#unless.......

gavin, who coughs up the first flower petal and holds it in the palm of his hand, glares at it, and crushes it in his fist. for good measure, he drops it on the ground and scuffs it into the concrete with his boot, pulverizing it into a mere red smear on the ground. he feels petals wilting in his lungs when he inhales nicotine smoke, thin edges scorched and blackened like aged paper. thorns scrape against his ribcage and threaten to escape their prison. it hurts like hell, but it's a pain he'd prefer over the alternative.

at least this pain isn't as relentless.

nines, who coughs up the second flower petal and stares at it in abject horror, fear of the organic thing that is somehow surviving- no, thriving- in an artificial host. fear of what it means. he can always feel the flower's ungovernable roots stretching deep into his chest, vines weaving between his chassis and constricting his thirium pump like a python - threatening to swallow him whole. at first, his systems adamantly report a foreign object lodged deep within his body, but with time, the warnings fade as his code accepts the plant as its own. plastic and chloroplast become one and the same. nines knows the plant has made its home in his chest.

he won't risk uprooting it.

You spend hours convincing Katsuki that it's gonna be okay, nothing is gonna happen to baby, it's fine.

Then baby cries as soon as you both go to leave and Katsuki breaks hard.

He spends the day parked outside the kindergarten some days making sure his baby is okay 😭

You know how sometimes the parent has to stay for a little bit once class time actually starts just because the kid won't calm down? There's Kat with your weepy baby in his lap during opening ceremony, see; days of the week song and counting to ten, red faced n trying to hold back his own tears LMFAO because he honestly doesn't want to leave either.

(You ask him about it later, and he's defending himself with: what if something goes wrong? They don't like the lunch that's provided, or trip and fall in the unfamiliar hallways? Or god forbid, the teacher's an asshole and takes it out on the students???

Not that he hadn't already went overboard when you were looking at schools, vetting the program and reaching out to all the teachers to make sure they were exactly what he was looking for before even thinking about enrolling baby)

It's only when activity time actually starts that baby finally, finally pulls away from him when some kids ask yours to play with them, giving dad one last hug before shyly joining their circle and picking up a block.

AND there Bakugo is, crying on the way to the car and then low? high? key sobbing once you're in because your kid chose some "lil extras" to play with instead of continuing to cling onto him, which you have to remind him is actually a good thing, that other kids wanted to play with your child LMFAO.