Hello everyone, here's my new story.

If Blade, my reviewer from Somebody to Die For is reading this then the answer is yes. I will be writing stories about all of the minor characters.

Not much else to say, this is a Fujishima x fem!Eric story set in the same universe as Don't wanna be your enemy and Somebody to die for but you don't have to read those first to understand this.

That's all folks, I own nothing. Please enjoy.

Chapter 1: Unable to say

Erica Solt hung back as she watched through jealous blue eyes as Kouske Fujishima showed two giggling young women to a seat by the bar. The women were mostly here for Kamamoto since it was mid-spring but that didn't stop jealousy from coursing through Erica when she saw the appreciative looks thrown Kouske's way when the girls realized that the other males in the bar were not too bad themselves.

Chitose was plainly not interested, he sat at the bar holding the hand of a three-and-a-half months pregnant Masaomi and as far as he was concerned, she was the only woman in the room.

Shouhei had only ever had eyes for San-chan, whether she noticed or not (and Shouhei and San-chan weren't even here anyway, they'd stopped coming around very often as had Masaomi and Chitose who had just picked today to pop by), and Izumo was polite and friendly, but that was all.

So the eyes not glued to Kamamoto fell on Kouske and Erica was almost growling as she watched from her corner, leaning against the wall.

Normally she wouldn't be like this, Erica was a lot of things and yes, some of them were not too nice, but jealous? Hardly.

So she liked Kouske, if someone else did too that was no reason to hate them, and if he liked another girl back then that was good for them. It would make Erica sad but it was no reason to get angry.

No, it was something else that had her so agitated -though this certainly wasn't helping!- Kouske's forgetfulness was what was bothering her.

The other girls on top of that, well, that was just icing on top of a cake.

At the thought of cake Erica's stomach lurched and she felt nauseous.

Towards the beginning of the month Izumo Kusanagi had celebrated his 27th birthday. And Erica and Yata, as pretty much the only people who still hung around HOMRA (Erica because she had nowhere else to go and Yata because she refused to go anywhere else) had celebrated with him.

Yata hadn't been old enough to drink and there was no way Mr. Kusanagi would let her drink underage so the idea of celebrating in a bar was kind of wasted on Yata. But Erica had turned twenty last month and she'd had a few drinks.

Neither of them had wanted Kusanagi to be alone on his birthday, it didn't matter how they celebrated, or even if they just sat around talking, which was mostly what they did.

And when Erica met up with Kouske later that night she'd had a few more drinks too. So had he.

Problem? A few, plus a few equaled a lot.

And, Erica sighed, how cliché, after losing a few boundaries she and Kouske ended up sleeping together.

That was twenty days ago, five days ago some stupid know-it-all test had confirmed for Erica what she already knew.

She was pregnant.

And that's why you should never get drunk kids. Drinking? Fine. Getting drunk? Not fine!

Erica banged the back of her head against the wall, cursing softly in English. Masaomi glanced at her over Chitose's shoulder but when Erica didn't acknowledge her look she turned her attention back to her boyfriend.

The next morning Erica, hung over and highly embarrassed by her loss in control the previous night, grabbed her clothes and bolted from Kouske's apartment. She spent the rest of the morning banging her head against a tree in a park and cursing her own idiocy as well as a flock of birds who kept getting under her feet.

Unprotected sex was bad enough and the first thing Erica did (after cussing herself out at the park) was go and get herself checked for STDs. Thankfully nothing.

Then she had tried bringing up last night with Kouske himself, mumbling while staring at the ground her hands shoved in her pockets.

And the bastard had the nerve to rub the back of his head with his hand, an ashamed blush on his face and tell her that he had drunk so much he didn't remember much of last night and hoped she had gotten home alright.

Erica had shoved him into a nearby fence and stormed off, muttering darkly to herself.

Even now, just thinking about it, tears pricked her pale eyes, well that night obviously hadn't meant as much to Kouske as it had to her.

So Erica naively thought that was the worst of it. That, as stupid and as bad as that was, it wouldn't get any worse.

She should have known better by now.

So yeah, Erica was screwed. Literally. It was bad enough that she had absolutely no experience with babies (and the only person she knew who did was only a few months ahead of her and didn't like her) but she had no job, no home of her own, no biological family and her only support system had disbanded after the death of their King.

Should she tell Kouske? Erica huffed out a breath, even if he didn't like Erica the way she liked him this was Kouske Fujishima they were talking about, he'd want to have a hand in his own son's life.

It was a son. Erica knew that.

Logically she knew there was no way she could just tell what the gender of the baby was but she was this child's mother. It was a boy, she was sure of it.

But either way! She knew Kouske would want to be part of his child's life and to be with her through this experience.

Heck, even if it wasn't his baby and he had nothing to do with it, Kouske would never abandon her when she needed help.

Huh, that wasn't actually a terrible idea. Even if he found out she was pregnant he didn't have to know he was the father just yet. Normally he'd be able to connect the dots, they'd slept together, Erica didn't exactly have an active sex life, and now she was pregnant. But it wasn't her fault he couldn't remember. Served him right!

She'd had just as much to drink as he had but she still remembered!

But she still didn't want to tell him, she didn't want to tell anyone. She wasn't over the news yet, she certainly wasn't ready to share it with others.

But, Erica sighed, she really needed help.

Because the person she was living with was Kouske! She didn't have a house of her own, for most of her life she hadn't even been treated like a human being, Mr. Kusanagi and Miss... Miss Totsuka had been teaching her things and getting her used to the outside world but it was definitely still a work in progress.

And if she wanted to keep what was happening a secret from Kouske, at least for now, she was going to have to be living somewhere else.

Erica had lied and said she had a mild stomach bug which always made her feel sick when she first woke up to explain the occasional mid-morning vomiting and nausea but Kouske wasn't an idiot and was going to figure it out sooner or later.

She needed somewhere to stay that wasn't with Kouske until she managed to find a job and had enough money to find an apartment of her own. But that was hard enough for regular people. Erica wasn't a regular person. She was a woman, barely twenty, hadn't been trained, had any previous jobs or experience or finished high school. Or middle school for that matter. Or elementary school!

Erica scrubbed her hands across her face in frustration. Damn she needed a drink! And because she was pregnant she couldn't even drink!

This sucked.

If she asked him Mr. Kusanagi would probably give her a job, but out of everyone she knew he was probably the person who'd figure her out the quickest. Except for Anna. Erica was avoiding Anna. The young girl would probably have enough tact to keep her mouth shut, but why take the risk? And Mr. Kusanagi had been talking about going to Germany in June or July so he wouldn't be here for much longer anyway.

And to be honest Erica didn't really want to be around the other members of HOMRA and she could tell that most of them felt the same. Everyone but the inner circle of HOMRA no longer visited the bar. And even their highest members, her closest friends were drifting away.

Masaomi and Chitose rarely visited now, with their King and Totsuka gone there was no one to keep them there apparently. Erica couldn't really hold that against them, they were together now and starting a family, if they wanted to walk away she couldn't really blame them.

It still hurt though.

Kamamoto and Yata still hung around a lot though Kamamoto mostly stuck around for Anna and the work he occasionally did at the bar.

Shouhei, who'd always been a well-adjusted young man with a steady job with computers had stopped showing up much too. San-chan, who'd been with HOMRA the longest, save the first three, still hung around a fair bit. But even she was showing up less and less nowadays.

Kouske, who'd also been around for a while, rarely showed up, and if he did it was only for a little while to help out when the bar was busy or he was looking for Erica.

The whole thing made her want to cry and break something at the same time.

Erica turned her face away from the bar in front of her and, when Kouske wasn't looking, she left.

Out on the street, where it was less hot and stuffy, Erica started to feel better; the unsettled feeling in her stomach went away-mostly.

It wasn't just her physical self that felt better, she started to feel more optimistic, she'd already started to look for jobs, she'd find something. And wasn't there some sort of government support she could get? Erica knew very little about that sort of thing but it was worth looking into.

For now she pulled out the cheap mobile phone Kouske had bought her and called San-chan.

"Can I stay with you for a while?" She asked San-chan, without saying hello, San-chan never bothered with greetings, they hadn't spoken in a while but Erica knew she would always be able to depend on the older woman, they would always be friends even if they could no longer be family.

"Sure." Said the black-haired woman curtly, "just don't slam the door coming and going. I hate that."

She hung up, Erica smiled, she couldn't help it, that was one of the things she liked the most about San-chan, she didn't ask questions.

Erica snuck back to Kouske's apartment, his apartment, she told herself sternly, to get her some of her clothes, toothbrush, etc. Lately she had come to think of it as their apartment but the cold hard fact of the matter was that it was his apartment and not hers.

Erica wasn't sure why she was sneaking, Kouske was still at HOMRA with the others. And those other girls, she rolled her eyes.

When she dumped her stuff in the spare room at San-chan's rather spacious apartment (and what did she do for a living exactly?) Erica was overcome with panic.

What the hell am I doing? She wondered, I can't take care of a baby! I can't take care of myself! What makes me think I can do this? She asked herself.

"You okay?" Erica became aware San-chan had come to lean against the doorframe and was watching her from the doorway. "You just went white all of a sudden."

Erica shoved her hands into the pocket of her hoodie as she often did when she was stressed or embarrassed or hiding something, or all three.

"I'm fine," she muttered.

San-chan studied her for a minute but, as Erica had noticed earlier, she didn't ask any questions, "if you say so."

Because she was just hanging around the house today and it was relatively warm San-chan didn't have her usual, shirt-vest-hoodie-hat combination on. She still wore her huge shades, apparently her eyes were very light-sensitive, or maybe she just thought they made her look cool but she was wearing just a simple black shirt and grey sweatpants.

Her long black hair wasn't pulled back into a bun as usual; instead it cascaded around her body, all the way down to the middle of her back in silky, rippling waves that lots of women would cheerfully kill for, the frayed red ribbon she usually used to tie it up was in a bow around her slender wrist. She wasn't wearing any makeup but her skin was flawless as usual and her full lips were still a perfect shade of blood red.

Looking at her Eric felt an unexpected pang of sorrow; San-chan was easily the most beautiful woman Erica knew (except for the Blue King who probably wasn't even human), what was she doing sitting around in her house all day alone except for Erica?

"You need to get out more," she told the other woman.

San-chan huffed, more amused than perplexed by the subject change, "you're one to talk, if it were up to you you'd never leave that apartment. You only get out because Kouske makes you."

The fact that once upon a time Erica would have gotten out of the house on her own to go to HOMRA but didn't do that as much anymore went unsaid between them but they both knew the words were there.

Erica almost smiled, "Kouske didn't make me leave now, I did this on my own." It occurred to her that this may be San-chan's way of very subtly trying to find out why Erica was staying with her but San-chan didn't press.

When she didn't answer Erica put the last of her stuff away and chucked her small backpack under the bed.

"Thanks for letting me stay," she murmured, "I'm going for a walk. I won't slam the door."

When she walked to the doorway San-chan switched spots with her and went to sit on the bed, "fine. I'm staying here. I'm just going to relax today. Though if you want me to go with you as support while you tell Kouske you're pregnant, we can do that too."

What?!

Erica whirled around, "how do you know?!" She demanded.

San-chan smirked one of her signature smirks that always made anyone who saw them want to punch her, "you told me. Just then."

"I started suspecting you," she continued when Erica spluttered, "a few minutes ago. Since you're doing the exact same things Masaomi was doing four months ago."

She ticked them off on her fingers, "getting nauseous and vomiting, avoiding the guy you're in love with inexplicably, panicking randomly and insisting nothing's wrong and lastly, hiding out in my house so your man won't have to find out." Well damn, when had San-chan become a psychoanalyst? And damn Masaomi for being San-chan's best friend and allowing her to witness all this the first time around.

"Don't tell him," was all Erica could think to say.

San-chan flopped back onto the bed, "as if! That's up to you. But if you need me, I'm here."

"Thanks," said Erica quietly, not good with feelings but touched by the unexpected words.

Erica left for her walk without saying anything else, she really didn't know what to say, she was still getting used to the whole being-able-to-depend-on-other-people-thing and San-chan wasn't particularly good with feelings either and was probably equally exhausted by the strain that came with being sentimental and nice.

Erica did realize that if San-chan, who wasn't exactly known for her great detective skills, figured her out so quickly she was probably out of luck when it came to hiding it from everyone else. So it looked like avoiding anyone and everyone she knew was the plan now.

"I'm sorry!" Erica heard a child's voice, it sounded like a young boy's, whimper.

She turned the corner into a dimly lit ally as a man's voice growled, "you will be!" Further down the alley

Erica saw a small child of eight or nine curled up in a foetal position as a burly man aimed a kick at his head.

The scene looked so much like one from her childhood that for a second Erica saw red, she was striding down the alley yelling 'hey!' before her mind caught up with her body and her mouth.

Shit! She couldn't keep acting impulsively anymore! She wasn't just looking out for herself now, she had her baby to worry about too!

Erica wasn't sure how to handle a baby but she certainly wasn't getting rid of it either, for women who wanted to have abortions or put their child up for adoption that was fine, that was their own choice, but already Erica felt an overwhelming love for her unborn child, she would never get rid of him. So naturally she would never allow him to be harmed, either.

But it was only one guy, and he was just a random thug.

"Mind your own business lady!" The man snarled and Erica could tell he had been drinking, the stench was strong enough that she could smell it a meter away.

Erica glanced at the boy, he was covered in bruises and wounds. Some of them were recent and some of them were old, this had been going on for a while.

"Tell me he's not your son," she said, keeping her voice mild.

The man spat at her feet, "of course not! Just some useless brat our gang took in after his useless parents died."

The words pierced Erica's chest like a knife, this wasn't like a scene from her childhood, this was a scene from her childhood.

She couldn't just leave him here.

Done! Let me know what you think guys!