Written for a tumblr prompt + pairing meme. The prompt was 'I've seen the way you look at me when you think I don't notice'.
Dinner and Other Such Hazards
by hashtagartistlife
There are tears in Inoue Orihime's eyes when she turns to face Uryuu in the small flat that they share.
"It's okay, Uryuu-kun," she says in a trembling voice, "I'm fine, truly, you don't have to pretend—"
Like hell she's fine, Uryuu thinks, she's not fine at all, but she's doing that thing of hers where she scrunches up her face into a semblance of a smile and it only serves to make her look more heartbreaking since, you know, she's doing it through a veil of tears. Uryuu's cursing himself internally. He doesn't even remember the last time he screwed up this badly.
"Orihime, listen—I didn't mean it, I swear—"
"No, no, Uryuu-kun, I'm not—sniff—not upset—I just—"
"Orihime, please, listen to me—"
"I know—sniff—that I haven't been the most—the most interesting lately—sniff—and you seemed so busy and tired at work and I just thought—sniff—that maybe something a little different—sniff—might cheer you up a bit—"
"It did, it did, Orihime, you have no idea how much I appreciated it—"
"Don't—don't lie to me, Uryuu-kun!" Orihime all but screams, the loudest sound he's ever heard from his wife in their five years of courtship, and Uryuu flinches. "I—I've seen the way you look at me when you think I don't notice, but I do notice, I do, and—and— you don't have to lie to me anymore, Uryuu, you just don't!"
Her voice rings for a few seconds in their tiny kitchen, and Uryuu stands there in helpless shock. Part of him is glad at the fact that she's finally dropped the –kun from his name, but another part of him is warning him that he's wildly out of his depth here and likely going to be kicked out on his ass. Being a doctor hasn't prepared him for this. Hell, being a goddamn gynaecologist wouldn't have prepared him for this.
Orihime rubs soothing circles on her pregnant belly with her hands and looks at him tearfully.
"… You don't really like my cooking at all, do you, Uryuu-kun?"
"No!" he hastens to answer, "No, of course not, that's not the case at all! Your cooking is—really—really creative! It's just what I need after a long day at the hospital, you know what the food there's like, all really bland and unimaginative—"
Orihime allows herself to be mollified as Uryuu continues to heap similar praise on her cooking, subtly binning the unholy combination of spinach, cereal, mayonnaise and liver that she had called dinner that day. He continues until he's run out of synonyms for daring and novel and inspired, and then makes some more up until she's satisfied. She goes to sleep with a small, happy smile on her face, and safe in the dark of their bedroom, Uryuu wipes his brow in relief.
He'll go to bed hungry today, again. He'll have to buy breakfast and lunch at the hospital cafeteria tomorrow, too. He's likely got another five months of this left to go—pregnancy, while suiting Orihime beautifully, has had just one unexpected drawback in that it's taken her already borderline cooking straight into 'inedible' territory.
But, looking down at the rounded figure of his sleeping wife, Uryuu thinks he wouldn't possibly have it any other way.
