trailing her finger down the curve of his forearm, making little impact on his unwanted body art. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together as she drew it back, coloring the tips of both with the same pleasing shade of pink. He paused at the bottom of the stairs, waiting...anticipating.

     Her cheeks too were tinged pink, the start of a blush forming as she drew lazily on his chest. Faint lines of chalk dust trailed behind the shape she sketched on his pectoral.

     “You are an adult though, Walt,” she teased, glancing up at him. Her eyes contrasted brightly with the rest of her, brilliant sky blue against a blush that was quickly spreading further. Her lips pressed together in her calculated pause, ruddy and rouge and flushed, driving him to distraction. “Shouldn’t you be able to handle showering alone?”

     “It is a rather large job, dearest,” he offered in counter. She drew her finger slowly downward in a straight line, eyes locked on his. He started up the stairs. Negotiation, he noted, was a rather tricky thing when one’s opponent was making two very different arguments. “One should never be afraid to ask for help, adult or otherwise...and you were so gracious as to offer.”

     Barbara hummed, tapping her finger lightly as though contemplating. He glanced briefly at the place where it met his skin and grinned.

     “I suppose lunch can wait.”

     No, he didn’t think it could. Not when so luscious a banquet lay prone before him. He hastened his ascent. “I’m sure we can find other appetites to satisfy first.”

---

     It was much later that Wally’s follow-up question came, as he idly mixed his peas and carrots into a colorful blend on his plate, drawing out eating them for as long as possible. The child looked up hesitantly, considering his conundrum and feeling out the shape of what he needed to know. “Mom said ask? Before touch?”

     Both adults paused. Barbara set down her utensils and offered the boy a look of compassion. Consent was a tricky lesson, and there was no quick way to explain it. No convenient way to teach it. But it was such an important building block. “Yes, sweetie. It’s important to ask people before touching them. Some people don’t like to be touched. Some people might change their mind about it. As long as they aren’t in danger, you should ask first.”

     He nodded, but still looked unsure. As he thought, he smashed a few peas quietly with his spoon. Barbara waited patiently until he met her eyes again. “Mom touched dad. He was sleeping.”

     Oh.

     Barbara felt her cheeks heat up as they flushed red for an entirely different reason.

     Seated adjacent to her, Walter fumbled his fork, nearly bending it in his haste to avoid dropping it. His face lit up with unbridled mirth.

     How in the world did she explain the nuance of that to a three-year-old?!

     Walter, face split wide with the most self-satisfied grin she had seen in some time, beat her to it. “Your mother has standing permission.”

     Barbara buried her face in her hands.