Work Text:
“Well... Let's make some rules”.
As he spoke, Aki underlined the title of the draft in his notebook. Next to him, Power and Denji were sitting around the table trying to pay some attention to him. To avoid sitting on the floor, Himeno remained situated on the sofa, watching that scene in complete amusement.
“First. At half past nine at night, you must go to bed”.
“But on Fridays at nine o'clock there’s a new episode of Detective Magician” Power said, pointing at him in an accusatory tone.
Then Aki silently crossed out his notes and wrote down the girl's remark.
“We'll make an exception on Fridays then”.
At that moment when she saw him correcting, Power took the opportunity to make more contributions.
“Actually, there're also episodes on Thursdays and Wednesdays”.
At her new note, Aki raised his head from his notebook and looked at her carefully.
“I'm going to find out when it is broadcasted. If that’s a lie, you’ll go to bed at half past nine every day” He warned her seriously.
With that warning, Power was forced to give in.
“Okay, it's only Fridays” She muttered crossly.
“Second. No yelling and no fighting” Aki kept writing.
“So, what're you going to do from now on?” Denji pointed out just before they both burst out laughing.
“I don't yell” Aki clarified, “I only corrected you when necessary”.
Without them stopping laughing, Aki continued taking notes down in that notebook.
“Third. Power, you’ll take care of Meowy”.
That was enough to end the kids’ laughter.
“Huh? Why’s that a stupid rule?”
“Because I won't be able to take care of it all the time” Aki explained “Meowy is your responsibility. You're going to feed it, water it and clean its litter box”.
“What are you going to do then?” Power questioned as she crossed her arms.
Then Aki looked up from his notebook and fixed his serious gaze on the girl.
“Take care of Himeno, of the two of you, make your meals, clean the house, do the laundry, the shopping” He began “Shall I go on?”
Power simply averted her gaze without saying anything else and, therefore, without reproaching Aki as she found herself without any argument. At some point a smile of tenderness began to widen on Himeno's face; instead of the obvious stress that Aki was already witnessing, for her, that scene was, to say the least, entertaining.
“Well. These rules are only valid if we all agree to accept them” Aki concluded “So, do you see the need to add something to this coexistence?”
Denji and Power looked at each other for a few moments. Although Aki was giving them a vote of confidence to be part of a consensus among all..., they thought this was an opportunity to wish for anything.
“We want to eat French fries”.
Aki did not alter his serious facade. He simply closed his notebook.
“Let's leave it here”.
The first few days went well. Bearable was what Aki thought, who was trying to hide the tension he himself, at times, was under at the thought of everything that could go wrong.
“Aki, I can still clear the table” Himeno reminded him, almost in a jocular tone, as she finished carrying the dishes to the kitchen before his watchful eye.
“Yeah, it's just... I want to help you”.
Himeno sighed, feeling kindly after all.
Already ready to leave the apartment, Power waited for her companions leaning on the door frame without taking her eyes off Himeno, whom she was staring at. Since she had heard the news about the baby, she had not been able to deal with it in a good way. Therefore, she simply tried to question every situation she contemplated.
“That's still the same as when we arrived. I'm sure the stinky baby thing is a lie”.
As soon as he finished packing up the kitchen, Aki went to meet Power and Denji, who had already met up with his partner.
“It's barely been two weeks. There're still no visible changes” Aki explained calmly.
Although that argument did not seem to convince her completely, Power remained silent. She would think of another comment to call everything into question.
When they finished leaving the kitchen as decent as possible, Himeno sat in front of the table simply listening to Aki insisting that he would be back as soon as he left Power and Denji at work, that he would only be absent for a couple of hours and to let him know if anything happened. For her part, Himeno cut him off with the excuse that they were going to be late. After all, only then would the two of them be able to be alone again.
However, when he was about to cross the door, the woman stopped him with a final warning.
“Hey, aren't you forgetting something?”
Then Aki stopped in his tracks and looked down at himself, searching to see if there was anything missing from him. After looking at Denji and Power and seeing that there was nothing on them that he missed either, Aki turned his gaze to Himeno.
She was smiling at him, but not in an endearing way, but in a mischievous way.
Tempting.
It didn't take Aki long to figure that it was too irresistible for her to take advantage of a situation where they had an audience. And, of course, he knew she wasn't going to let that opportunity pass her by. Himeno, seeing that Aki was slow to react, hesitating to give in, pointed to her lips while smiling. And so, trying to advance steadily in all his steps, he approached Himeno until he reached her and then placed a fleeting kiss on her lips.
As if that routine gesture had taken place without an audience, Aki returned to the door to leave the apartment, trying to ignore the astonished eyes of his spectators.
“Really?” Denji reproached, the first to speak, “So what do you do when we're not looking?”
Aki walked out the door, suddenly feeling very much watched, waiting for the children to follow him.
“They do THE SEX!”
“POWER!” Aki squealed at her intervention.
“Ah, you shouted!!” The girl accused him.
“We won!!” Denji added.
“No, this is not about winning or losing” Aki clarified as they went out and left the apartment behind “The rules are for all of us to accept so that we can reach a consensus...”
“BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING”.
“We won, period!!!!!”
Even though a small part of her could even feel sorry for the situation she had created for Aki, Himeno smiled amused to hear them continue arguing even after they had closed the door.
Discarding all the moments in which Power and Denji reminded Aki of his goodbye kiss with Himeno, that day passed normally.
It was then when, in the middle of the night Aki, after slowly turning over in bed, ended up realizing that, no matter how hard he tried to find Himeno, he couldn't find her.
Slowly, the man opened his eyes to, definitively, discover the empty mattress. After focusing his eyes a little more and seeing that she wasn't in the room either, Aki slowly sat up and walked on his bare feet in search of his companion.
“Himeno?” He murmured in a sleepy voice, hoping to hear her.
Then he watched the light peek out from under the bath and called softly.
“Himeno?” He repeated her name, hoping he hadn't interrupted Denji or Power.
The next thing he heard was Himeno's voice, but in no intelligible form.
Instead, in the form of nausea and coughing.
He didn't wait any longer and Aki entered the bathroom. He didn't need to ask her how she was after seeing her face hidden in the open toilet bowl. She simply stayed in her crouched position, too exhausted and uncomfortable to move anymore.
“Why didn't you wake me up?” He asked calmly when Himeno finished vomiting.
As he spoke, Aki rummaged through the drawers of the bathroom for one of his hair elastics and sat down on the floor next to her.
“I... I didn’t want you to see me like this” She muttered.
Then Aki wrinkled his face at her explanation and began to comb her hair with his fingers and, with the help of the elastic, to gather her hair behind her head.
“I've seen you like this many times”.
“... Right” Himeno confirmed after a moment's thought.
Those nights when the only way for them to feel alive was to behave like reckless teenagers. Those nights when they sought to escape from a world that had forced them to mature. And yet, that night was very different. There was no longer an escape from reality. Only a hopeful search for a future together, for a new opportunity.
Then Himeno felt a caress on her back.
“How are you feeling now?” He asked, completely oblivious to her thoughts.
“Uh... I don't know...”
“Do you want to vomit more?” He continued, trying to further refine his questions.
“Mmm... I don't think so” She mumbled, still unsure of moving from her place “You can leave if you want to”.
The moment the words fell from her lips Himeno was barely conscious. She did not really know why she uttered them. Not when, despite her insistent feeling of not wanting to feel like a burden in those moments, she didn't feel like being left alone. But Aki, to her good fortune, was blunt.
“I'm not leaving without you”.
At no time did he separate the contact of his caresses on her back.
“Aren't you cold?”
“No, I'm not... well, a little”.
Aki sighed as he stood up.
“Himeno...”
That tone was meant to be a reprimand, but, in a situation like that, it was camouflaged as tenderness and understanding.
After taking a clean towel as it was the only thing he had in the room, he put it over her shoulders. She remained leaning on the cup with her hair pulled back from her face thanks to Aki's updo. Then, having left the towel to serve as her coat, he rested his hand on Himeno's forehead gently but firmly. From his books he already knew that vomiting was a normal occurrence during the first months of pregnancy as long as it was not accompanied by fever. Then he withdrew his hand, relieved to see that her temperature was normal.
“Next week we’ll go to the gynecologist”.
Himeno sighed as if suddenly feeling all the fatigue of simply moving from there.
“And tomorrow I'll change your diet”.
Despite the pleasantness of his care, the woman began to interpret all this as too much information.
“You don't need to tell me everything now” She commented.
Aki simply came closer to place a small kiss on her head, aware that he was talking more to himself than to her.
“Sorry”.
And so, he waited beside her until she was ready to go back to bed.
Aki was so focused on his new way of life that he didn't even find it strange to have been away from his routine as a devil hunter for three months.
No matter how many different emotions the fact that he was expecting a baby aroused in him; Aki discovered during those days something he had been waiting for a long time: normality.
A normal, simple life. And he was then aware that he was enjoying it. That it was what he longed for the most.
However, Power and Denji made sure that this normality was only temporary.
“Wow, you're FAT!!!”
Power's sudden way of making such comments only managed to get a stern warning expression on Aki's face. After all, not raising his voice was still among his rules of coexistence. For her part, Himeno had gone from leaving her nausea behind to watch her body change in a way that, until that day, she had only been able to imagine.
“Are you comfortable?”
Later that afternoon, while Himeno simply rested lying on the couch, Aki sat down next to her, letting her rest her feet on his lap. He then focused on pouring oil over his hands, waiting for a response from Himeno that never came. Instead, another question was returned to him.
“Aki... do you think I'm fat?” She muttered, averting her gaze.
Without looking at her, Aki rubbed his hands together once the oil had been poured.
“Are you really going to listen to Power?”
Himeno stirred, as if she wanted to hide.
“You haven't answered me” She reproached him in a whisper.
Although Aki knew that Power was just behaving as usual, he was aware that Himeno might feel more vulnerable to her comments. Then, after leaning over her, he reached for one of her arms gently and began to massage it slowly from shoulder to wrist.
“You're not fat, you're gestating” He replied, as if he had to remind her.
“Mm...” She replied unconvinced by his words.
Once he had finished with one arm, Aki gently laid it beside her body and did the same with her other arm. It was easy for him to keep quiet for a long time, especially when he was concentrating on any task. It was, in that case, to soothe Himeno's skin and keep it from drying out. And so, he realized that, for Himeno, too much time had passed without saying anything.
“We can go for a walk later” He proposed to try to get her out of her thoughts.
However, at that moment, that goal was going to be more complicated than expected.
In just a few moments, Himeno thought about how her life was changing. And how radically she felt it was.
She thought about everything she didn't know. How she would be able to protect a baby if she was offended by Power's harmless comment. How the illusions with which she had begun this journey were turning into exhaustion, despair and overwhelm. And then she felt she was not strong.
The only thing that made her come back to reality and temporarily abandon that amalgam of sensations was to feel Aki's fingers, covered by a handkerchief, on her face. And only then did she realize that he was wiping away her tears.
Himeno's first impulse was to turn her head to stop him from continuing.
“Hey” He told her without any reproving tone “It's okay”.
Seeing that she didn't give in, Aki put down the handkerchief and went back to rubbing oil on his hands to resume the massage.
“You're going through a lot” He reminded her even though he knew that, without the need for him to talk to her, Himeno was not going to agree with him “And you've already seen me cry many times”.
Aki didn't intend for her to answer him.
He simply wanted to be there. He wanted her to know. And so, he carefully lifted her shirt until he uncovered her already bulging belly and began to massage it as if it were made of porcelain. And he continued until he fell back into the immense silence that accompanied them once again.
“Tell me if you are... uncomfortable”.
When he looked up to look at her, Aki realized he wasn't going to get any answer.
He approached Himeno's face slightly to check that she had fallen asleep. On the left side of her face, where her already closed eyelid rested, there was still some remnants of tears. Then Aki calmly pulled down her shirt to cover her belly again. He knew that, as hard as it was for Himeno to accept, it was his turn to take care of her.
As he watched her fall fast asleep, he thought they would take that walk some other time.