Dad!Bakugo is the king of emotional regulation and attentive parenting, literally from conception.
Mans has an entire shelf in his office dedicated to parenting books, in order of age and starting with pregnancy. Not too long after you give him a daughter with red eyes and dirty blonde hair, you pop into his office to see him leaned back in his recliner, holding her with one strong arm as she sleeps against his bare chest and reading a peaceful parenting book, barely shifting to flip the pages. He glances up at you, staring isn't very nice, mama, and you remark that you're just admiring the view. He sees you looking at the book and, unprompted, says I was a little terrorist growing up. There's a 50/50 chance that baby girl can end up with explosions, and I nearly leveled the house as a kid. If I can give her the head start I didn't have...
You do your best to teach her to communicate what she can using sign language and flash cards and teaching her everything you can so she can show you what hurts. When your daughter has her first tantrum, the both of you are ready.
Or at least…you think you are.
It happens in public when she's almost two, the three of you are at an event for heroes when she shows small signs of being frustrated. Katsuki kneels to try and see what she needs, and she pushes daddy's hands away, knocking herself onto her bottom as a result. Her lower lip quivers and the meltdown starts, crying and kicking her tiny feet and hands waving. Katsuki attempts to pick her up to soothe her, but it does nothing. She kicks and cries and yells and shoves, swats at you when you try to take her away, demands to be put down, stomps her feet until she falls again. People around the two of you begin to murmur about how she's just like her father, angry and explosive.
Katsuki, for the first time in his life, freezes in the face of a crisis. He looks near tears and defeated, as if he's failed your baby girl already, as if he's questioning his fitness to be a father because he doesn't know what she needs, and he feels like he should just know! He's her daddy! He's loved her from the minute he found out you were pregnant! He used to press his lips to your belly and sing in a soft baritone to her, he holds conversations with her while she babbles nonsense and he replies like the words were plain as day, surely he should know what she's communicating right now.
You turn to reprimand the onlookers behind you for judging a first time father and a toddler, when you suddenly recognize that she's not flailing. She's signing. You motion to Izuku to back the onlookers up, tell them to give your family room because they're witnessing a deeply personal moment.
You put a hand on your overwhelmed husband's chin, turn him to look at you, guide him through deep breaths while you gently stroke his cheek, subtly wiping frustrated tears of his own away before kissing the tip of his nose.
Look at your daughter, Katsuki. What do you see? Look at her hands. What is she telling us?
We're Bakugos. We can do anything. Just look at her. Take a deep breath and look at her.
Katsuki closes his eyes. Inhales. Exhales. Turns to his daughter and looks.
Her little feet are kicking and her little fists are rapidly tapping together, and he realizes it's a rhythm. tap tap. tap tap. tap tap. tap tap.
He looks at you in realization, turns to your child, is it your shoes? Do your shoes hurt? Do your feet hurt?
She continues to kickkickkick and Katsuki reaches forward to still one tiny foot, thumbs pressing at the toe. He turns to you, honey...her shoes. her shoes feel too tight. Her little toes have enough room, but what if her foot is too wide?
Katsuki pulls one Mary Jane shoe free, and the tantrum dwindles. Your daughter holds up the other foot with a soft whimper, teary eyes round as saucers as she looks at you. You pull the other shoe loose, and she stops kicking, still fussy. You sweep her up in your arms and sit on a nearby bench while Katsuki snatches her socks off too, looking at the sides of her feet to find them pinkish red and irritated.
How did we miss this? Katsuki whispers as he sets to rubbing your baby's feet, wiping them with aloe wipes, and kissing tiny toes until she giggles.
We didn't dress her this morning. You whisper back between singing to your daughter, Her grandparents did, and probably didn't notice. Accidents happen, baby. Nobody is perfect, but you handled this so perfectly.
He sits on the bench next to you, still gently rubbing your daughters feet. As her sobs stopped, she pulled at your shirt and Katsuki covered you with his jacket long enough for her latch to your breast before moving the jacket for her comfort.
As she nursed, she held his ring finger. The two of you softly sang to her, his gentle baritone matching your songbird soprano.
It's only love, they say,
She liked his eyes, she wanted more.
The baby's gonna have your smile for sure.
Heavy eyelids hid away ruby irises as you rocked her, ignoring flashing cameras in favor of looking up at your husband.
He saw a lovely girl, smelling sweet and soapy like fresh air.
She saw him looking, acting like she didn't care.
That's how we knew, and so love grew a flower.
The softest of snores fell from your daughter's lips, and you chose to carry her the three blocks to your house.
Every publication featured the two of you, especially Katsuki, singing to your daughter to soothe her. The headline? A photo of Katsuki kissing your forehead, hand on her head as she nursed herself to sleep, with the title
Your Daddy's Love Comes With A Lifetime Guarantee.
