Title: Delivered

Author: A. Windsor

Fandom: Warehouse 13

Characters: Myka Bering, HG Wells, Pete Lattimer, with supporting roles from everyone else.

Pairings: Myka/HG, Claudia/Leena if you're inclined to see it.

Rating: PG-13 (but this part is so very G)

Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. My two years of law school could allow me to legalese this a little more, but it also tells me it's pretty useless. So please don't sue; it's not mine, I'm just playing!

Summary: "I didn't sign up for the Warehouse to mess with us like this."

Author's Note: Here's a fluffy, fluffy, fluffy epilogue.

"Lee-na."

"Ma-ax."

"No bed."

"Yes bed."

"Nooooo."

"Yesssss. You're already in bed, silly boy."

Max pouts but makes no further fruitless complaint. He's had a bath and three stories, so he knew this was coming, even if his two-year-old stubbornness forced him to fight it.

"Daddy?" he asks hopefully.

"He'll be home while you're sleeping. He'll come give you a kiss."

"Okay."

"Aunt Myka and HG, too."

Max smiles. "Claud?"

"Oh you're right. Stay here," she instructs, tucking him into his toddler bed and standing up. "Don't move!"

He nods and pulls his Pooh close, grabbing his pacifier from under his pillow.

"So that's where you've been hiding that," Leena mutters as she sneaks down the hall to knock shortly on Claudia's door.

"Yeah?" Claudia calls from within.

Leena opens the door to find Claudia strumming softly at her guitar. She grins fondly.

"Max wants a goodnight."

"He's still up?" Claudia asks, surprised.

"He's exhausted but fighting it."

"I've got just the thing," Claudia smiles, standing with guitar still in hand. "One Aunt Claud lullaby serenade, coming up."

"Grandpa?"

"Yes, Max?"

He'll still protest when others call him that, but for Macsen, he merely answers without grumpiness. Vanessa finds it "adorable", and that helps.

"Cookie?" The toddler pauses to think, hand idly scratching at Trailer's head. "Please?"

Artie glances at his watch.

"Did you have lunch?"

Max nods dutifully. Artie glances around the first floor. The agents are all in the field, but Leena is puttering in the kitchen, from which Max just wandered.

"Alright." He reaches across the table for the tin of peanut butter cookies he made the night before. He steals one out and replaces the top, handing the cookie to Max.

"T'anks," Max says automatically. "Trailer too?"

Artie raises an eyebrow, and Trailer cocks his head hopefully.

"Yeah okay," Artie sighs, throwing one for the dog to catch. He shakes a figure at the boy and dog, an increasingly common pair. "Don't tell Leena."

"Don't tell Leena what?"

"Go," Artie shoos, grinning as Max giggles and hurries off towards the living room.

"Artie! Did you give him a cookie?!"

"Hey there."

"Hi-hi."

"Where are you supposed to be right now?" Steve asks the escapee.

Max shrugs, but his disheveled Mario longjohns and Pooh dangling from one hand give away the answer.

"What if Daddy knew you were awake?" Steve tries again, trying to be stern. Max's eyes widen, and he pops his pacifier out of his mouth.

"No, please, Unca Steve."

"Then we better get you back to bed, huh?"

Max nods vigorously and lifts his arms to be picked up, Pooh still clutched in one hand, pacifier in the other.

"Alright," Steve says, hefting Max onto his hip. Max's arms automatically squeeze around his neck, and Steve hugs him extra close in return. Steve carries the two-year-old back upstairs and tucks him into bed.

"Check," Max instructs.

"What, buddy?"

"Check," Max repeats, pointing toward the closet door.

"Oh, of course. I'm an expert at this, you know."

"Yeah," Max agrees, all snuggled into bed but watching Steve intently.

Steve makes a great show of rifling through the closet on a monster check, saying:

"Alright, if anyone is hiding in here, go home. This kid's got a big family and we're all heavily armed, yeah? So try another house."

Max laughs sleepily.

"T'anks, Unca Steve."

"You got it. Goodnight, Max. And stay put, huh?"

Max nods, and Steve ruffles his hair then kisses his forehead.

"Sweet dreams."

"S'eet dreams," Max echoes, eyes already closing.

"Alright, Lattimer fakes right, then right again, then- hey! Come back here with that ball! You're out of bounds."

Max just giggles and keeps trucking towards the other side of the house, tiny football tucked under one arm. Pete catches up with him in three long steps, sweeping him up into the air. Max keeps laughing as Pete turns him upside down, his obnoxiously orange Broncos stocking cap falling onto the leafy ground.

"That's not how you play football," Pete growls playfully, righting his son on the ground. He stoops to pick up the hat and pulls it back over Max's ears. "Wanna try again?"

Max nods, and Pete takes two steps back.

"Okay, throw it here."

"Okay, Daddy."

Max chucks the ball to him, and Pete catches it gamely. He underhands it back to the toddler. Max bobbles it, then grabs it off the ground and starts sprinting for the front porch.

"And it's Lattimer with the fumble return! He could! go! all! the! way!"

"Macsen," Helena says dryly.

"'Agey," the two-year-old says, just as seriously, looking up at her resolutely.

"I'm afraid I will have to ask you to move."

"No."

"Then I will have to fight you," she says, her voice just as serious but her eyes twinkling.

"Mine," Max declares, clinging tightly to Myka's arm.

"I disagree."

"You two really need to learn to share," Myka says disinterestedly, keeping her attention on her book, casually flipping a page.

Max and Helena stare at each other in consternation.

And then devolve into a tickle war.

Myka stands and extricates herself, letting them get out what Pete (as an expert) calls their "sillies".

When they collapse, exhausted, onto the couch, Myka takes her place in the configuration this was always going to end with any way: Myka and Helena sit close on the sofa, Max snuggled haphazardly across both laps.

"Is everyone happy now?" Myka asks, faux-seriously.

"I am. Max, are you happy?" Helena asks the boy whose hair she is currently sifting through.

"Yep," Max says with a laugh in his voice. "Mykes? Happy?"

"I'm good."

"Very good," Helena grins.

"Good," Max mimics.

fin