Child of a Wanderer

【Laughter】

timeskip - 2 months

it's now march, 2 months after soki was born.

and what was strange was... soki barely laughed.

since she was still an infant despite growing at an accelerated rate, you decided to keep her in the workshop. at the same time, scaramouche finished up his schoolwork and any other missions nahida gave him.

you were working on an upgrade to {robot name}, who had been powered down for some time during your trip to fontaine and your honeymoon. because your robot had a ton of safety features that were not child-friendly, you had to take them all off, which proved to be tedious work.

what you couldn't understand was how soki could sleep through the sound of screeching metal. it was like white noise to her, and she was asleep the whole time you worked except for wanting to be fed.

which was reasonable.

after all, you would do that too. and you do that anyway, which led scaramouche to cook for you at around 3 in the morning between studying. not that you pressured him to, he just wanted to.

at some point, scaramouche walked inside, having finished his recent paper and wanting nothing more but to relax. even though you told him you could now take care of soki, he always managed to take her off your hands or weasel his way into spending time as a family.

either way, he was very involved in soki's life, which was something that you appreciated a lot considering everything on his plate. the man rarely slept, and even though he said he was fine and never complained, you could tell he was exhausted.

"love," he called, walking inside. "do you know where the-"

suddenly, he slipped, making you flinch and look over. "k-kuni?! did you slip?"

you looked at the floor and saw a small amount of grease that tainted the hardwood floor, making you wince internally. he must not have noticed since his senses weren't exactly the sharpest from going 2 months with a really shitty sleep pattern. "shit, my bad, i should have cleaned it up," you apologized.

amidst scaramouche's displeased groan you heard what sounded like...

laughter?!

both of your gazes snapped to the small child seemingly laughing at scaramouche's fall. you looked at her with bewilderment, while scaramouche glared at her.

"are you laughing at me," he asked, his voice accusatory and stern at the small indigo-haired infant. although, soki didn't seem to care.

she just kept laughing.

at some point, you laughed too. her laughter proved to be infectious, and her small babbles and gurgles made you join in at the expense of your husband.

"that was silly, wasn't it," you asked soki rhetorically in a sing-song voice, pinching her cheeks which made her smile more. "isn't your father funny?"

he gritted his teeth and stood up. "i'm tired, okay? no need to laugh and poke fun at a mistake."

"your daughter seems to have taken after you," you teased. "laughing at others' misfortune."

he rolled his eyes and walked over, booping soki's nose. "look here, don't laugh at your father."

soki looked up at him with curious eyes before she started laughing again, making him groan. you stifled a laugh, a hand over your lips as you turned away.

"and why are you laughing," he snapped at you, his eyes filled with displeasure and embarrassment.

"because you're getting a taste of your own medicine and clearly it's too much for you," you said between small giggles. eventually, you couldn't hold it anymore and started laughing, soki laughing with you.

scaramouche rolled his eyes, "i'm going to go take a bath."

"b-bye," you called after him, trying to catch your breath. however, just before he left, soki had a coughing fit from all the laughter.

he immediately walked back inside and patted her back, rubbing it gently while you held her still. "this is why you shouldn't laugh at your father."

you snorted, "oh come on, laughing is an amazing thing."

"not when it's at your husband's expense," he glared at you, face inches from yours.

you gave him a small smile, gently grasped his chin with your free hand, and kissed him on the lips. "sorry."

he was bewildered for a moment, cheeks flushing before he "stormed" out, leaving a confused soki and a laughing wife.