Chapter Text
By six, the boys had discovered a very specific kind of violence that could only ever exist between siblings. Not the kind that drew blood or left permanent bruises. It wasn't real violence.
No, this was something feral, instinctive, and meticulously designed to be deeply, achingly, maddeningly annoying. It was the sort of thing Shane suspected might have been genetically encoded into his two small humans that was designed specifically to piss him off.
Shane was positive they got it from Ilya’s side.
The living room was quiet, or as quiet as it ever got, bathed in the warm, honey-gold glow of late afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows. Cartoons murmured softly on the television, a background hum of color and motion that somehow emphasized the stillness rather than interrupted it.
Megumi lay flat on his stomach on the rug, legs splayed like a starfish, one sock halfway slipping off his heel as he concentrated on his sketchbook.
The wings he was coloring were elaborate and intricate, somewhere between a dragon and a pigeon; it was a creature Shane wasn’t sure existed outside of Megumi’s imagination, and something he knew not to ask about unless he wanted all of the lore on this creature.
Across the room, Misha stood perfectly still like a statue.
He didn’t twitch. He wasn’t even breathing audibly. He just stood there, staring. Shane noticed it immediately, because this was the kind of quiet that meant trouble. The kind that preceded chaos.
His hands paused mid-fold, a dinosaur t-shirt dangling precariously from his fingers. “Baby,” he said cautiously, “why are you staring at your brother like that?”
Misha didn’t blink. His eyes were locked on Megumi with the intensity of a predator. Shane felt the hairs on his neck prickle.
“He looked at me,” Misha said, his voice almost a whisper, like stating it aloud might give him away.
Megumi didn’t so much as glance up. “I didn’t,” he said without looking.
“You did.”
“I blinked.”
“That’s suspicious.”
Shane opened his mouth to intervene, to ask literally any follow-up question, when Misha suddenly launched himself forward with a battle cry. It sounded suspiciously like something he’d learned from the gladiator movies Shane told Ilya not to watch around the boys.
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t check his trajectory. He didn’t even aim to hit. He simply hurled himself forward at full speed.
Then they were down. Limbs entangled, curls matted with sweat, and strands of hair plastered to foreheads. Laughter erupted, shrill and uncompromising, the kind of sound that made Shane simultaneously ache with amusement and a migraine.
Megumi retaliated immediately, shoving a crayon into Misha’s hoodie pocket as if it were a dagger, while Misha responded with an indignant howl of outrage.
“MAMA HE’S BEING WEIRD—”
“YOU EXISTED FIRST—”
“That’s not a crime!” Shane called, hovering over them and trying to figure out whose arm belonged to who.
“It feels like one!”
Shane stared down at them, exhausted already. He did not understand siblings. He understood the struggles of parenthood. He understood messes. He understood cups left half-full on the edge of counters and shoes in the middle of the hallway. But he did not understand this.
“Ilya!” he called toward the kitchen, voice pitched somewhere between panic and pleading. “Are they fighting or bonding?”
Ilya didn’t look up from the stove. His hands moved in a steady rhythm, flipping something in a pan. “Bonding,” he said, casually, as though Shane had asked whether the sky was blue.
“They’re biting each other.”
“Still bonding.”
Megumi lifted his head from the rug, curls sticking in all directions, grinning like a little demon who had won. “He started it.”
“You were existing aggressively,” Misha argued, voice rising like a challenge.
Shane pinched the bridge of his nose.
Shane felt his knees weaken. He closed his eyes for a brief, necessary moment and whispered under his breath, “I’m raising feral raccoons.”
From the floor, the twins froze just long enough to gasp in perfect unison, their faces horror-struck.
“We’re velociraptors,” they corrected, as if Shane’s characterization had been an affront to their very identities.
Shane opened his eyes. They were indeed velociraptors. They were small, merciless, clever, and unrelentingly loud. And somehow, amid the chaos, he felt the corner of his heart tighten, because no matter how feral they were, they were his.
Eventually, after Shane was sure thwy weren't actually going to eat each other, he knelt on the carpet and watched them for a moment longer. The room smelled of crayons, sweat, and the faint tang of ketchup from lunch.
He thought about how quiet life had been before his boys. Before the house echoed with laughter and shrieks and reckless battles. Before he knew how many sticky little finger prints he would scrub off the fridge door every night, or how every object in the living room could instantly become a weapon, a toy, or both at the same time.
Before Megumi and Misha, the sunlight had just fallen through the windows, warm and empty. Now it fell into their play area, and somehow, he thought, it was better this way. Better and messier and louder, and infinitely more full of love.