(Live play log converted into story form and posted with permission from all parties involved.)

Sin brought home a baby. Well, to be fair, she wasn't a baby any longer. Though the last time he had seen little Ana Salazar she had been. That had been two years ago. Now she was two and a half and horrifically mobile.

Salvador and children did not work well together. In fact, children beat paperwork and shopping above all and leaped to the top of the list of things he disliked the most. Children were unpredictable little monsters. The last one he had known at this age had taken it upon herself to punch him in the nuts for no good reason he could comprehend. Ana, thankfully, did not seem to operate under the same wavelength. The fact that she called him T?o Espigados (Uncle Spiky) was proof enough of that.

The day after the sinner had brought her home, he had spent the majority of the day with her, enjoying a domestic life that he could never really have. After dinner and a bath, the girl decided it was Not Bedtime -- and she was running naked through the apartment, chasing after Kavi, who seemed to be desperately trying to fit underneath the couch. "Gato, gato--" she chanted gleefully. Sin followed her out of the bathroom, towel slung over one shoulder. "Gata," he corrected, not that it meant anything to the girl at all.

Salvador, on the other hand, had spent the majority of the day avoiding the domestic life that he didn't ever want to be a part of anyway. Maybe it's true what they say about opposites. Though his particular brand of avoidance had mostly been as much as lurking, crouching out on the balcony where Ana couldn't get to him. Especially with the doors closed. Most of the time he sat there staring wide-eyed through the windows, when Sin wasn't looking, like the scenes inside had been a nonstop horror movie of a train wreck that he couldn't ever take his eyes off of. Bath time had been a good opportunity for him to sneak inside for his own dinner, and when the girl came racing out naked he crawled up onto the kitchen counter to watch the horror unfold from that safe spot.

The girl was gripping the cat relentlessly until Kavi gave in with a dejected mrow. The Spaniard chuckled quietly, letting Ana run amok for a few moments while he went to attend to his lover. Leaning against the kitchen counter, Sin moved to drop a kiss against his mouth. "You aren't going to break her, you know," he murmured with a chuckle. "She's not a china doll."

"Mrngh," Salvador argued. The kiss did not tear his attention off the girl. Some small part of him felt for the stupid cat. He was crouched up there on the counter, boots on the surface and tucked up into a tight, wary ball. His own feline aspect shining through. "Break her. Ruin her." His fingers twitched uncomfortably. He could imagine any number of horrible things he might accidentally do to the child with a mere touch. "Don't want to risk it."

"You can't, love. Believe me." As Sin spoke, Ana was abandoning the cat to chug her way over to Sin and ramble off something that made absolutely no sense while she waved her arms at him in the universal sign of "pick me up!" Chuckling, Sin leaned down to pick the girl up, resting her against his hip. "You owe her a bedtime story," Sin rumbled to Sal.

"Me!?" Wild-eyed horror intensified, along with incredulity. He instinctively leaned away from the child. "I don't know any stories." Telling stories wasn't on his resume! That was a bard's job, not his.

"So you make one up. It doesn't have to make sense." Ana was waving her little arms at him next; Sin peered at Sal with an encouraging grin. Come on! You can do it!

"Nnngh." He shrank back as far into the wall and the refrigerator as he could, slid sideways, back pressed, to drop first one leg off and then pull down the other. The floor was safer now that she was up in Sin's arms. So he could stand, but not too close. Rapidly looking back and forth between two faces. "Put her in there and I'll try." But he's so not touching her. Besides, didn't she need a diaper or something? He wasn't doing that either.

"If you do, I'll give you a blowjob." Oooh, incentive. Never mind that he's holding a little girl in his arms. Good thing she didn't speak English. Chuckling, Sin headed toward the spare bedroom, bouncing the girl on his hip along the way.

Perks of the business! Salvador snorted, but that wasn't an offer he was likely to turn down. Some other small part of him was trying to tell him that there being a small child in the apartment made that sort of thing wrong, all wrong. He quickly, mentally chopped that thought up into a billion little pieces and tossed it aside. Tentatively, and with a few well-placed spaces behind, he crept along after Sin and Ana.

Good boy. Sin was allowed to have sex as long as she was asleep, god damnit. Setting the girl on the bed, he snatched a nearby pair of PJs and proceeded to dress her while speaking in his native tongue. "Now, Uncle Spiky is going to tell you a story -- you will be good for him, yes? Hmm?" Once dressed, Sinjin's fingers tickled over her sides until she fell down onto the bed in laughter.

Uncle Spiky. To be honest, it wasn't the 'Spiky' part that made him disgruntled. The more disturbing of the two words was 'Uncle.' Crossing his arms sullenly, he took up a lean against the door frame and waited for the tickle assault to be done with.

Hey, it came with the territory. It's not like he could be 'Uncle Sin's Very Good Friend (And We Mean Very Good Friend) Spiky'. Releasing the girl, she sprawled out on the overlarge bed and took a step back, heading for the door. He pressed a kiss to Sal's cheek on the way by. "Good luck. I'll be waiting for you." Rumble. A swat to Sal's ass on the way by, and Sin was headed for their bedroom.

Well, there was that, true. Salvador grunted at the swat, which had a strong hint of noting his further discontent. For several long and agonizing seconds, he kept his shoulder attached to the door frame and stared at the child sprawled on a bed too huge for her. Only with the greatest reluctance, and after the sinner had made it all the way into their own bedroom, did he peel away from the threshold and creep closer to the bed. He didn't sit on it.

The spare bedroom had a desk with a chair, and he grabbed that, turned it around, back pressed up against the side of the bed, and straddled the seat. Arms folded over the back. Spanish was easy, and the girl understood it, so that's the language he chose to use when he said, quietly, "Hello, sweet Ana." Ana Dulce, as he had taken to calling her.

The girl was hardly settled, but hearing Salvador -- who rarely spoke to her -- she turned wide, dark eyes toward her and paused in her fidgeting with the sheets and blankets. Yeesss?

Ana wasn't the only one. Salvador hardly ever spoke to anyone. It was a rare and awesome occurrence, even, when he simply said hello. He tilted his head to regard her huge questioning eyes and thought for several long, agonizing seconds on what the hell he was going to tell her. "You want to hear a story?"

"Yes!" Excitedly spoken as she squirmed on the bed, giggling wildly while she crawled closer to settle in front of him. "Tell me a story!"

"All right." Only because Sin had told him he owed her one. "Once upon a time," he began. Somewhere he had heard that all bedtime stories were supposed to start that way. Granted, his stories weren't half as exciting as Papa Dan's were. Salvador didn't know the first thing about action and adventure and romance and pretty, pretty princesses being saved by handsome princes. "There was a boy." He also had that kind of school teacher monotone that worked well on numbing the brain into a sludge-induced coma. "A stupid, lonely boy who didn't know anything about anything, not even love." Aw, sad.

"That's sad! Was he a frog?" It is difficult to say how she came to this conclusion, but the girl seemed pleased with her guess all the same, assuming it was correct.

Maybe Dris had told her the story about the frog prince. "Hm. No." And Salvador wasn't very imaginative. Well. Then again. "He was a porcupine." Spikes. Quills. Someone had called him a monster porcupine freak once ... upon a time.

"What's a porcupine?" She asked, cupping her chin in her hands with her legs bouncing against the bed.

"Well..." Oh dear. Explanations. "It's this big, fat, ugly rat with qui-- mm-- needles stuck all over its back." He held his hands apart to indicate just how big and fat.

"Like you!" She giggled wildly. "Uncle Spiky is a porcupine!" Let's hope Sin didn't hear that one.

She caught on quick! He gave a vague smile and a short breath of a laugh. "Yes. Just like me." Now where was he?

"Can I be a porcupine?" She was looking at her back then -- or trying to, anyway.

"No, Ana, sweet. You can't be a porcupine." The smile kind of stuck, making him look a little amused. Just a little. "Only a porcupine can be a porcupine, because they're born that way. You--" Lifting a finger, but not quite tapping her nose. "--are a little girl."

She giggled for that, squirming some where she laid flat on her stomach in front of him. "Do I have to be a little girl?"

Salvador tilted his head, considering this. Man! Telling her a story the last time had been so much easier. She couldn't talk back, then. Previous dealings with Taneth, however, had sort of prepared him for this. He thought back on her and asked, "What would you rather be?"

"A kitty." Ana was infatuated with Kavi. She couldn't have her own pets, after all.

Being a kitty didn't fall under the category of known job descriptions in his knowledge base. It was a sad, sad thing that Salvador had never really, truly, actually had a childhood. He looked puzzled. "You can't be a kitty."

Awww. Look at the pouty face, Sal! Lower lip curled and everything. "I can't?"

"No." Because it didn't make any sense! He drew back his chin, kind of cowering away from the pouty face. "You don't have the ears, or the tail," he pointed out. "Not even any fur. But--" There were other kinds of kitties, after all. Cats in man skins. "Can you purr?"

The girl tried. It didn't sound much like a purr, but it was a valiant attempt. "I can! See? Can I be a kitty like Kavi?"

Well... Since it was such a valiant attempt, and because, despite his scary disposition, even Salvador couldn't say no to cute. "Okay," he laughed, all breath and no bark. "You can be a kitty."

The girl gave another pleased little squirm after that. "So the kitty and the porcupine were friends?" She was helping Sal along with his story, oh yes she was.

Salvador blinked stupidly, a little stunned at the notion. Probably because he wasn't completely creative enough to have separated the metaphors from fact and fiction. "I don't know. Were they?"

"Yes!" She paused. "We are friends, yes?" She looked up at Salvador now with a certain quietness.

He had no idea two-year-olds could be that damned clever. "Well..." The last time he had seen the child she hadn't even been crawling yet! He's never had a friend so ... young. It was the strangest concept to him. "Sure, I guess." Try as he might, he just couldn't say no to something that goddamned adorable.

The girl grinned brightly then, but finally kept to her silence -- maybe because she was getting sleepy, maybe because she was finally letting Sal continue with his story.

Where the hell had he been going with the story anyway? "Uh." Train of thought derailed and he needed to play the video surveillance in reverse for a second. "So the boy, um, porcupine. He was lonely and didn't have any friends." Pause. "Except for a kitty." Because they had agreed on that. This, however, didn't coincide with his original train of thought. "Which was strange, because friends like to hug each other." As Taneth had told him. "And you can't really hug a porcupine because of all those needles stuck to his back. That's why he didn't have many friends." He was prickly. "Not being able to hug made him mean and bitter. But the ... kitty--" Saying that instead of 'cat' made him feel silly, but whatever. "--liked him anyway. Why?" She had helped him out with the story thusfar, why not some more!

"Kitties and porcupines can hug! They just have to hug smart. See?" And the girl abruptly crawled toward Salvador to wrap around his front. Her little arms couldn't even reach all the way around him.

By purest horrified reflex, Salvador stiffened. His imagination was powerful enough to envision the very real possibility of his spikes impaling her tiny little hands, but that didn't happen because her fingers never even came close. They did twitter and click on their joints, but fortunately remained harmlessly flat down the length of his spine. After a very long and tense several seconds, he exhaled relief and remembered to breathe again. Tentatively, with extreme caution, he touched one hand to her hair and the other to her tiny little shoulder. "Well, yes," he said softly. "So they can." He wasn't smiling. It was just a muscle twitching at the corners of his lips. Honestly.

"See?" She was still leaning against him. Possibly because she was slowly but surely beginning to fall asleep there. It did explain her rapidly growing silence and lull in tone.

"I do." Softly but still with that school teacher monotone. He eased closer to the bed, slowly twisting to sit on the edge of it. Not sure where he'd intended on going with the story to begin with, and now that it had drastically changed anyway, he smoothed his hand over her hair and tried ushering her back onto the mattress itself. "Will you sleep now, sweet Ana?"

"What about the story?" She asked sleepily, allowing Sal to usher her back onto the bed with a yawn.

"That was the story," he lied reassuringly. "The kitty helped the porcupine figure out what love is by giving him a friend. And--" How did those stories always go? "They lived happily ever after." He tugged up the blankets so she could crawl under them.

She was far too sleepy to even understand the story at this point, crawling under the blankets and cuddling up to the pillow. "Goodnight, Uncle Porcupine."

Believe it or not, Salvador tucked her in. "Sweet dreams, sweet Ana," he said softly. Miracle of all miracles? He even bent over to kiss her tiny little forehead.

The girl was fast asleep for it -- but over by the door, the sinner was peeking inside with a slow, quiet smile. He did love his boy.

Sliding off the bed, he stretched and turned in time to see that smile. In a single half a second he was frowning. "Shut up."

Sin didn't say anything! He only looked at Salvador and then the girl for another moment before easing out of the spare bedroom and toward their own. Very proud, yes he was!

Rolling his eyes, he prowled after the sinner. Pausing only to carefully pull the door closed to a crack. Then he followed him into their bedroom.