Chapter Text
Kou did not consider bus rides pleasant. They smelled funny and clanked at sharp turns, and there was always that one man who shot her ungentlemanly glances. At least the last lessened when she rode with the swim team. Strangers took one look at Makoto's height and width, and they pictured bloody knuckles rather than cuddly kittens.
Kou cared even less for crying babies. A giggling cherub in frilly ruffles, sure, but a red-faced banshee? Send the creature back to its parents.
Only a demon could have constructed the hell that was a crying baby on a long bus ride.
She held the child in her lap, and she bounced her knees. Kou offered a bottle, but the baby only screamed louder as if the diluted juice personally offended her. Kou felt her cheeks flush as onlookers turned judgmental gazes on their corner.
"Gou-chan, make it stop!" Nagisa cried.
Haru sat beside Kou, his eyes only slightly wider at the noise, and the other three stood around them like walls meant to protect them from the outside.
"Kou," Kou snapped. "And I don't know what to do!"
“Maybe find someone who does,” Haru suggested evenly.
The baby wailed and beat her tiny fists at her side. Rei looked highly concerned, and Nagisa fretted on his toes. Makoto wore the same expression he did when he found a starving cat on the sidewalk.
Suddenly struck with inspiration, Kou pushed the baby into Makoto's arms. The third year paled with terror, but before his panic could take over, his hands cradled the child and brought her close to his chest. His instincts told him to sway slightly, and blissful silence washed over them all as the baby's wails faded into hiccups and then nothing at all.
"You are a miracle worker, Mako-chan!" Nagisa gushed, throwing his arms in the air as if praising a higher entity.
Kou and Makoto breathed sighs of relief, and Kou thought she might actually shed tears of joy. For a moment she wondered if her baby cousin would spend the rest of her life crying on this infinite bus ride to nowhere.
"Was there not a babysitter available?" Rei asked. He stared at the tiny human being as if trying to comprehend its existence, a sweat drop forming at his temple.
Makoto rocked the baby and smiled down as she started to coo in contentment. Nagisa peeked at the bundle and beamed at the miraculous transformation. Haru stared from afar with guarded curiosity though some tension did leave his shoulders at the resulting quiet.
Kou groaned, "I did everything I could to get out of this, but my aunt came to our house last night out of nowhere. Her husband left her, and she practically stopped functioning. Now I’m stuck with her kid when we should be focusing on the jamboree.”
Just as Kou walked out the door that morning, her mom cut off her path and held out her baby cousin. Kou tried to refuse, but her aunt chose that moment to release animalistic wails from the kitchen, and her mother’s eyes shined in that particular emotionally manipulative way. After that, the eight month old suddenly found her way in Kou’s arms.
When she met the boys at the bus station, she only shook her head in a warning gesture, and they climbed aboard. The child’s impressive bout of crying started barely two minutes out of the station.
Kou worked way too hard to sign Iwatobi up for this swimming jamboree to back out now. The competition was a tournament schools paid to join, and it provided a chance to practice before the conference races. After begging and working behind the scenes for the funding, Kou was not letting a mere baby stop them.
"What did you same her name was?" Makoto asked. He tapped the baby's nose to make her smile.
"Oh, I didn't," Kou realized. "Kairi. Kairi Yatogami."
"Kairi," Makoto cooed, and the eight month old giggled.
"You're like a father!" Nagisa teased. He pointed at the tallest of their group, and the spectators that had just turned their attention elsewhere reverted their gazes to the suspicious group of teenagers with a baby. Makoto blushed at the observation, but that did not stop him from cupping Kairi’s head and cradling her back as if he had done it for years.
"Who will hold her when we're swimming?" Haru wondered out loud.
Kou paled as everyone turned to her to answer the inquiry. "Um... I suppose I will," she volunteered shakily.
She hoped it was coincidence that Makoto chose that moment to wrap Kairi tighter in her pastel blue blanket and give her the bottle, effectively shielding the child from the outside world as she slipped into a doze.
"A babysitter would have been a preferable option," Rei sighed.
…
By the time they reached Seirin, the high school hosting the jamboree, Makoto successfully rocked Kairi to sleep, and the entire bus cheered when the Iwatobi swim club departed. Kou pulled both her coaching bag and the diaper bag over her shoulder as she declared, “Now’s not the time to let minor details bother us! Focus on your events.”
“Um… Gou-chan…” Makoto fretted.
“What is it?” Kou sighed. Though she wanted nothing more than to continue traveling Seirin’s sidewalks all the way to the pool, she forced herself to turn around and face her four team members and her cousin.
Makoto sweated and blushed as he suddenly regarded the sleeping baby like a feral beast. Gou put one hand on her hip and raised an eyebrow while Nagisa peered closer at Makoto’s dilemma.
“Oh!” Nagisa discovered. “Kairi-chan needs a diaper change!”
Kou suddenly felt a cold splash not unlike being hit by an ocean’s wave. “B-but she’s sleeping now! We can’t wake her up to change her diaper.”
“We certainly cannot leave her in a soiled one,” Rei stressed. He adjusted his glasses as he continued, “Such an unsanitary act is begging for consequences such as rash, infection-”
“Okay, we’ll change her,” Kou interrupted. Now with both hands on her hips, she scanned the surrounding area for something of which she did not quite know the nature. A convenient mother with a baby carriage? A giant sign emblazoned with ‘Changing Station’? Neither presented itself to her. “Let’s go to the pool. They have bathrooms, so maybe the female one will have a place to change her.”
“You sound so defeated, Gou-chan,” Nagisa noticed.
“I’m pretty sure only girls’ bathrooms have changing stations. I’ll have to do it,” Kou sighed.
Though the four boys attempted to look sympathetic, none of them quite masked his own relief. “If you don’t win this jamboree, I’m upping our training regimen to killer levels,” Kou growled, and they quickly turned pale, save for Haru of course. Feeling a little bit better, Kou led the way to Seirin’s indoor pool.
Makoto held Kairi nervously as he both tried not to jostle her from her sleep and avoided touching her sagging bloomers. Luckily, no rancid smell accompanied the weight, so they at least dodged that bullet, but Makoto had a strong instinct that the slightest wrong movement would cause the diaper to overflow with warm liquid and soak both Kairi and himself. He wondered if bleach removed stains of baby excrement.
He breathed a sigh of relief when they finally reached the pool, but their eyes did not sparkle as they normally did at the sight of a true indoor stadium. Rather, they all escorted Kou to the ladies’ room, and Makoto handed her Kairi.
Kou took the child as one might accept a death warrant, and she hesitated in the bathroom doorway.
“I have been told that there are techniques of changing that limit the baby’s exposure to germs,” Rei offered.
“I don’t know any of them,” Kou whined.
“Wait, do you know how to change a diaper, Gou-chan?” Nagisa questioned. He put his finger to his chin in a thinking gesture as he leaned close to Kou.
“How would I know? I’m the youngest in the family. I don’t have any baby siblings,” Kou defended herself. The high pitch of her voice broke the magic spell, and Kairi woke with a cry. Once she realized her replacement in Kou’s arms, she wailed louder, and Kou panicked.
Makoto reached for Kairi on instinct, and Kou happily gave her to him. The howls turned into pitiful whimpers as Makoto shushed her soothingly, still mindful of the bulging diaper.
“Makoto has younger siblings,” Haru volunteered.
“Makoto-senpai, do you know how to change diapers?” Rei questioned.
The tallest of the swimmers seemed to shrink under their gazes as he sweat-dropped. “Ah… it’s been a while,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I’d remember how after nine years.”
“That’s still more than any of the rest of us,” Nagisa pointed out cheerfully.
“It’s probably like riding a bike! It will come back to you… probably,” Kou encouraged.
Makoto looked far from convinced, but before he managed to formulate a protest, Kou practically shoved the third year into the boys’ bathroom despite the sixty pounds he had on her. Nagisa snickered as Makoto and Kairi disappeared behind the heavy door, and Kou turned her glare on him. The two second years promptly straightened as she barked, “Go help him. Maybe between all of us, Kairi will get her diaper changed.”
Kou handed the diaper bag off to Rei, and the three remaining swim team members slugged inside the bathroom. Kou sighed a breath of relief as soon as they left. She would eventually have to learn such skills, especially if her aunt did not pull herself together quickly, but motherhood did not appeal to her at the moment.
She made a mental note to keep Kairi far away from her boyfriend in case he got any ideas…
“Kou-san?”
Kou jumped at the sudden address, and she looked up to find the only person who actually called her by her preferred name.
“Nitori-kun,” she greeted.
The Samezuka swimmer smiled when she remembered his name. “Rin-senpai mentioned that you would be here. Where’s your team?”
“Yes, my brother told me about the jamboree in the first place…” Revealing that all of Iwatobi currently occupied the bathroom suddenly seemed a bit weird, so in lieu of answering, Kou asked, “Why are you away from the rest of your team?”
Nitori held up a container with six water bottles. “Our manager is in academic trouble, so I’m filling in for today,” he explained. “Rin-senpai will want to see you. Do you want me to show you where we are?”
“I’m sure I’ll find him later,” Kou waved the offer away. Nitori nodded his understanding, and he started to depart with a smile when a thought suddenly occurred to her. “Nitori-kun, wait!”
Nitori paused and regarded her curiously. “Yes?”
“What events is my brother doing today?” she asked.
A flush and sparkling admiration colored Nitori’s face as tended to happen when he spoke of Rin’s swimming prestige. “Since this is just practice for conference, Rin-senpai is letting the first and second years and the second and third strings use these races for experience. He’s only signed up for the 400 meter relay.”
A wicked grin spread across Kou’s face that actually made Nitori take a few steps back. “Perfect,” she said.
“I, uh, better get back to my team,” Nitori excused himself. “It was great speaking with you, Kou-san! Good luck today!”
The second year disappeared in a blur of his Samezuka jacket and gray hair, and when the Iwatobi boys finally emerged from the bathroom, they found Kou in a much better mood. Not that they noticed when all four of them slumped forward with exhaustion. Haru held Makoto’s jacket with two fingers.
“There wasn’t a changing table, so I had to put my jacket on a bench and use that,” Makoto explained. Though he now exposed his bare chest to the world, he carried Kairi in his arms, and her blue swaddling blanket kept her warm and happy.
“We Googled how to change a diaper, but we still got the jacket all wet,” Nagisa whined tragically.
“None of the sanitary techniques worked,” Rei mourned.
Kou brushed all their complaints away and held out her arms. “Here, give Kairi to me,” she ordered.
“Eh?” Rei and Nagisa shrieked, and Makoto regarded her uncertainly. Even Kairi paused in her cooing to gaze up at her surroundings with suspicion.
“You all need to get ready for your events,” Kou scolded. “I’ll take Kairi and sign us in at the officials’ table.”
None of them could argue her logic, and Makoto relented. Kou awkwardly adjusted the bundle of baby in her arms, and though Kairi whimpered at first, she finally settled down into a somewhat relaxed state. Kou did not realize she had been holding her breath until she sighed in relief. She then returned the diaper bag to her shoulder.
“I’ll meet with you later,” Kou promised.
The four boys sent back their various confirmations and went to find their designated locker room while Kou entered the main pavilion. She refused to let herself be distracted by the beautiful display of muscles before her as she scanned the crowds of swim teams in search of one in particular. While the officials set up the score tables and starting marks, the surrounding athletes stretched and listened to the motivating speeches of their coaches.
A few sent Kou odd looks for holding a baby, and she resigned herself to dealing with those sorts of questioning glances for a long time coming.
At last, an excited voice saved her the trouble of searching for her brother.
“Gou-sannn!”
“Momo-kun, please wait!”
Unfortunately, the exuberant first-year squeezed past Nitori’s attempts at holding him back, and Momo bounded across the stadium until he landed in front of Kou only to recoil at the sight of Kairi. “Gou-san? You betrayed me?” he shrieked.
“This is my cousin,” Kou deadpanned.
Instantly regaining all his energy, Momo exclaimed, “I knew we are meant to be!” As he started to rattle off his ideas of an ideal date, Kou suddenly wished she had claimed Kairi as her own instead. At least that might have prevented unwanted advances.
A strangled yelp suddenly cut off Momo’s rambling as Rin pulled the younger boy into a casual headlock. Nitori heaved a weary sigh at his swim captain’s side, and Rin raised an eyebrow at Kou and her companion.
“Gou? Isn’t this…?”
“Kairi, our baby cousin, yes,” Kou confirmed.
The eight month old gurgled in response to her name, and Nitori practically glowed at the sight. Rin and Momo, on the other hand, gave the child the most suspicious of looks.
“Why do you have her?” Rin questioned.
“Aunt Yuki’s husband left her, so she’s living with Mom and me now, and I got roped into watching her today… at least at the start,” Kou relayed.
“Aunt Yuki’s living… Wait, what do you mean at the start?”
Kou beamed and held out the baby. Her blanket slid from its fasten to reveal her white onesie underneath, the words ‘Pocket Princess’ emblazoned in glittery yellow across the belly. Kairi’s wisp of red-purple hair fell into her pale pink eyes as she cooed.
“Your turn, Onii-san.”