accidentally said "invasive thoughts" instead of "intrusive thoughts" today and actually I think I'm onto something. this thought does not belong here and it is harming the local ecosystem
The day your daughter chooses a new favorite hero is the worst day of Katsuki’s life.
Worse than getting his heart torn up and stitched back together. Worse than dying and coming back to life. Worse than the toughest fight of his career as a pro.
(You think he’s being a tad dramatic, but you can’t tell that man anything when it comes to his daughter, so you can guess how that went.)
You’ll never forget the look on his face when his baby girl, barely three and still struggling with saying some words, clearly and excitedly shouts ‘Uncle Shouto!’ and toddles straight to the stand that holds the number two hero’s merch, completely ignoring her dad’s.
The three of you had been at the mall the day Katsuki had new merch to be released. He never cared much for things like that before having a kid; always left the brunt of dealing with things of that nature to his team. But then Yuika was gifted a Dynamight pajama set by Denki, and she loved it so much she wouldn’t sleep in anything else for a good three weeks.
You can only imagine what that did to her father who was already wrapped around her finger from day one.
He became more hands-on about his merch since; only the best quality, no ‘harmful shit’ in any of the materials used to make them, and his daughter always gets everything first before they’re even released to the public.
He agreed to wait for the actual release day once—because it’s his day off and the both of you thought it would be nice to spend some time as a family outside of the house—and this is what happens.
Yuika keeps on pointing to the Shouto plush, unable to reach it herself. You’re about to take one off the stand and hand it to her, but your husband crouches down to her level, holding a Dynamight one—the one the three of you actually came for.
“What about this one, Yuika? It’s Papa, see?” He holds the plushie up next to his face. Yuika giggles, patting the plush and looking excited. Katsuki lights up, but then your daughter’s eyes go back to the Shouto one on the shelf. Back to her Papa, and then back up again like she’s deciding.
“Hmm,” she hums in thought, swinging her small body side to side, pauses, and then, “We haf Papa a’ home!”
She walks past her father to you, completely oblivious to the destruction she left in her wake and her dad’s stricken expression. “I wan’ Uncle Shouto, Mama!” She points at the toy, taking your hand as if to drag you closer to the stand.
You try your best to stifle the laugh bubbling out of you as you hand your daughter the plush, going along as she takes your hand and marches to the register. You throw an apologetic look to your husband who stays frozen in his crouching position for a second before standing up and following you two.
“I’ll knock that entire fuckin’ stand over, see if I don’t,” he mutters from behind you, making sure his voice is low enough so that Yuika doesn’t hear him cussing, and this time, you can’t suppress your laughter.
He still buys the Dynamight plushie, claiming that his baby will forget about ‘that ugly thing’ soon, and she’ll go back to her real favorite hero.
“When did this even start?” he asks on the drive home, a grouchy frown still on his face. In the backseat, Yuika plays out a scenario with her new favorite friend, and the Dynamight plush her dad got for her is placed inside a bag beside her car seat, neglected.
“She’s met him before, and she didn’t care,” he continues. “Aren’t toddlers supposed to forget faces real easily?”
“You were on the news a lot with him the past few weeks. You know she loves watching you on TV.” You shrug, amused smile still in place. “Guess that means she saw him a lot, too. Thought he was cool or something.”
“I’m cooler.” He grumbles, hand tightening around the steering wheel.
You chuckle, leaning close to press a kiss to his cheek. “Of course you are, baby.”
Not that it appeases him; you’re pretty sure you hear him mumble something like, ‘I’ll never fuckin’ work with that bastard again,’ a few minutes later.
It gets worse when Yuika doesn’t put her new toy down even hours after you get home. She has it right next to her during dinner, set at the edge of the tub as you gave her a shower, and right next to the sink as her dad helped her brush her teeth.
Your husband’s last straw is when she refused to wear her favorite Dynamight pajamas when he offers it, pointing to a white one with red stripes instead.
“I match with Uncle Shouto!” Yuika joyfully exclaims.
Katsuki grows quiet after that. He still goes through their usual night routine—he helps her dress into the pajamas she requested, reads her a bedtime story, tucks her in and gives her her goodnight kisses: one for each cheek and one on the forehead, and turns on her night light before he goes.
You expect more ranting once he gets to your shared bedroom, but he gets ready quietly, too. Goes through his night routine as usual, but with this somberness that is still a little funny but is starting to make you feel bad for wanting to laugh.
He gets into bed, stares at the ceiling with his hands clasped neatly over his stomach, expression somehow simultaneously blank and completely devastated—like he’s deliberating how his life came to this.
You purse your lips to hold back a smile, inching closer to him. “Hey, handsome. Care to tell me what’s on your mind?”
He doesn’t even make a face at you calling him handsome in a teasing voice, and that’s how you know he’s really taken this whole thing to heart.
“I’m s’posed to be her favorite,” he says after a few seconds.
“You still are.” You sling a leg over his, wrapping an arm around his stomach. “You’re her dad. This is probably just a phase, and she’ll have lots of those.”
“I know,” he mutters as he turns to face you, though he still doesn’t meet your eyes. “Her world’ll only keep on getting bigger. I just thought…we had more time where it’s just us.”
His words hit you unexpectedly. You were too busy being amused at what you only saw as a cute father-daughter moment that you neglected to see it from his perspective. Your baby is growing up fast; becoming more and more perceptive, intelligent, and talkative everyday. Sometimes you and Katsuki struggle to keep up.
You can only pull your husband closer, and he follows easily, curling into you and tucking his head under your chin.
“I should just fucking kill Icyhot.” he says after a while of you just holding onto each other.
“Well, no.”
+
His misery ends a week later when you call him in the middle of his workday with an inconsolable Yuika in the background.
“She’s so tired that she’s cranky, but she won’t take a nap,” you explain as you try to hush your daughter gently.
He could hear Yuika’s cries from your end, but a cry of ‘papa’ tugs at his heart the most. “Can you put me on speaker?”
“You’re on.”
“Yuika,” he calls softly, and the crying lowers in volume, “What’s wrong?”
“Where are you, Papa?”
“I’m at work, baby,” he says even as he’s already standing up from his chair. The paperwork after a small mission can wait.
“When are you goin’ h-home?!”
Her little hiccups break his heart, and he’s already gearing to fly out his office window. He’ll send a message to one of his sidekicks once he gets home.
“Can you count to one hundred with Mama?”
“That’s too many!” her cries resume, “I don’ know all the numbers!”
“How ‘bout twenty, then?”
Yuika calms down a little. “I know how to do that…”
Praise for his precious daughter is on the tip of his tongue, but your voice interrupts him.
You’re about to say something else, but he ends the call. He knows he’ll pay for that later, but at least he’ll be home.
On the other end of the line, you heave out a sigh. Turning to Yuika, you say, “You heard Papa, we have to start counting.”
And so you do, just thankful that she at least has stopped crying for now.
At number fourteen, Katsuki bursts through the door, shedding his gauntlets at the entryway and pushing his mask up his face.
“Papa!” Yuika pushes herself off the couch, dropping her Shouto plush on the way.
You almost forgot she still had the thing in her hand this entire time, but you and Katsuki exchange a surprised glance when she doesn’t come back for it and instead runs to him as fast as her little legs could carry her.
Katsuki meets her halfway, crouching down and opening his arms. She slams her body onto him, and he wraps his arms around her. He coos at her as he stands up, murmuring soft words as he wipes at the tear tracks on her cheeks.
His eyes find the plush on the floor even as he consoles your kid, meeting yours right after.
“Burn it.” He mouths, pointing at the abandoned plush.
You frown at him, even as an amused smile threatens to break out.
“Tear the thing apart.” He motions a thumb across his neck. You only roll your eyes at him.
Yuika lifts up her face from his chest as she senses his movements, and his expression morphs into a softer one, like he wasn’t just threatening an inanimate object’s existence a split-second prior. He leans down to press a kiss on his baby’s forehead. “You want a snack?”
“‘Es please…”
“You have to take a nap after, though, okay?”
“Pomise,” Yuika nods.
Your husband crouches down, snapping up one of the many Dynamight plushies your daughter owns from her toy box, squeezing the thing in between their bodies. Yuika eagerly wraps one arm around it and the other around her dad’s neck. Katsuki grins, wide and triumphant as he walks with his daughter in his arms to the kitchen.
ive said it before but i'll say it again: i love how haikyuu presents these very scary antagonists to us only to very thoroughly defang them, so that by the time their lil team arc wraps up, we remember that at the end of the day theyre all just teenagers playing a sport that they love.
oh, grand king oikawa? gets dunked on by his teammates incredibly regularly, and whines about it. iron wall aone? very earnestly wants to be friends with hinata. stz cannon ushiwaka? volleyball idiot. daishou suguru the snake? extremely grateful his gf wants to give him a second chance. scary miya twins, bendy middle blocker suna, and top 5 ace aran? need their captain on court to calm down again lol.
it's so refreshing to pick up a shounen manga about teenagers and have the reminder that they are also just teenagers. instead of getting overinflated with stakes like so much shounen manga, sports or otherwise, haikyuu is such a real take on real life stakes. it feels bigger than life, and it is bigger than life--for some of those kids, volleyball becomes their life. but there's always more to them than just the game, and there's no true bad guy, and it always reminds us in the end that it's about the love of the sport, and the role sports can play in learning about how to take care of yourself, and building community. it's nice. :')
you’re going to love again, find a job again, create art again, do what you love again, feel powerful again. you’re going to be back on track. i don’t know when, but you are going to feel like yourself again, eventually. this isn’t the end. hang in there.
"never go through a writer's search history" and then it's just "synonyms for performance" "synonyms for walked" "synonyms for contrast" "synonyms for atmosphere" "synonyms for descend" "synonyms for split" "synonyms for enmesh"
My brother in law recently became a veterinarian and it has really driven the point home as to how fucking bonkers veterinary medicine is. We don't expect human physicians to really know much outside of their own specialty - a dentist, an otolaryngologist, and a maxillofacial surgeon are three totally different dudes. Meanwhile a veterinarian at a wildlife rehab center is doing orthopedic surgery on a hawk and then doing rounds on baby hedgehogs in the hedgehog NICU and administering antibiotics to a ratsnake. And he also knows how to perform surgical interventions on a cow! What the fuck! Those are all totally, wildly different kinds of animal!!
I always think about that one post that was like "how come the surviving doctors in zombie apocalypse stories are always veterinarians" and the reply "because veterinarians make 'not getting bitten by their patients' a core skill"
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
titsay
stormborns
