Fight or Flight [Rooster x OC]

Chapter 3

Kate flopped down in an Adirondack chair on the back patio, exhausted from playing with her extremely active nieces and nephews, plus East. Dot had four kids, and TJ had two. She was the only one out of her siblings without kids. While sometimes she found herself wishing she had one or two of her own, when she was around her siblings' kids, she was reminded that there were some perks to being childless.

"Here, hold her."

Kate barely had time to lift her hands up before TJ practically dropped his youngest, eleven-month-old Emma, into her lap. Catching her niece, Kate shot her brother a half-hearted frown. It was hard to stay annoyed when Emma fell back against her chest and grabbed her hand to play with her fingers.

"Stop being so cute," Kate scolded her niece without an ounce of force behind her words.

"She literally can't, it's annoying," TJ said with a grin, sitting in the chair beside Kate's. "It makes it really hard to take things away from her."

"See, that's why I'm happy being the fun aunt," Katie said. She toyed with Emma's tiny chubby hand and glanced over at her brother. "I'm still surprised you got leave."

"Yeah...well, Dad has a lot of pull." TJ's smile fell even though she could tell he was trying to pin it in place.

He was in the Navy, but he hadn't gone the fighter pilot route. Instead, he was an intelligence officer, which had gotten him a lot of teasing over the years about being a spy on a jetski. Still, he was well-suited for the actual job.

Neither of them were going to discuss why they thought their father had called them home. That elephant in the room would sit right there if the two younger Kazansky kids had their way at the moment. It was Dot who kept asking. She had been pestering their mother since Kate had gotten into town, and she would bet that Dot had been at it since she herself had arrived, kids and civilian husband Nathan in tow. TJ and his wife Elisa had gotten there a day after Dot, and Kate had just shown up yesterday. And now they were all...

Kate wasn't sure what they were doing.

Emma babbled in her own brand of baby language. Wrapping one arm around her niece, Kate gently blew a breath across Emma's dark brown curls, getting a squealing peal of laughter out of her. Emma took after her mother, with her dark hair, heart-shaped face, light brown skin, and big warm brown eyes. Tommy, TJ's rambunctious four-year-old (3rd of his name), looked more like TJ with green eyes and straight light brown hair.

TJ looked like a carbon copy of their dad in his thirties, except his hair was brown, like their mom's.

"What's for dinner?" Kate asked, reaching for a particularly easy subject. "I thought I saw meatloaf."

"I think we're grilling," TJ said. "That was for the hamburgers."

"That works, probably the easiest way to feed the troops." She smiled a little as she looked at the small horde of children in the yard. Dot's thirteen-year-old twins Nora and Mason were playing frisbee while ten-year-old Perry sat against a tree, reading. Tommy kept trying to steal the frisbee and run away while Dot's six-year-old Sarah (or as the family called her, Sassy) attempted to boss him into playing "Café." East was tearing around, not sure who needed the most attention. Normally, Tom Kazansky would've been out here, tackling his grandchildren or getting them organized into a game of whiffleball, but he was napping at the moment.

Out beyond the expansive, well-kept yard, the sun was setting over the bay, white-gold light glittering across the sea. Out of all the places her parents had been lived over the years, Kate loved this one the most. It had been the one they had bought when her dad had become the Commander of the US Pacific Fleet, and it was supposed to be the final house, the one for retirement. Hence the huge backyard for all the grandkids and all the bedrooms and huge kitchen and the feeling of solid permanence.