Title: Parenting and Tea
Fandom: Legend of Galactic Heroes
Rating: G
Length: ~1200
Content notes: discussions of complicated childhood and being orphaned
Author notes: Assumes Julian came to Yang when he was 10 years old
Summary: Julian is settling in and Yang figures he needs to make some things clear

When Yang returned the house was cleaner than it had ever been and there was blue plastic cloche on the table with knife and fork beside it. He didn't need to look below it to know that Julian had made dinner, because there was the lingering smell of cooking in the air.

It was late though and the boy had gone to bed. Yang had been held up at HQ by meetings and strategy discussions and the usual political maneuvering that followed — some of it over chess, which he still put no effort into.

In the days before Julian's arrival, he would likely just have ordered some late night snack or put together a haphazard sandwich, if there was bread in the house. Admittedly, he often forgot to do the regular shopping or forgot he had done said shopping and found stale or moldy bread and then just went to bed without food after all. So much of his life was swallowed by work he would rather not be doing or making up for lost time by reading any history book he could get his hands on.

Life had surely changed in just a few days, Yang thought.

Caserne kept joking that he had found a good guardian for Yang instead of the other way around, but Yang was aware that this was a responsibility he couldn't shake. He had no intention to either.

Just think how it could have been, if someone stepped up to take responsibility for you, when you needed it, he reminded himself.

With food on the table, he didn't have the hard to just leave it untouched and head for bed. Instead he sat down like a proper human being and lifted the glouche to fined a simple meal, of processed Heinessen beef steak and vegetables.

It was better than anything that he would have made for himself.

***

The next morning he had the leisure of a late start into the day. He wasn't expected at headquarters before 2pm HST and he was going to enjoy every second of that late start. He slept in, but woke when he heard shuffling in the kitchen.

Of course, Julian had school.

He decided to be the adult he was supposed to be for once and got out of bed, to find the boy in the kitchen preparing his own breakfast and school lunch.

"You're very efficient," Yang noted, while he watched Julian preparing two things at once, varying ingredients.

The boy — by no means shy — looked pleased at the tiny compliment.

"Thank you for keeping dinner for me. You realize you don't have to do that, right?"

"Was it not… good?" Julian asked, sounding a little unsure.

That was a sign in the boy, Yang hadn't seen much of yet. He had only started to put the pieces of the puzzle together, from the profile he'd received upon adoption and from the bits and pieces Caserne and then Julian divulged. Julian had been 8 when his father had died and spent two years with a grandmother who had not been fond of him — for reasons that Yang was still trying to figure out.

"It was absolutely delicious," he assured.

Julian frowned. He was only ten, a few days shy of eleven, and he too was still trying to figure out this new strange guardian he was now living with.

"But?" he asked, biting his lip.

"Whatever Caserne put in your head, you're not here to take care of me. I am your guardian now." That still sounded so strange to him, but he was determined to get the hand of it. "It's my job to help you along. You don't have to make yourself useful, to stay with me."

Julian looked at him, wide blue eyes. "I probably cook better than you though, Captain."

"Yang," he corrected. "You don't need to call me by rank, Julian."

"It feels wrong not to."

Yang had already figured out, that Julian had looked up to his father, who had been a military man through and through — and he was just a little in awe of the fact that Yang at his young age, was already a known "hero" to the alliance. Sighing a little, Yang said: "Look, I think you — like me maybe, even though I am much more of a mess than you — had to grow up too fast. You don't have to think you need to take care of me, because I am too preoccupied to keep up. Alright?"

"I can still cook?"

"If you like cooking. After all you do cook like a master chef in the making. Did you cook for your grandmother?"

Julian shook his head. "Just for myself."

Another small piece of the puzzle.

"Recipes are one of the only things of my mothers that wasn't…" Julian struggled with the word, but Yang knew in essence what happened. There were no photographs of either of his parents. Apparently the grandmother had hidden them away or destroyed them.

"You can cook whatever you want, okay? You can also eat with the Caselnes whenever you want. They offered and I don't want you to have to do chores when it might get in the way, of school."

"Okay, Captain," he said and nodded, then squinted at the clock. "Don't you have to go, too?"

"Not today," he said, and got up to brew some tea. It was earlier than he liked, but if he was up, he could at least enjoy well made tea and the settle down with Europe’s Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War. It was an old copy of an even older book that an antiquarian had tracked down for him, as he was reading up on a part of Earth history that he had delved into recently.

Julian watched him go through the steps of making tea.

"You really don't drink any coffee?"

Yang huffed. "No, I don't."

His indignation made Julian grin, while he finished breakfast and packed lunch, leaving the house in time to get to school.

***

"So, how is your new caretaker settling in?" Caselnes asked Yang when they saw each other that afternoon.

"I know you're joking…," Yang started.

"Half-joking."

"…but don't tell Julian he has to shoulder responsibility a ten year old shouldn't bear, okay."

"Trouble?" Caselnes, to his credit, switched gears to concerned father-figure in an instant.

"No trouble whatsoever. None."

"Ah," Caselnes acknowledged. "He's a good kid."

"Yeah, he is. But, he's 10 and he's lost both parents and there is a constant war going on. Parentification isn't a fun joke if that is what has been going on for a while."

"Ah," Caselnes acknowledged again. "Let's make sure he feels he can get into trouble then."

Yang chuckled. "Let's make sure, I don't overcompensate by causing even more trouble, if he doesn't."

They laughed together.

***

Three days later, Julian woke Yang in time to get to work, serving him toast and tea.

The tea was exactly as Yang had prepared it — perfectly brewed and exactly the right temperature.

Yang nearly huffed, but he couldn't get himself to say: "You know you shouldn't, Julian." Not after he had taken a sip.

"It's amazing," he praised. "Perfect."

And it was nice to see the relaxed smile of his ward who was putting his own plate away, leaving Yang to his book and tea, before slinking over to the solovision set.

"Thank you for the tea, Julian," Yang said softly. "You don't have to, but I really appreciate it."

And perhaps that was the balance the needed to figure out for this to work.