Work Text:
Jinx has been thinking.
The year is drawing to a close, each passing day causing the number of available birthday dates to diminish by one.
Everyone has a birthday. Jinx thinks Silco must have one too.
She wants to do something for him, feeling she owes him as much. His kindness to her has breached gateways she never thought kindness could, and once, just once, she would like to offer him something other than meltdowns that take up prodigious amounts of his day and night, or unprompted acts of affection she feels she hasn't earned. True, the affection is mutual, but nevertheless she is aware that the care she needs is demanding and disruptive.
She has surveyed him keenly these past months, sequestered away in the rafters of his office for several hours a day, whether he's aware she's there or not. From there, she espied how he takes his coffee in plastic cup, and deemed this unsuitable, especially since she'd watched him drink alcohol in far better cups and glasses.
With this clarity, she determined she would make him a coffee mug.
The idea took seed in her mind, and there it festered like a purposeless growth-it needed detail: when to make it, how it should look, and most significantly, when exactly it needed to gifted.
It was this conviction that she marched to Sevika's room in the middle of the day, her brown boots thudding slavishly against the wooden floorboards. As usual, there were the surreptitious glances in her direction, but she barely noticed them and even less so acknowledged them. She knew what they all thought of her, and frankly, she didn't care. Only one man's opinion of her mattered in this place, and Silco had corroborated his adoration for her time and time again, until she had not even the slimmest shadow of a doubt that he loved her.
Eventually, she came upon the immense and domineering door of Sevika's room. Little rabbit under arm and readied confidence at hand, she crashed into the room without knocking.
"Hi, Sevika!" she chirped in the most cheery tone she could manage when regarding the women.
"Hey, kid," the bodyguard grumbled, a slither of irritation present at the exclusion of knocking.
Selectively ignoring her lack of welcome, Jinx nonchalantly jumped up the older women's desk, who rolled her eyes at this miniature display of dominance.
"Sevika, can I ask you something?"
She groaned, "Oh God, the hell you want now?"
"Nothing!" Jinx threw her hands her hands up in a contrived display of defencelessness, her eyebrows furrowing and eyes gleaming dolefully. "I just have a question, that's all!"
"Fire away," Sevika demanded with a wave of her hand, voice laced with belligerence.
"When is Silco's birthday?"
"Janna, that all?" she replied incredulously. "No whiny demand for oil crayons, or a shit ton of tools, or a list of chemicals I can't pronounce the goddamn name of."
"Just tell me!" Jinx broke out, her patience and façade dissipating as quickly as it had materialized.
"It's December 5th. Now buzz off, I'm busy."
So that was that then: December 5th. That gave her two weeks - just enough time.
"I said go!" Sevika grunted again, attempting to shove her off the table.
"I've changed my mind," Jinx said with a smirk, deftly re-securing her place on the desk. "I do want something."
"Oh for fuck's sake, what?"
"You," she persisted, poking her on the nose, "are going to teach me how to woodwork."
And despite herself, Sevika smiled.
The woodworking lessons were no where near as arduous as either had been anticipating. Jinx learned fast when she was invested in something, and this invested her like nothing had ever invested her before. As for Sevika, she taught in a way that was consistently brisk but equally comprehensive; it was what had made their self-defence lessons so effective.
Within two days, Jinx had drawn up a design. It would normally take a quarter of this time, but since it was a gift, Jinx had to mull it over thoroughly, configuring a gift that would be pleasing to Silco but still retain her 'special touch', as he called it. All that, plus the need for a degree of sentimentality, meant this sketch needed to be scrutinized and edited multiple times over to achieve its desired effect.
This alongside her woodworking classes meant that, by day three, she was able to set to work on the cup. Admittedly, the result lacked professional polish, but Sevika had (with unusual tenderness) reminded her that this was inevitable given her newness to the skill, and anyway, nothing manmade was ever perfect.
"Only robots can make flawless things, Jinx," she'd explained, patting Jinx amicably on the shoulder. "Don't beat yourself up over small mistakes."
After that, she tended to painting it, sneaking away to the rafters at every opportunity to work steadily away as the deadline crawled surely closer, until it resembled the features of a frowning monkey. Though she didn't want the humour of the gift to be lost on him, she hoped Silco would recognise it, not as a symbol of the life she had lost, but a symbol of the night he took her in, the start of a bond that had become so desperately important to her-she just wanted him to know, to see and understand, how much she appreciated and treasured the bond that had grown between them like a spring flower.
"What's that you're making?" Silco asked her warmly, about a week before his birthday, smiling up into the ceiling.
"Not telling you," she'd teased, shielding it away and causing his eyebrows to raise at this irregular behaviour - for the regular occurrence was for her to jump down excitably and prattle for half an hour about her new creation, but he didn't pry further. For a moment, she pondered if he remembered his birthday at all. It wasn't as though he had many people close to him to share it with, and wasn't that at least a presiding factor in the point of celebrating it? To have the people you love rejoice at your existence in their life?
Well, she would show him. She would show him she loved him.
Sure as the sun, the deadline rolled around, only for Jinx to find her gift-giving would need to be delayed to that afternoon. Silco had been called away urgently, Sevika said, and wouldn't return until after lunch. Jinx didn't mind so much; it gave her time to wrap the present - an arguably superfluous touch, but in her eyes the extra effort would show more ardently the depth of her love for him. Plus, it was awfully nice of Sevika to help.
When Silco finally returned he was dishevelled and evidently exhausted, slumping in his chair and tapping his medication in an expectant but resigned manner. As she clambered into his lap, he addressed her:
"I'm sorry I had to leave you this morning. I know you don't like being left alone."
"It's fine," she said, waving away his apology and tentatively positioning the needle.
"What a dreadful day," he moaned, and she let him vent. "I do hate incompetence. If only..." he paused to caress her face, "if only everyone was as conscientious as you."
She accepted the compliment by accepting his touch, and then promptly injected the shimmer, stroking his hair as he lurched forward in agony and waiting patiently for the pain to subside.
"It's an important day today," she whispered to him once he had composed himself, hands still in his hair as she now sat more comfortably in his lap.
"Oh?" he raised the brow of his good eye in intrigue. "And why is that?"
Hopping up, she giggled conspiratorially and scampered up to the rafters, before jumping down again and propping her little body onto his desk, directly facing him.
"For you!" she said, extending her arms to present a clumsily wrapped present and beaming at him ecstatically. "Happy Birthday!!"
"Oh, you-" he started in shock, his tongue struggling between various sentence starters. "How did you- When did you- I had forgotten- You didn't-"
"I did!" she insisted, all but shoving it into his hands. "Now open it, silly. You're killing me here!" and she swung her legs sporadically for emphasis.
He did as he was told, his mouth hanging peculiarly open in bewilderment, a contrast to his mostly controlled facial expressions. The wrapping was blue with various colour of confetti on it, and once removed his mouth gaped further at the monkey mug, his eyes clouded with an indeterminate emotion.
"You always drink your coffee out of a plastic cup," she explained absentmindedly, bringing him back into enough attention to regain control of his mouth. "Now, you have your own coffee mug, instead!"
"It has two handles," he stated idiotically, and Jinx nodded eagerly. His eye flicked up to her, and found she looked back at him with dire earnest, as though he was missing something she desperately needed him to get. This made him check himself, and he scrutinized the mug more carefully. "It's a monkey," he added uncertainly, and then, "Like your old monkey bomb.”
"That's right," she corroborated, but he knew from her whisper he still didn't get it. She'd grown fidgety now, toying with her fingers and staring at her toes. Now it was her turn to struggle for a sentence starter. "It- I made it look that because- I wanted to- I need you to understand-" she shook her head and, eyes fixated on her swinging feet, elaborated with some effort. "It- That night, when you found me, umm, I thought I'd lost everything. I thought no one would ever love me again, ever. But then there was you, and something good happened, and..." she inhaled sharply. "So you see," she pointed to the monkey's face. "it wasn't a good night-that's why it's frowning-but you were a good thing that came at a really horrible time, and now you're the best thing."
"It has your special touch."
"Yes!" she clasped her hands together, eyes lighting up like lightbulbs as understanding illuminated his mind. "So you understand?" she didn't wait for an answer. "I wanted to do something nice for you, because you do so many nice things for me, and you've always been so kind, and I just- I-thank you."
Silco knew what she meant. Her little brain didn't have the words to articulate it, but with her limited elaboration he managed to grasp the sentiment behind the object, and for a while he just stared at her blankly as it came to him.
The more obvious meaning was that it was clearly a display of gratitude, and a logical solution to his lack of a suitable coffee cup. But it wasn't just gratitude, it was love, an acknowledgement that he had found her in her darkest moment, and that he had made that moment better by being there. A symbol of the growth of their relationship, how how much that growth meant, in a way that could not be articulated with words. The effort showed unconditionality, the kind he had always exulted on her and that she now wanted to reflect upon him. In some wonderful way, that little mug carried so much more meaning than any of her words could.
Jinx shuffled uncomfortably. Silco was looking at her with an unidentifiable yet mildly familiar expression, staring with eyes that seemed to cut through her physical body and stare straight into her soul. His lips were parted in a sort of disbelief, as though he had never thought such a small human could carry so much love before, and his head tilted slightly to her left. Abruptly, he shut his mouth again and put the mug gently on the table, still gazing at her. He exhaled heartily, shut his eyes and smiled.
He was only looking at her for a millisecond before his arms swiftly wrapped around her, arresting her own in his grip. She was flung off the table, legs and braid flailing as he spun her around and around, his ragged cheek against her soft one as he exulted praises and platitudes and gratitudes of love into her ear. She couldn't help but laugh, a melodic, lilting sound that made him hold her faster still.
"I'm dizzy! Put me down!" she gasped, but her command lacked conviction in her giddiness.
"I won't ever!" he retorted, though he stopped spinning her to counter the dizziness. "I won't ever let you go. You don't feel real, you know. Oh, you dream, you!" he kissed the top of her head. "You absolute little dream!"
"I'm not a dream, I'm real!" she protested jokingly.
"Then you are a phantom or a fairy proven so," he shot back, twirling her around again, this time at arms length. "See how you even fly like one!"
"Don't drop me, dad!" she cried.
Silco stopped and gasped melodramatically. "I would never!" he exclaimed, and she understood the double meaning. He drew her close to him again, this time leaving her arms free so she could wrap them about his neck, her legs mirroring the action on his waist until she was certain she wouldn't fall.
"You've made my day," he said genuinely, pressing his forehead against hers. "You always do. What a wonderful day!" he pushed the tip of his nose against hers and they eskimo kissed. "And what a wonder I found you, you little fairy. You are single-handedly the best thing I have ever encountered."
"Ditto," she said, pecking his cheek.
The rest of Silco's birthday was a happy, fuzzy blur. Sevika was of course immediately called in to 'make the best cup of coffee in the history of coffees, and use this mug.' Silco showered Jinx with acts of affection all through the day, and she initiated it just as often. Though nothing particularly exhilarating occurred, to Silco there was nothing more perfect than spending this special day with his special Jinx, strewn along the couch until the sunset with a special, steaming mug of caffeine as she jabbered away about her gadgetry, nestled into the crook of his arm, or laying her head in his lap, or whatever other act of affection was called for.
As the evening closed, both found themselves unable to stop talking but nonetheless slowed in speech. Long sentences became punctuated by yawns, and the caffeine was losing its effect, until both feel asleep like that, spread along the full length of the couch in each other's arms, Jinx drooling on Silco's shirt as she slept atop the rise and fall of his chest.