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“Daisy, you already called to remind me to get milk,” Coulson said.
“Well, joke’s on you, because I forgot I called to remind you,” Daisy replied. “Baby brain, you know? Anyway, that’s not what I’m calling about.”
“Oh? Well, I’m in the middle of prepping Bobbi and Hunter for a mission, so…”
“I have a mission for you,” Daisy said. “Your favorite. Undercover.”
“Oh, no,” Coulson moaned, because he knew precisely where Daisy was going. “It’s not…”
“I’m afraid it is, Mr. Coulson. It’s PTA meeting night.”
Coulson groaned.
“And you get to go undercover as a regular suburban dad. Your favorite cover story. I know you’re just - Jesus, Tallulah, get off the roof!”
“Daisy,” Coulson said, “I can’t go to another PTA meeting. After the last one I wanted to blow my face off.”
“Yes, I completely understand, but we have to - Owen, do NOT bite the dog again! - go. We’re regular parents, remember?”
“We’re something,” Coulson muttered.
“Okay, so, be home at five-thirty for dinner. Meeting’s at six-thirty.”
She was gone before Coulson could tell her he loved her.
Coulson had lived in all kinds of places, but the house he shared with Daisy and their seven (soon to be eight) kids was his absolute favorite. And for the majority of his life, Lola was the only car he wanted to drive, but he somehow got almost the same feeling of pride just from barrelling down the road in their big blue van. The van, their house - they tied him back to something, something bigger than he was. They represented a place to come back to, a way to connect him to his family.
Not that he was ever disconnected.
The second he opened the front door he heard a squeal. “Daddy’s home!”
The chorus went up through the house. “Daddy’s home!”
“Daddy! Daddy!”
Footsteps pounded towards him, children tumbling down the stairs and careening through the hallway to get to him. Skyla and Owen were the first to reach him; Owen jumped into his arms and Skyla wrapped herself around his legs.
“Oof!” Coulson grunted as he caught Owen.
“Hi, Daddy,” Owen said, beaming up at him. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” Coulson replied.
It was the truth. Coulson liked working, but he would have preferred remaining at home with the kids. They were always into everything - painting and cooking and playing music and running and tossing and getting dirty and building with Legos and spying on each other - and he wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to live before he and Daisy found them.
Inhuman children were part of the fallout of the terrigen crystal dispersal - kids who’d been orphaned after their parents’ transformations, or who’d been given up following their own terrigenesis by parents unable to cope with their children’s gifts. Daisy wanted to bring them all home. So far Coulson had stopped her at seven.
“Daddy, Mommy says you’re going to a PTA meeting and Aunt Jemma is coming to stay with us,” Vi informed him as she slid down the banister. “Is Mrs. Hunt going to be there?”
“I think so,” Coulson answered, tickling Owen until the boy squealed. “Why?”
“When she looks at you, she gets weird pictures in her head,” Vi replied.
“Weird how?”
“Like, grownup weird.”
Coulson nearly dropped Owen. “What?”
“Yeah, like, you’re not wearing any clothes, and -”
“Daisy,” Coulson hollered.
“I’m in here!”
Coulson put Owen down and strode into the kitchen. “Did you know this thing about Mrs. Hunt?”
Daisy was standing at the kitchen counter chopping carrots, and the sight of her caused Coulson to almost forget about his telepathic daughter receiving dirty thoughts from a classmate’s parent. Her hair was pulled up in a wispy bun and she wore a sleeveless sapphire shirt, one of his favorites. He was amazed it still fit.
“Hi,” she said to him, and turned her cheek up for a kiss.
Coulson kissed her and she leaned into him. Her gently-rounded abdomen met his flat stomach and he swore he felt a kick travel through her body. “Miss me?”
“All day,” Daisy answered. “What’s this yelling about Mrs. Hunt?”
Coulson brought his hand down and placed it over the swell of her belly. Sometimes it was still hard for him to believe they were having a baby, that in four-and-a-half months there’d be a brand-new human on earth who was half him and half Daisy. He tended to get woozy if he thought about it for too long. “Oh. Um, Vi says Mrs. Hunt thinks about me naked.”
Daisy grinned. “Of course she does. I don’t even have to be a telepath to understand that. Every woman at that PTA thinks you’re as smooth as Michael Buble.”
Coulson pulled back. “What?”
“Yeah,” Daisy said. “Come on, you’re an absolute stud. You’re a dad who actually goes to PTA meetings.”
“There are other dads there!”
“Sure, there’s Joshua’s dads,” Daisy agreed, “but they’re taken… and obviously taken with each other.”
“I’m taken,” Coulson said stubbornly.
“You are. But they don’t like me.”
“Don’t know why,” Coulson muttered. “You’re the best one there.”
He moved his hand back to her belly and felt a definite kick. “Tell your momma, she’s the best one there.”
“Oh, believe me, Momma knows,” Daisy said. She popped a carrot into his mouth. “I need you to go have a talk with Tallulah.”
“Did she try to fly off the roof again?”
“You’re damn right she did,” Daisy said. “And I was already Mean Mom this afternoon, so you need to go be Mean Dad.”
“I hate being Mean Dad,” Coulson practically whined. “They don’t like Mean Dad.”
“No, but they respond to Mean Dad.”
“Do you know how many parents wish their kids could fly? And we actually have one and I have to go tell her she can’t?”
“She can fly,” Daisy retorted. “Just not off the roof.”
Another kick pulsed up to Coulson’s palm and Daisy winced. “God, that one was strong.”
Coulson rubbed Daisy’s belly and she let out a low moan of pleasure. “Stop,” she grunted at him. “If you start that we’ll never have dinner, and… ohhh, that feels really nice.”
He carefully worked his hands into the taut skin of her swollen abdomen.
“Stop,” Daisy repeated, somewhat halfheartedly. “Go be Mean Dad and let me finish dinner.”
She made no move to step away from him, though.
“Later,” Coulson promised, and he kissed her again.
“Promises, promises.”
He laughed as he went to seek out their daredevil daughter.
“Remind me of our cover,” Coulson said teasingly as Daisy pulled into a parking spot outside the middle school.
“You’re Phil Coulson,” she answered. “You like… old-timey stuff. And… your wife.”
“And you’re Daisy Johnson,” he said, taking her hand in his. “You like naps, birthday cake, and destroying things with your earthquake powers.”
Daisy slapped his hand away. “None of that. You think they don’t talk to us now, just wait until they find out I have superpowers. I mean, ones that aren’t related to my secret recipes for the bake sale.”
“You do make startlingly delicious butter cookies.”
“Well, I have a lot of free time, you know, with only seven kids running around.”
“Or flying.”
“Or flying. Man, we’re really not cut out for this PTA shit, are we?”
Coulson found two seats in the cafeteria while Daisy went to the bathroom. He debated about getting refreshments and decided to err on the cautious side; he joined the queue for lemonade and cookies.
“Phil!” a female voice squawked from behind him, and he turned to see Nancy Hunt, another PTA mom, standing there. She was a trophy wife with all of the assets that generally entailed, and for some reason she was fascinated with him. “It’s so lovely to see you!”
“Hello, Mrs. Hunt,” Coulson said, as he always did.
“Oh, please, call me Nancy,” she answered, as she always did. “I don’t see Daisy. Did she stay at home with your… charming children?”
“She went to use the restroom,” Coulson said.
“Oh.” Nancy’s perfectly-lacquered face didn’t move a muscle, but he saw disappointment flash in her eyes. She recovered quickly, though, and began to talk about the latest school gossip.
It seemed a bit awkward to stand there with Nancy Hunt, especially after what Vi had told him that afternoon. Coulson began to feel as though he was naked in the middle of the cafeteria, and had to look down several times to make sure he was still in his “dad” outfit (khakis and a polo shirt).
Daisy reappeared and slipped into line next to him, taking his hand. She suddenly seemed very tired and Coulson kicked himself mentally.
I should have let her stay home and go to bed early. I can come to a PTA meeting by myself.
“Why, Daisy!” Nancy Hunt crowed. “You’ve certainly popped! You’re all belly!”
Daisy clamped down on Coulson’s hand. He knew how hard the pregnancy had been on her, and how self-conscious she was of her rapidly-changing body.
“Please don’t earthquake her,” he whispered in Daisy’s ear.
“No promises,” she answered, her teeth grit.
“Is it nice knowing you’ll finally have a child of your own?” Nancy Hunt went on.
Daisy looked at her confusedly. “We have seven other kids.”
“Oh, well, dear, I know, but they’re not really yours,” Nancy said.
Coulson felt a headache start to form between his eyes.
“I mean, it was sweet of you to take them in, poor things, but they’re not yours, are they?”
Daisy stepped towards Nancy. “They’re not mine?” she asked, the tone of her voice perfectly mirroring Nancy. “Phil, did you know our kids aren’t ours?”
“Who do they belong to?”
“I don’t know. Nancy hasn’t told me yet,” Daisy replied.
“Huh. Well, they sure seemed like they were ours,” Coulson said. “Called me ‘Daddy’ when we left…”
“I just meant…” Nancy stuttered.
“I think I know what you meant,” Daisy interrupted her. “You meant that because I didn’t give birth to any of them, they don’t really count as mine. That you have to have a biological connection to a child before you can really love them. That somehow I’m going to love this baby more than the others because it’s going to come out of my body. And you know what’s wrong with that, Nancy - all of it. So take your comments and shove ‘em up your ass.”
Nancy’s mouth dropped open. Stunned silence blanketed the rest of the PTA.
Daisy strode away.
“Um, well, thanks for the cookies,” Coulson said awkwardly, and jogged after Daisy.
He caught up to her in the parking lot. “So much for undercover.”
She looked up at him, eyes shining. “Is it true?” she asked, her voice wobbly.
“Is what true?”
“Are we really going to love this baby more?”
“No,” Coulson said immediately. “No. It’s not true.”
Daisy hiccupped and he knew she was about thirty seconds away from a hormone-fueled sob.
“You love all of our kids,” he hurried to say. “ We love all of our kids. They’re messy and stubborn and smelly and sticky and fantastic and ours.”
“But what if…?”
“We didn’t take all of the kids,” Coulson said. “There were at least a hundred Inhuman kids we could have adopted, but we didn’t just take the first handful and call it a day. We picked. We waited for the ones that were truly ours. They weren’t all ours… just these ones.”
He wrapped his arms around her and she sniffled.
“People like Nancy… if they adopted a kid, they’d be doing it for the praise, for the recognition,” Coulson went on, stroking Daisy’s hair. “You did it because you know what it’s like to be alone, to be terrified of who you are, and you never want anyone to feel that way. You’re an amazing mom because you care so deeply about people - you want what’s best for them.
“I never, ever want to let people like Nancy Hunt make you feel bad about us, about our kids, about your body… you’re a real-life superhero, with or without earthquake powers, and if Nancy Hunt is so content with her life, why does she need to think about the obviously-hunky husband of a fellow PTA member naked?”
That got Daisy to laugh, and she wiped her eyes. “God, what an ass.”
Coulson turned slightly around, as though trying to see his own rear end. “Do you think that’s what she says?”
Daisy grinned. “You should ask Vi. I bet she’ll be more than happy to tell you all about it.”
“I love you,” Coulson said, and he kissed her.
“I love you, too,” she replied. “Even though you’re clearly shit at undercover.”
“Nobody needs the PTA,” Coulson said. “Let’s blow it off and get ice cream.”
He saw Daisy wavering, torn between wanting to get back to the kids and really, really wanting ice cream.
“Come on,” he said, teasingly. “We’ll get a milkshake and two straws and…”
“Yeah, right!” Daisy burst out laughing. “You can get a milkshake and two straws. Your pregnant and Inhuman-with-a-high-metabolism wife is getting something else and it’s definitely going to be covered in hot fudge.”
“I love you.”
“So you tell me.”
“It’s true.”
“Well, here’s something else true,” Daisy said softly. “I love you, too.”