Work Text:
Jabber:
Old man
Are you alive or did you croak already
Enjin:
Number one im not fucking old
And im fine
What do you want
Jabber:
Can you do me the tinniesst favor?
Enjin:
Did you get arrested or something?
I ain’t bailing you out again
Jabber:
You have so little faith in me
I was gonna ask you to watch you grandkids
But if you hate us that much
Enjin:
Oh, now you're trying to guilt-trip me?
That’s low even for you
And any faith I had in you was beaten to death years ago
Jabber:
So that’s a yes????
Enjin:
Where are you and Zanka going?
Jabber:
Date night
So will you do it
Enjin:
Yeah whatever
Jabber:
I knew you loved us
Enjin:
Don’t push it
Jabber:
Love you Grandpa
Enjin:
Call me Grandpa again and I’m blocking your number
Jabber:
See you soon peepaw
—
Enjin stared at his phone for a long moment, then slowly lowered it onto the side table.
He sank deeper into his recliner with a groan, his body melting into the cracked leather cushions as if he intended to become one with the chair permanently. The old footrest creaked when he kicked it up, and he grabbed the faded blanket draped over the armrest, tossing it over his legs.
“Two hours,” he muttered bitterly to himself. “I had two damn hours of peace.”
The house sat in comfortable silence around him. No yelling yet, no tiny feet stomping down the hallway, followed by suspicious crashes followed by the words ‘it wasn’t me’.
His shoulders slowly loosened. The tension drained from his face as exhaustion finally began creeping back in. After a minute, his breathing evened out, and his eyes slipped shut.
Then his phone started vibrating against the wooden side table.
Enjin made a noise so pained and dramatic it sounded like the opening scene of a medical emergency.
“Whoever this is better be actively on fire,” he grumbled. He blindly reached for the phone, squinting at the screen through half-open eyes.
Girl Child
Enjin frowned immediately and answered. “Hey. What’s up?”
A familiar voice came through, warm and slightly breathless. “Hey, Dad.”
Enjin sat up straighter almost instantly, irritation evaporating. Riyo never called unless something was wrong.
“What happened?”
There was a rustling sound on the other end of the line, followed by distant arguing and the unmistakable shriek of at least one overtired child.
“It’s Eishia,” Riyo said, sounding strained now. “She’s running a really high fever, and I’m taking her to urgent care. I don’t know how long we’ll be there, so could you watch the kids tonight?”
Enjin’s hand immediately dragged down his face and through his graying hair. “How bad?”
“She can barely stand without getting dizzy.”
The annoyance vanished from his expression so fast it was almost jarring. “Why are you still talking to me?” he snapped. “Get her to the damn doctor.”
Riyo let out a breath that sounded half relief, half exhaustion. “So that’s a yes?”
“Of course it’s a yes,” he grumbled immediately, like the answer should’ve been obvious. “Who do you think I am?”
His hand rubbed tiredly down his face, already mentally counting blankets and snacks and which kid would inevitably start a wrestling match first.
Another relieved sigh crackled through the speaker. “Thank you.”
Enjin leaned back again, rubbing at his temple. The irritation from earlier had settled into quiet concern now. “Don’t thank me. Just bring them over and drive safe.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Riyo said. “Love you, Dad.”
He clicked his tongue like the words inconvenienced him personally. “Mm. Love you too.”
Her laughter followed right up until the call ended.
Enjin stared at the dark screen for a few seconds before exhaling heavily and forcing himself upright. Every joint in his body protested like he was being drafted into combat.
He shoved the footrest down with a loud clack and pushed himself to his feet, muttering under his breath the entire way.
“One night,” he grumbled. “I was this close to sleep.”
He shuffled down the hallway with the posture of a man already mourning the peaceful evening he’d lost. One hand dragged slowly down his face while the other adjusted the waistband of his worn gray sweatpants.
“Four kids,” he muttered darkly to himself. “Fantastic. House is about to smell like crayons and sticky fingers for the next month.”
The old hardwood creaked beneath his feet as he wandered into the kitchen first, already preparing for what he treated like a small-scale siege.
Cabinet doors opened and slammed shut one after another.
Juice boxes, crackers, fruit snacks, a half-finished bag of pretzels. Then, from the very back of the highest cabinet, Enjin pulled out the emergency candy stash he swore to everyone in the family didn’t exist.
“This is for me,” he informed the empty kitchen firmly. Then he sighed and set it on the counter with the rest anyway.
Soon the counter looked like a convenience store display assembled by a deeply irritated man. Everything was arranged into neat little piles with military precision while Enjin stood there glaring at the snacks.
“Four damn kids,” he grumbled.
He moved into the living room next.
The lamp beside the recliner cast a warm amber glow over the room, softening the clutter just enough to make it look lived-in instead of messy. Blankets were tossed over the couch one by one. He nudged a pile of toys aside with his foot and bent down with a grunt to grab two game controllers from the floor.
The cords were tangled into what looked like an intentional knot forged by hatred itself.
Enjin stared at them in exhausted disbelief. “How,” he whispered to nobody, “does this even happen?”
He spent the next thirty seconds untangling them with visible annoyance before tossing both controllers onto the coffee table.
As he turned back toward the recliner, something sharp stabbed directly into the arch of his foot.
“SON OF A - !”
He jerked backward, catching himself on the arm of the couch before the full yell escaped him. His eyes dropped to the floor.
A tiny plastic dinosaur sat there innocently beneath the recliner.
Enjin glared at it like it had lain in wait for him specifically. “You little bastard,” he hissed.
He scooped it up and threw it onto the couch cushions with unnecessary aggression.
The house settled again after that, falling back into its quiet nighttime hum. The refrigerator buzzed softly from the kitchen. Cabinet doors opened and shut while Enjin wandered room to room muttering complaints under his breath like a man narrating his own suffering.
Then he passed the fireplace and his steps slowed.
On the mantle, tucked beside an old framed photograph, sat a small black urn. The silver lettering on its surface had worn faint with age, but the name was still readable.
Umbreaker.
Enjin stopped there silently.
The framed picture beside the urn showed a much younger version of him sitting on old porch steps with one thick arm looped around an enormous dog. Umbreaker looked massive even sitting down. Thick dark fur, scarred ears, broad chest, tongue hanging out lazily while he leaned against Enjin like he owned the entire porch.
Enjin folded his arms across his chest. “You would’ve hated this,” he muttered quietly.
His gaze lingered on the picture. “Five kids running around your house.”
For the first time all evening, his voice softened. “You probably would’ve eaten half their snacks too.”
A faint smile tugged briefly at the corner of his mouth before it disappeared again.
Then his phone started ringing.
...
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” He pulled the phone from his pocket and squinted suspiciously at the screen.
Raccoon son
Enjin answered without even trying to sound pleasant.
“What.”
“Well hello to you too,” Rudo replied dryly.
Enjin pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to leave marks. “If this is about money, I suddenly lost service.”
On the other end, Rudo sighed. Traffic noises rumbled faintly in the background alongside what sounded like two strangers arguing somewhere nearby.
“Can you watch Reggie tonight?”
Enjin stared blankly ahead for several long seconds. “You people coordinate this shit,” he accused. “There’s no way this is a coincidence.”
“It’s not my fault Jabber already called you.”
“He already told you he called me?” Enjin straightened immediately. “And you still decided to ask me?”
“Well,” Rudo said carefully, “you’re already in babysitting mode.”
Enjin looked genuinely offended. “Babysitting mode?” he repeated slowly. “What the hell does that mean?”
He groaned with the full-body exhaustion of a man abandoned by fate itself. The sound was so dramatic Rudo had to pull the phone away from his ear.
“How many is that now…” Enjin muttered, counting on his fingers. “One, two, three - ”
“Five.”
“I KNOW HOW MANY GRANDKIDS I HAVE!” Enjin sighed heavily through his nose, rubbing at his temple. “Are you working late?”
“Yeah.”
“And your wife is?”
Rudo finished the sentence. “At a conference.”
Enjin looked around the living room.
The blankets on the couch, the snacks on the counter. At the peaceful silence that was about to die a violent death.
He closed his eyes briefly like a man accepting defeat. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”
Rudo laughed under his breath. “We’ll be there in twenty.”
Enjin slowly lowered the phone from his ear and stared up at the ceiling like he was personally asking the universe why it kept testing him.
Nothing answered.
“Coward,” he muttered to the ceiling.
Then he turned and marched toward the kitchen with grim determination.
“Alright,” he said to himself. “If I’m surviving five children tonight, I need coffee strong enough to kill a bear.”
—
The first knock came about twenty minutes later, right as Enjin finished pouring himself a cup of coffee dark enough to qualify as an industrial cleaner.
He shuffled toward the front door, mug in hand, already bracing for impact.
The moment he opened it, chaos greeted him immediately.
Riyo stood on the porch looking exhausted in the very specific way only parents of small children could manage. One child clung to each side of her like decorative accessories she could no longer remove.
“Alice,” Riyo said through clenched teeth, trying to peel the seven-year-old off her leg, “stop climbing me.”
“I’m not climbing,” Alice argued despite being very visibly halfway up her mother’s torso like a raccoon scaling a tree.
Unlike her sister, June looked painfully composed. She held a tiny pastel backpack carefully in both hands, posture perfectly straight, shoes neatly tied, blonde hair brushed so flawlessly she looked like she was arriving for a formal interview instead of an overnight stay.
“Grandpa Enjin,” June greeted sweetly.
He slowly looked at Alice, who had somehow managed to get one sneaker onto the porch railing while hanging sideways off her mother, then back at June.
“How are you two related?”
June sighed with the exhaustion of someone decades older than seven. “I ask myself that every day.”
Riyo snorted so suddenly she had to cover her mouth with her hand.
Alice gasped in betrayal.
“June said she doesn’t love me!”
“I did not say that.”
“You implied it!”
“You don’t even know what implied means.”
“I know it means you’re being mean!”
Enjin dragged both hands down his face slowly. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “They came pre-started.”
Riyo slipped inside quickly before Alice could fully ascend the porch railing and achieve flight. Cool night air drifted in through the open doorway along with the distant hum of traffic from the street.
“Eishia’s in the car,” Riyo explained, brushing loose hair from her face. “She fell asleep.”
Enjin immediately looked past her toward the driveway. Through the windshield he could just barely make out the shape of a bundled-up person curled against the window.
“She okay?”
Riyo’s tired smile faded around the edges. “She’s burning up.”
The irritation left Enjin’s face instantly. “Then why are you wasting time talking to me?” he grumbled. “Go get her checked.”
Riyo exhaled quietly, relieved by the answer even though she clearly expected it.
Then Alice suddenly froze mid-spin, her eyes narrowed. “I smell candy.”
Enjin’s head snapped toward her immediately. “What are you, a bloodhound?”
Alice squinted suspiciously at him like she could sense hidden secrets buried somewhere in the house.
“You have some.”
Meanwhile, June quietly removed her shoes by the door without being asked and lined them neatly beside the wall.
“Thank you for watching us, Grandpa,” she said politely.
Enjin stared at her for a long moment like she was some kind of rare mythical creature. “How are you so sweet?”
June smiled serenely. “Mama says I got all the manners in the family because somebody had to.”
Riyo glanced back toward the driveway and sighed. “I really need to go.”
The moment she moved toward the door, Alice latched onto her arm dramatically. “NOOOO! DON’T LEAVE ME WITH THE OLD MAN!”
Enjin raised a brow at her, “First of all, rude.”
Riyo laughed under her breath and kissed the top of Alice’s head before crouching down to straighten June’s jacket.
“Behave for your Grandpa, okay?”
June nodded immediately. Alice nodded too, but with such aggressive enthusiasm it somehow made her significantly less trustworthy.
Riyo looked up at Enjin then with the exhausted, haunted expression of a parent silently begging another adult for divine intervention.
Enjin smirked knowingly.
‘Now you understand how I felt raising your ass.’
“Why are you still standing here?” he waved her off. “Go.”
Riyo laughed softly again before hurrying down the porch steps toward the car. The front door shut behind her and silence settled over the house that lasted exactly two seconds.
Then Alice looked up at Enjin with the terrifying energy of someone whose brain operated entirely on sugar and bad ideas.
“So,” she asked eagerly, “what are we doing?”
Enjin crossed his arms. “Surviving until bedtime.”
“That sounds boring!” Before he could say another word, she bolted into the living room like a tiny missile. A loud crash echoed almost immediately.
Enjin closed his eyes. Somewhere deep in his soul, he felt his lifespan shortening.
“Alice!” June shouted as she hurried after her sister. “You can’t just bodyslam the couch!”
Enjin shuffled into the living room with the slow dread of a man approaching a crime scene. Alice was upside down across the couch cushions with her legs dangling over the backrest and her hair hanging toward the floor. The couch itself creaked ominously beneath her.
Enjin crossed his arms, “You break that couch and I’m selling you on the internet.”
Alice gasped. “You can’t sell children!”
June climbed onto the couch properly beside her sister and folded her hands neatly in her lap like she was posing for a school portrait.
From upside down on the couch, Alice shouted, “June stole my markers yesterday!”
June’s sweet smile vanished and she scoffed, “Because you drew eyebrows on my dolls!”
Another knock suddenly echoed through the house.
Enjin slowly turned toward the front door. Then he looked up toward the ceiling like a man personally abandoned by God.
“Oh good,” he muttered darkly. “More already.”
He stomped toward the front door with all the enthusiasm of a man marching toward his own execution. Before he even reached the handle, he could already hear arguing outside.
“That is not how the right of way works,” Rudo snapped.
Jabber pointed at him dramatically from somewhere beyond the porch. “You don’t own the road just because you drive like an off-duty cop!”
“I WASN’T EVEN SPEEDING!”
Enjin closed his eyes briefly. “Fantastic,” he muttered. “They brought the stupid with them.”
He yanked the door open and both grown men froze mid-argument instantly.
Rudo stood on the porch holding Reggie against one hip, still visibly irritated enough to bite somebody. Even standing still, he carried that same permanently exhausted tension in his shoulders that made him look one inconvenience away from starting a fight in a grocery store parking lot.
Reggie looked exactly like him with the same red unimpressed eyes and tiny scowl of deep disappointment in humanity.
It was honestly unsettling.
Beside them stood Jabber with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and Cynthia tucked close against his side, small fingers twisted tightly into the sleeve of his jacket. Meanwhile Enzo bounced around them both with so much energy he looked physically incapable of standing still.
The second Enzo spotted Enjin, his entire face lit up. “Peepaw!”
Enjin narrowed his eyes immediately, “I’ll lock the door.”
Jabber looked unbearably smug as he rested a hand on Enzo’s head. “He learned from the best.”
Rudo snorted while adjusting Reggie higher on his hip.
Reggie stared silently into the house for a long moment like he was evaluating the structural integrity of the building. Then, in the flattest little voice imaginable, “Hi.”
Enjin stared at him.
‘Lord have mercy, It’s uncanny.’ “Hey,” he answered carefully.
Inside the house, Alice heard Enzo’s voice and she came barreling down the hallway at full speed like a tiny, screaming avalanche.
“ENZO!”
“AALIIICE!”
The two children collided in the middle of the hallway with enough force to concern physics itself, then immediately started bouncing around each other in excited circles.
“You came over too?!”
“Yeah!”
“Grandpa threatened to sell me online!”
Enzo gasped dramatically, eyes wide with admiration. “No way! That’s awesome!”
“It was not awesome,” June called from the living room with deep exhaustion in her tiny voice.
Meanwhile Cynthia lingered near the doorway, mostly hidden behind Jabber’s arm. She peeked cautiously into the house without letting go of his sleeve.
Enjin took quick notice, “You coming inside,” he asked gruffly, though softer than he had spoke to the others. “Or are you decorating the porch?”
Cynthia looked up at him uncertainly.
“She’s nervous,” Jabber said quietly, finally sounding like an actual parent for once. “She thinks she’s bothering you.”
Something in Enjin’s face shifted almost imperceptibly. He stepped aside from the doorway. “Kid,” he grumbled, “I lost control of this house years ago. One more won’t make a difference.”
That earned the tiniest smile from Cynthia. She shuffled inside carefully, shoulders still tense at first, until her eyes landed on June sitting calmly on the couch.
Like a nervous cat identifying the safest human in the room, Cynthia drifted immediately toward her. June patted the seat beside her and she quickly sat pressed neatly against her side within seconds.
Meanwhile, chaos had already resumed elsewhere.
“Wanna see how far I can jump off the couch?” Enzo shouted.
“YEAH!” Alice yelled instantly.
“NO!” three adults barked simultaneously.
Enjin pointed aggressively at both children. “If either of you breaks a bone tonight, I’m billing your parents and they're gonna pay with yall’s allowance.”
Neither child looked remotely threatened.
Rudo finally stepped fully inside carrying Reggie with him. The little boy immediately spotted the snacks lined up neatly on the kitchen counter.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Crackers.”
That was the most emotional response anyone had gotten out of him all evening.
Enjin glanced toward the counter. “Yeah,” he said carefully. “Crackers.”
Reggie nodded once like this confirmed a very important theory. Then he held out both hands expectantly, “Need crackers.”
Enjin barked out a laugh before he could stop himself.
Rudo looked offended immediately. “Don’t encourage him. He’s four years old and already judges me enough.”
Reggie looked up at his father thoughtfully. “Daddy looks tired.”
Jabber fell into laughter so violently he nearly dropped the duffel bag.
Rudo stared at his son in betrayal. “You tiny traitor.”
Alice suddenly grabbed Enzo’s hand. “Come on!”
Before anyone could stop them, the two of them sprinted toward the backyard together like a natural disaster gaining speed.
Jabber finally dropped the duffel bag near the couch with a heavy thud. “You sure you’ll survive this?” he asked, grinning.
Enjin slowly surveyed the scene unfolding inside his house.
June calmly helped Cynthia open a juice box with the patience of an elementary school teacher on her last surviving nerve, and at the kitchen counter sat Reggie silently eating crackers with the grave seriousness of a divorced accountant reviewing tax documents.
And only god knew what the other two were doing.
Enjin looked back at Jabber and Rudo.
“One of them better become rich.”