Chapter Text
“Thank you guys again so, so much for agreeing to watch her while we’re gone. We owe you one for sure!”
“It’s no problem, we promise we’ll take good care of her.”
The five of them were standing in the parking lot of Baji and Chifuyu’s apartment complex as Takemichi and Hina readied their car for the drive to the airport.
“We trust you two! Well, we trust Chifuyu at least, but I bet you won’t do too horrible a job of being a babysitter, Baji,” Hina chuckled as she skipped over to the two men and her daughter, who was standing hand-in-hand with Chifuyu and watching her parents with big, curious eyes.
“Hey! I’m good with kids,” Baji snapped back as Chifuyu laughed.
Takemichi joined Hina as the two kneeled down to hug their daughter goodbye, Takemichi already teary-eyed at the prospect of not seeing her for a week.
“Behave yourself, Aiko, my little angel!” Hina said as she gave her a big hug, and Takemichi added, “Have fun with Uncle Baji and Uncle Chifuyu!”
Proving that she took after her father, Aiko was slightly teary-eyed as well as her parents got into the car and drove away, waving enthusiastically after themselves.
“Aw, don’t be sad, Aiko, they’ll be back soon. I told them to bring us back something fun from Okinawa, so you’ll get some souvenirs,” Chifuyu said lightly, giving the girl’s hand a reassuring squeeze as they headed up to their apartment.
Takemichi and Hina had decided to spend their fifth wedding anniversary reliving their honeymoon —which had been a very cheap, bordering on unromantic affair as the result of them rushing to get married right out of college. They would be spending the next week in Okinawa, without their daughter to stay true to the nature of a couple’s vacation.
The girl seemed to perk up at Chifuyu’s words, and Baji couldn’t help but smile as well at the sight of Chifuyu being so sweet. He unlocked the door to their apartment, and they were pleasantly greeted by soft meowing at their feet.
Aiko’s face instantly lit up as she dropped to the floor with a cry of, “Kitty!”, promptly showering Peke J with enthusiastic pets.
“Be gentle with him, he’s old as hell,” Baji chuckled as he also stooped down to ruffle the black cat’s fur. “Although, at this point I think the little bastard is gonna live forever.”
“Baji,” Chifuyu warned, his voice low. “Language.”
“What! She’s five, she’ll probably forget I said it in a couple minutes.”
“Have you ever met a five year old?”
Luckily, Aiko had already moved past the doorway and into the rest of the apartment, excited to explore. Their apartment was much more sparsely decorated than Takemichi and Hina’s house, but it still felt incredibly homey to Baji. Everything from Peke J’s food bowls and bed (which Chifuyu insisted they keep, even though the cat always slept on the bed with them) to Chifuyu’s small succulent collection to the picture board they had set up with photos of them and all of their friends from Toman made the place feel more than welcoming.
Aiko ran into their bedroom as Chifuyu pushed her small backpack and suitcase in the hallway, then promptly ran back out again to join them in the living room.
“You only have one bed! Does that mean you’re married?”
Baji snorted at the straightforward question, and Chifuyu grinned, pointing to the engagement ring on his left hand.
“Almost! We’re engaged, so we’ll be like your parents soon enough,” he explained.
Every time they had a reason to bring up their engagement, Baji felt an overwhelming swell in his heart. It was a feeling akin to the high he felt after a good fight, when a heavy rush of adrenaline and sense of accomplishment would wash over him completely. He knew Chifuyu would tease him for making such a comparison, but it was true to his feelings. Thinking about what that silver band on his ring finger meant for them made him feel as on top of the world as he had during his glory days.
“You better not go on vacations without me like them, though,” Aiko said bluntly, a small pout on her lips.
“She holds grudges, I see,” Chifuyu hummed as he elbowed Baji playfully. “Better not give her any reason to be mad at you.”
“Who, me? Never.”
With that, Baji strode into the kitchen with Aiko trailing after him from a distance.
Baji would be lying if he said that he wasn’t a bit nervous about the upcoming week. Despite what he had jokingly told Hina before she and Takemichi left, he was convinced that he was definitely not great with children. He could be an abrasive person at times, and he knew kids easily caught onto that --even though Chifuyu insisted that, really, he was the least intimidating person in the world, he figured that was not true to the average five year old.
However, Baji was thankful to see that, so far, Aiko seemed content staying with them --probably because Chifuyu, being Takemichi’s best friend, spent a lot of time visiting the Hanagaki household. Baji didn’t get as many chances to meet with them, so it had been a while since he had seen Aiko; she either somehow managed to remember him or she was very good at pretending to know who he was.
“Alright, kid, what do you want for dinner?” he asked playfully, ignoring any fears of inadequate pseudo-parenting for the moment. Aiko responded almost instantly: “Mac and cheese!”
Blinking slowly, Baji scratched his head at the unexpected answer. “Uh, I don’t think we have any,” he replied as he rifled through their cupboards. “We have yakisoba, though.”
“I got some yesterday,” Chifuyu grinned from the kitchen counter next to him, pulling a blue box from one of their lower shelves. “According to Takemichi, it’s her favorite, so I stocked up.”
Aiko grabbed the mac and cheese from his hands and shook it enthusiastically like it was a maraca. “Thanks Uncle Fuyu!”
Baji smirked at his fiancé and snatched the box back from the young girl. “Look at you, Chifuyu, already acting like a mom. You got gummy snacks in your purse, too?” he teased, prompting Chifuyu to whack him in the head with the wooden spoon he had grabbed from the drawer in retaliation.
“Quiet, Edward,” he replied. “You two go sit in the living room and get to know each other or something while I massacre these noodles. I’ve never made this before, so fair warning, it might be horrendous.”
Recognizing that he had been kicked out of the kitchen as punishment, Baji scuttled into the living room with Aiko in tow. She leapt up onto the couch and plopped down, cross legged with her hands tucked neatly into her lap. Baji noticed that, with the curious gleam in her eyes, she looked so much like Hina that it was uncanny. The girl had her mother’s soft, long-lashed eyes and round features and her father’s tufty, jet black hair, which was pulled into a small ponytail at the base of her neck. She’s a really adorable kid, Baji thought.
“Do you have any games?” she asked.
Baji sucked on his lower lip. They had a few drinking games (an engagement gift from Mikey, who insisted that every couple needed to get plastered together before getting married to see each other’s true natures), which he definitely would not play with a child, and some decks of cards that he figured would probably bore Aiko to death.
“Um… we have a TV? You wanna watch, uh, Paw Patrol or something?” Baji responded awkwardly.
“Or you could, you know, actually interact with her,” Chifuyu called from the kitchen, a remark followed by muttered swearing as the man worked on dinner. Surprisingly, Baji was the better cook between the two by far, and he knew Chifuyu only offered to make dinner to give Baji a chance to visit with Aiko. He had hoped Chifuyu would not be able to mess up making boxed mac and cheese, but he might be proven wrong soon.
“Alright, alright,” Baji responded, dropping to the floor in front of the girl. She seemed more reserved now that it was just the two of them, with her hands tucked under her legs and her gaze averted, and he felt equally as uncertain of how to act without Chifuyu there to liven the mood. He knew Chifuyu wouldn’t allow him to get away with avoiding Aiko in any way, shape, or form this week, and he certainly didn’t want to do that even without the other man’s interference, so he knew he had better get used to spending time with the young girl. It occurred to him that she was more comfortable with Chifuyu than with him since she saw the former more often --so, he needed something to break the ice between them.
“You wanna braid my hair?” he asked gingerly.
Aiko’s face burst into a smile in an instant. “Yes! It’s so pretty, I wanted to but I was scared to ask,” she said as she scrambled off of the couch and into the hallway, returning with her purple backpack in hand.
Satisfied that his offer had gone over so well, Baji turned around so that the back of his head was facing her and sat cross legged with his back up against the couch. He pulled his hair out of the unkempt bun he had put it in for the day and shook it out, telling Aiko, “Go crazy.”
“Wow, she really did go crazy, huh Keisuke?”
Chifuyu giggled at the sight of Aiko, very pleased with herself and contently munching on her only-slightly-watery mac and cheese, and Baji, sitting next to her with his hair pulled into every hairstyle imaginable.
“She sure did,” Baji hummed, slurping on his own serving of noodles. “This side is ‘french braided,’” he said, pointing to the left side of his hair, which was pulled into two tight twists that were very far from being actual braids, “and this side is some kind of cutesy bun, but also kind of a pigtail,” he finished with a gesture to the messily coiled hair on the right side of his head. The whole thing was finished off with a few colorful plastic hairpins that Aiko had pulled out of her bag. “She takes after that Akkun guy, you know, Takemichi’s friend? She should be a hairstylist too.”
“He looks super cute, right?” Aiko beamed.
“The cutest,” Chifuyu responded with a genuine fondness in his eyes that made Baji’s cheeks heat up. “I’m shocked you let her touch your hair, Kei. It’s your precious baby,” he added with a sneaky smile.
“Of course it is. That’s why I never dyed it that God-awful piss yellow you and everyone else in Toman thought looked good when we were kids.”
“Hey! The only one of us who really had piss-colored hair was Takemichi. But, you make a good point.” Chifuyu turned to Aiko, who was still munching happily on her dinner. “Aiko, have you ever seen pictures of your dad when he was a teenager?”
The young girl nodded. “His hair was really yellow. It wasn’t very cute.”
Baji and Chifuyu both burst into laughter at that, Chifuyu vowing that he would pass that information on to Takemichi when he and Hina returned from Okinawa.
After the three of them finished dinner, they all sat together on the couch and watched Ponyo, a favorite of both Aiko and Baji’s as they quickly discovered. Baji laid curled up with his head in Chifuyu’s lap as the short-haired man combed through the loose pieces of Baji’s intricately styled hair and Aiko leaned into the TV with her eyes glued to the screen.
As the colorful animation flashed across their television, Baji rolled over to look up at Chifuyu, watching the light cast by the movie as it danced across his fiancé’s features. Chifuyu was watching the movie so intently that he didn’t notice Baji staring until the long-haired man reached up and gently pinched his cheek. Chifuyu jumped slightly, then looked down at Baji and pinched his cheek back, albeit with a bit more force.
“You’re a lot more fun to watch than the movie,” Baji grinned. An unusually good mood had overcome him that night as he sat with Chifuyu and Aiko and their silly kid’s movie. He had successfully made it through the first evening with Aiko without making her hate him, and, in all honesty, he considered that to be a success --in fact, letting her play with his hair seemed to be the exact right thing to do to get the girl to feel more comfortable around him. Chifuyu may have insisted before they agreed to watch over the girl that Baji would do just fine that week, but it was a relief to see that the short-haired man might have actually been right.
Chifuyu looked back over at Aiko, who was still watching the film with rapt attention, in a poor attempt to hide his smile. “Since when are you such a sap?”
“Since you’ve been so handsome, which is always.”
Baji was about to continue showering Chifuyu in compliments when Aiko vehemently shushed them from her place on the arm of the couch. “Be quiet! No talking during Ponyo.”
They both laughed and adhered to the girl’s urgings.
When the movie was finished, Chifuyu insisted that they go to bed, much to Aiko’s dismay; they had an early day tomorrow because they had to wake up to go to work, and Aiko would be accompanying them. The girl looked like she was on the verge of throwing a tantrum --and Baji was on the verge of panicking-- until Chifuyu shoved all of the cushions off of the couch to reveal that it was actually a sofa bed, which she would be sleeping on. She was shocked to realize that couches could also double as beds, a fact that she found adorably exciting.
After setting up the bed for Aiko and bidding her goodnight, Baji and Chifuyu retired to their own bedroom. Peke J was already asleep on the pillows, and they both kissed him on the head as they came into the room.
They were about to get ready for bed when Chifuyu’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and, when he saw it was Takemichi, answered and put it on speaker.
“Hey guys!” Takemichi’s voice rang out, along with slight background chatter noticeable through the phone. “Hina and I are about to board our flight. Is everything okay? How’s Aiko doing? What did you guys do tonight? Is she settling in with you two?”
Baji and Chifuyu shared a smile with each other at Takemichi’s instant bombardment of questions. It was obvious that he was nervous about leaving Aiko, and Baji wouldn’t be surprised if he missed her already.
“Everything is fine, you don’t need to be a helicopter dad,” Chifuyu joked. “We had the mac and cheese you told me about and watched Ponyo. She’s asleep now.”
“That’s great! But let us know if you need anything, we--” Takemichi practically wheezed, and then was silent for a moment. Baji heard Hina’s voice faintly in the background. “Okay, okay,” he continued. “Hina’s telling me to calm down and leave you guys alone, so I’ll do that. But call me if anything comes up, okay?”
They agreed to Takemichi’s request and said goodbye to their friend. Chifuyu set his phone down on the dresser and turned to Baji. “You ready to be fake parents for a week?” he asked, pulling out a pair of sweatpants to wear to sleep.
“Oh god. Not really. I mean, I’m sure it’ll be fun, but --I’m a little concerned about how we’ll keep her busy at work. She’s pretty much just going to have to hang out in the break room for like, six hours. Were we really the best people to call to watch her?” Baji replied as he began the painstaking process of removing all of the ornaments from his hair without ripping half of it out. Truthfully, he was more concerned about his own babysitting capabilities than anything else, but he didn’t want to gripe about that to Chifuyu again.
Chifuyu laughed and yanked on a newly freed piece of Baji’s hair. “Oh, apparently we were Takemichi and Hina’s, like, fifth choice for babysitters. Hina’s parents live too far away, Naoto is in the middle of a really intense case and has basically holed himself up in his apartment and hasn’t left for days, Mitsuya and Hakkai are out of the country with Yuzuha, and Takemichi is way too scared of the dudes that come to Draken and Inui’s shop to have her stay there all day while they work. So, by that logic, us it is.”
Baji snorted unceremoniously. It appeared that Chifuyu and Takemichi had already had this discussion in detail. “Okay, okay, I guess that makes sense. What about Mikey, though?”
“Would you let Mikey take care of your child for a week?”
“Good point. We can always just give her one of our phones to watch Youtube on or something.”
Chifuyu sighed and slipped into bed, rubbing Peke J behind the ears. “Tora can help keep her busy. I bet she brought stuff to do, too.”
Grunting absently in response, Baji simply plopped down on the bed and kissed Chifuyu on the forehead. “I guess we’ll worry about that tomorrow. Goodnight, ‘Fuyu.”
“Goodnight, Kei,” he replied as Baji turned off the light. The two settled under the sheets, and after a moment, he added, “And don’t worry about Aiko. I know what you’re really concerned about is that you think you’re going to scare her shitless, or bore her, or mess up or something, but it’ll be fine. She’s Takemichi’s kid, she’s got thick skin.” He flipped over onto his side to look at Baji directly, a sly smile crinkling his eyes. “And, besides, you can definitely be irresponsible sometimes, but you’re not nearly as scary as you think you are. Like, look at your cute little fangs! If I were a toddler, I’d just think you were adorable.”
“Why do I feel like that’s more of an insult than a compliment?” Baji sighed in response, although he was smiling slightly as well. Trust Chifuyu to know exactly what he was thinking, even if he didn’t say anything. He supposed he would have to wait and see --so far, Chifuyu seemed to be right, and that was enough to give him a bit more hope for the week than he had earlier that day.
“Maybe it is,” Chifuyu winked before flipping back over to face away from Baji. “Don’t freak out too much, and sleep well, cutie.”
The long-haired man couldn’t help but smile at that.
————————————-
Baji was woken up the next morning by an elbow to the nose.
He nearly rolled off of the bed in shock, struggling with the sheets as if they were trying to strangle him as he shook himself out of the drowsiness of sleep and whipped his head around to try to find his assailant.
All he found was Aiko, who was snoring peacefully next to him, curled up on top of the blankets in between Chifuyu and him with her arms splayed in an outright comical position.
Baji looked around himself again, as if he would find an explanation for the girl’s sudden appearance somewhere on his bedroom walls. Then, he let out an embarrassingly loud yelp when he heard the alarm abruptly go off behind him.
The young girl opened her eyes slowly, then jolted upright when she realized it was time to wake up. “Good morning, Uncle Baji!” she said sweetly, then turned over and shook Chifuyu, saying, “Wake up, Fuyu! Wake up,” until he groggily sat up in bed.
After successfully rousing Chifuyu, she shimmied off of the front of the bed and ran to the hallway of the apartment.
“Holy shit,” Chifuyu muttered as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “How does she have so much energy? Its 6:00 in the morning.” After a brief pause, he added, “Wait, did she sleep in bed with us?”
Baji shrugged, equally baffled about both topics. “Guess she did.”
The three of them went through the motions of getting ready in the morning; Baji made breakfast, and when the two men asked about it, Aiko simply explained, “I came to sleep with you guys because the sofa bed wasn’t very comfy.” Baji could not help but feel pleased that Aiko felt welcome enough to simply crawl into their bed at night as if they were her parents; it was a cute thing to picture.
Chifuyu hurried Baji and Aiko to get ready and dressed as quickly as possible, and once they were set to go, the three of them went out to the car they had rented for the week. The two men usually got around on their motorcycles, but they couldn’t exactly take a five year old with them on a motorbike, so the car was a necessary feature to get around. Chifuyu drove them to the pet store that the men owned and worked in along with Kazutora.
The store was about ten minutes from their apartment and was located in the downtown shopping area of their local suburb, in between a small diner and a furniture store. It was a small, cozy shop with a teal storefront and a patch of brick wall underneath the large front window. There were multiple cat scratching posts in the window, along with a couple of bags of dog and cat food out along the street.
Chifuyu wrestled Aiko out of the car seat that Takemichi and Hina had left for her and took the girl’s hand to lead her into the store as Baji grabbed their bags to take in. Surprisingly, Baji could see through the window that Kazutora was already there, which showed how much longer than usual it had taken for them to leave the house that morning --their coworker was notorious for arriving as shortly before opening as possible, usually with a disgustingly black coffee in hand. He had his black-and-blond-swirled hair pulled into a bun as usual, and he was tying on the dark apron the three of them wore when handling the pets.
Kazutora looked up at the sound of the front door jingling open, his bell-shaped earring making a similar noise as he moved. “Oh! There you guys are,” he said, trotting over to the door.
At the sight of this new person, Aiko clutched onto Chifuyu’s hand a bit tighter and stood closer to his leg. Baji reached down to pat the girl’s head in what he hoped was a comforting gesture and explained, “Hey, Aiko, this is Kazutora, your, like, fifteenth uncle. He’s going to help watch you today, since we all have to work.”
“Ah, you’re so big! You don’t remember me, but we’ve met before. The last time I saw you, I think you were two, and you were super tiny. Crazyyy,” Kazutora hummed, stooping over slightly to wave at Aiko.
The girl considered him for a moment, then pointed to the intricate tiger tattoo on the young man’s neck. “Tora!” she exclaimed, then asked, “Is that why your name is Kazutora?”
“Actually, it’s the other way around. I got the tat because my name is Kazutora.” The man in question stood up straight and addressed Baji and Chifuyu with a grin. “How is it, being parents with a child out of wedlock?”
“Very funny,” Chifuyu rolled his eyes, walking with Aiko to the back of the store and grabbing his apron from Baji’s bag. “We’re judged constantly, y’know, being only engaged, not married, with a child that is definitely ours and all.”
Baji snickered at the comment, giving Kazutora an affectionate smack on the back of the head as he followed Chifuyu to the back room. He enjoyed working and joking around with the other two men more than he would willingly admit to most people --it always made him thankful that this was how his life had turned out, when it easily could have gone a much darker direction based on how he and all of his friends had lived in their youth.
Chifuyu set up Aiko with a coloring book and her backpack at the corner table of their break room, and the girl sat on one of their wooden chairs, swinging her legs and looking up at Chifuyu.
“Okay! So, yes, we do have cats here. We also have some hamsters, fish, and turtles. You can go look at the pets, but --but!” Chifuyu was explaining to the girl, holding up a finger when she began practically jumping up and down in her seat, “You have to be careful and quiet around them, or else you might scare them. No tapping on the glass!”
Nodding enthusiastically, Aiko repeated, “No glass tapping. Got it.”
With that, Chifuyu set her free to wander about the store, leaving him and Baji to get ready for the morning so that they could open at 8:00. The two walked over to Kazutora after a few minutes, and Baji tugged on his sleeve to get his attention. “Okay, so we’re taking shifts running the store and watching Aiko. She’s been really well behaved so far, so she shouldn’t be too much trouble, but she might get bored and she’s still a five-year old. Chifuyu goes first because she likes him the most.”
With that, the three opened for business for the day and began working.
After taking his daily stroll through the back of the store to greet all of the cats, Baji busied himself cleaning out the hamster cages while Kazutora manned the front counter. It was always a monotonous, unpleasant task, since, as Kazutora had so delicately commented one time while doing the same job, “Man, these hamsters must shit themselves like, every five minutes.” Baji much preferred dealing with the cats, but that would come later.
He had always had a soft spot for animals, so much so that he insisted on leaving his bedroom window open all the time as a kid to let in stray cats to take care of, much to his mother’s dismay. The poor woman. With all his antics as a teenager, from him getting held back a year in middle school to him getting nearly-fatally stabbed by Kazutora during that God-forsaken Valhalla battle, he had sure given her a constant headache. Being a parent must be rough shit, he thought.
Once he was finished with the hamster cages, he moved on to replacing the filters in the fish tanks. As he entered the fish aisle, he saw Chifuyu and Aiko sitting on the floor, Chifuyu pointing out the different types of fish to the girl.
She waved at Baji as he walked over, gesturing to the colorful fish in the tank. She pointed to one fish in particular, one that was black and yellow striped, and drummed her fingers on the glass excitedly. “This one looks like Uncle Tora!” she cried, making a small tiger claw shape with her hand.
“Hey, I thought I told you not to tap the glass,” Chifuyu scolded.
“Yo, it does look like Tora. Cute,” Baji grinned, turning down the aisle to work on the air filters. Although, he really thought the cutest thing was Chifuyu and Aiko watching fish together.
The morning was fairly uneventful, with a few customers filing into the store with a steady regularity. Their shop was well-known at that point, having been open for several years, and many of the pet owners in the area were regulars. Eventually, Aiko got bored of looking at the pets (since Chifuyu told her she could pet the cats later that week when they were less busy doing menial tasks) and insisted on sitting at the front counter with Kazutora when it was his turn to watch her.
She stared at Kazutora very intently until he noticed and raised an eyebrow at her. “You want something?” he asked indelicately.
“Your earring is pretty,” she said shyly. “I want to wear fun, big earrings, but Mama said I’m not big enough. Can I play with it?”
Kazutora blinked slowly, looking much like the cats that he took care of, then slowly leaned down to her level in the seat she was sitting on behind the counter. He pulled his hair out of the way so that she could properly see the earring and said, “Sure, I guess, go for it.”
Aiko made a high-pitched, happy noise and reached out to swat at Kazutora’s earring like a kitten reaching after a feather toy, squealing in delight when it tinkled pleasantly. “It’s a bell!” she commented.
From the other side of the counter where he was restocking, Baji added, “Yeah, Tora comes with a bell like a cat. That’s how you know he’s basically a pet.”
Kazutora scoffed and balled up a discarded receipt from the counter, throwing it at Baji’s head with the grace of a baseball pitcher. It hit him smack in the eye, causing him to drop the bag of dog food he was carrying on his foot.
“Motherfucker!”
“Baji!” Kazutora gawked, making a show of covering Aiko’s ears and turning her head away from Baji. “You can’t swear in front of her, you know Hina will absolutely wreck our shit if she comes back cussing,” he smirked, his voice lilted in a teasing tone.
“You just did it too!” Baji snapped, grabbing the dropped bag of food and shoving it onto the shelf where it belonged. “And you made me swear, you asshole.” Despite the bravado, Baji did feel a bit guilty that he had already forgotten to be on his best behavior around Aiko. He tried not to think about it too hard.
“I did?” Kazutora asked blankly. “Ah, my bad, you’re right.”
“What’s a ‘motherfucker’?” Aiko piped up, despite Kazutora still covering her ears, just as Chifuyu walked out of the back room to join them.
The short-haired man sighed. “I leave you alone with her for five minutes…”
Kazutora coughed awkwardly, pointing a thumb at Baji, who cringed. “His fault.”
“Hey!”
-------------------------------
After a long day of Aiko repeatedly ignoring Chifuyu’s sole request and tapping on the containers of just about every pet in the store, her, Baji, and Chifuyu bade Kazutora farewell and closed up the shop for the evening.
“You should come over sometime this week,” Baji called after Kazutora as they walked back to their car. “Aiko would probably love to get her hands on your hair.”
“I don’t know about that, but I’ll come by,” Kazutora replied without turning around.
They drove home once they had managed to wrangle Aiko, who had abruptly decided that she absolutely did not want to sit in her car seat right before they left, safely into the car. After they arrived back to the apartment and gave Peke J his appropriate greeting head pats, Aiko insisted that they have mac and cheese again, and Baji decided it was his turn to cook and let Chifuyu play with the young girl. He added some shredded cheese from the fridge to the concoction to make it extra gooey and called the other two into the kitchen to eat once it was done.
“So,” Chifuyu began as he sat down at the kitchen table. “How did you like hanging out at the pet shop today, Aiko?”
The girl grabbed at her bowl of food passionately, taking a moment to reply to Chifuyu’s question. “It was fun! Uncle Tora is pretty. He was also funny, and he drew pictures for me,” she trilled.
Chifuyu snorted. “Tora? I didn’t know he could draw.”
“He can’t, I saw the drawings, and they were awful. He did one little tiger that was sort of cute, though,” Baji added with a grin. Kazutora had doodled various pets from the store (and otherwise) on the back of their spare receipt paper when there was a lull in business after their lunch break. Aiko had very happily taken them home with her in her backpack.
“I have to see these,” Chifuyu replied. “Show me after dinner.”
Nodding, Baji said, “See, Aiko? Your pretend uncles are pretty cool, huh? Probably a lot more fun to stay with us than your actual uncle.” Despite all the time that had passed and Takemichi’s insistance that the man was a great friend, Baji still found Naoto to be a bit stuffy. Baji was an ex-gang member and Naoto was a police officer, after all --old grudges died hard.
Aiko stared at him for a moment, the noodles she had collected for her next bite slipping off of her fork. “What do you mean, ‘pretend uncles’?” she asked slowly.
Chifuyu raised an eyebrow at Aiko while Baji scratched at the back of his head and responded cautiously, “Ah, well, you know we’re not actually related to you, right? Your uncle Naoto is your mom’s brother, though.”
Wide, baffled eyes looked back at him for a long, tense moment before Aiko finally said, “So, you aren’t my uncles?”
“I mean, your parents call us your uncles, but we’re actually just close family friends,” Baji trailed off, his stomach churning as he sensed that he might have just steered the conversation in a very unfortunate direction.
Aiko gaped back and forth at both of them as if she was truly seeing them for the first time. Then, her bottom lip began to quiver, and before either man could react, she burst into tears.
“But I thought we were family!” she sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve and bawling.
Baji gawked at her for a moment, unable to process the sudden change of events, then simply turned to look at Chifuyu, who looked equally shocked, as Aiko continued to sob loudly at the table.
“Oh, um, Aiko, it’s okay, don’t cry, don’t cry,” Chifuyu finally said after a long pause filled with mounting alarm from both men. “We’re still your family, even if we’re not--”
Aiko leapt up from her seat and ran into the hallway, still crying forcefully, leaving Baji and Chifuyu dazed at the table.
The two sat in silence for a moment before Chifuyu threw his hands up and cried, “Keisuke! What did you do!”
“I- I didn’t do anything!” Baji yelled back. “I mean-- well, I didn’t mean to! I didn’t think she would cry, I figured she knew that we’re not actually related to her.”
Chifuyu sighed, dragging his hands through his jet-black hair. “Man, she’s been so easy to deal with so far that I kind of forgot little kids will just lose it over the most unexpected shit,” he groaned. “You need to go talk to her, though.”
“What? Why me?” Baji snapped back.
“You’re the one who made her cry, you idiot! And I don’t know how to deal with five year olds having meltdowns any more than you do,” Chifuyu shot back, poking at Baji’s chest from across the table. “Man, all Takemichi told me was the food and toys she likes and shit like that. The son of a bitch didn’t give us any directions about what to do when she randomly starts sobbing,” he grumbled.
Baji was about to object, figuring that at the very least they could both talk to her, but Chifuyu firmly pointed in the direction of the hallway, and he knew there was no room for argument.
He couldn’t help the guilt that seeped into him like a chill as he sighed and pushed himself up from the table. Something like this was exactly what he had anticipated would happen when he was taking care of a kid --and while he knew that young children, as Chifuyu said, were unpredictable and volatile, it didn’t make him feel any less bad about upsetting them. He felt a bit foolish for having been lulled into a false sense of security and thinking that perhaps he would make it through the week without incident.
Baji took a deep breath to mentally prepare himself, then tiptoed down the hallway to follow Aiko. He discovered that she had curled herself into a ball on the bed in their room, and he gingerly stepped up to the bed, asking, “Aiko? Everything okay?”
She had stopped fully crying, but she was still sniffling sadly, and she shook her head in response to Baji’s question.
The long-haired man chewed on the inside of his cheek, thinking. He didn’t know what she wanted to hear, and he did not want to outright lie to her and say he had only been joking when he said they were not related. Aside from any problems dealing with children, Baji had always been awkward around people who were upset in general, being a naturally aggressive rather than overly empathetic person. He oftentimes was completely stuck when it came to comforting anyone other than Chifuyu, who was probably the only person he could effectively cheer up without even having to think about what to say.
Baji took a seat on the edge of the bed and figured he had to at least try something. “Look, I get why you’re upset,” he started cautiously, “You probably feel like us not being related makes us less… important to each other, or something, right?”
Aiko rolled over and looked at him, her eyes still glimmering with tears, and it made Baji a bit sad as well to see her upset. “Well, you don’t need to be related to be a family,” Baji continued thoughtfully. “I mean, when I was a kid, it was just me and my mom, and it was pretty lonely sometimes. But, I had all these friends that I made when I got a little older, in our gang-- uh, club. Club. Like, you know Mikey, and Draken, and Tora? And your dad, too, at some point. They were all like family to me, even if we weren’t related by blood. We were all really important to each other, and we loved each other. That’s how I met Chifuyu, after all.” He found himself suddenly feeling oddly nostalgic, Aiko’s tantrum apparently having brought on mood swings of his own. “And also, some people can’t have kids of their own, so they adopt them, but they’re still just as much of a family as people who have kids who are really related to them. Like me and Chifuyu, we can’t have kids, but we could still start a family if we wanted to.”
Baji realized that he was rambling, and that most of what he was saying was probably going to go right over Aiko’s head, but the misty look in her eyes was slowly clearing, and he felt like he was at the very least going in the right direction. “So,” he finished, “don’t be sad that Chifuyu and I aren’t really related to you. We’ll still do anything we can for you, like real uncles.”
The young girl was staring at him pensively, her eyes still shimmering enough that Baji was worried she would start crying again, but instead she eventually asked, “Are Mikey and Ken-chin and Tora also not my real uncles?”
Wincing and hoping that his answer would not send her into another downward spiral, Baji responded, “Yeah, the only one we call your ‘uncle’ who’s actually one of your parents’ siblings is Uncle Naoto.”
Aiko was quiet for a moment, seemingly allowing Baji’s words to settle in. After a beat, she tilted her head at him and questioned, “Why can’t you and Fuyu have kids?”
The question caught Baji off guard; he had expected her to focus on just about any detail from his spiel other than that one. “Well,” he replied simply, unsure how else to respond, “it’s because we’re both boys.”
That answer seemed to confuse Aiko, who scrunched her eyebrows at him. “But why does that mean you can’t have kids?”
Baji gulped, sensing that Aiko’s questioning was about to veer into dangerous territory. “Ah… that’s probably a good topic for another time.”
“You gave her ‘the talk’?” Chifuyu gaped.
After successfully defusing the bomb that was Aiko, Baji had returned to the living room with the girl, who was suddenly in such a good mood that Chifuyu had pulled Baji into the kitchen to ask him how he had done it. Although, as soon as he grudgingly told Chifuyu, Baji couldn’t help but feel that he was about to get yelled at again.
“Okay, listen, I didn’t mean to, it just came up when I was trying to calm her down and then she was really persistent about wanting to know more. Like really, really persistent. She must get that strong ass willpower from Takemichi--”
“How did making babies come up in your conversation?” Chifuyu cut him off, shrill-voiced.
Baji tugged at a loose piece of his hair as he thought over his answer. “To cheer her up, I told her some really corny shit about how families don’t have to be related by blood, with Toman and all. And… it was sappy, but I meant all of it. And one of the things that I mentioned,” and this was the detail that Baji had been mulling over ever since he said it, “was that even though the two of us can’t have kids, we could still start a family.”
Chifuyu’s back straightened, his eyes widening noticeably at Baji’s response. He was speechless for a moment, and Baji thought for a stressful second that he might have made things awkward, before his face cracked into a broad, bright smile. “Okay… that’s pretty sweet. You’re off the hook, for now at least,” Chifuyu finally said, leaning over to gave Baji a kiss on the cheek. “You did a way better job of calming her down than I expected, honestly. Good job cleaning up your own mess, Kei. I think you two are going to get along just fine.”
Baji sighed in relief, then pulled Chifuyu in to give him a proper kiss on the lips. He was more than relieved that he had been able to handle the situation on his own, and, dare he say, he was even a bit proud of himself for overcoming their first major obstacle as babysitters. At the very least, he had managed to get through to Aiko to cheer her up, and that made him feel much better about his prospects as a caretaker --even if he owed much of the success of the moment to an impromptu discussion of how babies were made.
As the two walked back into the living room to join Aiko, Chifuyu asked, “What exactly did you tell her, anyways? Baby-talk wise, I mean.”
“Ah. I just gave her the old, ‘when a man and a woman really love each other’ spiel. Nothing super biological or anything,” Baji murmured in response.
“No storks delivering babies in a basket? I guess that’s fine, as long as she doesn’t tell Hina anything that would make her want to kick our asses.”
Baji laughed and sat down next to Aiko, who was already absorbed in the coloring book she had begun earlier at the pet shop. He thought about what he’d talked about with the girl, and even if she most likely had not absorbed much of it, it felt good to acknowledge every once in a while that Toman’s many ex-members really were a family to him. A true band of brothers.
Aiko eventually went back into the kitchen to finish eating her dinner, and Baji and Chifuyu spent a peaceful night watching sitcoms on the TV as Aiko colored. It became considerably less peaceful as soon as they told Aiko it was time for bed; she put up just as much of a fight against the bedtime ordinance as she had the night before, and she insisted that she would sleep in Baji and Chifuyu’s bed again instead of on the sofabed.
Baji and Chifuyu, of course, agreed to her demands. Who were they to deny her anything she wanted?