May 22, 2024
JOAN CRAWFORD in RAIN — 1932, dir. Lewis Milestone
seen from Philippines
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seen from Türkiye
seen from Uzbekistan
seen from Spain
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
seen from Indonesia
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JOAN CRAWFORD in RAIN — 1932, dir. Lewis Milestone
Chapter Four - Pain: You find your husband, Satoru, in the hospital and figure out why he was galivanting around town instead of coming home to his pregnant wife. Also on AO3
The universe hates you.
The universe fucking hates you.
It has to hate you because there’s no other explanation for this ridiculous shitutation that you’ve found yourself in.
On one hand, your husband didn’t leave you to start a new life with someone else.
Well… that may be up for debate for now.
But it certainly wasn’t intentional. So while it’s not what you were thinking, it’s still pretty bad.
Dr. Yaga has been droning on about his condition and you know that what he’s saying is important, but you kind of zoned out not too long after giving his diagnosis.
Before you ask him to repeat everything, you just have one question, “how much time has he lost?” You hate to make this about you, but you’re desperate to know.
“I’m not sure, that’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself as time goes on. The more time you spend with him, the more things like that will come into focus.” That makes sense but you really wish he just said something like, "it's only the last ten years” because that would give you more of a starting point as far as helping him goes. “And what should I do to help him with everything?” You don’t even know how to phrase what you want to ask.
“There’s a few things that you can do to help. But the most important thing is to have a lot of patience and don’t take it personal if he doesn’t remember something. Second, if you had a routine before, I would suggest getting back into it now. Returning to routines has been proven to be helpful versus going completely off the books hoping for the best. Obviously, returning to work may not be the first option right now. But getting back into other patterns can help.” Okay, reasonable.
“Making little notes or reminders and keeping them around the home can also be helpful in forming new memories which may also help in unlocking older ones. At the very least, it doesn’t hurt. I’ve also been told by previous patients that memory games with photos or notes can help. Just be patient, supportive, and explain whatever is needed in an easily digestible way. But don’t overwhelm him with too much at one time,” he pauses to let you take all of that in.
“Do you know how long it’ll take for everything to come back to him?” You have a feeling that you already know how he’s going to answer that but you can’t help but ask. “There’s no way to determine exactly how long that will take.” You were right. “But we will run some tests for his migraines to see if there’s any underlying damage and that will help us figure out how severe his condition could be.” You really hope it’s not worse than it already sounds. “As his wife, we would like you to fill out some paperwork though. It seems he was recognized by some of the staff, but since he hasn’t been admitted here before, we don’t have anything on file for him, not even his name at this point. So I’ll go get that and then we’ll take it from there.” After saying that, he walks out of the room.
You just stand there, frozen, still facing the door. It’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable, and you don’t even know how to speak to your husband seeing as he doesn’t even remember that he is one. That’s especially evident based on the model who just walked out of the room.
But you don’t have to break the ice because Satoru does it for you, “so, we’re married?”
You turn to look at him and ‘yes’ is all you say.
He nods his head and says ‘nice’ with a smirk.
Yeah, that’s your husband.
“When did we get married? How’d we meet?” For some reason you thought him finding that out would cause him to shut down but you’re relieved that it hasn’t.
“Uhhh, we met in high school, through mutual friends, and we stayed friends for a couple of years before we started dating. Then we were in a relationship for two years before getting married on Halloween. Our five year anniversary just passed.” You’re trying to give him the bare bones version of the start of your relationship. The last thing you want to do is overload him or cause problems with the people he needs to be re-introduced to.
“Halloween huh?”
“You actually suggested it. I wanted to wear a black dress and make it goth, so you said we should just do it on Halloween and everyone can get dressed up however they want to.” It was actually incredible seeing everyone showing up in costume so needless to say, he had the right idea.
“You wanted a goth wedding but you’re standing there in head to toe light blue?”
“You got me this outfit.” He looks so proud after you say that.
“I have good taste,” he replies with an air of confidence.
“Well, you married me, so obviously.” Now it’s your turn to wear a smirk. You both chuckle and so far, so good.
Just when things are getting comfortable, a nurse walks in with a clipboard holding all the paperwork that you need to fill out. You take it from her and then sit down on a chair in his room to begin filling it out. You wanted to ask him if he knows the answers to anything on it but seeing as they’re having you do it, that’s probably a no. But you’re curious so you’re going to probe a little bit.
“I don’t want to pressure you, but is there anything that you can say you definitely remember?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s anything real specific. I feel like I can vaguely remember faces and maybe quick flashes of events. Some things I think I might remember if they were put in front of me.”
You give him a break before asking anything else. You don’t want to make him feel bad for something that’s not his fault.
As you start filling out the usual information on his paperwork, you get to his birthday and realize that it just passed! Maybe it’s a good idea to hold off on that information unless he asks you. Maybe you can make it up to him and have a late birthday party / welcome home party when he’s discharged. You also have to find a time to re-announce your pregnancy but you’ll probably hold off on that one as long as you can.
“Are we… happy?” He asks in a voice barely above a whisper.
Of all the questions he could have asked you, that’s not one you thought would be on the list.
“Yes. Very happy. Why?” On one hand you want to know who the hell that woman was. But on the other hand, you don’t know if you can handle the roller coaster of emotions that would come with a devastating admission.
“It’s just,” he pauses again and now you’re getting really nervous. “Why haven’t I seen you until… today?”
You didn’t want to overwhelm him with information today but there’s probably no way around it now, unless you lie. And you can’t lie to someone who already doesn’t know what the hell is going on. It could jeopardize any progress he makes.
“Well, nobody knew where you were, Satoru.”
A look that you can only classify as ‘what the fuck are you talking about’ flashes across his face before he asks, “what does that mean nobody knew where I was?”
“Uhm, you went missing a little while ago. Today is the first time anyone has been able to find you.” You really hate giving him such a basic explanation but this is probably a conversation better suited for the two of you with the detectives.
“How long?”
“Just under six weeks.”
His brows raise, his eyes widen, and his jaw drops open as you probably knew it would. But this isn’t something that you can lie about. And if you want to establish trust with him, you can’t push things off either. Instead of speaking, he lays back in bed and just looks at the ceiling.
You don’t know what to say, so you go back to finishing all this paperwork before the nurse comes in to retrieve it.
You can’t imagine what’s going on in his head. You don’t even know exactly where his memory starts or with you. And to learn that you have people in your life who missed you but you didn’t even know and probably had no way to find out, it has to be the worst thing.
After a few more minutes of silence, you decide to try speaking to him again, “Satoru? Are you okay?” Probably a stupid question, but you don’t want him to shut down completely.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” is all he says.
You’re both sitting there in that awkward and uncomfortable silence when you feel your phone vibrate. You pull it out of your coat pocket and see that it’s a text from Kento.
Kento: You’ve been gone for a while. Is everything okay?
You; There’s a lot to talk about. Did Utahime and Yu show up yet?
Kento: A few minutes ago. So, is it him?
You: Kind of.
“Hot date?”
“Huh?” You’re not sure if he really said that or if it’s just what you heard. He points at your phone and you know that he really just decided to start teasing out of nowhere. Thank god. That’s so him.
“No. Our friends came with me to see if it was really you, they just wanna know what’s going on.”
“Really?” He looks stunned. But why? What was he being told over this time period? Clearly he was with other people so what the hell is going on?
“Yeah, everyone was really excited to see if you were here. I would have brought them up with me but, you know, doctor’s rules and all.”
Just as he’s about to say something else, the door to his room opens up and a nurse walks in.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I have to steal him away to start his tests. You can wait here if you want, but it’s probably going to take a while,” she says in a pretty upbeat tone. It’s nice considering most women seeing you with Satoru start to act like it’s a competition for attention instead of going about their day.
“That’s fine, I’ll head out. I also don’t want to continue to pester him while he’s getting all of this done.” Before leaving, you walk over to Satoru to say goodbye for the day, “I’ll see you tomorrow, if that’s okay?”
“Of course it is, why wouldn’t it be? Aren’t you my wife? I’m not gonna ban you from coming to see me.” Fuck, that’s a relief.
“I just… I know you’re going through a lot and don’t want you to feel overwhelmed or pressured or anything like that.” That’s the nicest way you can say ‘I don’t want you to feel obligated to love me again.’
He seems to understand how you’re feeling though and wastes no time in dispelling those fears, “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Especially if you show up in another outfit like that.” This fucking guy.
“I’ll see what I can do,” is all you say before turning around and walking out the door.
Once outside his room, you stand outside for a minute to take a deep breath before making a quick trek to the elevator at the opposite end of the hallway.
Out of all the possibilities that were running through your head while he was missing, this was not one of them. There were two theories that kept coming and going. One, it wasn’t him on the surveillance footage and there was no chance of him coming home. And two, it was him and he didn’t care to stay hidden because he had an affair and moved to go start a new life with someone in the most cowardly way possible.
Him coming home with no memory of at least the last ten years of his life was not something that ever occurred to you.
And not only that, but there was some random woman with him. Did he fall in love with someone else over the time he was gone? What the fuck is going on?
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
You’re back at your apartment after practically sprinting out of the hospital and then sitting in a very awkward silent car ride home. You didn’t want to break the news to your friends while you were still there since you knew that they wouldn’t be allowed to see him.
But now you’re sitting at your dining room table in the home that you and Satoru share trying to figure out how to break the news to them. There’s probably no easy way to do this so you may just have to rip the band-aid off as they say.
“So, what’s going on? Was it him?” Suguru asks you. Okay, so Kento didn’t relay your text message, maybe that’s a good thing. It probably would have resulted in a lot more confusion if he did.
“Yeah, it’s him. For the most part.” All eyes are on you and it’s very fucking uncomfortable. “I met his doctor and got his diagnosis and it may be difficult to deal with at first, so we have to be patient.”
Everyone is staring you down right now. You can’t really blame them seeing as they probably think you’re speaking in riddles. But if you’re being honest, you didn’t realize how much this situation affects everyone at this table. Everyone here has known Satoru for as long as you have with the exception of Suguru who’s actually known him since childhood.
And now that you’re sitting here, stalling when it comes to breaking the news to them, you realize that you’re not the only one who may feel like they’re losing something. “Difficult, in what way?”
“I met his neurologist and he diagnosed him with post-traumatic amnesia.” That’s all you say. You have a feeling nobody is going to believe you, so you want them to work that out for themselves first. After a few seconds of silence, everyone except for Kento starts laughing. You had a feeling that this was one of his theories he was keeping to himself and by the look on his face, this was confirmation. As for the rest of the group, they clearly think you’re telling a joke even though you gave no indication of such a thing.
It’s Utahime who stops laughing first when she sees the look on your face, “you’re not kidding, are you?”
“Nope.”
Everyone stops and just looks at each other as if it’s the craziest thing they’ve ever heard.
“How did this happen?”
“Well, he did suffer blunt force to his head. It’s probably from that.”
“This explains his new sense of fashion and that shitty haircut,” Suguru couldn’t wait to bust that one out. But you can’t help but giggle a little bit after he says that because Satoru’s short hair is so fucking weird to you. It looks like he just joined the military and his head looks so big.
“How much does he remember?” Kento inquires.
“We don’t know yet. He didn’t recognize me when I walked into his hospital room.” There’s an audible gasp after those words leave your lips. “I figure that when we visit him, we can just go a couple at a time to try to see who he may remember in order to estimate how much time he lost.”
Everyone seems to be in agreement with that plan. Unfortunately, there’s really no other option. You just really hope that he didn’t lose his entire life even if he doesn’t remember you.
But now, you have to break the rest of the news.
“There’s one more thing that I have to tell you guys,” you pause to take a breath before continuing. “When I got to his hospital room, there was another woman there.”
You look around and all your friends have pure rage in their faces. You honestly didn’t think that’d be the thing that pissed them off more.
“Are you sure she wasn’t a nurse?” Oh Kento, always the voice of reason.
“She looked like a model and clearly wasn’t part of the staff. She also alluded to being Satoru’s girlfriend so there’s that.”
You flinch as you hear a bang on the table next to you. You look over and see that it’s Choso, the quietest one in the group.
You explain the rest of the situation with Mei, your new adversary if you were making an educated guess. Everybody’s face shifts from anger, to being modified, to being sad, to being full of rage again.
“Is it really fair to hold it against him though? I mean, he has no idea what’s going on with himself, let alone relationships with anyone else.” You’re trying to talk down your friends because you don’t want them all showing up tomorrow spewing nothing but negativity. That won’t help the situation in any way.
“So… you’re fine with another woman coming in and stealing your husband while you’re sitting at home pregnant with his child?” Damn Utahime.
“No, of course not. But he has no idea what’s going on so I don’t want to blame him for that. It’s not like he left me for Mei, he had no idea I existed.” You knew you were going to have to do a lot of defending, but you are a little surprised at how upset everyone seems.
“Mei? Did she look like this?” Yu pulls out his phone and shows you a picture. Damn, it’s her.
“How did you instantly know who I was talking about?” Does everyone know this woman except for you? “Is she famous or something?”
“She’s a social media influencer,” he replies.
“Okay, so she’s not famous.”
“Maybe not technically, but she has a pretty decent following. She’s constantly getting dressed up, going out, taking pictures, all the things that those people do.” He seems to be pretty familiar with this woman.
Ugh, you already know that instead of sleeping, you’ll spend hours looking at this woman’s social media wondering ‘why her?’ You never thought you’d be put in this position and it fucking sucks.
Everyone else starts pulling out their phones and looking her up as well. One person is on Instagram, another is on TikTok, etc. You didn’t feel like doing the same so you just cheat by sneaking glances at the phones next to you.
“Why didn’t Satoru know that he was missing?” Kento asks the room.
“He did lose his phone, so it’s not like he was posting on his own accounts,” Suguru responds.
“I know that. But this woman makes a living off of social media, a place where a lot of awareness was raised for his case. If he was with her, how did he not find out?”
It’s a good question and it’s one you’ve been wondering yourself.
Was she a part of whatever happened to him? Or did she just find someone in a vulnerable state and decide to take advantage of them? Unfortunately, these aren’t answers you could get from Satoru and you doubt that she’d admit to being such a miserable bitch.
“When is he allowed to have more visitors?”
“I think as long as we don’t show up with too many people at a time, it might be okay to continue going tomorrow. I wanna stop by early to take him food and drop off the bag that’s still in Kento’s trunk.” Even though the situation is incredibly frustrating, you still want him to be comfortable. You’re not going to abandon your husband for something that’s not technically his fault.
“I think Suguru should go with you tomorrow.” Oh Kento, always has a plan.
“Why is that?”
“We don’t have any idea as to where his memory is at. Suguru is the only one at this table that he’s known since childhood and everybody else sitting here, he met when he met you. If you go with him tomorrow, it’ll help us find out how much he knows and how to help him. Plus, we don’t want to have too many people around all the time and completely overstimulate him.” Fair point.
“I’m gonna start working on a photo album!” Yu shouts with pure excitement in his voice.
The rest of the friend group starts brainstorming ways on how to help Satoru. Everyone wants to create their own photo album and include little descriptions with them to help him remember things. If it wasn’t so devastating, it would be super cute.
As the night goes on, your friends slowly start to leave one by one, with the exception of Choso who has practically moved in at this point.
Choso decided to take over the cleaning that he once again, will not let you help with. So, you decide to go to your room and make a phone call.
You haven’t spoken to either of the detectives on Satoru’s case in a couple of days and since they haven’t called you, you’re assuming that they don’t know that he’s been found. You know that they have to confirm that it’s him regardless, but you don’t want them to drop too many bombs on him in one day. So you’re going to call them first and give them a heads up on the situation.
You pull your phone out of your purse and start searching through your contacts for their numbers. You decide to call Usami since he’s the one who you’ve had the most contact with since all of this started.
One ring. Two rings. Three rings. And you remember how bad your phone anxiety is. Lame.
By the fourth ring, you hear a man answer the phone, “Detective Usami speaking.”
“Uh, hi. This is Mrs. Gojo.” You feel so fucking awkward on the phone and you can’t understand why.
“Yes, I recognize the number. Is everything alright?”
“I just wanted to let you know that my husband has been found.”
There’s silence for a few moments and you start to wonder if you’ve been put on hold or hung up on.
But finally, he responds, “are you certain that it's him?”
“I spoke with him in the hospital this afternoon.”
“That’s interesting. We had a lead as to where he was but we didn’t want to get your hopes up before we confirmed it. I apologize.”
“Ohh it’s okay! I have a friend who works there so that’s how I found out. I know that you still have to verify his welfare in person, but I wanted to let you know a little bit about what I learned.”
You spend a few minutes on the phone explaining everything that you’ve learned today. You tell him exactly how you found him and what his condition is. He told you that they’ll still be showing up to meet him and make sure he’s okay. But that they’ll hold off on the hard hitting questioning until he heals up a little more. Since he doesn’t seem to know anything, they don’t see the point in potentially traumatizing him when they have a better chance solving the case without him at this point.
You eventually get off the phone and finish up your night time routine before climbing into bed. You try to distract yourself by putting something silly on the tv but your mind just won’t let you rest. You pull your phone back out and start browsing through Mei’s social media accounts.
She is attractive, you won’t deny that. But what else does she have going for her? Even though both you and Satoru have social media accounts, you don’t make it a point to post constantly. You like to share photos, but neither of you let it run your life. He used to laugh at people who acted like their life was over if they missed a day of posting. And now what? He’s in a relationship or a situationship with someone like her?
But you can’t stop thinking about what Kento said earlier, if he’s been with her, and she’s introducing herself as his girlfriend, where the hell is he in these posts about her life? You wouldn’t think too much of it if she didn’t post other friends up and down her accounts.
Fuck. You’re tired.
“Put your phone away before you start asking yourself ‘that’ question,” you hear behind you, not even noticing that Choso entered the room until he spoke.
“What question?”
“The ‘what does she have that I don’t’ question. You’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re fucking funny, and the two of you have a hell of a lot in common. I think it’s safe to say more than them. You just need to spend more time together so that he can see that.”
You put your phone away and lay back in bed because he’s right. You were starting to let yourself get to that line of questioning and it’s not healthy. You’re literally carrying this man’s baby, you can’t allow those negative feelings to take over ever, but especially not right now.
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
You look good. Real good.
You’re wearing a short, black, silk, mini slip dress. You paired it with a black faux fur coat and a pair of strappy heels. And of course, a pair of black thigh highs which he always loses it over.
You did your makeup with a very dramatic smokey eye that he always liked and that plumper lip gloss that he’d end up smearing not even five minutes after you put it on. You tied your hair up into an intentional messy bun and threw in a couple sparkly clips to pop amongst all the black.
Nevermind, you don’t look good. You look fucking incredible. .
You do a once over in the mirror to make sure everything is in place, and then you finally leave your bedroom to meet your friends in the kitchen.
The only person who’s coming with you today is Suguru so you don’t want to have him waiting on you too long.
But Kento still decided to come over because you live closer to the hospital and he wants to be closer in case you need a shoulder to lean on.
“Woooohhhh! Can you be classified as a MILF before you have the baby?”
“Suguru!” He would say something like that.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes sir. But we still have to stop off to pick up Satoru’s food.” You know that hospital food isn’t exactly gourmet, so you decided to order from one of his favorite places and take it with you when you go.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ll get his food so he can get the precious princess treatment,” Suguru says with a sigh. He knows you mean well, but he’s still upset about the Mei news on top of everything else. “Shouldn’t his ‘girlfriend’ be bringing him food?” See. There it is.
“Suguru,” Kento scolds. But honestly, he’s kinda right.
You don’t want to make it a whole big thing so you bid farewell to your friends and then you make your way out.
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
Alright, maybe you overdid it with the food. He likes a lot of stuff on this menu so you got a few appetizers and entrees, but then made the choice to get one of each of the sweets. Not only do you have two bags of food, but you have two boxes of cupcakes, cookies, cake pops, fruit tarts, all the stuff you expect to see in a bakery. Thank goodness for your strong friend who wants to do all the heavy lifting for you.
“Suguru, are you really going to be able to carry all the food and his bag? I can hold stuff you know. I’m pregnant. My arms didn’t fall off.”
Once again, he declines. As much as you want to help out, you’re not going to push him on it. If he wants to grab all the bags and boxes, you’ll do the rest. You get his keys and lock the car up before you two start to make your way into the hospital.
You see that it’s only Nobara sitting at the reception desk and it makes you feel so much better that she’s the one greeting you today. You get the visitor's stickers and then start making your way to Satoru’s room.
Once you enter the elevator and the doors close, Suguru asks you if you’re nervous. If you’re being completely honest with yourself, you are. But you keep trying to push those feelings down because they are going to cause more harm than good.
“Are you nervous?” You ask him.
“Ehhh, not as much as the others probably are. I am a little annoyed that he doesn’t remember making my life a living hell when he wanted to date you. But it is what it is, I guess.”
Before you know it, you’re standing outside of Satoru’s door and that’s when the nerves really kick in. You’re just really hoping that he’s the only one on the other side. You knock but this time, you don’t hear anyone answer. You slowly open the door and walk inside to see Satoru sleeping, in his bed, alone. Thank fucking goodness.
You and Suguru do your best to quietly enter his room and put his things away without disturbing him. But it’s irrelevant because when you’re helping Suguru place the food bags down, you hear Satoru call your name and it melts your heart. At least he remembers that.
“Heyyy, sorry to wake you up.” You apologize profusely because being here all the time must be exhausting and you know you hate when someone interrupts your sleep.
“No, it’s fine. I’ve been drifting in and out for the past hour because I’ve been so bored.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but we have stuff for you. Are you hungry?”
Satoru doesn’t respond at first. He just looks you up and down with his mouth agape and hunger in his eyes before finally saying, “famished.”
This dress was such a good investment.
“Uh Suguru, could you help me set up everything for him?” After saying that, you hear Satoru repeat ‘Suguru’ in a voice barely above a whisper. Did that trigger something? You hope so.
As you’re setting up the table and bringing the bags over, you’re startled when you hear your husband yell out “you!” while pointing at his best friend.
“Do you remember me?” He asks him.
“I think I remember your face, although the romance novel cover hair threw me off.” Okay, so Satoru still has jokes.
“Better than your shitty wannabe drill sergeant haircut you have right now.” These fucking guys.
“What’s wrong with my hair?!” Satoru asks with a pout.
“Dude, we don’t have all day for me to list everything that’s wrong with it.” Of all the conversations they could have had for the first time, you didn’t expect this to be it.
“Anyway,” you take the time to interrupt them before this gets out of hand. “I got a few of your favorites from the restaurant down the street from our home. I also got one of everything on the dessert menu.”
“Damn. It takes one hell of a sweet tooth to eat all that. Do I really eat that much?” That’s surprising.
“You started eating sweets like crazy saying that it helped you focus, and now you just can’t stop,” you tell him with a chuckle.
You take a seat in the chair on one side of his bed while Suguru sits in the one on the opposite side.
“So, how have you been, dumbass?” Fucking Suguru.
“I don’t remember you being such a bully,” Satoru says but you can tell he’s not taking it seriously.
“Yeah but it seems like you don’t remember everything.” Fucking hell. “What do you remember?” Okay, right into it then.
“I remember something about suits and a tree. Everything is just really fuzzy. It feels like one of those things where you don’t remember someone’s name or face too much, but if you see it or hear it, it clicks. Besides that, I just see flashes of you as a kid, I think.”
Okay, that’s good to know. That means that creating albums and telling him stories may help him out.
While you’re lost in thought, Suguru explains what Satoru was alluding to, “that sounds like the night of homecoming our freshman year. We decided to ditch early and have a few drinks of some really cheap Vodka in a treehouse. But, you can’t hold your liquor to save your life, so I had to carry you on my back down the street to get you food because you kept complaining that you were going to die even though you only had two shots.”
You can’t help but laugh at that. Two shots? That makes you think of that scene in Fun with Dick and Jane when Jim Carrey was dancing on a table and then the bartender revealed that he only had half a beer. You don’t drink either so you might have the same reaction, but damn.
“Anyway, your wife brought you stuff.”
“More stuff? You spoil me, but I’m not complaining.” Yeah, that’s still your husband.
“I’m complaining, but hey, she loves you and wants your stay to be comfortable or something,” Suguru dramatically explains.
You walk around his bed to the other side of the room to get the weekend bag with everything you packed.
“I put in a few sweaters that you always like wearing around the house,” you start pulling things out to show him as you explain everything. “I also threw in a blanket in case the ones here aren’t that comfortable. I packed you a bag of snacks and got you a new phone since yours is destroyed. I restored it using your account so that it’s exactly the same as the one you had before.” You hand that over to him immediately. Since he said he was bored, maybe this will help out.
“You didn't have to do all of this, but thank you,” he says with a bit of sauce on the side of his mouth. He’s so fucking cute that you can barely stand it.
“I took the passcode off so that you didn’t have to worry about it, but you can change that back whenever you want to.” You move back over to your seat on the other side of his bed.
He picks the phone up and starts going through it right away. You’re a little nervous yourself because you don’t know exactly what’s in there. While you two have always had each other's passcodes, you always made a point to respect your partner's privacy and you never went through his phone. You know he has a lot of albums of the two of you because you did a quick little browse to make sure stuff loaded in, but that’s about it.
“When was this?” He turns his phone over to show you the album he’s inquiring about.
“That was this past summer. We went out to the lake to feed the ducks and then we decided to just hang out and have a little impromptu picnic while we were there. There’s food trucks in the area so we picked stuff up and hung out for a bit.”
You remember that day very well. After the ducks no longer found you interesting, Satoru pulled a blanket over the two of you and decided to bury his fingers inside of you the first chance he got. Luckily, there was nobody else in your area to witness such an act. But you really hope that there’s no videos of it in there. He does like to record everything and that makes you a little nervous.
You look back up at Satoru and see him with rosy cheeks staring at his phone and you can only guess what he came across in what, a minute and a half?
“Everything okay?” You don’t want Suguru to potentially witness your porn but you wanna know what he’s staring at.
Satoru doesn’t say anything, he just turns his phone around and shows you a picture. It’s you, bent over, on your hands and knees while he lifts up your skirt and takes a picture of your panties. Honestly, it’s pretty tame compared to what else is probably in there.
“Oh, that?” You giggle and refrain from saying anything else.
That’s how the rest of your visit with Satoru goes. He goes through the various albums and asks you to tell him about the pictures he comes across. It makes you feel good to know that he’s trying without you even asking him to.
Suguru also shows him a bunch of stuff on his phone and gives him the stories of your matching tattoos. Satoru was stunned to learn that you also have the heart tattoo but you think it helped him see just how close you two are.
And he started absolutely demolishing the desserts. Since he made it sound like he hasn’t had anything, you were wondering if he no longer liked them. But that’s clearly not the case. Maybe whoever he was staying with just didn’t keep those things in their home.
You didn’t ask any questions about what happened and who he’s been with for the past few weeks. You wanted today to be a positive visit where you taught him more about his past and less about you interrogating him to get answers for yourself. You also know that the detectives should be coming by at some point and you’ll leave them to do the good cop bad cop thing seeing as they actually are the cops.
“Well, Suguru and I are going to be heading out now because he has to take me to a doctor’s appointment.”
All the color drains from Satoru’s face right after those words leave your lips. “Are you okay?”
You don’t want him to worry but it makes you feel good to know that he cares.
“I’m fine, it’s just a checkup. Nothing to worry about. Can I come see you tomorrow?”
“You can come on me anytime.” He freezes before correcting himself, “I mean, you can come see me anytime you want.”
You giggle and lean in to give him a hug and you can hear how deeply he breathes you in. Ugh, he’s so hot.
“I’m not gonna press my tits up against you so I’ll just see you later,” Suguru says before waving and walking towards the door.
You follow Suguru out the door and let out a breath you feel like you’ve been holding in since you got there. All in all, today was a good day. And most importantly, no Mei today.
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
“How’d it go?” Kento asks after you walk in and have a seat on the couch.
“It was good. Baby’s healthy, about the size of a turnip.”
“Hmmm. And how was the visit with your husband?”
“I think it went well. He asked Suguru and I a lot of questions so I think that’s a good sign that he’s trying. But he’s a little different. He seemed shocked when he told him that he eats sweets like he’s trying to make sugar go out of business.” It seems like he just came back thinking it was opposite day and that’s bizarre. But who cares? You still have time to figure it out.
“Did you tell him about the pregnancy?”
“No. I wanted everything today to be as low stress as possible so I decided to save that for another visit depending on how things go when I return.“ A part of you wanted to do it today, but you don’t know how well that would have been received and you just didn’t feel like today was the right time.
Kento nods before getting up and walking into the kitchen to bring you back a plate of food. “I know you fed him, but I have a feeling that you didn’t take care of yourself yet.“ he pushed the plate and the utensils in front of you and motioned for you to start eating.
He’s right. Especially with the baby moving closer and closer to entering the world everyday, you need to take better care of yourself.
“When are you going back?”
“Tomorrow. I’m gonna take a photo album with me. I have one where there’s descriptions on the page opposite the picture so I think that’ll be good for him,” you say while taking a big bite of food. Kento filled this plate with steak and roasted potatoes. This man knows your weakness.
“I think I’ll go with you tomorrow, if that’s alright.”
“That’d be great, thank you.” You’re excited because you didn’t think he’d be so willing to go.
“Have the detectives spoken to him yet?”
“I think they’re supposed to go sometime today. Usami told me he’d let me know after they’d spoken to him.”
The two of you continue to sit in relative silence while you eat the rest of your lunch. If there’s one thing you can say about Kento, it’s that this man can cook his ass off.
Why is he single???
Just as you start wondering that, his phone rings.
“It’s one of the models I’m supposed to shoot this week, I have to take this.”
That’s right. Work-a-holic.
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
A couple of days have passed and you’ve seen Satoru several times. The past few days have been very tiring so you don’t stay for too long when you see him. It’s usually you going as early in the day as you can and bringing him lunch, then you go back a few hours later and take him dinner about an hour before visiting hours shut down.
Being that you’re only seventeen weeks pregnant at this time, you’re not showing too much. But you still keep a coat on whenever you visit him because you’re not ready to drop that bomb on him until he comes home. You’d hate to tell him and then have to leave right after so that he’s alone with his thoughts all night.
The two of you have even been texting back and forth when he has questions about photos and videos on his phone, things you’ve done as a couple, or even questions about himself. He’s really been making an effort so you’ve been making sure that you’re always available to him.
And because of the fact that he didn’t know the volume on his phone was turned up, you know firsthand that he’s come across some of your more adult videos he filmed.
The detectives went to meet with him to confirm his welfare and ask him what he remembers, if anything. They gave him the bare minimum on what was going on with the investigation and asked him just enough to see if he remembered anything about his attack, which he didn't. They decided to give him a break until he seems comfortable back at home since they don’t get the vibe that his life is in immediate jeopardy.
Kento also started visiting him the day after your initial visit which resulted in him already being tired of seeing him. As soon as he walked in the room, Satoru apologized to him and told him that he doesn’t remember anything more than he didn’t yesterday which resulted in Kento having to explain that he’s not law enforcement on his case and he was actually his wedding photographer. For the rest of the visit, Satoru periodically made jokes about how they look like twins. Poor Kento.
You don’t ask them too many questions about their visits because you don’t want to pry. But Kento did tell you that Satoru said, “she married me?” Like he was in completely disbelief. And it resulted in Kento saying, “yes, and for the life of me, I still can’t understand why.” You wouldn’t expect any other response from him and you kind of love that even with everything going on, he still has that one-liner ready to go at a moment's notice.
Choso, Utahime, and Yu still haven’t been to the hospital though. Everyone decided that between testing and the few people already visiting him, any additional people may do more harm than good by completely confusing him.
But there is still one additional person who continues to see him, and that’s Mei.
The good thing is that you haven’t seen her as often. She’s usually coming as you’re going or going as you’re coming so there’s not really any interaction between the two of you. But it has definitely resulted in a bit of unspoken competition.
She wears perfume? You wear yours a spray stronger.
She wears heels and a dress? You wear higher heels and a tighter dress paired with the thigh highs that always has your husband losing your mind.
You haven’t seen her be too physically affectionate, in person, that is. You have seen her sitting on the side of his bed when you come into the room, but nothing more than that. But one day she did leave a lipstick mark on his cheek and you had to stop yourself from making sure that she was also admitted into said hospital.
That was a tough pill to swallow considering the fact that you’ve been trying to keep your distance and not be too physical with him because you don’t want him to feel like you’re being too pushy. You give him hugs when you arrive and before you leave, but you try not to do more than that. But it’s hard when you see another woman being completely comfortable with him to do whatever she wants while you end up on the sidelines watching your marriage basically crumble.
But throughout all of that, the biggest positive is that Satoru is coming home soon.
When you visited him earlier today, his doctor came in and informed you that he’d be discharged tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
After seven weeks of not being together, he’s gonna be able to come home. And he seemed really excited about it which made you even happier.
Because of the fact that he’ll be coming home tomorrow, you decided to skip the second visitation time today. You’re having Kento and Suguru pick up food for him which they promptly respond with, “you spoil him.”
So what? Maybe you do.
And you’re going to spoil him even more when he gets home.
You’re taking the rest of the night with Choso and Utahime to make everything comfortable for him. You’re washing all his sweaters that you’ve been sleeping in for the past seven weeks. You washed and changed the sheets on your bed but also the guest room in case he’s not ready to share a bed with a relative stranger yet. You’re fluffing all the pillows, polishing everything you can, you’re even scrubbing down all the walls.
You’re even working on a fancy two tier cake as a welcome home / belated birthday cake for the occasion. You’re not the most experienced cake decorator, but you can create that frosting drip effect. So you’re making a blue cake with white frosting dripping all around the top. You’re going to write ‘Welcome Home Satoru’ on the top and hope that it comes out looking nice.
Tomorrow morning, you’re going to set up all the party decorations. It’s not gonna be a big thing, just your closest friends. But you are going to have balloons, streamers, welcome home banners, and maybe confetti somewhere because it just makes it feel more festive.
So much to do. So little time.
“Didn’t you already dust all those photos?” You didn’t even hear Utahime enter the room but there she is.
“Probably, but I just want to make sure that everything is perfect for him.”
“Okay, but do you really think he’s going to inspect the picture frames?”
“Maybe not intentionally, but he may come over to look at the photos.” She’s right though, you are probably overdoing it.
“He’s been in the hospital for days, he’s just going to be happy that he’s coming home to a real home with a real bed,” she says while taking the feather duster from you.
“Maybe. But I don’t know how he was living with whoever before he ended up in the hospital. What if our home isn’t enough?”
“It will be. Because it’s yours.” You hope that she’s right. You’ve been in this place since he asked you to live with him so it holds a lot of memories.
Truth be told, you still don’t know too many details about where he was or who he was before he ended up in the hospital.
Suguru did ask him questions because even though you were reluctant to put him on the spot, he wasn’t. He wanted to know where he was, how he wasn’t found, and how apparently nobody else knew he was a missing person.
He didn’t press him for too many details, but he did learn a few things.
He was staying with Mei.
He did interact with other people while being there.
Mei was very forward with him about wanting a real relationship.
He wasn’t really surprised hearing those things, especially not the last one. She comes off as territorial seeing as she acts like his wife is the other woman in the relationship. But he was a bit concerned that he was apparently around someone with an active social circle but nobody knew what the hell was going on with him.
But then again, maybe they genuinely didn’t. That couple at the pharmacy didn’t know what was going on because they didn’t watch the news so maybe this isn’t some big thing, maybe it’s all just a coincidence.
You hear your cooking timer go off and rush into the kitchen to check the status of the cake. It still feels like you have so many things to do even though you’re practically done with everything except for that.
“How does it look?” Choso asks as he rummages through your refrigerator for something to drink.
“I think it needs a few more minutes. I hope it finishes soon so that I can add the frosting tonight.”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll help you with the rest if you need to go to bed.” Other people complain about being babied, but not you. While you’re excited for your husband to return, you’re also going to miss someone always being there to help you with things when you need them. Now you’re going to be the one doing all the work for the home and for Satoru.
You feel bad because you don’t want to leave him with the work for your husband, but you’re fucking exhausted. You’ve been up since early this morning getting ready to see Satoru and take him things. Then you ran to multiple stores getting stuff to have for him when he gets back home, and now you’ve been cleaning for hours. You’ve been tired for awhile, but you’ve been trying to not let it show.
“Go to bed. I see you making excuses in your head. But you’re tired and being pregnant is making it worse, go to bed. I’ll finish up here.” It’s like he can read your thoughts and for that, you’re grateful.
“I think I’m gonna head home and get some rest too. I gotta get this stuff ready for tomorrow for your loud ass husband.” Thanks Utahime.
“On the bright side, he may not remember who you are so he may not tease you as much,” you tell her and she fucking smiles. “Thanks for coming by and doing so much.” You give her a hug and she heads out the door.
You’re exhausted so you go to your room, brush your teeth, and then go straight to bed. You couldn’t give less of a fuck about anything once your body feels those sheets. It feels like you haven’t rested your body in weeks even though it’s only been one long day. You try to stay awake for a little longer in case Choso needs help with anything, but after your head hits that pillow, you’re out in a matter of minutes.
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
It’s the next morning and you’re up bright and early.
Too fucking early.
But there’s a lot to do which means that you can’t stay in bed and hit snooze on your alarms six times.
You slowly climb out of bed and get in the shower to start your day. You even do your lengthy hair care routine so that it’s as soft and beautiful as possible.
After getting out of the shower, you wrap a towel around yourself and have a seat at your vanity. You decide to do a halo look for your eyes today using various shades of black / grey with a pop of blue in there. You make your highlighter bright enough to blind someone and work your lip-liner magic as much as you can to make your lips look as plump as possible. You dab on some pink blush because he loves the rosy cheeks and start to work on your hair. Lucky for you, not too much goes into that. It is already a bit air dried so you use a blow dryer to do the rest of the work before putting your hair up in heated rollers and letting them sit while you work on everything else.
When you woke up, Choso was gone which means he was probably setting everything up.
All your closest friends took the day off of work so that they could be here to welcome Satoru home.
You throw on a robe and leave your bedroom and you’re absolutely blown away by everything you see. All the things that you had on the list are perfectly set up. There’s welcome home banners, some helium balloons filled with confetti and some blown up but on the floor. There’s other dangling decorations and everything just looks incredible.
You go into the kitchen to get something to drink and see Choso in the kitchen working on something.
“Good morning,” you greet before getting too close. You have a habit of accidentally scaring people.
“Morning. How’d you sleep?”
“Fine, I guess. Did you do all of this?”
He nods. “I woke up some time ago so I decided to get as much done as possible. Do you wanna change anything?”
“No, it’s perfect. Thank you. I just hope it wasn't too much for you.”
“It was fine.” He still hasn’t looked up from whatever he’s doing.
“What are you up to now?”
He motions for you to come over and your jaw drops. He’s been working on the cake this whole time and it’s fucking incredible. It’s still white, but he’s taken blue and black frosting and somehow drawn little caricatures of Satoru along the sides. It pays to be best friends with an incredible artist.
“What do you think?”
“I fucking love it. I was just going to do the bare minimum, but this looks amazing. Thank you!” You throw your arms around him to hug him. It’s nice to see everyone in your life putting in so much work for him.
“I’m glad you like it.”
He finished decorating and setting the cake up to give it its two tiered drama and you return to your room to finish getting ready. You decide to go above and beyond with your outfit today. You’ve pulled out a light pink, strapless, floor length dress, with cutouts open down the sides and just some ribbons holding it together. It’s tight, it makes your tits look good, and you can’t wear panties with it. Whatever, it’s gonna be amazing.
You take your rollers out and your hair falls into the most beautiful curls. You decide to pull back some of your hair into a sparkly clip just to make sure it’s not in your face, but still frames it beautifully. After fixing your hair, you slide on your dress and you take your own breath away.
You go to check your phone and right as you pick it up, you have a message from Kento letting you know that he’s outside. He’s going to take you to pick up donuts for Satoru and then pick up Satoru and bring him home.
This is the most excited and most nervous you’ve ever been and unfortunately it’s happening at the same time.
You put on your heels and throw on your cream coloured faux fur coat before spritzing yourself with Satoru’s favorite perfume. He even got you one of those vintage perfume bottles to keep it in because he likes watching you get ready. You grab your purse and finally leave your bedroom.
“Choso! Kento and I are heading to the hospital now. Do you need anything before I go?”
“Nope, go get your man” he says while still putting all his focus into this cake.
You grab your keys and rush downstairs to go meet Kento.
When you get downstairs, he’s outside his car waiting for you and when he sees you, his brows raise and a hint of a smile appears on his face.
You pull your jacket down and do a little spin, “do you think he’ll like it?”
All he says in response is, “obviously.”
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
Once you arrive at the hospital, Kento decides to stay behind so that he can keep the car warm. You have no problem with that because you don’t see yourself being here long. Dr. Yaga said Satoru was being discharged in the morning so that should be soon.
When you enter the hospital, you see the receptionist that you can’t stand so you immediately walk past her and into the elevator. You’d feel bad if it was Nobara, but you have no time for this woman's shenanigans today.
It feels like you blink and you’re outside Satoru’s room. You knock twice and when you open the door, you see his back is towards you and it looks like he’s packing.
“Heyyyyy,” he turns around when he hears your voice and his jaw drops. He’s completely frozen with his eyes wide and cheeks pink and now you know that it was worth it when you spent hours getting ready for this moment.
You set the box of donuts down on his bed and ‘accidentally’ allow your coat to slip off your shoulders so he can get a better look at your outfit.
As happy as you are to get this reaction out of him, you’re a little concerned that you broke him because he’s been frozen for about a minute.
“You okay, Satoru?”
He literally shakes his head from side to side like he had to work himself out of a trance. “Yeah. Just uhhhh.. You. Look. Sensational.”
Maybe today was a bad day to wear a dress that you can’t wear panties with.
He takes a break from packing, sits down, and pats the space on the bed so that you can sit next to him. Things between you two are getting more comfortable by the minute and you can’t wait to spend one on one time with him, not in a hospital.
Not too long after you arrive, Dr. Yaga walks into the room. “Good morning.” He picks up Satoru’s chart and does a once over before speaking again. “How have you been feeling?”
Satoru turns to you and says, “much better.”
“That’s good. That’s good. Well, looking over all your test results, we don’t have any answers for your migraines other than it’s probably just from the assault. Since there’s nothing else that we can do for you here, I’m gonna allow you to be discharged today. Any questions?”
“Nope. Just excited to go home.”
Your heart skips a beat.
“Great. I’ll send the nurse in with your paperwork and then you can get going.”
You’re ecstatic. You can’t wait for him to get home and see how much everybody has missed him. Even Utahime even though she doesn’t want to admit it.
After a few more minutes pass, you hear a notification from a phone. You check yours that was buried in your pocket and it’s not from you so it must be him. But when you see him reach for a phone, it’s not the one that you gave him.
If that bitch gave him a phone she’s definitely getting her ass whooped.
After reading whatever the hell the message said, his smile falls and his entire personality shifts.
Fuck.
You don’t know what’s coming, but you can already sense that it’s not good.
Just as you’re about to ask him what’s wrong, the door to his room opens and the nurse comes in. You’re ecstatic but he seems even more disappointed. She drops off his paperwork, wishes him well, and then leaves.
Easy breezy. Except it seems like he’s getting more tense by the second.
“Satoru, is everything okay?”
He hesitates and you are already sure that whatever bad shit is about to happen, is going to fall down on you.
“Uhhhhhh, I don’t know how to say this.” Fuck.
“Say what?” You’re trying to not sound too disappointed but you’re probably not doing a good job at it.
“It’s about coming home.” Okay, now your stomach hurts. “I think… uhhhh… just for now…” He’s rocking back and forth and looking everywhere but at you so you have a feeling that you know where this is going.
“Satoru, relax. I’m not going to lash out or anything. Just say what’s on your mind.” That’s partially true. You won’t lash out at him, but you absolutely might slam some doors or something once you get home.
“It’s just, for now, I think I’m going to return to Mei’s instead of going home… with you,” he says with his head down.
It feels like your heart is crumbling.
“Oh… okay.”
He interrupts you before you can ramble on, “it’s not anything personal against you or anything. It’s just, while dealing with memory issues, it might be a little bit better to return to a familiar place so I don’t overwork my brain.” The doctor did say to go back to previous routines but okay. “I also don’t want to make things awkward with you with everything going on.” How sweet… except it’s fucking not.
You put on your best smile because you don’t want the last time you see him to be a yelling match. “It’s fine, I understand. I hope you do well. If you need anything, you now have a bunch of numbers to call.” You purposely didn’t say to call you because at this point, you may not answer the phone. “Anyway, I’m gonna head out.”
“Oh I wasn’t kicking you out. You can stay for a little lon–”
“It’s fine. Kento is downstairs keeping the car warm and I don’t want him to blow through all his gas doing so, so I’ll just hear from you when I hear from you.” That’s the last thing you say before turning around and bolting out the door.
Rain - Arena Homme Plus Magazine February Issue ‘18
a flower bloomed in a dark room
🌸 🌺 🌸
@faebaeb a wip :3c
Chapter Fourteen: Standing Next To You: Satoru traumatizes your entire friend group and you adjust to life as parents.
Also on AO3
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
“How are you feeling?”
“Whoever invented the epidural should get their dick sucked everyday. Nobody deserves it more than them.”
“What a coincidence, that happened to be me,” Suguru acts like he just dropped some big reveal.
“You’re Fidel Pages?” Utahime says in the most sarcastic tone.
“Correct,” the confidence that dropped off of that was crazy. It probably could have convinced you if you didn’t know any better.
“The Spanish surgeon who died in 1923?”
Everyone in the room starts to laugh.
“I don’t make the rules. I just make the things that help dull the terrifying pain of labor and childbirth.”
𓆩♡𓆪A Few Hours Earlier𓆩♡𓆪
Shortly after arriving at the hospital, your friends were slowly arriving after you. Choso got there first, wasting no time in checking on you after getting the middle of the night call from Suguru. He had pure worry written all over his face when he first saw you because of course he’d arrive at the worst possible time, contraction time. But when he learned that you weren’t dying, he was relieved.
Utahime was the next person to arrive and also with a bag of snacks, fruit mostly. Shoko said that if you’re a low risk pregnancy and delivery, you can eat small things while in labor instead of having to wait several hours. On top of dropping off food, she apologized for the ‘horrible things Satoru’s dick is putting you through.’ Of course your dear husband is offended by her comment and it’s doubled down when Suguru arrives.
“For the record, my dick would never treat you so terribly,” is what Suguru says when he enters the room to announce his arrival. Satoru immediately refutes his claims of penis torture but Suguru and Utahime both point to you, mid contraction, to prove their point.
“Just so you guys know, laughing makes the pain worse,” you try to say in a light hearted tone to not dampen the mood, but let them know that it doesn’t have to be Open Mic Night.
“Sorry,” Utahime apologizes. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll manage. I’m absolutely asking for an epidural the next time someone comes into this room.”
The only people in your close friend group who aren’t in this room are Shoko, Kento, and Yu. But that’s only because Shoko is working elsewhere in the hospital until she gets the news that you’re ready to deliver and Yu went out of town with Kento for a job, but they’re on the short flight back. Unless they decide to induce you, they should arrive before then.
“Are you going to record the trauma you’re about to experience?” Of course that’s how she’d say it.
“We got approval for Kento to do the recording,” Satoru offered to do it, but you want him to be there holding your hand. But of course he told Kento to record and ‘not look at the goods too much.’ Silly goose.
After another twenty minutes of dealing with these lame ass contractions, you pushed the button for the nurse with more force than necessary and beg her for relief when she enters the room. You wish you were one of those people who could just ‘hee-hee-hee, hoo-hoo-hoo ’ your way through this but that’s absolutely not the thing. You’re not a mind over matter when it comes to pain type of person and if there’s one day you need the help, it’s today. Once your request is approved, it’s almost like a pain reliever washes over you right then and there, it must just be the knowing. But all of your friends are wide eyed when the person who’s administering it returns and they learn where that needle is going.
“Are you sure you wanna do this?” Utahime looks genuinely scared for you.
“Think of the worst cramps that you’ve ever had and then multiply them by ten. Aaaand then, imagine tearing your vagina apart by pushing out a literal person,” you don’t know how else to phrase it but you’re assuming that it’s enough.
“Can I have an epidural just for having to listen to hear explain that?”
𓆩♡𓆪𓆩♡𓆪𓆩♡𓆪
You’re sitting around in your hospital bed, in your private room, that you were moved to not too long after you arrived and most of all, you’re just kind of bored.
About a month ago, you and Satoru packed a hospital bag for the big day on the chance that you started going into labor when you weren’t at home and didn’t have time to make a stop on the way to the hospital. It’s nothing over the top, it’s mostly just comfort items like robes, slippers, a handheld fan that sprays water in case you get hot, a laptop and movies to pass the time and the thing that Satoru was most excited about, a few pairs of Yu-Gi-Oh socks with other cutesy changes of clothes.
Even though you’re the one who’s actually in labor, Satoru is cycling through every motion possible every time another contraction pops up to remind you that it’s there. When you’re just sitting around talking, he’s super excited to meet her and start life as a new dad and the second that a contraction starts, he’s shitting him and trying to alert medical staff that there might be something wrong with you. And then when they arrive after a contraction has passed, he gets upset that they missed it in case it was something serious before shifting to relief and starting the cycle all over again. At one point he steps out of the room to get some juice and you apologize to a nurse for his theatrics and she just waves you off saying that it’s more common than you realize.
“...I can’t wait!” You didn’t catch all of what Satoru said, but you’re sure it’s something about wanting to take your baby daughter to do something that she’ll be too small to do or understand. “What do you think?” He’s beaming and you feel bad that you have no fucking idea what he’s talking about.
“What was that?”
“I was saying that I want to show her our favorite ride at the amusement park and win her a giant bunny like I did for you!”
“That’s so sweet, baby. But you know that she won’t know what the hell is going on, right?”
“I know that, but we can still show her around to some of our sentimental spots, right?”
“Of course we can. We should probably just stay away from things that are overstimulating or have too many people because of potential germs. But we can take her to the park or–”
“That scenic route where you got me that coin with the heart?!” He’s so excited.
“Yeah, we can go there too.”
“When can we take her to see her godfathers tattoo shop? I want her to see how hard they work and how much they love her.” How can people find your husband annoying? He’s so cute!
“Probably at least a couple of months to allow her immune system to develop some more. You already know that everyone is gonna want to see her so… better safe than sorry.”
“I wanna get her name tattooed, ya know, when we finally pick one. Maybe I can get it somewhere close to yours.” You just hum but don’t say anything else. You just look at him and see how happy and sincere he is and it just makes you smile. “What?” He asks when he sees you just staring.
“Nothing. Just thinking that if I didn’t have to wait awhile before having sex, I’d probably end up pregnant back to back.”
“Good thing we’re going to be pretty busy otherwise it’d be a really long year.”
“You don’t have to wait a year to have sex after giving birth.”
“You don’t? How long is it?”
“Like two months or something.”
“Well damn! That’s like nothing! Why have so many guys that I’ve known complained that it feels like it’s been years?”
“Because they’re assholes would be my best guess. I’ve known more than a few men who get upset that their wife won’t have sex with them after they give birth and complain that ‘she doesn’t love me anymore,’ so they’re probably just whining.”
“But even if it was something like a year, I could imagine my asshole being torn apart and then someone wanting to ravage me even more. That sounds awful. Are people not scared about hurting others?” You agree with him but that was a wild analogy.
“One time, I very subtly took some artistic liberties with a man’s tattoo when he was complaining to his friend about his wife not putting down their breast feeding child in order to tend to his sexual needs. It took him three months to notice and it was absolutely worth the bad yelp review on the shop,” Choso admits and your jaw drops, but you’d be lying if you said that you weren’t proud of him.
“Can someone sue you for doing that?” Satoru asks and now you’re also curious.
“Fuck him. Who cares?”
Good point.
You wince and everyone starts to look worried.
“Isn’t that horror movie needle supposed to remove the pain? I’ll go get someone,” Satoru starts to get up when you stop him.
“It’s not severe pain, it’s just pressure. They said that this is normal so there’s no need for you to threaten all the hospital staff.”
“And you’re supposed to be sitting there holding your wife’s hand so I’ll go do it if need be,” your knight in shining blonde hair said.
“Kento! You’re here!”
“Yu is right behind me, he just stopped for a bottle of water.”
You're so grateful to be surrounded by your favorite people on such a big day.
“How’s it going?” He walks over to the side of the bed and grabs your hand.
“Oh, ya know. My body is tearing itself apart to prepare to make way to a new one like this is The Substance. But on the other hand, Utahime and my husband are getting along swimmingly and Suguru is praising our marriage and how happy he’s been for us.”
“Good thing we’re in the hospital because it sounds like everybody is fucked up.” Damn. That sent you. “How far along are you?”
“They think it’ll only be another couple hours. Luckily, everything is moving along nicely and they don’t think it’ll be much longer than that.”
“Good. I brought my camera and I’ll get everything adjusted while we wait,” he kisses the back of your hand and takes a seat to start working on things.
“Now remember what I said before Nanamin,” oh great, Satoru is about to be on some bullshit. “This is work, not ogle my wife o’ clock.”
“Satoru,” Kento sighs and you’d feel bad for him if you weren’t preparing to go through the worst healing process of all time. “Even if I wanted your wife, which I don’t. My ideal fantasy of seeing her vagina for the first time wouldn’t be when it’s stretched to oblivion by pushing out a literal person.”
It’s quiet in the room as everybody looks at each other, wondering who’s going to say what next.
But of course, it’s Satoru.
“Why don’t you want my wife?”
For fuck’s sake.
“Anyway,” you interject to prevent that from going wherever the hell it was going to go. “Someone give me a bite of something to eat because I have a bad taste in my mouth from sitting here and yawning for hours.
Utahime brings over a fruit bowl that she showed up with when you were given the approval to have little snacks. Everyone continues to bicker until Yu shows up and they include him in their shenanigans. Even though you say that you’re fine, Utahime insists on helping feed you pieces of fruit. Everyone is working overtime to make sure that you’re as comfortable as humanly possible, all things considered.
While some other people may be annoyed, you’re happy to know that they care this much to go above and beyond the way that they do. Your girlfriend is halfway feeding you and Suguru has been fluffing your pillows and helping you get comfortable because as much as they want to help you, they’re also trying to take as much work away from Satoru as possible. Very soon, there’s gonna be a time where you’re fighting for energy and sleep and your friends are working double time to make sure you’re both as relaxed as possible until that time comes.
𓆩♡𓆪𓆩♡𓆪𓆩♡𓆪
“Alright, time to check our progress!” The doctor announced as he entered your hospital room. “How are we feeling?”
“Tired. Mostly,” you don’t even know what else to say. You just really want to be ready to finally give birth because this is the longest process in the fucking world. You’ll never understand how people have like nine kids. Who the hell wants to repeat this slow ass process that many times?
“Well, let’s do a quick little exam and see where we are.” He puts on a fresh pair of gloves and makes his way over to you. He lifts up the blanket, your hospital robe, and starts the exam that he’s been doing basically every hour.
Satoru is holding your hand and everybody else is either looking at their phone or at one of the walls to not incur the wrath of your husband making jokes about them tryna catch a peek.
After about a minute of ‘poking around,’ he pulls your robe and blanket back over you and steps over to the trash can to throw away his gloves. “You’ve made excellent progress Mrs. Gojo, it looks like it’s about time to meet baby Gojo.”
Both you and Satoru freeze with your jaws dropped open. You knew that’s the whole reason that you’re here, but it still feels surreal.
“I’ll notify Dr. Ieri and then have someone in here to wheel you to the delivery room when she’s scrubbed up. And I’ll notify staff that you’re having your cameraman accompany you so it’ll just be a minute or two. Congratulations!”
The doctor walks out of the room and when the door closes behind him, everybody turns to you and Satoru and just looks at you.
After about a minute of silence, there’s a loud “CONGRATULATIONS” shouted in unison and it makes you smile.
“Make sure to come back with at least some of your vagina intact!” Thanks Utahime.
“Yeah, but mostly for me!” Thanks Suguru.
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
You’re exhausted, groggy, and just feel weak overall.
You ache, but are not in level ten pain just yet, but more than you felt before.
“My love, are you okay?” You feel someone holding your hand, but you’re too tired to respond. “It’s okay, you can rest. I’ll be here.” You hum, barely, and then drift off back to sleep.
You groan as you start to wake up again and hear someone calling for you.
“Baby, are you awake now?”
“Mmmmm.”
For the first time in what feels like years, you’re able to open your eyes and you see Satoru looking back at you with a worried expression on his face that doesn’t match the sound of his voice.
“How do you feel?” He asks you.
“Me? Sore. But what about you? You look like shit, like you’ve been worrying about something for days. Respectfully.”
“You started to fall back asleep when they were wheeling you back to our room and I’ve been worried because you’ve been out for hours. I wanted to wake you up to make sure that you’re okay, but they said that you needed rest and to give you your time.”
“Where’s our little girl?”
“Asleep, next to me. She’s so beautiful. But with you as her mom, of course she would be.”
“I wanna see her. And I would like some painkillers. It feels like fucking everything hurts.”
“I pressed the button for the nurse when you started waking up, we should be able to get something for you soon.”
You groan and finally open your eyes all the way, talking in the surroundings of your room. “Where did everybody go? Is this the same room?”
“They’re in the hallway. Shoko and the nurses said that you’d need a lot of rest but they didn’t wanna leave until they knew that you were okay. Do you want me to bring everyone in?”
“Can you help me sit up first? Just a little bit.” He immediately comes over to you and helps you scoot back and up just a little bit when you realize that you need those painkillers more than you thought.
“Are you okay?” Satoru asks when he hears you hiss in pain.
“It’s part of the process. I just hope that they’ll give me something.”
“I’ll text Shoko and then…” he’s interrupted by the sound of a cry and it’s like the pain disappeared from your body and you look for the source of the sound. “Somebody’s awake.”
“I want her. Can I have her?” You’re crying as you outstretch your arms, reaching for her.
Satoru helps you get more comfortable so that you can hold her properly and you continue to reach for her.
All you hear are cries and it makes your heart hurt. It makes you wonder how anyone can just let their baby cry for hours in another room while trying to just tune them out.
“Alright, here we are. Let’s go to mommy,” you see him turn around with her in his arms and she’s so small against his broad chest and you cry even more. He sits down on the bed next to you so that he can slowly pass her over and make sure that you’re comfortable or if you need to adjust.
You know that you held her after you first gave birth, but you were so tired and drowsy that it almost felt like it wasn’t real. But now you’re awake and have a clearer head so this feels different.
You look down at her and see that while she does look like her father, she’s not the carbon copy that everybody thought that she would be. If anything, she looks like a perfect mix of the two of you by getting your hair and getting his vibrant blue eyes. You already know that Satoru is going to have to beat the boys away from her with a stick.
“She’s so cute… and so small,” you say while gently rocking her to help her calm down. As you’re sitting together, a nurse comes in to speak to you and help you out.
“How’s the happy family?” She asks with a smile and all you can do is cry.
“Sorry,” you barely get out through the tears.
“It’s okay, it’s normal. Don’t apologize. How about we try getting her to feed?”
You spend some time with the nurse as you cry when you don’t get the feeding right the very first time, but she says that that’s common and there’s no reason to worry. Right after, your little girl does latch on to you and that fear has faded away. The nurse also gives you advice about things you can do in the future with her and just a basic newborn guide that they tell all new parents and it’ll probably be very helpful. After that, she steps out to give the three of you some time alone, making sure to put in an order for some painkillers in the process.
“How do you feel?” Satoru whispers as to not wake the little girl who finally calmed down.
“I’m in love,” you look down at her sleeping face and start tearing up again. It’s almost like you can’t believe that everything is real and it’s very overwhelming, but you’re happy.
“I told Shoko to have your placenta encapsulated.”
“Does that really do anything?”
“I don’t know. I read some stories from women who said that they felt that it helped them, but I guess doctors have said that there’s no hardcore evidence that it’s actually beneficial. But it can’t hurt, so better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, right?”
“I’m glad that you didn’t plan to just saute it at home.”
He laughs at the thought, “I bet that I could make it real good.”
“I don’t doubt your skills in the kitchen, but I’ll pass. I don’t need something that was inside of me also in my mouth.”
“That never stopped you from giving me a blowjob,” he says so effortlessly and you laugh.
“Satoru! She’s right here and you didn’t even cover her little ears.”
“She’s asleep and either way, she doesn’t know what a blowjob is. We probably sound like Charlie Brown characters to her anyway, she’ll be fine.”
“Mmmm. Did everyone else meet her while I was asleep?”
“No, they wanted to wait until you woke up. Want me to bring them in?”
“Please.”
Satoru gets out of bed as gently as possible to prevent waking her up and practically tiptoes over to the door like he’s the Pink Panther. He opens the door as quietly as he can and all his theatrics make it so hard for you not to laugh because you don’t want to wake the sleeping cutie pie. You see him waving to motion people in before shushing louder than you heard anyone moving.
Slowly, your friends make their way back into your hospital room to get a look at your little girl and your face that’s continuing to produce more tears.
She starts to stir before opening her bright blue eyes and looking around the room and everybody collectively lets out an ‘aaaawwwww’ which is the correct response because she’s clearly the cutest baby in the world. She closes her eyes again and you wonder how you’re supposed to get anything done in life when she’s here and she needs you.
“She barely looks like her dad, so that’s good,” Utahime says and everybody starts to laugh.
“Hey! She got my incredible eyes!”
“They only look good on her. You look like you glow in the dark.”
Damn.
“At least I’m unique. What about you and your ‘I’ll have the number six’ haircut with the bangs from the nineteen twenties?”
“Says the guy who looks like he never brushes or styles his hair? You look like you just rolled out of bed most of the time.”
“And you look like you’re going to get arrested for violating prohibition.”
Oh.
My.
God.
What an insult.
Prohibition?
Good god.
“Well, that was riveting,” Kento says after the laughter dies down. “On a separate note, how do you feel?”
“Like everything is making me super emotional, but look how cute she is!”
Everybody moves closer to your bed to get a look at her and Utahime asks to hold her and you give in.
“Did you come up with a name yet?”
“Mm-mm. I mean, I feel like I have ideas. But I just wanna spend more time with her to see if it comes to me.”
And that’s how the rest of the visit with your friends goes.
They were all with you at the hospital for well over twelve hours before you forced them to go home and get some rest. You thanked them for all that they did and all the support that they provided because without them, this would have been a much more difficult experience.
Satoru stays with you, obviously, and he sleeps on the couch so that he can be right next to your daughter’s bassinet and get to her quickly if she wakes up crying without having to wake you up too. You told him not to worry about stuff like that and that you have to get used to the middle of the night wake ups eventually.
And he responded with, “eventually. But not today. You need to rest and I want you to do that for as long as you can. You already have a lot of work to do, no additional stress is needed.” You appreciate his dedication, you just hope that he doesn’t run himself ragged by trying to carry all the weight alone.
The next day, you’re examined and Shoko approves you being discharged from the hospital and you start getting everything together.
“Is there anything else that we need?” Satoru asks you as you’re folding clothing to put in your bag, the one thing that he’ll let you do.
“We have her car seat set up, right?”
“Yup!”
“Everything else we need is in the nursery, I think we’ll be fine.”
Once you’re finished putting stuff in the bag, he takes it from you and places it on the couch before sitting next to you on the bed. “I was thinking that we could keep her in our room for a little while before moving her to her nursery full time.”
“That sounds good, Satoru. You’ll have to be the one moving her crib around though.”
“That’s fine,” he gives you a kiss on the cheek and then goes back to the couch to watch your little girl sleep. “Suguru and Kento are picking us up today.”
“How come both of them?”
“One of them is going to drive our car back so that I can sit in the back with you and the other will drive the other car back and they’ll both ride out together.”
“We should get all of our friends nice bottles of wine or whiskey or spa certificates or something. You’d almost think they were all having babies with how much that they did for us.”
“We’ll start planning something for them when we get home.”
“Something for who?” Suguru asks as he walks into your hospital room. “I hope you’re getting me a hooker.”
*sigh*
“Why? Aren’t you and Utahime getting married? You looked awfully cozy when we got our pictures taken.”
Five seconds.
He and Kento have been here for five seconds.
“How are you feeling?” Kento speaks to you while Suguru and Satoru bicker like children.
“Sore. But happy. And excited to go home and be with her.”
“I’m so sorry that Satoru will also be there.”
“Hey!” What the hell? You thought he and Suguru were neck deep in some made up drama. “You’re just jealous that you don’t get to go home with my beautiful wife.”
“Well, technically, Suguru and I are taking the both of you home so I kind of am.”
“Okaaay… fine. But only I get to sleep next to her every night.”
“And that’s all you’ll be doing since you destroyed her vajayjay by making her give birth to that beautiful little girl who’s only beautiful because she looks like her mother.” Thanks Suguru.
Satoru sighs and all he says is, “you’re right.” You can’t believe how fast he agreed to that. “But it’s okay. I’m not some sex obsessed maniac who’s gonna hurt my wife. Besides, I’m really excited for us to all be at home together and sleeping in the same room, I’m not even thinking of anything else.”
Satoru gets your little girl, Suguru gets your bag, and Kento helps with any misfit items and you get in the wheelchair that the staff insists that you ride out of the hospital in. Honestly, you’re not gonna complain. Your favorite part of ever having to be in the hospital is other people wheeling you around even though it feels like they’re always going fifty miles per hour.
When you get to your car, Satoru puts your little girl in the car seat which you double check to make sure that she’s safe and then he checks again to make sure that he did it right.
Oh goodness.
Is this paranoia going to be across everything?
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
It’s been a few months since you’ve gotten home from the hospital and there’s only two words to describe everything: tired and bliss.
And the perfect word to describe your little girl is… spoiled.
If you had even just a penny for everytime she fell asleep on yours or Satoru’s chest instead of her own bed, you’d be the richest person in the city.
You did some childproofing of your penthouse before finally giving birth, but once you got home and the paranoia turned up a few notches, Satoru did some more just to be safe.
Despite all his fears about changing diapers one hundred times a day, he’s actually been on it faster than you can. It’s so sweet to see him transform into super dad the second that she arrived and it makes you feel super comfortable as you’ve been healing.
You thought that once she was born, the chores would be more evenly split the way that they were before, but that’s not the case.
Nursing and pumping is something that’s taken a lot more out of you than you thought that it would and it’s resulted in Satoru continuing to take as much weight off your shoulders as possible.
When you got home, he moved her crib to your bedroom so that she could be close to you and if she starts whining, there’s less wait time to get to her and less chance of waking the other up if she goes for too long. But surprisingly, she doesn’t scream in the middle of the night as much as people warned to scare you out of pregnancy.
But even if she did, it’s okay.
She’s fucking adorable so she can get away with whatever she wants.
Whenever you’re awake, you and Satoru are just enjoying your time with her and he’s incredible at always being able to make her laugh. She has the cutest little giggle and it’s really unnecessary for her to be so perfect, but you’re not complaining.
The older that she gets, the more you see her features and it’s almost difficult to tell who she looks more like, you or him. She has your beautiful hair and Satoru’s bright eyes that pierce right through your soul. Even if she’s not actually smiling, her eyes still make her look like she is with her beautiful long lashes that you wish you had. Her skin tone is somewhere between you and your husbands, she has pouty lips and the cutest scrunched eyebrows when she looks upset at something even though you don’t know why, it’s not like she knows what bills are yet.
It’s funny how she can do any little thing and it has you and Satoru in awe like she deserves her own page in Guinness. The other day, she sneezed. That was all she did, just sneezed. And after Satoru finished his meltdown of feeling like you needed to take her to the emergency room, all you did was gush over how adorable that was. When she first came home, you put mittens on her and all he did for like a day was talk about how cute her mittens were. You know that people may say you’re overreacting, but you don’t think you are. Perfect is an understatement for her.
She’s a little glammed out now that she’s been wearing the custom bracelet that Choso got for the two of you and you had it engraved once you settled on a name.
“Who’s my little Peony?” You hear Satoru ask her as you walk back into the bedroom.
“Peony? That’s her new name?”
“Why not? She’s beautiful like one,” he turns back to her and holds her little hands, “who’s a girl more beautiful than a Peony? It’s you.” He starts doing a silly voice and she’s all giggles and smiles so you take a seat on your side of the bed and pull out your cell phone to record them.
You’ve recorded so many hours of videos and have already taken thousands of photos and she’s only been home for around six months, but you can’t help it. You and Satoru even set up a camera to record her while she’s sleeping so that you can look back on that if you want. And if you feel like you’re overdoing it, Satoru has probably taken more photos and videos than you have. It’s so nice to be able to record these things since technology is so accessible compared to a time where your family practically had to be rich to afford a camcorder. But not only do you have a camera at your fingertips, it’s great quality and not fifteen dollars a box for film.
“Who’s my little Jelly Bean?”
They’re so fucking cute together.
“So, what do you wanna do toda–?” He starts to speak but he’s interrupted by a cry. “Looks like someone is letting out a hungry cry. Time for mommy to break out daddy's favorite things to feed you.”
“Goodness Satoru, of all the ways that you could have said it,” you laugh at how ridiculous he is. You get comfortable against the pillows for what feels like the eighth feeding of the day.
“I don’t know how men complain to their wives about being sex deprived right after they give birth. We’ve been so busy I’ve barely even had time to think about it, let alone be upset about it,” he says while helping pass her over to you.
You and Satoru were so distracted with your little girl that it took you quite some time before you jumped back into your sexy time activities, but once it started back up, it didn’t slow down. If you were a betting woman, you’d say that he was trying to get you pregnant as soon as possible.
After a few minutes of feeding her, Satoru burps her and lays her down on his chest for her nap. That’s how you spend most of the day, just enjoying being with each other.
Ugh.
This life is making you sappy instead of the sarcastic bitch that you used to be.
Before the night ends, Satoru says that he has something that he wants to give you. You’re surprised at how much he’s had planned for the evening and are curious about what’s next.
After you finish feeding for the evening and put your little girl to bed, he sits you down in bed and brings over a black box with white ribbon wrapped around it. You know that he wouldn’t give you anything bad, especially not like this. But you’re still nervous since the entire night has been a surprise.
“This is a pretty big box,” you lift it up to see how heavy it is and it feels like there’s something pretty heavy inside of it.
“I got you a box of pet rocks. Congratulations baby. Let’s name them all after the angels from Supernatural.”
“Smart ass.” You pull the ribbon off and start to laugh a little because it would be hilarious if he was serious.
When you pull the lid off the box, you see that it’s full of multicolor tissue paper and a bunch of confetti that’s covering the comforter and all you can think about is how you’re going to find this stuff in your bed for weeks, even after changing the bedding. Once all the packing is out, you see an envelope with another item and pull that out first.
“Don’t read that yet,” he says once you flip the envelope over to see if there’s anything on it.
“Oh, okay. When do you want me to read it?”
“I don’t know,” he scratches the back of his neck. “I just get nervous about stuff like this, ya know? I want you to read it some other time, just when I’m not sitting here.”
“Okay, I understand.” You put the envelope on the bed next to the box and pull out the larger item and you realize that it’s a giant book. You flip it over and feel all the feelings when you see the title, ‘Moment You Knew.’
“I was going to wait until our next anniversary or ceremony to give this to you, but we missed our last one so I wanted to give it to you now. When I was looking for my memory box, I came across this in a locked cabinet and found the anniversary gift I got for you inside of it. I’ve been having some questions still, about our relationship, and going through this helped me a lot.”
You open the book and look at the first page and it’s almost like a quick rundown on your relationship and it’s detailed as fuck, which makes you smile. It has everything from your names, to very specific dates like the day you met to when he felt like you actually became friends. He listed where you went on certain dates and even some of your mutual likes and dislikes.
There are a lot of people who complain about their partners not remembering birthdays and anniversaries so it really makes you feel loved that he remembers everything, even down to the littlest date.
When you flip past the page, you see the first couple of text messages that you sent each other and you’re shocked to see that he saved and put them in there.
Unknown: Hey pretty lady. This is your new best friend. Miss me?
Future Wife: Who is this?
Unknown: Satoru!
Future Wife: Perfect! Now I know to block this number.
Satoru: Hey!
“I still can’t believe that you listed me as your future wife when it took months for you to even get my phone number.”
“Yeah, my bride was being pretty difficult, so I had to be a little sneaky.”
“Sneaky? You say that like you’re a spy or some shit, you just took it out of Suguru’s phone.”
“I had to! How else was I supposed to get it?”
“Ask me,” you laugh.
“Okay… fair. But I was too shy! Gimme a break.”
“Fine. Fine.”
You keep flipping through the pages and that’s when it really hits you that this is the largest book that you’ve ever held in your hands. You didn’t realize it at first because you were still trying to find out what this was and what was going on. But you lift up to almost the last page to get a quick look at how long this is a couple thousand pages.
Damn.
“I may have gone a little overboard,” he says once he sees your reaction at the length.
“Maybe it’s warranted. We’ll see.” You keep flipping through and you see from the many pages that you look through that it’s every text message exchange and letters that you wrote to him along with candid photos of you that he took and some that you didn’t even realize existed until this moment.
“It looks like it’s all of our written conversations leading up to the day that we got married but it does have a photocopy of my vows in there.” You continue to look through and you can see areas where he’s written little things about fun days that you’ve had together and stuff that he likes about you. “The theme was ‘Moment You Knew’ so here you go.”
“This has all of our exchanges in here, except for audio.”
“I always knew. What can I say?”
You start to cry but keep your volume down so as to not wake your daughter and even though some people may think that this is overboard, you think it’s sweet and once again proves how this man never fails to make you feel like the most loved person in the entire world.
“I love you, Satoru. Thank you,” you give him a kiss before flipping through some more of the pages. While you look through, he switches out the blanket on the bed to one that’s not covered in confetti and then he joins you. “I kinda did something similar for you.”
“You did a giant book too?”
“No. I made a giant collage for you.”
“Ooooooh. Of all sexy photos, right?”
“Shut up and follow me.” You shut the book and get out of bed, leading him down the hallway to your home office where you also have a locked closet. You unlock it and turn on the light to see the giant frame that you’ve had hidden underneath a sheet for months to protect it from the dust. “That’s it,” you point at it.
“If I pull down the sheet, is it going to turn into the mirror from Oculus?”
“Yeah and it’ll drain all our plants so make this look quick so that we can cover it back up.”
He chuckles and moves past you to pull the sheet down and when it hits the floor, you hear a low ‘wow.’
It’s similar to what he did, only instead you put a bunch of things together into one giant collage inside of a giant frame. It’s about the size of one of the posters that you see at a movie theater and it has everything from the first flower that Satoru got you that’s been pressed and preserved. It has the first polaroid that you two took together and some stubs and items that you’ve collected from your time together. You took some stuff out of your memory box to build this for him and seeing the look on his face, you think it was all worth it.
After a couple of minutes, he turns around and pulls you into a hug before kissing you like his life depended on it.
“I love you,” he says when he pulls back and you know that you could never live without him. “Can we put this up somewhere instead of having it hidden in a closet?”
“We can put it wherever you want… tomorrow… because our Jelly Bean is in the other room and I wanna get back to her.”
“Deal.” Even though you always have a baby monitor with you, you’re still paranoid about leaving her in another room.
You finally make your way back to your bedroom to turn in for the night. You don’t know why, but today has felt extra long and you’re ready to get to partake in your favorite hobby: sleeping.
It was a long day.
But a good day.
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
“She’s beautiful. Thank god she looks like you,” Suguru says as he picks up your little girl.
“I’m beautiful!” Satoru shouts out.
“Of course you are,” you shut that shit down before it even gets started.
“Hi Amaya,” Kento says to her and she smiles. You didn’t think he’d pull out the good with babies card so effortlessly but you’re impressed.
Once again.
HOW IS HE SINGLE?
She reaches out for him so you pass her over and she immediately lays her head against his chest.
“Did I just get replaced?” Satoru sounds genuinely offended but you’re not gonna let that linger.
“No. It’s a good thing that she likes the people we trust around her, be happy. You know that daddy is still number one.”
He sighs and takes a seat on the couch as everybody in your circle fawns over her and holds her and she’s just loving all the attention. She has on the Daddy’s Girl onesie that Suguru designed with a little skirt from the gifts that Kento and Utahime got for you and you’re wearing the matching one. Since the engraving was completed, you’ve also always worn the matching bracelets unless you’re bathing and they mean the world to you. You love matching with her and spoiling her and you don’t see that changing in the foreseeable future.
“So, what’s next?” Utahime asks.
“We’ve been briefly talking about the new vow renewal ceremony, but we haven’t made anything official yet other than we wanna go somewhere that she can have fun.”
“Where do you wanna go for fun?” Yu says in a baby voice and it makes her laugh. “Disneyland?”
“Maybe,” both you and Satoru say in unison.
“Vow renewal at Disneyland? Sounds like fun. Everyone can dress up in characters,” Suguru adds and you haven’t put much thought into it, but you wouldn’t be mad dressing up for the day. Suguru turns to you and you already feel yourself having to calm your husband down once you see his smirk, “you can wear that little red number that Jasmine wears at the end of the movie.”
“Not until I get my pre baby body back.”
“Naw, I think you’d look good.”
“If she’s Jasmine, then I’m Aladdin and you can be Jafar.”
“You want me to dress up as the man who’s gonna put your girl in handcuffs?” Everybody laughs at the revelation. “I’d love to.”
“Maybe. But I’ll be the one who gets her in the end and you can dress up as the literal snake.”
Oh geez.
“How about if I’m Jasmine, then Kento can be Prince Eric and Suguru can be Li Shang and Utahime can be Cinderella in a blonde wig and blah blah blah so that nobody gets shit mixed up?”
“That means I also have to wear a wig,” Kento points out and you’re confused. “The prince you’re referring to has black hair.”
You stare into nowhere for like twenty seconds before just bursting into laughter. “I think I meant the prince from Sleeping Beauty!”
“He doesn’t have blonde hair either!” Yu points out and you’re more confused than ever.
“Isn’t there a heartthrob with blonde hair?” You’re so lost because it’s been literally years since you’ve watched a Disney movie other than Aladdin.
“Do you mean John Smith from Pocahontas or that guy with the horse from The Hunchback of Notre Dame?”
“Maybe,” you laugh and everybody else laughs with you. “Whoops.”
“It’s okay baby. We can do whatever you want and we’ll make it work,” Satoru kisses you on the cheek and you just laugh at your stupidity.
That’s how time goes for a while, just chatting and hanging out and it feels really good to have everyone over. People always make jokes that when you have children, you’re excluded from everything and your social life is basically over but luckily that hasn’t been the case for you. You have been given some space, but only because you’ve needed time to adjust and everyone has been supportive and still wants to hang out with you.
After some time passes, Satoru says that he has an announcement that he wants to make.
“I just wanted to say that through all the jokes and the bickering with my My Little Pony lookalike friend here, I, along with my wife, am very grateful for all of you. Once we all met, we’ve all been stuck like glue and building these bonds means more to me than you know. Before it was just me and Suguru and Shoko, and then it included Nanamin and Utahime and Yu and of course the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“That would be me.” Fucking Suguru.
“Anyway. I just wanted to thank all of you for always being there. You were there for us as friends, and then us as a couple, to supporting her when I disappeared which still sounds weird as hell to say. And then you were still there when I came back and all showed up to the hospital at the drop of a hat to be there for us when we didn’t know what was going on with her. I just want all of you to know that I really appreciate it. I know that we both do.”
You start to feel your eyes water because it’s not often that Satoru gets super sappy like this and says something from the heart with no jokes included.
“I just have one more thing to add, to show my dedication to you as well,” he unbuttons, unzips, and pulls down his pants in front of everybody. “I will wear a pair in everyone’s honor to show my love and support!”
You know that feeling when you want to laugh but it feels like your body won’t let you get it out?
That’s how you feel right now.
You bury your face in your hands and just take deep breaths at the fucking shenanigans that just unfolded. He’s wearing a fucking pair of yellow underwear that has Kento’s face and name on them which means they were custom made and you have no idea when he did this.
You look to Kento and see that he looks equally parts mortified but also not surprised. It’s a really weird mix that you never thought you’d see before and it honestly makes everything funnier.
“Bahahhaaahahaha!!!” Shoko is the first to burst out in laughter and Utahime throws a marshmallow at him from your snack bag.
“Why. Do. You. Have. Those?” Suguru asks the question that’s on everybody’s mind, including yours.
“Like I said, I wanted to show my love and support for all of you. I got a pair with the face on it of everybody in this room.” There’s a collective groan and he laughs at the reactions.
“Where did you even get something so horrifying?” Poor Utahime, she looks like she’s on the verge of collapsing.
“I had to have them custom made. First I had to find a place that let me upload my own photos, and then I needed the right size to accommodate my massive dick.”
It’s in that moment that you feel like you sink into the couch.
“Oh please! I can’t even see anything!” No Utahime, please don’t tempt him.
“Oh, that’s because the bulge is where Nanami’s mouth is.”
Thank god your daughter is asleep in her crib.
But you wouldn’t be upset if she had a sixth sense and started crying just to interrupt this.
“Baby,” you put your hand on Satoru’s arm, “please put away all the things that belong to me.” He pulls up his pants before sitting back down on the couch.
“That’s not fair. If I asked, he probably would have finished us off like this is a Rammstein concert,” Utahime grumbles but you still hear her.
“Well, this was the worst day of my life. Thank you for inviting me over,” Kento says in the most monotone voice of all time and everybody laughs.
Yu passes him the bottle of whiskey that was on the coffee table and he just drinks it straight from the bottle.
You love your husband so fucking much.
But why is he creating the most damaging emotional trauma that you’ve ever witnessed?
“I have some with you on them too,” Satoru whispers in your ear and you chuckle.
Maybe it’s not the worst thing to ever happen.
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
It’s been several months since Amaya was born and all the people who said that you were going to hate your life after you give birth can go fuck themselves.
It may sound cheesy as hell, but you’ve never been happier and you get a little happier everyday.
Your daughter is a little over ten months old at this point and you’re surprised at how much of a personality she has. You thought it’d take a bit longer for that to develop, but you can already tell that she’s silly just like her dad and you love seeing her eyes light up when he plays with her. Satoru says that she’s clingy and loves attention like you, but you still think that’s more him than you. The faces that she makes when she’s grumpy are probably more you than him since it takes everything in the world and then some to piss him off.
You didn’t think it was possible to love someone as much as you love this mini version of the two of you. But everyday, you love her more. You also love her snarkiness when Satoru changes her diaper and then has to do it again quickly after and groans causing her to laugh. It feels like adding insult to injury and it’s hilarious every time.
You also love how when you’re sitting with her and trying to get something done, she pats you until you give her attention. That’s literally what your husband does so you can’t, for the life of you, figure out why he thinks that’s one of your traits.
A couple months ago, Satoru surprised you by inviting Utahime over to watch Amaya so that you two could spend some time alone, even though you were still at home. But she hung out in the guest room while you two were in yours and it was a nice night. Since then, he’s had your entire friend group on rotation to give you at least one of those nights a week.
One of your favorite days was when Satoru and Suguru were arguing over the meaning of her name.
“It means Heavenly Valley which makes perfect sense for her because she’s a little slice of heaven.”
“You’re so dramatic, Satoru. Also, wrong. It means Night Rain, which is perfect because your wife is a night owl and she thrives in the colder months when it rains. It describes your wife perfectly and it makes sense since she looks like her.”
“Oh Suguru…. You’re stupid. I googled this.”
“I googled it too.”
“If you googled it, then you’d know that you’re wrong.”
“Yeah, same thing to you. Are you sure your memory is getting that much better?”
You’re sitting in the rocking chair in the living room with Night Rain Heavenly Valley as they bicker about who’s right and who’s wrong with more enthusiasm than you expected for people talking about a baby’s name. You end up pulling out your phone to google it yourself and so who’s right and who’s wrong.
“Uhhh baby… and Satoru,” you decide to tease him since it’s been a while.
“My love! How could you?”
“I’m kidding, shut the fuck up,” and he does. “I googled what you guys are talking about and I have an answer.”
“If I’m right, you owe me fifty dollars, asshole. And I’m making you go to work with your hair in pigtails. Let’s see how many girls bat their eyelashes at you then.” Oh Satoru. That’s never stopped girls with Choso but you’ll let him have his moment.
“If I’m right, you have to let me blindfold you and tattoo you with whatever I want.” No.
“Deal!” Fuck. Satoru and Suguru shake hands and now you know it’s official in man land or whatever. “Okay babe, who’s right?”
“Well,” you clear your throat. “According to the interweb, both of you.”
“What?” They both ask in unison.
“According to this search, it says that you’re both right. Sorry.” It’s funny to you because neither of them looks proud even though technically, they both did win the bet. “Have fun with whatever crazy fucking tattoo Suguru puts on you. My only rule, nothing on the face pleeeasseeee.”
“Oh damn. I wanted to put ‘damaged’ along his jaw in Baby Kruffy font.”
Fuck no.
Anyway, ever since that day, your daughter has gained several more nicknames but she reacts positively to all of them so you’re not going to complain. You love that everyone in your life is building a good relationship with her so that’s good.
But today is the day that Satoru is fulfilling his losing part of the bet and you’re going with him to Suguru and Choso’s shop to get his mystery tattoo. You and Satoru decided that you want to get your daughter's name tattooed, but then he’s gonna get whatever the hell Suguru is gonna do to him and while he’s panicking, you’re not. You know that he’s not gonna put a veiny dick on his neck or anything so you haven’t put much thought into it.
“What should I wear?” Satoru asks you as he dramatically pushes around the clothing in the closet.
“Short sleeved shirt or something easy to roll up depending on where he needs room to work.”
“What if it’s cold there?”
“Bring a sweater just in case.”
“Maybe I should wear something that’s easy to take off since I don’t know what he’s going to do. What if he wants to put ‘dumbass’ between my shoulder blades?”
You laugh as you finish brushing and tying up your daughter's hair. “He’s not going to give you a fucking eight hour back piece Satoru. I’m sure that you’ll be okay.”
“Our daughter is definitely gonna get her potty mouth from you!”
“You just said ‘dumbass!’”
“Yeah, but you shouldn’t say ‘fuck’ anymore ‘cause ‘fuck’ is the worst word that you can say. So just use the word ‘m’kay!’”
For fuck’s sake.
“She’s ten months old, she’ll be fine. If she starts speaking at this age, even if it’s a naughty word, I don’t give a shit. That means that she’s a genius and I’m gonna shout it from the rooftops. Now hurry up and finish getting ready dumbass. All I have left to do is put her shoes on.”
“Alright. Alright. Alright.” He finally does as you say and puts on a shirt and grabs a sweater to bring along with him. Afterwards he grabs your daughter's baby bag and gets her stroller set up. “Ready?” He calls out from the other room and you meet him there.
You dressed her in a black onesie that says ‘never trust the living’ on it and she has a cute little tulle skirt and you’re wearing the same thing. This mommy and me fashion is never going out of style in your head.
“Oh my goth,” Satoru says when you come into the room and you just roll your eyes. “I’ll be right back!” He runs out of the room and back to the bedroom and you just sit on the couch and groan.
“Satoru! You know that we’re scheduled right?! That means that the longer that we take, the longer that the people after us have to wait.” You don’t wanna take all day because you don’t wanna mess anything up for everybody else but punctual is not a word that your husband is familiar with.
“Okay, I’m ready!” He jogs back into the room wearing all black instead of the white tee shirt with dark blue jeans that he had on before. “I couldn’t be the crazy outlier with you two cuties, I had to change. I know, you’re annoyed. But don’t worry, I’m ready to go now.”
You finally make your way out of the home and into your car to start the day.
As you sit in the back with Amaya, you see Satoru tapping on the steering wheel a lot and you know that he’s nervous as hell. “Why are you freaking out so much?”
“Well, tattoos are permanent and I’m about to get blindfolded while I get one.”
“Babe. You really think I’m gonna let him put something crazy on you?”
“What if he wants to put a sad clown riding a rubber chicken carousel horse on my ass?” Good god.
“I would never let him do that… well… it depends on the design. That sounds super funny.” He exhales a deep breath and you realize that he’s not just putting on a show. “I won’t let him put anything on you that’s gonna dry me up, okay?”
“Okay.” It makes you wonder what threats Suguru has been making since that day he won the bet that Satoru isn’t even trusting his best friend the way that he should.
Whatever.
He can trust you and you’ll make sure he doesn’t regret what happens today.
When you arrive at the shop, you see the young, pink haired apprentice, outside and scrubbing the glass door like his life depends on it.
“Hey Yuji.” He jumps at the sound of your voice and you feel like shit. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“Oh, it’s fine Mrs. Gojo. I just got lost in thought. Suguru and Choso have us cleaning the shop more than we’ve ever cleaned before, and that was a lot, so I was distracted. Where’s the rest of the family?”
“Oh, Satoru took a call so he has our daughter. He told me to go ahead.”
“Oh okay.”
“So why do your bosses have you making the shop more sterile than an operating room?”
“Because you’re bringing their goddaughter. They didn’t schedule any appointments early in the day so that we could make sure the place was as clean as possible to make sure that it’s safe for her.”
Aaaawwwwww.
Yuji’s face lights up and that can only mean one thing, “Mr. Gojo! Welcome back!”
You step to the side to allow them to get reacquainted. This kid has always loved Satoru so you’ll let them have their moment. You’re not sure exactly what they’re talking about, trading cards or something, but they sound pretty enthusiastic. You'd think one of them hit the lottery with how hyped up they seem.
Eventually all of you make your way into the shop where you see the other apprentices cleaning like they expect Gordon Ramsey to scour their kitchen for any sign of dirt.
Suguru is the first to come out of the back and greet you and you immediately laugh when you get a look at him. He has his hair parted in two high pigtails and Satoru makes sure to let out the most obnoxious laugh of all time. But then, Suguru turns it around and just freaks him out, “so pretty boy, I’ve got a blindfold with your name on it. Ready to have some fun?”
“What are you gonna do to me?”
“You’ll see it after I’m done.”
“What if it’s something embarrassing?”
“Then it’ll be a funny story for the future.” He has a point.
You know that Ink Master has had some horrific tattoos come out of it through the years, but at least it’s a cool story to tell and you feel more people should look at it like that.
“And what does this beautiful little girl want? Skull on the face?” You and Suguru have been here for less than five minutes and Satoru is already ready to throw Suguru off the roof of his own shop.
“Even after she turns eighteen, that is abso-fucking-lutely not allowed and I will beat your ass if it ever does.” Well damn.
“What if she gets it done at another shop?”
“I’m still blaming you.” Petty. “Anyway, let’s get this shit over with.”
“So, Satoru’s better half,” of all the ways that Suguru could have addressed you, but it is correct. “What are you getting done today?”
“Oh nothing. He’s just here to fulfill his side of the bet. But I did some reading and it said that I should still wait a few more months before getting any tattoos.”
“So no matching His & Hers today?”
“Not on tonight. We’re still coming up with ideas on how we wanna match Amaya’s name so we’ll worry about it later.”
“Sounds good.” Right as you’re about to follow Suguru to his station, someone tries to open the doors to the shop which have seemingly been locked. He walks over to what looks like two young ladies and unlocks the door to speak to them, “sorry about that. How may I help you?”
“We just wanted to see if you took walk-ins, but I guess not,” she lets out a nervous chuckle.
“I apologize for the confusion. We do take walk-ins, but the shop is closed for the next couple of hours due to a special appointment so I’m sorry for the mix up. But if you’d like to come back later, I’ll give you a special discount for the inconvenience.”
“Suguru is charming as fuck,” you whisper and accidentally activate your husband’s jealousy.
“Not as charming as me.” Oh boy.
“Of course he isn’t, everybody loves you,” you kiss him on the cheek before this gets out of hand.
Suguru walks back over and you ask him what the hell is going on and why his shop is closed. “There’s precious cargo here today and I want to make sure she’s not being brought around outside germs by strangers. I’ll open back up when you’re leaving.”
Aaaawwwww.
“I’m happy that you acknowledge how important our princess is.” You love how Satoru says that like he's the reason behind these plans that you didn’t know about until thirty seconds ago.
“I’m aware. Now let’s go put a tattoo on you that will embarrass your daughter for years to come!”
Why are they like this all the time?
When you get to Suguru’s room, you see Choso in there finishing up some cleaning and you kinda wanna hire all of them to clean your home. These people put more work into a tattoo shop than probably most restaurants do with their food.
Choso takes off his gloves before walking over to you and giving you a hug. And then right after he turns to your husband and says, “ready for an awful day?”
Watch them do all this hyping up and then he just tattoos a fucking butterfly or some shit.
“You’re making me neeervooussssss,” Satoru sings out before taking his seat.
“Would the beautiful bride like to do the honors?” Suguru asks you after pulling out a blindfold from a nice wooden box?”
“You really went all out, didn’t you?” You thought that he’d pull out some cheap piece of fabric that only cost a dollar instead of the nice piece of silk that he pulled out.
“It came in a bondage kit,” everybody in the room laughs at the fact that he bought a fucking bondage kit to tattoo your husband.
“Fun,” you take the blindfold from him and walk over to Satoru to tie it on. “Maybe we can get a kit of our own,” you whisper in his ear before taking a seat in one of the chairs Yuji just brought in.
“Would you like to see it, wife?” Suguru asks while pulling up Satoru’s sleeve to see if he has to adjust the size of the stencil.
“It’s fine. I trust you.”
“But it feels like it’s going on my arm! What if it’s horrible?”
“Then at least it’s in a good place to cover it up.”
After a few minutes of cleaning the area and adjusting the stencil, he finally applies it and gets started. Satoru lets out the most dramatic fake scream as if that’s going to help his friend do a better job. Suguru needed your help with what he wanted to do and that’s why you know that there’s no reason to worry. But if you’re being honest, it’s still a little fun to see him throw fits over nothing.
“Baby, how does it look?”
“It’s been like three minutes,” and that’s Chosos way of telling him to shut the fuck up.
Everybody else continues to make small talk and Satoru continues to throw a tantrum until he gets tired at the fifteen minute mark. But that’s when your daughter takes his place and starts to cry.
“Nooooo. No sads, little one,” you pull her out of her stroller and try to calm her down.
“You infected her with your whining, Satoru.” You don’t catch who says that but it makes you laugh either way. And when everybody else starts to laugh, your little girl laughs as well, showing that she just needed some attention.
Everyone is falling in love with Amaya anytime she does anything, and that includes just resting her head on your chest and grabbing at Choso’s necklaces.
Satoru groans. “Uggghhh, how much longer is this going to go on fooorrr?”
“Fuck, you whine a lot!” Nanako, one of the apprentices says and everyone freezes in silence before bursting out into laughter. Suguru even has to turn his machine off because he doesn’t trust himself to not mess up if he continues.
“To be fair, we’ve been here all day.”
“tO bE fAiR, you’ve been sitting there for like thirty minutes.”
Damn, right as Amaya was falling back asleep on your chest, you started laughing so hard that she woke up.
Fucking Nanako.
Well, actually, fucking Satoru for fucking whining.
“Alright. Alright. Nanako, just know that once you start with Satoru, he’ll argue back like a child all day if he has to,” Suguru warns her and that makes you chuckle.
“You’re one to talk, you bicker with him all the time. Hell, you fucking provoke it most of the time.” You were not going to let that comment slide when you know his shadiness.
“I know, my dear, that’s my point.”
Everyone ends up getting entranced in their phones except for Choso who takes Amaya off your hands so that you can go to the bathroom.
But Satoru stops you before you can exit the room, “that sounds like my wife’s heels. Where are you going?”
“To pee.”
“Where’s Amaya?”
Really?
“I left her on the floor.”
“WHAT?!”
“I’m kidding! Choso has her so shut the fuck up Drama Queen,” you say in a joking tone. You’re literally in a room full of people who love her, did he think you were gonna leave her outside or some shit?
“As long as he’s safe with her, I guess it’s okay.”
“Damn. I was gonna take her on a motorcycle ride to the skydiving place and start the day off right.”
“You guys are trying to give me grey hairs at such an early age and I don’t understand why.”
“Your hair isn’t gonna go grey to go back to white, Satoru. You’ll be fine,” and that’s Sugurus way of saying shut the fuck up.
You go to the bathroom to get a break from what feels like sibling arguments and it also gives Choso a few more minutes of godfather time which you know he loves even though he won’t say it. But that little girl took to him like animal hair on a black sweater and you love seeing them together.
After a few more minutes of fixing imaginary problems, you return to Suguru’s room and he silently waves you over to take a look at your husband’s tattoo and you have to fight back the tears.
“Ah, my wife is back.”
“Can you see through the blindfold?”
“I’ve spent enough time between your legs to know what your perfume smells like.”
“Satoru!”
Everybody groans in unison and you can’t blame them. If you were a bystander to this, you’d also feel mortified.
“I like how you say that as if I spray perfume directly on my vajeen.”
“I used to think that’s what girls did!”
“My lady bits would be rotted to hell if I ever did that,” Suguru’s face scrunches up the second those words leave your lips and he makes a gagging sound.
“Good!” Satoru starts yelling at him. “Be disgusted by my wife’s disgusting reproductive organs! There’s nothing there for youuuuuu. You can take your jokes and use them on another woman.”
Damn.
You’re getting dragged.
You retake your seat and give Amaya a very light kiss so as to not wake her. “How ya doin’ there goddaddy Cho?”
“Why is she like this?”
“What? Super cute?”
“Yeah.”
Good answer.
After another thirty minutes go by, Suguru announces that he’s done and everybody breathes a sigh of relief like they were all the ones under the needle.
“Ready to take a look, Satoru?” Suguru wipes down his arm and makes sure that everything is clean before allowing him to look at it.
“I’m nervous. What if it’s bad?”
“Do you really think I’d put some monstrosity on my best friend?”
“As a joke, yes.”
“Real ink and needles isn’t a joke. Maybe if it was temporary I would but I don’t have that kind of ink here. I wouldn’t put a dick on your neck in red ink or anything like that. Besides, your wife would never let me even if I wanted to.”
“Damn straight,” you reiterate. “I know everybody makes jokes, but I’d never let him put something that was horrific on you, unless it was really really funny or cute.”
“And what are the parameters for that?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t stop you if you were gonna tattoo like a glitter Hello Kitty microwave or something. But if the quality was worse than something Doodlebob would draw, I’d stop you.”
“Alright, let’s get this over with, I’m freaking out. Somebody take this blindfold off.” Suguru decides to take the lead this time and stands behind him sort of leaning over so that his hair brushes against his best friend's face. “Ugh Suguru! Why do you have to make it sensual?” Once the blindfold comes off, Satoru doesn’t even look at his tattoo, he looks around the room for you and Amaya and smiles when he sees you. “Sometimes I get scared that I’m gonna open my eyes and you’re not gonna be there.”
Fucking.
Sweetheart.
“Well, I’m here. And I’m always ready and willing to endure your Satoru-isms. Now take a look at your fucking arm so that Choso and Suguru can open their shop back up.”
“Oh yeah!” Silly boy. Suguru kicks the youngsters out of the room so that the four of you can have some privacy and get the shop ready to re-open but that makes Satoru even more nervous. “Are you sending them away because you know that I’m about to have a meltdown?”
“Kinda.” Okay Provoking Peter.
After everyone else leaves the room, Satoru looks down at his arm, after being incredibly dramatic about it, and he’s still for a moment.
“I love it,” he says in a low voice. Suguru pats his shoulder and continues to clean the area so that he can wrap it. “How’d you do it?”
“Your wife helped me out.”
“When did you do that?”
“The day you went with Choso to pick up some things for Amaya, Suguru came over and we did it together,” you explain.
“I love it. Thanks man.”
“You’re welcome. Did you really think I’d put something on you like a kangaroo with octopus tentacles or some shit?”
“I don’t know! Maybe!”
“I would never do that to you. Either way, the crisis averted and you don’t have to worry about this bet anymore,” Suguru finishes disinfecting his tattoo and wrapping it up.
“Yeah, and you don’t have to wear those pigtails anymore.”
“Actually, this is the third time I’ve worn my hair like this in the past week. I tried doing my hair like this one morning to see if I’d need help and ended up just leaving it. The thing that you thought was going to push the beautiful women away actually made them love me more.”
“Well shit. What a waste of a punishment,” Satoru says and Suguru laughs. “What do ya think, babe?”
“I think it’s beautiful.”
After weeks of panicking about what his best friend was going to do to him, he finally chills the fuck out after looking down and seeing a tattoo of a little footprint on the inside of his wrist. One day when Satoru was preoccupied, you and Suguru painted Amaya’s foot and stamped it a few times on a piece of paper before he chose the best one for the stencil.
“So… Suguru… you were sneaking into my home after I left to see my wife?” Oh boy.
“Yeah… to paint your kid’s foot.”
“So you went to spend time with my wife and play daddy with my daughter?”
“I played ‘uncle’ who kept getting covered in paint because my niece kept kicking me.”
“That’s my daughter, what a good girl.”
Fucking guys.
“Alright Satoru, get the fuck out so that I can open back up for business.”
“Fine. Fine.” Satoru adjusts his clothing and carefully gets Amaya from Choso which causes her to stir and then cry. “Ahh damn. Now she loves him more than she loves me!”
“No she doesn’t. Shut up. Let’s go.” She calms down immediately so she must’ve just been cranky that you accidentally woke her up.
After Suguru finishes cleaning up, all of you follow him back out into the rest of the shop where the two girls from earlier are waiting. You hear a little ‘ooooohhh’ and you just roll your eyes because it never stops.
“Oh no, it’s raining,” Satoru says when he finally looks outside. “I’ll run to the car and see if there’s an umbrella.”
“It’s fine. I like the rain.”
“What about Amaya?”
“She’s not gonna drown. It’s not even raining that hard so I think she’ll be okay.”
“See you tonight,” you say to Choso before following Satoru out of the shop.
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
A few hours after leaving the shop, you dropped Amaya off at Choso’s place where he and Utahime agreed to watch her for the night so that you and Satoru can have the first official date night since she’s been born.
Even though you have been out together since she’s been born, you haven’t had a traditional date where it’s just the two of you and your friends suggested that you finally take some time for yourselves not only for your relationship, but to also not make her codependent.
You were really nervous about dropping her off somewhere else and you literally took like three bags of things with her along with two pages of notes which neither of your friends rolled their eyes at you when you explained everything.
“Amaya really loves her ramen squishmallow so you’ve gotta make sure it’s at least in the room with her wherever you go. She loves peekaboo too so if she starts crying and you can’t figure out why, that usually helps. If she keeps it up, she’s probably hungry,” you rant.
“Yeah, and if she starts crying like this,” Satoru starts imitating her whines and your friends look mortified. “That means that she needs a diaper change. And if she starts crying like this–”
“We get it!” Utahime interrupts him before he can start back up again.
“Okay! Okay! If you need anything, just call us.” You and Satoru sneak out of Choso’s apartment while Amaya is asleep and Utahime locks the door behind you.
“Are you sure she’ll be okay?” You ask Satoru once you’re back in your car.
“I’m sure. It’s only for a couple of hours, and then she’ll be back home.”
You didn’t think it’d be so hard to be separated from her for the first time. You thought with all the time that you’ve spent, you’d be more adjusted. Before this, the most time that you spent apart was with her in another room while somebody else watched her, so this is a lot for you.
You turn your head to look out the window as you start tearing up and Satoru senses immediately that something is wrong. “Baby, you alright?”
“I’m fine,” you respond in the least convincing voice possible.
“Babyyyy…” he pulls over and parks the car. “She’s gonna be fine. She’s with people that we trust so you know that she’ll be fine.”
“But what about her cries? What if she wakes up and she’s sad that we’re not there?”
“She’s not with strangers. Everyone has spent a lot of time with her so I don’t think that’ll be a concern. Remember that she was sad when you pulled her away from Nanami last week, I should be the one panicking that I’m being replaced. I just can’t compare to a man who’s really good at doing his taxes,” he says sarcastically and you laugh.
“Okay. I’m okay. We can go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
It’s not like this is a date that’s going to take the whole night because you’re doing like seven different things. Tonight you’re starting off by just doing dinner and then your friends are supposed to drop her back off at your place. It surprised you when you learned that they already got a car seat so that you didn’t have to give yours up or worry about her, and that made you smile. They say that it takes a village and your friends have basically all stepped up and have volunteered to do more than most people's families probably would and that makes you feel happy for Amaya, that she has such a strong circle already.
Satoru takes you to one of your favorite restaurants, one where you get to cook some stuff yourself and you love it. It gives you the opportunity to enjoy the nostalgia along with distracting yourself so you don’t stay so emotional.
Not too long into dinner, you get a text from Suguru and it’s of him, Choso, and Utahime sitting together with blankets over their heads like they’re wearing robes and they put her in one of those black onesies with the anarchy logo and the message says, “joining a cult! Xoxo.”
Assholes.
“Our daughter is being sacrificed,” you say to Satoru and his brows shoot up like you just said the craziest thing in the world and to be fair, you kind of did.
You turn the phone around to show them the photo and he drops his head and sighs. “Why are they like this?” His reactions make you laugh a little and you start wondering what you should write back. “We didn’t even get an invite.”
“I’m writing that back.”
“We’ve been gone for like an hour, that means that they’ve been planning this.”
“Hey, the neighbors in Rosemary’s Baby planned that out too, it wasn’t an impulsive choice they made.”
“Fair.”
You and Satoru continue to eat and hang out and about thirty minutes later, Satoru receives a text on his phone this time. He grabs his phone off the table, unlocks it to view the text, and laughs so you know that it must be silly.
This time it’s a photo of Amaya wearing a shirt that’s too big for her but it has Daffy Duck on it and he’s wearing chains and it looks airbrushed like that early 2000’s trend. She’s wearing a giant hat, but it’s facing sideways and tilted like she’s T.I. and there’s a giant fake chain around her neck. Utahime is holding her while throwing up what is clearly not a gang sign, and she has a candy cigar in her mouth.
“They’re having way too much fun babysitting. I was fucking crying in the car on the way out of their parking lot and there’s having her joining cults and turning into a delinquent.”
“On the bright side, that means that they’ll probably always be willing to sit for us.” You and Satoru laugh before he braces himself to say something. “So… I was thinking… maybe we could head home a little early.”
“Why do you make that sound like it’s an imposition?”
“I know that it’s our first night out together in quite some time and I just didn’t know how much you wanted to do while we weren’t on baby duty. Our friends are watching her for a few hours so I figured we’d do dinner and then we…”
“We….?”
“We could go home and I could fuck your brains out.”
“Order dessert to go.”
“Check!”
⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺
SUMMARY: You’ve been married to your husband Satoru Gojo for almost five years and things have been as perfect as they can be. You still go on dates, try new things, and spend a lot of time together. To celebrate your five year anniversary, the two of you decide to throw a vow renewal ceremony. But the day before your anniversary, he vanishes. After spending what feels like decades searching for your husband, he returns. But he doesn’t return as the man you once knew. Can the two of you navigate all the changes to your lives and relationship?
Also available on AO3 at HomainExpansion
Chapter One: Shoots & Ladders
Four years, eleven months, and three weeks. That’s how long you’ve been married to Satoru Gojo. While the two of you always make plans for your anniversary, there’s a lot more planning going into this one. It is a milestone after all.
The one part of your tradition is that you always get professional photos taken, this actually started before you got married. Even though you take plenty of photos together throughout the year, you want to look back on your relationship in more than just selfies. It also gives you an excuse to wear matching outfits which the both of you love.
The other part of your tradition involves the gift exchange. Neither of you want a gift that’s basically a price tag, so you agreed to choose a different theme every year and the gift must fit that theme. This gives you the opportunity to be sentimental, put a spin on an old idea, or be completely silly. This way you don’t have to worry about one person getting jewelry and the other getting a notebook.
The first year was stuffed animals and you got him a squishmallow of his favorite Digimon character to add to his collection. He got you a vampire bear that when you squeezed its hand, it spoke in *his* voice and said, “I vant to suck your tits.” So you can’t let kids play with this, but the back had a heartfelt message embroidered that said how happy he is to be married to you. That’s one of the things that you love the most about him, that he can combine his loving side and his horny side so easily but it doesn’t feel like it cheapens anything.
The second year’s theme was flowers. You got him a flower crown of blue roses, Alice in Wonderland style and he got you a bouquet of red roses. But once you looked closely, they all unraveled and were actually thongs wrapped up as roses. This fucking guy. Nothing like realizing that in the middle of a restaurant. But you still decided to keep them on display in your home because it’s funny every time you walk past them.
The third year's theme was glass. Every month that you’ve been together, Satoru gets you fresh flowers when the others start to wilt. So his gift this year was a custom and very extravagant vase for all your bouquets. You got him a custom snow globe of the place you were when you had your first official date. Later on that night, he surprised you with a glass butt plug. If there’s one thing that man wants, it’s multiple things, multiple kids actually, and he’s not shy about it.
For your fourth anniversary, the theme was games. Apparently the two of you only had one thing on your mind and your gifts that year reflect that. You got him an adult version of Jenga full of sexy prompts. And he got you Sexopoly instead of another variation of monopoly to add to game nights. You already felt pregnant the second you took it out of the bag. That still didn’t stop the two of you from arguing about who the winner was.
This year, the theme is a bit more sentimental. The theme is all about when you realized you were in love. You decided to make a giant collage full of some of your favorite moments with him. It’s going to include photos, letters, ticket stubs from dates, a variation of things. You’ve been debating on when to give him his real gift, the news he’s been waiting for for years, you’re pregnant. A part of you wants to tell him the night of your anniversary after the gift exchange. But sometimes you also want to tell him before the ceremony because it’s such a hard secret to keep. You also know that he’d probably love to scream it from the rooftop during your big day so it’s definitely a decision you don’t have a lot of time to make.
But until then, it’s more planning and the running of errands. Satoru wanted to go all out for this anniversary and you’re not complaining one bit. Not only are you getting your photos taken today, but you’re doing a small vows renewal with your closest friends and family. Then you decided to take two weeks off of work and the two of you are going to go on vacation. It’s a lot, but you’re really excited.
“How do I look? Good? I know.” Satoru comes out of the room wearing a blue sweater with a lighter long sleeve button up underneath and a pair of black slacks.
“You look like a social studies teacher.” He does look good though.
“Good. Now is the perfect time to do the teacher / student role play considering you’re perfectly dressed for it.”
He’s not wrong. You’re wearing a light blue sheer button up top and it’s tucked into a darker blue, black, and white argyle print skirt. You made sure to put on white thigh high tights, and a pair of black ankle boot heels. Yea, he’s right, it’s giving schoolgirl. But you’re also serving a look and you know you are so who cares.
“This is the most you’re going to get in that regard. I don’t have anymore room in my drawer for more costumes.” It’s full of costumes for everything from a nurse role play to the head cheerleader and football star.
“That’s fine, we’ll throw out some of your work clothes.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“What? Once I knock you up, you’re going to have to take maternity leave anyway. So, less work clothes.”
“One, you don’t go on maternity leave day one, I still need clothes for work. Two, maternity clothes are ugly. I’m still dressing the way I do now, I’ll just get everything bigger.” That might not be how they work but you know how to sew so it’s fine.
You end up rolling your eyes and feel your resolve starting to crack. If you tell him, it definitely won’t be until you return home because he’ll tell everyone on the street everything he did to get you pregnant. You appreciate his enthusiasm, but sometimes it’s like, people don’t want to know strangers have a sex swing, unless they’re your ex.
“Hey.” He grabs you by your waist and pulls you to his chest. “You look beautiful.” Then he leans down and kisses you. This man knows how to make you weak in the knees and it’s surprising that you get anything done.
“Thank you, but please don’t smear my lipstick.” You’re already walking over to the hallway mirror to assess the damage. “It’s fine if it is, we’ll just go back to bed.” He says so casually as if this isn’t a tradition he wanted to start.
You just roll your eyes and grab your purse. “Let’s go!”
“Yes ma’am. How do you feel about a dominatrix fantasy?” This fucking guy. “if you get us there on time, I’ll do all the financial don stuff that you want.” You just had to sneak that in. You used to wish that you were one of those girls with the charm to just take a man’s wallet George Jetson style.
“You already take all of my money baby,” he says with a pout.
“If you keep annoying me, I’ll take your dignity next.” Is he stalling for time? What the fuck?
“Oooohhh, sounds fun. How do you feel about indulging a man’s humiliation kink?” He asks as he starts raising an eyebrow for dramatic effect.
“I’ll tell you what, if you get us there on time, we can do whatever the hell you want when we get home.”
That was a mistake to say because he decides to speed all the way to the studio.
♡♥︎♡
“You’re still married to him?” Kento asks you, knowing it’s going to drive your husband crazy.
“What’s wrong with me? I’m good looking and I’m hilarious” Satoru snaps back.
“She’s the only one who laughs at your ‘jokes.’”
“She’s the only one that matters. If she laughs, I’m funny.” He’s not wrong.
Kento walks over to you and puts his hand on your shoulder. Then he looks you in the eyes, and in the most deadpan tone he says, “please, it’s not too late to run.”
You can’t help but laugh at that. You have this conversation every year when you show up at his studio. You used to wonder if he’s actually hated Satoru since high school. But, he’s still here and they see each other pretty frequently, so he must like him at least a little bit, you think.
But there was a time when he absolutely meant that. Kento Nanami and Utahime Iori were the other members of your trio and your best friends since high school. When you finally revealed that you were dating Satoru, they were not amused and for lack of a better term or phrase, fucking hated him. But throughout the years, Kento has come around. But not Utahime, she still can’t stand him and he plays on it constantly so you really can’t blame her.
“So Nanamin, you ready to take our boudoir photos?” Satoru says with a smirk.
“That is absolutely not going to happen” you finally say. “Just our yearly anniversary photos, pleeeaseee.”
“Let’s get started then.” You know Satoru is disappointed by his teasing time being cut short, but you're grateful. This man will go all night if nobody stops him.
“How come you’re not that nice to me?” You hear Satoru ask as he starts going through his friends work bag.
“I have no respect for you.” Damn. “Huuuuhhhhh?!” At this point, you’re a little surprised you’ve never seen them fight, even play fight. Even Suguru has punched Satoru at least once, and he’s basically the most chill guy on the planet.
You’re full on laughing now and never understand when people say Kento has no personality.
“So, how are you Kento?” You decide to start a conversation before your husband can annoy your photographer some more.
“Things are fine. I’ll be leaving for Paris a few days after your ceremony for work,” he says while adjusting settings on his camera.
“Oh fun! Are you going to come back with a supermodel girlfriend?” You hope so, you really want him to find somebody. And since you’ve seen him sitting poolside, you're even more surprised that he’s single.
“Probably not, work is picking up.” Ahhh, that’s why. Work - a - holic.
“Well, I’m rooting for you regardless.”
After graduating from business school and working in the stock market for awhile, Nanami said he needed a change. He said his job was, “soul sucking bullshit.” Even though your friend group takes a lot of pictures, he is rarely in front of the camera. He prefers to take the photos and that’s when you saw that he definitely had ‘the eye.’ One day you came across some amateur photographer contest and convinced him to send something in. He ended up winning, just like you knew he would. It resulted in him making connections and having a career shift. He gets booked for months at a time, but he still makes time for all of you.
“Come on Satoru! We don’t wanna take up all of Kento’s free time.” He immediately comes over and gets posed in front of the camera.
“I don’t know what magic you possess to control a maniac like him so easily, but it’s powerful stuff. You should bottle it up and sell it.” Satoru is pouting now.
You stand up on you tip toes and whisper in his ear, “you can do it too. You just have to have sex with him.” His face. His fucking face. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Kento looking so disgusted, it’s awesome.
“What’d you say to him?” Satoru asks you.
“Nothing. Let’s take some pictures.” You can tell he doesn’t want to let it go, but he does.
The photo shoot goes by relatively quickly, even with Satoru and all his antics. You get everything from the usual couple's photo to him stealing kisses and sneaking bunny ears. You even make sure to take a few photos facing sideways because you know your husband is going to want before and after baby bump pictures. You’re so excited that you’re starting to feel you won’t make it to the big day to tell him, and that you’re going to crack sooner, maybe you should. You really wish you weren’t so indecisive.
Before you can allow your thoughts to spiral, the nausea kicks in. You try your best to hide it, but it’s apparently written all over your face.
Nanami notices you looking a little blue and brings you a bottle of water. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just a little winded. Thank you.”
Satoru comes over then and kisses you on your temple. “Let’s go eat, then you’ll feel better.” At least that part is true. While you’ve felt sick in the morning, and at night, food hasn’t been making you sick yet so you’re grateful for that.
“Sounds good. Will you be joining us Mr. Kento Nanami?”
“Thank you, but I must decline. I already have a business dinner scheduled. I probably won’t see you guys until your ceremony.”
“Awwwhhhh how am I gonna survive with you for a few days Nanamiiiinnn??!!” Satoru throws an arm around his shoulder and whines that into his ear.
You’re starting to think that your husband is an energy vampire and he only feeds on Kento.
“Alright, we’ll see you in a week then!” You give him a hug and head out the door.
♡♥︎♡
*Four days until your ceremony*
You’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get everything perfect for the ceremony and Satoru has been putting in extra hours at the office to ensure that he won’t be bothered while you’re on your vacation. Planning has been relatively smooth with the exception of the last minute venue change due to double booking. But that aside, things haven’t been nearly as hectic as you expected, it just feels more exhausting due to your looming pregnancy that you’re still keeping under wraps.
The biggest back and forth between you and your husband has been choosing a place for your trip. It’s not that you can’t necessarily agree on a place, it’s more so that you two want pack as many things into one week as you can and that’s difficult because not one place will have everything that you want. The two of you settled on a trip to visit Las Vegas. It has basically everything; penthouse suites with gorgeous views, a ton of restaurants, shows, roller coasters, and the heat has let up so it won’t feel so grueling. Satoru will probably be a little disappointed that you can’t go on rides with him, but he’ll be more than willing to sit poolside with you after you give him the big news. You also got tickets for that Cirque du Soleil sex show as a backup.
Satoru should be home from work soon so you decide to try on your dress before he gets home to make sure it doesn’t need any more alterations. It may be a little extravagant for a vow renewal ceremony, but who cares? It’s your day and if you want to splurge on a couture gown, that’s your right. This ceremony is literally night and day from your first one and you want to have fun with it. When you got married, everything was black, dark purple, and red. But that was to be expected seeing as you got married on Halloween. But this time, everything is full of bright colors. You’re wearing a white, silk, floor length, off the shoulder corset dress with blue gems to accent the seams and create a more mermaid shape. You even have some sparkly, strappy heels that lace all the way up to your knee because you know your husband will lose his mind seeing that.
Everything looks perfect. Thank fuck.
You put your dress back in it’s garment bag and decide to just take a breather. You lay down on the bed and decide to enjoy some of the last moments of silence you’ll have before Saturday. When you got engaged, Satoru actually suggested renewing your vows every year and at first it sounded cute. Who doesn’t want someone to love them to the point where they always want to show it?
But after all this work? Absolutely not.
This will definitely just be a once every five years ceremony because the stress is stressing.
Just as you feel you could drift off for a quick nap, you feel it, the fucking morning sickness that lasts all day. You run to the bathroom only to find out it’s a false alarm, just a strong wave of nausea, it’s awful. But that reminds you that you need to eat and you feel absolutely no desire to stand there and cook. You decide to order food from one of Satoru’s favorite places and then settle down on the couch. You figure that you might be able to get one episode of your show in before your loud ass husband walks in the door and talks all the way through it. You love him, but ‘spoilers’ may as well be his middle name.
About five minutes into your episode, you hear a key in the door. Mother nature is giving you no breaks today, is she?
“Honey I’m hoooommeeeeee! Where is the love of my life?!” You hear Satoru shout from the front door.
“She left because you’re too fucking loud.” You hear him laugh from the hallway. You love having someone you can banter with. You made a joke like that with an ex and his response was literally, “if I’m such a burden, you can just leave.”
You hear your husband walking up behind you, “then I guess it’s a good thing that there’s a beautiful woman on my couch right now. Interested?”
“Depends, what am I being offered?” He narrows his eyes at you as if you just asked him the most ridiculous question.
“Well, me, of course,” he says, beaming with pride.
“Just you?”
“Just me? Baby, I’m a prize!” “Eh.”
He chuckles and walks around the couch to sit down next to you, then he pulls you to him so that you’re straddling him. He’s only been gone since this morning, but it feels like it’s been days. Just being with him feels like everything and then some.
“Hey baby.” Fuck, that voice.
“Hey, how was work?” You ask him as you wrap your arms around his neck.
“It was awful,” he says right before he leans in and kisses you. “I missed you all day.”
“You’re such a sap,” you say with no bite to your words because the truth is, you feel the same. Between the pregnancy and the upcoming ceremony, you feel like one big ball of emotions.
You feel him start to kiss down your next, slowly, like every kiss is completely calculated. You lean your head back and start to run your fingers through his hair. He moves his hands to your waist and holds you so tightly, as if he feels you’ll slip away. You don’t know how he manages to make you feel so much by doing so little, but it’s still incredible to you.
If there’s one thing that your husband is good at, it’s making you feel not just loved, but desired. He always puts his hands on you any chance he gets and touches you with such care that you know he worships you. Feeling insecure about your appearance is completely non-existent in your marriage. Your husband doesn’t touch you any more when you have makeup on than he does when you don’t. Your bitter ex tried to convince that one day you’ll wake up alone because he found someone ‘hotter,’ but you’ve never felt more secure than you do now.
“I missed you too, I can’t wait for our trip,” you say as he goes back to kissing your neck.
‘Me too. I’m going to absolutely defile you in that hotel room.” This fucking guy.
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it, just let me take care of you.” Defile? That’s the word he chose?
Just as he starts pulling down your top, there’s a knock at the door. He closes his eyes and groans, you can hear the disappointment even in that. “Who is showing up and ruining our ‘fucky fucky time’?” Is he serious? “One, I ordered food. Two, we are absolutely never calling it that.” You can’t even stop yourself from laughing because it’s so stupid and he knows it is. “That's fine, I’ll come up with something that you like.” The truth is, you don’t completely hate that title. You just know that if you were about to have sex, you’d laugh and dry up faster than you could recover.
After dinner, you decide to head straight to bed. You don’t remember the last time that you saw your husband so tired, it looked like he was falling asleep with his fork in his hand. By the time he hit the bed, he looked like he was completely out. And even though it’s still fairly early, this pregnancy is already draining you, resulting in you crawling into bed right after him. You would have bet money that he was asleep before you laid down, but like every night, you feel an arm wrap around your waist and pull you to his chest. It’s like he has a sixth sense that only reacts to you, but maybe that’s not the worst thing.
♡♥︎♡
*Two Days Before Your Ceremony*
Fuck it. You’re telling him.
You wanted to wait until Saturday to tell him the big news, but you’re doing it today. After this morning, you realized that you can’t put it off any longer, not even two days. You didn’t even notice that this was starting to make you a little distant towards your husband until he said something. “Are you upset with me?” Satoru asks you, concern written across his face. “I can stay home if you need me to, am I working too much?” Damn, you feel bad. “What? No. We agreed on all this together, I’m not upset.” How do you explain all the reasons you feel the way you feel without revealing too much?” “It’s just, you’ve been distant,” he looks down as he says to you. It’s almost as if he’s scared of your reaction. “It just feels like you’re always on the other side of the room. We haven’t been eating together, hanging out, having sex, and you’ve been asleep by the time I get home the past few nights.”
Shit. The real reason is that your morning sickness that’s supposed to only have you sick in the morning, has extended to the rest of the day. His cologne and some cooking smells have really been hitting you hard. And the fatigue? You feel like you now need three naps a day. “It has nothing to do with you.” Kind of.”I’ve just been feeling a little under the weather. I think it’s just a bug. I’m sorry.”
He steps closer and wraps his arms around your waist before leaning down and kissing you. He feels so good, but fuck this cologne. You just have to keep it together until he leaves.
“Do you want me to stay home?” You can tell that he wants you to say yes, but you need some time to yourself. You just want some time to think and take a nap.
“No, go do what you have to do. It’s your last day for the next two weeks, I’ll be here when you get home,” you do your best to force a smile.
“Okay.” He kisses you again. “I’ll check on you throughout the day. Love you.” With that, he turns to leave.
You didn’t even notice that he was feeling you pulling away from him, that truly wasn’t your intent. The situation is what it is, and it’s time for you to fix it. Tonight you’re going to reveal your pregnancy so that your husband knows that it’s not him that’s bothering you. It’s just his cologne, detergent, and whatever food he brings home. Alright, it still sounds bad but context is key.
You want a cute reveal but unfortunately, you don’t have time for all of that. You thought about putting the ultrasound photo in his wallet and asking him if he had change for a larger bill, but he’ll just give you his card. You thought about putting it in his tie drawer, but this would be the one night he doesn’t go in there. So you’ve settled on a much simpler idea.
When you were at the doctors, you got not only a photo, but a dvd of the ultrasound. That’s it, that’s the idea. You’re just going to sneak the dvd in and call it a day. It’s not one of your most elaborate plans, but you keep reminding yourself that he’s going to be so excited, he probably wouldn’t remember if you went over the top with the reveal. You did make sure to order food and time it with his arrival because there’s no fucking way you could stand in the kitchen for an hour cooking right now.
You hear a knock at the door and start to freak out until you remember that your husband has a key and wouldn’t be knocking. That means it’s the delivery person and you’re going to wait a minute before opening the door because you don’t want to go viral for showing up in the delivery photo. After you feel certain that they left, you go outside and bring in the bags of food. As you’re laying everything out on the counter, you can’t help but laugh. It always reminds you of the time that you first met Satoru’s parents. They were coming over for dinner and according to him, they have really high standards. He said there’d be no point in trying to cook for them, so he just ordered food and passed it off as his own. He picked the fanciest place available on the app and put all the food in your pots and pans, turned the heat on low, and served it in front of them as if he cooked it. He’s so ridiculous, and he was right, they have the highest fucking standards.
You’re so lost in thought that you barely heard your husbands keys in the door. Here you go, it’s all or nothing, now or never, or whatever the fuck people say.
You start to walk over to him, but he’s distracted with his phone in his hand resulting in him walking right past you, and into his office, closing the door.
Fuck.
You can’t remember the last time that happened. He really thinks you’re mad at him. Time to do damage control.
You walk over to his office and brace yourself before knocking on his door. At first, silence, no reaction of any kind. You wait a few moments and then knock again. You hear a distant ‘yeah’ from the other side, he must be all the way across the room. You slowly enter and look around for him, spotting him at the desk, setting up his laptop.
“Hey babe, everything okay?” You ask, a bit timid, you can’t remember the last time you saw him like this.
“Everything is fine, I just have some work to finish up.” He never brings work home unless he decides to actually work from home for the day. But he never extends his day and works throughout the night. You made a deal when you got married that you wouldn’t allow work to consume you and once you get home, that time is for each other.
You don’t want to annoy him, but you speak up again, “can it wait a little while? I have dinner set up and I thought we could watch something.” You can tell from the way he’s looking at you that he wants to say no. He probably wants space as much as you do right now, but this is for all the wrong reasons. You don’t want to miss telling him, you don’t want to go to sleep angry, and you don’t want this to follow you into your ceremony.
“This is a big case and I should prob-,” you cut him off because you already seeing where this is going. “Please. Just dinner, and then you can go back to work,” you say as your voice starts to break. You see his eyes widen a little before he stands up and walks over to you. ”I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, don’t cry.” He wraps his arms around you before leaning down and placing a kiss on top of your head. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Were not supposed to bring work home,” you say as you look up at him, tears in your eyes.
“I thought you needed some space from me, it won’t happen again.”
“I didn’t need any space, I’m sorry I made you feel that way.” He tilts your head up and kisses you, fuck, this man is great. “I ordered food from your favorite place.”
He smiles after you say that. One of the things you love the most about your husband is his lack of being stubborn or spiteful. There’s no grudges and throwing negativity back in your face later. You get to work kinks out this easily and it’s incredible. After seeing your friends and family argue with their partners for days over petty bullshit, it scared you out of dating. But Satoru is the opposite and for that, you're grateful.
You lead him over the the couch in the living room and the you start bringing over boxes of food and plates from the kitchen.
“You need any help?” He asks you and you realize that now is the time.
“Nope, I got it. But, maybe you can find something for us to watch.”
You walk away far enough that he thinks you went back to the kitchen, but you’re standing around watching him, trying to see his reaction when the time comes. He reaches for the remote and your heart feels as though it’s pounding through your chest. You see the tv come on and Satoru is just sitting there, frozen.
“Babe! What is this?” He sounds confused, it’s kinda cute.
You walk back over to him, “oh that? Just something that I picked up recently.”
“Picked up from where?”
“The doctor.” He narrows his eyes at you.
“The doctor?” He just continues to stare at you.
“Yes, the doctor.” He’s just staring you down as if there’s some big prank going on. But then his eyes widen and his lips form an ‘o’ shape and he looks back at the tv.
“Is this what I think it is?” He asks as he breaks out this huge smile.
“That depends, what do you think it is?” You’re smiling too.
“Are we having a baby?” You don’t think you’ve ever heard his voice this high before.
“Well, I’m having a baby. But you can stay and help out.”
He walks over to you and kisses you, deeply, passionately. He moves his hands to your waist and you feel him pouring love into every touch.
“I love you.” He tells you everyday, but something about it feels different this time, good different. “I’m so happy that we’re expanding our family. Thank you. I love you.” Kiss. “I love you.” Another kiss. “I love you so much.” Many kisses.
“Alright alright, I get it. I love you too, now get off me so I can eat,” you barely manage to get out because of his onslaught of affection.
He finally pulls away from you and you go to sit down on the couch and eat. He comes to sit next to the left of you and snatches the fork out of your hand.
“What are you doing Satoru?”
“Feeding you. You need to rest. Also, practice for the baby. Here comes the airplane!” He starts making sounds that are not even close to an airplane and trying to get the fork in your mouth, which he successfully does once you start to laugh.
“Sir, respectfully, give me my fucking fork and eat your own food. I worked hard on cooking this.”
“Didn’t you order out?” He says with a smirk.
You slam your hand against your neck as if you’re clutching your pearls, for dramatic effect, of course. “The cheek, the nerve, the audacity, the gall, and the gumption! I’ve been slaving all day while carrying your baby and you accuse me of lying?”
“Isn’t the baby only the size of an olive right now?” Bastard.
“So what! You just told me I can’t even feed myself anymore.” Please let him give this up because you don’t think you have anymore comebacks lined up.
“Fine, I’ll concede.” Thank goodness. “When did you find out?”
“Uhhh, about a week ago.”
“Why’d you wait so long to tell me?” Is a week that long? Ehhh, maybe for someone as excited as he is.
“I was going to wait to tell you the night of our anniversary. But, today happened. I didn’t want you to think I was pulling away from you because of, well, you. I was just feeling a little sick from the cologne and stuff like that.” He chuckles a bit, “so, still me?” Shit.
“But not you because you upset me, just the strong smells, and feeling more fatigued lately.” He hums at that. “I also figured you’d want to celebrate with everyone coming instead of finding out afterwards, so this just made the most sense.”
You thought he’d be more upset by you not telling him sooner, but he doesn’t, so that’s a relief.
“I can’t decide between calling everyone we know and telling them, or taking you on this couch.” “Satoru! I’m eating!” You giggle as he starts kissing your neck, This man’s libido should be studied because he went from trying to airplane feed you to wanting to fuck in like a minute. “Yeah, I know, I’m hungry too,” he says as he slides his hand between your legs. His ‘eating’ comments never fail to make you laugh even though you find them completely unsexy.
You barely have time to react before he’s slowly pushing you down on the couch, kissing his way down your neck as he does so. It’s been a few days since the two of you had sex and you desperately miss the connection. But just as you feel yourself starting to get into it, things take a turn for the worse.
“ Fuck, Satoru, stop.” He ceases all movements and looks up at you. You just cover your mouth and run to the bathroom in your shared bedroom and start to gag. This is so humiliating.
“Damn, was I that bad?” he asks as you’re hunched over the toilet bowl. You know he’s trying to lighten the mood, but really? Now? You appreciate the attempt but you’re literally dry heaving with tears in your eyes.
Once you realize you’re not going to actually throw up, you wipe your mouth off and brush your teeth anyway. “I’m sorry Satoru. You’re cologne, it smells like ten sprays instead of two and it’s getting to me.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he says softly. “I’ll take a shower, wash it off, and cut it out until it no longer makes you sick. Okay?” You love this man.
You decide to head to bed and get comfortable while he washes off. You grab your phone and pick a podcast to listen to while you wait for your husband to finish up. Even though you found out about your pregnancy a week ago, something about it feels more real today. It’s almost as if telling Satoru confirmed what the doctor already deemed to be true. Your family is expanding and you feel overcome with happiness and hit with a wave of emotions. Before you know it, you have tears running down your cheeks, worrying your husband as he comes out of the bathroom and sees you. That’s one part of the pregnancy that you hate, because you’re typically not someone who cries a lot.
“Are you okay?” He rushes over and sits down next to you. The concern in his eyes is so evident you can’t help but feel grateful for him. The last man you cried in front of told you to do it in another room so he doesn’t have to hear it. But, not Satoru.
“I’m fine, just thinking about life, and the baby. I’m just… happy.”
You see relief wash over his features and that helps calm you down as well. He wipes your tears before he leans down to kiss you, first on the lips, then on your forehead. He stands up and walks over to the closet to put on his pajamas, which is just a pair of boxers, before he goes to his office to grab his cell phone, you already know what’s coming.
You make sure nothing is playing on your phone and just listen for any sounds coming from the next room over. It’s silent for about thirty seconds, and then you hear it. “Suguru!” You were right. “I knocked her up! We’re gonna be parents!” You can hear the smile in his obnoxiously loud voice, but you won’t complain about the noise, he’s too happy.
After that, the sounds are muffled, but you can tell that he’s still really excited. You hear him close his office door so he must be coming back to join you. The bedroom door opens and there he is, beaming like nothing could make him happier. He says your name and when you turn to look at him, you see his phone facing you, Suguru on facetime.
“Congratulations to the both of you,” you hear Suguru say before Satoru turns the phone back around.
“She looks pretty good for someone who’s been carrying a baby for… babe, how far along are you.” You laugh at that because you just realized that you forgot to tell him. “Eleven weeks.” “Eleven weeks!” He yells into the phone, poor Suguru. “She’s more than just a pretty face,” you already know he’s about to say something ridiculous. “She’s also a strong working woman, mother,” okay, maybe you were wrong. “And a nice pair of tits.” “Satoru!” He just laughs that comment off, but you’re not surprised, he just can’t help himself. “It’s late, stop yelling at the man and let him get some rest.”
“Okaaaayyyy, mom!” Dumbass. “I’ll talk to you later Suguru. Love you, xoxo,” and you noticed he hung up.
Years ago, before you started dating Satoru, you asked Suguru how he deals with him. He literally said, “you just have to know when to hang up or walk away.” You always praised him for that but you’ve since married who you once considered an annoying nuisance so there’s that.
“Who else should I call and tell the good news?”
“Whoever you do call, just please make it quick. I don’t want you to annoy people to the point that they don’t want to show up on Saturday,” you ask of him. And to your surprise, he agrees to only call one more person. “Alright, I’m calling Nanami.” Of all the fucking people he could have chosen to call at eleven o’ clock at night. He would pick the one person who needs a month to recoup after dealing with him for a day.
There’s three rings before you see Nanami answer the phone, and you can tell from the camera that he was in bed. Now you feel kinda bad. “Nanamiiiii!” Your husband sings, he’s really trying to age that man as much as possible.
“What do you want? I was in bed.” Fucking Satoru.
“We’re pregnant! Well, my wife is pregnant, but she said I could stay.” He’s going to run that into the ground, isn’t he? You have a feeling he’s going to bring that up every time you ask him to do something that he doesn’t want to do. “Congratulations, that’s amazing news,” he says in that monotone voice, but you can tell he’s supportive.
“Thank you Kento!” You yell from your side. All you hear in response is, “but, like I said before, it’s not too late to leave hi–” And then Satoru ends the call.
“That’s enough of that.” You’re cackling now. You’ll never get tired of Nanami’s running joke, mostly because you know he doesn’t mean it. And honestly, you think it’s fair. Satoru loves playing pranks on him and annoying him so his one liners are fair game as far as you’re concerned.
Satoru puts his phone on the charger and then he crawls over to you, wrapping an arm around your waist, and pulling you against his chest. You used to hate when people were overly cuddly, but being like this, with Satoru, has become one of the best parts of your day. You don’t even realize how tired you are until you feel him next to you. It’s as if his presence alone is enough to relax you.
“Hey baby,” you hear Satoru whisper.
“Yes?” You reply with a yawn.
“I love you. And thank you for making me a dad.”
You’re not usually an overly emotional person but you feel like you might cry again. Fucking hormones.
“I love you too. And you don’t have to thank me. This is what we both wanted, and I’m glad you’re happy.”
He hums and you feel him kiss the top of your head, and hold you a little tighter. Before you know it, you’re asleep.
♡♥︎♡
*the day before your ceremony*
You wake up and find Satoru already awake as well, just playing around on his phone. You just look up at him, you can’t help it, he’s so beautiful.
“You should take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he says with a smirk.
”I don’t want to break the camera.” That smirk? Gone.
“What do you want for breakfast?” He asks you as he starts to get out of bed.
“Whatever you wanna make.” You don’t want to be difficult.
“Ooohhh, so chocolate and strawberry pancakes? Drenched in whipped cream and and syrup?” Fuck no.
“I was thinking more like eggs, bacon, potatoes, and toast. Ya know? A breakfast for a growing adult.”
“Sounds good…. For you, my love.” He bends down to kiss you before making his way out of the room and to the kitchen. After about a minute, you hear a ‘baaaaaaabeee’ coming from the kitchen. Just as you’re getting out bed to see what’s wrong, he’s coming back into the bedroom.
“So, as it turns out, we have nothing for breakfast. And I mean, nothing.”
Then, it hits you. You forgot that you haven’t been ordering out just because you want to, the both of you have been so busy that grocery shopping has taken a backseat. That's definitely something that’s going to have to change before the baby is here.
“We could—“ Satoru cuts you off before you can finish that sentence.
“Don’t say ‘order breakfast.’” That’s absolutely what he was going to say.
“My beautiful wife is carrying my baby and I’m going to make her a home cooked breakfast for the occasion.”
“But we don’t have anything,” you say in response.
“I’ll just run to the store and go pick some things up.” Maybe you should order, that seems like a lot of work for breakfast.
“I don’t want you to do all of that just for breakfast.” You already know that you probably won’t change his mind, but that won’t stop you from trying.
“We need stuff anyway, I’ll just get enough until it’s time to leave for our trip.” You know he’s right. But who the hell wants to wake up and immediately run errands?
“Well, I’ll go with you then.” As you start to get out of bed, he stops you.
“You’re carrying precious cargo, you’re not going anywhere that you don’t need to go. I’ll go handle everything, and you take a break and stay in bed a little longer.”
“Are you sure?” He can sense your reluctance.
“Please.” He kisses you. “Stay in bed. Relax. You can call me if you need anything.”
You don’t want to give in, but you do. He goes to the walk in closet to get dressed, comes back to the bed to kiss you one more time, and then he’s out the door.
You decide to take advantage and stay in bed to relax. You put on a show you haven’t watched in a while and get comfortable in bed. But as it turns out, you’re more tired than you realize and you start to drift off.
About twenty five minutes into your impromptu nap, you hear your ringtone start up and you immediately know that it’s your husband, so you pick up.
“Hello?”
“Hey babe! I was thinking of picking up some stuff to throw on the grill and maybe we could do a mini get together with our closest friends tonight. Ya know, before the big day? I just want to share the exciting news with the people who matter most since most people will probably end up drunk tomorrow.”
“Well, they are gonna need the alcohol to tolerate your shenanigans.”
“Awwww I love you too. So, what do you think?”
“Sounds good. But you have to send out the invites.”
“I already sent it to everyone in our group chat.”
“Of course you did.”
“Sorry, I’m really excited!”
“It’s fine. As long as you’re doing the cooking, I’m fine with it.”
“Yay! Alright, I'm going to check out and then I’ll be on my way home to snuggle with you and our baby.”
“Yeah yeah, hurry up.”
“I love you!”
“I love you too, Satoru. I’ll see you when you get home.” And with that, you end the call.
Just as you’re about to put your phone down, you start getting a bunch of notifications. It looks like it’s mostly people letting you know that they got the invite and that they’ll be coming over tonight. For a split second, you were thinking it may be a bit much to have people over tonight when you’re doing something so big tomorrow, but you’re actually pretty excited.
Through the influx of messages, one stands out, a text from your husband. You’re curious seeing as you just spoke to him on the phone so you wonder what crazy thing he’s planning next. You take a deep breath and open it,
Satoru, My Love: I know we just spoke, but I wanted to tell you again that I love you. I’m so excited for the future with us and our new journey as parents. Thank you for making me a daddy, and not just a ‘daddy.’ Love you and I’ll see you when I get home.
Sappy fucker. For all the antics that people complain about, one thing is true. Satoru has never, not once, failed to make you feel loved. And truly loved, not just in private loved but keep a distance in public. Even though you’ve been together for years, it’s like he still can’t believe he has you and he always shows it. He’s incredible. Even though he’s less than thirty minutes away, it feels like it’s taking ages for him to get home. You decide to just lay down and relax so that you can help him cook when he gets home, regardless of what he says.
♡♥︎♡
When you wake from your nap, you feel as though you slept all day, cementing the reasons you hate going back to bed or taking a nap in the middle of said day.
You reach for your phone to check the time and see that you slept for three fucking hours. You look to your right and see Satoru’s side of the bed empty, the bathroom and closet lights off, so he must be in the living room giving you your space.
You get up, go to the bathroom, put on pants, and stroll into the living room to look for him. However, once you get there, you see that everything is off and he’s nowhere to be seen.
Weird.
You walk over to the kitchen to look for him here, nothing. Balcony? Nothing. What the fuck?
You go back to your bedroom to get your phone and see if you have any missed calls or texts from him, nothing. If he was going out with someone, he surely would have told you. But there’s nothing, well nothing from him. You start checking your messages to see if any of your friends mentioned him stopping by, but there nothing for that either.
You’re already starting to panic. Due to your obsessive nature of watching true crime docuseries and YouTube videos, you immediately start thinking the worst. But, you’re going to call and text friends first and see if plans changed and you just weren’t informed.
First call, Suguru.
You bring up his contact and hit the call button, probably with a little too much force. After about four rings, you hear him pick up.
“Hello?”
“Suguru.” Shit, your voice is already sounding shaky.
“Is everything okay?” You feel like you already worried him, whoops.
“Ha-have you heard from Satoru?”
“Not since this morning, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know. He was just going to the grocery store and coming right back home. I feel asleep right before he was on his way and I woke up a few hours later and he’s not here. I was wondering if he was with you.”
“No, he’s not here. I haven’t even heard from him since he sent out that invite.” Fuck. “But don’t freak out yet.” Too late. “I’ll call around and see if anyone else has heard from him. He may have just taken a detour.”
“A detour from a store fifteen minutes away?”
“Fair point. Just keep your phone on you, I’ll make some calls. Try not to stress too much, we don’t even know what’s going on yet.”
“Okay, I’ll keep my phone on. But I’m absolutely going to go panic.” He chuckles a little bit you can’t blame him. You say your goodbyes and decide to sit in bed and wait by the phone.
You get a notification on your phone and see that it’s Nanami. All it says is, “I’m coming over.”
Shit. Suguru must have told him what’s going on and if he’s showing up instead of calling, it must be something serious. Before you know it, you’re crying and can’t stop it. You know they always say that things happen when you least expect it. But, what the absolute fuck universe?
About ten minutes later, you hear a knock on your door. Nanami must have already been on his way by the time he messaged you. You brace yourself before heading over to answer it.
When you open the door, you can see it in Nanami’s eyes, pure concern. It’s the afternoon and you’re just crying in your pajamas, this sucks.
“Hey. Suguru told me what’s going on.”
You spent a moment just looking at him, trying to figureout out what to say.
“Just tell me, Nanami.” Now he looks confused.
“Tell you what?”
“Suguru told you what was going on and you, being the most level headed in the group showed up. Let me guess, it’s bad news and you’re here to deliver it, right?”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I have nothing to report. I just came by so you didn’t have to be alone while all these calls are made. And I thought I could check his computer, your tracking app, whatever the hell kids are calling it these days, that’s all.”
In a way, you’re relieved. You hate being in the dark, but at least there’s someone to sit with you.
About an hour after Nanami arrived, Suguru showed up. But there’s still no news on your husband. Suguru decided to call hospitals and jails, but nothing came from that. Nanami checked Satorus phone and he can only view its last location, the grocery store. It appears as though his phone has been turned off because it keeps going straight to voicemail.
You’ve been trying to remain calm all day, but you’re entering full blown panic mode.
“We should call the police. Something’s not right,” you hear Nanami say and you immediately burst into tears.
“Fuck, you’re right,” you barely manage to get out through the tears.
“I’ll make the call.” Nanami excuses himself from the table and returns to the office to retrieve his phone.
Suguru tries to calm you down, but it’s too no avail. You’ve never experienced this much fear in your life and it’s overwhelming you. Nanami walks back over to the table and that’s when you hear it,
“I need to report a missing person.”