The admission was almost unthinkable, at least to Jake.
Death was all around them in their line of work -- the line of work Finn had been entrenched in since he was an infant. Handling monsters was practically their family business. Not everyone got crossbow lessons from their mothers by the age of four. Not all parents had frank conversations with their young children about what to do with their corpses, should they fall in battle. Jake wasn't even ten when his father first turned to them, all business, and asked him to make sure he collected all the pieces of his body for burial in the event of a messy death. Can't leave any bits behind, boys, I know plenty of dark wizards aching to get their hands on this puppydog tail. Don't let your poppy become black magic, kids.
Killing monsters and avoiding death yourself, that was just their lives. It had always been their lives and, Jake was confident, always would be. It wasn't a fact Jake always necessarily loved, particularly as he aged and priorities changed, but he knew that Finn did love it.
The slow circles on Finn's back didn't stop, even as Jake stumbled car to car down his long train of thought. Jermaine sat in closer, sandwiching Finn tight between them, with a looped an arm around Finn's shoulders. He was without question the least physically affectionate of the three of them -- the intimacy and lack of escape never appealed to Jermaine -- but Finn's misery was a powerful motivator. So he leans in heavily against him, a little puppypile like the old days.
"Sometimes when something bad happens, you can't always fix it by going back to normal," Jermaine offers, voice reassuring. It wasn't quite as good as Jake's, but there was still significant power there. "That's okay, y'know? Stuff doesn't have to be normal right away."
"Normal's boring, anyway," Jake chimes in finally, squeezing closer. Finn was smack dab in the middle of a full-on brother hug. "Figuring this out'll just be a new kind of adventure, right?"
Both Jermaine and Jake hug him tighter, a damp trio of miserable pups stabbing towards hopeful.
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Death was all around them in their line of work -- the line of work Finn had been entrenched in since he was an infant. Handling monsters was practically their family business. Not everyone got crossbow lessons from their mothers by the age of four. Not all parents had frank conversations with their young children about what to do with their corpses, should they fall in battle. Jake wasn't even ten when his father first turned to them, all business, and asked him to make sure he collected all the pieces of his body for burial in the event of a messy death. Can't leave any bits behind, boys, I know plenty of dark wizards aching to get their hands on this puppydog tail. Don't let your poppy become black magic, kids.
Killing monsters and avoiding death yourself, that was just their lives. It had always been their lives and, Jake was confident, always would be. It wasn't a fact Jake always necessarily loved, particularly as he aged and priorities changed, but he knew that Finn did love it.
The slow circles on Finn's back didn't stop, even as Jake stumbled car to car down his long train of thought. Jermaine sat in closer, sandwiching Finn tight between them, with a looped an arm around Finn's shoulders. He was without question the least physically affectionate of the three of them -- the intimacy and lack of escape never appealed to Jermaine -- but Finn's misery was a powerful motivator. So he leans in heavily against him, a little puppypile like the old days.
"Sometimes when something bad happens, you can't always fix it by going back to normal," Jermaine offers, voice reassuring. It wasn't quite as good as Jake's, but there was still significant power there. "That's okay, y'know? Stuff doesn't have to be normal right away."
"Normal's boring, anyway," Jake chimes in finally, squeezing closer. Finn was smack dab in the middle of a full-on brother hug. "Figuring this out'll just be a new kind of adventure, right?"
Both Jermaine and Jake hug him tighter, a damp trio of miserable pups stabbing towards hopeful.