WHO: Martin Boot & Nicole Bardera
WHAT: Serious conversations.
WHEN: After practice
WHERE: The United training complex

Martin had a lot of new information to absorb these days. It wasn't necessary bad information... if anything, it was the good, happy-making sort. But still, it was enough to sort of overwhelm someone as simple-minded as Martin Boot. On the one hand there was the fact that the team had been reinstated. No longer having to play with the loser replacements was a major perk, but not better than not having to put up with a cranky Nick any longer.

Then there was Noah and his garbage-can baby. Yes, he was going to continue to call the kid that probably until he was old enough to get offended. Again, it wasn't a bad thing, but it was certainly a shocker. He didn't even know that Noah liked kids, let alone wanted any of his own. But he had gone with him to the hospital the other day to retrieve the little guy, and it was then that he realized how dead-ass serious his younger brother was about adopting the kid. So he was an uncle now!

Well, he supposed Eddie sort of counted, but he never saw the kid.

Brow creased in contemplation, he turned and offered a goofy, lopsided smile and a wave to Nick as they steered their brooms back down to the pitch. Practice was finally fucking over, and not a second too soon in his opinion. The briefest of winces crossed his face as his feet touched down; his knee had been bumming him for the past week or so.

Practice was over, but Nick didn't land beside Martin untl about a minute after he'd initially waved to her. She'd been back on the team for days now, but even so it felt like she hadn't gotten enough of it. It had been the bloody longest month of her life that she had been banned from her job and the sport she loved, and now that she was up in the air again, flying and feinting and catching and scoring, she didn't want to come back down. Even Finn's normally torturous practice sessions couldn't faze her from the happiness of finally being back in the game.

Of course, that probably wouldn't last too long.

She landed lithely, jumping off her broom before she hit the ground, and shouldering it as she came up beside Martin. "That was a good practice," she commented, but she was not-so-subtly eyeing his knee as she did. It worried her, it did, the way that it bothered him; but who was she to tell him to stop playing? She'd sound like a right hypocrite, what after the finals last year. "Feeling alright?"

"Knee," was his simple response, rolling his tongue over his bottom lip as he hoisted his own broom up to his shoulder as well. It was a pretty common thing, his knee acting up, so at this point in their relationship it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise anymore. As long as it wasn't keeping him out of the game, he'd be fine. He grinned at her and quirked a brow, nodding his shaggy head towards her broom. "Didn't think you were gonna come down," he teased, glancing around to make sure the guys weren't looking before draping his free arm around her waist. They'd been together for almost a year, but it was sort of an unspoken thing that they keep their PDAs to a bare minimum.

"Feels good to be back, huh?" He gave her an affectionate squeeze and smirked. "You have no idea how glad I am that our team doesn't suck anymore. I was embarressed to go to work."

She smirked, in too good a mood at the moment to even care if any of their teammates were watching them as he slipped his arm around her. Normally, it was something that they just didn't do--there were too many idiots on the team who had way too much to say about them, even after a year. Of course, it helped somewhat now that Seth was gone and Kirke was still too new to have the boldness to say anything, but that did leave Bell. Bell always had enough stupidity in him for a whole team of people.

"It does," she said with a happy sigh. Jesus, she hadn't felt this good in a long time. "I never realized how much I love the game until they told me I couldn't play it."

With her free hand, she pulled the band out of her hair, letting lazy blonde curls fall free, and she leaned up to peck him lightly on the cheek. "Well, we're not out of the woods yet. Still have a lot of games to make up."

He groaned a little in protest and dropped his arm from around her. "Yea, I know. Finn hasn't exactly let us forget it." He watched her hair fall free of the band with an appreciative eye, puckering his lips thoughtfully to the side. It was weird to think that they had lasted as long as they had... funny how things worked out sometimes, wasnt it?

As they started back towards the locker room, he glanced at her from the corner of his eye and brought up one of the two topics that had been consuming his thoughts. "So I went with Noah yesterday to get the garbage-can baby from the hospital. I'm an Uncle now."

Nicole stopped in her tracks and turned to Martin with wide eyes. "Wait, you---what?" she asked, incredulously.

Of course she'd heard of this 'garbage can baby', as Martin had so aptly christened the child that had been abandoned by its mother at his brother's planetarium. But the last that she'd been told, Noah had dropped the boy off at St. Mungo's so that he could be put in the system and hopefully adopted out to a family that could take care of him. There had been nothing in that story about Noah taking him back home, and definitely not of him adopting him himself. She couldn't claim to know Noah as well as Martin did, but of all things, he had still never quite struck her as the fatherly type.

"You mean to say that---I thought he wanted nothing to do with the kid? And now you're telling me he's adopting him?"

He stopped as well, grinning at the shocked expression on her face and nodding in agreement. "Yea, I know." Reaching up, he scratched the back of his neck and shrugged, sort of a 'what can ya do?' gesture. "He just decided that he wanted to keep it. I dunno, Noah's always been weird, but it kind of surprised me, too." After seeing the kid though, he had known that he was serious about the decicion he'd made... and besides, Martin couldn't say he wasn't a little excited about being able to spoil the shit out of the kid and teach him dirty words.

"I think he'll be alright. It's gonna be funny as hell though, I can tell you that." He grinned impishly, dimples sinking in at the corners of his mouth. "But I told him I'd help him out if he needs it. But I draw the line at poop patrol. I don't know what was in that dumpster when they found him."

Nick rolled her eyes at his last remark, and shot him a pointedly--yet only half-serious--admonishing look. To be quite honest, she was a bit eager to see Martin handle his new nephew. A playful attitude like he possessed tended to lend itself to being good with kids, and---well, despite his constant displays of immaturity, he seemed like one of those people that would be a natural at being a father; or uncle, as it were. That wasn't to say that the kid probably wasn't going to learn about a million terrible things that would have to be rectified by poor Noah, but at least he'd get along with his nephew.

Her lips quirked up into a smile and she nudged him with her hip. "You're going to be a good uncle for that kid to have."

"Yea well, I'm just glad that Noah actually wants me around the kid. My sister adopted a kid and vanished off the face of the damned earth." It was obvious he was still a little bitter about Noel's complete neglect of her immediate family, but he shrugged it off relatively quickly and gave her a smile, nudging her back with his arm.

He had to say, he was pretty good with kids. They tended to like him; he assumed it was because he was on their wavelength. You know, same maturity levels and all. "It's funny though. Noel's married with kids, Noah has dumpster baby..." He scratched at his chin thoughtfully. "I kinda always thought I'd be the first one to have a kid. Not just beause I'm older, but just because I never thought Noel would run away and elope and Noah... well he's a social reject most of the time."

Her brow arched so high that her eyebrows disappeared under her hair. "Seriously?" she asked, surprised for the second time in the span of about five minutes. This kind of thing could not be good for her heart. "I mean, not that you don't seem like you wouldn't be a good dad, I--you would be a great dad, but---I don't know." She frowned, trying to find the right words to phrase what she was thinking. "The lifestyle you like so much, with all the partying and the different girls--well, before this" --she motioned in between them-- "isn't really synonymous with imagining yourself with kids before your siblings."

To be honest, the fact that Martin had managed to commit to almost a year's worth of a relationship with her was surprising enough. Before now, she would have bet a whole year's salary against anyone who told her he'd ever thought about as big a committment as a baby before. It was---weird, almost, to hear him say that.

"Yea," he said, a goofy smile forming. "I dunno, I love the life and all. The booze, the girls, all that good stuff. But my mom wanted grandkids really bad, was always bugging all of us about settling down and popping 'em out for her." It showed great improvement that Martin could now recall his parents without having a minor meltdown. it still hurt, no doubt about it, but it was getting a little easier to remember them without feeling bitter or angry. "And let's face it, I'm really lucky that there aren't a million little bastard Martins or Martinas running around."

He always knew the right thing to say, didn't he?

"Well, don't hold your breath or tomorrow there'll be one showing up on your doorstep," she commented, surprisingly without bitterness. It had taken a while, but she had slowly come to terms with the things he did as long as he wasn't doing them around her. That did not, however, include the sleeping with other women thing--that he was strictly banned from doing, but she could at least accept what she already knew about how much he'd done it in the past. Nicole would never agree with it, but, well. If she didn't get over it, then where would they be?

She put her broom up against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. "See, my family's not like that, though. Of course, my mum's pretty sure I'm going to be an old maid, but at least she's got my three brothers to have kids for her. Usually that keeps her off my case--Tristan's too, to an extent, seeing as they're betting he'll never settle down either."

He gave her a playful look of disbelief. "But why would anyone think that you would be a spinster? Such a warm, happy girl with such a fondness for boys!" He chuckled and tossed his broom down beside hers, leaning himself up against the wall just beside them to ease some of his weight from his knee. He frowned at her mention of Tristan, and might have even made a little face, too... he couldn't help that her brother was a right bloody bint. But he wisely refrained from making a comment.

Instead, he decided to breach a rather sensitive topic, one that they had never discussed up until now. "Well, do you even want kids?"

Again, there was the shock---this time that he had actually asked her that question, and she was so preoccupied thinking about it that she forgot whatever retort she was going to give to his earlier jab. Given everything that she had thought about Martin up until now, she had never thought that this particular topic of conversation would ever enter his mind. Maybe because she'd never really thought about what her answer to it would be herself.

"Well, I--" She cut herself off, her mouth open a little as she mulled it over. Well, hadn't she always loved her nieces and nephew? But then, having kids would spell an end to her career, something that she loved more than anything. If she had been a few years younger, not already nearing the end of her run as a player anyway (at least on a team full of men), it might not have been such a concern, but potentially never going back to playing Quidditch was a worry at 27.

Then again, once she was done, what would she have, if not a family? Wouldn't retiring hurt that much more if she was retiring to nothing?

Nick pursed her lips for a second, and then slowly nodded. "Yeah," she finally answered. "I think I do."

"You think you do?" He smirked. It was almost as though he could read her mind, because he leaned towards her a little bit, one brow raised knowingly. "Having kids doesn't necessarily mean your life as a quidditch player would be over, you know." It felt sort of surreal to be having this discussion with her. The pair of them had been together for so long and hadn't even said 'I love you' to each other, yet here they were discussing whether they wanted kids or not.

"And besides," he added, the tone of his voice suggesting that he was about to tease her again, "you're not getting any younger. What are you now, thirty-five? Bet you remember what it was like to be my age." She was barely any older than he was, but he stilled enjoyed poking fun at her for it when he could.

Okay, this time the surprise didn't get her, his teasing eliciting a punch to his shoulder. "You're really an asshole some days," she told him, thinking all the while that he was lucky that his knee was hurting him, because otherwise he would have gotten much worse than a little punch. Of course, she wouldn't admit that out loud. Couldn't ever let him think that pretending that he was in pain could stop her from kicking his arse in case he ever wanted to try it.

"And yeah, it pretty much does." Nick crossed her arms back over her chest and stared out at the field. "If I had a kid, there'd only be about a 95% chance I'd be able to get fit enough afterwards to come back--and even then, they could very well not take me back. I'm already signing single-year deals with them because the managers are so scared I'll fall behind all of you big, burly men and they'll have to replace me at any moment. I could go play for another team, but---well, I always imagined ending it with the United."

He listened to her; not for the first time, she managed to make him feel slightly guilty about the sexist privelages he received because he was born with a penis. Her comment about 'ending it' with United perked his interest though, and he tilted his head slightly to the side. "Really?" It just seemed like a strange thing to do, to end your career so early when you loved it so much.

"Nick, listen. I'm sure they're not gonna get rid of you any time soon, alrght? You're bigger and burlier than some of the guys on the team." He smiled that cute little-boy smile he usually offered when he was trying to cheer her up. "And sexier." Seeing as how the guys were all in the locker room by now, he had no problem whatsoever with reaching out for her, pulling her against his chest and kissing her neck. "And you smell better, too."

She laughed, quietly and against her will, and allowed herself to be pulled against him. She ran her hands up against his arms, but at the same time glancing over his shoulder at the locker room door to make sure that none of their teammates were coming--after all, this was a touch less tame than an arm around the waist, and she wasn't in quite good enough a mood to listen to Bell's catcalls.

"You don't have to try and cheer me up about it," she assured him, leaning back just slightly to show him that she was smiling. "I didn't get into this profession not knowing that I was at a disadvantage---pisses me off still sometimes, but it's not something to cry over."

He gave her a skeptical look. "Yes I do," he assured her, that playful smirk still upon his lips. "Because if I don;t cheer you up you stay grumpy. And when you're grumpy I don't get sex." He laughed and released her, noticing the way she glanced back towards the locker room. Personally, he didn't care what the guys had to say, but he knew it meant a lot to Nick. Not that it was any big loss on his part; open displays of affection were never really his thing anyway.

"Wanna have dinner tonight?" There, a nice change of subject.

Nick rolled her eyes. "No wonder you want kids!" she exclaimed in mock surprise. "That requires sex! Aha, it all makes so much sense to me now." A smirk slid onto her face, partially because of her own comment, but partially because she couldn't believe she was talking about this casually with him. Nicole couldn't keep a straight face and tell you at the same time that before today she'd ever imagined her relationship with Martin going anywhere past dating, mostly due to the fact that the idea of such a party boy having a family was hilarious. But now? Well---she wasn't so sure. He had really pulled a twist on her today, and---maybe.

Maybe there were possibilities there. And strangely enough, that didn't freak her out half as much as she thought it should have.

"Dinner sounds good," she agreed. "We should maybe think about getting showers first, though."

"Together," he said agreeably. If there was one thing to be said about Martin, it was that he was persistant. "And yea, the sex part of the whole kid-making process is pretty nice, I have to say." He laughed a bit and squinted at her thoughtfully, mouth held partially ajar as he slowly came to a conclusion. "You can't get over the fact that I said I actually want kids, can you?" Well, he supposed he couldn't exactly blame her; he wasn't exactly the fatherly type. But neither was Noah, and just look at him!

"Ok, so here's the plan. Let's go back to your place... or mine I'm not picky... take a shower, have the non-baby-making kind of sex, and then go out to dinner. Sound good? Brilliant."

"Nope, still sort of processing that revelation over here," she admitted, leaning off the wall and grabbing her broom. "But I think that plan for the night sounds like just the thing to help me get over it."

Not like she would have gotten out of his plan anyway---he had agreed to it for her already, after all--but it did undeniably sound good, especially now that the results of the hard practice were starting to settle in on her muscles. A shower and sex and dinner was what she needed.

Leaning up, she pecked him on the cheek before beginning off in the direction of the locker rooms. "Come on, go get your stuff and I'll meet you at mine in ten."