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Inuyasha hated hospitals. He hated the smells, he hated being able to hear things he absolutely did not want to hear. He also hated that he had to pay to park onsite, as if he had a choice with his not- exactly-wife- but - more- than -girlfriend Kagome leaking a shocking amount of fluid that seemed to gush with each contraction. She couldn't walk from the car to the hospital door; but sure, parking down the street with the human answer to a strawberry slushie in the middle of a zombie apocalypse was a viable option and not a death wish.
Carrying a damp and somewhat indignant Kagome through the halls reminded Inuyasha of another reason to hate hospitals: what did these people have against signage? It felt like ages - and at least one additional centimeter - before they finally arrived at the maternity ward. Immediately Kagome was wheeled away into a room where she could get checked by the doctor (singular, since the profession had been royally fucked by The Outbreak) on call while Inuyasha was left behind to hobble his way through the admissions paperwork. Of all the things that went up in flames as the world changed, insurance paperwork wasn’t one of them. Inuyasha’s handwriting was probably illegible as he wrote as quickly as he could, desperate to get back to Kagome as he heard her groan through another contraction - a full thirty seconds sooner than the last one. He practically threw the clipboard at the nurse before booking it to the exam room, pulling back the curtain and dying on the spot.
There are a lot of things you don't want to see when you pull back the curtain around a hospital bed: Your ex-fiance up to her elbow inside your current partner's vagina is absolutely one of them.
—
Inuyasha hadn’t seen Kikyou - Doctor Kikyou Hidaka, OB/GYN -in over a year, ever since she moved out of his apartment. Her career had to come first. Of course it did, he understood, really he did, but that didn’t make him any less upset. And it absolutely didn’t make it any less shocking to see her now.
Maybe he should have taken more time with those forms.
Kagome was fixated on the fetal heart rate monitor, and Kikyou was speaking to the nurse, both of them blessedly unaware of his moment of panic. He quietly composed himself and took the few steps to stand beside the bed. He silently grasped Kagome’s hand, hoping beyond hope that maybe Kikyou wouldn’t recognize him, that maybe she would keep her professional mask - both literally and figuratively - firmly in place and say nothing to him. If nothing else, maybe a contraction would hit at just the right time so Kagome wouldn't hear Kikyou say, “Oh! Yash, hi!”
But based on how Kagome’s head turned almost Exercist style towards him, he knew hope was out the fucking door and gone already.
“Dr. Hidaka,” he replied, hoping the formality would reset the tone in the room.
It didn’t.
“Oh Yash, no need for that,” said Kikyou, tossing the exam gloves in the trash and coating her hands in sanitizing gel, “I was just telling your friend,” -- Inuyasha wasn’t sure if it was a contraction or the term that made Kagome flinch so strongly -- “she’s already at 6cm and things seem to be going smoothly. I wish I had time to chat - but I’m the only OB at the moment, so I’ve got to run.”
She gave a polite wave to Kagome as she backed out towards the door, then stopped. “Oh, but Nurse Rin, page me when the father arrives and I'll come pop in.”
Before Inuyasha could say anything Kikyou was already sprinting down the hallway, to what he assumed was another patient having a much better day than he was.
“So, Yash,” he heard Kagome say, her voice a full octave higher than usual, “have anything you want to talk about?”
Inuyasha looked up at the heavens and tried to remember what he’d done to deserve this.
He sat down at the end of the bed, “Is now really when you want to get into all of this, Kagome?”
“Considering that this just saw me naked and poked my cervix, yeah, I think now is a good time.”
Fair.
“Kikyou and I dated for two years. We broke up when we realized the first Outbreak wasn’t the only one. She was fully committed to her work and that didn’t leave room for anything else.”
“But you wanted there to be something else?”
“I also didn’t want to get eaten by my neighbor - things changed.”
Kagome’s undoubtedly scathing retort was cut short by another contraction, which the poor nurse took as her opportunity to leave. “I’ll go check on that epidural for you hun.”
Inuyasha waited until the poor girl had left before continuing to air her boss’s dirty laundry.
“Ya know, you and Kikyou have a lot in common actually. I asked her to marry me and she said no, too.”
Inuyasha immediately regretted opening his mouth again at all. So far the pain had been unpleasant but manageable, keeping Kagome’s hands red from squeezing things but her eyes mercifully dry. But between the emotions running high in their conversation and, according to the little green line on the monitor, her contractions staying at their peak for longer, Kagome was officially a mess. Her composure shattered, sending tears and snot running down her face. Inuyasha shot up and quickly scanned the room for tissues, nearly breaking the drawers next to the sink in his haste. He quickly decided the roll of toilet paper from the bathroom was the best option. Sitting silently next to Kagome as he handed her wad after wad of tissue, he kicked himself for taking the bait and opening this line of dialogue at all. It wasn’t fair to Kagome to bring up her refusal, but Inuyasha was always a sore loser. It took several grueling moments before Kagome could form words again.
“That’s not fair,” she eventually managed to mumble, “you two were actually together. She didn’t have to worry you would resent her in six months for trapping you.”
Inuyasha groaned, realizing that despite the Herculean effort Kagome was putting into holding this conversation, it was going to be a repeat of their argument last time. “Trap? What trap? We worked together for years. We were dating for weeks before we knew you were pregnant. I moved into your apartment. Hell, your water broke all over my car because I’m right here.”
“Guilt is a powerful motivator.”
“Why would I feel guilty?”
“Why would your ex assume you’re a cabby and not the father?”
That…was a good question. A fair question. A question he wasn’t sure he had a good answer for.
Kikyou was a very fact driven person. She probably did a quick calculation of what was statically likely: that Inuyasha was helping someone in need, or that he’d fallen in love with a coworker and in less than a year moved in with her, married her, and fathered her child. He could see why she wouldn’t exactly jump to option two. But Kagome, who honestly hadn’t asked too many questions about his dating history and he had absolutely not volunteered, didn’t.
He looked at the furiously beeping monitor and tried to compact his previous thirty years into a single sentence. He finally decided on, “Because Kikyou thinks I should never have a baby.”
Kagome made a shocked sound, which clearly indicated he’d deeply over simplified.
“I mean… Kikyou never would have thought she and I should have had a baby. It took us five years of living in the same building and having coffee together every single morning before we ever went on a real date. And six months after that for us to have sex. Me proposing after living together for two years was a rash, overreaction to the zombie outbreak as far as Kikyou was concerned. We never would have committed to a baby, we had work and that was too all consuming for anything else - for both of us. And I was happy with her. I was happy with work. If the world was a different place, I could maybe still be happy with that. But it’s not that world anymore. Things changed. I changed.”
“I’m done waiting for things to be the right time. The right time is now, Kagome. I made an active choice to be here and I don’t want to be anywhere else. Besides,” he couldn’t help the snarky lip curl that formed as he spoke, “if I wanted to leave, I’d have done it before you ruined the front seat of my car.”
Kagome snorted, the first sign of his usually giddy partner he’d seen in far too many hours. “I told you we needed to leave sooner.”
“You did, and if you want you can spend the rest of our lives saying I told you so.”
But, like everything else that day, timing was not on his side today. As Kagome bit her lip and bared down through the pain the nurse finally arrived with the anesthesiologist. In mere minutes a horrifyingly large needle was stuck into Kagome’s spine, and the small miracle that is modern pain relief meant Kagome was asleep before the magic man was even out of the room. Once Kagome was settled in a small mountain of pillows, Inuyasha combed his claws through his hair and coaxed it up into a ponytail, trying to look more like a father-to-be and less like a feral cat. Inuyasha looked at the large steel plate that would have been a window in another life; it was probably after dark by now. He dragged the small chair away from the wall and set himself close enough to hold Kagome’s hand without putting any strain on the IV and tried to get some sleep himself.
-
Inuyasha thought he knew what to expect at a birth. He’d seen the screaming video in health class, he’d seen a thousand awkward instant births in sitcoms. Hell, since his coworkers found out about him and Kagome every woman in the building had made it her mission to tell him all about their own experiences in much more detail than he would ever ask for. But still there were some things he hadn’t expected.
One, he didn’t know you could actually bumrush a baby out in less than five minutes. Or, that the rush of new human life was accompanied by an uncomfortable sauna of heat and blood that he would be able to smell on his clothes for weeks to come.
Second, he didn’t realize just how small a newborn truly was. He’d seen the tiny hats and shoes, but to see his son - his son- folded and wrapped like origami and disappearing into Kagome’s arms was startling.
And third, and perhaps most importantly, he absolutely didn’t expect that timing would finally work out in his favor.
After the birth and afterbirth had been cleaned up, and the somewhat concerning number of extra nurses had vacated the room - blessedly without any additional commentary from Dr Hikada - Inuyasha was summoned by Nurse Rin to help get some additional baby measurements while Kagome took a moment to close her eyes and breathe. While Rin confirmed baby’s weight Inuyasha dug furiously through his jeans pockets. Carefully he pulled out a small black box - the third box like this he’d ever owned. The first had held Kikyou’s simple titanium band - clean, wearable under exam gloves, and shiny as hell. The second had had the same ring as this third one did: a round cut pink sapphire set in white gold. However, after Kagome’s refusal Inuyasha couldn’t bring himself to return the ring, confident that Kagome would change her mind once her anxiety about his sincerity had faded. But this meant he’d taken to carrying the ring everywhere, just in case his moment arose. The ring survived a trip through the laundry, but the box had not. Thus, a third purchase.
He delicately opened his son’s monkey-grip-reflex fingers under the watchful eye of Nurse Rin, who swaddled him so his little hand stuck out of the blanket to clearly display the engagement ring.
“You really want to make her cry right now?” she whispered.
“She did ruin the car seat.”
Nurse Rin chortled, but still carried the baby back to Kagome waiting to place him in her arms until after her hands came away from her face and her tears had been wiped away.
It might not have been the statistically average start to their new life together, but Inuyasha wouldn’t have had it any other way.