A/N: Because Darien's a Leo. Also because he's such a little kid underneath all that gruff sophistication. Also because I needed to give you guys a slightly happy breather between the last vignette and the one coming up. Not to mention STC…

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

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He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Explain one thing to me, Odango."

Serena, propped up on her elbow next to the tiny baby on the bed, made a humming sound of acknowledgement but didn't look up from Rini's sleeping face, which she was tracing with adoring fingertips.

From where he stood at the foot of the bed, a few feet away from the empty bassinet, Darien sighed. "Why did we spend six hours at four different furniture stores to find the perfect bassinet if we're not going to use it?"

Serena was still humming softly, now brushing her fingertips over Rini's soft hair. It had been a week since they brought her home from the hospital, and Serena still seemed as entranced by her as she had the first time she held her in the hospital bed. For Darien, however, a little of the shine of a new baby had worn off. He had discovered that having Rini meant having to share his wife…and his bed. He wasn't sure which one bothered him more.

Carefully, so as not to wake the baby, he sank onto the bed next to Serena's bare feet. "Serena."

Her soft blue eyes glanced up at him, and she extended her leg to nudge him with her toes. The sight of her ankles, which had been so recently swollen and pink and were now back to being pale and slender, still filled him with amazement…and a few other things.

"Hold your horses, Dare-Bear," she said teasingly. "We'll use it, just not yet. Not yet," she said again in a soft baby voice, her eyes going back to Rini and her face lowering to nuzzle the baby's cheek with her nose. "How can you look at this pretty little face and think she's big enough to sleep on her own? She needs to stay with Mommy still, don't you, baby girl?"

Darien sighed. Serena must have stopped smothering Rini with love for long enough to hear it, for she looked up and nudged him with her foot again. "Come on, get in," she said, nodding her head over her shoulder to his side of the bed. "You've got to be up early tomorrow."

He looked at his side of the bed. Though he didn't realize it, there was a pout beginning to stiffen his lips as he looked at the veritable barricade of pillows that Serena had constructed to separate his side from hers. So that he wouldn't roll over in the night and accidentally squish Rini, she'd said.

"You're far more likely to do that than I am," he had pointed out, thinking of how Serena could start out the night with her feet at the bottom of the bed and head safely on the pillow and wake up the next morning with her head on the floor and her feet on her pillow. "Shouldn't we barricade you off?"

She had bristled at this idea. "I wouldn't squish my own daughter! We females sense our children's presence. It's mother's intuition!"

He had laughed at the time, but now he just eyed the pillows dolefully. The pillows kept him away from Rini, it was true, but more importantly, they kept him Serena. "Couldn't we…?" he began, then saw that Serena was absentmindedly fluffing the barricade pillows with one hand as he spoke. His lip jutted out further. "Never mind. I'm just going to go watch the news in the living room for a bit." He leaned forward to give her knee a dutiful pat, facing away because he didn't quite want to look at her, he felt…unhappy with her…

A palm pressed flat against his stomach.

He went still, his hand freezing on her knee, looking down at the small hand splayed across the thin white fabric of his t-shirt.

"Darien," came her soft voice from behind him, and there was a note of mischief in it that matched the way her fingertips wiggled tauntingly against his abdominal muscles, "are you…pouting?"

Darien sat up straight. The friction the movement created between her hand and his body was painfully delicious. "What? No." He turned to look at her. The motion created more friction, making him tense and tighten, wetting his lips.

She pushed herself up on one elbow, a mischievous smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "You are."

One side of her nightgown had slipped down one shoulder. Still acutely aware of her warm hand against his stomach, he followed the line of her clavicle with his eyes – then forced himself to look away, feeling simultaneous satisfaction with himself (he still had his younger self's ridiculously iron self-discipline) and aggrievement (he shouldn't have to discipline himself, dammit! She was his wife!). "I'll be in the living room–"

"Oh no you don't." Her hand bunched in his shirt and stopped him as he began to get up. Pulled off balance, he sat abruptly back down on the bed. "Get over here, you."

He wasn't sure how she did it, considering she had been lying down, but suddenly she was sitting up and pulling him into a kiss, down into her mouth. His opened immediately, slanting, and he shifted, twisting around to face her fully without breaking the kiss, leaning forward, forward, until his hand was planted next to her waist and she was easing slowly back onto her back among the pillows, and he was following her, not letting even a molecule of air into the space between them, much less a pillow.

It was some time later that she broke away, her eyes dark and clouded, and against his jaw she murmured, "Okay. We'll put her in the bassinet."

Triumph broke across Darien's face like a beam of light across dark water, and he turned his head just enough that Serena could keep breathing her soft, warm little air-kisses against his neck as he lifted the hand that wasn't entwined in her hair to motion at Rini. A cushion of air lifted the sleeping infant from the mattress and floated her safely into the frilly bassinet next to the bed. Once she was safely in the contraption (and out of his way with Serena) he was able to admit that she was, after all, a rather wonderful baby, certainly wonderful enough to merit all of Serena's fascination, but in the end, he thought happily as Serena's lips touched his ear, Serena was still his…As he had this thought, he could not help looking smugly back at the bassinet and –

"Darien." Serena pulled away abruptly. "Are you sticking your tongue out at Rini?"

Darien went still, flushing guiltily. "No."

Serena raised an eyebrow at him but only said, "Good." She pulled his head back down to hers. "Because you're supposed to use it on me."

THE END