I Don't Think I Regret it

Breakfast Time Blues

Sometimes people shouldn't be parents. All people, in theory, are capable of being parents. This does not mean everyone should be a parent.

Sometimes a parent can't be the best parent.

Children leave their parents, sometimes children are taken from their parents.

Parents might leave their children.

It's hard to think that bad parents can make a good decision. Or that good parents make bad decisions from time to time. But that's how Ai saw it. Her mother had made the terrible decision of staying with her father even after she first hired the private investigator when Ai was four. Maybe meeting her father as a whole was her mother's single worst decision, though that would mean Ai would have never been born.

Parents make mistakes.

With their partners, with their choices, with their lives, with their children's lives. Some people just aren't meant to have a child.

As for her father, Ai saw him leaving her and her mother as his only good decision. He was a selfish, inconsiderate man. He cared more about having a son than the child he already had. To Ai, that was unforgivable. What kind of sexist asshole was her father?

Ai laid there in bed with Kuroo. It was dark and she took comfort in hearing his breathing, the sound of his heartbeat while she laid her ear upon his chest, and the gentle rise and fall as his lungs expanded and deflated. He smelled nice, cologne and soap. A serious upgrade from how Kuroo would smell after practice, like sweat and rubber.

She traced her fingers over his, as his arm was wrapped protectively over her shoulder and his hand rested on her side. She slid her fingers into the valley of his digits and curled her fingers up. He squeezed back. Half asleep, he murmured. "It's late, go to bed." His voice was low and so close that it rumbled inside his chest. She ran a thumb over the top of his hand.

"I can't sleep." She whispered. Her voice sounded like glass about to break. Ai was a very strong girl, but Kuroo would have been concerned if the whole ordeal from the day before didn't affect her. "I want to hate him," she said quietly, "I really wanted to hate the boy my father chose over me. I thought I did hate him too." Kuroo shifted onto his side so that he could hold her in both of his arms. "How could I hate him?" Ai asked herself bitterly, burying her face in Kuroo's shirt. "What is he guilty of?"

Kuroo soothed Ai by running a hand over her shoulders in a massaging pattern. He didn't speak though, sometimes it's best to let people get everything out. "He's not the one I should resent." She sighed deeply, snuggling closer to Kuroo. She felt safe in his arms. She knew confiding in him was the right decision.

Kuroo spoke, "That's a good reason to not hate him." Kuroo pressed a chaste kiss into her hair. "Though you and him have a lot in common."

"Kuroo." Ai growled.

"Don't take it the wrong way," he ran his fingers through her long hair. "It's just that you and him both look out for your mothers, you both care about the happiness of your mother over the retention of the nuclear family unit."

"Wow, leave it to you to bring in some nerdy social studies terminology while you're trying to cheer someone up." Ai laughed a bit emptily. She didn't hate that side of him. "Though I thought you were more of a Chemistry guy."

"I'll have you know I am proficient in all areas of expertise." He said it with a joking air of superiority.

"You dork." She muttered, tracing his jawline before kissing him. "You're my dork." She felt softer and light. Kuroo always seemed to make her feel better.