Chapter 1:
"Don't Look So Surprised"
Kaoru felt the room closing in on her for the fifth time in the last sixty seconds and a small wave of claustrophobia washed over her, sending goosebumps down her arms. Her large sapphire eyes darted to the left as she heard a small dripping noise of the faucet Kenshin had left half-way on in the kitchen and they shot back to the right as she heard the toilet flushing down the hall.
Unconsciously, she sucked in her breath as her fiancé made his way back to the couch and lazily plopped down beside her. Again her eyes darted, wide and expectant, and she felt her muscles tightening in her chest as Kenshin put his arms around her like a child would to its favorite pillow.
"What are you watching?" he asked her as he gently kissed her hair.
Honestly, Kaoru had completely forgotten that she had been sitting in front of the TV. She blinked and realized it was still on. Whoops.
"I have no idea," she answered quietly and her hands fidgeted openly in her lap. Gripping her skirt, she forced them to stop.
Her nerves had been like an old rickety roller coaster for the past five days now, causing her to space out at the most random moments; already at her restaurant she had forgotten to pick up the checks for about a dozen people and her boss had been less than thrilled when he heard about it. This dazing was now becoming more frequent and also much more aggravating.
"Kenshin, we need to talk..."
Uh oh. Kenshin hated that phrase. Even though it was four words long, he could of more than a dozen reasons why it was possibly the worst sentence in the entire world. This "wanting to talk" always meant trouble, usually resulting in a couple empty tissue boxes, broken hearts, and weeks upon weeks of wearing the same pair of ripped-up sweatpants. But what could he have possibly done wrong to upset her? Or maybe it was something he didn't do. Did he forget to buy something on his last trip to the groceries? Did he forget their anniversary? Her birthday? Oh dear God, was it Valentine's Day already?!
It took a few seconds but suddenly, it dawned on him and as it did, Kenshin's eyes grew swirly and round. Slowly, he shook his head, which utterly confused his wife-to-be, who had been watching him as his face became overridden with panic and desperation, only to become guilty and bashful a second later.
"Kaoru, honey, I swear, the bachelor party was NOT my idea, that it wasn't," he tried to explain, his hands discreetly loosening their grip around her slim form in case she decided to take a swing at him and he needed to dodge, "Yahiko said that I was supposed to have a little fun before I 'tied the knot' so he and the guys called up a couple of..."
"I wasn't talking about that, Kenshin," Kaoru interjected just in time, her eyebrows raising as she pulled away slightly to look him in the eye, "whatever you did at your bachelor party is your strictly business..."
Phew! He was saved!
"... and whatever I did at my bachelorette party is my business."
"Oro?!" Kenshin exclaimed as he finally comprehended the end of her sentence and at the thought of his Kaoru pushing some half-naked-soon-to-be-dead-as-soon-as-he-could-find-out-his-name male stripper down on the floor, he found himself incapable of saying anything bigger than a couple syllables, "But Kaoru, I thought...! Everyone said...! You said..! Orororo..."
"I know, I said a lot of things but..." Kaoru trailed off as she realized her fiancé was not really listening to her and instead was rolling about on the floor either in confusion or in anger at the news of her bachelorette party. Her eyebrows twitching, she gave him a good hard smack. "Snap out of it!"
"ORO?!"
Rubbing his now throbbing head, Kenshin shook himself to clear up his jumbled thoughts before looking back at the love of his life and saying, "So you're not breaking up with me then?"
"No!" Kaoru replied earnestly, adding numerous head shakes to show the negativity she felt for such an absurd idea, "I would never do that!"
'Thank you, God!' Kenshin silently sang in his head and he cheerfully twisted his mouth up into the biggest grin Kaoru had ever seen, 'I knew one of these days all those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I donated for the homeless was gonna pay off! And the guys said it was all just a waste of time and wheat bread! Hah! Up yours, Sanosuke Sagara!'
"I want a baby, Kenshin."
Silence. Kenshin blinked. Once. Twice.
"Excuse me?"
"I said... I want to have a baby," Kaoru repeated and she shyly looked from her hands to his face in quick glances, unsure if either he or she was more shocked by what she had just suggested, "I want... I want us to have a baby, Kenshin."
More silence.
Kaoru suddenly felt nauseous just thinking about what could be rolling through her fiancé's head. She in no way wanted to ruin what she had with Kenshin; he was the best thing that had ever happened to her and their relationship meant everything, but this overwhelming quiet was making her feel smaller and smaller. Right about now she felt no bigger than the tip of a pin. She would've killed for something to drink, a pill to pop, anything that could create a roaring noise in her ears or destroy a couple of her brain cells so she wouldn't have to just sit and wait for Kenshin to start freaking out on her before he packed up and left.
Timid, she looked down at the small golden band about her ring finger on her left hand, turning it over and over to keep herself occupied. Or maybe she was just taking one last look at it before he decided to take it back. Kaoru hardly noticed that she was holding her breath until she felt about ready to faint. Luckily, a pair of familiar arms tightened around her, giving her a gentle and approving squeeze.
"I think that's a great idea, Kaoru, that I do," Kenshin finally spoke, his usual rurouni smile plastered across his face as wide as the equator, "We should have a baby."
"You're serious?" Kaoru asked, unsure if she had heard him right and she turned her body to fully face his, "I mean, do you really want to have a baby with me? Because if you don't, I don't wanna make you do anything you're not prepared to do and I can wait if you're not ready for the responsibility or if we don't have enough money. Or we can wait until we're actually married if you want 'cause you know, if our friends find out that we've been um... doing it... a lot more, they'll start with some weird speech about..."
"Kaoru?" Kenshin asked, his deep voice interrupting her more-than-necessarily-long speech.
"Yes, Kenshin?"
"Maybe we should go upstairs," he suggested, his warm hands moving over her bare shoulders in somewhat of an act of persuasion, "This baby-making idea of
yours would be a lot easier to accomplish in our room, that it would."
Irritated and bored, Sanosuke threw the Home Making magazine he had in his hands out the window. It was five years old anyway and there really was no use anyway in trying to convince himself that he was good with a hammer; the damn thing just never wanted to cooperate. Tapping his foot in impatience, he checked his watch again.
This was getting ridiculous. He'd been at the mechanic's for almost two and a half hours already and he hadn't even caught a glimpse of his jeep. The poor excuse for scrap metal had broken down on him that morning on his way to work at the construction site, causing him to skip a whole day's worth of work and losing a handful of much needed cash. There was only a limited amount of TV dinners one could eat before he/she went completely bonkers.
Sighing, he stood up from his seat and stretched out his arms, letting out a big tired yawn that was aimed to make the attendants remember that he was still there and waiting for his car to be finished. But in finding that none of them had even paused in their work/talking about how hot Halle Berry was, Sanosuke felt the urge to grab one of their water buckets nearby and hurl a dozen at their empty heads.
"Fucking slow-ass bastards..." he grumbled under his breath and he lazily leaned against the nearby wall covered in neon orange graffiti that he had no idea how to read and shoved his hands into his pockets. Looking up from the ground to the parking garage, his eyes narrowed. "Where the hell is my car?"
Tired, Sanosuke finally decided he had had enough of waiting for these punks to actually start working and he spit out his now flavorless gum on the floor and headed over to the work area. Walking around the entire garage, he hesitantly watched where he stepped, more than positive that the place was crawling with unheard of diseases and germs.
'Damn... that fox is really starting to rub off on me,' he thought as he casually jumped over a man half-way under a bent-up old truck, 'Ahah! There's my jeep!' Finally spotting it at the far end of the room, Sanosuke quickly jogged over in his anticipation, almost tripping over a tool box someone had carelessly set in the middle of the floor in the process.
"What the...? Who the hell is stupid enough to put a wrench set in the middle of the walk way?" Sanosuke asked himself with the scratch of his head and turning his attention back to his jeep, he found that not only was the tire replaced, but the color shined like new. The car actually looked... decent. "Whoa... okay... this IS my car, right?"
"Well, if you're customer number 43917, then yes, this jeep is yours," a man Sanosuke had not seen earlier replied as he finally stepped out from behind the vehicle's trunk, a dirty rag in his hands as he calmly wiped them clean of car grease, "the motor's fine now and I already filled your tank with some gas and gave the thing a wash so you should be ready to... Oh shit..."
"YOU!" Sanosuke shouted, catching the attention of practically everyone in the garage as his memory finally kicked in and he saw past all the dirt, grime, and mechanic's outfit to reveal a man he had not seen in years. Pausing, both men stood in silence for a good thirty seconds before Sanosuke burst out laughing.
"Hahahahahahahahahahaha! You.... hahaha... You mean to tell me... haha... that... ahaha... Aoshi Shinimori... is a... hahaha.... mechanic?!" he asked through huge fits of laughter and stumbling backwards, he almost tripped over the same tool box again, but caught himself just in time. Still, he didn't stay upright for long; his insane chuckling had him holding onto his stomach on the garage's filthy floor only seconds later. "Hahaha... You're.... hahaha... a mechanic!!!"
"......." Aoshi frowned, unsure if it was worth risking his job if he actually did throw a wrench at Sanosuke Sagara's inflated head.
After ten tries of trying to recollect himself, Sanosuke was finally able to calm down enough to quietly slap his knee and occasionally breathe through his mouth with deep sounds of, "WHOO! That's too good!" Aoshi remained as still as ever, sometimes allowing his left eyebrow to twitch in impatience, half expecting the man to explode from his laughter. So when the arrogant rooster-head suddenly turned serious, Aoshi was suddenly uncertain of what he was supposed to say besides, "Go fuck yourself."
"Well then..." Sanosuke softly mused as he casually placed his hands behind his back, an idea rolling through his head, and he thoughtfully walked around his jeep for a thorough inspection of just what his old enemy had done to it. Pausing on the right side of the hood, he delicately wiped his index finger across the front end and brought it up to his face for observation.
"Hm... Looks like you missed a spot when you washed it, Shinimori," Sanosuke pointed out as he held his finger up to show off the tiniest, almost invisible, speck of dust that appeared on his fingertip to his mechanic, "Look at this dust! No, this won't do... this won't do at all... Guess this means you're gonna have to wash it all over again! And hey, you know, it's been a while since my car's had a waxing job and since all this extra stuff comes free with an oil change, I guess you better do that too!"
'Why that...!'
"Oh, and new hubcaps would be nice," Sanosuke added, his grin growing more and more extended as he added chore after chore onto Aoshi's list of additional things to do for his jeep that were all conveniently free of charge and also, quite time consuming, "... and the paint's kinda chipping so you should work on that as well and the seats are covered with crumbs that I'm sure you wouldn't mind vacuuming up... and is it possible to get that new car smell again?" Aoshi clenched his fists in response as he started up on the car wax. Sanosuke watched over him from behind, smiling as he pulled up a small lawn chair and began getting comfortable on his new 'throne.' "Okay, great. Actually, let's not do a paint job of the same color. Let's do blue. Nah, green! No, maybe black! Or what about white? White sounds good. I mean, it'll take up more time than all the other colors and you might have to work a little harder to scrape the old paint off, but eh... it's your job to give the customer what he wants, right? Besides, I think my gorgeous GIRLFRIEND, who I am living with now by the way, would like my jeep to be white. I'm not sure though, what do you think, Shinimori? You think MY Megumi would like me to drive her around to nice places in a white jeep?"
"....." the small squeaking noises of the dish rag rubbing wax on the trunk of Sanosuke's car was all the sound that came from the once richer-than-possible Aoshi Shinimori and his 'energetic response' was more than satisfying enough for Sanosuke to happily prop his feet up on Aoshi's expensive tool box and innocently whistle the tune of his and Megumi's song, "How Sweet It Is," loud enough for the whole mechanic shop to hear. Aoshi wanted to scream.
"Yo, Shinimori!" Sanosuke suddenly shouted over the raucous of drilling coming from the other cars and Aoshi angrily whipped around to face his delighted customer with icy eyes.
"What. Is. It. Now?!" he seethed.
Sano grinned and pointed, "You missed a spot."
"So you wanna...?"
"No."
"Not even one little...?"
"No."
"Well, how about on Thursday...?"
"No!"
"Oh... okay... Friday there's this..."
Megumi's hand flew to the red phone at the side of her desk, the emergency phone that was immediately directed to the clinic's top-notch security, and gave the man leaning against the counter a warning look of, 'Just dare me.' Laughing nervously, he backed off with his hands above his head, as if she had just pushed an invisible yet deadly needle against the side of his neck and threatened to inject him. He walked like that the entire way down the hall, never fully turning his back to her so she couldn't throw something large and heavy at his pompous head which she had been known to do. Finally reaching the elevator, the man gave Megumi a small apologetic smile and quickly scrambled inside the shaft and tried to help the doors close faster with his arms. Megumi's hand only left the phone after she was sure that the arrogant bastard wasn't planning on coming back through the stairs or something.
That was the fifth guy that day. Five guys that all wanted the exact same thing, five guys that received the exact same answer. Sighing, Megumi turned back to the paper work at her desk, but was only disappointed to find out that she had lost her place in a paper she had been reading because of yet another annoying disruption.
Fridays were always the hardest days to stay at the clinic, those were the day that all the horny people decided to get sick, leaving Megumi at her desk to deal with more than just a small case of the flu.
Her co-workers were all out on a lunch break still and would be returning in a little less than an hour, so for the moment, she was all by herself, except for the occasional nurse on-duty that came out every so often to call out the patients' names and bring them into the rooms. Quiet sounds of the copy machine in the backroom filled the atmosphere and mixed in with the loud buzzing of the light above her head that was running low on batteries. Whenever Sano would come in for a visit, he would always try to sneak up behind her, but the spikes of his hair always ended up hitting the lamp around, eliminating the element of surprise. The noise around her was actually quite soothing as Megumi slowly drifted off to sleep, her chin resting stiffly in her hand, bobbing every once in a while from her lack of consciousness.
Ring, ring, ring!
Megumi bolted upright at the sound of her phone, her ears first registering the sound as some kind of fire alarm and she shot out of her chair, a little too quickly, as she bumped her head on a cabinet over her that she had carelessly left wide open earlier when she had wanted to munch on one of the patients' lollipops. A yelp escaped her as she reached with her hand to cradle her throbbing cranium and she bit her lip to keep in the violent curse words she had heard Sanosuke use that very morning when he forgot where he had put his keys... again. Instead of violating the clinic's policy of language, she settled on saying a silent, "Ow..." before reaching for the phone.
Gently rubbing her head, Megumi brought the device up to her ear and muttered in the happiest she could conjure up, "Doctor Gensai's office, this is Megumi. How may I help you?"
"Am I speaking with a doctor right now?" a woman's voice came from the other line.
"No, ma'am, Dr. Gensai is in with a patient at the moment, I'm his assistant though. Anything you need to ask the doctor, you can ask me," Megumi said, fumbling with the phone on her shoulder and against her ear as she tried reaching for an ice pack she had under chair in her mini- fridge, "Do you need to set up an appointment?"
"No, I just need to ask a question, it's about my son," the woman continued. Megumi thought her voice sounded distinctly familiar but she couldn't quite put her finger on where she had heard it before. "You see, he's sort of um.... well, he was playing with his crayons and he uh.. kind of... stuck one up his nose..."
"....... Oh...." Megumi replied after a very dull silence at the other end and she took a seat back in her chair and hefted her feet up onto the keyboard of her computer, kicking off her shoes, "well then, what have you tried to get it out?"
"My husband is trying to get it out right now with some tweezers but so far... he's been pretty unsuccessful," the woman said with a sigh and Megumi could hear somewhere in the background another familiar voice (she could only assume it was the woman's husband) telling the child to stop moving and trying to get him to snuff some pepper through the free nostril and sneeze the damned wax out. Megumi sweat dropped.
"Well, you might want to bring him into the clinic to have the doctor take a look at him," Megumi suggested, one hand still holding the ice pack to the bump on her head, "I'm sure Doctor Gensai will have something for your son. Can I get your name please, ma'am?"
"Tokio Saito," the woman on the other line said and she pulled away from the phone for a moment to say something to her husband in the background, which Megumi heard as, "Hajime! The nurse says we have to take him to the clinic and have the doctor take a look at him! Hajime! Hajime, put that pepper away!"
'Hajime Saito... married?!' Megumi thought to herself in shock, 'To Tokio?! With a child?!' Before she could go more into depth with picturing one big happy family of narrow-eyed little boys and girls, Tokio came back on the line, out of breath.
"Okay, we'll be there in a minute! Thanks a lot! Bye!"
"Wa... Wait!" Megumi exclaimed into the phone's mouth piece, but her only response ended up being the dial tone. Sighing, she leaned back in her chair, her mind running around in circles as she tried to figure out how it could be possible that her best friend's jerk of a brother had gotten married without her knowing it. God, Fridays were hard... The sound of someone clearing their throat interrupted her thoughts.
"Hey, how would you like to...?"
"NO!!!"
A/N: Hey, sorry about the delay with this chapter too, I've been kinda busy. Lucky for you tho, summer is coming up so hopefully that means that I'll work on this some more hehe. So here's the thing, I've got a couple ideas about this fic, but it's kinda hard to write since I gotta think of all this stuff on my own so if you have scene ideas, feel free to share them with me! I like listening to requests but if it doesn't really work out with the story line, I might not use some. Leave a review, I'm counting up to seven this time for the next chapter. Haha, yes I am evil like that and will count until I have seven reviews for this chapter until I continue! Bwahahaha! Alright, I'm done writing, it's your turn now! ^^