Fairgame Week 2020

For day 2: domestic, we have an art piece and a short ficlet of Clover and Qrow and their nieces.

art: line art by @bosiphas​ and color by @data-plays-viola​

fic: written by @data-plays-viola​, edited by @bosiphas​ and @lameclub​





Fic under the cut!

Qrow slowly wakes up, uncertain what woke him. Clover remains still at his back, still asleep. Then he hears a sound, a small squeaky voice? He tilts his head and closes his eyes to attempt to figure out what the sound is.

“Hehehe.”



“Ruby, shhhh.”



Ah, right. His nieces are still here. He lets out a sigh. This is the fourth day Tai has left the girls with him and Clover. He loves his nieces to pieces, but he and Clover can only entertain a toddler and a preschooler for so long before everyone starts to feel a little antsy. Thank gods Clover happened to be down from Atlas for a few weeks, otherwise he would be handling the girls on his own. Their house is not equipped for children, a fact which has become very obvious over the past few days. Next to no toys and two kids who are way too active to sit in front of the TV all day is very quickly becoming a recipe for disaster.

“Morning, Pretty Bird.”



Qrow turns his head to look at Clover. “Good morning, Lucky Charm.”



“That’s the girls I hear, isn’t it?”



“Sure is.”



“We better get up, then.”



“Yeah…”



Qrow snuggles back closer to Clover. Neither of them moves for a few minutes. Clover presses a gentle kiss to the back of his neck. All of a sudden they hear a crash followed by what sounds like a panicked Yang.



“Ruby!”



“Time to get up.” Clover says as he and Qrow jump out of bed and hurry to investigate the commotion.



Clover and Qrow crash into the kitchen to see quite the confusing scene. Yang is on the floor, holding a wide-eyed Ruby in her outstretched arms as though she just caught her from falling. Yang’s eyes are burning red, drastically different from her usual purple. Her hair is also ablaze, glowing like yellow flames. Some of the magnets from the fridge and a handful of red rose petals lay scattered around the girls, along with the cookie jar from the top of the fridge. Its lid is cracked. That explains the singular cookie Ruby has in her hands. Thankfully, neither of them look hurt.



The two uncles pause at the scene and exchange confused glances.



“Hey, Sunshine, what happened here?” Qrow inquires.



At the nickname, Yang’s hair goes out like a bucket of water on a fire. The red melts from her eyes as she begins to cry. Ruby joins Yang in crying, prompting Qrow and Clover to move closer to the girls.



“Hey, hey, Little Flower. It’s alright.” Qrow bends down to scoop Ruby up from Yang, bouncing her slightly as she shoves her face into his chest, still crying. He soothingly rubs his free hand up and down her back, occasionally accompanied by small pats.



“What happened, Yang?” Clover asks, crouching down to get at eye level with her. He holds out his hand for Yang to take to help herself up from the kitchen floor. As she does, he quickly scoops her up as well.



“Ruby wanted cookie n I tried to say ‘no wait for Uncle Qrow n Uncle Clover’ but she wouldn’t listen n then she was petals n then the cookie jar fell n I had to catch her please don’t be mad.” Yang blurted out between sniffles as she snuggles into her uncle’s hold.



Qrow shifts Ruby in his arms so he can make eye contact with her. “Is that why you’re crying, Little Flower? You think me and Uncle Clover are going to be mad?”



Ruby sniffles loudly and nods her head, looking down to avoid her uncle’s eye contact.



“We’re not mad, right, Uncle Clover?” Qrow says, looking over to him.



“Of course not,” Clover says as he wipes a few tears from Yang’s cheeks as she begins to calm down. “We just want to make sure you don’t get hurt.” He looks over to Ruby with a gentle smile.



Yang and Ruby both loudly sniffle, but the tears have stopped.



“Alright, c’mon,” Qrow shifts Ruby in his arms to set her into her booster seat at the kitchen table. “Let’s have some breakfast, yeah?” Qrow says as he clips Ruby into the seat. Yang squirms in Clover’s arms until he lets her down. When she’s free, she quickly runs over to the empty chair next to Ruby and pulls herself up into the seat with a struggling grunt.



Clover grabs the cereal from the top of the fridge, carefully avoiding the mess on the floor—for the time being—as he sets the box on the table. He’d grabbed some Pumpkin Pete’s for the girls when they realized they were going to have the them for a while. Qrow grabs the milk from the fridge and sits down across from Ruby and Yang.



“So, petals, huh?” Qrow says, quirking an eyebrow at Yang as Clover pours her a bowl.



“Petals!” Ruby giggles and claps her hands together.



“Yeah!” Yang garbles through a mouth full of cereal. She swallows and continues. “She kept jumping for the cookie jar and then all a sudden she turned into petals and zoomed up to the top of the fridge. But then she changed back. So, I had to catch her! I didn’t think I was gonna be able to, but I did!” Yang beams proudly.



“Proud of you, Sunshine,” Qrow says as he reaches over to ruffle Yang’s hair. What an eventful morning.



Clover finishes his breakfast first, standing and rinsing his bowl in the sink. He walks over to Qrow and bends to whisper in his ear. “I think I have an idea about what we can do with the girls today. Keep them busy for an hour while I run to the store?” He presses a kiss to Qrow’s cheek and leaves the kitchen.



“Hey! Where’s Uncle Clover going?” Yang pouts.



“He’s going to get something from the store. Let’s clean up and then put on some TV until he comes back, yeah?”



“TV!” Ruby cheers, throwing her little fists in the air.



~~~

“Hoooney, I’m hoooome!” Clover comes crashing through the front door, so many bags balanced in his hands that his semblance must be involved.

Qrow smiles and shakes his head. Idiot. “Hey! Yang, why don’t you go help your uncle with that.”

Yang jumps up and runs over to Clover, taking a bag from him in both her hands. Qrow gets up, taking Ruby’s hand to help her follow along with him. Qrow takes two bags from Clover in his other hand, and they all head to the kitchen.

“Whadya get, Uncle Clover?” Yang asks as she attempts to put her bag on the counter.

Clover swoops down to grab the bag from her as he answers, “I got stuff to make cookies.”

“Cookies!!” Ruby shouts excitedly. As she’s jumping up and down, a couple petals float to the floor.

“Woooah, there kiddo,” Qrow says, quickly crouching down to put a hand on her shoulder. “Calm down, sweetie. We don’t want a repeat of this morning, now do we?”

Ruby settles as Yang and Clover start taking things out of bags to put on the table.

“You… you bought so much, Clover. Did we really not have any of this?” Qrow squints his eyes at the ingredients being laid out on the table.

“We really didn’t, Qrow.” Clover says with a laugh. “I’ve been gone for 2 months. I’m not too surprised that we’re out of everything. You’re not the biggest cook, love.”

“Choco chip?” Ruby asks as her sister pulls a bag of chocolate chips out of a bag.

“Yeah, Ruby. We’re making chocolate chip cookies,” Clover replies, watching her look at all the ingredients in curiosity.

Qrow grabs the bowls from a cabinet while Clover grabs utensils from a drawer.

“Here, Yang, let’s get you up on this chair so you can reach the table better.” Clover holds one of Yang’s hands and rests the other on her back to stabilize her as she steps up onto the chair. “Also, let’s get your hair out of your eyes. Making cookies can be kinda messy. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to your beautiful curls!”

Clover takes the hair tie off his wrist and gently gathers Yang’s hair into a ponytail. On the other side of the table, Ruby grabs the table leg to stabilize herself as she reaches up, attempting to grab the bowl from the table. Qrow catches the movement and crouches down next to her.

“Hey there Little Flower, what do you think you’re doing.” Qrow grabs Ruby and stands, settling her on his hip.

“Okay, very important task. We gotta start on mixing! You think you can handle that, Yang?” Clover says as he’s measuring out ingredients.

Qrow smiled warmly at his niece who was drumming on the table excitedly.

“Yeah!” She beamed as Clover placed several utensils in front of her. “You got the oven on babe?” Clover called out and Qrow just gave a quick thumbs up as he placed baby Ruby back down.

“Now, you just gotta put these in one at a time and then mix these until they are all gooey. You got this.” Clover said with a smile of encouragement as Yang nodded enthusiastically and began to pour in the ingredients he’d measured out for her in the bowl before starting to stir like crazy.

As Qrow picked up the bag of chocolate chips, Ruby pouted. She was clearly upset about being left out, “Don’t worry kiddo, once Yang’s finished that we have a job just for you.” Qrow smiled, which seemed to satisfy Ruby as she just giggled in response.

“Uncle Qrow! I think I’m done!” Yang shouted, which had her uncle come over to inspect her hard work.

“Not bad! Now, we get to pour the chips in. You up for the task, Ruby? It’s very high stakes.” Qrow teased as he opened the packet, waiting for her response.

“Yeah!” Ruby exclaimed as she made grabby hands and Qrow chuckled.

“Just make sure you don’t eat the whole bag. I know how you like to do that.” He said with a playful smile and Ruby smiled brightly as she began to sprinkle the chocolate in. Both Clover and Qrow took note of her sneaking a few now and then though, rolling their eyes in response.

“You wanna give Ruby the most important job, Cloves?” Qrow said as they stood next to each other and Clover hummed loudly.

“You think she is up for it?” which had Ruby nodding her head and cooing out for it.

“Yep, she’s ready… Here you go, Ruby. The most important job you can do…” Qrow said, handing her the wooden spoon. “You get to lick the spoon!” He smiled brightly at her, and she happily took it.

“You think letting a child eat raw cookie dough is okay?” Clover asked, raising an eyebrow to Qrow.

“Ah, it’s fine. It’s not much anyway.” He joked as he walked over to Yang who was finishing up mixing in the chocolate chips. “Okay, we gotta make the dough into nice little balls. Try to make them as close in size as you can,” he explains.

Sticking her tongue out as she focused, she carefully scooped out the dough, rolling it between her tiny hands. She made sure to lay out the cookie dough very neatly, squinting her eyes to make sure every single one was evenly spaced.

As they finished that, Clover took the now very clean spoon from a happy ruby.

“Okay! Now they are ready to go into the oven! Good work everyone, we all did a great job!” Clover smiled as he picked up the tray.

“What now, Uncle Clover?” Yang asks excitedly.

“Now, we wait.”

~~~

Bonus: Clover’s apron. (Yes, Qrow wrote that in himself)

Also: Clover always ends up with a hair tie on his wrist whenever the girls are over. No one ever knows how it happens, it just does.