"Thanks for dinner," Jin said, popping back in the house after seeing Aika off.

"It was our pleasure," Lisa said, coming out of the kitchen with a recently rinsed bowl in one hand and a drying cloth in the other. "Aika's a lovely girl, Jin. Really. And she's got a good head on her shoulders."

"Yeah, she's..." As a dozen adjectives ran through Jin's head, a smile made its way onto his lips, and he abandoned his search for the perfect word to encapsulate all that she was. "She's great," he said, leaning against the couch. His eyes scanned the room before coming back to Lisa. "Is Dad...?"

"He turned in for the night," Lisa said, pausing before setting down the bowl. "I think he's a bit tired. Meeting someone new, trying to make a good impression, all that."

"How's he doing?" Jin asked, keeping his voice low so it wouldn't travel around the house and into unwanted ears. "With...the accident, and..." Jin trailed off and shrugged, and Lisa took his point.

"He's...better," she said, rubbing at one of her hands and looking off to the side. "But this sort of thing...it never really leaves you. He still goes to Jimin's room sometimes and just...sits there, like he's waiting for something. And he still calls their phones." She paused, sinking down onto the arm of the armchair. "And it's silly I guess, but I just worry that when the contract is up for their phones, what will happen when their numbers are given to someone else, and he calls and doesn't hit their voicemails and some stranger picks up instead?"

She looked up at Jin, sighing deeply. "It's not that you father doesn't realize that they're gone because he does, but...he doesn't want them to be, and who can really blame him for that?" Lisa tilted her head and gave him a sad smile. "I wish they were still here, too. Every day."

Jin nodded and, as he looked down, noticed several notifications on Lisa's phone popping up, all from the same person. "I think Mark is trying to bug you about something," he pointed out with a small chuckle, and Lisa looked down, biting at her lip.

"He does have a talent for being insistently annoying," she said, although there was warmth in her voice, and Jin grinned.

"It's just a brother thing," he said, and Lisa slid the phone into her back pocket without replying to any of the messages.

"Must be."

"Is it something important? Cause I can go and get out of your hair..." Jin asked after a moment, feeling like it was time to head out, but Lisa's sigh stopped him in his tracks.

"Not exactly. It's not unimportant, it's just...a losing argument no matter where I stand." And Jin, with his experience in the public eye in which he had to watch every single thing he said and every single gesture he made, sort of understood that.

"About?"

Lisa stared at him for a moment before seeming to give up on whatever she'd planned to say.

"Come on, Lisa. I know you don't have to tell me and you don't want to drag me into whatever it is, but I'm an adult now. You don't have to hide things from me."

"You, an adult?" she snorted. "You will always be a kid to me. You and all your brothers." She hesitated for a moment though, and Jin capitalized on that by sinking into an armchair. Lisa narrowed her eyes, clearing seeing right through his tactic of coercing her to talk, but she sat down nevertheless. "I'd appreciate if you keep this between us because I haven't quite decided what to do, and I don't want to drive any sort of a wedge between you and your dad no matter how you feel about it, okay? Just- I need you to know that, first and foremost."

"I understand."

Lisa was quiet for a moment, fingers rubbing against each other in some sort of a nervous tic. "There's been...a lot going on, since I got out of the hospital. There was of course the accident, and...the funerals, and preparations and those things. And your dad needs a little bit of care, and I know Jimin had really stepped up to be there for him while I was out of operation, and with Jimin gone...well..." She stopped wringing her hands and just stared at the arm of the sofa, frowning softly in the way Jin recognized as the look of someone reliving a memory or several memories at once, and he wondered which moments she was thinking of. He found himself getting lost in recollections rather often as of late, and it was getting harder to pull himself out of them.

"Jimin and Tae...they've left behind a big hole. And I know that once Tae started focusing on his art, we saw less and less of him, and that's just sort of the normal nature of things and growing up and all that. Jimin was always a bit different, and having him here was something I think we both got used to...it's just been a bit tough, adjusting to their absence, albeit in different ways." Lisa seemed to snap out of a daze and looked up abruptly. "I'm sorry, that wasn't really what I meant to get into, I just...I just meant to say that there's been so much to do and prepare and take care of that I haven't really had any time to think about...well, what's next for me. And it seems silly and selfish to rank that concern up with everything else because it doesn't compare in any way, not really, but..."

"You want to go back to work," Jin surmised, and Lisa gave a single small nod.

"I...do, I think." She stopped to think for a moment. "It's hard to think about going back, not just after what happened to me but..."

"Jaebum," Jin filled in after a moment, and Lisa nodded, her eyes getting a bit glassy as she blinked away tears.

"We'd worked together for so long, he was like a brother to me. I trusted him with my life, and...now he's gone, and it's hard to think about going back to see someone else sitting at his desk and having to get a new partner, let along learning to trust someone like that again...but even once I'd sort of come around to the idea of returning to work, your dad was against it." She started back up with the hand wringing as she quickly went on. "And it's not that I don't understand where he's coming from, I do, and I know that it's because he wants me to stay safe and he's worried about what could happen to me in this line of work, what's already happened to me, and...well, I think it's only natural that after losing two of his own children, he's terrified of losing anyone else close to him, but..."

"Lisa, you can't let his fear stop you from living your life," Jin said, keeping his voice quiet in case Namjoon was still awake and attempting to listen in. It wasn't that he wouldn't say the same things to his dad's face because he would if he had to, but it was easier to just talk with Lisa like this, one-on-one, and leave that conversation with Namjoon for another day. "He's a dad. He's been a dad practically forever, since he had kids when he was way too young and now he's super old."

Lisa raised an eyebrow, and her face told him that if he were ten years younger and still living under her roof, he'd be earning his way toward getting an earful about respectfulness.

"My point being," he continued on with a small smile. "That dads worry, and my dad is the dad-est dad I know. That's just how he is. And worry is healthy, to an extent, right? When someone worries about you, it's because they care about you. Like when I would come home some nights and you or Dad would be watching late night TV, waiting for me to walk in through the door because you guys were worried that I wouldn't make it back safely. And as much as any teenager groans about having a curfew, it...made me feel loved, to know that someone was up, waiting for me."

"That's when his Jeopardy addiction started, you know," Lisa said, her eyes crinkling as a fond look shaped her face. She'd always looked younger than her years and invincible in a larger-than-life sort of way to Jin – Officer Lisa, action figure heroine that ran around busting crime and rescuing kittens from trees – but there were wrinkles around her eyes that hadn't been there just a year ago. Her invincible aura had been shattered for him the moment he'd seen her in a hospital bed, an oxygen mask over her face. And it was sad watching people get old, Jin realized all of a sudden even though it was a truth he'd always known. It was horribly sad watching the slow decay of something amazing and beautiful as its components withered away beneath its very eyes, and the only beauty in the withering was that everyone withered away in their own little way. "Six teenagers, with at least half of you determined to make your dad go gray before you graduated. I don't know how he would have done it without Alex Trebek."

Jin smiled at a memory of his dad looking over with a relieved smile as Jin opened the door before immediately looking back at the TV. "It's the daily double!" he had announced, to himself, to Toaster, to Jin, to nobody.

"A little worry is good," Jin said, reaching over to take one of Lisa's hands in his to prevent her from wringing away at it anymore. "But too much worry is constricting. It stops you from moving forward, from growing. And as much as I love my dad and as much as I'm touched that he worries about me, there have been plenty of times where I've ignored his concerns because I needed to grow." Jin folded both his hands around Lisa's, encapsulating it like a sandwich. "There's a quote I really like – I might not have it exactly right, but it's something along the lines of, 'Ships in the harbor are safe, but that's not what ships were meant for.' It's by–"

"Grace Hopper," Lisa said, and Jin's eyes widened. "What? Don't look so surprised. I know a thing or two."

"Yeah, but that's one random quote in a million–"

"Yeah, and, Grace Hopper was one badass lady." When Lisa said Jin's blank look, her eyes got even bigger, and she wriggled her hand out from Jin's hands in order to wag a finger at him. "Grace Hopper was a Rear Admiral in the US Navy! And she invented the first compiler for computer programming!"

"Why do I get the feeling that you've secretly always been waiting for an opportunity to bring her up in a casual conversation?" Jin asked with a laugh, and Lisa snorted before falling back into her seat, crossing her arms.

"I haven't but maybe the author has," Lisa said with a shrug. "But..." Her expression softened, and she tilted her head into her palm, her elbow anchored on the chair arm. "Thank you, Jin. Really. I see what you're saying."

"Any time, Lisa." He got up from his seat, hesitating for a moment. "And...I know it'll be hard, getting back to work and...learning to trust a new partner. But you're the bravest, strongest woman I know, and if anyone can do it, it's you."

The two hugged, and Lisa let Jin help clean up the kitchen for a bit before she shooed him out. Jin said good night with a smile, hoping that Lisa had less of a burden to carry on her shoulders than before they'd talked, and he got in his car.

He looked over to the passenger seat to see the book he'd picked up earlier that day, 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. It had been a recommendation from Taehyung, one Jin had promised time and again to read, but he'd never made the time for it. Until now.

He clenched his jaw, switched gears to drive, and when he got back to his empty apartment, he flicked on the coffee table lamp, curled up on the couch, and opened to chapter 1.

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published 09/04/22 (mm/dd/yy)

2089 words