Malcolm - First Day of School

“Daddy. Daddy, wake up.”

Next to me, Malcolm groaned, and the bed moved slightly with the weight of his body rocking back and forth from the small hands that continuously pushed him.

“Daddy. Daddy. Da-dd-y.”

“I’m up,” Malcolm muttered softly. He wasn’t. It was very clear he wasn’t as our little light started shaking him yet again.

Opening my eyes, I spotted our child sitting on top of him, bouncing up and down. Her hair was wild around her, tumbling over her night dress in a display that made me cringe. It would take hours to get that birds nest out of her hair. I should have listened to Malcolm and braided it last night.

“It’s the first day of school, daddy.”

“Let’s start tomorrow,” he muttered, trying to bury himself under a pillow.

“No. Now. You promised.”

I laughed a little, flinging the covers off of us. “She has a point,” I told him. “You did promise to start school today.” Little Light had been begging for school for over a year now, and while we had taught her basic ideas here and there, we had not begun any formal education due to her attention span. However, Malcolm agreed, in a moment of weakness, to start her homeschool at the start of Fall. She had marked it on her calendar and there was no getting out of it.

“What are we learning today, daddy?” she asked.

I grinned, nudging Malcolm with my foot. “Yes, daddy. What are we learning?”

He glared at me from beneath a pillow. He was not a morning person. Malcolm liked to greet the day with a ritual. Slowly getting out of bed. Brewing himself a pot of tea. Watching the little garden that he and his sister created until he was ready to take on the world. Sometimes that was instantly. Sometimes, it took him hours. I loved the mornings it took him longer because he always wound up painting, shirt still discarded, muscles cording on his back as he stroked the canvas.

Rubbing a hand across his face, Malcolm looked at our daughter. The eagerness to learn present in her eyes. It was a look both of us agreed we needed to nurture, no matter how inconvenient it might be to our day. Or, in Malcolm’s case, how early he needed to get up. I personally, was planning on going back to bed.

“Letters,” he told her. “You start with the basics.”

She squealed, tumbling off the bed and running into the living room. Malcolm flopped back down on the mattress, trying to drag the pillow over his eyes. I caught the edge of it, peering down at his sleep rumpled face with only the slightest amount of pity.

“You created this monster,” I reminded him. Malcolm had nurtured education within her from the very start, morphing our wild acting baby into someone who was a bulldog for discovering all there was to learn in the world.

“Fifty percent of that DNA is yours,” he told me.

“Aw, but you see, I never had a thirst for formal learning. When I was her age, I was playing with the stars and creating entire galaxy’s. This letter thing is all your doing.”

In a rare display of irritation, Malcolm groaned loudly into his pillow before tossing it off him and flinging his feet over the bed. I hungrily watched as he stood, rooting around for a shirt, his hair falling around his face in small waves. Rumpled Malcolm was a rare sight, but it was one of my favorites.

He tossed a glare my way. “You’re enjoying this.”

“You’re cute when you’re grumpy.”

Stalking over to the bed, he leaned forward, boxing me in with his arms. I grinned up at him, watching the brewings of a familiar hunger coat his eyes. “Careful, Lamplight. Payback is a well noted bitch.”

I grinned. “It’s our daughter's education,” I told him innocently. “What sort of payback would even be enacted? It’s not my fault she’s an early riser and she prefers you as her teacher.” Reaching up, I pushed some of his hair out of the way. “Besides, I think it’s sexy. Teacher Albright.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “I’m not feeding into that fantasy.”

“Daddy! I drew the letter A!”

Both of us froze, eyes locking, game cast aside. “Where?” I called out. We hadn’t set out paper for her and where we kept it was usually higher up than she could reach.

“On the window!”

“With what?” I asked in a panic.

“Daddy’s paints!”

At that, Malcolm’s grin spread across his face. Leaning down, he kissed my lips hungrily, taking the breath from me. I melted beneath him, losing myself in the feel of his lips and the way his fingers brushed the side of my cheek. When he pulled back, he looked far more awake than he had and entirely too pleased.

“Payback,” he told me.

“Huh?”

“I got to start school, Lamplight. You’ll be scrubbing the paint off the walls and windows. Careful. They are fast drying.”

I glared. I hated cleaning. “Mal,” I warned.

He hopped out of bed, pushing his hair out of his face. “Little Light, are you all ready?”

“Yeah!”

He winked at me. “Consider it your detention, Lamplight.”

He sauntered out of the room with a swag in his step, hands hooked in his pockets. I laid there stunned, listening to father and daughter in the living room, and wondering how I got here. I also wondered if I could perhaps convince Little Light to start school after lunch tomorrow.