By RegalOneByTheStream

Koe no Katachi made me cry so freaking hard. ADORABLE.

But I don't own it. Just saying. Disclaimers and stuff.

I also shipped Nishimiya and Ichida SO FUCKING HARD. IT WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN.

Anyways, enjoy!

XXXXXX

Ichida woke up feeling very much like a worn out rag doll.

As soon as he gained a sense of coherence he knew that he had drool down the right side of his face, that there were little crusts of rheum in the corners of his watery eyes and a glaze of oil over his cheeks, nose, and forehead, and that his normally spiky, wild hair was a tangle of knots on one side while the other was completely flat, sticking straight up as if he'd stuck a finger in an electrical socket. Not to mention that he had slept with his left hand under his cheek, so there would be a bright red mark somewhere on his face for the rest of the day, even if he did manage to tame his hair and get some sort of respectable cleanliness on his face. Moaning, he slammed a hand down on the alarm clock that had woken him and glanced over at his partner. Shouko was still asleep. He wasn't exactly surprised. She was deaf. He pressed his chapped lips to her temple softly, gently, before he kicked the covers off of himself and went to the bathroom, to relieve himself, to shower, and to get a semblance of consciousness before he started the day.

Clothed only in boxers and a towel after completing his initial tasks, he fisted his cold toes in the rug in front of the sink in their bathroom and splashed some water onto his mess of a complexion. Wiping the film off of his eyes, Ichida blinked clarity into his face, then picked up his shaving supplies and got to work. As he scraped his stubble away, he surveyed the damages sleep had done, as it did every morning. It wasn't as awful today as other days, a remarkably good thing considering how awful it could be. But he had been right about his hand: on the edge of his jaw, his wedding band had left a thick red indent. Scowling, he rubbed his wet hair, trying to shake some of the wetness out of it and to ignore the dull throb accompanying the mark now that he knew it was there.

"Soyah?"

His wife stumbled into the bathroom, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her face into his back. "Ish Sunday. No work." Ichida put down the shaver, his task complete, and toweled the remainders of shaving cream off of his face as he translated what she had said to regular speech. They had been working on getting her talking to sound like a regular person, although it was a work in progress, and she still had to revert to sign language and writing things down sometimes. But they had reached the point where she could say her 'V's like 'vuh' and not 'buh' and her 'O's like oh instead of eh or ah, and they were trying to get her stubborn 'sh' to go away. "There are no walk-ins on Sundays," he replied slowly, signing in the mirror for good measure even as she buried her face into his back, between his shoulder blades, which she supposedly liked because she said it let her know what he felt like when he spoke. "But two of the regulars have made appointments in advance today, since the weekdays weren't optional for them, and I have a luncheon at half-past noon."

"Mmm," she hummed, her breathing slowly evening out. "Soyah, bed, pweash."

"Yes, my princess," he said, smiling as she flung her arms over his shoulders. Grinning like a dope, he lifted her into his arms and walked her to their bed. Ichida placed her on the bed softly, sliding his hands out from under her when he finished and planning to go to the closet to put some clothes on, but it seemed that Shouko had a different plan as she latched onto his neck and breathed, "Goo'nighd kish?" He was happy to oblige. Pushing his mouth against hers in a quiet, chaste peck, Shouko took the reins as she pulled him down, letting him know exactly what she wanted. So he opened his mouth, pushing his chest to hers and kissing her, leaving them both breathless when she finally pulled back, gasping for air. "Goodnight," he murmured to her, her reddened face smiling at him as he turned away to get his pants and go to the bathroom.

Staring down his bare arms and torso in the mirror as he straightened out the blue button-down shirt that he was going to wear, Ishida grimaced at his own upper body. Sure, he knew he was toned. He knew he couldn't go to the beach anymore with Ueno in the vicinity because last time he had she had tried to lick his abs and then, after learning why he'd worked for them, almost beat Shouko half to death before they'd found them behind the snack bars and he had ROARED at her. He knew that every time Shouko looked at his bare body her eyes teared up at the huge scars on his ass and on his ribcage, and then she would poke at his muscles sulkily and refuse to communicate with him. He knew that she knew without him telling her why the muscles were so presided over; why they were there in the first place.

Next time New Year's came around, he would have the strength to pull them both up.

Ichida slid his arms into the sleeves and yanked the shirt onto his shoulders. Fiddling with the buttons for a minute or so, he managed to snap them shut. Then he wrapping the black apron on the hook around his waist and walked into their kitchen. They lived in the flat upstairs of their business, the best salon in town, so there were no stairs. It was a blessing, seeing as Shouko never really woke up until she got to the stove.

He and Shouko had agreed with much fussing that she would be the chef of their relationship. After nearly burning the kitchen down when he had assumed she couldn't cook and in consequence had tried his hand at it, it seemed like it was every morning that Ishida could only watch in astonishment as Shouko set up her phone with a flashing light and arranged all of the alarms and ingredients and preheated the oven and made a dinner that had his taste buds crying out with joy, ALL while being deaf. But she was upstairs now, enjoying a nice rest. And of all the things Ishida was bad at mixing up in the kitchen, he had a God-given affinity for coffee. Grinding the beans and adding milk and a touch of cinnamon, just the way she liked it, Ishida poured out two cups, taking just a mouthful of each to make sure it wasn't scalding before he presented it to his wife like a badge of honor. The scent was enough to get her stumbling blearily out of their room, calling, "Caffhee?" and she dropped into a chair at the table and smiled as Ishida set her cup in front of her. "Caffhee," she hummed, sipping it happily. "T'anks, Soyah. I luv chu."

His face reddened, but he played it off, stepping behind her to run his fingers through her hair, rubbing her scalp and pulling the strands into a braid. His fingers nudged her hearing aids, and a pang ran through his chest, just as it always did, when the simple act flashed him back to elementary school, where he tore her hearing aids out of her ears and made her bleed and hit and scratched and threw rocks and…

"Hey, let me see it!"

Ichida laughed as Ueno threw the piece of plastic to him, them shivered and screeched as if he had touched a slug. "EW! There's something on it!" He squawked, winding his arm up, "GROSS!" The hearing aid flew out the window, and Ichida fought the urge to hold up his hand like a professional golfer to watch it fly as his classmates giggled out "That's so mean!"s and laughed uproariously. He turned back to Nishimiya and, setting his sights on the other one, grabbed it and ripped it out of her ear.

Nishimiya gasped, then whimpered. The class went silent.

This time, there actually was something on it.

Ichida looked down at the bloody hearing aid and the disgusting ear pulp thing on it. Then he dropped it to the ground. The goodie-two-shoes girls flocked around her, offering condolences and shaking their heads with distaste, but even they had the gleam in their eyes that was an unmistakable enjoyment of Nishimiya's suffering. The less fake students sniggered in the background, both at Nishimiya and at Ichida as his own ear was snatched and he was dragged to the teacher's office.

"I know it's hard, but you have to try to understand Nishimiya," Sensei had told him.

"Well, I know how you feel, though…"

Scowling, Ishida leaned down and pressed his mouth to the corner of her cheekbone, just in front of her ear, and restrained himself from begging forgiveness. She had already told him that it was okay, that he'd made up for his sins. It didn't mean it hurt any less when he saw the little vertical scar on the flesh of her ear where the rip had been when he'd hurt her. Pulling back, he calmed his shaking hands by finishing off the braid with one of the billions of hair ties that wrapped around his wrist and the fingers on his right hand. His left was decorated with the watch Shouko had gifted him for their anniversary a few months ago, a nice leather one that she had no doubt saved up for for months, and a cat bracelet that she'd thought was 'absolutely the most adorable thing in the world' and that he 'just had to wear it'. Cats were kind of their thing, anyways. It was no wonder that the teenage boys whose hair he cut laughed and told him that Shouko had made him her bitch. He didn't care if he was a bitch, as long as he was hers to use as she saw fit. But there was no way he'd tell them that. He just made sure to grind his knuckles into their skulls good-naturedly as they yowled half-assed apologies amidst cries of pain. Upon which he would call them pussies, because really, he ground into Yuzu much harder and she didn't even have bruises. Then again, he often wondered whether or not Nishimiya Yuzuru was superhuman, so…

He washed his mug out in the sink as a newly wide-awake Shouko set to work in the kitchen, pulling out pots and pans with muted clangs for the sake of her husband's eardrums, and babbling to herself about the ingredients she would need. "Ekks, murk, sahsah, buddha," she sang, reaching low in the fridge as Ishida reached high over her, "Yogood, juze—ah! Soyah, glashesh, bols, and plaes!" Ishida turned away, leaving her to her ramblings as she finished her list and started to talk about her own instructions. "Cwack th' ekks, mm, juze en glashesh, pweash, Soyah! Ant put th' plaes ant bols here!" she gestured at the countertop, then whirled around to concoct some deliciousness. Smiling, he did as she asked, pouring the juice into the glasses and setting the two plates onto the designated area with the bowls on top of them.

Patting her shoulder to get her attention, he signed and spoke at the same time. "I'm going downstairs to set up shop," he told her, "So call me back up when you're done." Leaving her upstairs, Ichida walked down the staircase, a hallway kind with wooden rails sticking out from the walls and a door at the bottom separating the bottom from the top. Pictures, frames and unframed, littered the walls: countless photos of Shouko and him, most of which taken when they were completely unaware. Most of them were of little kisses here and there when they had just began dating and were still in a mushy phase. One section of them was when Shouko had decided it would be an ample punishment for practicing one of his most daring makeup procedures on her to bite his ear, so there were about ten consecutive pictures of Shouko looking up at the camera in shock, vibrant makeup penciled onto her face like a Russian doll, her lips pursed around the cartilage of his ear as he laughed. There were the cutesy ones where the photographer had zeroed in on their hands in multiple shots, the last two with the engagement ring and then one where he remembered them posing for Yuzu, Shouko's petite hands over his larger ones, their golden wedding bands gleaming in the flash of the camera (which was Yuzu's self-proclaimed "one true love" to the dismay of every boyfriend she had ever had). Then there were the ones in their third year of high school, with Nagatsuga Tomohiro, Kawai Miki, Sahara Miyoko, and Mashiba Satoshi, at graduation, during the movie, and at a get together later on.

Then, about halfway downstairs, there was the picture that had made Yuzu's name in the photography business boom and consecutively made Ichida and Shouko her two favorite models.

It was taken just before he'd proposed, when Shouko was leaving their small town to go back for the final part of her final year of beauty school, almost two years after they'd started dating. Shouko was snuggling into his arms like the train was going to eat her, crying into his neck like a scared child. He always turned red when he looked at the picture because the version of him there looked so stupid, standing there with his arms caging her, his face buried into her hair. Everyone else was blurred away, thanks to Yuzu's computer editing skills, leaving their embrace and the incoming train as the main attractions to the portrait. The picture was blown up onto a canvas and had been the most exquisitely framed of their collection, however, and there was a golden pin stabbed into one of the corners of the original photo. There was a fancy-looking certificate there, too, framed to the right of the picture, that explained how the photographer, Nishimiya Yuzuru, had won first place and a scholarship to an American school of cinematography, her utmost goal. That made three of his closest friends part of the entertainment industry: both Mashiba and Nagatsuga had made it big as actor and director, and Nagatsuga had even grown a thick mustache and goatee as promised.

The next section of things were random stuff that Yuzuru had thought was cool: a worn out old temple's prayer bells, a jumping frog, a stone water basin in the garden of the lady across the street. There were some of her coolest Death Pictures scattered around which Yuzuru had refused to throw out yet her mother had refused to let her keep, now that there was no need for them…now that Shouko had Shouya.

Reaching the main level, Ichida shut the door, absently stilling the bouncing sign on it labeled Employees Only that Shouko had made, and walked to the front desk. Glancing at his watch, which read seven forty-two, he groaned. The first of the two customers, an older woman who constantly nagged him about having children (probably because every time she did, he turned a vibrant tomato color), was going to arrive at ten o'clock. The next customer arrived right afterwards at eleven. And he had agreed with Nagatsuga that he would meet him and the head scriptwriter for his current production for lunch at twelve-thirty, possibly driving him there if things at the set ran late, and making arrangements for him to get started with the character designs with the writer.

Ichida turned on the computer at the desk and clicked open the planner log. He glared down at the entries for the next day. Yuzuru had taken the liberty of vandalizing his schedule the first chance she'd gotten, which meant that, from America, she had hacked into his work account and had put nicknames in front of all the people she knew. Nishimiya Kyouko was Boss and Mommy-in-Law. Shouko was 321The Best Thing that EVER Happened to you123. Sahara was $o$Fashionista-sempai$o$. Ueno was (ಠ益ಠ) THAT BITCH (ಠ益ಠ) . Ichida didn't really understand why there were symbols by every one of them, but all the same, it made him want to laugh in good humor and choke his sister-in-law to death at the same time. Not to mention the constant flow of messages asking if Shouko wanted to divorce him yet.

Sighing, he responded to a few emails, booking customer's appointments and setting aside time for he and Shouko to visit Nagatsuga's set to work with and advise the already hired makeup artists. He glanced at his wristwatch again. Despite his lingering in the stairway and the booking, it was eight o' four. What was Shouko doing?

As if the universe was waiting for him to ask, he immediately heard a clatter from above. "S-SOYAH!" His wife screamed, and his blood ran cold. "SOYAH!"

Ichida's mind blanked as his body went into autopilot, vaulting him back into the other room, across it, and up the stairs in a series of bounds as his mind chanted, "Robber, or maybe a giant spider, or maybe she found some sort of bruise that's actually an extremely deadly disease…"

He burst into the kitchen, finding the plates shattered on the floor and his wife across the room, retching into the sink. Ichida ran to her side, ignoring the glass that cut into his feet as he reached her, wrapping a hand firmly around her hair and tying it back despite the vomit already in it, and rubbing her back soothingly as her hands grasped for him, seeking comfort as her stomach rejected the coffee. It felt like years were passing, time unmarked as slowly but surely, the flow of puke thinned to phlegm as her stomach emptied and she dry-heaved. When her body wore itself out, Shouko sank against him, bawling. Ichida picked her up, carefully avoiding the glass and ceramic on the floor that had already cut into his feet, and walked her to their bathroom. He turned on the warm water, helped her out of her soiled clothes, and sat her down gently into the tub as it filled, taking a short break away to grab a bucket. "If you need to, puke in here," he told her, repeating gently, "In here, in here," to better clarify the message, since his hands were a bit preoccupied.

"Soyah, Soyah," she replied, teary-eyed, and then her hands rose and started signing furiously, so fast that even he couldn't make out the words. All he could see were "sick" and "scared" and "doctor" and "I'm sorry" and for some reason "test" which made no sense since he was pretty sure neither of them had taken a real test for a few years. So he grabbed her hands, kissing her knuckles, and then leaned up to plant one on her lips. She shied back from him, squeaking out a "I'b gross," and so he touched his mouth to her forehead and then leaned away, grabbing the shampoo, squirting a generous dallop into his hand, and then slapping it into her hair. She blinked at him in surprise, but let him administer to her, massaging patterns in her hair and cleansing it of her bile, wiping her face gently with a washcloth, and then scrubbing down the rest of her body. He left the room momentarily to grab a towel, coming back to his wife having an adorable owlish look on her face, and as he rubbed her hair dry she started explaining with her hands what had happened. "I had finished cleaning up breakfast preparations and was taking the dishes to the table, but I could feel myself throwing up so I dropped everything and ran to the sink and screamed for you. You saw mostly everything after that. Shouya? Can we go to the doctor after this? Please…"

He gave his assent, pulling her to her feet and wrapping the towel around her form as he took her to the closet. She grabbed a random pair of khaki capris and one of his green shirts, trying to put on the latter before its real owner realized that A: it was his, and B: she was trying to get away with going commando. Unfortunately, her mission failed, and with an impromptu game of tag that ended with a red-faced Ichida pinning his giggling, squirming wife down on the bed and forcing a bra onto her body before threatening to do the same with her underwear, a warning which quickly spurred her to do it herself. She threw up again as she put on her shoes, but this time Ichida was ready for it, handing her the bucket.

Ichida put sandals on, wincing as they rubbed against the shallow cuts on his feet, and led his already ready wife downstairs. As they walked to the doctor's office, which wasn't too far, thankfully, Ichida called his three appointments. "I'm sorry," he told each of them, "but my wife, Ichida Shouko, has been violently sick since this morning, and I'm afraid that I'm going to be busy all day taking her to the doctors and being with her. I apologize for the inconvenience and am turning my phone off now so that I can be with her now. Thank you for your understanding and have a good day.

He didn't wait for responses, slipping his deadened phone into his back pocket and glaring at anyone who dared to stare at Shouko as they walked, holding the bucket between them. When they finally turned into the doctor's office, the lady at the desk looked up, and then brightened. "Ah, Ichida-san!" she said to his wife, "Just on time! Dr. Minoschov has your results, has been bouncing off of the walls all day waiting to give them to you!" Ichida smiled, looking between them in bemusement. Shouko had been coming here? For how long? "The test results for what?" he asked, wrapping his arm around her waist once he was finished signing. Shouko leaned into him, tensing, and signed, "Pregnancy."

Everything stopped.

Ichida could feel himself numbly reacting, pulling back to arm's length and staring at his wife like she had grown another head. His lips shaped the word, "Pregnancy…"

And then he doubled over, gasping. "You're pregnant?" he asked, eyes wide, staring at Shouko's abdomen. She blushed under his scrutiny. "Oh God, you are!" he cried, blanching, "Oh, God, oh, damn, I think…I think I'm gonna need to sit down."

The receptionist jerked her pen at the hallway to her right. "There's an open room. Second door on the left. The doctor will see you soon," she instructed, and Shouko led him like a small child to the room. She sat on the paper, crinkling it, and started to fiddle with her hands, glancing at him through her lashes as they waited. Finally, her hands raised. "Are you mad?" she asked.

"No!" he cried almost instantly, forgetting that she couldn't hear him before starting again. "No," he repeated, the words signed this time, "Absolutely not...I'm terrified."

Her shoulders immediately released with a certain tension at his vehement denial, but then Shouko's cheeks blew out in testament to her exasperation and she had just raised her hands no doubt to scold him with some female guru philosophy when an extremely handsome man burst into the room, his arms raised in a V for victory, and started jabbering in some foreign language, signing out what he was saying. "Congratulations, darling!" the man said to her, drawing about seven exclamation points with his pinkie at the end of each phrase, "your results have come in, absolutely positive!" Turning, the strange guy finally noticed the other man in the room. His eyes widened, and he looked between Shouko and him with something like an epiphany flashing across his face, first at their relationship, and then at the redness in Shouko's cheeks and neck and the numbness in Ichida's movements. Realization struck him as his eyes flashed down at the thick golden band on Ichida's left ring finger, but he started talking to Ichida in broken Japanese anyways. "Extremely proud I am of Shouko-san," he said brightly, "She is strong, proud woman and she lucky to have such handsome caring husband. Deaf does not hold down." Ichida looked past him, where Shouko sat on the table. She had a smile on her face, but he knew she was bemused. She couldn't hear what they were saying, after all. "It's ok," he mouthed to her. Her smile in return was luminescent.

The man smiled and held out a hand. "Am doctor of Shouko-san. Am called Victor Minoschov. It a pleasure to meet you."

Ah. A Russian.

Dr. Minoschov grabbed a piece of stationery and wrote down a quick set of numbers. "Mail address, and below my cell number," he explained, "for any questions or even just chat. We gentlemen stick together!" With a blinding grin, Dr. Minoschov walked out with a quick goodbye and a signed, " I'll bring you official papers and signup for ultrasound!"

Shouko stared at him. Ichida stared at her. Then she stuck out her lower lip in a sulk. "He was hitting on you," she signed, mumbling something unintelligible under her breath. Ichida spluttered, gasping for something to combat her statement. But the doctor's prior actions only strengthened Shouko's argument, and the winky face next to the doctor's offered number didn't exactly help. Ichida cleared his throat and shook his head. He didn't care if the doctor was gay--his wife was pregnant! Shouko! And he was going to be a dad...an awful dad, no doubt. He'd shower the kid with love to make up for it…

Ichida blanched.

Nishimiya Yuzuru was going to murder him.

XXXXXX

Returning from the hospital had been pretty easy. Ichida had only had to fill out a few forms and set an appointment to fill out the remaining paperwork, courtesy of the clinic's policy to allow new parents time to celebrate and figure out what they wanted to do with the baby.

The next few days, however, were absolute hell. Ichida closed his schedule completely the next day as well to better take care of his poor wife, who had begun to shiver even though she was burning hot. They had been given meds that helped astronomically, but it wasn't quite enough to pull her farther than the stairs. And then there was the matter of telling Nishimiya Kyouko that he had impregnated her daughter. He would have felt safer if she had started screaming. The silence that followed his statement was more deafening than if she had started a screeching sermon, and the quiet, "What?" was more than enough to make him want to run for the hills. Nishimiya-san made no secret of how much she disliked him from his middle school years as the biggest asshole in Japan. But underneath her hatred, he knew she was grateful to him for saving her daughter in high school and had agreed to their marriage under the condition that she be completely in control of the groom's outfit. His mom had been ecstatic and together the two women had had a blast fitting him in suits that were all colors of the rainbow and styling his hair like some sort of Donald Trump style toupee. This time, she had demanded that the baby, if it were a daughter, to have the oldest girl's -ko in her name. Other than that, she said, they could have ten children for all she cared. Her tone of voice made it clear that if he indeed took her up on that and fathered ten children, she would use his own scissors to make sure he never had any children ever again.

Yuzu had hung up as soon as he'd told her, and the next minute he got a call from an anonymous American phone number, a girl that said she was Nishimiya-kun's roommate at the Cinematography School and who sent him a finely tailored version of the girl's rant and asked him if she could have the statement that had set her off and use it for her final project at the end of the year. The video began with pillow takedowns that would make any karate sensei proud, bleeped out expletives, subtitles, and an excellent view of the carnage that would be wrought upon him if Shouko felt anything but happiness whatsoever during her nine months of pregnancy, and then ended with her asking if they would use the -ru from her own name. Asking being a loose term for demanding. It at least left him with the decision of who he feared more, super sister or momzilla.

Shouko had called Sahara-chan and Kawai-san, which left him with the duty of calling Nagatsuga, Mashiba, and Ueno.

Oh God. Ueno was going to be pissed. Maybe skip her.

Raising his phone again, he speed dialed Nagatsuga. He could probably get both his best friend and Mashiba down in one hit, since they were in on at least one project together. And both he and Shouko could deal with Ueno when the time came. Definitely in an area with plenty of people, where there were many doors and no sharp objects. The phone rang once, twice. It took four rings for Japan's busiest director to pick up. "Moshi moshi! Yashou! How are you, man? Your woman okay? Nishimiya-chan is okay, right? Actually, it's Ichida-chan now, isn't it? She's okay? What happened? Tell me everything!"

Ichida swallowed hard. "She's pregnant, Tomo."

The other end went silent. "Tomo?"

"...but you're the father, right?"

"Yes, I'm the father!" Ichida shouted, and he could hear his friend laughing on the other end. "Nah, I already heard. Sahara sent a huge tweet out. The entire world knows. Mashiba says good luck. He already has two and apparently they're totally awesome besides the sleep deprivation stuff. And hey, what's this about Sahara knowing before me? She your new number two? Ahahaha, nah, I'm teasin' ya, Yashou! You got no worries, ya hear? Our squad has your back one hundred and ten percent! You just watch out for the viper, Ueno. She might try to do something to it."

Ichida whitened. "You think so?"

Tomohiro snorted. "Please. Did you see her at your wedding reception? That poor cake slice stood no chance to the wrath of the viper scorned--ouch, ouch, Mashiba, i'm just being honest--sorry, Yashou, I gotta run. My AD is giving me a nasty look--don't pretend you aren't, Sakada-kun--adios, amigo!"

Click.

Ichida rubbed his face as he flicked his phone shut and rubbed his face. It was about eight o'clock p.m. What the hell was he still doing down in the workplace and not upstairs, at home, with his delicious dinner and beautiful wife and their child?

Stalking towards the stairwell, he paused, staring up at the frames lining the walls of the stairway. Smiling, he made plans to clear out one side to make room.

Room for a child.

XXXXXX

GYAAAH! I love this manga!

This was actually written a long while ago by me. Like, a LONG time ago.

Okay. I'm done.

No I'm not. I reuploaded this because I was being a dunce and messed up Nishimiya with Nakamura. I SUCK AT NAMES. GOD, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? I APOLOGIZE. THANK YOU FOR POINTING IT OUT, REVIEWER. XOXOXO THANKS A BILLION.

There actually will probably not be a sequel, despite the story ending at the beginning of the pregnancy. Sorry to shoot down anyone's hopes, but don't hold your breath. There's about a 10% chance of it happening.

~ RegalOneByTheStream