Work Text:
“It’ll be fun, he said. A bonding experience, he said. A chance to discover your inner maternal instincts, he said.”
On a late Saturday morning, Itou Kuramoto was crouching with his back against a kitchen counter, looking like a food hurricane had thrown up all over him. For all intents and purposes, he was feeling utterly defeated and it showed in the hunched slope of his shoulders and his face buried in his hands. This was not how Itou had pictured his romantic, lazy weekend date with Renji. In his head, there had been a lot less toddler and soft food, and a lot more hand-holding, crepes in Harajuku, and maybe a dozen kisses dappled with soft sunlight underneath the trees in a park somewhere…
Somewhere in the house, a pile of heavy somethings toppled over and hit the floor with varying degrees of noise and clatter. Itou groaned just as he heard a tiny voice yell, “Sowee!” At least he didn’t hear anything shatter. He knew that he was supposed to be stronger than a one-point-five year old. In theory. But Touka Kirishima was far from being just a waddling infant in diapers. She was armed with teeth, a water gun, and a tendency to spit food and laugh at Itou for being a pathetic human being in general.
“I’ll be back in ten minutes, he said,” Itou growled into the heels of his palms. “I told her to behave, so it’ll be fine, he said.” Touka was a wily kid, no doubt about it. At least Ayato was being a model baby and keeping his mouth shut. Though he was only a month old, and quite incapable of saying or doing much except poop and cry—both of which he was, thankfully, not doing at the moment. Probably, Itou was supposed to be counting his blessings, instead of his curses.
Some other pile of stuff hit the floor—books, from the sound of fluttering pages and heavy hardcovers landing one on top of the other—and Itou decided it was time to come out from hiding and be the man he was always pretending he was, constantly: an intimidating one. He took a metal cookie tray from one of the drawers to act as his shield against the water gun and other possible flying toys and objects.
When he felt properly armed, he walked out of the kitchen and straight into Renji’s chest. Typically enough, he bounced off like a ball thrown at the nearest wall, hissing a swear word from between his teeth as he teetered backward. “Itou, what are you doing?” Renji asked, obviously suppressing a smile as he hefted groceries onto the counter. He straightened, rolling his shoulders back, and looked around at the decimated kitchen and living room. “Looks like you both had fun.”
There had been a thorn of agitation snarled in Itou’s stomach, but the moment Renji smiled at him, it had melted away into the softest kind of jelly that didn’t exist outside the part of his heart that was fully devoted to his barrel-chested boyfriend. He occasionally hated that he was so weak to this man—the idea of being weak to anyone, was an idea that met distaste in his mind—but mostly, he was impressed that he wasn’t already completely swallowed up by these feelings of soft affection and prickly desire. There was a knife’s edge between falling and staying sane enough to speak without feeling his heart in his throat, beating like it had never done that before. He liked to think that he was still a bit sane.
“If by fun, you mean a death match, then yes, we absolutely had the time of our lives.” Itou lowered the cookie tray with a sigh. “She’s building a fort in her room and hasn’t had her breakfast. Which you can see is—”
“Is all over you,” Renji said, flicking a piece of egg from Itou’s hair and making him shiver at the briefest contact of finger against cheek. “Well, it’s nothing she hasn’t tried before. I think.”
“This is normal? She’s one year old. Are one-year olds supposed to have teeth?”
“Yeah, they are.” He rubbed the back of his neck, his thoughts wandering, probably having another flashback, probably just spacing out like he always did whenever he was around small animals. It was the kind of distracted look, the kind of Renji that was fuzzy around the edges, that Itou wanted to reach over and touch, despite being afraid that he was trying to pull a cloud to Earth—trying to attempt the impossible. Itou’s heart felt like porcelain and he barely caught Renji’s words. “… two or three-years old, thereabouts. At least from what I’ve read.”
Itou opened his mouth to reply that he hadn’t been paying much attention, but countless more things were falling over and rolling on the floor where neither of them could see. Renji pursed his lips, frowning.
“Touka!” he called. “I’m home and you better not be building a fort again!”
There was a delighted peal of laughter and the sound of small feet running across hardwood.
“She doesn’t sound very scared,” Itou commented.
“She’s a warrior,” Renji agreed. “It’s pretty amazing.” He glanced at Itou and breathed a laugh. “And hard to handle.” Itou elbowed him, cheeks burning.
“I didn’t ask to be a babysitter,” he said sourly. “It’s not exactly on my resumé.”
“I know, I know,” Renji said, leaning in and pressing his lips against Itou’s forehead. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t part of the plan today, but… I promise, next time—”
Itou angled his chin upward and was once again surprised by how easy it was to rope Renji into a kiss. “’S nothing to be sorry about,” he said softly. There was a sense of wonder to be had from the sensation of their breaths mingling—the same way anyone might feel from witnessing their first shooting star streak across the night sky. “Shall we go get your warrior niece?”
More books fell from a shelf somewhere. Renji was lost in Itou’s smile, looking for the shooting star that had passed him by and, possibly, hopefully, realizing that the star itself was Itou, the same way Itou had seen his star in Renji. “Yeah. Let’s go get her.”