The Devil's Assistant (Watty Awards Finalist 2011)

Devil's Assistant [7]

Chapter 7

The sound of booming male laughter and the innocent giggling of a baby made my eyes peel themselves open. For a moment I was confused as to what I was really seeing but after a few more blinks I realised that it was in fact real and not some apparition. Lucius was sat on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him as he was pulling faces at Danny, sticking his tongue out at him and doing some other stuff before laughing when Danny started copying him. I smiled at the little intimate moment they were having. Then I heard that baby's laughter coming from Danny and instantly I was off the sofa and over to Danny and Lucius, staring in wide eyed awe.

"How did you do that?" I whispered watching Danny's smiling face as he giggled slightly before sticking out his tongue. Smiling I poked my tongue out too and watched as he frowned before smiling. "You made him laugh his first laugh." The last part was awed as I reached over Lucius' shoulder and allowed Danny to grasp my finger. When decided that my finger wasn't interesting enough he let go of it and instead reached for Lucius' face with wide eyed fascination. Not even thinking about it, I wrapped my arms around his waist so that I was hugging him from behind and gave him a whispered thank you as tears started to leak from my eyes.

I remained like that just hugging Lucius whilst I stared at my little boy in admiration, it was surprising how much he had grown and changed in such a small amount of time and I kind of liked this, having a male presence in the house who didn't shy away from Danny, for just a moment it felt like a real new family should. All of a sudden though, my attention was brought fully to the situation as Danny's little face got all scrunched up and bright red before a loud rumble came from his direction. 

"Danny!" I gasped playfully letting go of Lucius who had started to laugh silently, his whole body shaking with the action. I tried not to think of how the vibrations his laughter made sent a thrill through my body. Shifting around him I grabbed onto the baby that was sitting in happily in his grasp, smiling whilst his face faded back to its normal colour. I lifted him up and sniffed his butt. "Lil man you smell." My tone was babyish as I pulled him in to my chest and coddled him for a moment. "You're a stinky boy, yes you are." Feeling eyes on me I looked up to see Lucius dark brows furrowed together as he looked at me oddly. Laughing at him as I pushed myself off of the floor, I took the smelly baby over to where the changing mat was laid out ready.

"Uh, where's your bathroom?" Lucius asked awkwardly from behind me. Glancing over my shoulder I smiled before pointing to the hall.

"Second door on the left." I replied before a thought struck me. "Oh and next to the bath there is a red flat pack baby bath, can you bring that in with you when you come back?" I questioned which earned me a nod before he retreated from my vision. I had just unstrapped the nappy from the baby and was cringing away from the lovely yellowish poop when I remembered why I didn't want him to go into the bathroom in the first place. "Ah crap." I cussed remembering the lingerie hanging up in there. I was just glad it wasn't my crappy grannie panties that I wore when I was due to do some laundry and they were the only clean ones left.

Blushing at the thought of my boss, who minutes before I had been hugging like we were an actual family, was going to walk into a room that had my underwear strung up before his eyes. I'm never going to live down this moment because this man is most definitely not a saint, if anything he will tease me mercilessly and the innuendo is bound to start tenfold because my lingerie is pretty fancy for a single mother. It's what I treat myself with though, most people it would be a new pair of shoes, me its underwear. I just think that if I was to get sent to a hospital for some reason I would like to be comfortable in the fact that I am in pretty matching underwear rather than manky mismatched ones.