[A/N]: Stones?
The blue light of teleportation faded, depositing Jay, Domino, and Luv back in the heart of their Savage Land sanctuary. The waterfall's thunder rolled through the cave like distant drums while sunlight refracted through the cascading water and painted rainbow patterns across wet stone.
Luv's eyes went round as dinner plates, his little body tensing in Jay's arms. "Dad? Where are we? It's so pretty!"
Realising this is the first time Luv is properly seeing their Home as he's just been to their bedroom and kitchen, "Home, buddy," Jay said, setting him down carefully. His hand stayed on the kid's shoulder, steadying.
Luv's gaze tracked across the cave's interior, drinking it in like he was seeing it for the first time. The space opened up behind the waterfall curtain into something that shouldn't exist: Reed Richards' technology nested among Cretaceous rock formations. Holographic displays floated near the sleeping area, their blue glow reflecting off crystalline mineral deposits in the walls. A sectional couch that had definitely cost someone a fortune sat arranged around a massive television screen. The kitchen area gleamed with modern appliances that looked absurd next to stalactites dripping from the ceiling. Recognition flickered across his young face.
"I remember!" Luv bounced on his toes. "This is where Mom made pancakes! And where the cat chases the mouse!"
Domino's smile lit up her whole face, "That's right, sweetheart. Welcome home."
Jay watched them both, something twisting in his chest, like a locked door opening.
The realization hit him harder than most punches from Death; this was his life now.
The next morning arrived with all the subtlety of a flashbang grenade.
Luv's little hands shook Jay's shoulder with the persistence of a telemarketer.
Poke. Poke. Poke.
"Dad, I'm hungry. Can we have breakfast?"
Jay groaned, his brain still three states away from functional. Not used to being woken at dawn. Jay hadn't needed sleep regularly in months, and now, after his fight with Death, his body remembered what exhaustion felt like. But the moment he cracked one eye open and saw Luv's hopeful blue eyes, wide, earnest and completely convinced Dad could solve this crisis, resistance crumbled.
"Yeah, buddy. Let's go see what we can make."
Domino lifted her head from the pillow, white hair falling across her face. One eye opened, tracked them, closed again. "It's five in the morning."
"Kids don't understand time zones," Jay muttered, scooping Luv up and heading toward the kitchen area.
"Or consideration," Domino called after them, but her voice carried amusement.
Jay set Luv down at the counter and stared at the kitchen like it might attack him. Cooking. Right. He could reshape reality, manipulate cosmic forces, and had once dog-fought with FURY, but making breakfast for a five-year-old?
Terrifying.
"What do you want, buddy? And please say cereal because that's about my skill level."
"Pancakes! Like Mom makes!"
Of course.
Twenty minutes later, the kitchen looked like a war zone with batter on the ceiling and somehow batter on the wall six feet from the stove. Luv covered in flour like a tiny ghost while Jay contemplated whether he could steal the time stone to just make this never have happened and save face in front of his son.
But the pancakes on the plate looked... pancake-adjacent, close enough.
Luv attacked them with enthusiasm, his vocabulary expanding in real time. "These are really good, Dad! Not as good as Mom's, but still really good!"
"Thanks, son. Your honesty is refreshing."
Domino emerged from the bedroom, took one look at the kitchen, and laughed so hard she had to lean against the wall.
"Don't," Jay warned.
"I'm not saying anything."
"You're thinking it very loudly."
"That's just your guilt manifesting." She crossed to Luv, dropping a kiss on his flour-dusted head. "Morning, sweetheart. Did Dad try to burn the cave down?"
"Almost! But he caught it!"
Jay had, in fact, caught the kitchen towel that had somehow ignited, though he chose not to examine how that had happened.
Domino caught his eye over Luv's head, her expression softening with warmth.
Domino's hand found his across the counter and squeezed once, a whole conversation in that single gesture.
We're figuring this out. Together. Don't panic.
Jay squeezed back. I'm already panicking. But I'm here.
Luv, oblivious to the adult emotional complexity happening above his head, kept eating.
By the third day, Jay had learned several critical things about parenting:
One: Five-year-olds have infinite energy, physics-defying, thermodynamics-violating and absolute perpetual motion.
Two: The phrase "I'm not tired" is always a lie.
Three: He had no idea what he was doing and was absolutely winging it.
Domino had slipped into a teaching rhythm that surprised both of them, not the formal instruction of a hired tutor, but the practical knowledge of someone who'd survived by understanding how the world worked. Colors and shapes, numbers and letters, the names of things Luv saw around the cave. The kid absorbed everything with startling speed, his enhanced genetics of course, giving him processing power that made learning feel less like education and more like downloading software.
"What's that?" Luv pointed at the waterfall one morning.
"Water falling from high up," Domino explained. "Gravity pulls it down. Makes that sound you hear all the time, like thunder that never stops."
"Why doesn't it run out?"
Domino paused, looked at Jay, and Jay looked back while neither of them actually knew the hydrological specifics of their magical hidden valley.
"Because there's a lot of water," Jay tried.
"But where does it come from?"
"Clouds."
"What's clouds?"
This was going to be a long childhood.
"Can we touch it?" Luv asked, already moving toward the cave entrance with the single-minded focus of a kid on a mission.
Domino's hand shot out, snagged the back of his overalls. "We can do better than that." Her eye glinted with something that looked dangerously like mischief. "We can swim in it."
Jay opened his mouth to object, to point out the million ways this could go wrong with the water pressure, the rocks, the fact that Luv probably couldn't swim.
Domino shot him a look that clearly said: We're doing this. We are literal demi-gods. Stop being paranoid.
Fair enough.
The pool at the base of the waterfall stretched out in crystal-clear brilliance, fed by the cascade and draining away through underground channels. Mist hung in the air like suspended diamonds while the roar of falling water filled everything and made conversation nearly impossible.
Luv stood at the edge, tiny toes curling against smooth stone, his face cycling through emotions: excitement, uncertainty, determination.
"It's really loud!"
"It is!" Domino had to shout over the thunder. "You ready?"
Luv nodded, grabbed her hand, and jumped.
The splash sent water three feet in every direction.
When Luv's head broke the surface, his shriek of delight probably scared every dinosaur within a mile radius. He spun in circles with his arms spread wide, letting the mist soak his clothes and hair and face and everything. Water plastered his brown hair to his skull, made his blue eyes seem impossibly bright.
Jay and Domino watched from the cave entrance, hands finding each other without conscious thought, hearts full in ways they hadn't known were possible.
"We're terrible at this," Jay said quietly, just loud enough for Domino to hear.
"Absolutely awful," she agreed.
"He's going to be so messed up."
"Completely traumatized."
Luv chose that moment to try to drink directly from the waterfall, got a mouthful of water that made him cough and laugh simultaneously, then did it again.
"He's perfect," Domino whispered.
"Yeah," Jay agreed. "He really is."
Her head tilted, resting against his shoulder while his arm came up and wrapped around her waist. They stood like that, watching their son play, and neither of them said what they were both thinking.
That this felt right in a way nothing else ever had.
That it terrified them both.
That they wouldn't trade it for anything.
The Savage Land stretched out beyond their cave in impossible grandeur.
Ancient tree ferns rose fifty feet high, their fronds creating a canopy that filtered sunlight into shafts of gold and green. Cycads clustered in prehistoric profusion, their primitive forms unchanged for millions of years. The air hung thick with humidity and the scent of vegetation so lush it bordered on overwhelming. Somewhere in the distance, something roared while something else answered.
This wasn't the Savage Land from the comics but real, dangerous, alive in ways that made Jay's threat assessment constantly spike.
Which was exactly why Luv needed to see it.
Jay kept his null field tight, wrapping Luv in suppression that would prevent any accidental reality warping while still allowing the enhanced durability that came with his genetics. The kid bounced beside them, head swiveling to take in everything, questions firing like a machine gun.
"What's that tree? Why's it so big? Do dinosaurs eat trees? Can trees eat dinosaurs? What if a tree was a dinosaur?"
"That's a tree fern," Jay answered. "They're big because they're old. Dinosaurs do eat trees. Trees don't eat dinosaurs. And that last one is just weird, buddy."
"But what if," Luv insisted with the logic of a five-year-old.
Domino's probability senses flared. She froze, hand shooting out to stop them both.
Thirty seconds later, a Tyrannosaurus Rex crossed the path ahead, each footfall shaking the ground hard enough to rattle Luv's teeth. Forty feet of apex predator, scales gleaming copper and bronze in the filtered light, eyes tracking for prey with the cold calculation of evolution's finest killing machine.
Luv's mouth fell open while his entire body went rigid.
The T-Rex paused, head swiveling, massive jaws parting to reveal teeth the size of combat knives.
Then it moved on, crashing through the undergrowth in pursuit of something they couldn't see.
Jay realized he'd stopped breathing.
Luv tugged on his hand. "Dad, that was so cool. Can I have one?"
"No."
"But Dad..."
"Absolutely not. We're not getting a T-Rex."
"But..."
"Not negotiable, buddy."
Domino's shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. "Maybe something smaller, kiddo. Like that thing over there."
She pointed.
In a clearing where massive ferns grew in wild profusion, a Triceratops munched on vegetation with the unconcerned manner of an animal that had no natural predators. Twenty feet long, scales shading from dusty brown to green, the three horns on its massive head gleaming like polished ivory. The frill around its neck bore scars from old battles, proof this particular specimen had survived more than one encounter.
Luv froze, his little hand gripping Jay's finger so hard the bones ground together. "Dad, is that also a dinosaur?"
"That's a Triceratops," Jay said, kneeling to Luv's level. "Herbivore… I mean plant-eater. See how it's just chomping on those ferns? It won't hurt us unless we scare it. And even then, probably not. They're pretty chill."
Luv's eyes tracked the creature's every movement: the way its tail swished, how its beak-like mouth stripped vegetation with mechanical efficiency, the occasional huff of breath that sent mist into the air.
"Can I touch it?"
Domino laughed, the sound ringing through the clearing. The Triceratops' head lifted briefly, regarded them with one massive eye, then returned to its meal. "Not this one, kiddo. But maybe we can find something that won't accidentally flatten you."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
They watched the Triceratops for another ten minutes before moving on while Luv kept looking back, like he was afraid it might disappear.
Three days later, they found something better.
The juvenile Pachycephalosaurus stood about three feet tall at the shoulder, roughly the size of a large dog. Its domed skull gleamed slate-gray in the morning light, the thick bone cap designed for headbutting rivals and predators alike. Dusty green scales covered its body, fading to cream along the belly while yellow eyes regarded them with what might have been curiosity.
It looked lost or maybe orphaned, though it was hard to tell with dinosaurs.
Luv approached it with the fearless curiosity of childhood, his hand extended palm-up like Domino had taught him.
Jay tensed, ready to snatch the kid back if the dinosaur attacked.
The Pachycephalosaurus sniffed Luv's palm with hot breath and wet nose, then bumped its domed head against Luv's chest with enough force to make him stumble backward.
Luv's startled yelp turned into giggling with pure, uninhibited delight.
The dinosaur bumped him again, gentler this time.
"He likes me!" Luv bounced up, immediately approached for another headbutt. "Dad, Mom, the dinosaur likes me! Can we keep him? Please? I'll take care of him and feed him and everything!"
Jay and Domino exchanged glances loaded with unspoken communication.
Jay: This is a terrible idea.
Domino: Absolutely the worst.
Jay: We're keeping it, aren't we?
Domino: One hundred percent.
"What are you going to name him?" Domino asked, already accepting the inevitable.
Luv didn't even hesitate. "Bonk!"
"Bonk?" Jay repeated.
"Because he bonks!" Luv demonstrated by gently headbutting the air. "See? Bonk bonk bonk!"
The Pachycephalosaurus, now officially named Bonk, headbutted Luv again while this time Luv was ready, bracing himself and laughing.
And that was how they acquired a dinosaur.
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