#kidfic hell

Laurel’s initially resistant to the idea of having kids because her own parents fucked her up so much and Luke is pretty much NOT GREAT at it either. Eventually she decides that it might be okay if she does it with Gareth since she thinks he’d be a good dad and she might be able to swing being a good mom. Around the same time Gareth decides that he’d rather be w her than have kids and they shelf the kids discussion for a few years since they’re both career-focused and both feel like they could go either way on it.

When they do eventually settle down and decide they want kids, they find out that they have ~unspecified fertility issues~ which i won’t go into bc i didnt want to research it. They try to have a kid for awhile and it’s just not working out so they go the fertility treatment route and eventually get pregnant with their first kid, Zoe Cathryn Ritter. They have their second kid Mackenzie Marie Ritter very soon afterwards cause they’re both so close with their siblings they wanted to make sure they had at least two.

After that they pretty much call it quits on the fertility treatments/kids front but then WEIRDLY a few years later Laurel gets pregnant accidentally. Which is a very big surprise. They thought she might be seriously sick before she went to the doctor. And when she does and the doctor’s like “hey you’re pregnant” Laurel shows up at Gareth’s office unannounced and he’s like OH MY GOD YOU’RE DYING ARE YOU DYING?? very alarming. Anyway this one is a boy and they name him Jacob Lucas Ritter and call him Luke, naturally.

The kids are all very plucky. I really don’t have that many headcanons about the children themselves bc all my convos with Caroline were focused on Laurel and Gareth lmao. But I like to imagine they have the kid humor of XplodingUnicorn’s girls and are all very precocious and intelligent.

Martyn spread his new workbooks across his study desk.  The tutor that Grand Enchanter Vivienne sent had come with several fancy books bound with gold leaf and dragonskin.  Martyn took this as a sign that he was now a grown-up lad who had to turn his attention to serious matters, and not a baby who who only got to do baby magic, which was all his former governess had allowed him.

It was time to get down to business.

And yet it felt like something was missing.  As though Martyn had left out a crucial step in his very adult work preparations.  He had a quill, and paper, and the rag to mop up ink spills, and of course the books which he kept opposite of the ink because Grant Enchanter Vivienne was scary, and, and--

Of course!  It was the chair.  Father never used the chair in his office.  Instead he loomed over his work and, Martyn assumed, ordered it to get done.  A chair was for babies, probably.  For the lazy and the spoiled.

Martyn kicked his chair into the corner and immediately felt better about himself.  There.  All set to go.

He stood over the first book and opened it up.  The first page contained a vivid diagram of a dragon.  It deserved very careful scrutiny.

The door opened to the side of him. "Martyn, are you done playing with your new picture books?  I-- oh, Maker." His mother's hands flew up to cover her mouth, but Martyn could still see the grin crinkling at the corner of her eyes.