Chapter Text
“Tsukasa…! Tsukasa, wake up!”
Isn’t hearing your fiancée’s voice one of the best things to wake up to? Well, it is to Tsukasa. Hearing Nene is one of his favorite things, if not the favorite. Usually, it meant something nice was coming next. Breakfast in bed. A forehead kiss. Or maybe her groggy little complaints about how he kept kicking her in his sleep, which he always denied like it was some kind of injustice.
So when he hears her voice this morning, a little higher than normal and just slightly off, he doesn’t even think. He just smiles with his eyes still shut.
“Morning, diva,” he mumbles, half-asleep, lips curled into a grin against the pillow. “Let me dream for five more minutes.”
“Tsukasa.” She says it again. This time her voice has weight. It presses on him. “Tsukasa, I think something’s wrong.”
He lets out a lazy sigh and shifts beneath the blankets. “Mmhmm. Is it because I was also a cat in your dream? That part was weird. But romantic. You know, like cat soulmates.”
“TENMA TSUKASA!”
His eyes snap open.
He sees red. Literally. There is blood running down her legs. Thick lines cutting through her skin like dripping paint. A dark puddle has soaked into the sheets and is now spreading onto the floor. Her knees are shaking, barely holding her up, but she’s standing. Barely.
He stares at her.
Blinks once.
Then twice.
Then he screams.
“AAAAAAAAAAH! Nene, you're dying!!!”
“What?! No I'm not?!”
“Yes!! Yes you are!! Look, there's blood and blood equals death! No, my diva!!” He’s already thrown the blankets off like they’re on fire.
“I’m not dying, you idiot! I… don’t think I feel like I’m dying?!”
“Are you sure because that's a shit ton of blood!!” He’s now circling the bed, spinning like a robot with broken code, both hands tangled in his hair. “We need a doctor, wait, no. An exorcist! No, both!”
“An exorcist, are you serious? I don’t even feel that bad! It’s just wet and weird and it hurts my privates…”
“Oh my god, this is it. This is the end. You’re too young to die! I'm too young to be a widower! We didn't even get married yet!”
“TSUKASA!!” she yells. “I’M NOT DYING!!”
He freezes mid-flail, arms suspended in the air like he’s been paused. In their two years together, she’s only ever shouted at him like that once. Okay, twice now. And both of them happened this morning. Is this what married life is going to be like?
Nene lets out a shaky sigh and looks at Tsukasa, who somehow managed to resemble a wet dog caught in a thunderstorm. His eyes were glossy, lower lip trembling like he might cry at any second.
“...Are you sure?”
Nene nods, but then her face tightens and her hand grabs at her stomach. “Okay maybe something is wrong? Like not dying-wrong, but... weird-wrong? Crampy-wrong?”
Tsukasa gasps. Not dramatically. Desperately. “OH NO. YOU’RE GROWING A TUMOR, AREN’T YOU?!”
“WHAT?! NO!! Why is that your first guess?!”
“I DON'T KNOW, NENE, I'M PANICKING. THERE’S BLOOD AND YOU’RE MAKING THE PAIN NOISE!”
She winces again and leans into the wall, one hand braced against it like it’s the only thing keeping her up. “Okay, that one was a lot. Like something is squeezing my insides.”
“OH MY GOD, YOU’RE BEING POSSESSED. I KNEW IT. THIS IS WHY YOU NEVER TOUCH OUIJA BOARDS IN FLEA MARKETS.”
“Tsukasa, I'm gonna need you to shut up! I think I need to go to the hospital.”
He’s already halfway to the door before she finishes her sentence. “Yes ma'am!"
She grabs her phone with one hand and the nearest hoodie with the other, dragging it over her head while trying not to double over again. “Nene, if you're not dying,” he mutters as they step outside, “I'm still writing a complaint to the universe. You scared the crap out of me.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just drive, idiot”
There are certain moments in life that define a man: the birth of his children, the moment he realizes the love of his life is stronger than any superhero he’s ever seen and the exact second his legs give out from under him in the middle of a sterile hospital delivery room and he faceplants against the tile.
That man is Tenma Tsukasa. And this is that moment.
There were words being yelled that Tsukasa didn’t understand. Ten centimeters. Crowning. Hold your breath and push! But what he did know was that his fiancée was giving birth to not one but two babies that both had never realized she had conceived. Somewhere between twin number one and Oh my god there's another one, Tsukasa had made the mistake of looking too closely. And that’s when it happened. He felt his soul leave his body. Not romantically, like oh my soul belongs to her, awe.
No, more like it crawled out of his ears to escape what his eyes were seeing.
The narrator, had there been one, would have told you this:
He fought bravely for ten minutes.
He held her hand and said encouraging things.
He tried. He really did.
But when twin number one made their dramatic, shrieking entrance into the world: covered in goo and with lungs clearly inherited from Tsukasa himself. The man’s knees buckled. And that was that.
Now back to Tsukasa.
Everything was spinning. The lights were too white. Someone shouted, “We’re losing the father!” He wanted to say, No no, I’m still emotionally present, but all that came out was a faint wheeze and the sound of his face meeting linoleum.
“Tsukasa?!”
Nene’s voice broke through the fog. Powerful. Sharp. Filled with more authority than all the doctors combined.
He groaned from the floor. “I’m fine,” he mumbled. “I’ll be fine. Just need a reboot.”
“Get up!”
“Don’t yell at me,” he whispered. “I gave birth emotionally.”
A nurse crouched beside him. “Sir? Sir, she’s about to push the second one.”
He blinked at her like a dying anime protagonist. “There’s more?”
“Twin pregnancy, sir. That means two.”
“…Right.”
With great effort and zero dignity, he crawled to his knees. Peered over the edge of the bed. Just in time to see their second child come into the world, smaller than the first, but somehow louder.
Nene, soaked in sweat and glory, looked up at him from the bed, her eyes hazy but steady, her breath uneven but strong. Her whole body looked like it had been through war and decided to win out of spite.
She smiled.
He collapsed again.
No words, just a second thump as Tsukasa folded back to the floor like a dying Victorian noble.
“Seriously?” one of the nurses muttered.
Another wheeled a stool to Nene’s side. Someone was already wrapping the second baby in a towel. There were soft cries, and cries getting louder, and somewhere a monitor beeping steadily, reminding everyone that somehow, miraculously, no one was dead.
From the floor, Tsukasa mumbled something about lights and angels. Then:
“Are we in heaven?”
“No, Tsukasa,” Nene croaked. “We’re in maternity.”
“Oh. That’s worse.”
The room moved on without him for a few minutes. Nene was still the center of it all. The nurse asking her to breathe, the doctor congratulating her, two tiny babies screaming just to prove they could.
Tsukasa peeled himself off the ground eventually. Very slowly. He made it halfway up, used the wall for balance, looked at Nene, and forgot how to speak. The babies were real. There were two of them, each bundled like burritos, each impossibly small and loud. One of the nurses gently tucked the second into Nene’s arms beside the first.
“They’re…” he began, voice hoarse. “They’re like… tiny humans.”
Nene looked at him. “Yes, Tsukasa. That’s usually what babies are.”
“They’re ours.”
“Yup.”
“They didn’t… explode.”
“They’re not supposed to..? They came out the regular way.”
“That’s worse.”
“Whatever. Hold one before you pass out again.”
He hesitated, his hands were trembling and eyes were wide and wet. Regardless, the nurse had placed the louder of the two in his arms anyway.
“Oh,” he whispered.
The baby yawned.
“Oh no.”
Nene leaned back against the pillows, exhausted beyond comprehension, her head lolling slightly toward him. “You’re crying again, aren’t you?” she asked without even looking.
“…No.”
“You’re definitely crying.”
“I- I thought I was gonna die,” he said, eyes still fixed on the tiny face in his arms.
“Huh? You weren’t even the one giving birth.”
“I know,” Tsukasa said softly. “But I did it emotionally.”