Work Text:
“Jin! Hey, uncle Jin, look at this!”
Jin somehow manages not to melt at being called ‘uncle’ when Azure beckons him to the kitchen table. Upon his approach, he’s met with crayons and various pieces of construction paper scattered about. Akira is seated next to his sister, bent over and furiously scribbling something on what used to be a blank page. Meanwhile, Azure is coloring very deliberately and carefully. Jin chuckles at the scene before angling his head to get a better look at the older twin’s piece.
“What is it?” he asks, to which Azure responds by holding up her drawing for him to see.
“Look! I drew the four of us together!”
And by ‘the four of us’, Jin is assuming she means her, Akira, Max, and him, if the illustration is anything to go by. But strangely, the twins in her drawing are much taller than they are right now. They’re also clad in police uniforms not unlike the ones Jin and Max wear to work. He raises an eyebrow.
“Is this you and Akira?” he wonders. Azure nods happily.
“Uh-huh! Aki and I are gonna be police when we grow up, just like you and dad! We’re gonna save people and fight bad guys! Right, Aki?”
She turns to her brother, who nods similarly.
“Yeah,” he agrees, reaching for a red crayon. “You and dad are so cool!”
Jin blinks, absolutely speechless. Hearing Azure say that makes his heart swell with pride, and it takes almost all of his willpower not to cry instantly. He wishes Max were home to see this, he would tell him he has the cutest damn kids in the whole Ark.
“Is that so?” he asks when he finally recovers from the fatal blow. “Just like me and Max? Being a police officer isn’t easy, you know.”
“Well, duh,” Akira says, continuing to drag the crayon across the page in a frenzied manner. “But that’s why you guys are so awesome! Because you never give up, even when things are tough!”
Well if Jin thought he could handle the twins’ cuteness levels before, he was dead wrong. The smile on his face is so wide it hurts.
“Well, that’s… That’s very sweet of you to say,” he replies. “I’m flattered.”
“Here, you can keep this!” Azure beams, handing her drawing to Jin. “I want you to have it.”
“Take this, too!” Akira adds, now finished with his drawing. Jin chuckles upon seeing what appears to be an illustration of him fighting some sort of winged monster with three heads and a sharp tail (he assumes it’s supposed to be a chimera). Streaks of red lightning are surrounding him as he bravely faces the beast.
“The monster is a chimera,” Akira confirms. “I’ve never seen one in real life, but I think that’s what they would look like.”
Jin has obviously seen one before, and they look nothing like this, but he doesn’t voice this.
“It looks just like one,” he says instead. “Wings and all.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he laughs again, moving to ruffle Akira’s hair. “Maybe one day you’ll see one for yourself, kiddo.”
“And I’ll be there with you!” Azure chimes in. “We’ll take it down together!”
The younger twin smiles, brown eyes sparkling.
“I can’t wait.”
Azure really needs to stop making a habit of losing all her pens. Or, should Akira say, his pens, because every time his sister loses one he has to lend her another to replace it. He only has so many that he can spare. One of these days he’s going to run out, and then they’ll both be in trouble.
Akira opens his desk drawer in search of yet another pen so he can fill out a certain file—only to find said drawer completely void of any writing utensils. He scans the room for his sister, and finds her busy cleaning her Legions at the Legatus terminal.
“Azure, do you have a pen I can use?”
She pauses before turning to face him with a smile.
“Yeah, sure thing, bro!”
Azure crosses the room to her desk and searches through it, looking under scattered files and opening drawers, and Akira can’t even begin to comprehend the organized chaos that she has going on over there. After a few seconds, she stops, and Akira assumes it’s because she’s found one of his long lost pens, but the sheepish smile she wears tells a different story.
“Damn… Seems I don’t have any. Sorry, Aki.”
At this point, Akira is so disappointed he doesn’t even have the will to tell her not to call him that. He huffs and rakes a hand through his hair.
“Are you serious right now?”
Azure tilts her head. “What?”
“I’ve lent you at least a dozen pens to accommodate for every pen that’s gone missing from your desk, and you’re telling me you’ve lost all of them?”
“Okay, I know it looks bad,” His sister holds her hands up apologetically. “but I swear I’m not trying to lose them. They just disappear! I keep track of them, honest!”
Akira gives her an unimpressed glare.
“Well, you don’t keep good enough track, apparently, if they keep ‘disappearing’.”
Azure salutes. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Cop’s honor.”
Akira’s pretty sure that’s not a thing, but he doesn’t question it. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Sure, fine. Whatever.”
With that, he directs his attention to another officer, one who is (hopefully) more responsible with his pens than Azure is.
“Hey, Jin, can I borrow a pen?”
Jin nods without looking up from his game of solitaire. He gestures vaguely to his desk from his spot against the glass wall.
“Sure, there’s one in the left drawer of my desk.”
“Cool, thanks.”
Akira breathes a sigh of relief before making his way to Jin’s desk and opening the left drawer. As promised, there are a few black pens. He picks one out and begins to close the drawer, but stops when something at the bottom of it catches his eye.
Akira quirks an eyebrow, and when curiosity overtakes his better judgment, he opens the drawer once again to inspect it further. Hidden beneath the small pile of pens is a piece of paper covered from corner to corner in scribbles of crayon. Confused, he slowly slips it from its hiding place to get a better look at it, and when he sees what it really is, he nearly drops it.
“Whoa…”
At this, Jin finally looks up from his solitaire screen. He pales when he sees what Akira is holding.
In Akira’s hands is one of the drawings he and Azure used to draw for Jin as kids, and suddenly he feels like he’s eight years old again with wild dreams and an even wilder imagination. The particular drawing he’s holding is the one that’s supposed to look like Jin fighting a chimera. ‘Supposed to’ being the keywords. The proportions are ridiculous, and chimeras definitely don’t look like that. And where did the lightning come from???
Akira isn’t sure if he should be amused or embarrassed. He settles on a mixture of both.
“I can’t believe you kept these,” he chuckles. “That was so long ago…”
By now, Jin has abandoned his game in favor of returning to his desk to see what Akira dug up. He sighs and covers his face with a hand.
“...Dammit. You weren’t supposed to know about those.”
Deciding to insert herself into the conversation, Azure bounces over to Jin’s desk to peek over Akira’s shoulder. She giggles upon seeing the picture.
“Awww, that’s sweet, Jin! I didn’t know they meant that much to you.”
Jin huffs and ducks his head, cheeks flushed. “W-well… You guys had me wrapped around your fingers. I couldn’t not keep them. Besides, the two of you were the cutest kids I’d ever seen. It was kinda hard not to get attached when you were calling me ‘uncle’ all the time.”
Now it’s Akira’s turn to blush. “That— That wasn’t all the time!”
“Uncle Jin, huh? How cute.”
All heads turn to the source of the new voice. Akira doesn’t want to know how long Max has been standing there.
“Dad…” he grumbles.
Azure, meanwhile, isn’t fazed at all.
“Dad, look! Jin kept the pictures we drew for him as kids!”
Then, as if the page in his hands isn’t enough evidence, his sister digs through the drawer and finds a drawing done by her. It’s the one depicting the two of them as grown police officers, standing side-by-side with Jin and Max.
Max laughs heartily and wipes an imaginary tear from his eye.
“Wow, you really were wrapped around their fingers, huh?”
Jin shoots the captain a death glare.
“If you say one more word, I’m going to carve out your other eye.”
“Heh, sure you will.”
At this, Jin quickly swipes another pen from the drawer and throws it at Max. Meanwhile, Azure continues to rifle through the pile of paper mementos. Akira just sighs and hands his picture to his sister before turning to Jin, face still burning.
“Remind me to never borrow a pen from you again.”
Jin, despite the color of his cheeks, narrows his eyes at him.
“Serves you right, kid. You shouldn’t have dug through my stuff.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have put them somewhere anyone could find them!”
“Hey, don’t make me throw a pen at you, too.”
“Ugh, whatever,” Akira sighs. “I’ll just— give this back to you later.”
“Don’t bother,” Jin replies, readying to throw another pen at their captain cackling a few feet away. “Just keep it. I’d rather lose a pen then suffer through any further embarrassment.”
“Deal.”
And with that, Akira shuffles back to his desk, pen in hand, though he doubts he’ll be able to focus on his file after what just happened.
“Hey, Akira. Could I borrow that pen when you’re done?”
Akira glances up at his sister for a moment. Then he snorts and returns to the file on his desk.
“Not a chance.”