Surviving the Mercers

Mercer World Miscellaneous #1

Something I wrote for fun.  It won't be in any book, it is simply a made up scene to help me get my head back into the Mercer world :)

The bedroom door crashed open, startling me enough that I elicited a small yelp.  While I flailed about and tried to figure out what was going on, Justice merely groaned in his sleep.  Forgetting for a second all about the intruder, I paused to gape at him.

Six months ago, he would have been standing upright and armed to the teeth if I’d so much as twitched lying beside him while he was sleeping.  Now, I had a feeling a hurricane could rip our house to shreds and he’d continue to snooze obliviously.

“Good lord, is he dead?”

Gin’s voice distracted me, or brought me back on track I supposed.  Because she was the intruder, and she looked far too perky for… well whatever time it was right now.  I blinked owlishly at her as I sat up.

“What?”

“Montoya,” Gin said, eyeing him like he was an alien life force and not one of her closest and dearest friends.  “I mean, it’s not like him to sleep through, well, anything.  So did you kill him or what?”

I made a noise of indignation.  “Yeah, right.  Me?  Kill him? The apocalypse will come about before he lets me end his life.”  I scrubbed my hands down my face, then elbowed Justice in the side.

He grunted, but didn’t move from where he was laying face down, his arms tucked under his pillow.

“See?  It moves,” I said, grinning at Gin.

She laughed, shaking her head.  “Damn, a few more months with you and he won’t have an aggressive bone left in his body.”

She came further into the room, rubbing absently at her stomach where there was a slight bulge.  Pregnancy had never looked better on anyone.  Gin was positively glowing, and I’d never seen her so happy.  It had taken her years to convince Sal to start a family with her, and after all of that perseverance and stubbornness, it was finally coming true.

Unfortunately him caving and saying yes didn’t extend to the multitudes of shopping trips Gin had already made to prepare for the baby.  The first and only time she’d dragged him into a baby store, he’d nearly hyperventilated and passed out at seeing the dozens upon dozens of heavily pregnant women roaming around.  Now, much to his relief, Sal’s role was limited to handing over the cash and making sure she didn’t go anywhere alone.  Which was normally where I came in.

“So what’s up?” I said through a yawn. “Did we forget something yesterday?”

My question earned me a snort from Justice, who stretched lazily and rolled over to squint sleepily at us both.  “Did you forget anything?” he repeated, voice tinged with amusement.  “You’ve outfitted the kid with enough clothes it’s going to have a set for each day of the year.  You bought a five hundred dollar baby stroller when the one on sale for sixty would have done the same job.  And don’t even get me started on the bottles and sippy cups.  Kid’s only going to have one mouth, not seven.”

“One mouth each,” Gin corrected.

It took Justice a moment to process what she was saying, but I saw understanding dawn in the way his mouth dropped open and he went from staring at her face to her stomach.

“Twins,” she exclaimed happily before he could form some kind of verbal response.

“Oh, mio Dio,” he breathed, then frowned.  “Hold on, Sal didn’t say anything about more than one baby.”