A/N: As always, thanks for the reviews, favorites, and follows. I don't know when it happened, but this story is currently the most favorited of all my ongoing stories, and that's pretty cool. :D

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~Present Day~

I was never going to say anything for fear of getting hit - or worse: denied sex - but the Moyashi was beyond adorable stuck in that wheelchair. His pregnant belly filled his lap, making the bump even more prominent, and the frustrated frowns that graced his face were so much more genuine than his usual expressions. Seeing him like that, I just wanted to hold him and never let go.

On the other hand, Allen being stuck in a wheelchair meant that everyone else was even more obnoxious than usual, and I wasn't sure that that was an acceptable trade-off for how much more attractive he was. They were constantly in the way, claiming that they were helping, and while that was obnoxious in and of itself, it was made worse by how desperately I wanted to be alone with my Moyashi; we'd been on our own for nearly six months, and having to suddenly go back to sharing him was incredibly hard on me.

And Lenalee was the worst offender of them all.

While a good chunk of my annoyance with her came from how she had been acting towards Allen since she had learned about our relationship, most of what pissed me off about her behavior was actually something that she had been doing since I'd known her. Lenalee had the incredibly annoying ability to get everyone else excited about the things she was excited about. And today she had her sights set on finding out how Allen and I had gotten together.

That was a subject that everyone was already interested in, so even though Lenalee instigated it, the others took it and ran with it, pestering Allen with question after question while he tried to eat lunch. I desperately wished that they would talk about anything else, but at least they were leaving me out of it. Though that was a small comfort when I knew exactly how they were going to react to learning that Allen and I had fucked each other for months before we fell in love. They weren't going to care that he had consented to the sex, which meant that I would be accused of raping him. It was beyond ridiculous when, just a month earlier, they had all been ready to lynch Allen for being a whore.

But in a completely unexpected turn of events, the Moyashi evaded every single one of their questions. At first, I thought he was just being stubborn, unwilling to share personal details with people that he had grown to distrust, but then I caught the worried looks that he was surreptitiously sending my way. Allen wasn't just being wary, he was being protective. He knew exactly how uncomfortable I was with this subject and was trying to avoid it for my sake.

His attempts to blow off the subject were ignored, probably because no one believed his assertions that there was nothing to tell, and they eventually pushed him so hard that he snapped. "Look. What goes on between me and Kanda is private. It's no one's business but our own. So drop it before I get mad and sick him on you."

Following the outburst, he tossed his napkin on the table and stormed off.

Or at least, that's what I imagine he would have done if he weren't in a wheelchair.

Instead of an impactful end to his declaration, the Moyashi struggled awkwardly with his chair, having difficulty backing it up and turning it away from the table. It was definitely amusing, but I knew better than to laugh at my husband while he was pregnant and hormonal.

Lenalee jumped up and grabbed the handles of the wheelchair, but the Moyashi hissed angrily at her when she tried to help push him in the right direction. "Just let me leave!"

She clearly looked like she was going to argue with him, so I stepped in, pushing her hands away and giving him the room to escape like he wanted. I shot her a fierce glare as I followed after him, but that didn't stop her for long. Less than half an hour after we returned to our room, she showed up at the door.

Allen had calmed down by that point, so he gladly welcomed her in. Though I think he regretted that when she immediately started asking about our relationship again. Apparently, she thought that he was simply unwilling to share the story in public and would be more than willing to tell her now that there was no one else around.

I could see the Moyashi growing frustrated with Lenalee, and that was rather impressive, both that he was showing her how annoyed he was and that he was uncomfortable with this topic of conversation. I knew that he had been avoiding it earlier for my sake, because he knew that I didn't like to talk about the days in our relationship before I fell in love with him, but apparently, this was something that he personally didn't want to discuss. And I wondered why that was.

After only a few more prods from Lenalee, Allen snapped, exactly like I knew he would, but he didn't tell her off like he had done with the others earlier. Instead, he caved and told her exactly what she wanted to know. "He raped me, Lena. He pinned me to a wall and forced himself on me."

I knew Lenalee's silence was because she was trying to process what Allen had just said, but my own silence came from other reactions. I had been feeling guilty about our first time together for quite a while. Sometime after I realized that I had fallen for Allen, I had replayed that encounter in my mind, and viewing it in hindsight, I realized that I had done exactly what he had just accused me of doing. I had taken advantage of his confusion and inexperience and raped him. I was in a loving, committed relationship with a man I had raped. That realization hurt quite a bit, and I coped with it the only way I knew how, by avoiding the subject as much as I could. Fortunately, the Moyashi was oblivious and didn't notice that I was trying to hide something from him. Or at least, that was what I had thought. Discovering that Allen knew that I had raped him was terrifying.

But then I caught the way he was smiling at me. It wasn't evil or smug; it was apologetic and full of love. Allen knew what I had done to him, but he still loved me. He mouthed the word "sorry" at me, but that was all he got out before Lenalee returned to her senses.

I couldn't see her face, but the shock flowing off of her was incredibly obvious. "He raped you?! But you're-!"

Allen smiled calmly at her as he cut her off, finishing the sentence for her. "Madly in love with him and just a few weeks away from willingly giving birth to his babies. That's why I didn't want to tell the story. It's not pretty."

She blinked at him for a moment, but then her attitude suddenly changed completely and she turned on her heel and took a menacing step towards me. The look on her face was a terrifying mix of anger and horror, and it took a lot of self-control to not back down when she confronted me. "You raped him? I know you hated him, but to stoop to rape? How could you do that-?"

I was unsure of how to respond to her, unable to decide whether it was better to lie or to admit to the truth, but Allen beat me to it. The Moyashi cut off Lenalee's angry questioning before she could close the distance between us. "It was a misunderstanding, Lenalee."

She immediately whipped around to face him, and that calm smile never left his face as he explained what had happened. "He didn't do it because he hated me, he did it because he wanted to have sex with me. He thought he had my permission."

Still in my stunned daze, I only vaguely processed that the Moyashi was standing up for me and justifying my actions, and that didn't make sense to me. Yet, even as Lenalee continued to press the issue, he remained on my side. "That doesn't help, Allen. Even if he thought he had your permission, that doesn't change the fact that he raped you. He still didn't actually have your consent."

A faint blush coated Allen's cheeks as he frowned. "Except that I did consent to it. I just didn't know that that was what I was consenting to."

That explanation only made Lenalee more upset. "How can you have not known?! He was forcing himself on you!"

Allen's embarrassed blush only deepened. "I was fifteen, Lenalee. It was my first time doing anything like that with another person - I'd never even been kissed before. I didn't know what was going on, and I was too confused to realize that sex was what he wanted." He suddenly smirked darkly at her. "Of course, once I figured that out..."

"But-!"

Allen abruptly cut her off, once again finished with her prodding. Yet, when he spoke, his firm gaze was fixed on me; this was something he wanted me to hear just as much as he wanted her to hear it. "Look, there's really no point in dwelling on it. Our first time may have been rape, but the second round definitely wasn't, and it was less than half an hour later. And now here we are, five years later, married and with our first children on the way. It doesn't matter how we started. What matters is that we're in love." He turned his gaze back to Lenalee. "And if you can't accept that, you should just get out now."

The Moyashi threatening to kick Lenalee out was more startling than any of the things he'd said so far. He knew I'd raped him, but he still loved me and wanted to be with me, so much so that he was willing to cut Lenalee out of his life completely if she wasn't willing to accept that fact.

She wasn't going to go without a fight. "I'm just worried about you, Allen. I-"

"And I've told you: there's nothing to be worried about. The rape barely happened at all and it only happened once." The firmness of his tone was bordering on anger, and I hoped for everyone's sake that Lenalee realized that he was on the verge of blowing up. "Besides, my well-being is none of your concern. You gave up that right when you chose to believe the rumors that I was a whore."

It surprised me that Allen would actually tell Lenalee that to her face. I was quite familiar with his rude side, but even during the bullying, I had never seen him show it to the others. But when Lenalee started crying, Allen sighed heavily. "It's only been a few weeks. I've forgiven you enough to be comfortable with being alone with you, but you're not my best friend anymore. And you may never be again. Too much has happened and we may never get back what we lost. I still care about you and want you around, but I don't trust you."

"Allen, I-"

He cut off her attempt to reason with him. "Lenalee. Can we talk about this later? You're clearly upset, and I don't want either of us saying something we'll regret. Besides, I'm-" He paused to let out a huge yawn, "I'm seconds away from falling asleep."

She frowned at him, but she did what he suggested, though not before fixing me with that terrifying glare once more. It got her point across: the next time I was alone with her, she was going to confront me about raping Allen.

Still stunned over everything that had just happened, I didn't move to help the Moyashi go lie down. He didn't need my help, and he usually didn't want it either, so I stayed on the couch and tried to wrap my head around the fact that Allen knew that I had raped him.

But needing a nap was apparently just a ploy to get Lenalee to leave, as Allen didn't move from his spot. Instead, he smiled at me and gestured at me to come closer. "Come here."

I couldn't make myself move from my spot. I was too scared of what was going to happen now that we were alone. But Allen just rolled his eyes at me. "I'm not supposed to come to you, so you better get your ass over here before I'm forced to get out of this chair."

That was a very good point, so I found myself moving over to where he was sitting in his wheelchair. When I got close enough to satisfy him, he didn't hit me like I expected him to. Instead, he brushed a hand into my hair and pulled me in for a kiss.

The kiss felt no different from our usual kisses. It was full of the same love and passion that was always there. And that was so surprising that it snapped me right out of my stupor. "I can't believe you know that I raped you. When did you-? How-?"

Allen cut me off with another kiss. "I knew that you were raping me while you were doing it."

The words made my stomach drop. "That doesn't help, Moyashi."

He sighed and adjusted his hold on my head. They earnest way he stared into my eyes when he spoke was strange. "Look. We've had sex ... a lot in the last five years. I clearly have a problem saying 'no' when you try to start things, but at the same time, if I don't want to have sex, we don't have sex. Don't you think that same thing would have been true five years ago?"

"Not when you were a virgin." He had a point, but I didn't want to concede to it. Knowing that he had been capable of fighting me off but chose not to did not make me feel better. "And you did cry. A lot."

My attempt at arguing with him only made him laugh. "Maybe, but I think the only coherent word I said was 'again'. I put zero effort into stopping you and basically begged you to keep going. I didn't even yell at you afterwards. It may have started as rape, but it didn't end that way. And think about everything that's happened since then."

At the blank look on my face, he pulled his hand from my hair before taking my hand and placing it on his pregnant belly. "I agreed to date you knowing that you had raped me. I fell in love with you and got to watch you fall in love with me. I'm carrying your babies and got married to you. If I had a problem with you raping me because of a miscommunication, do you really think that any of that would have happened? Do you really think we'd be where we are right now? I love you. I don't blame you for what happened that day."

That earnest look faded into a smirk. "If anything, I'm surprised that you know that you raped me. That's a change in you that I didn't expect. You've opened up so much in the last five years, and it's been beautiful watching you learn that you have feelings. And from that perspective, seeing you eaten up with guilt like this is wonderful."

His wistful smile faded. "However, I hate seeing you feel guilty over something that you have no reason to feel guilty over. As I've told you several times now, while you may have technically raped me, that's not the full story. So can you let this go? For me?"

He finally stopped talking, leaving me to wonder what to say to him, and he waited patiently for me to collect my thoughts and didn't even prod me with his facial expressions. While I did feel better knowing that he didn't even sort of blame me for raping him, and I knew that there was no longer a reason for me to feel bad about it, that guilt just didn't want to let go of me. But if Allen could forgive me then I was just going to have to figure out how to forgive myself. "Moyashi. I-... I'll try."

"Thank you." He smiled brightly before pulling me into a kiss. The kiss was deep, and when it was over, Allen grinned cheekily at me as he backed up his wheelchair. "Now, come do that thing to me that you think you did to me without permission."

I couldn't help raising an eyebrow at him for the way he worded that request for sex. "That's weird, Moyashi."

His cheeky smile immediately fell into a pout, but the expression was only there for a moment before he shot me a very specific look. "I want you in me, Yuu."