Chapter Text
You look just like your father
You both have the same eyes
( we are both exhausted )
Frowning, Chuuya picks up a folded towel and shakes it out. “Stand up, Aya. Time to get out.”
Aya is unusually quiet tonight. Chuuya doesn’t hear a grumble or a peep from her as he easily lifts her from the claw-footed bathtub and dries her soft skin with a towel, his gaze admiring the dimpled knees and rounded tummy of a healthy toddler. She’s perfect in every way, he thinks, affectionately, making Aya’s wet hair stick up in spikes with a ruffle of his hands.
( He remembers the first time he’d laid eyes on his daughter. The nurse had washed and wrapped her up like a miniature mummy, and placed Aya in his arms while the doctor stitched him up, a gentle and incessant tugging at his skin that Chuuya ignored as he tried to soothe his daughter’s wails.
He’d never had much to do with babies before, and never had Chuuya held a newborn. Aya’s face was bright pink and crumpled-looking, her eyes brownish-green and perfectly round. Hair covered her head like the pale feathers of a wet chick. The weight of her felt about the same as a large sack of sugar, but she was fragile and floppy. Chuuya tried to make Aya comfortable, shifting her until her face was pillowed on his shoulder. The round ball of her head fit perfectly against his neck. Aya turned her face into his neck. Chuuya felt her back heave with a kitten-sigh, and she went still.
One look, one cuddle, and he’d fallen in love. Aya’s fate was sealed. There was no way he was going to hand her over to her absent father. Chuuya didn't want to let her go. Aya’s his baby, part of his body, knotted to his soul. )
It’s their game to make a tent out of the towel after Aya’s dry. Chuuya pulls it over their heads and drops a kiss onto Aya’s nose, but even the sweet gesture isn’t enough to rouse a smile from Aya, who chews thoughtfully on her bottom lip, something that Dazai always does when he’s deep in thought.
She might be the spitting image of him, but Dazai’s habits – subconscious or otherwise – are shining through.
“Mommy?” Aya asks, her eyes dark and wide in her round little face, now scrubbed clean of dirt and grime.
Chuuya pauses in his ministrations. Something in Aya’s voice rubs him the wrong way. “What is it, sunshine?”
“Why don’t I have a daddy?” The despondency in her voice sets her words aflame. A tear trickles down Aya’s cheek. Chuuya’s throat convulses in guilt and anger. “Is it my fault? Did I do something bad?”
“No, sunshine. It’s not your fault. Never.” Chuuya says fiercely, and takes his daughter in his arms. Aya buries her face in his neck and sobs loudly. Chuuya strokes his hands down her back, patting and whispering that it’s okay.
Not for the first time, he finds himself hating Dazai, for leaving them both behind. And for letting him walk away, without putting up a fight.
( Chuuya’s job as Dazai’s right-hand man keeps him busy for the good part of the day, which means that he’ll have to send Aya to preschool – as much as he wishes that he could keep Aya by his side. He’d told Dazai, flatly and firmly, that he would be leaving work at five sharp every day, and that he wouldn’t be coming in on weekends. Much to Chuuya’s relief, Dazai hadn’t pressed the issue, but had easily accepted Chuuya’s new working hours.
Chuuya’s got everything all planned out.
But he doesn’t factor in his daughter’s tears.
The first day of school, Chuuya walks his daughter to her classroom and fights to hold back his own tears as Aya – so brave and rebellious and feisty – sobs and clutches at him and begs him not to leave her. )
“I don’t wanna go. Please, please, let me stay with you.” Over and over again, Aya blubbers out the same thing, hoping to wear her mother down.
Hands pat at her, reassurances breathed into her crown of curls, but even that is not enough to soothe the hurt she feels from being abandoned. “Aya, sunshine, it’s just for a little while. Mommy will come back. Promise. Now, you’ll stay here, and make new friends –”
“I don’t wanna make friends!”
“Yes, you do. And you’ll play and learn new things. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
Aya howls, a long wail of misery. “No!” She buries her sopping wet face in Chuuya’s chest. Her voice is muffled in his shirt. “I wanna go home with you. Please?”
Chuuya cups the back of her small head, holding his daughter securely against his damp shirt, now stained in tears and mucus. He could care less. “I’m not going home, sunshine. I’m going to work. Mommy has to work, and you’ll stay in school.”
“No!”
Chuuya eases her head back, and swipes at the tears running down Aya’s face with gloved fingers, wishing that there’s a way to stop her from crying ever again. “Aya. Look –” It’s a spur of the moment decision, but Chuuya sweeps off his hat and places it gingerly atop Aya’s head. “See? This is a present that you can carry around with you all day. And if you start to miss me, that will remind you that I love you and that I’m coming soon to pick you up. Okay?”
Aya pulls the brim of his hat down, to hide her face. Her bottom lip still trembles, but she’s remarkably dry-eyed and calm, aside from the occasional quiet sniffle. “Okay.”
“I love you, sunshine.” Chuuya presses a kiss to her cheek. He stands and takes her hand. “I love you so much. I’ll be back before you know it. Promise.”
Aya grows up without a father.
There’s a dark emptiness gnawing at the hollows of her ribs when she thinks about him, his absence, and it’s a feeling she wishes she could forget completely.
But she has her mother, her friends and her grandma, and that’s enough.
Whenever Chuuya picks her up from day care or grandma’s, walking towards Aya with that bright grin and his arms outstretched, Aya thinks that life can’t possibly get any sweeter. According to her teacher, her vocabulary is “increasing in leaps and bounds”; she and Chuuya talk together all the time. In the car, at restaurants, and even when they’re lying together in bed, snuggled together under the covers. Chuuya has a huge sleigh bed in his room, and it’s like swimming in the middle of a lake of silk whenever it’s time for bed. Aya still sleeps together with him every night, their legs tangled together as she chatters on about her day. She’ll tell Chuuya about her day-care friends, and complain about the ones whose artwork was “just scribble-scrabble,” and report on who’d gotten to be the mother when they played house.
“Your legs are scratchy,” Aya complains one night, kicking and squirming as she tries to get comfortable. “I like ‘em smooth.”
( That strikes Chuuya as funny. He’s exhausted, he has to read these papers by the next morning, he’s worried about his meeting with Dazai, it’s more than past time to make the weekly grocery shopping trip, and now he has to deal with a toddler criticizing his grooming habits. )
“Sunshine. One of the benefits of not having a boyfriend is that I can go a few days without shaving my legs.”
Aya crinkles her nose. “What does that mean?”
“It means deal with it.”
“Okay.” Aya snuggles deeper into her pillow. “Mommy?”
“What?”
“When are you gonna get a boyfriend?”
“I don't know, sunshine. It might be a while.”
( Chuuya tries to picture himself with someone else – someone other than Dazai – on his arm. He can’t see it. He’s only ever been with Dazai, and the thought of finding someone else feels like a punch to the gut. Maybe some small part of him still hopes that Dazai will come back to him. To them. He should know better. But he always hopes. Besides – his life revolves around his daughter now. He doesn’t have time for dating. Aya, Aya, Aya, his sunshine, his universe, his reason for breathing. )
“Maybe if you shave your legs, you’ll get one.” Aya nods solemnly, as if she’s just discovered all the secrets to the universe.
The bed shakes with the force of Chuuya’s laughter. “Good point. Go to sleep, sunshine.”
Aya and Chuuya visit the beach often. It’s about a five-minute walk away from their apartment, and Aya loves it – loves how the sky seems much bluer down there, loves the noise of the boats, loves the seagulls wheeling overhead. She always manages to find an interesting trinket buried beneath the sand – shells, an old coin, a bit of coral. Some of them go into her treasure box at home, some she presents to Chuuya with a big smile, and he always accepts her gifts with a smile of his own, promising to keep them safe, and tucking them safely into his pocket.
It’s too cold to swim or paddle now, but she still walks down with Chuuya every weekend, her small mittened hand clutched tightly in his. It’s not so cold once they’re huddled next to each other on the picnic mat, and Chuuya unzips his leather jacket a little. Aya rolls over on one elbow and reaches out, tugging at the choker around his neck.
“Did Daddy give you this?” This is an old routine. Aya’s curious. She’s asking Chuuya questions – lots of questions – about Dazai. He can try to evade, but most times Aya isn’t so easily distracted.
Like mother, like daughter.
Chuuya decides to give her this. Something small so that she’ll stop prying for more. “He did.”
Aya lights up. It’s so easy to make her happy, Chuuya thinks, carding his fingers through her hair.
“How come Daddy gave it to you?”
Because he wanted me to wear a collar. I punched him hard enough to expel all sense of feeling in my knuckles. He compromised by getting me the choker. He liked tugging on it – tugging me – into dark corners, and kissing me hard enough to bruise, his hands roaming everywhere that they shouldn’t have. He wanted to see me straddling him in nothing but that choker, as he licked his lips and smiled, his eyes dark and hungry, fingers digging into my hips hard enough to bruise.
As if he can tell his daughter that!
“ . . . He thought it looked nice on me.” Chuuya’s cheeks feel far too hot for his liking. “So he bought it. It was a present.”
Aya keeps on tugging. “It’s pretty.”
“He had good taste.” Except for his ridiculous suicidal tendencies.
“Was he nice?” This is also becoming part of the routine.
“ . . . ” He can’t tell her that her father is the boss of the Port Mafia. He can’t tell Aya that her mother kills for a living. He just can’t. But Chuuya remembers the tender moments, too. The motion of bandaged hands through his hair whenever Dazai brushed it, the way Dazai always hummed in the mornings when they were making breakfast together. How Dazai would always pull him into impromptu dances, twirling around the living room, the dining room, how it had felt like flying each and every time. He doesn’t tell Aya that, either. “. . . Yeah. He was.”
( His chest hurts. His eyes sting, but it’s not the cold air. )
Aya thinks she dreams about her father. She can’t remember his face – what he sounded like, what they did, if he loved her at all – but she wakes up with cheeks that are wet and a longing to see her father so badly that it scorches out everything else in existence. The first thing she realizes is that she’s not alone, and she rolls over to bury her face in Chuuya’s stomach. His cologne smells different. And strangest of all, Chuuya tenses up – but a second later, he relaxes.
“Mommy?” Aya snuggles closer, seeking comfort, seeking love in the arms of the person who loves her the most. She doesn’t have a father, but she does have a mother. “I had a bad dream.”
Cool arms hesitantly circle her. “ . . . Do you want to talk about it?”
Chuuya’s voice sounds off, for some reason. But Aya’s brain is fuzzy, a rolling mass of white, and she doesn’t dwell on it.
Aya shakes her head. “In the morning. Sleepy now.”
Aya feels a silent laugh shake through Chuuya.
“Will you stay with me?” Aya asks, not really awake at all. “Until I fall asleep?”
Chuuya says something else, something low, but she’s already asleep.
Chuuya presses his lips into a thin line. He tries to keep his eyes on the road, instead of on his daughter in the passenger seat next to him. Aya’s eyes are downcast, her knuckles scraped raw and bloody. Chuuya’s wrapped them up in a handkerchief, but red poppies still stain the white fabric.
Chuuya is rattled, out of breath from his mad rush down to the school, and thoroughly exasperated. “Aya. When you asked me to teach you how to fight, you promised you wouldn’t get into fights at school.”
Aya’s face is defiant and mulish. “He was bullying Izuku. I taught him a lesson.”
“Well, you should have told the teacher, not beat the other kid up! You’re grounded.” Chuuya says firmly. “You’re not going to Ochako’s birthday party on Sunday.”
“You can’t do that!”
“You fought in school, Aya. You need to know that your actions have consequences.”
“Nuh-uh.” Aya’s eyes take on a sly glint – Chuuya’s sure that he’s seen that nasty look somewhere before – the stubbornness of a child glazing her pale features. “I fought outside of school. By the gates. Didn’t Aizawa sensei tell you that?”
( He sees more and more of Dazai in his daughter every day. That quick wit, the sarcastic remarks on the tip of her tongue, the intelligence slivering her eyes. Some emotion wells up, lodges itself in his throat. Chuuya doesn’t know if he wants to scream or cry. )
It’s Aya’s sixth birthday. She’s bright and vivacious and healthy, and Chuuya throws her a party. It’s a small and intimate gathering, with Kouyou and some of Aya’s closest friends.
Every surface in the apartment is decorated with streamers and balloons and dozens of vases filled with flowers. A white table cloth covers the dining table, holding a cake, towering with pink icing and scattered with delicate pink flakes, as well as a stack of plates and a small stack of brightly wrapped presents.
Aya unwraps a copy of Alice in Wonderland, and moves on to a small rectangle package. She makes no effort to preserve the pretty paper as she usually does – she’s much too excited.
Inside the box are two tickets. Aya sees the words – “7-DAY VIP MAGIC PASSPORT” – emblazoned on the front, the grinning Mickey Mouse waving his magic wand in the air, and she screams.
“Mommy! Mommy, look!” Her smile is as bright as the beam of a flashlight as she waves the tickets in the air. “This is the best present ever!”
( Chuuya stares. He can feel Kouyou’s eyes boring into his back. He remembers a conversation he’d had with her, about how Aya had been bugging him to take her to Disneyland, but he couldn’t justify taking a week off work, not when they were in the middle of a turf war. Dazai had been standing nearby, his expression unreadable, but Chuuya hadn’t thought that he’d cared, or that he’d even known what he was talking about. He knows who’s sent that; and the lack of a card on the box only serves to confirm his suspicions. )
“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, I wanna go! Can we go? Please, please, please!”
( The present comes with an unspoken message; almost as if Dazai’s giving him his approval. )
Chuuya swallows. Nods. Tries to smile. “Sure, sunshine. We can go.”
He marches into Dazai’s office on a Monday morning. Dazai’s dark head is bent over a book. Without him looking at Chuuya, he’s free to stare at his profile. The pale skin, the long, dark eyelashes brushing his cheek. The way the hair at the crown of his head falls in an untidy and entirely familiar whorl.
Chuuya slams a picture down onto the desk, hard enough that the polished wood splinters slightly from the force of it. It gets Dazai’s attention immediately. His eye flickers downwards, to the now crumpled picture and then away.
Chuuya doesn’t know why he’s doing this. Not when he’s living in fear of Dazai taking his child away from him.
But if feels like he owes Dazai somehow. For helping to put a smile on Aya’s face.
“Aya had fun. She went on all the rides, but she threw a tantrum when she was too short to ride the rollercoaster. She took pictures with all the mascots. We watched the fireworks every night, and she’d fall asleep halfway on my lap.” Chuuya doesn’t mean to tell Dazai so much; it just slips out. She wants to see you, Chuuya wants to say. She wants to know why you’re not around. Why you abandoned us. She asks about you every day, you asshole.
What comes out, instead – “She – We had a good time. Thanks.”
Dazai nods. His unbandaged eye is huge and dark and full.
Chuuya leaves.
( Unnoticed, Dazai picks up the picture. He smoothes out the crinkles. In the dim light, alone, he looks at every detail. His daughter poses with a group of princesses. Aya’s in a white eyelet sundress, and a pair of sequined Mickey Mouse ears sits atop her head. Her curls are tangled, a smudge of ice-cream smeared across the bridge of her nose. She’s smiling, utterly happy and at peace.
Dazai slips it into his jacket. )