Author's note: Thank you again for reading, everyone! From here on, I'm going 100% rogue with Omegaverse headcanon, with only throwbacks to canon. Hope you like anyway! Xx

SEVEN YEARS LATER

It was a world in which passions took hold without warning, paying little mind to reason. But it was also a world in which, sometimes, reason and passion combined. Where they went hand-in-hand, each overwriting the shortcomings of the other as neatly as yin and yang, healed the pain of the past, and created entirely new worlds, all in just seven years.

'Look, look! Touchan, look what I drew!'

Doumeki glanced down just as Aoi began tugging on his pants. She didn't relent even when she had his attention.

'Touchan, you're not looking!'

'I am,' he insisted gently.

He put the last dish on the rack, turned off the taps and dried his hands. He then took the drawing out of Aoi's hands. At first he couldn't focus on the lines and colours on the page because he was distracted, yet again, by Aoi's bright, expectant gaze. Her cheeks were slightly flushed and her eyes, so like Yashiro's, were now wide with anticipation. Her fair hair had fallen out of her ponytail in her rush to show her father her latest creation.

She was only seven, but it was already clear that she was going to be a beauty.

And as proud as Doumeki was of that fact, it also made him extremely nervous. He already had a vague idea of the anxiety that awaited him as the father of a teenage daughter who had stolen Yashiro's looks. During more paranoid moments, he wished he had retained a gun or two from his Yakuza days to scare away suitors. He thanked the gods that she hadn't been born an Omega, at least.

'Touchan!' Aoi complained, her face falling a bit. 'You're not looking at the drawing!'

'Sorry.'

He lifted the sheet of paper again. It was a carefully constructed drawing of her fathers, both with round, heavy heads and overlarge eyes. Doumeki was wearing an apron and frowning at a cake that appeared to be drooping out the sides of the tin. And Yashiro was sitting at the kitchen table, his hair bright yellow, laughing.

Doumeki felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.

Aoi beamed. Each time she drew that small, gentle smile from her father, she knew she had done well indeed. It felt like a better reward than any praise or even the gold stars her teachers gave her.

'It's very good,' Doumeki said sincerely. Aoi had also written 'Oyaji and Touchan' in large writing along the top.

'You're bad at baking,' Aoi said happily, in place of thanks.

Doumeki put it up on the fridge beneath a magnet, beside some of the other drawings she had done.

'You're just as good as your aunt,' he said, wondering again about that little coincidence, given that Aoi didn't have any blood relation with his sister. 'You could have your own room in a gallery too, one day.'

'You named me after her, huh, Touchan?' she said as she raised her arms, hoping to be picked up. He obliged.

'Mm,' he said. He stared at Aoi's multiple renderings of Yashiro. 'You're really good at drawing Oyaji. He's smiling just like he does in real life.'

'Yup,' Aoi agreed proudly.

Then she remembered something and she grew uncharacteristically sober.

'He's not smiling much today, though,' she said.

Doumeki looked at her in surprise. From what he had seen, Yashiro had done a good job of keeping it from the children. But Aoi's intuition was obviously keener than either of them had expected. And if she had picked up on it, then it was almost guaranteed that her younger brother, Sotaro, would have noticed too.

Earlier that day, Yashiro had waited to pick up Sotaro from preschool. Suit jacket draped over his shoulder, he leaned against the lamppost in the courtyard outside and reached for a cigarette. He was conscientiously avoiding the blushing gaze of the tall, sort-of-handsome divorcee who sat on a bench nearby, fidgeting. Yashiro smiled at the ground, pleased to find that even at forty-two, even after having two children, he clearly still had it. He knew that if he threw the guy a wink, it would probably make his day, if not his week. Just as he was wondering whether or not to do it, he overheard gossip from a group of mothers nearby.

'I couldn't believe it. The poor little thing.'

'That family has always been shifty if you ask me.'

'Eiji's own father. Can you imagine?'

Yashiro froze.

News reports confirmed it in the coming days, though names were omitted. It was discovered that one of the four-year-olds at the preschool, Eiji Takahashi, had been abused and molested by his father for years. The father was now in custody and the boy had moved away with his mother.

Little Eiji had been a friend of Sotaro's. They had had him over for playdates in the past.

Even though Yashiro couldn't be sure at the time he overhead the gossip whether or not it was true, the news clutched at his heart in a powerful and completely unexpected way.

Doumeki noticed Yashiro's mood later that afternoon itself, almost instantly, and asked what was wrong. Yashiro told him in an undertone, his face drawn. There was a shadow over his eyes that Doumeki hadn't seen in years and it made him recall darker days.

Although Yashiro managed a smile when Sotaro came into the living room and announced he had bathed and dried and dressed all by himself, Doumeki noticed that Yashiro was quiet for the rest that evening and retired early.

'Is he mad at me?' Aoi asked, fiddling nervously with the hem of her nightdress.

'No,' said Doumeki at once. 'Not at all.'

Aoi waited, eyes wide. Doumeki sometimes felt caught in them like he felt caught in Yashiro's. Her eyes would reduce him to putty in her hands.

And so he tried to explain, wondering how much he could tell a seven-year-old without upsetting her. A seven-year-old who was astute enough to know when she was being lied to or pacified.

'Your Oyaji,' he began slowly, 'wasn't always happy. There was a time when he was young, around your age, when bad things happened to him.'

Aoi struggled to imagine it. Her Oyaji was always laughing and joking.

'And so when he remembers it, like he did today, he feels sad again.'

And guilty, Doumeki silently added. He feels as though he should have known, after everything he's been through. He feels as though he should have protected little Eiji.

'Is that why he went to sleep at the same time as Sotaro?' asked Aoi, who was always proud of the fact that she was allowed to stay up a whole hour past her little brother's bedtime.

'Yes.'

Aoi was silent for some time. Doumeki shifted her in his arms and walked towards the bedrooms, snapping off the kitchen light on the way.

'I know!' Aoi said at length. 'I'll make him cupcakes tomorrow to make him feel better. The vanilla ones that he likes.'

'That's a good idea.'

'But you're not allowed to help, Touchan,' she said, pulling at his earlobes and staring at her father with a fierce love in her eyes. 'You'd just mess everything up, as usual.'

Doumeki smiled faintly again. Aoi had inherited Yashiro's looks and biting sense of humour.

He glanced into the master bedroom before heading for Aoi's room. And he stopped.

Four-year-old Sotaro was sitting on the floor in his pyjamas, cross-legged, staring at Yashiro who was fast asleep in bed. He lifted his somber, serious gaze when Doumeki appeared.

'What are you doing?' Doumeki asked quietly.

'Oyaji's sad,' Sotaro replied in a loud whisper. His expression didn't budge an inch even as he spoke. His small, blunt spikes of hair were slightly dishevelled, as though he had been in bed for some time before getting up again.

Doumeki sighed internally. They were both far too observant. Sotaro especially, and especially where Yashiro was concerned. Doumeki held out his free hand and beckoned for Sotaro to come. Sotaro hesitated for long seconds, his gaze back on Yashiro, reluctant to leave his side.

'He's okay,' Doumeki assured him when Sotaro finally approached and took his hand.

For a guilty moment, Doumeki wanted to wake Yashiro, to show him how surrounded he was. How protected and loved. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the golden hair caught in lamplight.

SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

Doumeki heard two pieces of news, only a few days apart, that changed his life forever.

The first was delivered on their flight out of Hokkaido. Doumeki's right shoulder was heavily padded and bandaged and he had spent two days in hospital before being discharged. Yashiro sat beside him on the flight, leaning his face into his hand and staring out the small oval window, and in an unaffected tone, he told Doumeki of the decision he had made when he had spoken with the Kaichou.

Doumeki's reaction was a combination of everything Yashiro foresaw. Blinking and false starts at speech and eventual silence.

'You going to say anything?' Yashiro prompted, smiling slightly, hearing his pulse in his ears.

Doumeki hesitated for a long time. He wondered if he was having a medication-induced hallucination.

'What – whatever Boss wants,' he said finally.

Yashiro stared at him for a moment before asking to borrow his shoulder, the one that didn't recently have a bullet in it, and he fell asleep for the rest of their flight back to Tokyo. Doumeki stared off into space, blushing very slightly, his own heart hammering. In amongst his medley of emotions, the one that was reigning at that moment was the sense that he had finally done right by Boss.

And it was only a few days after that that Yashiro noticed the symptoms. It came at a strange time; the three-month window of prime fertility was over and the need for physical closeness was ebbing. He found that he didn't feel the distance from Doumeki as urgently when he was out of the flat. It was a development that came as a mild relief, and allowed him to make all the necessary plans for their escape.

It was risky to remain in Tokyo any longer. He knew Misumi already knew. All his subordinates knew too. And Yashiro was fairly lucky in that Hirata's death overshadowed his leaving. They were all gearing up for a major reshuffle of Doushinkai that Yashiro knew he needed to evade completely if he was to emerge from that world, and bring Doumeki with him.

The first surge of nausea occurred when he was overseeing the furniture being moved out of the living room. He suddenly doubled over and raced for the bathroom. Doumeki was packing up his own flat and Yashiro, for the first time, was glad for the solitude.

After the movers left, he bought the test kit himself, and waited by himself. The bathroom was empty, as was the rest of the flat. A hush fell over Yashiro and suspended him in time for a moment. Another moment where he was truly alone, on the precipice of a life where he wouldn't be, ever again. Then he picked up the test and read the result.

Doumeki came back shortly afterwards and wondered why Yashiro was avoiding his gaze.

Yashiro, meanwhile, realised how ridiculous it was that he had been nervous about telling Doumeki about his decision to leave the Yakuza. This was a thousand times worse in every way.

When he finally told Doumeki, he didn't do it with any of the casual brazenness he had had on the plane. His words carried the kind of uncertainty that Doumeki alone had heard before, when he held Yashiro in the privacy of darkness, in the cocoon of their bond.

Quiet though they were, they left Doumeki winded. He recovered in a few seconds, enough to realise it must have happened back in Hokkaido, enough to loathe himself for putting Yashiro in that position yet again, and enough to feel a strange gratitude that he was at least there, this time, to see Yashiro through it when he –

'I'm keeping it,' Yashiro said, suddenly. He pretended to check the tape on one of the boxes that had been piled up and continued to avoid Doumeki's eye.

Doumeki was completely sure he misunderstood.

'What?'

'I'm keeping it,' Yashiro repeated, his tone a little stronger and even laced with a familiar impatience. He kept a hand on the stack of boxes and turned to look at Doumeki side-on. Doumeki's heart somersaulted when he saw the flush on Yashiro's face. 'So if you have any hang-ups about becoming a father at twenty-six, you should have thought of that before running to Hokkaido unannounced and making me go into heat and –'

Doumeki crossed the room and Yashiro was suddenly trapped in an embrace as sudden as it was stifling. Yashiro made a small noise of surprise before he felt his whole body cringe.

'Get off, idiot –'

He struggled for a moment but Doumeki didn't let go. Then Yashiro realised.

'Are you… are you crying?'

He was. And he didn't stop for a long time. Yashiro was forced to stand there and watch him cry, suppressing the overwhelming urge to laugh. At himself, at Doumeki, at the fact that his life was in boxes waiting to be shipped quietly to Osaka.

'You done?' he said, when Doumeki finally looked like he was calming down.

Doumeki nodded.

'You'll have to man up before the kid gets here,' Yashiro warned.

'Yes, Boss,' Doumeki mumbled, sounding dazed.

Yashiro's lips twitched. 'You'll also have to stop calling me Boss. Or the kid'll figure out pretty quickly that his parents are ex-mobsters.'

Doumeki stared, looking lost again, and Yashiro laughed even though he also felt strangely close to tears.

He had just one phone call to make. He felt each ring stretch back several years, until he was lying against a chain-link fence on a school rooftop.

He didn't expect Kuga to pick up.

'The old man's in the shower,' he drawled. 'What do you want?'

'Can you pass on a message?'

'Yeah, whatever.'

'Do you have a pen?'

'I'm not your goddamn secretary. Just say it, I'll remember.'

'Okay.' Yashiro spoke slowly as though carefully counting off his fingers. 'Tell him I'm pregnant again, I'm keeping it this time and that I'm quitting the Yakuza. Oh and that I'm fucking off to Osaka for good, but tell him not to tell anyone else. Top-secret.'

A stunned pause.

'Should have gotten a pen, huh?' Yashiro said.

'What – you're knocked up now? And what the hell do you mean you're pregnant again?'

'Oh, that's what I do now, haven't you heard? I'm having everyone's baby. I might have Kageyama's baby next.'

He regretted that Doumeki wasn't around to hear that call.

'I'd like to see you try,' Kuga snapped.

'I'd like to see you try,' Yashiro replied smoothly, thoroughly enjoying himself. 'Oh wait, you're a Beta, so that's not something you can do.'

'Like that's going to make me feel second-best to some loose Omega sl–'

'Give me that,' Kageyama's annoyed voice interjected in the distance. 'I told you to stop answering my phone.'

When Kageyama came on, Yashiro repeated the news, in the exact same way, and heard the same stunned pause.

'So,' Yashiro continued airily, 'if you know a good OBGYN in Osaka, that would be useful. You know, someone who's not biased against Omegas.'

'I…' Kageyama began, sounding dazed. 'I know a few.'

'Thanks, Kage.'

That was a natural place to hang up, for both of them, but suddenly neither of them could. Yashiro felt a strange surge in his gut.

'Will you… be okay?' Kageyama finally asked, his voice more gruff and awkward than Yashiro had ever heard it before.

'I'll be fine.'

Twenty years, he thought. Kageyama thought the same thing. Yashiro's gaze was subdued for just a moment.

'Kage,' he said finally. 'There's... something I want to tell you.'

The tone of his voice made Kageyama's pulse pick up. Yashiro took a deep breath.

In a voice that was still quiet and serious, Yashiro told him, 'There's a spy cam in your bedroom that you never found. It's in the ceiling lamp.'

There was another long pause.

'What –?'

Yashiro hung up.

It didn't feel real then and it wouldn't feel real for the next nine months, even when they were in Osaka. For Yashiro, the decision felt strangely like it had already been made. The first time he found out he was pregnant, he had been catapulted instantly into the darkness of his past. The second time couldn't have been any different. He had stared at the little plus sign and only thought of the life he was about to leave behind. He sensed that he was about to be catapulted into a future that was as bright as the past had been brutal. He also thought of what he had lost before, when he had purged his body over disgust and self-loathing.

Are you sorry because it was ours? Are you sorry because it could have been... anything?

He remembered his words to Doumeki. They had been cruel before. Acerbic and vindictive. But suddenly, the same words came to him in a new light.

It was theirs. And it could be anything.

Osaka welcomed them quietly.

Their new flat was in a high-rise overlooking the river. The banks were bordered by cherry blossom trees that looked like a carpet of pale pink from their height. Doumeki was slightly overwhelmed by the size of their apartment; the little flat he had left behind in Tokyo could easily fit into their new living room.

But he didn't have time to be overwhelmed. Between midnight runs to cater to Yashiro's cravings (which ranged from pork buns to sea urchins) and keeping a paranoid eye out to constantly ensure Yashiro and the unborn child's safety, Doumeki was strung out until the baby arrived.

Yashiro watched him in wry amusement. The fact that Doumeki's protective instincts had been vamped up to such an extent – enough that the guy who accidentally knocked into Yashiro's shoulder on the sidewalk ended up being wrenched by the front of his shirt and thrown backwards into a wall for several tense seconds before Yashiro convinced Doumeki to let him go – all gave Yashiro a strange feeling of warmth that Doumeki didn't even intend.

The only time in those nine months that Doumeki felt at peace was when they were in bed at night and he would gather Yashiro in close and listen happily as Yashiro bemoaned the fact that his perfect body was slowly acquiring the proportions of a rubber duck and that it was all Doumeki's fault.

Each time Yashiro fell asleep in his hold, with Doumeki's large hands on him, he found he didn't slip into the nightmares that he thought a swollen belly and the terrifying, unreal thought of a life growing inside him would conjure. He was rarely visited by his stepfather, or by memories of gunshot wounds – both his own and Doumeki's. Occasionally he would think of the blood he wiped from his shoes, the men whose lives ended by his hands whether directly or indirectly. Families whose lives were forever changed. And he would temporarily panic, realising he didn't deserve whatever feeble, fleeting happiness it was that he had carved for himself. That the child wouldn't stand a chance with a monster like him for a father. That he was doing the child and the world a grave injustice.

But in moments like that, he would wake Doumeki, sometimes with a soft word, other times with a sharp nudge, and Doumeki would mutely gather him up and Yashiro would breathe in his scent and remind himself that he was fine, that they were going to be fine, and that he probably, hopefully, wasn't making a huge, horrifying mistake.

It wasn't real to either of them until the day Doumeki was asked to choose between them. There were complications during labour, as there often were with Omega pregnancies, and for a few minutes the doctor wasn't sure if he could save them both.

That was the first time Doumeki came to know his firstborn would be a girl.

'Him,' Doumeki said quietly, when the doctor pressed him again. 'Yashiro.'

The doctor nodded grimly and returned to the OR.

When both father and baby were given the all-clear, Doumeki numbly stepped into the room. Yashiro's sweat-drenched hair was plastered to his face. He opened his eyes weakly when Doumeki took his hand.

'She okay?'

Doumeki nodded. The decision he had made in the hallway outside was one that Yashiro would never come to know.

Yashiro saw how shaken he was was. He moved his head closer. 'Are my balls okay?'

Doumeki held back tears and nodded. He then heard a quiet mewling in the cot at the other side of the room.

He stared down at the impossibly tiny thing, no larger than two of his handspans. At first he didn't quite understand what he was looking at. But by the time he picked her up, he was completely overcome.

Yashiro often told Aoi that that was the moment someone superseded him in her Touchan's heart.

Aoi was a fussy, headstrong baby – an Alpha through and through – from the very beginning. The nurses struggled to feed her or placate her. After she was brought home, she brought several neighbours to the door with bleary-eyed complaints.

She finally began to settle after a few weeks when she recognised her fathers' faces. Especially Doumeki's. He was able to end her crying and put her to sleep far quicker than Yashiro. With one exception that they discovered when Aoi was a month old.

Her crying roused them again and a sorely sleep-deprived Doumeki sat up robotically. Without a word, Yashiro tugged him back into bed and got up himself. Doumeki watched him gratefully and fell asleep again as soon as his head touched the pillow.

In Aoi's room, Yashiro resigned himself to long painful minutes of unrestrained crying. He simply didn't have Doumeki's touch. Aoi's plaintive, unrelenting wail made him question himself again – question every decision that had led to that moment. He paced the room and tried rocking and cooing and nothing seemed to work.

He didn't know what made him start singing.* He had already started by the time he realised he was doing it.

'Hush now, baby, don't you cry.
Rest your wings, my butterfly.
Peace will come to you in time.
And I will sing this lullaby.'

Both the sound of his voice and the sound of Aoi's silence woke Doumeki again. He came to the door of the nursery and listened, utterly entranced.

'And oh,
Through darkness,
Don't you ever stop believing,
With love, alone,
With love you'll find your way,
My love.'

Doumeki had heard Yashiro hum before, even back in their Yakuza days, and he had noticed it was always beautifully in tune, but he had never heard him like this. Yashiro's voice was mellow and rich while somehow quiet and soothing, rolling from one note to the other like a gently flowing stream.

'The world has turned the day to dark.
I leave this night with heavy heart.
When I return to dry your eyes,
I will sing this lullaby.
Yes, I will sing this lullaby.'

Back in their bedroom, Doumeki asked him where he had heard that song. Yashiro was quiet for a few moments. He told him it was something his real father sang to him often, before he died.

Doumeki didn't ask anything more.

Yashiro had learned from an early age that so much of the world, parts that were visible and the parts that weren't, was run by money. There was very little, in fact, that couldn't be controlled by it. His own induction into the Yakuza was based on it, on the false debt of his rent and the very real debt of Kageyama's practice.

And so he had planned for it, in some way, in the back of his mind. Perhaps not this exactly, this daytime soap where he grabbed his Alpha bodyguard by the tie and raced off into the sunset. But something. Something that would call for the large stack of cash hidden in his safe and in various private vaults over the city. Some of it came from the cast-offs in various business transactions, things passed to him under the table in a way that Hirata and Misumi wouldn't notice. But most of it was done playing the stocks, which became almost second-nature over the years. A clean way to make money appear.

And in fact that was what he kept doing, even when they left Tokyo and set up in Osaka. It only took a discerning eye and a few taps on his phone and an extra zero or two would appear on the end of his account balance. It was a knack that he had always had, and one that he eventually turned into a career of sorts, though he always refused to acknowledge it as such. Even when he wore a suit and went to work in the little firm he started with his own capital, Yashiro still preferred to think of it as his 'little hobby'.

Doumeki, meanwhile, stayed at home with Aoi.

He would strap her to his front while he cleaned or prepared meals. They would walk along the river. When she was two, he would hold her hand and very reluctantly let go when she spied something she wanted to get a closer look at; a duck on the river or a dog being walked. They would rest beneath the cherry blossoms and Doumeki would pick out the petals that fell in her fair hair. She would grip his arm tightly and sometimes fall asleep and he would pray to the gods to preserve her as she was for as long as possible, before she grew up too quickly.

Aoi's first word was Touchan and her earliest memory was of watching him do push-ups in the living room. She made a game of rolling beneath him swiftly, from one side to to the other, between each push. When she grew too big to do that, she would perch on his back and tug at his hair, and he would continue his routine with a smile.

There was once a day when Aoi played with a few friends her age who lived on the same floor. The other two children also lived with stay-at-home fathers. Doumeki tried to make small talk with the other fathers where he could but he was mostly relieved when it was time for them to head home to their wives.

Though Doumeki didn't know it, Aoi, who was three at the time, had spent a few minutes ignoring her playmates and staring almost philosophically at Doumeki where he was standing with the other men. She realised something in that moment. When her friends left, she came to Doumeki and informed him, with a serious face, that he was definitely better than all the other fathers in the whole, big world.

In a strange way, Yashiro occasionally missed the unique artistry of his life in the Yakuza. The sense of being one of the masters of that invisible, ever-present underworld. Occasionally the past came to him not in bursts of blood and pain but in terms of the small kingdom in which he had been feared even more than ridiculed. He had proved himself capable despite being an Omega and he had been silently proud of that fact.

These feelings were often supplanted by a sense of unworthiness, which Doumeki also sometimes felt. That they were fooling themselves into thinking they could outrun a past as dark as theirs. Soldiers who had resigned themselves to war.

But Aoi put those thoughts to rest as soon as they reared. Passion and reason had combined, and it had created her. For her, and for Doumeki, Yashiro learned to completely discard his old life, the only thing he knew, the only thing he thought he was good at, for a life that suddenly involved laughter and late night feedings and a view of the carpet of cherry blossoms by the river.

Because of how much both had suffered at the hands of their fathers, a silent, implicit agreement was made that neither would ever raise a hand to Aoi. She was raised with that unique, doting, careful love that came from parents who made up for the demons of their own pasts and the mistakes of their parents by ensuring she was safe and happy at all times.

Yashiro only lost control once, and only for a split second.

Aoi was just as brilliant and precocious as Yashiro had envisioned long ago. She was toddling at eight months and speaking in high, constant and perfectly understandable streams of consciousness by the time she was two. Each time Yashiro passed Doumeki in the kitchen and pulled him into a kiss, Aoi would instantly demand the same from her Touchan.

Her personality was so similar to Yashiro's that they often clashed, especially when Doumeki wasn't there to silently broker an agreement between them, simply through his presence.

'It's like raising Kuga in female form,' Yashiro once lamented.

She locked horns with her Oyaji again on the morning she refused to take her medicine. Her fever was improving but Yashiro took no chances. He crouched and tried coaxing the little medicine cap of purple liquid into her mouth.

'Come on, don't you want to be all better?'

'No! I don't want it!

Doumeki was still in the bedroom getting dressed and Yashiro was frustrated in the thought that Aoi would have taken the medicine in a heartbeat if Doumeki was the one trying.

After several failed attempts where they were both reaching the end of their tethers, Aoi slapped the medicine out of Yashiro's hand. It was his right hand which still carried memories of its days as a useless add-on. The medicine spilled richly on the pale rug and Yashiro's hand stung. Before he knew it, he pulled her forwards by the wrist and slapped her hard across the shoulder.

Her eyes grew wide in the sudden silence. Then her lip trembled. Yashiro's regret was instantaneous. A small black drop of tar in his stomach.

'Aoi –'

She pulled out of his grasp and ran for the bedrooms, crying for her Touchan.

'What's wrong?' Yashiro heard Doumeki ask in surprise.

'Oyaji hit me!' Aoi said, her voice high and shaking.

He came into the bedroom to see her hiding behind Doumeki's legs. Startled, Doumeki looked up at Yashiro. But Yashiro looked only at Aoi. At the way she clutched Doumeki's pant legs. The little black drop of tar spread inside him.

'Aoi,' he tried again. He came close and knelt. 'Oyaji should never have done that. I'm sorry. I'll never do that again. No one should ever do that to you.'

Aoi's eyes were huge and tearful.

'Okay?' Yashiro said, trying to mask his self-loathing in a light voice, which nevertheless shook very slightly.

Ojisan, stop! Please...

Why should I stop? You like it when it hurts.

Doumeki heard the tremor in Yahiro's voice. He watched them both, still unsure what to do.

Aoi took another few seconds to decide. Then she came out from behind Doumeki's legs and put her arms around Yashiro's neck. She cried into his shoulder, lost in relief and self-pity. Yashiro closed his eyes and picked her up as she continued to sob. When he opened his eyes he met Doumeki's gaze. The tentative relief he felt in Aoi's forgiveness was multiplied, and found proper closure, in Doumeki's gentle expression.

When Aoi had recovered somewhat, she stayed in Yashiro's arms, cleverly milking every drop of her father's obvious repentance. She sniffled importantly.

'Oyaji did something bad,' she declared. 'So I get to punish Oyaji now.'

Yashiro chuckled, thinking there was a Yakuza leader in her somewhere.

'Sure.'

By the following morning, when Aoi and Doumeki enjoyed waffles and Yashiro was condemned to toast, all had been forgiven.

Yashiro's heats came regularly, and his suppressants worked reliably. He sometimes fondly recalled their unrestrained days in the first three months after being bonded.

Despite the fact that the frequency had been significantly curbed since Aoi, the intensity hadn't ebbed at all. They were both grateful that Aoi had proven to be a deep sleeper, though her curiosity still proved troublesome. They had to find a new place to hide their massive stack of condoms when they found her on the floor, surrounded by dozens of the little plastic packets, some of them open. She glanced up and asked why her parents kept so many balloons in their bedside drawers.

'That's what I get for trying to hand a box of condoms to the first Aoi,' Yashiro realised, wondering if he ought to start believing in karma.

Sometime when Aoi was three, Yashiro looked up from his laptop on the couch and found himself staring at them sitting on the rug in front of the television. Doumeki was watching intently as Aoi drew a picture, changing crayon colours often and keeping up a running commentary of her artistic choices. Doumeki then stretched his arms behind him, his shoulder muscles straining against his t-shirt.

It was both a sudden heat and one that crept up on him slowly. Doumeki glanced up at once. Yashiro, breathing a little raggedly, moved his laptop away.

'Aoi, stay here,' Doumeki said, his voice and eyes changing.

Aoi was wrapped up in her drawing and barely heard him, and barely noticed when her parents disappeared for twenty minutes.

In the bedroom, clothes were whipped off, and Doumeki pinned Yashiro to the bed, their cocks leaking, Yashiro's hole already drenched. He arched his neck and pulled Doumeki closer as he licked his way down Yashiro's stomach.

A strange feeling was taking over Yashiro. A feeling that was new, yet again, just when he thought he had exhausted his body's ability to experience new things. And he realised what it was when Doumeki reached for a condom under the mattress and ripped it open with his teeth.

Yashiro sat up and took it out of Doumeki's hands, his heart pounding louder than he could remember.

Make me pregnant.

The words were there, on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't say them.

Doumeki heard them.

The plastic edge of the condom was still in Doumeki's mouth, exacerbating the dumbstruck look on his face. It almost made Yashiro laugh. Doumeki spat it away before kissing Yashiro's mouth hard and fast and flattening him once more.

It was new for Doumeki too, and utterly exhilarating; the feeling of fucking his Omega mate raw, thoroughly and deeply, making him moan and cry out and cling, and knowing he wanted Doumeki's to come inside him, to bear his seed and his children. To love and want him, Doumeki, that much.

'Yes!' Yashiro gasped. 'Oh, fuck… So good. Yes, come inside. Ugh, come inside! I want to feel you come. Mmh, breed me, Doumeki!'*

Doumeki groaned and reached down to enclose Yashiro's cock in his hand, thrusting as though fuelled entirely by Yashiro's heat and Yashiro's words. His body grew hotter and hotter, both slick with sweat and Yashiro's scent sending him somewhere else.

'I'm going to come,' Yashiro realised, feeling Doumeki plunging deeper, getting as far as he possibly could. 'Oh, fuck… I'm coming…'

It was a burst of heat within him, superimposed over the heat everywhere else. Yashiro felt it in tandem; Doumeki release inside him, and his own body pulling it all in as he came.

Doumeki collapsed on his side beside him, huffing, keeping his eyes on Yashiro's face. He ran a hand through Yashiro's hair, pressed his nose to his cheek, brushed his thumb across his lips. And Yashiro inclined his head slightly and let him.

Then Doumeki's hand travelled to his stomach. 'Do you think…?' he asked tentatively. Surreally.

Yashiro opened his eyes halfway.

'Yes,' he said.

Doumeki was struck by how certain he sounded.

And just like that, in a way that was gentle and unassuming, Sotaro was conceived. He came entirely from Yashiro's will, at a time when Yashiro wanted him, when he felt the need for him somewhere in his body. And Sotaro was born in much the same way, after only a few hours of labour and without any fuss.

And this time, Yashiro held Sotaro before Doumeki did. By then, the doctor had run a quick test and confirmed that Sotaro was an Alpha too.

'I'm an Alpha factory,' Yashiro told Doumeki weakly.

Doumeki had come into the room to see Yashiro holding Sotaro and wearing an expression that Doumeki was sure he hadn't seen before. He then stared at his son, whose few strands of hair were as dark as Aoi's were fair.

Yashiro's love for Sotaro newly defined him. And Sotaro's love for his beautiful Omega father was earnest and reverent. Doumeki would often catch them lying together, their heads close, two-year-old Sotaro feeling out Yashiro's face with tiny hands and a solemn expression.

Doumeki sometimes envied the love Sotaro had for Yashiro. It was a purer love than Doumeki's. It was one that sought only to cherish and, when Sotaro grew older, to protect. In many ways it was the love that Doumeki felt he ought to feel for Yashiro, with none of the need to ravish. The thought made him happy and grateful, all the more so when he wondered whether perhaps even his own soul bond with Yashiro was all for this – so Yashiro could have someone like Sotaro in his life. Someone to love him completely and innocently. A love which, until his son was born, Yashiro had lacked his whole life.

If the favourite part of Aoi's day was spent with her Touchan, the favourite part of Sotaro's day was when his Oyaji came home from work. He would race to the door when it opened and Doumeki would hear Yashiro laugh and swing him up in the air and give him a noisy kiss on the cheek. Yashiro would come into the living room with Sotaro perched on his hip, Sotaro's cheeks flushed over the faintest of smiles.

Aoi, meanwhile, dealt with having to share the spotlight with a lot more grace than her parents expected. She took the quiet, gentle Sotaro on board as her underling, and trained him in all the ways of Aoi. She also used him as a convenient scapegoat for certain things, like juice spilling or toothbrushes stuck in USB ports, and only Yashiro's astuteness was able to pick out the real culprit. Beyond that, however, she loved and protected her younger brother rather fiercely.

And so did Yashiro. When Sotaro was seven, Yashiro dropped him off at school on his way to work and saw three older boys jostle him in front of the school gates. One of them pushed him straight to the ground. Yashiro felt a surge of anger and nearly got out of the car. But when Sotaro quietly got up, brushed himself off and kept going, he thought the better of it. There was no use stepping in and humiliating Sotaro further.

Then he spied the bicycles that the bullies had ridden to school and parked on the bike rack.

That afternoon, Sotaro was surprised to see his father waiting to pick him up. Yashiro's work usually kept him at the office later than that. And he wondered why he was standing by the bike rack.

'Oyaji? What are you doing here?'

'I gave myself some time off,' Yashiro said mysteriously. 'No point being the boss if I don't do that every now and then...'

He glanced over Sotaro's shoulder. The three older kids who had pushed him to the ground that morning approached the bike rack. They saw Sotaro standing with a well-dressed man with slicked-back blonde hair.

'Hey, boys,' Yashiro said warmly. 'Sorry to say, but it looks like someone's slashed the tyres of your bikes.'

They all looked at their bikes and saw he was right. Their bikes slumped uselessly in their racks. Then they glanced up and saw Yashiro casually flick a penknife closed before pocketing it. The blade had glinted brightly in the sun.

'Best be careful, don't you think?' Yashiro continued. His expression was suddenly razor-sharp. 'There are psychos around here.'

The kids paled. Sotaro flushed and stared at his father in disbelief.

'Do you need a lift home?' Yashiro asked the older boys, tilting his head innocently.

'N-no, sir,' they stammered. Yashiro watched as they unlocked their bikes and walked them hurriedly down the street.

On the ride home, Sotaro stared at his father with newfound awe.

'What?' Yashiro said, noticing his stare out of the corner of his eye.

'Nothing,' Sotaro said averting his gaze. He kept his eyes on his lap.

Yashiro smiled and reached over to ruffle his hair.

Not long after Aoi discovered where babies came from, and the precise roles of Alphas and Omegas in that regard, she demanded the details of her conception. Her fathers flailed a little.

'It happened in a guesthouse… in Hokkaido,' Yashiro said gingerly.

In a room covered with dead bodies. While your Touchan had a bullet in his shoulder.

Aoi seemed happy with that explanation. Yashiro and Doumeki breathed a sigh of relief. It was an improvement on the day a few years before when Aoi had walked in on them and their explanation meandered down a strange road. Sometimes, when two daddies love each other, one daddy ties the other daddy's hands with a leather belt…

Sotaro, however, proved to be much more problematic on that count. In fact, the topic of Alphas and Omegas was the first and only real barrier that formed between himself and Yashiro.

He was nine at the time, and he came home from school looking troubled. Doumeki tried asking what was wrong, but Sotaro struggled to put words to his thoughts. When Yashiro came home a few hours later, he heard about Sotaro's strange mood and came to his room. For Yashiro, Sotaro made more of an effort to explain.

'We were taught about Alphas and Betas and… and Omegas in school today,' he said.

'Ah,' said Yashiro. He sat slowly on Sotaro's bed and waited for Sotaro to say more.

'You… you're an Omega, right Oyaji?'

'I am,' Yashiro said carefully.

Sotaro frowned, remembering all the things his teacher had said happened to Omegas. The heats and the sex. The bite that bound them to an Alpha. It had upset him deeply. It spoke of a hidden world that was jarring and ugly and unreal. And he couldn't come to terms with the fact that his own parents might inhabit it. Not his beautiful, perfect Oyaji. Oyaji wouldn't be reduced to whatever it was that happened to Omegas in heat.

'But that means you…' Sotaro flushed, unable to finish that thought. He tried a different one. 'But Touchan would never do… all that stuff to you. And you wouldn't… let him. Right?'

His tone was imploring. Yashiro felt heat rise to his face and his stomach somersaulted. He wondered how on Earth to reply. And why he suddenly felt so overwhelmingly guilty.

'Sotaro, it's not… it's not how you think it is. Your Touchan and I –'

But Sotaro had understood enough in his Oyaji's answer. He suddenly couldn't look at him in the same way.

And he closed himself to Yashiro from then on.

Yashiro felt that distance from Sotaro in quiet despair. His son rarely looked him in the eye, rarely spoke to him, and insisted that he catch the bus to school instead of getting lifts from Yashiro on his way to work. Yashiro seemed to accept it all in resignation.

Doumeki watched them, his heart heavy. A strained month followed where Yashiro subtly moved out of his reach in bed and grew a familiar barrier around himself that was thin but impenetrable. Doumeki felt it, and knew why it was there. Even Aoi, who, at twelve, was busy at the head of her clique of girlfriends, noticed the strange new tension at home.

Sotaro's rejection, and what Yashiro assumed to be his disgust, made Yashiro recover a fragment of his past. He was reminded of all the ways in which he was weak. He was reminded of all his defects, all his perversions, all reflected in the fact that he had lost the love of someone who had looked up to him so earnestly.

'Imagine if he knew everything else,' Yashiro said quietly to Doumeki, with a cold laugh. Public toilet. Lustful cat. The dozens and dozens of Alphas who had had him over the years.

Doumeki wanted to say something, or reassure him in some way, but he knew it wasn't in his power to do so. And so one day, he knocked gently on Sotaro's door while Yashiro was still at work.

He understood what Sotaro was going through. For Sotaro, just like it was for Doumeki, Yashiro was simply the most beautiful person in the world, in every way. And Sotaro needed some time to reconcile his innocent love for his father with the reality of the world.

'Oyaji won't say it,' Doumeki said gently. 'But he's very upset that you're not talking to him.'

Sotaro flushed deeply with shame and confusion. He almost felt like crying.

'He's still the same Oyaji,' Doumeki went on. 'Whether he's an Omega or not. He loves you very much.'

Sotaro continued to remain silent. There was a long silence between them, both silent and grave and both caught in the complexity of their feelings. Doumeki almost smiled. He saw, in that moment, how much his son took after him.

The following morning, Yashiro was in the kitchen grabbing some files when he noticed the little lunch Doumeki had packed for Sotaro still sitting on the counter.

'Sotaro!' he called, just as Sotaro reached the front door. 'You forgot your bento.'

Sotaro came into the kitchen and silently took the bag from Yashiro, his gaze on the floor. On his way back out, he stopped suddenly. Then he turned, came to Yashiro and hugged him. He found, as he did so, that he was again on the verge of tears.

Yashiro's heart leaped up into his throat. He hesitated for a moment before he hugged him back, almost buckling under the weight of his relief. Sotaro's hair tickled his chin. Sotaro drew back and their eyes met properly for the first time in weeks. Yashiro ran a hand through his hair.

'You're getting tall,' he said.

Sotaro blushed slightly and said nothing. Yashiro stared after him.

When Doumeki came into the kitchen, he didn't understand why Yashiro suddenly grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him forwards, lips locking, pressing them against the counter, but he didn't stop to complain. It had been over a month, after all. He lifted Yashiro swiftly onto the counter and pressed their chests together firmly, his hard-on already straining against his pants. Yashiro breathed heavily in his ear.

Doumeki had removed Yashiro's vest and was halfway through unbuttoning his shirt, lightly nipping at the skin around his nipples, and Yashiro's hand was deep in Doumeki's hair and his head tilted back, legs wrapped firmly around Doumeki's hips, when Sotaro came back into the kitchen.

'Oh.'

Both Yashiro and Doumeki glanced round in shock.

'I forgot my –' Sotaro stammered, but he forgot what he had forgotten and his face turned beet red. 'S-sorry!'

He bolted before Doumeki and Yashiro even had a chance to spring apart.

A few minutes later, at the busstop, Aoi noticed that her brother looked like he had seen a dead body.

'What's with you?'

When Sotaro refused to say, Aoi glanced back at their apartment and took a clever guess.

'Did you catch them doing it or something?'

Sotaro blushed yet again. Aoi sighed in sympathy.

'I wish they'd stop doing that,' she said dryly. 'I've walked in on them like a hundred times. It's so gross.'

Sotaro looked at her with gratitude and a powerful new kinship, as though they were veterans of a very specific war.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Yashiro laughed in bemusement, still seeing Sotaro's shocked face in his mind. Doumeki's head swam with the sound of his laugh. As Yashiro pulled him forwards again and deftly wrapped his legs around his hips once more, Doumeki marvelled over the fact that Yashiro's laugh had the same effect on him then that it did twelve long years ago.

*Author's note:I'm sure you guys probably already figured, but 'Oyaji' and 'Touchan' are nicknames Japanese kids have for their fathers. I love the idea that Yashiro became an Oyaji himself, like what he used to call Misumi in a Yakuza context. And 'Touchan' seemed to suit Doumeki somehow.

Also, the song I imagined Yashiro singing is 'Lullaby' by Josh Groban (though Yashiro's voice would be far gentler than Josh's). My headcanon is Yashiro's real father singing it to him, promising to keep him safe, not knowing that he was going to die and leave his son in the hands of monsters :( Actually, beyond that, the mere idea of Yashiro singing makes me want to cry for some reason. I even had him singing in my old story Careful Now. And I hear there's a reference to Yashiro singing in the next chapter in canon! Omg, Sensei is glorious.

And the asterisk in the middle of the sex scene is so I can give a quick credit and shout-out to daniinad for the breeding kink idea! Thank you my dear! :)