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Kyo is barely awake when he feels an annoying poking sensation in the middle of his back and hears a small voice behind him.
“’Tou-san?”
He rolls over and frowns at his four year old son, finger to his lips. Tohru is heavily pregnant, and is tired all the time these days. He doesn’t want Hajime waking her up so early. “What is it?” He whispers, voice hoarse with sleep.
Hajime shuffles his feet, large stuffed orange cat dangling from one arm. Kyo hates the stupid thing, but Tohru had bought it when Hajime was a newborn and stubbornly kept repairing it when the little boy was a little too rough with it. When his eyes adjust to the light, Kyo is startled to see tears in his son’s eyes and reaches out to thumb away one that has fallen down his cheek. “What’s wrong?”
Hajime sniffles and shuffles his feet. “I had a bad dream.”
Kyo ruffles his hair. “It’s okay. It was only a dream.” He assures him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Hajime shakes his head, scrubbing the back of his hand across his eyes. Kyo pats the boy’s head and makes to get up, but Hajime’s warbling voice stops him. “I dreamed you got locked away and ‘Kaa-san was sad.”
Kyo fights the urge to scowl. He knows what this is about.
“Is this because of that man from when we went to see Ojii-san?”
Hajime nods.
Not for the first time in his life, Kyo feels like punching his biological father. When Kyo and Tohru had gone to visit Kazuma the past weekend, they’d run into him when going to visit Hatsuharu and Rin in the Sohma compound. The older man had begun to scream himself hoarse at Kyo the moment they’d made eye contact—shouting that he was still a monster and should be imprisoned no matter what anyone said.
“I am on a visit with my wife and son.” Kyo had said sternly, despite the anxiety pooling in his gut; he hadn’t seen nor spoken to his biological father since before he and Tohru had started dating eight years before. “Please leave us alone.”
That had sent the man on another rant. What right did Kyo have to have a family when he’d taken everything from him? How dare he rub them in his face? He should have been rotting in that room like every other monster before him. Tohru had moved to bodily protect Hajime when the irate man had taken a step forward, and Kyo had been about half a heartbeat away from physically assaulting the man if he took even one step closer to his son and pregnant wife.
They’d been saved when Shigure had arrived, drawn by Kyo’s father’s shouting. People had been staring. There had been whispering. But a word from the husband of the head of the family had sent the man running. Shigure had offered Hajime a piece of candy from somewhere on his person and bid the young family a cheerful goodbye without telling them who had run to get him.
Hajime had seemed fine afterward. Apparently it had stuck with him more than Kyo and Tohru had thought.
“Why did he say that, ‘Tou-san? He called you a monster.”
Kyo sighs, lifting the blankets to invite him in. When he’s safely snuggled between his parents, Kyo tucks an arm around him and whispers, “Be careful not to wake Okaa-san.” Hajime nods solemnly. “We can talk about that when she wakes up, okay?” Another nod. “Good boy. Now let’s go back to sleep.”
Tohru wakes to a strange pressure on her back, jolting out of sleep as her bladder makes itself known. It’s hard to get out of bed these days, but she manages, waddling to the bathroom to relieve herself and back before she notices the extra body in her bed. Kyo’s arm is around the small body of their son, whose tiny fist is clenched in his nightshirt. Hajime’s head is tucked into his father’s chest, his stuffed cat sandwiched between them.
She creeps over for her cell phone to take a picture. She’s just opened the app and moved to get a better angle when Kyo speaks without opening his eyes, voice thick with sleep. “Don’t you dare.”
She takes the picture anyway, giggling to herself as she waddles back and lowers herself to the mattress. “But you’re so cute, Kyo-kun!”
Kyo grumbles unintelligibly, but her voice has woken Hajime. The little boy blinks blearily at his mother and rolls over.
“Good morning, Hajime-kun.” She reaches over to run her hand over his hair.
“Morning.” He grumbles into the pillows.
Kyo props himself up on his elbow. “Did you have another bad dream?” Hajime shakes his head. “Good. Why don’t you go wash up before breakfast?”
When Hajime is out of the room, Kyo flops back down onto the bed and scowls at the ceiling. Tohru waits patiently.
Eventually he says, full of bitterness, “My old man gave him nightmares about me being imprisoned.”
Tohru has always been the type to be easily moved to tears, but pregnancy has made it even worse. She sniffles and blinks rapidly to stop her vision from swimming. “What did you say to him?”
“Nothing yet. Didn’t want to wake you.”
“Well, why don’t you talk to him while I make breakfast?”
Kyo sighs and runs a hand down his face. “I dunno what to say. He’s too young to tell him about the curse.”
Tohru runs her hand through his hair, still fiery red long after the departure of the cat spirit. Hajime’s own hair is red, but a more muted colour. She suspects that most of the distinctive characteristics of the zodiac hosts will be gone from the Sohma family tree within a few generations, aside from the occasional throwback from recessive genes. She worries that Hajime will be bullied for his red hair when he starts school the year after next.
“You’ll figure something out.” She smiles, distracting herself from her concerns. There’s no point, Kyo reminds her, in worrying about it now. Especially not when she’s so heavily pregnant. “I’ll go get started on breakfast.”
She passes Hajime in the hall on her way to the kitchen, stooping with great difficulty to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Otou-san is still in bed. How about you keep him company until I finish breakfast?”
The door creaks open and Kyo looks up to find his son watching him from the crack. He grins and beckons the boy over.
Hajime’s face is serious as he climbs back onto the bed and takes his mother’s spot, sitting with crossed legs and hands fisted on his knees. Kyo recognises the pose from his younger days. He wonders when he got so relaxed that he stopped using it. “Did you still wanna talk about it?”
Hajime nods.
Kyo levers himself up against the headboard of the bed, crossing his legs and patting his knee. His son crawls over and settles in his lap, big brown eyes blinking up at him. He takes a deep breath and begins a heavily edited version of his relationship with his biological father.
“You know how Ojii-san adopted me?” He begins tentatively. Hajime nods. “Well, you know that means we’re not related by blood, right?” He nods again. “That means that before him, I had different parents.”
“How did you get new ones?” Hajime asks innocently, a little frown on his features as he parses his father’s words.
Kyo mulls his words over before speaking again. “Sometimes… sometimes kids don’t have good parents.” He begins cautiously. “When that happens, sometimes they get taken away and given to new people to look after them.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Hajime asks with wide eyes. “Were you taken away and given to Ojii-san?”
“Not really.” Kyo looks out the window, casting his mind back to his early childhood. He tries not to think about it in his waking hours, but sometimes his father’s spectre still haunts his dreams. He hates that the man has intruded into his son’s. “When I was about your age, my ‘Kaa-san got into an accident and died.” He lets Hajime parse that. The boy knows what death is, but Kyo doesn’t want to expose him to the horrors of suicide until he’s much older, and able to understand.
“Like ‘Baa-san?”
Kyo nods. “Just like Kyoko-baa-san.” He takes a breath. “My first ‘Tou-san… wasn’t very nice. My ‘Kaa-san protected me as much as she could, but when she was gone there was no one to protect me anymore. He started being very bad to me. He used to scream at me and call me a monster. Sometimes he hit me for no reason. That’s when Ojii-san took me away.”
Hajime nods, the little frown back between his brows. Then, he gasps as something clicks in his mind. “That man was your first ‘Tou-san?” Kyo nods with a hum. “But why was he so mean to you? You’re never mean to me, except when I do bad stuff.”
Kyo takes a moment, tucking Hajime into his chest while he decides what to say next. “Sometimes people just aren’t nice for no reason.” He said softly. “I was… sick, as a little boy, and it made me look different from other kids.” He tugs on his hair. “I still look different. He didn’t like how sick I was, and blamed me for my ‘Kaa-san’s accident, even though it wasn’t my fault.”
“But ‘Kaa-san says it’s not someone’s fault if they get sick!” Hajime cries in indignation. “That’s not fair!”
“No, it’s not.” Kyo agrees. “But sometimes people get so hurt that they don’t care about what’s fair. I used to do it too.” He grimaces. At Hajime’s little confused sound, he grins in self-deprecation. “I used to blame Yuki for me being sick, you know? Even though he was sick, too. But we didn’t know each other very well, then, and we didn’t understand each other until we were grown up.”
“But Yuki-ji-san is ‘Kaa-san’s friend.”
“He is.” Kyo agrees. “And I don’t blame him anymore. It was no one’s fault. That’s how come we can get along better now.”
“But your ‘Tou-san didn’t stop blaming you.” Hajime surmises. Kyo nods. “And that’s why he was screaming at you?”
“That’s right.”
“So you’re not a monster?”
Kyo laughs. “No. I’m not. I used to be pretty angry and did bad things when I was a kid, but I’m not a monster. And I’m not going to be locked away.” He promises, sensing Hajime’s next question. “That man… he just never got over my ‘Kaa-san’s death, and he still blames me for when I was sick. He thinks that my sickness caused her accident.”
“But how?”
Kyo shrugs. “I dunno. Sometimes when people are angry they don’t care about what makes sense.”
That seems to satisfy Hajime; they lapse into silence and Kyo waits. When his son puts a hand on his cheek, he turns to look him in the face.
“You’re sad, ‘Tou-san.”
Kyo buries his face in Hajime’s hair. Their son has inherited Tohru’s empathetic nature; it disarms him, sometimes, how well Hajime is able to gauge their emotions. “Yeah. It makes me sad to think about those days.” He admits. “But it was a long time ago. When I moved in with Ojii-san things got better.”
They’re interrupted by Tohru’s call from the kitchen. “Breakfast is ready!”
Tohru isn’t sure what to expect when her boys come out. Due to the added weight of her pregnancy making it difficult for her to lower herself to the ground and then get back up, they eat at the small table in the kitchen. She’s already sitting when they arrive.
Hajime leads Kyo out by the hand and frowns up at his mother. He looks so much like a tiny copy of his father that she has to bite her lip to keep from giggling.
“’Tou-san is sad.” He announces with gravity. “So we have to make today extra good to make him happy again.”
She does giggle at that, eyes moving to her husband. Kyo is chuckling, stooping to pick Hajime up; he’s a little old to be held, but Kyo is strong enough. “I’m already happy.” He promises. “You and ‘Kaa-san make me happy.”
“And the baby.” Hajime prompts.
“And the baby.” Kyo agrees. “It more than makes up for all the bad stuff when I was a kid.”
Tohru wonders what Kyo told him—she’ll ask later. For now, she sits at the table and allows Kyo to fuss over her and serve the meal while she chats with her son.
“Hey, ‘Kaa-san, did you know ‘Tou-san was sick when he was little?”