#lil raiden

[sirce-ap]

Lil Raiden against Sundowner

Well, I did not expect that...

[wishingforatypewriter]

The Master Plan (Portraits of 119)

Summary: Raiden and Akane, age six, plan the rest of their lives while Jouichirou spectates. 

In Saiba Jouichirou’s experience, there were only two ways to manage young children—distractions and manual labor. He himself had no particular preference for one over the other, but since Erina would drop kick him into next week if he put her six year old on a twelve hour diner shift, he decided to take the vacation photo route.

His grandson and his preferred pink-haired companion had been scrolling through the pictures on his iPad for the past few hours, making elaborate life plans all the while. 

“Someday we should get a house like that in Curacao, right on the beach,” the girl, Shiomi’s granddaughter, said to Raiden. And the kid looked at her like she’d just explained quantum physics. 

“Yeah, definitely. And then you could go out on the balcony and paint.”

“Mhmm. And you can cook me dinner and we can eat outside and enjoy the view.” 

“That’s a good idea,” Raiden said. “Hey gramps, can we—”

“Later,” he said, flipping the channel back to his football match. He supposed there were worse things they could be up to than planning a picnic. 

“Curacao is gonna be our winter home, right?” the girl asked Raiden as they continued to huddle together over the screen. 

“Yeah.” He scratched the back of his head, grinning at her. “And we can summer in LA.”

“And spring in Paris?” she asked, hopefully. 

“Of course,” he told her. “We’ll spend autumn back in Tokyo to check up on Totsuki and stuff.”

“You’re gonna have to check on it more than once a year, you know,” she told him, arms crossed. 

“Yeah, I guess. We can come back every few weeks like my parents.” 

“That works,” she said, appeased for now. “I’d need to see Junko, too.”

At this, Jouichirou couldn’t help but laugh. “You two really plan on living together all your lives?”

The two children exchanged a brief look—confirming their plans without words—before nodding in unison. 

“But what happens when one of you gets married?” 

They shared the look again, this time a bit longer than before—question and answer, call and response. Then Raiden simply shrugged. “We’ll get married, right?”

“Mhmm,” the girl replied without a second thought. “Grandma Arato says so.” 

“Great gramps too.”

Did they now? That would be just Senzaemon’s way, moving his pieces and casting his web. Would those two even be here now without his meddling and  careful curation of the ‘jewel generation’? Had this—the Nakiri god tongue enhanced by a hyper acute sense of smell—been his endgame the whole time?

“Hey, gramps, what’s this one that says secure folder?”

“Ignore that.”

He sighed. For now they were just kids, not pawns in some master plan, and it was going to be a very long day. 

[wishingforatypewriter]

The Son

Summary: In which Souma almost misses the birth of his son. 

Souma hadn’t been planning on leaving, not with his wife’s due date so close, but Erina had all but packed his bags and kicked him down the steps of their duplex. 

“I’m not going to have the kid for another two weeks—minimum,” she had said when he tried to put off his trip for the third time. “Just go to Paris and handle your affairs. I’ll live.” 

Because he knew he would never hear the end of it if he didn’t take her advice, Souma decided to go. It would be a quick trip—just three days—and he’d be back home before his wife’s next doctor’s appointment. 

He had just settled into his business class aisle seat—because he never got the aisle when he flew with Erina—when his phone started vibrating. 

“Did they close up your plane yet?” his wife asked, breathless, as soon as he answered. 

“I think they’re about to,” he said, glancing around at the flight attendants shutting overhead bins. “Why? What happened?” 

“Well...” She sighed. “If you want to finish your trip, it’s fine, but—”

Souma shook his head slightly. If he let her go on like this, she’d still be dancing around the point when he was halfway across the Pacific. “Babe, you kind of have to get on with it.” 

Erina scoffed, and in his mind’s eye Souma could see her flipping her hair back in that perpetually disgruntled manner of hers. “Well, it’s not like you need to come right away—”

“He probably does need to come now, Nakiri-san,” he heard her personal assistant, Kanon, say in the background. 

“Erina, what—”

“It appears that I am slightly in labor, so if you can um...not go to Europe it would be—” Erina trailed off then, turning away from the phone as she released an anguished sounding groan. 

Oh. Oh fuck. 

Souma was already grabbing his scarf and carry on from the overhead rack when Kanon came back on the line. “Souma-san?” she asked. 

“I’m here.”

“I don’t know if you got all that, but she wants you to meet us at St. Luke’s as soon as possible.” 

“Got it. Thanks, Kanon.” 

An airline employee tried to stop Souma as he exited the plane and started back through the tunnel. “Excuse me, sir,” she said. “We’re about to close the flight. You won’t be able to get back on.” 

“It’s fine. My wife is having a baby,” he explained. 

“Oh, congratulations,” she said, her face changing. “If you wait a few minutes, we can get all of your luggage out from under the plane.”

“Sorry, there’s no time,” he explained. “I’ll ask someone to handle everything in France.” 

And from there it was all a race against time. 

When Souma reached the correct wing of the hospital, he was met with the sight of his father sitting in the waiting room, sipping a coffee and reading a newspaper. 

“Yo, Souma.” He nodded in his son’s general direction. “Cutting it a little close there.”

“Pops? I didn’t even know you were in the country.” 

Jouichirou shrugged. “Had a feeling it was good time to come back.”

“So Doujima tracked you down? Or Shiomi-senpai?” 

“Both of them, actually,” the man admitted. “Those two really have no faith.” 

“Yukihira, you piece of shit!” Alice said as she stomped over, arms crossed in front of her. “How were you going to get on a flight to Paris when Erina was about to have your baby? What is wrong with you?”

Souma sighed, raising his hands in surrender. It did sound bad, now that he really thought about it. “I don’t know. She just really wanted me to go and—”

“But we both know Erina makes no sense! You have to—”

“Alice, it’s enough already,” Hisako said as she emerged as well. “Just let him see his wife and stop being a nuisance.” 

Alice puffed up her cheeks. “How rude, Hishoko. You sound more like Akira every day.” 

Hisako rolled her eyes at this, and then turned to Souma again. “Go on in. She’s waiting for you.” 

When he got inside, Nakiri was—no surprise—dictating an email to her personal assistant. Souma hoped the young woman, who looked a lot like Nakiri back in high school, was getting paid enough for all the shit she did for them. 

“End it there,” she said, once she saw him come in. “Tell them I’ll follow up on the rest at next week’s board meeting.”

“Next week, Erina-san?” the young girl asked, looking incredulous. 

Good shit, Kanon. 

His wife sighed, turning to glare at him, as though she could sense his amusement. “You’re right; tell them I’ll follow up in a detailed memo.”

“Right away, Nakiri-san.” 

“Thank you, Kanon. That was the last of them. You’re free for the rest of the day.” 

The young girl nodded before collecting her coat and purse. “Congratulations to you both,” she said, and then slipped out of the room. 

“You could have gone to Paris, probably,” Erina said once they were alone. “He’s taking his time.” 

“In classic Nakiri fashion,” he joked, taking her hand. “How are you feeling?”

“The doctors drugged me to kingdom come, so I’m not feeling much of anything.” Then another contraction ripped through her, and she clutched Souma’s hand hard enough to shatter bone. “I stand corrected.” 

“I shouldn’t have left,” he said, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. 

“I shouldn’t have made you,” she replied with a shrug. “We’ll get this couple shit right one of these days.” 

“Do you want anything?” he asked. “Like chocolates or a magazine?”

“All of the above,” she told him. Whatever medicine they’d pumped into her seemed to be making her drowsy. “But don’t go anywhere.” 

Some ten hours (and four cups of coffee) later, a doctor placed a son in Souma’s arms. 

The child had his mother’s amethyst eyes and mildly unimpressed expression. If the baby could speak, he’d probably ask why after all the amazing places they had him travel to in utero, they really chose to have him in this drab looking hospital room. 

But then his son looked at his face for the first time and gave an unguarded smile that reminded Souma of his late mother. He was like the fucking sun. 

“Hey,” he said. “I think he likes me.” 

“Did you think he wouldn’t?” Erina asked with a tired, tinkling laugh. “Fool.” 

“So what we calling the kid?” They had gotten down to two given names the last time they discussed the matter. 

“The birth certificate is on the table,” she said. 

When he glanced at it, he saw that she had named their firstborn Yukihira Raiden. Souma blinked twice, half-certain that he’d read it wrong.

“Yukihira?” he asked. “I thought you wanted him to be a Nakiri.” 

“He still is,” she said, waving him off and rolling onto her side.

“But—”

“Leave me alone. I’m sleeping.” 

He knew that was as much of an answer as he’d ever get.