When the morning finally came, the first thing that Abaddon did was seek out all of his children and embrace them.
With his body being so large, he was easily able to wrap his arms around most of his children all at once, with the exception of Thrudd who was hanging across his back like a koala bear.
"Ahhh… I missed this so much."
Yemaya: "I missed you too, dad!"
Straga: "Glad you're back, pops."
Belloc: "T-That's great, but please let me go…I'm not made for all this affection. "
Despite Belloc's protests, Abaddon only hugged his son tighter.
"I don't really want to hear something like that from you when I can see two different sized marks on your neck."
Stheno and Melanie were leaning on a nearby wall together and blushed when records of their 'intimacy' was discovered.
Melanie the human was still getting used to Nevi'im culture of open affection and sexual freedom, so having her intimate acts so openly exposed was incredibly embarrassing.
Stheno, while used to their culture's lack of prudishness, was also embarrassed because she feared others would discover her more gentle side.
She was a hardened general who crawled from the depths of biblical hell itself!
Her reputation would not survive if it were discovered that she quite enjoyed cunnilungus and being held for long periods of time while she basked in silence.
Her brothers would never let her live it down.
"I don't like affection from old men." Belloc clarified.
"Be quiet, NEET dragon." Abaddon fired back.
Belloc started to make it especially clear that he was no longer a shut-in when his father finally released them of his own accord.
With the room being filled with people in the midst of reuniting, Abaddon had to move around to see more than just them.
His mothers also wanted to embrace their son, as did his in-laws.
Though when he got to Karliah, he gave her a small flick on the head as she went for a hug.
"Oh, come on! You gave everyone else some loving but me!"
"None of them caused me problems while I was out. Thanks to you I had to deal with a particularly vengeful hunter."
With a head and body as thick as cold peanut butter, Karliah made a confused expression as if she'd developed amnesia.
"And what exactly could I have done? I don't even remember the last time I ran into one of those annoying zealots."
Abaddon could only stare back dryly.
"…Your lack of self awareness is somehow astounding enough to be called a talent."
Karliah shrugged as if she didn't care and forced Abaddon to hug her anyway.
He waited for a moment of sexual harassment to follow, but ended up surprised when she just pulled away cleanly.
His mother-in-law just so happened not to miss the look he was giving her at the moment.
"What?? I am capable of exorcising restraint I'll have you know. For now, I am just grateful to have my son-in-law back home where he belongs."
Karliah then walked away, leaving Abaddon to wonder if his egregiously aggressive mother-in-law had been impersonated by a skin walker.
But he knew that was too good to be true when he heard her private thoughts about him.
'Kukuku… As long as I keep playing the game of sincere seductress, I'm sure I can make that man strip himself for me bare! He loves those gentle, frilly types the best it seems.'
'I heard that.'
Karliah stopped halfway out of the doorway and turned back around with a look of betrayal on her face.
'Y-You made a promise to the family that you would stay out of our minds!!'
'It doesn't apply when you are plotting on how to seduce me.'
'How would you know that if you weren't running around my head in the first place?!'
'I sensed it and then investigated. I'm in the clear.' Abaddon reaffirmed.
"Daddy?"
Abaddon suddenly looked down where Courtney was tugging on his pants leg.
In the brief moment where he looked down, Karliah disappeared from the room and escaped her incoming punishment.
Pledging himself to find her later, Abaddon instead smiled and lifted up the daughter he was most enthusiastic to see.
"There's my girl. See, I told you I wouldn't be gone long."
"Yea, but guess what??"
Courtney hopped up and down with a twinkling in her eyes that could have outshone the stars.
Lillian came over and lifted up their daughter into her arms.
"You're going to tell him already? I thought you would have atleast waited until we sat down for breakfast."
"Can't hold it! I'm gonna explodeee!" Courtney flailed her arms around dramatically.
"Well now I'm curious." Abaddon chuckled. "What's got you so excited that you're this energetic?"
Courtney beamed with pride as she held out two fingers.
"I made two friends at school! Not one! TWO!"
Abaddon's brain practically shot off fireworks.
-
Yesh and Asherah were in the midst of listening to their son Azrael chat on the phone.
Apparently, the young woman he'd met in Tehom was quite smitten with him and was inquiring about when exactly she might see him again.
But the angel of death had cold feet due to the nature of his existence and responsibilities.
While his parents were trying to coax him into attending, a small portal suddenly appeared right in front of Yesh.
Abaddon poked his head out of the portal and stared at Yesh with a bright glimmer in his eyes.
"I just wanted to say, I take back everything I ever said about you in my youth. You are indeed a miracle worker with a grand plan and I'm sorry I ever doubted you!"
"Eh?"
Abaddon retracted his head and closed the portal before anyone could ask what the hell he was talking about.
After almost a whole minute of silence, Asherah turned to her husband with deep confusion in her eyes.
"Did you do something ..?"
Yesh gave the most honest and straightforward answer that he had ever spoken since his self-actualization eons ago.
"I don't know?"
-
Some people might never understand why Abaddon was so overzealous about his daughter making friends.
From the beginning, his worry was that Courtney would have somehow inherited his relatively low talent for social interaction.
He was very aware that Courtney had her own eclectic interests that might not have aligned with children her age and would have led to her being seen as 'weird' or 'scary'.
This could cause her to be ostracized young, or even worse, feeling as if she had to change the way she carried herself in order to fit in.
Those were the last things that he wanted for her.
He couldn't imagine how horrible he would feel if his daughter was treated even 1/10th as badly as he was in high school.
But now that his daughter had successfully made not one, but two friends, a weight was lifted off his shoulder that he didn't even know was there in the first place.
Which was how he and Courtney ended up sitting on the sofa together while she told him everything.
"What are their names??"
"Fae-Fae and Kaela!"
"T-They're nice to you, right?? Like they don't make you the butt of their jokes or anything, or ask you to get them stuff, right??"
"No? They're super nice to me and we play and nap together everyday!"
"Glorious…"
Abaddon temporarily became serious as his mind started to formulate a plan.
"We need to lock these friendships down for sure… Have you considered play dates yet?"
"A play date? Here??"
"No, hun, but we can purchase a house on that earth for occasions like this in the future."
Abaddon made a serious financial decision in the blink of an eye like it was a pizza topping.
And little Courtney was completely on board with it.
"Woahhh, okay!"
Thea was watching all of this from the couch opposite him with Sabine sitting on her lap.
"You're really showing your favoritism, dad. You didn't react like this at all when I first made a friend."
"You skipped a couple of steps, didn't you?" Abaddon rolled his eyes.
"What's that supposed to mean??"
"The first girl your age you ever found interest in was one you wanted to turn out, not do macaroni art with."
"…Well she makes me sound like macaroni, so-"
"Inappropriate." Abaddon hurled the largest pillow he could reach at his eldest daughter.
The force knocked both her and Sabine off the couch and onto the floor.
Courtney gave her father a nudge. "What did big sister mean by that?"
"N-Nothing, don't concern yourself with anything that your eldest siblings say until you are atleast seventeen."
"What if I want to know before then?"
"Your mother has some very informative books and flashcards on the subject." (Lailah)
"…I'll wait until I'm big." Courtney agreed.
"That's my girl." Abaddon smiled. "Now, what do you think these friends of yours would like to eat..?"
Before they could get back to planning, Abaddon received a swift chop on his head.
He looks up at Sif impatiently as he rubbed the new crack in his skull.
"What was that for??"
"You're getting too carried away about all of this, you big idiot. She and those girls haven't even been friends for a whole week yet."
This did help reign Abaddon in just a bit more and he actually seemed like he was going back to normal now.
"Right… but you didn't have to hit me."
Sif still seemed like she was in a poor mood.
"Consider that your punishment for not 'greeting' me when you came home last night…"
"You were asleep."
"So what's your excuse for this morning?"
"I wanted to see my children and my family." Abaddon smiled innocently as if he hadn't done a damn thing wrong.
The heartbeat in Sif's pants only worsened at the sight of his perfect porcelain teeth.
A small twinge of red on her cheeks betrayed her building frustration like a neon billboard.
Prompting Abaddon to realize that maybe he'd let his dishes 'marinate' for just a bit too long.
Chuckling, Abaddon placed Courtney down on the couch by herself.
"I'll be back in a little while, Courtney. We'll keep planning for your friends later."
"Ehhh? Where are you going??" She pouted.
Abaddon's arm slipped around Sif's waist and traveled down sneakily until it reached her butt.
Sif's cheeks instantly went from slightly pink to beet red.
"Well I need to go and have my own play date with your mothers and stepmother so I can show them exactly how much I missed them."
Ayaana soon found her way into his free arm like the road runner and soon the twelve of them were exiting the room together and heading upstairs.
Thea finally crawled up from the ground with a minor concussion.
"Are you kidding me?? You can say that, but I can't say one joke about-"
Abaddon hurled another pillow at his eldest daughter and knocked her back to the floor once again.
Little Courtney looked back and forth between her elder sister and departing parents; not understanding what either of them were getting at.
Eventually, she just crawled down from the sofa and went to find her grandmother Kirina and spend some time with her.
'Adults are weird… I hope I'm not like that when I get big.'
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