AN: September/October 2038. Got super excited about this one and wrote it at the beginning of the year, and then had to wait to post it until Halloween. I wrote this and then realized there's one other piece of info I have to reveal in fic before there's a full family tree I can unveil so hopefully that'll be out soon.
"What do you want to be for Halloween?" Jacquie excitedly asks their six-year-old.
Richelle pauses helping Noah decorate cookies, wanting to hear Jesse's response.
"I wanna be a leopard! Like Mommy!" Of course their kid, who notices everything, would notice she wears the same costume every year. Or at least for the years he can remember. The first couple years she let Noah and Jacquie plan matching family costumes, but then Jesse decided he wanted to pick his own costumes.
"I think we can do that, little leopard cub." Richelle has gone back to helping Noah decorate, but she stops again when Jesse lets out the most adorable little growl in the other room.
Noah gently takes the piping bag she's holding, "You should go talk to him about leopards. I can finish these."
"But I said I'd help you decorate," she argues weakly.
"I'll be fine. I'm sure he'd love to tell you all about what he's going to be for Halloween."
"Mommy! Mommy!" Jesse barrels into their tiny kitchen and Richelle is very appreciative of the fact that Noah took the frosting bag she was holding so their son doesn't knock it out of her hands. "We're going to match for Halloween this year!" He tells her, resting his chin on her stomach and looking up at her.
Richelle brushes a hand through his hair, it's getting long, she thinks. "I heard." She leans down so she can stage whisper to him, "Maybe we should ask Mama and Daddy to match with us too."
His eyes widen and he looks like he can't believe he didn't think of it first. "Daddy, will you be a leopard too?" Richelle tries not to laugh at his little puppy dog eyes.
Richelle can see that Noah's trying not to laugh too as they play along, "But then Mama will be the only one who isn't a leopard. I don't want her to feel left out."
"'M gonna ask her next. She's not gonna be left out." He tells them earnestly. Richelle watches as he debates whether or not he wants to run and ask Jacquie now to prove he means it or wait until he gets a response from Noah.
"Well in that case, I guess I can be a leopard too."
Jesse throws himself at Noah to hug them before running back out to the living room. Richelle follows him out and watches as he launches himself on top of Jacquie.
"Hi Mama," he says, panting a little, grinning up at her goofily from her lap. "Daddy said he would be a leopard too, but only if you were a leopard too, 'cause he doesn't want you to be left out. Will you be a leopard for Halloween?"
Jacquie gasps, "A whole family of leopards?"
Richelle folds herself into the empty space on the couch next to them.
"Uh-huh." Jesse nods his head aggressively.
"I think that sounds like a great idea. Maybe we should go to the zoo this weekend to do some research."
Richelle stifles another laugh when Jesse's little brow furrows. "But Mama, they don't have leopards at the zoo."
"They have snow leopards," Jacquie offers.
"Not real leopards, Jacquie," Richelle reminds her.
"Yeah Mama, they aren't real leopards." Richelle ruffles Jesse's hair affectionately, at least somebody listens when she talks about leopards. That's not true, she knows that Jacquie and Noah listen, but they don't understand that the differences are important.
***
While searching for costumes they quickly realize that most of the leopard costumes they find are marketed towards girls. And it's fine, Jesse likes wearing skirts and gravitates toward the costumes anyway, but they're worried about him going to school in it. He's never gone to school in a dress or skirt before and he'll probably be okay, but they don't know.
They use the Fall Festival his school is hosting as a sort of test run. The festival is a couple weeks before Halloween and he's been wearing the dress around the house, twirling around to watch the skirt flare out around him. Noah finds a dress that more or less matches Jesse and it makes her feel a little better. It took him a while to get comfortable, and he doesn't do it often, but Noah does have a small collection of skirts he likes to wear, which might be why Jesse has built up his own collection. Jacquie finds a similar dress and somehow Richelle gets talked into wearing a full costume as well.
The morning of the festival Noah sets up their kitchen table with face paint and stage makeup. Jesse doesn't have the patience to let Noah paint his face all at once so he does part of it then sends him off and does Jacquie's. And she gamely lets him do most of her face, complete with leopard spots before Jesse comes back to get the rest of his face paint. Richelle only lets Noah do his usual nose and whiskers on her for Halloween since she's wearing a full costume and she hates the feeling of even just that.
When they make it to Jesse's school they stop by the classroom hosting the cake walk to drop off the cake Noah made as one of the prizes. Almost immediately Jesse takes off after his best friend, Wren, Henry and Amy's daughter, following her to their classroom. When the adults make it to the classroom Richelle lets out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Most of his classmates seem to be in the room (presumably, it looks like a classroom full of grade one kids and she's assuming they're all in the same class) and the only comments on his costume are about how pretty the dress is.
As the festival goes on kids float in and out of the various classrooms, most of them hosting games, but a few have been connected with tunnel-like structures to form a haunted house. Jesse and Wren stick close together so the three of them make their way through the school with Henry and Amy, following a spotted tail and fairy wings. Apparently Piper and Finn are around somewhere too, but they're following around their four-year-old, RJ.
The five adults sit a couple tables away from the kids as they decorate cookies in the caf. Even though it's mostly for the kids Noah has several bowls of frosting in front of him and he's working on an intricate sugar skull design. Noah's only about half-done with his design when Jesse worms his way onto Richelle's lap with his own cookie, a black cat.
"Wren's almost done, can we do the haunted house next?" Jesse asks, looking between all the adults.
Jacquie reaches across her to ruffle his hair, "Of course, although I think we might need to leave Daddy behind."
Noah doesn't move and Richelle's not even sure he heard, too focused on decorating. Jesse shifts to Jacquie's lap to share his cookie with her while they wait.
They do end up leaving Noah behind after Wren joins their table, sharing her cookie with her own parents as they walk upstairs. Piper and Finn pass them in the hallway, Finn holding a teary dinosaur.
"He wasn't a fan of the haunted house, we didn't even go all the way through," Piper explains quietly, not wanting to keep the older two from trying it out for themselves.
Wren presses up on her toes trying to get a better look at her brother, "It's okay RJ," she pats his leg and offers him what's left of her cookie.
Richelle stifles a laugh and she notices the other adults similarly holding back laughter. Finn accepts the cookie on his son's behalf even though they're probably on their way to the caf to decorate their own cookies.
As they approach the haunted house Richelle puts her earplugs in. If their kid is potentially about to be terrified she doesn't need to be dealing with her own meltdown on top of it. Jesse stands between her and Jacquie, gripping their hands as they get closer to the entrance. But she can't tell if it's out of anticipation or fear. He tenses as they go through, but honestly Richelle flinches and jumps more than Jesse does.
***
Sunday morning, Halloween, Jesse bursts into their bedroom, requesting his facepaint a full ten hours before they're leaving the apartment. Richelle is the only one who's actually awake (Jacquie makes a noise that she's heard their tiny bedroom entrant, but she doesn't otherwise move to get up) so she playfully swings him into her arms and takes him out to the living room.
"Let's watch a movie while we wait for Mama and Daddy to get up," Richelle suggests as they settle on the couch.
Jesse wiggles around on her lap and turns around so he can look at her face to face, "But Mommy, I wanna be a leopard."
"I know J, but I don't know how to put on your leopard spots. How about you put your ears on for the movie?"
Richelle waits while he decides if it's an acceptable compromise. "Okay," he acquiesces, not looking too thrilled with her option, but clearly deciding it's better than nothing. He rushes off to his room before immediately coming back. "Um, Mommy, do you know where my ears are?"
If Noah or Jacquie were up they'd probably remind him to keep better track of his things, but Richelle can't remember where she puts her stuff half the time either, there've been a number of times she found measuring cups in the fridge or pantry hours after she lost them.
"I don't, but why don't we look in your room together." It takes them probably close to ten minutes (although his room does get marginally cleaner as they look, so progress?) but they eventually find his leopard ears tangled up in a t-shirt in his hamper. While they're in his room Richelle makes sure they know where the rest of his costume is too so they aren't running around trying to find a single piece that he absolutely has to have before they leave.
Jesse crawls back into her lap as they resettle on the couch and Richelle pulls up Halloweentown. It's not actually that early so the other two should probably be up soon but for now Richelle's going to enjoy a little extra one-on-one time with her baby (though at six he objects to being called a baby), even if his leopard ears keep poking her in the face.
"I wish we lived in Halloweentown," Jesse comments a few minutes after the city appears on screen.
"Oh, yeah. Why's that?"
"'Cause then you could really be a leopard. But like a leopard person." His eyes don't leave the screen, but Richelle still holds him a little tighter.
"Would that be cool, having a leopard for a mom?"
"Uh-huh. And Mama would be a witch, 'cause she makes potions. And Daddy would be..." he pauses, clearly having had an easier time coming up with her and Jacquie's Halloweentown personas, "a werewolf! 'Cause they transports."
"Transport?"
He tears his gaze away from to give her a look like he can't believe she doesn't know what he's talking about. "Yeah Mommy, werewolves turn from people into wolves," he duhs.
"Transform Jess," she corrects gently. "Werewolves transform, not transport."
"Oh yeah. But Daddy transforms for work too. They're Daddy at home but they're not Daddy at work, they're always different." It's a rather simplistic way of putting Noah's acting career, even if they have taken a step back in the years since Jesse was born, but she supposes it makes sense to his six-year-old brain.
By the time the movie is over Noah and Jacquie have both joined them and Richelle has Jesse tell them his idea of them living in Halloweentown.
"...And Daddy would be a werewolf because werewolves transform. Not transport."
"What about you?" Noah asks, pulling Jesse into their lap.
Jesse doesn't even pause to think before confidently stating, "A were-leopard witch." Like it's the most obvious thing in the world for him to be a chaotic mish-mash of all his parents.
"A were-leopard witch!" Richelle repeats back to him.
"Uh-huh," he says, pressing closer to Noah.
After several more movies, and a break for lunch, they finally let Jesse change into his costume. Noah's putting off the face-paint until right before they leave so he doesn't have a chance to mess it up during dinner. Eventually though they're repeating the process of the previous Saturday for the Fall Festival.
Finally they arrive at the Smith-Hollis-Martin household. Jesse immediately rushes off to the playroom upstairs to play with Wren and RJ.
"I see where we rank," Henry jokes.
Noah pulls their best friend into a hug, "We're glad to see you, even if our kid thinks he was raised in a barn."
Since they're still waiting on James and Riley, the adults converge in the kitchen. Ten minutes later when they still haven't arrived Richelle retreats, choosing to go upstairs and check on the kids. Her friends' kitchen might be bigger than the one in their apartment, but it's still quite small for seven adults. Plus it's pretty quiet upstairs and with three kids that's never a good sign.
"Nooo RJ! You hafta wait 'til we finish building it before you knock it down." Wren's scolding is followed by the sound of plastic building blocks hitting the ground. Four-year-olds aren't the best at following directions.
Richelle stands in the doorway watching the three of them, well the older two, rebuild the tower. And she intercepts RJ in his dinosaur costume as he gets ready to knock it down yet again before it's finished.
"Thanks Mommy. He keeps knockin' it down before we're done." Jesse barely looks up from their creation to thank her. A couple minutes pass where the only sound is quiet collaboration of where specific pieces should go and then they give her permission to release the squirmy dino. This time the sound of plastic bricks crashing to the ground is followed up by the doorbell.
RJ pops up from where he's become part of a debris pile on the ground, "Gracie?"
Richelle mostly ineffectively blocks the doorway and reminds them to clean up before heading downstairs. They haphazardly get thrown into bins but Richelle figures it's probably better than nothing. The two permanent inhabitants of the house fly down the stairs as soon as Richelle moves from the door to greet their cousin. But Jesse waits for her and they sit at the top of the stairs speculating about what candy he's going to get. Neither of them is a huge fan of large crowds and even if it's family, 14 people in one room is a lot so they wait it out until Noah comes to get them.
Despite making it out the door only a minute or so later they don't actually leave the front porch for another ten. Noah insists on getting a family picture of all of them, and then pictures of all the kids in various groups. And then Gracie wanted one with her dad, since apparently she's his security guard (suddenly her black suit and earpiece make sense).
"How is it that your kid is so blonde?" Riley asks as they (finally) start walking down the street to the first house. "None of you are that blonde."
Noah shrugs, "Some weird genetic fluke? We're guessing it's probably going to get darker as he gets older."
The kids run ahead of them, stopping at the driveway only to look back at their parents and get permission to approach the door. Every house they stop at Jesse comes back to them to show off whatever piece(s) of candy he got at that house. Before he's immediately recalled by the rest of the kids who want to move on to the next house.
About twenty minutes in, RJ insists on being carried, claiming he's too tired to walk, but he absolutely, positively, doesn't want to go home. A couple times Richelle notices Wren pointing back at them in order to get more candy for her brother who has collapsed on Finn's shoulder. Another twenty minutes and the six-year-olds are dropping out too, and despite being five years older Gracie doesn't look like she's putting up much of a fight about going back either.
Anticipating this coming they had crossed the street and doubled back a while ago so they're only a few houses away. Figuring it's safer and faster to not go back inside they bid their goodbyes from the front porch before heading back home.
AN: Richelle listens to "Purple People Eater" on loop around Halloween so the first costume Jesse picks for himself is the purple people eater. It's never going to be a fully fleshed out story because I don't like writing toddlers, but please know that 3-year-old Jesse asks his parents to be "the mo'ster from the song".