(FIN) Not the Mama! [Bee]

[Dark]

Rin knew he was a whipped man—he watched the kids whenever it was demanded of him, paid for doctors appointments, toys, clothes and other ‘necessities’, and ran miscellaneous errands on a daily basis—and there was very little control he could actively exert over his life. His job being one area of his life still under his own moderate control—though it could be argued he was at the whim of his customers, which to a large degree was true, and he certainly didn’t have any say where the money he made went—and this. His campaign; a petty revenge, though it might be, it filled him with no small amount of pleasure every time he heard the sound of his victory.

“I’m Papa, and that’s your Mama, kids,” he had instructed them from a very young age. With luck, conditioning would win over Jin’s strong objections to the title.

[Bee]

For the most part, Jin was unaware that something was amiss. The children were soaking up knowledge out of his sight, whenever they went to visit their father. Which was often, because he lived just down the hall. Their slip-ups he attributed to childish naiveté.

“Papa,” he could correct, whenever one them would call him otherwise. He tried not to look annoyed.

Zhenya attached himself to the name Mama because it seemed logical to him. Jin was technically his mother, so it seemed fitting to call him this. Besides, he thought, having two papas was too confusing. How could you tell one papa apart from the other? One of them needed to be a mama.

Milena acclimated herself to using Mama when she began to get a sense for how much it irritated her mother. Saying it brought her simple, childish delight.

“Papa,” Jin corrected, again. Was it REALLY THAT HARD?

[Dark]

Rin watched his children carry out his tiny revenge from afar, careful to never let on that there might be an external influence carefully fanning the cause of Jin’s continued ire. It would be a slow, painful death if Jin ever did catch on.

Coralie was easily convinced; she was a sweet little thing, and eager to please her Papa. And since families were supposed to have a Mama and a Papa, and she already had a Papa, then that meant the other parent was by default her Mama. Coralie loved her Mama, but not as much as she loved her Papa.

Kaz did it mostly just to stir up trouble, being a creature who derived amusement and satisfaction from such affairs, and sensing on some deeper level just how much it annoyed his parent. He loved his Mama, but it was too funny to see how he reacted when addressed as such to resist.

[Bee]

“Mama,” said Zhenya, about to launch into some request.

“Papa,” Jin insisted, before he could finish. He had officially had enough of this. He was going to settle this once and for all. If Rin got to be Papa then he fuckin’ got to be Papa, too. And it was time all his beloved little ankle-biters knew it. “Gather round, children, Papa—”

“Mama,” Milena corrected.

“—has an important thing to explain to all of you,” he concluded, ignoring his daughter’s interjection. When his children were safely gathered around him, he continued: “Now, I will teach you all a very important biology lesson. Do you see your papa here?”

“No,” Zhenya said, perplexed. His papa was across the hall doing work.

“I meant me,” Jin said. “See me here? Now, all of us are very slightly of both genders. But I, your papa, am predominantly male. Thus it is only fitting that I am called something that befits a man. Men are not mama. Men are papa.”

“But you carried us around like a mama,” Zhenya said. He was now in the realm of hopeless confusion. “Papa said so. He said you were real mean, too.” He paused. Maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say. “And you act like a mama.”

[Dark]

Kaz nodded in agreement with his brother, “What Zhenya said. If you carried us like a mama, then you are the mama, Mama. Doesn’t matter that you’re a boy.”

Coralie was very confused, “Families are supposed to have a mama and a papa and babies.” This was the recommended prescription, and Coralie could not fathom deviating from it. “What would we do without a mama?” she fussed unhappily.

Rin, who had stopped by to drop off groceries and had watched the scene unfold from where he’d ducked into the kitchen, smiled victoriously. It would seem he had won this small battle, for all that his opponent didn’t know that he was behind it all. It was better that way, though; he didn’t want to start an actual fight--Jin always won, through sheer force of personality--and a quiet victory suited him, besides.

He made a retreat before Jin could spot him, feeling pleased with himself.

[Bee]

The children were becoming visibly upset and confused about this issue. Well, half of them were, anyway. Coralie and Zhenya looked legitimately confused. Milena and Kaz…those two were just budding assholes, he suspected. He was almost proud of them.

But mostly he was irritated. He needed to train them to direct their pintsize assholery elsewhere.

Jin did not believe in lost causes in the ordinary course of things, and he was pretty freaking determined that one day, those children were going to call him papa, and he was going to emerge from this naming war the true victor. Unfortunately, he seemed to have lost this battle, because reasoning with small children was monstrously difficult, and reasoning with asshole small children was even worse.

Why weren’t their little brains developed enough to understand his logic?

Rin’s genes, clearly.

That was the answer to everything.

“All right, go play,” Jin said, sourly. “Mama needs alone time with a nice icy blonde.”