Daddy's Little Girl
A one-shot by Ellipsis the Great
Summary: For a request on the Star Trek Kink Meme on Live Journal. 'Hikaru Sulu is a single father. His daughter was born before the movie, and he's allowed to take her with him on the Enterprise for the five year mission. And he's a great dad - he dotes on her, shows her off, and spends all his off-duty hours with sees this and his man-ovaries explode. He decides he wants a piece of that adoration (and it doesn't hurt that the kid is so cute and he just wants to cuddle her all the time). Cue awkward single father/eighteen year-old romance with a kid in the middle.' Sulu/Chekov
Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to J.J. Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, and all those other cool cats who own it. All I own is the plot!
Rating: T just in case
It starts with an angry knock on his door.
Well, actually, it all started nearly a year and a half before the knock on the door, with a one-night stand, but that's a different story. So we'll just focus on the knock.
Hikaru Sulu, who is celebrating his acceptance into Starfleet Academy with an extra-large pizza and a six-pack, has just popped the top on his first beer and is still waiting for his pizza to be delivered. Naturally, he assumes it is the pizza delivery guy.
He opens the door.
It isn't the pizza delivery guy.
Instead, it is a rather frumpy looking girl who he vaguely recognizes. She is pushing a stroller and carrying a huge baby bag, and turns a fierce glare on him as soon as the door opens.
"Um. Hi." He says. "The chick who babysits is down the hall." He points.
"Oh, that's cute." The woman says. "Look, bub, I can't do this anymore." She thrusts some papers at him. "I've signed away my rights as her mother. She's your problem, now."
And then she drops the baby bag and storms away.
Hikaru's mouth is hanging wide open as he looks over the papers—a birth certificate, legal documents, a list of the kid's favorite toys and foods.
Then he looks down at the stroller. The child that occupies it is sleeping, her little head turned to one side.
Even though he's not ready to be a father, and has always been a little iffy about the subject of kids, he's pretty sure he's already falling in love.
He looks back at the birth certificate.
"Alana." He says. "Alana Sulu."
Then she wakes up, looks around, and starts crying.
He decides that love can wait until after he calls his mother and begs for help.
(HAVE YOU DISENGAGED THE EXTERNAL INERTIAL PAGEBREAK?)
It takes a lot longer than Hikaru would like (three weeks), but eventually Alana decides she likes him and stops crying whenever she sees him. She also stops asking for her mama so much (they're down to once a day).
As he moves into the Academy dormitories, he can hear already people whispering about him behind his back. He's pretty sure most of them think she's his (much younger) little sister, and he doesn't bother correcting them. If there's one thing that having weird hobbies like fencing and botany has taught him, it's that people are gonna gossip and make up stories about you no matter how many times you try to explain, so you might as well just save your energy and let them talk.
A few people ask him, over the first few weeks of school, why his little sister is staying with them. And he doesn't lie; he tells them she's his daughter with an easy shrug, because she's quickly becoming the most important thing in his life (if she isn't already), and he isn't ashamed of her. A little embarrassed, sometimes, when someone catches him making googly faces at her to make her laugh.
He gets into a lot of trouble with her, at the beginning of the semester. He almost can't take his eyes off of her when she's awake, because she is damn fast for a toddler and likes trying to run away, so he ends up playing with her until she's finally exhausted and falls asleep. By then he's usually ready to pass out, himself, so sometimes he does, which means he doesn't do the homework or reading he needs to have done by tomorrow. His professors, who have seen his previously spotless record, are concerned when he comes a little too close to failing for comfort.
His advisor advises him to send her home to live with his mother. He tells his advisor to shove it, because his baby girl has already been abandoned by one parent and he sure as hell isn't going to make her go through that again.
Eventually, he puts her in a nearby daycare. She panics, at first, and breaks his heart with her crying after him as he leaves, but eventually she realizes that he is always going to come back for her, and settles down.
Of course, none of this helps his social life. His fellow cadets already think he's weird thanks to the fencing and botany (which he can only keep up with because most plants aren't nearly as demanding as his daughter, and because Alana is the best fencing spectator he's ever had). Add to that the fact that he can hardly wait to get out of classes and do his homework and go pick up his baby girl (that last is something not many of them know about), and most of his peers think he's some nerdy, anti-social whiz kid.
And it bothers him, sometimes. Of course it bothers him. Back before Alana had literally been dropped into his life, he had imagined what Academy life would be like. He had imagined girlfriends, and sex, and bar-hopping, and passing out on someone's couch, and waking up with penises drawn on his face, and any other number of things. And he wants that, sometimes, so badly that his heart hurts.
But then Alana looks up at him and smiles and holds her hands up and says 'Daddy, up!' and those things just don't matter, anymore. It seems silly to want anything other than this beautiful, perfect baby girl who thinks he hung the moon.
Anyhow, it's not like he's completely unsocial. When people talk to him, he's friendly and polite. And every once in a while he gives into temptation and hires a babysitter so he can go out and be a Cadet with the rest of them.
For now, that's enough.
(HAVE YOU DISENGAGED THE EXTERNAL INERTIAL PAGEBREAK?)
Three years later. The Narada happens. Hikaru doesn't dare tell anyone that the reason he forgets to disengage the external inertial dampener is that he's worrying over his daughter, whose daycare center isn't expecting him not to show up at the usual time. And he can't tell Kirk or Chekov that his only thought while he is fighting those Romulans and then flying through the air is that 'Oh, God, I can't leave Alana all alone.' He does forget himself long enough to pull Chekov into an enthusiastic hug once they're back on board the Enterprise, though, and thanks him awkwardly after pulling away.
Chekov, he discovers, has a very nice smile and looks ridiculously cute when he's embarrassed.
But there's no time for that, because suddenly they're flying all over the galaxy, going from captains to acting captains to acting acting captains, and then they've destroyed the Narada and saved the world.
God, it feels good.
But not as good as landing. Seeing all of the cheering crowds as they disembark. And then…
"Daddy!"
He sees Dr. McCoy's head snap up (oh, that's right, McCoy has a little girl, too), but he would know that voice anywhere.
"Alana?" He says, and then she comes barreling out of the crowd and throws herself at him. He scoops her up into his arms and holds her as tightly as he dares.
"Daddy, I missed you!" Alana says, burying her face in the crook of his neck.
"I missed you, too, Little Bit!" He says as he kisses the top of her head. "Were you good for Miss Yolanda?"
She nods vigorously. "Daddy, did you really save the whole wide world? Me and Miss Yolanda was watching the news and they said you did!"
"Well, I helped," says he, blushing modestly, "but—"
"Lieutenant! Lieutenant Sulu!" Chekov is waving to get Hikaru's attention, a smile on his face that is a mile wide. It dims a little when he sees Alana, which makes Hikaru frown. "A-and who is this?"
"This is my daughter, Alana. Alana, this is Ensign Pavel Chekov."
Alana waves so quickly Hikaru fears for a moment that her little hand will fall off. "Hiya, Mr. Babble!"
"Pavel, sweetie." Hikaru corrects her gently.
She giggles. "Pebble?"
"Pavel."
"My friends call me Pasha." Chekov says. There is a strange, almost…disappointed? light in his eyes, even though he's smiling. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Alana."
"You, too!" She chirps. "Did you really save my daddy? The news people said you did! How did you do it? Miss 'Landa says you grabbed him right out of the air! But you look awful small, so I think she's wrong. Did you use a net?"
Chekov can't seem to keep himself from laughing, and Hikaru can feel some of the tension draining out of his shoulders. "I used a transporter."
Her eyes widen. At this age, she thinks that all big words must be for something amazing. "What's a transporter?"
"It is a machine that instantly takes a person from one place to another without them having to move themselves." Chekov explains.
"Oooh." She says, awe-stricken. "And you made it work all by yourself?"
Chekov nods.
"Wow! You must be real smart, Mr. Pasha!" She says.
"Why, thank you. I believe you must be very smart as well." Chekov says. He reaches up, then pauses and looks at Hikaru like he's asking for permission to do something. Hikaru cocks his head to one side, part permission and part curiosity, and smiles when Chekov ruffles Alana's hair. "Where is your mama?"
"I don't gots a mommy." Alana says, and kisses Hikaru's cheek soundly. "Just Daddy!"
"Just?" Hikaru asks, feigning injury, but he is watching Chekov out of the corner of his eye. Here it comes, the part where Chekov…relaxes?
"Oh, I see." Chekov says. His smile is genuine, now, like someone flipped a switch. "I bet he is a very good Papa."
"He's the best Daddy in the whole wide universe!" Alana says.
"The whole wide universe?" Chekov repeats, and lets out an impressed whistle.
"Mhm!" And, in a move that causes Hikaru's eyebrows to shoot up towards his hairline, she reaches her arms out to Chekov.
The two men exchange a glance, and warily Hikaru lets Chekov take her out of his arms. His arms feel terribly empty once she's gone.
"Thanks for saving Daddy, Mr. Pasha!" Alana says, kissing his cheek and hugging his neck. Then she squirms until he lets her down and wraps herself around Hikaru's legs.
Hikaru laughs and pats her head. "Alright, Al, let's go." He looks sheepishly at Chekov. "We need to get going. I gotta pay the woman who runs her daycare and start packing all of our stuff for the five-year mission."
Chekov nods. "Yes, I must also pack. Do not forget that we must report to the auditorium tomorrow morning for our official graduation."
"Right. Thanks." Hikaru says. "I'll, uh, see you there. I guess."
"Yes." Chekov says.
Hikaru turns, grabbing his daughter's hands as she positions herself on his feet. "To the daycare!"
"Daycare!" Alana cheers.
As they are about to get into Miss Yolanda's car (bless the woman, she already has all of Alana's things from the daycare packed and ready to go), he looks back at where Chekov is still standing. The younger man has an almost fond little smile on his face that stretches wide when he realizes Hikaru is looking at him. Chekov waves cheerfully, then turns and trounces away.
Hikaru smiles, shakes his head, and buckles Alana into her car seat.
(HAVE YOU DISENGAGED THE EXTERNAL INERTIAL PAGEBREAK?)
Life on the Enterprise after the start of the five year mission is much the same and much changed in comparison to his life before it (but after Alana).
He still dotes on his daughter during every waking moment that he isn't spending on the clock. Still hardly has time for fencing and botany. Still doesn't have much time to spend socializing.
The difference is that people don't wait for him to have time to socialize with them. Instead, they invite him to join them for activities that are child-friendly, like watching (G-rated or heavily censored) TV, or playing games (excluding, of course, drinking games or games that involve stripping for stakes). And no one says anything about him being a single father. Or, at least, they don't say it to his face. Especially not after Chekov (innocent, sweet little Ensign Chekov) reams a pair of gossiping engineering ensigns out for it in the mess hall one day, so angry that he switches back and forth between heavily accented Standard and Russian without seeming to realize what he's doing.
And then Dr. McCoy hypo's the pair of them with something they're apparently mildly allergic to, if the sudden outbreak of hives is anything to go by, and tells them he won't give them an epidural until they either apologize or agree to babysitting duty so they can see just how hard it is to take care of a kid all by yourself.
"It's darn near impossible with two parents, you ignorant little twits." McCoy snarls, and everyone there can hear the cuss words he is carefully censoring lest Alana, whose eyes are wide as she watches the proceedings, decide they're words she wants to repeat. "And Lieutenant Sulu, bless his heart, has to do it by himself on top of all of the stuff he's gotta do to keep this sorry hunk of scrap metal flying! So you'll show him the respect he deserves, or you'd better hope you don't end up in my sickbay anytime soon!"
The ensigns apologize, of course. But people seem to take McCoy's threat seriously (not to mention Chekov's, for all that it is anyone's guess what all he had said), and the gossip ends whenever someone sensitive to Hikaru's situation (which, Hikaru comes to discover over the next few weeks, is a surprisingly large percentage of the ship) is within earshot. And several people approach Hikaru offering to babysit for him during shore leaves, so that he can go 'hang out with the boys,' as it were.
Hikaru turns most of them down, because he doesn't mind taking Alana down with him, and heaven knows she deserves some time planet-side, too. Plus, he doesn't want to leave her with a lot of different people. It still takes her a long time to get used to new people, and he's afraid that introducing her to too many people all at once will frighten her.
Chekov—who quickly turns into Pavel, and then Pasha—is the glaringly obvious exception to all of this. Hikaru had figured Alana only liked him that first day because he saved her father's life. Hikaru was wrong.
Heck, if Hikaru's honest, Pasha's been a Godsend. Alana straight up adores Pasha, who seems to lap up her attention and return it ten-fold, his doting only outmatched by Hikaru's. Hikaru is close to adoring him, himself, because sometimes when they aren't sharing a shift, he'll come back to his room to find Pasha teaching Alana how to make some obscure Russian dish. And sometimes Alana's taking her nap, and Pasha is sprawled out on the floor beside her bed, a PADD on his chest that he had obviously been reading to her before they fell asleep.
And then there are the times when their roles are reversed—Pasha stops by the room to make sure Hikaru isn't staying up too late working on something after Alana has fallen asleep. Or they run into each other as one of them is returning from shore leave and the other is about to start theirs, and Pasha gives him this look…it's somewhere between complete adulation and something a little…darker. It makes Hikaru's heart stutter a bit, and there's this tendril of something that sends a shiver up his back. But it gets thrown to a backburner when Nurse Chapel (one of the only people Hikaru trusts his daughter with) steps into the transporter room with a wriggling Alana in her arms.
Things stay like that for a while. A long while. Alana's fourth and fifth birthdays come and go. Their first and second Christmases on the Enterprise. Alana's first loose tooth—and hadn't that been fun, with everyone and their brother giving Alana advice on how best to get it out, and Pasha saying that of course Hikaru got to play the tooth fairy this time, but please oh please can't he do it next time?
And then one day—one completely normal, boring day—Hikaru looks at Pasha and knows, without any doubt in his mind, that Pasha wants to kiss him. And he, God help him, wants to kiss Pasha.
It scares him. It thrills him. It makes him pull back for a little while. He tries to distance himself, because he has to think of Alana first, not himself. She likes Pasha, yeah…but does she like him enough to consider her his second daddy?
And, Jesus, Pasha is so young, himself. Sure, he's good with her, now, but what about when he gets older? When he sees all of the stuff he's missing out on because he has to put her first (all of the stuff Hikaru is missing out on, but he can't think like that, he can't)?
Besides, there's no guarantee that they will even make it that far. Hikaru knows quite well—from observing it in others (like his parents and Dr. McCoy) if not from personal experience—that sometimes having a 'spark' doesn't mean shit about how long a relationship will last. He can't…he can't go through heartbreak, himself. He's seen what it does to people. What it makes them do. He won't risk putting Alana through that.
And then there's the day he overhears Alana calling Pasha 'Papa' while she's too tired to censor herself. But she wakes up, fast, and blushes and takes it back while Pasha grins a mile wide and tells her it's perfectly okay with him as long as it's perfectly okay with Hikaru.
They both look up at him, standing in the doorway from where his shift has just ended.
He can't stop the smile that comes to his face. "It's perfectly okay with me." He says, and his eyes meet Pasha's and he doesn't even try to pull them away because Pasha's face lights up and it's one of the most beautiful things Hikaru has ever seen.
So they tuck her in, together. This can't be the first time they've both tucked her in at the same time, but it feels like it is. Hikaru kisses her on the forehead, and Pasha pats her head like he wants to do the same but is holding back.
"I have the best dads in the whole wide universe." Alana mutters, smiling sleepily at them, and then rolls over, asleep and snoring almost immediately.
Hikaru looks at Pasha—that grin is still lighting up his face, and it makes Hikaru grab his hand and pull him out of the room and press him against a wall (not the one that connects to his daughter's room, of course) and kiss him, chaste at first but increasingly passionate and long when he realizes that Pasha is kissing him back.
"I thought maybe you did not like me." Pasha gasps out when they finally part. They are both breathing hard, like they don't know how to breathe and kiss at the same time, and maybe Pasha doesn't but Hikaru does, and doesn't that just say volumes about the whole situation?
"Yeah." Hikaru says, then blinks and shakes his head. "I mean, no…I mean, I do like you. But I…I mean, I've gotta…"
"You must think of your daughter, first." Pasha says, reaching up and putting a hand on his cheek. "I understand. That is why I have stopped myself from kissing you until now."
For reasons he can't explain even to himself, Hikaru thinks that's the sexiest thing anyone's ever said to him. So he captures Pasha's mouth in his again, and Pasha chuckles against his lips. This second kiss is even better than the first—so are the fourth, fifth, and sixth kisses, and by that point they are stumbling across the apartment to Hikaru's bedroom.
Hikaru thinks they probably would have had sex (it's too soon to say 'made love,' isn't it?) right then, and he's pretty sure it would have been amazing, and he's positive he wouldn't have regretted a second of it. But just as he's dragging Pasha's shirt over his head, kissing the gangly chest as it's revealed to him, there is a soft knock on the door.
The two men freeze and try to exchange a glance, which as it turns out is pretty much impossible through the material of Pasha's shirt. So Hikaru jumps away and Pasha stuffs his shirt back down just as the door opens hesitantly and a teary Alana pokes her head in.
"Daddy?" She whimpers, and sees the two of them. "Papa? I had a nightmare."
"Aw, Al." Hikaru says.
"Can I sleep in here with you guys?" She asks, sniffling.
This time their eyes connect, Hikaru's wide and startled, Pasha's inquisitive. After a moment that seems to last a lot longer than it probably does, Hikaru puts a hand on Pasha's shoulder and squeezes.
"Of course you can, sweetie." Hikaru says, and can't help but smile when Alana darts into the room and jumps onto the bed. "Just let us get changed."
Without either of them deciding anything out loud, Pasha borrows a set of Starfleet issue pajamas and goes to the bathroom to slip them on while Hikaru puts on the plaid, non-Starfleet issue pajama bottoms that are all he ever sleeps in.
By the time Pasha gets back, Hikaru and Alana are already curled up in bed. Alana is already asleep, but Hikaru watches him as he crawls into the bed on Alana's other side.
Their hands meet somewhere in the middle, fingers twining together.
Hikaru thinks that maybe, just maybe, things are gonna go wonderfully.
The End
A/N: Like I said, this is for a request on the Star Trek Kink Meme on Live Journal (which you can find here: http(colon)(backslash)(backslash)community(dot)livejournal(dot)com/st_xi_kink_?thread=13198544#t13198544). I don't know that it's exactly what the prompt asked for, but hopefully everyone enjoys it, anyhow!
Love you guys! See ya next!
-EtheG