Before I Melt Away [Peterick]

Before I Melt Away

[A/N: Just a cute little Christmas tale to get you in the holiday spirit. Leave a comment if you like, I'll love you if you do, and a very Merry Christmas to you all!]

"Hey! Don't bite," Pete snaps at his daughter as she tries to claw today's favourite toy out of her brother's hand. Pete only just manages to pull her off him before he aims a kick at her that would've landed them all in a screaming fit, and Pete really doesn't need that on a Thursday night.

"Don't kick, either, Josh," he almost shouts, catching his son's foot in the air and holding it well away from himself and his wriggling daughter. "How many times have I told you? You have to learn to share."

Both of them seem equally apathetic to this idea, and Josh unhelpfully waves the toy – a small, green truck – at Carrie with his tongue stuck out.

She's not having any of that though, and lets out a scream of anger and squirms hard enough to make Pete decide to remove her fully from the situation and carry her over to the couch, sitting down and holding her still until she stops yelling her tonsils out. Pete's a step away from yelling himself.

"You shouldn't bite, okay?" he says as calmly as he can, when she's stopped screaming in favour of bawling nonsense into his shirt. He glances towards a sheepish-looking Josh, who clutches the truck to his chest and shuffles away from the mess of animals and cars and Lego littering the living room floor. "And you shouldn't kick. You could've really hurt her, Josh."

Josh just opens his mouth wide and Pete braces himself for the shouting. "But – but she took it, I was playing with it and hers is the yellow one, the green one is mine!"

"No, no yours is ye'ow! Yours is ye'ow!" Carrie shrieks back, her eyes absolutely distraught and her legs flailing in Pete's lap.

"Alright, okay," Pete sighs, knowing that all this calls for another Talk. "Josh, come sit here." He pats the couch beside him. "You've made your sister cry, yeah?"

"It was her fault, she doesn't know how to play properly, she doesn't put the cars on the roads and I wanted them to –"

"That doesn't mean you can fight with her. You're older than her, you've got to know better. Why don't you teach her how to use the roads? And share the green truck?" Pete suggests, hoping against hope that Josh takes the higher ground on this one.

He pouts, oh, he pouts tremendously, crossing his arms and scowling something chronic. "But she always ruins everything. She doesn't know the game."

"Well then you teach her the game. And you certainly don't kick."

"She bit me!" he retorts, which is a fair point. At least he raised a kid with reasonable debating skills. Although it was probably mostly Patrick who taught him that.

"Yes, and I'm going to tell her off for that too, but you have to learn to share with each other. The game's gotta be more fun with two people, right?"

Josh doesn't look convinced, and rightly so, it was a poor defence on Pete's part, but still, he doesn't shout anymore and Pete can turn his attention to the slightly calmer three-year-old in his lap. "You don't bite, do you understand me?" he says as forcefully as he can, sitting her in front of him and trying to catch her gaze. "Do you understand?"

Carrie's face is screwed up in a brewing scream, but she seems to give in, reaching for Pete and garbling a "Sorry daddy".

"That's okay, but say sorry to your brother too. He doesn't like it when you bite, and neither does daddy," Pete says, probably in way too many words for her to follow, but she seems to have picked up the main point because she says something that sounds like sour jars, which is close enough for Pete.