Work Text:
“Alika!” Steve calls, hurrying down the dairy aisle. “Come on, we’re late.” An awkward glance at his watch tells him just how messed up his morning is, and he stomps down on a flare of irritation. “Alika!”
Well, he’s working on the irritation, that’s the main thing.
Alika, as it turns out, is busy emptying out a freezer with determination, boxes of ice-cream already going soggy on the floor.
“Alika, no! Put those back, right now!” Steve doesn’t know whether to reach for his son, the ice-cream, or just scrub his hands over his face in defeat. It’s a moot point anyway, because he’s got his arms full of groceries, coffee and the kiddy-toothpaste that they’ve run out of, which is apparently reason enough to send Alika into a tantrum and make them late for preschool.
And work.
Steve isn’t really looking forward to another morning of defensive-grumping his way through a late-start with the Governor, torn between feeling bad and feeling embarrassed. Being flustered is not a good look, and he doesn’t like it; he especially doesn’t like the way people chuckle at him when he turns up to work with custard down the front of his shirt. Blood? No problem, part of the job. Gooey snacks? It just looks like his life is spiraling out of control.
He should be better than this.
Frustration wells, because Alika is showing zero interest in listening to him, happily emptying the freezer of its contents. He’s moved onto the frozen peas, arranging them with the kind of dedication to pattern that would normally make Steve happy.
“Alika, I am not kidding,” he growls, acutely aware that an elderly couple further down the aisle is watching like hawks. “Put them back in the freezer. Now. You’re late for preschool, Danno and I have work.”
A stormy look passes over Alika’s normally beautiful face, so different to the happy-as-a-clam smile he’d woken up with, tucked snug between his fathers. Just when Steve thinks that he’s come to grips with how mercurial kids can be, Alika sets out to prove that he owns the lion’s share of mood swings.
“I don’t want to go!” Alika shouts, digging his tiny fingernails into a bag of peas so tightly that it tears, icy green balls scattering across the ground with a whoosh.
Steve squeezes his eyes shut. Just for a second, because he wouldn’t put it past Alika to take the opportunity and make a mad-dash for it.
“You have to go,” he growls, shifting the coffee in his arms. Maybe if he – wait – no - maybe if he wedges it under his armpit – no that doesn’t work – god dammit he needs three extra arms. And eyes in the back of his head. He tries to balance the coffee in the crook of his elbow, but it slips – he’d catch it, but he’s got Danny’s malasadas in the other hand, and he just can’t make it all work.
The glass hits the ground, cracks into three large chunks, and beans scatter out to join their vegetable-brethren.
Steve is done.
“Right,” he announces, as though he’s seen the light. “Right.” He deposits the rest of his groceries into the arms of a lurking staff-member, scoops Alika – who is now screaming bloody murder – under his arm like a football, and makes for the exit. Two twenties are dropped by the resgister, with a curt, “Sorry, there’s ice-cream everywhere, I have to go,” and then he’s out the door.
Alika is screaming and sobbing, wriggling violently as though he wants to get as far away as possible, and Steve didn’t even know that he could feel like this. So angry, angry at his son, angry at himself, because what kind of a failure is he, how can he be so fucking bad at being a father.
Alika’s sobs have died down to achey whimpering by the time they reach preschool. He’s as red as a tomato, little face covered in slobber and snot and tears. It hurts to watch, hurts to hear, and Steve wants to crawl into the backseat and offer sorries and snuggles until his son loves him again. But that’s just not the way things work.
Unbuckling from the car-seat is even harder than usual – those clasps are straight from the devil, Steve is sure of it, and Alika keeps whining about being pinched, even though they both know that he’s not.
There’s a brief second where it looks like he’ll walk up the path to preschool on his own steam, but he makes it about four steps before sitting down in a huff.
Up, up, up over Steve’s shoulder he goes, and then they’re off.
“I hate you,” Alika sobs quietly, angrily fisting Steve’s shirt, paying no attention to the way his father flinches, the way he sucks in a breath like it hurts. As soon as they reach Alika’s classroom, he kicks his way down, running across the room to seek the comfort of kindly Mrs. Baxter, who is, apparently, the coolest ever.
Fuck it all. Steve’s so late for his meeting with the Governor that it doesn’t even matter anymore. He sits in the truck for twenty minutes, staring at nothing.
-
Danny picks Alika up from preschool. Steve just can’t do it, no matter how many times Danny tells him that Alika didn’t mean it. Steve knows that. Just like he knows that it’s probably not the last time their son will hurt him, hate him. Just like he knows that today was an extreme, that they’re raising a good kid, a kind kid. Tantrums are a part of life, no matter how good a parent you are.
And he is a good parent. He is. He’s got Danny’s seal of approval, he can make dinosaur-shaped pancakes, and the Kelly-Kalakaua matriarchs aren’t so scared of him baby-sitting their grand-kids anymore. He’s a good parent.
Case in point, he hears the shuffle of kidlet-feet across the kitchen floor, knows the very second that his son walks into the room, as though a magnetic bond spins and sways between them.
Turning the stove down low, Steve shifts to take in the sight of his son.
Alika looks the epitome of dejected, bottom lip trembling, hair flopped low over his face as he stares hard at the ground. He spares a quick glance at his Danno, who is propped against the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed and eyebrows raised expectantly.
“Go on, then,” Danny says, jutting his chin forward.
Steve doesn’t really want this. He doesn’t want Alika forced into an apology that he doesn’t feel, even though he knows he’s perhaps expecting too much of his tiny son.
“Danny,” he says, but is cut off by, “Sshh, Steve, give him a chance.”
Sure enough, Alika begins, soft and unsure. “I…” he pauses, frowns, as though he has too many thoughts swirling around in his head. His face scrunches up, distraught. “I don’t hate you,” he sobs out, all but falling forward in grief.
Steve bundles him up, quick-smart, burying his face into the soft cotton of Alika’s Widget the World-Watcher t-shirt. He doesn’t even know where Danny finds these things. “I know you don’t, baby. I know.” He soothes and strokes, hushing Alika’s cries with a gentle voice.
There’s so much more to say; Alika’s behaviour still needs to be discussed, possible repercussions doled out – even though Steve is kind of hoping that Danny has already covered that base. What are partners for, if not to shove the awkward parenting talks onto?
With dinner done, Alika droops his way into the bath, heavy-lidded and pliant as he’s scrubbed and dried and poured into his jammies. By the time Steve crashes into bed, ignoring Danny’s, “Hey hey hey!” as he indignantly rescues paperwork, he can’t even be bothered to get out of his cargos.
“You told me it would be like this,” he mumbles into his pillow, trying not to purr like a cat when Danny swoops in for a kiss. “You said that Hell Week was nothing, that I could kiss my benevolent dictatorship goodbye, because Alika was running the show, now.”
Danny hums happily, bopping his head in that smug one-two-three manner that Steve, against his better judgement, has grown to love.
“I can’t even remember what it’s like to be on time for something.” Steve scrubs his hands over his face, flashing back to coffee and peas all over the floor. Peeking out between a gap in his fingers, he asks the big question. “What did you say to him?”
Danny stretches luxuriously, all that muscle shifting and bunching, and it’s a testament to how tired Steve is that only a small curl of warmth takes hold. “I didn’t say anything. You should’ve seen him when I picked him up, he was bereft that he’d hurt you.”
It must be a funny by-product of parenthood, that Steve can’t cope with his son feeling that way, even about him.
“I mean,” Danny continues, “when Gracie was little, she told us she hated us more than a few times. Rach and I, we tried to teach her that she couldn’t hurt people like that, but we could never hold it against her, because we knew she didn’t mean it. She’d always forget what she’d said. She’d see us ten minutes later and be smiling. But Alika…”
Steve is almost afraid to hear the end of Danny’s sentence.
“…I don’t know, Alika carried this with him, throughout the day. I, ah, I decided to let the grocery store go. Just this once. I think he was beating himself up enough already.”
This, Steve knows, is code for: I’m too big a softie, and can’t bring myself to punish him when he’s already down in the dumps. Steve can relate.
He’s just drifting off, cargos halfway down his thighs because he and Danny started something and then got too tired to finish it – his life is a mess these days – when the lightbulb goes off.
Shit. He forgot to buy the toothpaste. He’s up and out of the bed in an instant, buttoning things back up and hunting for his car keys.
“Where’re you going?” Danny slurs, cheek smushed against a firearms requisition form.
“Alika’s toothpaste,” Steve says, as though that explains it all. To Danny, it does.
“Babe, no, you can’t” – Danny pries the paper off his cheek, distastefully eyeing the drool that’s smudged his signature – “you can’t indulge this, he needs to learn. Life is a box of toothpastes, or something.”
Aha! Steve thinks, because there are his keys, right where he least expected. “Save your Forrest Gump wisdom for when you’re properly awake, babe.” He leans over, and one kiss becomes two, two kisses becomes three, before he pulls away. “I’m not taking any chances, I’m going to get this toothpaste or die trying.”
Danny waves a hand, already slipping back to sleep. “Wear your vest.”