KEEP ME AWAKE, GIVE ME A FRIGHT ☆ trygve

[michael t.]

Despite his very apparent soft spot for them, Michael hadn't actually interacted one on one with a child in... well, ever, really. When he had been traveling from camp to camp with Trevor, the only children they had ever met were the ones latched onto the sides of the people they were scamming, so it was hardly the best time for bonding. In spite of his relative inexperience of those of the younger persuasion, the fugitive had already come to realize that Ry was the troublemaker of his sister's children. Perhaps not the only troublemaker of the litter – he had seen Natyli and the others going along with and encouraging his poorly thought out schemes – but certainly one of them. That was why it wasn't very surprising that Ry had chosen to leap on him while he was just casually resting. What Michael was very glad for, however, was that Ry hadn't decided to come up on his bad side. The left side of the bobcat's body was essentially senseless save for smell, with his eye and ear both not working ever since his birth. His mother and father had never been interested in finding out why, and none of the medics he had gone to after escaping their clutches had been able to figure it out, so he had come to just accept his disabilities as a fact of life – albeit a rather upsetting one.

The sound of Trygve's frustrated young voice was what finally pulled Michael from his self-deprecating trance, his blue gaze flicking down to look at his nephew. He felt a smirk form across his muzzle when he saw the way that Ry fluffed up and lashed his tail, clearly enraged at the thought of being considered nothing more than a mere kiddo. The bobcat said with a low chuckle after Ry had spoken, shaking his head from side to side, "I won't call you kiddo when you're not ages younger than me there, kiddo." He lazily flicked his paw forward to knock Ry over again into the sand, not doing so maliciously, but just because he found it entertaining to see Ry's little badass ego a bit bruised. Michael would never mistreat or berate a child like his parents had done to him, but it wasn't as if Trygve was going to wilt like a weak little flower if he got teased a little bit by his uncle. At least, he wouldn't if he had gotten any of Roxie's DNA. After all, she was the one who had taken to teasing Michael all the time, despite being the younger of the two adopted siblings.

Upon hearing the second part of Trygve's words, the male found himself laughing again, although this time it wasn't at Ry, rather at the mere notion of what he was saying. Firmly shaking his head, Michael mumbled as a few more stray hiccups of laughter left him, "Show you? No way, Ry. Your mother would kill m–" The bobcat was cut off, however, by Ry launching himself upwards once again, this time actually managing to latch on to the older feline. Despite this, Michael wasn't too worried, simply dropping down and beginning to roll over to crush the boy beneath him – leaving plenty of time for Ry to scramble out. He then tried to grab the other's scruff, plopping him down and saying with a snicker, "C'mon Ry, you've hardly shed your baby fat yet. You're not ready for all the fun shit the apprentices get to do." It was blunt, but it was also honest, Michael not even realizing he had broken his no cursing around the children rule already.

[glow=#75603C,1,000]" oh, it's a setup, no, no, we won't fall. "[/glow]