Chapter Text
This damn HQ would never be fully done. It was like Katie found something new to nitpick at every other day. The sounds of shifting furniture and clinking glass filled the still, partially unfurnished HQ as Katie fixed her pink windows for about the third time this week. She liked to think she was making good progress on the place, but the constant pranking didn’t help.
Her cheeks puffed up with breath as she reached for a taller spot along the window, dangling precariously over the edge. If there was anything Katie knew how to do; it was keep busy. Especially on days like today where it seemed like everyone was too busy with super-duper serious meetings and missions to entertain her. Of course, she didn’t want to be distracted from her incredibly serious work either, but like. It would at least be nice to have the option to turn them down.
She managed to place the final glass pane and backed up from the window with a sigh, dusting off her hands. She checked her communicator, eyebrow twitching at the lack of emails. She spent the last few days really pushing to get her revamped Therapee business off the ground, making a big deal of sending reminders of the open business through public chat. And she knew these sad fucks needed therapy, yet all she had gotten was prank bookings filling up the clipboard she left outside her HQ. She pulled the clipboard from her bag to give it another deeply irritated glance over.
Several empty columns and spots where people’s names had been moved or erased. On her meetings scheduled for today, right below Triple T and Ibai, was ‘NACHOS’; which she was certain Ewron’s fatass wrote thinking he was placing a restaurant order. She grumbled and brushed the pad of her thumb over the scrawled name in thick black ink, taking in the barely legible handwriting.
The clipboard was stashed away and Katie straightened her blazer. That’s fine. Her therapy room needed a trampoline installed anyways.
Katie was elbow deep in a slime block when she heard a distant knocking and muffled “Hello?”. Her head snapped up and she roughly bumped it on the shelf she was under. She pressed her lips tightly together as she let out an internal scream and cradled her skull with her non-slime hand.
“Shit, yes! Coming!” She shouted as she stood up and frantically wiped her arm on the back of her pink seat. She hadn’t heard her communicator go off in hours, so she really wasn’t expecting a visit from anyone today. Maybe it was one of her brothers waltzing in with no notice. She walked down to the lobby, preparing herself to be the victim of yet another prank. She could list nearly half their island’s population as being a semi-frequent visitor of her HQ. She was a bit of a hot commodity after all; with several booming businesses and projects. Everyone wants a slice of Katie B. However, the stiff scientist who stood at her open doorway was not someone she would have thought to put on that list.
“Multi?” She blinked and his eyes shifted to meet hers. It wasn’t as if she had never interacted with Multi, he was a particularly insistent nuisance when it came to her KFC branding. She knew he had some big nuclear reactor, and he lived in the Polish Cave; which Katie only really visited to track down Ewron or Graf. Multi had sometimes been around in the background of those conversations. She had always thought he was a ‘serious’ guy. Only around to talk about radiation, grave dangers, or Popeyes. Sometimes she wished people would take her that seriously, go quiet and stiff when she entered a room. His hands clasped behind his back and he cleared his throat to speak,
“I have an appointment for today. With your therapy business.” Her eyebrow quirks up high and she walks down the rest of the main steps while shaking her head. No, this couldn’t be right.
“Hm. Oh really? That’s funny because I haven’t gotten a single email informing me of this ‘appointment’!” her hand blindly feels around her bag, then pulls out the clipboard from earlier. She looks at it only for dramatic emphasis, “And no Multi on the appointment sheet either! Shoot, it must have just slipped through the cracks, huh?” she grinned and shrugged. Deep down she was truly irritated at the mere thought of this being a purposeful attempt to waste her time. All anyone ever wanted to do was waste her time and sabotage her businesses, clearly. Her foot tapped audibly against the floor; excess energy swirling around in her body; bored, pent up and irritated with barely anybody to laugh or argue with all day. Multi opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him.
“Well, then just come right on in! No appointment that’s fine, Katie’s not busy at all. She can do walk-in therapy. Just snap and she’ll come running!” She gestured wildly with her clipboard while pacing, Multi’s neck craned a bit to glance at the page as she continued her sarcastic rambling. Normally he was patient enough to let this sort of one-sided conversation run its course, but the light hug on his leg grew nervously tighter and he knew he would have to speak up eventually.
“The appointment isn’t for me, kurwa.” He grated out during a lull in Katie’s speech, pinching his nose. Her pacing stopped and she looked at him, confused. He used the silence to his advantage and pointed at the clipboard in her hand. “You see? 4pm, Nacho.” Katie blinked several times and slowly looked over the clipboard again.
“Nachos…” she mumbled thoughtfully, glancing back over to Multi, then down. The pale white child hugging onto his leg was suddenly extremely obvious. Her lips formed a perfect ‘oh’ shape and Multi just sighed, exasperated.
“Yes. My child.” He clarified, and something clicked in her head while looking at the smooth smiling mask covering the child’s face. She had seen Nacho before. Mostly him running around and causing havoc on the island. The common opinion was disgust towards any federation worker here, but Katie had firsthand experience to know that not all of them were bad. And also, this one looked like a baby which was really really really cute. She swept in close and quickly crouched in front of the child with an extremely endeared smile.
“Awwwww, Nacho! Look at you, so cutesy patootsie! Of course I have time in my schedule for you!” She cooed, looking over the young boy’s fluffy white hair and matching lab coat. She reached out to playfully tug on one of his bear ears like a toy and boop his flat plastic nose. Nacho released his father’s leg and waved quickly at Katie in greeting, he seemed indifferent or maybe just accustomed to the over excited reaction. Multi on the other hand looked uneasy as Katie continued to gush over his son, and Katie’s vision of Nacho is blocked by Multi’s pant leg as he steps between the two. She pauses awkwardly. Okay, a bit of a protective father. She clears her throat and stands up, instantly back in professional mode.
“Let me get you both checked in then.” She briskly walks behind the receptionist desk and writes in the book and quill. Multi watched this completely unnecessary process in silence. Surely, she could just pay someone to do this part? But that was irrelevant as she now led them upstairs into a room that looked significantly more decorated and furnished than the rest. Nacho didn’t waste time skittering and hopping onto the big pink couch, patting the spot he wanted Multi to sit on. Multi ignored him briefly, preferring to stand and survey the area as well as Katie herself.
Katie sat on the armchair across from the couch, crossing her long legs and swapping her pink sunglasses out for a more intelligent looking pair of black frames. She flashed him a smirk and he decidedly looked away.
“Katie..” he began, shushed by her raised hand.
“Ah, ah. In this room It’s doctor Katie. Also, we here at Therapee really value patient confidentiality so, you can actually wait outside and leave Nacho with me.” She hummed, preparing a notebook. Katie watched as Nacho instinctively looked at his father to see how he would react. Multi’s face contorted into a mix of offense and confusion.
“Excuse me? No, I’m not leaving my kid alone with you.” He was firm in his stance, and Nacho followed suit; standing up on the couch to reach over and tug his father’s sleeve closer. He jumped and stamped his foot, demanding Multi stay here. Katie raised her hands in innocence and nodded,
“Okay, okay. You can sit in on the session.” She relented. Nacho only calmed down when Multi absorbed the information and slowly sat beside him on the couch. He now kicked his feet happily. Katie had noticed he didn’t ever speak, like Tomate, and a familiar dull ache throbs in her chest. Though she had seen him use writing to communicate in the past, and his body language on its own was always very telling. It was endearing, but it made her unsure who to direct her questions at. She furrowed her brow and pretended to be thinking of something serious.
“Nacho.” She decided, looking straight ahead at his permanent smile. “What made you decide to do therapy, buddy?” she asked. In return she received a blank stare which then turned to Multi instead. She huffed out a breath, so much for direct communication. Reluctantly she looked at Multi as well, making a ‘well go ahead’ gesture.
“He needs help.” He said bluntly. Katie repeated her gesture in annoyance, waiting for an actual response. “Fuck ah, he’s, how do I say it. He is a good kid, yes.” Nacho rocked happily. “But he has some issues, behavioral, that I think maybe come from his biological father. And I want to help him, but I am sometimes not very… equipped.” He explained carefully. Katie wondered if there were things he maybe wasn’t saying in front of Nacho. No kid really likes to hear exactly what’s wrong with them and how their parent wishes they were different.
“Right, okay. And so, you want my help. Well, you came to the right place! I know lots about child development, and like brains and stuff. So, I can totally give you some strategies to use with him.” She hummed brightly, scribbling things down in her notepad. She noticed Nacho’s gaze wandering all over the office, fidgeting around in what she interpreted as boredom. She reached over and rooted around in the container next to her as she spoke again, “I do need to know more though about what kind of issues he deals with on the daily. And also, who’s the baby daddy?” she asked, tossing a fidget spinner over to Nacho which he immediately began spinning like crazy.
“What?” Multi choked, incredulous. “Noo, no, Katie. It’s not like- my. My anything. It is Nacho’s Father. Cucurucho.” His voice became more serious by the end and Katie raised her eyebrows.
“Cucurucho? Like federation Cucurucho?”
“Kurwa, what other Cucurucho you know?” he stressed, like she was an idiot. Katie shrugged and wrote in her book again. Multi wanted to snatch it from her hands and see, because he had a sneaking suspicion she was writing gibberish but had no way to prove it.
“Well, I can definitely see how that would cause some issues.” He hummed, making some idle sound effects with her mouth. She thought about the federation, what they had done to Tomate just because of who he loved. They clearly didn’t have any qualms about harming their own workers or family. Had Nacho been through something like that? She watched as he attempted to squirm into his father’s lap and spin the fidget spinner right in front of his face, Multi playfully batting him away. Or if he hadn’t yet, would he also be punished for those emotions soon?
“Yes. Ehm, he has some issue with communication sometimes. He knows how to write to talk, but sometimes, he just doesn’t, you know? Like he goes completely quiet, even though I keep asking him questions. He struggles with uhh substances.” Katie side-eyed that, but there was no specification as of right now. “Not good with, being told no or being in trouble. And ah, his attention span is very bad.” Multi said just as nacho was getting bored of the fidget spinner and was tugging on his hair instead. Katie passed him over a ball of slime which he slapped on the table to begin playing with.
“I see, I see…” she hummed like a true therapist, taking note of this lengthy list of problems. A sharp snap sounds when Katie promptly shuts her notebook and looks Multi dead in the eyes. “Okay so there’s no way I help with all this shit.” Multi gawked at her. It took so much of his social battery and pride to come here, to Katie specifically. And now he was being turned away? He began to sputter out a response as Katie could no longer hide her giggles behind the book in her hands.
“There’s no way I can help with all this shit TODAY. Gotcha!” She clarified with a big grin, Nacho clapping at the prank. “Which is why I’m assigning Nacho weekly appointments with Yours truly, to work through his issues and become the most mentally healthy child this island has ever fucking seen. Boom.” She crossed her arms, feeling like a boss bitch while Multi fought to recover. Did he really want to deal with Katie’s strange therapizing on a weekly basis? He wasn’t even sold that she had any actual advice to help them.
He watched his son play and pick lint out of slime with his lips pressed thin. Multi knew he wasn’t enough. Nacho had many needs, and yes Multi was smart, but this was different. Nacho required a type of emotional care and persistence that Multi had never received before. The thought of letting Nacho down crushed him. And when he looked at Katie, he didn’t know why but, he felt a glimmer of hope. It shone like her hair in the sunlight that streamed through the therapy windows.
“…Okay.” He relented, “We can do that.” She smiled softly at the agreement.
“I also need a tour of you and Nacho’s living quarters, to ensure child safety.” He froze. Suddenly a big ass cloud was blocking the sun.
“KURWA, NO.”
“Doctor's orders!” Multi sunk completely into the couch, covering his eyes with both arms. Do it for Nacho, do it for Nacho, do it for Nacho.