A/N: Hello… Um… I'm very nervous about this fic… so… please… enjoy? I'd like to thank the lovely Xx The Grey Lady xX for being my beta and holding my hand through writing in this unfamiliar genre…

Disclaimer: I don't own Prince of Tennis, to my disgruntlement…

Pairings: InuiKaidoh, InuiOC, OishiKikumaru, TezukaFuji, TezukaOC, MomoshiroEchizen

Warnings: I dun want to give it away… : / Character death (noncanon character) in this part, that's it.

—

"You don't love me."

Inui frowned. He couldn't see her, but his wife's voice was resigned. He could tell she was smiling sadly.

She smoothed the pads of her fingers over his eyebrow, making it relax.

"Aiko…"

"Shh…" She exhaled. Her breath hit his chest, head tilted down. There was a faint bark of laughter in her words. "You don't have to say anything. I know you don't love me. And…" She shrugged. "I'm okay with that."

There. That was more like Aiko.

"I knew from the beginning that you weren't in love with me, Sadaharu. I thought you would come to, though. Because I loved you. I still do."

He could hear the confusion trickle into her tone.

"But… There's always been someone else you've been hung up on. Knowing you, you probably don't even know who it is."

He could tell she was a little offended by that. "Aiko—"

She put a finger to his lips. "You don't have to explain. Look, I'll get the divorce papers at work tomorrow and we'll go from there."

"Aiko, I don't see why we need to be so rash," Inui brought his hand up to push the locks of hair he knew had fallen across her face behind her ear. Aiko blocked the hand with hers. He frowned again. "What about Naoki?"

"Haru, I won't stay married to a man that doesn't love me."

"And Naoki?"

"If we stay like this, we might start to hate each other. I would rather separate now and not put him through a messy divorce later when he'll actually remember it…"

There was a long pause.

"Sadaharu…"

"Hm?"

"Would you hold me?"

Inui pulled the woman firmly to his chest without another word, tangling their legs together and curling an arm around her waist. He stroked her hair comfortingly.

"Aiko, even if I don't love you… I still… care about you… very much." He kissed the top of her head.

Inui woke up to the smell of coffee and the sound of muffled whining. He got up and padded down the hall to his son's room. As he picked up the stirring child he noticed the shower was on in the next room. It amazed him how much his hearing had tuned in to his child since Naoki had been born.

A garbled syllable brought his attention back to the crib. Dark eyes shined up at the man.

"Come on. Let's get your diaper changed." Inui lifted Naoki out of his crib and set him atop the changing table. He unsnapped the onesie and removed the soiled diaper, replacing it with a new one. The onesie was snapped back into place, and he balanced the baby on his hip as he walked back down the hall to the kitchen.

Naoki's bottle, made the night before and taken out of the fridge, was put in the microwave while Inui poured a cup of coffee. As he got Naoki situated with his bottle, Inui was quite thankful the boy was almost a year old and could hold it on his own now; having to feed him was yet another thing to do before they all left the house.

Inui picked up the coffee mug and started down the hall. Aiko, who had finished doing her hair and makeup and was standing outside the bathroom door in her robe, held her hand out to take her son and raised her voice an octave.

"How's my baby boy? Did he sleep well?" Inui pressed the cup of coffee into her other hand and went into the bathroom.

Naoki continued to suck down his bottle as he sat on his parent's bed. His mother's now half empty coffee mug sat on the dresser a short distance across the room. Aiko finished buttoning her top and smoothed her skirt before picking the baby up again. The next spot the ten month-old was deposited was his high chair, where a handful of dry cereal was placed in front of him.

Aiko placed her empty coffee cup in the sink and put another next to the pot before she snagged her son's day bag to make sure she didn't need to replace anything she didn't already know about. A new snack, bottles, and diapers were tucked into their places, as well as a fresh onesie and socks. Naoki babbled from his chair loudly, and she smiled. Inui fluffed his son's hair as he passed them on their way to get the baby dressed for the day, on his way back to his bedroom.

They met at the front door, Aiko toting their fully dressed son and Inui gulping the last of his morning dose of caffeine so he could take the baby while she put on her coat. Naoki was passed from his dad to his mom after Aiko had donned her coat and purse. Inui took the keys off the table and opened the door for her, straightening the strap to Naoki's diaper bag with the hand that wasn't holding the keys and his wife's briefcase.

She put Naoki in his car seat, and Inui put the bags in on the other side. They crossed paths for the last time that morning in front of the car, each going to their respective sides. Inui started the car.

Inui glanced at his wife as they pulled out of their apartment complex's parking lot. She was rifling through her purse looking for something. Her bottom lip stuck out in an irritated pout. Inui smiled at that.

His wife wasn't the most beautiful or the best housewife, but she was sensible and practical and hardworking. As her brow furrowed in anger, he added stubborn to that list. She kept her dark hair short and manageable, so that curious little fingers wouldn't be too interested in pulling it, but long enough that a few pieces usually fell into her dark eyes. She was slim, without much in the way of either breasts or hips, and quite small compared to his long gangly frame.

Neither of them were big on talking, but both loved facts and figuring things out. For Aiko this meant occasionally tearing into a witness in the courtroom; for Inui it was telling some pompous CEO of this or that big drug company why their product wouldn't work and how they could fix it with a sadistic grin. They both knew each other inside and out. They were comfortable with each other.

And that, Inui supposed, was the problem.

He took a hand off the steering wheel to push his glasses back into place and put a bit of pressure on the gas pedal as the light changed colors.

—

This time, when Inui woke up, it was to a nasty throbbing in his head, rather than the scent of the coffee Aiko had started before she got in the shower and the sounds of his son playing quietly in his crib.

He blinked, bringing a hand up to rub at his eyes. Why was it so blurry?

"Sir, please don't move. We have to finish this x-ray!" A young woman in scrubs came out of what Inui was realizing was the booth from which x-rays were taken.

"What happened?" Inui asked her.

"You were in a car crash, Inui-san. Do you not remember?"

Inui swallowed and shook his head, quickly bringing his hands up to steady his head, and thus the spinning room, seconds after.

"Inui-san, please stay still. This is the last x-ray we need to take, and then we'll take you back to your room."

"Where is my wife? And my son?" His mind was running a mile a minute as he tried to get a grasp on the situation.

"I'm not sure, sir. Would you like for me to go find out?"

Inui nodded, slowly. He realized that even if he told them he wasn't hurt that they would still make him get the x-ray. They were just doing their jobs…

The x-rays were finished and he was taken back to the small curtained-off ER "room."

Inui laid in his bed for ten minutes before a different nurse came in and said that aside from some bruising and a slight concussion he would be fine.

"My wife, and my son… Could I see them?"

"I'm not sure where your wife is, but the little boy who came in with you seemed to be okay. He was conscious. They took him to the children's wing. I could escort you up if you'd like. You're the last patient I needed to check on before my break." She initialed a box on the clip board attached to Inui's bed.

"Thank you," he paused to look at her ID tag, "Seisha-san."

She helped him up, making sure he didn't get tangled into the IV lines, and led him down the hall to the elevator. They went up two floors and down three different halls before they nearly passed a room with a viewing window where almost twenty young children played in a room with several nurses.

Inui grabbed his nurse's arm. "Naoki is in there." He tapped the glass. The tap made his son, who was being rocked back and forth by a nurse, look up and change from sad and droopy to happy almost instantly. The nurse glanced at the little boy in his arms and turned to see what he was looking at, making the baby squirm in his arms.

Inui could hear the little boy squeal "Dada!" through the glass. It made him smile.

"Inui-san, the door is over here." Inui looked to his right to see his nurse opening a door for him to enter.

Only when Inui had his son safely in his arms did he pay the nurse that had been with the baby any mind at all.

"Kaidoh?"

"Inui-sempai? I didn't think…" He gestured at Naoki. "Didn't know…"

Inui had to smile at the social awkwardness that it seemed Kaidoh had never grown out of. "It's good to see you too, Kaidoh."

Kaidoh looked down, rubbing at the back of his neck.

"Kaidoh-kun, I'm sure Inui-san wants to know how his son is doing…" Seisha was peeking around the corner of the door. "I'm going to go on my break now, please take care of Inui-san."

He nodded and waited for the woman to leave before he said anything. "Inui Naoki is your son…" His eyes looked up to Inui's before they were glancing at a pair of little girls playing house to his left.

"Yeah… I'm sure his mother is looking for him. I'm not sure where she is right now…" Inui petted Naoki's hair and kissed his forehead, only just catching the surprised look that crossed Kaidoh's face as he finished what he was saying.

—

Inui laid stretched out across the couch, Naoki laying on his chest with a bottle. The baby had been quiet since they left the hospital, having sensed his father's mood .

"Inui-sempai, it said on Naoki's papers that his mo—your wife was killed in the crash… She was declared dead at the scene…"

He took his glasses off and folded the arms back before hooking them to the collar of his shirt.

"Oh… You don't… We were on our way to file for divorce…"

Fingers found their way to the bridge of his nose, and he pinched, trying to hold back the flood of stress, grief, confusion that threatened to overwhelm him now that he was in the safety of their—his—apartment.

Kaidoh nodded awkwardly. "I-I'm sorry for your loss."

Naoki released the grip on his bottle, letting the empty cylinder fall off the couch to the floor.

"Kaidoh, I think I'd like to take Naoki home now…"

Inui absently reached down to right the bottle. His other hand stroked Naoki's back as the baby drifted off to sleep.

"Of course, Inui-sempai. I'll have the pediatrician discharge Naoki immediately."

Tears finally welled up in his eyes. "Aiko…"