For Reasons Wretched and Divine

Quick to Rise and Easy to Surprise

"Uncle Happy," Abel looked up at him from his pile of sand, frowning.

"Hmm?" he answered, snatching a rock out of Thomas' mouth. The baby gave an indignant scream before grabbing the sand shovel and making an absolute mess.

"Will I get a motorcycle too when I'm big like you and dad?"

"Of course," he agreed instantly, something that would have gotten him swatted in the back of the head if Tara was around.

"I want to drive mommy around like dad does," he dumped the playground sand out of the dump truck he was playing with and then promptly turned on Happy, narrowing his far too clever eyes at him.

"How come you don't drive the girls around on your bike?"

'The girls' was the affectionate name he had given to the croweaters that often watched him, and no one ever fought him on the title.

"Oh," Happy blinked at the four (almost five, he let everyone in a ten-foot radius know that he was on the verge of being five) year old that was smarter than Half-Sack on nearly every day of the week.

"Do you not like them?"

"I like them," he defended, twisting the sifter in his hand, picking the tiny pebbles out of the mesh. He wasn't sure why he was being defensive against a toddler, but he couldn't help that the boy was too smart for him to handle.

Abel frowned at him. "Do they smell bad? Mom says I have to take baths, or people won't want to be my friends at school,"

Happy grinned at him, the special kind that was reserved just for the boys.

"They smell fine,"

The boy quirked up the side of his mouth as he thought, swapping the colander in Happy's hands with the shovel he had been using, sifting sand into the downright filthy plastic dump truck.

"It's because you don't love them like mommy and daddy do, right?"

Happy looked away from Thomas, under the assumption that the conversation had been dropped, considering it was more than five minutes later.

Crystal clear blue eyes stared him down; his Paw Patrol hoodie and light up shoes didn't do much to match the age in his eyes.

"Yeah," Happy sighed. He wasn't sure how the kid had popped the nail so accurately on the head when he, the adult, hadn't worked it out for himself yet.

And just like that, the spell was broken.

"Wanna watch me do a backflip?" he asked excitedly, dropping the toys back into the sandpit.

Before Happy could open his mouth and say that it probably wasn't the best idea, Abel tucked his head between his knees and executed perhaps the worst somersault that Happy had ever scene, sprawling out flat on his back, grinning dopily up at the biker.

"That was amazing," Happy laughed, pulling out his phone to take a video. "Do it again so I can show your dad,"

Abel bounced to his feet and repeated the same unorganized tangle of toddler limbs and poor balance, much to Happy's entertainment.

It wasn't that Abel didn't often have thought-provoking things to say, such as 'Why is Tiggy like that?' and 'Is Bobby actually Elvis?', it's just that his observations had never followed Happy after he walked away from the toddler. But now, it was all he could think of.

Someone in Jury's crew had gotten out of the joint, and the party had been exceptionally obnoxious. Some of the details were a bit blurry, but there had definitely been fireworks and a skid steer involved. And he didn't really know if he had been the one driving it.