Work Text:
Sometimes family is a child genius, his hot-headed apprentice and her domesticated assassin.
Sometimes family means company on long nights in the library; a brilliant mind challenging and inspiring you. Someone to point out the obvious your eyes have not yet quite catch on. Someone to raise the right questions at the right time; someone to lift your spirits after a failure. A person nursing you back to health if you catch a cold – someone to brew a mug of hot herbal tea, sweetened with honey no matter how hard you try to hide your sweet tooth.
Sometimes family means that you have someone to teach you how to climb a tree and how to trip up a renowned foreign scholar, elegantly seasoning your petty move with a fine selection of curses from across the globe. A person to teach you how to cook – someone who would stuff you, with force if needed, on days you just immerse yourself a bit too deep in your research. Someone who does not quite understand your frenzy for books, but listens and offers a helping hand wordlessly. Someone who can surprise you from time to time.
Sometimes family means the lack of loneliness. It is akin to a ray of sunshine, light and warmth. With time, it piles up: smiles and tears and coughs and cries, laughter and words, all kinds of smells and spices.
Sometimes family teaches you to believe, to hold your hopes high against all odds.
Sometimes it helps you grow.
Yet another time, family is insufferable, with those two idiots you have known for what seems your entire life making the room stuffy – playing their own game, the same one they have had between them since the moment you know them, about stolen glances and shy smiles.
Sometimes you think family is a hassle.
One is blind, the other thinks he is unworthy. You would not love anything more than for these idiots to resolve their issues on their own. Yet, you treasure them too much not to offer a helping hand.
Shirayuki has opened your eyes to a lot of things – a few words at the right time and the right place, said nonchalantly, as if you were speaking about the weather – and she blushes, ears camouflaging themselves between her signature red hair.
Obi has given you a meaning – but for him to believe he is good enough, you cannot stage a play. He is way too clever and way too guarded not to notice. So you decide on the straightforward route, it suits you more anyway. You know Shirayuki hides just behind the corner, so you make him confess.
Sometimes family means that you end up in a tree, ogling your pair of idiots through the leaves to ensure they will not mess up – it is for your own comfort, you reason, it is to avoid any misunderstandings or unnecessary drama. It goes smoother than you expect – even if you have left out of your calculations that they find you, dragging you down and suffocating you in their embrace.
Sometimes family means getting terribly drunk for the first time in your life on the wedding of your favorite idiots.
Sometimes family means baby burp over your well organized notes.