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#given mei house sat i don't even think she lived with them anymore i think they just have her room and leave it the way she left it
skellebonez · 3 years
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How #67 with Mei and her parents? don't see much content with them. - Pixel Anon
Considering we haven't seen Mei's parents since episode 3 and we have no idea what their relationship is actually like now, I decided to do some canon-divergence and have them take initiative to be more involved in Mei's life. And since it’s fathers day... eh, why not do a little something with her dad in particular since I never really write her parents? (I got another anon for a fill involving Mei and her dad, but unfortunately Tumblr seems to have ghosted it into the ether, and i fused it into this one.)
My father may look like the scary one, but it’s my mother you need to be afraid of.
"Uh... hi mom?" Mei said in surprise, looking around when she heard the sound of someone clearing their throat from behind her and finding that it was indeed the two of them alone in the garage. "Where's dad?"
"He's a little tied up in business, but he’s home," Mrs. Long said with a sigh, moving to stand behind her daughter and look down at her project with a look of confusion and mild dismay. "What... are you working on, dear?"
Mei looked down at her current state, coated in engine oil and grease with scattered parts of one of the many many cars laying around her. Like a gutted fish but much shiner and louder.
“Oh, uh...” Mei started with an awkward chuckle. “After, you know, the whole break in and everything I’ve been fixing up some of the cars that were still mostly in one piece and, uh...” she gestured to the one in front of her, jazz hands waving slightly enthusiastically. “Ta da?”
“... Oh!” Mrs. Long said when she registered what Mei meant, a small smile finally forming on her face. “You didn’t need to do that on your own, Mei, but...” She moved forward, inspecting the car with a careful gaze. “This is quite impressive! You’d never know it was damaged at all. I thought...” She frowned again, looking back to her daughter. “Well, I thought you were only interested in motorcycles so I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Oh no!” Mei laughed, wiping her hands on her work overalls. “Motorcycles are my specialty, but I know enough about most vehicles to give them some good care!” There was an odd expression on her mother’s face that fell over her at these words, something far off and somewhat sad. “Mom? You ok?”
“Yes,” her mom replied, just a bit too fast before she smiled again. “Actually, I think your father was almost finished when I came in to check in on you. He wanted to talk to you himself, why don’t you see if he’s done? He should be in the tea room.”
“... sure...” Mei said slowly, bending down to start picking up parts before her mom placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry, dear, just leave those there in case you want to come back later. Just... change into clean clothes and wash your hands for now.”
Now... that was odd. Mei’s parents had always been clear on keeping the house as tidy as possible once you needed to leave a room (barring her own bedroom). But ever since that one Bull Clone (General Ironclad she thought she heard Red Son call him once) broke into her house for the Dragon Blade her parents had been acting different. Not extremely different, but noticeably so.
But instead of bringing this up Mei nodded to her mother and headed to wash up.
~
“Dad?” Mei called out, cleaned up from her car repairs and in clean clothes once again. “Mom said you wanted to talk to me?”
He was right where her mother had said he would be, in the tea room. Strewn about in front of him were papers upon papers, some seeming to be insurance forms for the multitude of broken objects strewn about the house and others repair bills. She was certain some of them, all on one side of the table, were research papers of some kind. And sitting at a seat in the middle of the long table was her father, small space cleared before him as he drank a fresh hot cup of tea. There was another, equally fresh cup across from him.
“Ah, Mei!” Her father said brightly, but there was an odd tenseness to his tone. “Yes, come in, sit down! There are a few things that we need your input on.”
Well that was vague as hell. But Mei did as requested, taking the seat across from him and picking up the tea before her. “I wouldn’t think this is something you’d be doing here in the... tea room.”
“Yes, well,” her father shrugged, glowering down at the paperwork with a sigh. “Sometimes you put aside convention to be comfortable. And with my office out of commission this is a much more relaxing place to work on papers than the dining room. If I don’t replace those chairs as soon as possible remind me how uncomfortable they are!” He shuddered dramatically, the action making Mei relax just a tad bit. The chairs had always been uncomfortable, she and her mother had told him as much before, but the three of them had never sat in them long enough for them to become bothersome. “But that’s something to worry about later! First, the main reason I wanted to talk to you...”
He put down his cup, reaching over to grab some paperwork on the right side of the table and slide it to her.
“As you know most of our cars in our collection were not salvageable after the break in.” Mei tensed a bit at that, frowning down at the paperwork in front of her. And her eyes widened. “And, well, we never really had reason to drive them anyway. Refilling the garage with new cars just seems silly at this point, so your mother and I were talking about possibly restructuring it and making the empty 3/4 of the garage into a sort of...” He paused for a moment, humming before snapping his fingers. “A workshop, I suppose is the correct term! For someone who liked to collect a lot of cars at one point I don’t know much about them, that was always more your mother’s interest even if she always insisted we only needed two. But you’re always working on your motorcycle and I thought giving you that space would be a much more reasonable use for it!”
Mei set her teacup down, picking up the papers as he talked and looking over them with wide eyes.
They were blueprints. For a garage workshop. For her motorcycle. For her.
“I-I!” She sputtered, gesturing to the papers with a shake of her head. “You... but this is-! I don’t-!”
“Mei,” her father said firmly, but gently, holding up one of his hands. “I know that we paid for you to live on your own in your own pent house and that you have a workshop outside as well, but this house is still your home as well! You have a room here, after all. But you don’t have to agree to having a workshop here if you don’t want one, they’re just blueprints at this point, and we can always find other uses for the empty space in the future.”
“... ok, what happened?” Mei asked, deadpan and looking at her father with suspicion. “I mean, I love the idea! I’d love to have a place for my vehicle work here! But ever since the break in you and mom have been acting really weird, dad!”
Mr. Long tensed, looking away from his daughter for a moment before bowing his head to look down into his tea.
“We... had a conversation with Mr. Tang,” Mr. Long said after a moment of silence, making Mei look at him with surprise. “... actually, no, it was more like we were given a lecture by Mr. Tang.” He chuckled, ruffling his hair and looking back up to Mei. “We may have many years on him, but he made us feel like teenagers being yelled at by the principal again. Your mother and I... we realized after your reaction of surprise that we haven’t been the most open and communicative parents. We’ve treated our house like more of a museum than as a home ever since you were a child, and when you moved out and we helped you get everything you had no access to while growing up here... we didn’t realize that it would feel even more so like we were trying to uphold that image.”
“Mr. Tang talked to you about that?” Mei winced, remembering the multiple times she would rant at her family friend who had been there for her since she was just a little girl. Multiple... multiple times. He’d been sworn to secrecy, naturally, but it seemed that this was the last straw for him.
“Yes,” her father confirmed with a nod, twisting his fingers. “We never meant for you to feel unwelcome in your own home, but with how busy we always were and how proud we were of our family history we lost sight of the fact we were. Even if you only stay here when we’re gone to watch the house we want you to feel comfortable, Mei. I can understand if you’re still apprehensive of this, however.”
Whatever Tang has said to the Long family heads must have been something to behold. And Mei couldn’t help but grab the paperwork and move to the side of the table her father sat at, sitting beside him instead of across from him.
“Well for starters, lets make this less ‘business meeting’ and more ‘dad talking to kid’, ok?” She said lightly, laying the papers in front of both of them. “And... car upkeep is more mom’s thing? Since when?” Mei raised a brow with a smirk,
Her father looked at her with surprise before chuckling, moving to half face her and the table with a far more comfortable smile. “She hasn’t really had the time to work on them since well before you were born, but...” he leaned in closer, whispering conspiratorially. “She used to be a street racer too!”
“WHAT!?” Mei exclaimed, covering her mouth when her father raised a finger to his lips in a shushing motion. “Mom was a street racer?”
“One of the best, right around when she was your age too!” Mr. Long laughed, a far off look in his eyes. “You and her have a lot more in common than one would think at first glance. You’re smart, good with vehicles, not to mention our dragon powers are from her side of the family- I only earned my own through being close to her over a long period. Why, sometimes I think the only things you got from me were your skills in video games and amazing sense of hair style!”
“Dad!” Mei laughed, gently shoving her dad’s shoulder tentatively. When he only laughed more at that she softened, relaxing against the table. “Guess I have a lot to learn about you both, huh?
“As long as you want to,” her father offered, spreading the blueprints between the two of them.
"I do,” she agreed, looking over the papers again. They could definitely use some... fine tuning. But they were a good start. “But I guess I was right about one thing!”
“What’s that?”
“Every time someone saw you guys they thought you were the one to be worried about,” she admitted with another chuckle, shaking her head. “I’d always correct them saying ‘my father may look like the scary one, but it’s my mother you need to be afraid of’ and now... well, if mom used to race the way I do on my bike I was way more right than I thought I was.”
“Oh, Mei, your mother was far more reckless than you ever were. You should have seen some of the catastrophes she used to cause.”
“... are they on the internet?”
Her father frowned for a moment before watching the door... and a conspiratorial smirk overtook his face.
“Want to find out together?”
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