So... surprise? In light of the newest movie being released in just 28 days, I thought it would be nice to give the DM fandom a little love again! Try my hand at something I love so dearly, you know? So there's a few things planned to celebrate film 3's release! some casual

1) some casual updates and oneshots here and there

2) I WILL BE TAKING REQUESTS! FOR ONCE! So if there's something you want to see, leave it in the comments with a nice word or two and I might try my hand at it and give you lots of credit!

3) I will also be writing a short sequel to another one shot that already exists in the fandom. It's by one of my favorite DM writers 4 years running (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE 3) and I am more than a little excited to put it out into the world.

That's all for now. But until then, enjoy Gru's inner turmoil when it comes to having a full house.

Sorry to all who wanted either Edith or Margo's introspection. Those are coming! And like I said- leave suggestions in the review box. I'll have to do some really in depth look at their lives in the days to come.

Also, first person to tell me why nothing I bolded is showing up bold gets a cookie in the form of a story...

~Gal

Gru is wearing shoes in his kitchen. It's not something he used to notice often. The act of wearing shoes was not there to be noticed, because it was normal.

Normal.

What was even normal anymore.

God... some days he hated that nothing was normal anymore.

Some things stayed the same. He got up, he put on pants, he (sometimes) ate breakfast, and he put on his shoes. He remembered to always bring his freeze ray. He never left the house without his wallet, his scarf, and one or two weapons for good measure. It was a part of the structure of his every day how to function in society checklist that had, for the most part, been as obsolete in its recognition as it was important in its structure. His old normal -something he often then not longed for when the noises of his little world became almost too much- had included the silence of his big house, the solitude, and the knowledge that his large, imposing windows would be free of sticky pink heart decals. He had been aware of his own self gratitude to choosing a life that was perfect for him as it was dastardly for all in his path.

But now, in his kitchen, he is aware of his shoes.

He steps back again to survey the floor, and something CRUNCHes under his foot. He lifts up the heel. Glass plinks to the tile. He dusts it off the back of his shoe with the broom he's holding before scooping it into the dust pan with the rest of the now broken Novelty 1970 Neil Armstrong Moon Landing Pepper Shaker.

He really didn't even know why he still had the thing...

Oh wait.

Yes he did.

Because his childhood dream had been snapped into place with a few words about small steps and big steps and a man in a suit who floated almost effortlessly across the surface of his 12x12 television screen. It had been one of the only gifts his mother had given him that had meant something. Wrapped up in Macy's red Christmas paper and left under their bare-bone tree without much afterthought, he'd been ecstatic about the small token of his mothers affection and recognition.

And yes. It had been a pepper shaker (he lost the saltshaker a while after he'd gotten the pair, but it didn't matter much- he was only interested in Armstrong anyway) but it was his and it was real, and he'd kept it ever since. Treasuring it and all its meaning by giving it the highest honor of the tiny spot right next to his stove.

His old life had been filled with things that he owned. That he was aware of owning. That, unless he fell into a nihilistic rage and destroyed things for the sake of destruction, never really were there to break. So he kept all his things where he wanted to. And this one thing, his most special of things, was in the space by his stove where he could be sure to alway find it.

Which just so happened to be the counter space right under the cabinet where he kept all his glasses.

The counter tops that happened to also be very... very... very... high.

It wasn't her fault. It really hadn't been.

His youngest child was just so small. He'd put stools up to all the counters - ones with little steps on them to ensure that late night water runs weren't too much of a hassle - and had left it at that. They enjoyed the independence, Agnes especially. And she'd been trying her very best; scrambling onto the counter on all fours, carefully balancing onto her knees, reaching for her favorite cup on the second shelf of the cabinet, tongue twisted under her front teeth. It was one little shift in her balancing act that would lean her forward just so and her hand collided with the edge of the ever important pepper shaker and down

...down...

...down...

...down...

it fell.

Her voice had cracked. When he'd come running in, slipping on his socked feet, her little voice had cracked.

"I didn't mean to!" She clutched her blue plastic Doc McStuffins cup to her chest. "I swear I didn' mean to!"

He can hear his wife and other two children already beginning to congregate in the hall, ready to burst in and see what had transpired. His Neil Armstrong Pepper Shaker, something the girls had known despite the lack of questions surrounding its existence was one of his favorite and only keepsakes, is still there on the floor, broken. He sort of feels like yelling for no reason. He also sort of feels like laughing because holy shit.

Agnes is still waiting for him to decide, her eyes huge, lip worried and trembling.

She's scared.

Well... scared would be the wrong word.

She's having what he's quietly dubbed as one of the girls' fits. Because they all have them. One at a time, in short intervals, and rare as hail in July. But they have them. The time Margo spilled water on his laptop and nearly went catatonic. The time Edith broke the third floor window with a baseball bat and had to be coaxed out from under her bed.

Agnes... he thought that maybe, young as she was, she'd be able to go through life without one. But there she was. Trembling on his counter, tiny shoulders heaving up in down in what he suspects are the early onset hyperventilations of a panic attack.

Oh fuck fuck fuck.

Sometimes he forgot where they came from. Forgot the situation they'd been in. Forgot what he'd done.

(Hated) what he'd done.

(Despised) what he'd done.

(Never quite forgave himself for) what he'd done.

What he'd done.

How could he forget...

How could he forget that their normal and his had been two entirely different things.

Agnes was probably counting down the seconds until the explosion. Edith and Margo (most likely already waiting outside with their ear to the door) no doubt thought the same. Which would explain why they hadn't come in already. Just waiting out the inevitable.

His pepper shaker stares up at him with a broken sort of face.

"Daddy?" says Agnes, who's use of the word falters. Behind it, he can hear the underlying question he hadn't thought he'd ever have to hear again. Are you going to send me away?

He knows, rationally, that he should turn this into a big deal. Into a huge event of don't think that way and never, I would never and how could you ever think and every other loud thought strangling his brain. He's done it before. Coddled. Cooed. Tried to work past the way his voice just didn't quite know how to do affection and stuffed it full of endearments through an awkward and lagging tongue. It never worked. The trauma always niggled its way back in.

Normalcy.

He needed normalcy.

They needed normalcy.

Gru looked down at his feet. He was still wearing socks. He looked at hers, dangling off the counter. Her bare feet hung just over the glass, four feet below.

They need something normal.

And he can give that.

Gru crept across the floor towards the counter, being sure to step around the smallest chips of his long lost keepsake. He scoops the little girl up, who clings to him straight away like a kitten to a tree. Please don't be mad. He should say I could never be angry at you over this. But instead he just tweaks her nose with his free hand and says "shoes only."

Her voice twists against the trembles. "What?"

"Dere's glass," he says, pointing to the floor, stepping over it in his socked feet. Her hair tickles his nose, and her tiny fingers are almost too tight against his shoulder. "Shoes only right now. Deed you get water?" She shakes her head. There are still tears in her eyes, but he doesn't comment on them. Instead, he pours her water and takes her out.

Margo and Edith are indeed there. And they are there to collect her sister as he puts her on the floor and walks past towards the dust closet. "No one goes into the kitchen," he warns the trio. "Broken glass. Shoes only."

He won't go back in until his shoes are on. And he's so aware of them. So aware as he crunches over his favorite gift, now broken, that he's wearing shoes. That this is normal.

He scoops the remainders of his pepper shaker into the dust pan before piling it all into the trash. It isn't until its all cleaned up and he's done a second and third sweep over that he finally takes off his shoes, lining them up by the assortment of size 4, 6, and 8 children's sneakers, high heels, and black men's leather Italian loafers.

He should be mad.

Give or take a few years, he would have been furious. When the three girls had first entered his life, the youngest may not have survived her shoeless encounter. He should hate this. He should hate the way that this all went. Because his favorite thing is now in the bottom of a garbage can, broken by a child who wanted a cup of water.

But... he's not. And as he leaves his kitchen behind, he finds that there isn't any loss or won't for what is gone. There are heart decals on all the windows he passes and spare puzzle pieces left here and there, and in reality, most of it is plastic junk... It should be, at least.

He stops outside the living room doors. They're closed, but behind them he can hear his wife cooing to a child.

A child who is his favorite thing.

Children (plural, he remembers. he actually has a plural of something now) who make everything else second place.

She's waiting for him on the couch, the water cup balancing on the leather between her and his wife. Short chubby arms are out before he can kneel in front of her. She's crying. He hates that she's crying. "Didn' mean to" she chokes up at him, and he scoops her up. "Sorry, Daddy."

"She was worried." Lucy pulls gently on her pony tail. She must have intercepted early on, taking the girl from her sisters and sending them off to do something else. "She knew that was your favorite thing."

He pulls back and flicks Agnes' nose. "Please. Yoo're my favorite thing. D'at's why I don't let you into kitchen's wit'out shoes." He gives her big toe a pull and she giggles. It's a welcome sound, even if it is a little wet and congested next to the slowing flow of tears. "I'm going ta vacuum the kitchen so do me a favor and tell your seesters not to go in wit'out shoes." She nods, the mission already taken to heart. He kisses her (loud and messy and completely on purpose to hear her laugh just one more time because god he can't stand to see her like this over something so completely meaningless) and lifts her off the couch, watching her scatter away to deliver the crucial news of the new temporary "shoes only" policy enacted on their kitchen floor.

"Nice work, partner." Lucy cuffs him on the arm. "Another mission successfully accomplished!"

He nods. Rubs his arm. Sighs. "I weesh they didn't look at me like that."

"But they do." Lucy collects the blue cup and shrugs. "It'll take time."

"It's been years..."

"It'll take time," she says again, unwavering. "Give them it. You're doing what you need to. Just... they need things to be normal. That's what's important right? Or... I don't know. That's what the parenting book said."

"I told yoo not ta read d'at junk."

"I can't help wanting to be informed." She gave a little insulted sniff, then softened. "You're doing good, hon. You are. Really. You've always been doing good. Better than good."

He doesn't have time to answer-

and oh, how he wants to. because if he could he might have kissed her senseless right then and there. because having a wife had gone from a nuisance to an afterthought to companionship to friendship to having someone to tell him that he isn't a complete screwup when it comes to the three most important entities of his existence to him believing her

- before the smallest of said three entities is back with her elder two in tow, both of whom looked a little too relieved that the broken trinket hadn't caused a rift in familial bonds. Agnes (who bounced back from her previous state of snot and tears) stood right at his feet and pointed at her own, now clad in light up green sneakers, pulsing tiny flashes. "See, Daddy!" she chirped. "Shoes!"

"I see. And yoo've delivered the message, it seems!" He tousled her hair, adjusting the scrunchie tighter around the broccoli stalk.

Edith wiggled her left foot to demonstrate and Margo rocked back and forth on her heels. "We can help clean up if that works?" she offered hesitantly. An offer he'd no doubt take up if only to show them that it didn't matter. That he didn't care. That useless trinkets, no matter how valuable, weren't as important. To prove that they were more priceless than a pepper shaker. As if he ever needed to prove that...

He breathed in deep. "Right," he smiled. "Let's go see if we can find any other lost pieces then!"

Agnes follows fast, shouting don't forget your shoes, Daddy at the backs of his calves.

Normal.

This was normal.

Neil Armstrong had an effect on his life once from a 12x12 television screen in 1969. His girl (his girls) burst through reality without the boundaries of dimensions or quotable lines or pepper shakers and had made everything else meaningless in their path. Everything they touched was messy and paint covered and pink. But it was theirs, and it was his, and it was perfect.

And when he scooped her up, reveling in the laughter, he was glad that it could be.

Leave me a review and/or suggestion!

Thanks for reading!

:)