A/N: I really have no business doing this to myself. Gods above…
So this was never supposed to turn into a serial or anything like that. It was supposed to be a oneshot and that was that. But my mind said no. And so, what was a oneshot has now become a serial called For All Seasons. The first installment has been edited very slightly to add a summary and individual rating for "The Tradition" itself, so you can go back to check that out if you really want to, but it isn't a major change.
This came to me as I was walking the dog one night and contemplating the fact that The Nutcracker—one of my favorite ballets—is going to be playing in my neck of the woods very soon. Actually, a show will be happening the weekend of my birthday week, and I've been toying with the idea of going. (As it happens, I will be going; it's the only thing I told my mother I wanted for my birthday, and she bought tickets for us two to go, since the Baby Gator and Brother will be celebrating their anniversary that night. So, yay Hack Mom, lol.)
Anyway. In different parts of the country, they start playing The Nutcracker in either late November or early December, so I thought, "Huh, I bet I could do a oneshot for this for the Everlong 'verse."
And then, this happened. Sigh.
So this is probably (definitely) going to become a serial based around the celebration of certain holidays that, at least in my book, were never better than when you were still a kid and magic was totally real. This one isn't precisely attached to any holiday—it's in between them, actually—but it's shaded by two, Christmas and Thanksgiving, that are also dear to me. This one is actually a birthday fic (which is funny because today is my birthday, lol), and when you're a kid, your birthday definitely counts as a holiday. :D
(An aside: I was actually going to try to finish this and post it on Thanksgiving, and then that didn't happen [clearly]. So I decided to finish and post it by the date in this story, but I had three papers to write for the end of my semester—two 8-9 pagers, and one monster 15 pager—and this week and last week, if it didn't have to do with my papers, I didn't give it the time of day. An-aside-within-an-aside: I have never read so many books in such a short period of time. Don't make the mistake of asking me what I read, though, you'll just get a blank look.)
So this installment switches gears to the other side of the main cast, which was unintentional, and not at all an indication of the pattern in which these will be posted (i. e., first Tokio, then Saitou, then Tokio, etc). In fact, the next one after this is going to stick with this particular cast, just a head's up. This one is set—purely by coincidence, mind—in the same year as the previous one. Misao has just turned nine, Saitou is 34, and they are a little less than two years away from Saitou and Yaso's divorce.
So there you are. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Not mine, not now, not ever.
Words To Watch Out For:
Ballon: the appearance of being lightweight and light-footed while jumping. It describes the quality, not the height or speed, of a jump. It is a desirable aesthetic in ballet and other dance genres, making it seem as though a dancer effortlessly becomes airborne, floats in the air, and lands softly.
Ballon
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Rating: K+…for the KILLER FATHER-DAUGHTER FLUFF
Genre: Family Fluff/Humor
Summary: Because birthdays aren't just cake and presents; there's a certain magic there too.
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November 30, 2001
Misao Saitou glanced up from her coloring book to look at the back of her father's head for the tenth time in as many minutes, before once again going back to her coloring book, fairly vibrating with excitement.
Tonight was a Big Girl night, and it was just her and her father, because her parents had gotten into another one of their infamous rows and weren't speaking.
This now made a full month of glacial silence between her parents.
Misao decided that made a new record.
"We're almost there," her father said from the front seat, and Misao grinned and clasped her hands together excitedly, sure she was going to burst with delight.
Since she had been six, Misao had gone to dance class. Her mother had enrolled her in modern dance, just like Yaso had learned when she'd been younger, and Misao had been pleased enough with it…until she had had the chance to see a ballet class.
It had been love at first sight, and Misao had begged her mother to switch her. Yaso had been less pleased with the development and, her father had later explained, hurt that Misao had wanted to change.
"Mommy's sad because she wants you to learn dance like she did when she was your age," he said.
"But I wanna be a ballerina!" Misao wailed, crying full-on at that point, face red and snot dripping.
"Stop crying then," he said, amused, as he dug into his pocket for the pack of tissues he carried around with him for moments just like these. "No one likes soggy ballerinas."
"Will you make Mommy put me in ballet class, Dad?" she asked, sniffling with fat drops still leaking out of her eyes as he mopped up her face.
"I'll talk to Mommy about it," was the noncommittal answer, in her father's typically noncommittal style.
Another fight (or three) had broken out, but once the dust had settled, Misao had gotten her way, and she had ecstatically begun ballet class no less than five months after she'd been bitten by the bug. Yaso had been bitterly disappointed, but she dutifully attended each performance Misao had danced in. Her father, on the other hand, was much more pleased with how things had gone, and didn't mind dropping her off at practice and picking her up, since the studio wasn't that far from where he worked as a professor at Stanford University.
They had sort of bonded over ballet. Misao had known instinctively not to talk about what she'd learned in ballet class to her mother. That only left her father, so he became her one-man audience after class by default, but Misao never really minded all that much. Her father was generally more tolerant of her interests than Yaso was, and rarely patronizing, which Misao appreciated; when her father said she was doing well and learning a lot, he really meant it.
Tonight was a particular treat for Misao: Saitou had gotten tickets to a one night only performance of The Nutcracker, which Misao had danced in only once (as a mouse), but never been able to really see. It was different, dancing in the show; sure you saw it, but you rarely got to enjoy it, because other things are constantly going on around you, and you weren't allowed to clutter up the stage wings or sneak out to the sidelines to watch there. She'd only ever seen it up close, and seen pictures from shows that the New York City Ballet had done, and from the film version of The Nutcracker Macaulay Culkin had starred in the year she was born—in fact, she had the book on the seat next to her, and she had browbeat Saitou into letting her take it to the ballet with her, because she wanted to compare the pictures to the performance in real time. Her father hadn't put up nearly the fight she had anticipated, and she thought it might be because tonight was supposed to be her birthday present and he just wanted to ensure smooth sailing.
A few of her friends at school had thought it was weird that her father was giving her a night at the ballet as a birthday present, and Misao had—after getting offended and having a fight with one of her friends who had been particularly judgmental—grudgingly agreed that it probably was weird…on the outside. But Misao understood her father very well, and Hajime Saitou had never treated her like a child once a day in her life. Her father always treated her like an adult, always talked to her like an adult, so Misao had gotten used to having rather startlingly grown-up-in-tone conversations with her father. The result had been a vocabulary that was unusually advanced for her age and an ability to occasionally correct adults on their current events, which always embarrassed the adult, amused her father, and mystified Misao.
Her father was a difficult man to get close to. He was prickly, abrupt and temperamental, but Misao pretty much adored him because of those personality defects rather than in spite of them. He wasn't "Daddy," who could French braid her hair or do animal voices for bedtime stories; he was "Dad," who could get her out of modern dance class and teach her how to insult someone without getting into (too much) trouble with her teacher. In light of that, Misao wouldn't trade her father in for anything.
His skills were way more practical than other dads', as far as she was concerned.
Coloring became a distant memory as soon as Misao saw the performing arts center, lit up like a Christmas tree, and she happily shoved her crayons and coloring book aside to—carefully—get up on her knees in the seat so she could press her face against the window and watch the concert hall get bigger and bigger the closer they got to it.
"Misao, sit in your seat like a person," her father said irritably.
"We're here!" she breathed against the window, fogging her view.
"Sit down, or you're wiping the hand- and forehead-prints off the window when we get home," he warned, and she wrinkled her nose, but once more sat in her seat and smoothed out wrinkles from the skirt of her dress.
He had to threaten her with cleaning the window two more times to get her to stay seated until he had parked in the lot, and by the time Saitou had handed her out of the car and set her down on the ground Misao was shaking like an excited puppy, and babbling in triple time:
"I was reading that the prima ballerina's Russian, Dad, and she's been a ballerina since she was even younger than me—did you know that only the prima ballerina's supposed to be called a ballerina, 'cause that means you're the best, an' everyone else's supposed to be called a dancer, 'cause their not as good?—but that's only in France, I think, so maybe in Russia it's different, 'cause France is France an' Russia's Russia—did you know The Nutcracker's Russian, Dad, and it was some guy with a funny name—"
"Breathe," Saitou ordered as he knelt before her to fix her coat, and Misao obediently took in a deep breath, then blew it out and sent her father's bangs dancing and made her giggle.
He rolled his eyes, then said, tugging her collar into order, "The composer was Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky."
"I can't say it like you can," she admitted.
"I gathered," he said dryly. "What else do you know about it?"
Misao beamed at him. "It's pretty old," she said, speaking at a less frenzied pace now. "And it wasn't popular until the mid-twentieth century, which I don't know what that means, but that's what I read."
"Ballpark it to anywhere from the late 1940s to the 1960s," Saitou advised. "Gives you wiggle room."
"Okay," Misao agreed with a nod. "You got the tickets, right Dad?"
"Right. Ready?"
"Duh," Misao said, rolling her eyes, and Saitou made an "Of course" sort of gesture that managed to convey more sarcasm than saying the actual words would have.
"All right—hold my hand until we get to our seats," he said, rising to his full height and offering his gloved palm.
Misao cheerfully tucked her own gloved hand into his and they made their way from the lot to the Greater Stanford Performing Arts Center. Once they got into the crowd, Saitou decided he liked the idea of carrying her better than holding her hand, so Misao ended up with the best view of everything, especially since her father was almost a head taller than most of the people there.
The hall made Misao's eyes widen and her mouth tighten into a small "o"; it was the biggest room she had ever seen, surpassing even the lecture halls her father taught in. And the seats were much nicer, the cushions covered in pretty red velvet fabric that was set in ornately carved frames. The carpet was equally impressive, dark and decorated with fancy swirls in gold and red tones that looked like pretty, stylized flames in the ambient lighting. The stage was enormous, the orchestra pit equally so, and Misao felt sudden envy of the people lucky enough to be up in the balconies and the second level…until she saw how close to the stage their seats were…and that they were dead center.
The only way Misao could have been closer to the stage or the orchestra was if she was sitting right on top of either.
"Thank you, Dad," she said, hugging him around the neck, since he was still carrying her.
"You haven't even seen the ballet yet, Misao," he said, amused. "It might be terrible."
"Our seats are still better than everyone else's," she said loftily, and he smirked and squeezed her.
"For better or worse," he said. "You're welcome, Weasel."
She smiled and laid her head on his shoulder while they waited for the couple in front of them to get settled so they could get to their own seats.
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Misao was so entranced by the ballet that her copy of the book she had been planning to compare notes with lay unopened in her lap until the intermission.
"What do you think so far?" Saitou asked her as the house lights came back on.
"It's the most prettiest thing I've ever seen," Misao said dreamily, and a woman sitting near them laughed into her fist.
"Yeah? How about just the prettiest?" Saitou asked, smirking.
"That too," Misao assured with a sigh.
"How's it stack up against your book?" he asked, tapping the hardcover in her lap, and Misao snorted, then stuck her nose up into the air.
"Real life's way better than some book," she said, and Saitou laughed quietly under his breath.
"Getting snobby in your expertise, there, Weasel?" he teased, giving her braid a gentle tug.
"Marie Belova's pretty, right, Dad?" Misao asked, leaning her head against his arm.
"Sure," he replied.
"You think her hair's really that blond?" Misao wondered.
"Could be."
"Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"Can you pretend to be interested in talking about the prima ballerina's hair?"
"Yes."
His easy acquiescence made her immediately suspicious, and Misao's forehead crinkled up in thought until it occurred to her that she had not asked precisely the question she had meant to:
"Will you pretend to be interested?" she asked finally, looking up at him.
"Not a chance, Weasel."
"Nuts," Misao mumbled, pouting. "Whaddaya think Mommy's doing right now?"
"Terrorizing a small village," Saitou muttered, though not quite low enough for Misao not to hear.
She ignored it; whenever her parents were in a fight, there was a lot of muttering from her father that might or might not be aspersions on his wife's general character, but he was generally discreet.
Yaso, however, was not, and Misao had heard a few choice complaints about her father over the years that, though she did not understand the majority of them, she had gathered were not good things mostly by her mother's tone and facial expression.
"She's probably out with her friends, if she isn't at home, enjoying the peace and quiet," Saitou said finally. "Mommy works pretty hard, so she enjoys it when she gets to be alone and do whatever she wants."
"Too bad she doesn't like ballet," Misao decided, rubbing her cheek thoughtfully against the arm of her father's suit jacket. "She's missing out on the prettiest show ever."
"Ballet doesn't speak to everyone," Saitou said, shrugging the shoulder of the arm she wasn't leaning against. "So does the fact that you're trying to not-so-subtly slide into my lap mean you'd like to sit with me?"
"Maybe," Misao hedged, eyeing him, and he raised an eyebrow. "Yes."
"Are you going to fall asleep? 'Cause that really wasn't the point of this little outing."
"I'm not even the tiniest little bit tired," she assured, then pinned him with a hopeful look. "So I can sit with you?"
"Sure," he said with a put-upon sigh, and Misao cheerfully abandoned her own seat to make herself comfortable in her father's lap.
Their coats and Misao's book had to be shifted around to reside in her seat for it to work, but by the time the house lights began signaling that the intermission was over and it was time for those patrons who had gotten up to head back to their seats, Misao was quite happily ensconced in her father's lap, eagerly flipping through the program booklet to see what was coming next and reading it aloud to her father, who dutifully listened and corrected her when necessary.
All in all, no different than any other night, with perhaps the exception of the venue.
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Misao persevered against the urge to fall asleep through the whole last act out of sheer, stubborn bullheadedness, but it was a hard fight: Saitou was warm and comfortable and familiar, and Misao was content enough with all of that that falling asleep in her father's lap was an attractive prospect.
But the desire to see the end of a professional production of The Nutcracker was stronger, and by the time of the curtain call, she was clapping—less enthusiastically than she would have been even an hour earlier, but darn it, she was still clapping—and vaguely wishing she had thought to ask her father if they could buy flowers to present to the dancers when she noticed some people in the audience had flowers in hand.
It was sort of a sleepy blur after that, until Misao found herself being carried in her father's arms, her head on his shoulder and her book tucked under his arm, as they followed the crowd out of the hall.
"It was the prettiest Nutcracker ever," she murmured sleepily.
"I thought so too," he replied, absently rubbing her back through the coat she didn't remember him bundling her into.
The air was chillier on the walk to the parking lot than it had been earlier, and Misao snuggled closer to her father, trying to stay warm.
"How you doing, Weasel?" he asked.
"Sleepy," she said, voice muffled by his coat.
"I see that."
Everything had a strange, dreamy cast to it, and Misao lamented the lack of snow to complete the sense that something magical was at work.
It'd be just like The Nutcracker if it was snowing, she thought, rubbing her cheek against her father's coat.
When they got to the car, he sat her down in the backseat, buckled her in, then helped her lay down so that she was still buckled but also somewhat comfortable, then covered her with the blanket he kept in the backseat pretty much solely for when she fell asleep on long car trips.
Misao was vaguely aware of her father's ministrations, of the soft, barely there pressure of the fleeting kiss he dropped on the top of her head before he shut the back door and went to the driver's side. She snuggled under the blanket, eyes closed, drifting between waking and sleeping, the memory of all she'd seen tonight flitting through her mind like so much ephemera.
She felt almost weightless, like she could float away, and she decided that this must be what happiness feels like.
"Daddy?" she called.
"Yeah?" came her father's deep cadence over the low whoosh of the heater.
"It was the prettiest birthday ever."
"You're welcome Misao," her father said after a moment, and Misao smiled and allowed herself to drift off to sleep, content with the world.