Work Text:
July 2034
It was all kind of a blur. Yaz collapsed, then Sammy had to take her to the car. Darius had a work meeting he claimed was super urgent, and Ben and Brooklynn were getting the food ready for the big barbeque dinner. The kids all seemed disappointed to be going home without their promised ice cream, so Kenji promised to take them. Darius asked, “Isn’t five kids a lot to handle all by yourself?”
“Nah. I’ve led climbing classes of double that number up a mountain. I think I can handle a trip to the park.”
Which is how Kenji wound up boiling alive in a sun-beaten park, babysitting six kids and trying to carry three ice creams and two children, all while making sure the other three don’t run off. Turns out, children are far easier to keep in line when they have harnesses keeping them that way. They’re on that precarious cusp of being old enough to run around, but too young to understand the urgency of needing to stay together in a park as busy as this. One lapse in Kenji paying attention, and he’s lost a kid.
His eyes scan the grass, searching for a bench — that might be optimistic, but the ground is probably gross and dusty — or even somewhere for the kids (and him) to eat their ice cream in relative peace.
It gets hotter the more he walks (or maybe it’s just the exertion of carrying a two year old on his shoulders and a three year old on his hip), and sweat rolls off his forehead. Zara asks him why he’s so damp, and Kenji asks her, a little harsher than he intends to, “would you like to walk through this crowd?”
“Sorry,” he says after three seconds, wishing he had a hand free to pat her shoulder or something. “I didn’t mean that.”
Zara doesn’t say anything, but squishes her cheek against his chest, and he takes it as forgiveness.
Finally, he finds somewhere empty and relatively shaded, and begins shepherding the kids towards it. He picks his way over picnic blankets, trying to stay balanced and keep an eye on the other three. Oh, he should’ve known this was a bad idea. If only he wasn’t so insistent on being able to supervise five young kids on a busy day... then maybe, they’d—
Something stirs. Something changes among the crowd. The kids don’t notice, they’re far too young to be fine-tuned to danger — but Kenji does. There’s a scuffle, and it grows, rippling through the people like a Mexican wave at a football game.
Kenji doesn’t wait for it to reach him.
In a moment’s utterly ridiculous hesitation, Kenji dumps his ice cream on the ground (it’s five dollars I can get back) and crouches down. “Xi, get on my back.”
His son and niece do as he tells him, his little hands firmly hooked around his neck. He barely has the time to make sure Zara and Estrella are okay, let alone comfortable, before people start running, and he really is out of time.
“Katie, Julie, come on, let’s go,” he says, reaching behind him for Katie’s hand. She takes it, and he glances behind to see she has Julieta’s hand in her other hand.
He runs (okay, very quickly walks) for it, keeping as steady a speed as he can with three kids on him. His neck swivels to check Katie and Julieta are beside him at all times.
It was all kind of a blur. Kenji doesn’t stop, and doesn’t let the kids stop either, even when they complain their feet hurt (and nothing makes him feel more like a monster than forcing them through it) until they’re out of the park, and at least several streets away. They come to a stop under the watchful shade of a Magnolia, and Kenji finally lets the kids off his back. They were starting to squirm, and his joints were starting to ache.
But nothing was as worse as imagining how he’d explain it to the camp fam — or Ben — if one of the kids didn’t make it out of that steadily-growing... whatever that was, but people were panicked, and when a lot of people are panicked, it’s a one-way ticket to disaster. His stomach squirms horribly, imagining one of these kids caught up in that. It’s bad enough they were there at all, instead of sprawling in the shade of one of the many trees dotted lazily around the Watering Hole and sucking on an ice lolly they could’ve got for a third of the price than the van at the park.
And now they’re all different levels of upset: Xi is crying, and Estrella cries too because she idolises her cousin like that (it’s really endearing, Kenji has to admit). Zara sniffles, getting tearstains on her rainbow ruffled sundress. Katie is trying to be strong, hugging her brother, but Kenji can tell it shook her up. Julieta is the most outwardly put together, and maybe it’s because she’s the eldest, or because it suddenly becomes easy to be brave when people are even smaller and even more scared than you — Kenji would know — but she stiffens her upper lip, and meets Kenji’s eyes with measured calm.
Yaz once told the camp fam that kids are much more perceptive than people think: that people underestimate how deeply they can absorb the emotions of a room and react accordingly. Kenji admitted he thought that was a normal behaviour, and Yaz gave him one of those Looks that meant they were going to talk later. But it cast a different lens on how he spoke to his kids: always trying to be gentle and reassuring, even when he was standing on a ledge one crumbled stone away from caving in beneath him. When he wants to yell, his mind sends him whizzing back to memories of his own father, and the volume always dies in his throat.
He keeps that in mind now. The kids need an adult: someone stable they can rely on.
Estrella really only needs a hug. Darius and Brooklynn’s little angel of a daughter is one of the sweetest cuddlebugs Kenji’s ever encountered, and she snuggles happily into Kenji’s chest as he addresses the other four.
“Hey, look, don’t panic, okay?” He gives them his best, kindest smile. “I don’t know what that was, but the important thing is we’re not there anymore. We’re safe now.”
“What do we do now?” Katie asks, her eyes wide.
“We’re gonna walk back to the Watering Hole, okay? It might be a long way, but the time’ll fly by!” He forces cheer into his voice. The kids need it, and so does he a little bit.
“Will you carry me again?” Zara asks.
“Of course I will, sweetie.” He then remembers his earlier jab, and guilt stabs right through him. He apologises again as he settles Estrella on his shoulders and Zara on his hip, and she nods into his chest.
They get going: Julieta by Kenji and Zara’s side, and Xi and Katie walking ahead of him, their little hands pressed trustingly in each others’. The sight melts Kenji’s heart, and he wishes now were a good time to take a photo. It would make a good photo: the suburban streets they find themselves in are picturesque, the houses finished with a distinct country flair, and the sun is bright and burning. Katie’s turquoise shorts match Xi’s turquoise baseball cap perfectly — maybe Ben chose them on purpose — and it’s the kind of moment Kenji wishes he could frame so the kids know just how much he and Ben cherish them. Goodness knows he never felt that from his own father.
It became a mission of his, in a way, to fight against that. His father was awful, and now that he’s a father, he can’t make the same mistake. He knew from the get-go that he wanted to adopt. So many kids out there need good, loving homes, and it was a long, arduous process where the finish line seemed to inch further away with every crushing rejection. But suddenly it arrived, slamming them in the face with two wonderful twins. That February day where Katie ran right up to him at first sight, and Xi clung to his neck the whole flight home, was honestly the happiest of Kenji’s life.
He knew, since then, his kids would have a better dad than he did. His friends’ kids will grow up with a fun, active person whom they can always count on.
And that starts with days like today, where kids learn who they trust when things fall apart.
He ushers them on, keeping Katie and Julieta occupied with silly stories, filling Xi’s ear with reassurances, humming gentle lullabies that bounce and judder with every step, but Estrella and Zara don’t seem to mind. Every loving touch is undercut with a layer of fierce protectiveness. He would die in the line of fire for any one of these kids, but he’d also die comforting them. Reassuring them. Holding them. These kids firmly planted their places in his heart the moment he laid eyes on them, and Kenji won’t ever dig up their roots.
So he doesn’t stop, even up the hill, until he opens the door to the blissfully cool Watering Hole farmhouse, and the kids all spill into the hallway.
“There you are!” Sammy exclaims — her voice is hushed, so Kenji instinctively mirrors it as he briefly explains the situation to Sammy. Yaz must be ill with heat exhaustion, too. That would explain the shut blinds. The kids all seem to know what to do, too, quieting their voices and gently opening and closing doors, and Kenji couldn’t be more proud. They take after the camp fam in the best way possible. And he knows they will continue to do so, so long as the camp fam raise them right.
Unbelievable as it may seem, they’re growing up. And some of it’s a blur, they’ll be teenagers before Kenji knows it — but as for now, time blissfully slows down, and Kenji hands out ice lollies as the kids sit, their legs swinging, in the shade of the back porch.