Work Text:
Shouyo should have been a boss at traveling by this point.
He was an Olympic athlete who’d moved to the other side of the world straight out of high school. Planes, trains, and automobiles were so familiar, he could probably do it all in his sleep. (Voicing that thought earned him a lecture from his beloved husband about the dangers of falling asleep at the wheel and the need for stricter punishments for irresponsible drivers.)
Compared to most people, it was generally a breeze for Shouyo getting through airport security. If he was traveling for work, his manager was there to flaunt his VIP status and get him to the front of the line. And there weren’t many redheaded pro volleyball players in Japan, so verifying his identity was also easy as pie and negated his chances of getting selected for random screening. Bonus if the security agents were fans.
But throw the fact that he was traveling for personal reasons and a screaming toddler into the mix, and all of that went out the window.
“Na-chan,” Shouyo said through gritted teeth as he caught his daughter by the back of her jacket. “The planes are that way!”
“NOOOOO!” Natasha wailed. “Don’t wanna!”
Shouyo threw his arms around the three-year-old before she could stretch out the fabric or just slip out of it completely and run off. She wriggled around in his hold.
“I thought you were excited to see Obaachan!”
“Wanna see Obachaan!” She yelled, still trying to escape.
“And you wanna be on the plane, right? We’re gonna be way up high!”
“Wanna go airpwane!”
“Okay, so we gotta go through security first. They have to make sure we’re safe.”
“NOOO!” She screamed in Shouyo’s ear.
He looked around in desperation, but only got pitying looks from passersby. It wasn’t like this was the first time they’d flown with Natasha, having made the trip a few months ago for Golden Week. She hadn’t behaved anything like this then. She’d been her normal sweet self, excited at the idea of being way up high as much as a three-year-old could understand the concept of being thousands of feet above the earth. Shouyo had no idea what had changed.
He made a noise of relief as he saw Kei emerging from the bathroom. They’d agreed that Shouyo would go on ahead with Natasha while Kei took their carry-ons to cut down on the hassle. So much for that.
Kei was already raising an eyebrow as he approached. Shouyo just gave him a helpless look.
“She doesn’t want to go through security.”
“NO!” she chimed in, to emphasize his point.
Kei took one look between the child and the security checkpoint and scooped her up into his arms. She didn’t flail around like she had for Shouyo, but buried her face in his shoulder.
“Shh. It’s okay. Dad and I are gonna keep you safe from the mean men, alright? It’s okay. We got you.”
“What?” Shouyo said.
Kei looked at him over the top of their daughter’s head. “She’s afraid of the security guards.”
“Since when?”
“Remember the museum the other day?”
Shouyo remembered that, but as far as he knew nothing had actually happened. Kei had taken advantage of a day off last week to take their girl to the natural history museum and when Shouyo had met up with them for ice cream afterward, he’d asked what her favorite exhibit had been. She really liked the T-Rex skeleton (which Kei was never going to get over). And Shouyo had asked if there was an exhibit she didn’t like. She’d thought about it for a minute and said “the big scary man” and continued eating her strawberry peanut-butter swirl like any three-year-old would. It had taken further questioning from Kei to figure out what she meant.
So, no. Shouyo had not anticipated a problem.
“Here’s what we’ll do—” Kei nudged Shouyo to get into the line. He grabbed their bags and followed his husband’s lead.
“We’re gonna play a trick on them,” Kei said to Natasha. “We’re gonna make sure that they don’t know you’re here.”
He gave a pacifying smile to the woman ahead of them who’d turned around with some alarm. Shouyo also looked at his husband with some trepidation, not sure where this was going.
Kei set Natasha down and grabbed the jacket that was hanging off of his suitcase. He put it on and beckoned her back into his arms. Once she was clinging to him like a koala again, he zipped the jacket up over her so that only her red curls poked out.
“Alright, they’re not going to see you, but you have to be very still and very quiet so they don’t know you’re there, okay?”
Natasha giggled and nodded. Kei shushed her gently.
“If they hear you, they’re going to know you’re there. You’ve gotta be quiet.”
By this point, they were at the kiosk, and a security agent was watching the whole thing. Shouyo snagged Kei’s boarding pass and ID from his pocket and handed all three of their credentials over to the agent.
“Just the two of you?” She said throwing Kei a wink.
“Yep!” Shouyo said brightly. She scanned them in and waved them through.
Shouyo’s face fell as another obstacle rose up in front of them. Kei would have to take off his jacket to go through the metal detector. Thank goodness for pre-check—if they’d had to go through the body scan machine, they’d be screwed. Still, Shouyo wasn’t sure how they were going to handle this.
Once again, Kei was already a step ahead of him. He put himself in between Natasha and the agents and set her back down.
“Distract her for a second,” he said as he put his jacket on the conveyor belt. He darted ahead through the metal detector and said something to the agent on the other side.
“Where’s my big strong girl?” Shouyo said. Natasha immediately jumped up and down, eager to prove that it was her. He lifted both suitcases onto the belt, letting her believe that she was doing most of the work. “Good job! You’re so strong!”
“Natasha!” Kei fake whispered. He was on the other side of the detector, positioned just right to block the security agent from her view. “Quick, while they’re not looking!”
Of course, the agent fully saw the child running into her dad’s arms, but he played along just like the first. Shouyo imagined he wanted to avoid a screaming, crying fit just as much as they did.
Shouyo followed them both through and felt a weight drop off his shoulders. It was seamless, getting their stuff and moving into the terminal. Natasha seemed to have totally forgotten her fear and squirmed out of Kei’s arms so she could run ahead of them.
“Airpwane! Airpwane!”
Shouyo bumped his shoulder into Kei’s. “Good job.”
Kei hummed and leaned down for a quick kiss. “We did it together.”
“Was there more to the museum I don’t know about?”
Kei shook his head. “Kids can be weird about that kind of thing. I remember her seeing the guard and turning to go back to the dinosaurs, but she didn’t seem scared.”
“To be fair, you were probably distracted by seeing your kid be so into dinosaurs.”
Kei scowled, but there was a hint of a smile in it. “You know, I don’t think it’s a bad thing if our daughter has a healthy distrust of authority.”
Shouyo shook his head. “Poor Daichi. He’ll be crushed.”
“He can never visit in uniform, that’s for sure.”
Or maybe he would be able to help her understand that security guards and police officers weren’t so scary after all. There was probably a conversation to be had about facing your fear instead of hiding away from it, but that could wait until another day.
For now, Kei and Shouyo followed after their daughter toward their next adventure.