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"Psst. Kento?"
"Hrrmph…?"
"Are you sleeping?"
Nanami squinted his eyes. He really couldn''t afford to lose a single hour of sleep during the short periods of time that the baby wasn't crying.
"I was…" Nanami stirred with a groan. "Why did you wake me up?"
No answer. He rolled over on his back and sighed.
"Mahito, what is it?"
"You sound mad." Mahito replied with a little voice. Nanami turned his head to look at him.
"I'm not, I'm just tired. You should be sleeping too."
"How can you sleep?"
Nanami propped himself up on his elbow to get a better look at Mahito. The curse sitting in bed, hugging himself.
"What do you mean?" Nanami asked.
"Don't you feel it too?"
Mahito looked genuinely upset, so, despite going back to bed being the only thing Nanami wanted to do, he tried to be patient.
"I'm sorry, but it's four in the morning and I have no idea what you're talking about. Can't it wait a few hours?"
Mahito's frown intensified and showed that, no, it couldn't wait.
"I think there's something in my belly, where the baby used to be, and it keeps telling me bad things could happen to him at any moment, even when everything's alright. I feel like he might be constantly needing something, even when he's not crying, and I doubt myself. I created a whole, fully functional human being, but now that he's his own person, I feel like this is too much, and so much bigger than me. When I look at him, I think he's sending emotional beams directly into my brain because I've never felt like this before. Can he do that?"
Nanami laughed softly and sat up, wrapping his arms around Mahito's upper body and resting his head on his shoulder.
"Maybe he can, because I feel the same."
"See! I was right!!" Mahito cried out a little bit too loud.
"Shhh." Nanami whispered in his ear. "It's parental anxiety. It's perfectly normal."
"But if you feel it too, then how can you sleep so well?"
"Well… I'm human, so I always needed more sleep than you in the first place. I also tell myself that I'm fully prepared to handle this… tiny human-curse hybrid and that I don't have to deal with all this on my own."
Mahito could tell Nanami was smiling as he referred to their newborn child as some sort of curious creature, which, to be honest, he kind of was.
"That means you can rely on me, and that, whatever happens, I'll be by your side." He added, and Mahito, though he knew it, always felt a bit relieved to hear it from Nanami himself.
He paused before asking:
"... Am I going to feel like this forever?"
"I'm afraid so."
Before Mahito could add anything, Nanami shifted their position and draped his arm over Mahito's chest to gently pull him back onto the bed.
"But it's a good thing. It shows how much love you have for him. Everyday, I can tell; you are so, so loving."
Mahito practically melted into Nanami's arms. "I love you, too."
Wailing could be heard from the next room. Nanami sighed and pressed a kiss to Mahito's forehead before getting out of bed. They both knew it was supposed to be Mahito's turn to go.
"Get some sleep." Nanami ordered him. "I can do a lot, but I can't handle two sleep-deprived babies at the same time."
Mahito didn't protest. At the end of the day, even with the arrival of their son, he loved still being Nanami's baby.