"Darling?"
"Mmm?"
Obanai hummed a sleepy sound of acknowledgement as his eyes barely slitted open.
"Do you want me to take her?" Mitsuri asked quietly, a sigh of a question as she slid onto the couch next to him. "You were up with her last night. I can take care of her tonight."
Obanai shook his head. "I got a couple hours in before I opened up this morning. Don't worry."
But worry was all she did lately. Between the baby's newfound fussiness and pulling hostess duties in the restaurant most days, she felt so tired that some days she worried she might die and somehow not even notice. But then here Obanai was getting even less sleep than her! That was unfair to him.
Mitsuri tried to slide her arms under the baby in her husband's arms but he shook his head again. He was not letting go of the precious bundle unless she pried the baby from his unconscious hands.
"No, really, I got it. You get some sleep."
She gave a frustrated scoff. "You look exhausted."
"You look even more exhausted," he shot back with the faintest hint of a smile on the corner of his mouth.
She pursed her lips. Sure, her eyes looked bruised because of the dark circles, but Obanai - already pale - had gone even paler since their daughter decided to spend every hour between dusk and dawn screaming her little head off if she wasn't being held for even a second. As tired as her face looked in the mirror every morning, Mitsuri knew she was better off than him. His beautiful eyes were all but entirely ringed in purple from a sheer lack of sleep.
The baby suddenly stirred in his arms and made a tiny annoyed whimper. Both parents froze in place, terrified to even take a deep breath lest it set off their newborn daughter.
But if their baby wasn't asleep, at least she quickly returned to the relaxed state she was before. Eyes closed and face slack.
Mitsuri slowly - ever so slowly - leaned closed to her husband until her mouth almost brushed against his ear hidden among his midnight dark hair.
"I'll sit with her for half the night and then wake you up when I get too tired," she whispered. Her words were barely louder than a breath. She dare not speak any louder.
Even with her face practically buried in his hair, she still caught his strange, wry smile.
"If I let you do that, you'll stay up all night and say you forgot to wake me up. I know you. Then tomorrow you'll be all fussy because you didn't get any sleep."
"You'll be in a bad mood tomorrow morning if you don't get any sleep."
"I'm always in a bad mood, sleep or not."
She couldn't help but giggle, although she immediately tried to force the laugh into silence with lips pressed together.
"You're terrible!" The exclamation came out as a hiss as she tried to swallow her own laughter.
"I know I am."
With her mouth so close to the side of his face, she delivered a grazing kiss along his cheekbone. She couldn't help herself. It was like placing a tantalizing cupcake in front of her.
He absentmindedly turned his head a little bit to return the kiss but kept his eyes on their daughter and instead kissed into one of Mitsuri's poofy braids.
Mitsuri giggled quietly. "See? You're tired."
"I'm not," he blatantly lied.
"You look like a professional boxer punched you in both eyes."
This time around he bothered to turn his head to shoot a glare at her. It was not the look most people got. At most, he looked mildly reproachful at her, which was not his usual withering stare that pinned ill behaved customers or foul mouthed employees to the spot.
"How dare you assume I'm not some off the grid martial artist boxer by night."
She sank her teeth into her lip to keep the bubbly laughter at a near silent level. "If you were, I'd say you were a boxer by... what? A couple hours in the early morning? When have you had the time to sneak out and lead a secret exciting life outside of this apartment lately?"
"I could squeeze in a secret second life while you sleep, but only if I wanted to."
"Oh, I'm surprised. I thought that even you had to sleep, Mr. 'I sleep only a few hours a day and run a whole business'.'' Her tone was mocking but not mean.
He tilted his head just far enough to bump against her forehead.
"Ha," was the only sound he made and it sounded absolutely exhausted, depleted of all energy.
"Darling," she cooed into his dark hair with the softness often reserved for the dying. "You sound like you're about to drop dead from exhaustion."
"I don't doubt you," he whispered back. "But I've survived on less sleep than this. I'll live."
Her arm snaked around his waist, hooking on the far side and pulling him gently against her side.
Her mouth stayed buried perpendicular to his ear. Her words placed in a direct axis to his mind, a road to the precious sharp thought inside his pretty head.
"I don't want you to just survive. I want you to be happy and thrive, not just- I mean, I don't want you to be tired all the time, just to like, live. You deserve more than that."
That subtle expression didn't change at all.
"If I wanted to be well rested, I wouldn't have opened a fucking restaurant."
On reflex, her hand darted up to cover her husband's mouth, as if her fingers could catch the swear word already out of his mouth before it reached their daughter's ears. At the same time, his beautiful mismatched eyes widened slightly as he belatedly realized he'd just said.
"Shit- I mean, no, oh fu- sorry," he mumbled into her hand before brushing a kiss against her palm, lips placed right where her index and middle finger joined.
She smiled against his cheek while she curled her arm under his under the baby. "See? You're so tired, you're teaching our daughter terrible words."
He went quiet, face unreadable from her point of view.
After a few seconds, the only thing she could hear was the soft sound of his breathing a counter rhythm to their daughter's tiny little huffs. The only way she knew he was still alive was she could feel his pulse through his arm caught between their torsos.
"Darling?" she asked quietly, a single word spoken so softly as if any sound of hers might break reality like glass. Maybe he'd dozed off a bit and she hated to deny him even a few seconds of precious sleep.
But she felt him tense. He did that sometimes. Not so much as moving under her touch but, under his skin, she could feel every muscle pull taut, as if he were coiling to spring forward.
She wanted to ask if he was alright but at that moment, she worried even a word might startle him into... into... Well, she didn't know what might happen if he was startled. Would he jump up, clutching the baby to his chest in terror and, like, accidentally crush her? Or - oh god - what if he accidentally dropped her? No, wait, he'd never do that!
She shook her head a bit, trying to clear the worst case scenarios from her sleep addled brain. Cobwebs of exhaustion clogged her frontal lobe.
"Mitsuri?" she heard him ask.
"Yeah, sorry, I'm here."
She caught sight of him staring at her in the corner of his eye. Blue-green peering catlike at an angle.
The same blue-green in their daughter's eyes. Both her eyes. He had just the one lagoon colored iris but their daughter managed to have two.
"You should get to sleep," he said, flatly, voice and mind sounding like they were a million miles away.
"No way. You look and sound like you're going to pass out!"
"Mitsuri, shhh. You're going to wake her."
She pressed her mouth in a thin line. She hated to be shushed but she couldn't exactly say Obanai was in the wrong here.
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you're going to pass out tomorrow at work and face plant right onto the stove, darling."
He let out a snort of a laugh before realizing he shouldn't have.
"Obanai!"
"Sorry but that's a funny mental image."
"I'm serious," she hissed into his ear. "What if you fall asleep at work or something?"
He shot back, "What if you fall asleep while waiting on customers? Or when driving?"
Her mouth twisted with annoyance. Since his right eye wasn't great, she tended to be the one who drove them most days but he'd taken over that since late in her pregnancy and after the baby's arrival. She couldn't even remember the last time she was the one behind the wheel, but was that because it was so long ago or because she felt so tired that her memory was failing?
"What if you fall asleep and accidentally drop her?" The words came out of her mouth a touch sharper than she intended.
He snapped his head to the side and glared at her. Actually glared at her! He'd never done that before.
"I would never. Don't even fucking joke about that."
"Language," she said automatically.
He flinched but barely.
"I'm not kidding, Mitsuri. That wasn't funny."
"I wasn't trying to be funny. I'm honestly worried about y-"
As if cued by her parents' rising tension, the baby made a fussing mewl that threatened to escalate into full blown crying. Her face scrunched up, starting to turn red, and the impossibly tiny fists balled up as she uselessly tried to rub at her face.
Without pause, Mitsuri leaned down and cooed over the infant, delivering soothing assurances and nonsense words that told the baby that everything in the world was alright. Obanai gently rocked their daughter, not too fast and not too slow. Just the right amount to immediately stop the whimpering from escalating. Between the swaying, the warmth of a father's arms, and a mother's familiar voice, the baby's sea green eyes gradually grew glassy while staring up at her parents' faces. And then her eyelids grew too heavy to fight and the baby drifted back into sleep.
The parents sat still for several minutes, both too nervous to say a word until they were certain their darling girl was as deep in sleep as an infant could be.
Obanai - slowly, patiently, carefully - turned his head just enough to allow his whisper to be heard. "I'm sorry."
"What?"
"I shouldn't have snapped at you."
She wanted to bite back and say, "Yeah, you shouldn't have." But she knew that was unkind and unnecessary.
"I can tell you're tired," she said instead.
He sighed. "Why are we even arguing about this? Don't most parents try to foist a crying baby onto the other parent?"
"I was wondering the same thing."
Her hand, still under his under their daughter, slid over his and her finger tips wove between his knuckles. She felt his hand curl and tense, fingers entwined in the blanket, but his face stayed the same. Strange and unreadable.
She licked her lips and asked, "Something's wrong."
"It's nothing."
That definitely meant something was wrong.
"You can tell me, darling," she said quietly and then quickly added, "Uhm, if you want to. You don't have to."
He didn't say anything for a long time and, in turn, neither did she.
His body felt tense, coiled and wound spring tight, like a cornered animal. Mitsuri couldn't tell if he seemed frozen in terror or poised to fight or somehow both. Even his breathing seemed tense. Shallow and quick, so unlike his usual poised self.
Mitsuri let herself lean against him, let her arms stay loosely encircled around him, neither trapping him nor letting him go entirely. She let the weight of her limbs be there as a reminder of her presence, that she would stay nearby no matter how long this silence ran.
Obanai was never one who opened up much, except to her, and even then, she knew it could take him a little time to parse thoughts and feelings in exacting words. She knew not to press; there was no faster way to get him to clam up than to pursue an answer aggressively.
"It's..." he started and then snapped his mouth shut, almost as if the sound of the sound of his voice in a single word startled him back into silence.
"Yeah?" she said, a coaxing word in a gentle voice.
He licked his lips before he said, slowly, each word trailed by a pause, "What I'm about to say is going to sound insane."
That peaked her interest. The exhaustion from the previous weeks if not months seemed distant while all her senses sharpened.
"I'm sure it's not," she said, although she would admit to herself she wasn't sure at all. How would she know? "You can tell me anything."
He nodded slowly and then sighed. "I think I told you that even as a kid, I never slept much, especially at night. Right?"
She nodded, vaguely recalling him mentioning it in passing. In all the time she'd known her husband, he never needed more than a handful of hours to sleep, even on the longest day on his feet. When she asked how he did it, he said he'd been that way ever since he was a kid.
"You think our girl is like you? Like she inherited that?"
His narrow shoulders lifted briefly in a shrug.
"I don't know why she's doing it. But I remember when I was a kid, I used to always have this nagging feeling at night that someone - something - was watching me."
The fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Something about that seemed so familiar but she knew hadn't heard this particular story from him before.
He continued, words fast and barely audible above her own blood rushing behind her eardrums. "I'd be fine until night and then, only when it was dark and I was alone in my room, I knew that something was staring at me. Every noise and bump in the house seemed loud, so I kept waking up at the tiniest sounds, convinced something was going to-"
He glanced out of the corner of his eye, checking her reaction before finishing.
"-eat me."
Her stomach twisted.
Why did this story seem so familiar? She'd never heard him talk about this before but it seemed like she heard this story before.
Cautiously, as if any single word might make him drop the conversation, she asked, "Was there anything?"
She could picture a small child feeling watched because an animal perched outside the window or perhaps a small creature got into the home's walls.
He shook his head, shaggy hair brushing against her shoulder. "No. It drove my parents crazy. They tried to show me nothing was in the closet, nothing could see through the curtains. They even pried the cover off a heating vent to show me that nothing was inside the ducts."
"Did that help?"
"A little. No, not really. Because, to my stupid little kid brain, I knew that whatever was there wasn't going to show itself while the adults were around. The feeling only came up when I was by myself in the dark."
"Real or not, that sounds scary for a little kid."
He sighed, swaying the baby in his arms a little without being conscious of the movement that he'd practiced over the months since their daughter's birth. "It fuckin- it really sucked. I couldn't sleep and my parents didn't know what the hell- didn't know what to do. So after a while, when they realized it was useless trying to prove to me nothing was in the wall or ceiling. So they gave up."
All Mitsuri could do was picture a small dark haired boy cowering under the covers in the dark of the night. The mental image broke her heart in two.
"They could have stayed the night with you or- or- or something. Anything would have helped, I'll bet."
"You've met my parents. They aren't those kinds of people."
She made a little exasperated noise.
Another indifferent shrug. "I'm sure they thought I would outgrow it. And I did but it took years for that feeling to go away."
"That's not an excuse! They should have tried harder!"
"Mitsuri, shh," he hushed her and her eyes widened before darting to their baby's face. But fortunately, the little ruddy face stayed slack with sleep.
"Oops, sorry," she whispered. "But still. If our girl gets that, I'd spend every night at least trying to show her she's safe. I'd stay the night with her. That's what good parents do."
As soon as the words flowed from her mouth, the puzzle pieces fell into place.
"Is that what you're trying to do for her? Make her feel safe?" Even as she asked, Mitsuri could feel her heart swell, threatening to burst in her chest. Just when she thought she couldn't love him more than she already did, a tiny gesture or story like this made her only fall more in love with him. Her already deep well of affection grew deeper by inches every time.
"Well..."
"Oh, I thought -"
He turned his head quickly, accidentally interrupting her. "I mean, it's a little because of that. I don't ever want her to be scared if she doesn't have to be. But it's..."
She paused, letting the question hang before finally asking it for him. "You get that feeling a bit again?"
"A little bit. I don't think anything is watching. But when she's out of sight, when I close my eyes, I get the feeling that something is going to take her."
Her swollen heart practically burst with potent heartache. "Oh, oh Obanai..."
He gave a breathy chuckle, one not rooted in amusement but nervousness. "I know nothing is going to get her. My brain knows that she's completely safe with you. You're a good mom. You'd never let anything get to her. But..."
"You're still afraid."
He nodded, face as solemn as the grave. "Knowing that it's irrational doesn't help. My heart keeps telling me that something in the dark can and will take her."
"Oh, darling, oh no..."
"And if I am here, holding her through the night, then that's one more day where it doesn't happen. Here, nothing can take her, so long as she's with me."
A veil of tears began to form of Mitsuri's eyes. She blinked quickly, trying to will the tears back into their ducts, or at least keep the water form overflowing from the surface of her eyes. But she didn't want him to see that. She tried to flash him a smile, however unconvincing it might be.
The corner of his mouth quirked upwards subtly, the pale and distant imitation of a smile.
"Like I said, it sounds crazy because it is crazy. Literally insane."
"No, don't say that. It's not crazy at all," she whispered hurriedly, needing to get that idea crammed into his head as quickly as possible. "It's normal to have irrational fears when you have a baby."
"This one is pretty weird. It's not like I don't also check to make sure she's still breathing when she's sound asleep."
"Ok, that's normal. I do that too. Like all the time, I swear."
"I think every parent does that."
She worried her lower lip with her teeth for a moment, thinking about what to say next. "But darling, you can't just not sleep forever. That's not good either."
"I know. But when you're out here with her, I can't sleep."
"Really?"
"When I try to sleep while you're up with the baby, all I can do is lie on my back and stare at the ceiling, just waiting for you to call for help."
How long had this been going on?
"Obanai, that's- when was the last time you got any decent sleep?"
Cat-like eyes darted away, too guilty to meet her gaze.
"Since a month or two before she was born," he admitted and then visibly flinched, all too aware of what she was about to say.
Her eyes went wide in shock. "But that's been-"
"Months. I know."
"Darling. You can't keep doing this!"
Another bout of silence where his eyes slid away from meeting hers.
She hooked her hand around his waist and pulled herself closer to him, rather than move him to her, as she frequently did without thought.
She laid her head against his shoulder, let her body shift its weight to lean against his side, not so much as to push him, but simply be a solid presence. A physical reminder of weight wrapped around him. Never too heavy but always there within the familiar distance of familiar touch.
She buried her face in that crook between his neck and shoulder. Her lips, softened by an evening routine application of Vaseline, brushed against his skin.
He said nothing but tilted his head so it all but lay on top of hers.
Mitsuri often felt like she was not usually the most clever person in the room. Not the dumbest, not by far. But compared to her sharp tongued and sharp witted husband, she felt like the less clever of the two.
But where she might not always have the most cutting edge insults - or any insults at all, that wasn't her way - she could read people. After all, that's one of the many ways she won her darling husband over. He tried to close himself off from anyone, tried to be all knife edges and sharp words, but she'd seen through all that. Nimbly, she could work through his jagged behavior.
"I don't think it's just you're worried about something to happen to her," she whispered into his jawline.
Again she felt his fingers curl into the baby's blankets, a tell-tale sign that, if she was not right, she was achingly close to some wounded spot.
Not that she wanted to cause him pain. No, far from it. She wanted to only give him every soft worded affection that she could conjure from her vocabulary. She wanted to give him adoring glances and little jokes that made him give his quiet, breathy chuckle that few other people got to hear. His laughter, his smile, were treasured treats she tried to pry out of him at every given opportunity.
She fished her fingers through the tangled bundle of blankets under their daughter until her palm slid over the back of his hand. She felt the subtle terrain of scars, the tiny burns and cuts left by the hours and hours in the kitchen. Her fingers glided over knuckles until her fingertips could hook between his slender fingers.
"It's ok, darling," she whispered as she squeezed his hand. "I'm here, too. Between the two of us, nothing will ever happen to our little girl."
He turned his head so suddenly that their noses almost crashed into one another. Despite that near miss of facial structures, he didn't pull away. He didn't allow for anymore space that the barely gaps between his skin and hers.
His mouth was practically on top of hers, and her first impulse was to kiss him like she'd done ten thousand times before. But he didn't kiss her. Instead his lips moved quickly barely in front of hers, only brushing against hers in his haste to mumble panicked words, as if he needed her to swallow his worded thoughts so they no longer existed in the tiny gap between them.
"That's it, though! That's the crazy part! I worry about her because she's a part of you and I can't let anything happen to you. "
This close to her, she couldn't focus her eyes on him without accidentally going cross eyed. But she didn't need to see him to know the strained worry on his sharp features. She only caught the glint of their apartment's dim light reflected in the teary pool barely starting to gather in the corner of his eye.
His frantic words didn't stop. Now as the poison worry began to spill out of his mouth, he continued to half whisper in a panic, a river that started that he didn't seem to know how to stop.
"You made her and she's a beautiful shard of you, so shining and beautiful and I can't bear to lose any part of you, whether it is you or our daughter. If anything happened to either of you, I couldn't tolerate living."
His voice didn't break on any particular word, but his pitch climbed uncharacteristically high over the course of the sentence, ending in a swallow that she knew tried to disguise the choke in his throat.
"Any fraction of you that I lose is too much," he choked out, as if each word hurt on its way out of his mouth.
Her heart broke at all these little details. While so many of her friends and fellow new mothers complained about their spouses ignoring them or practically foisting a fussy baby on them at all hours, here she was pleading with her husband to take it easy. God, here she was trying to practically pry her own daughter - her own flesh and blood - from her husband's clutching arms.
"Darling," she cooed into his mouth.
Even at this close angle, she caught the embarrassment, the shame in his eyes, and dear lord, was she ever going to put a stop to that at least.
She brushed a kiss against his parted lips - a gesture so rooted in the habit of love and sex that she felt her body warm simply at her own gesture. How often did their kisses lead to a tumble into bed without any effort on either of their parts? But here was not the time or place. His words dripped with the pang of anxiety and she should at least do her best to address it.
"Darling, darling, darling," she breathily sighed his nickname into his mouth.
"I'm sorry," he murmured breathily in return.
"You're sorry but I don't think you even know what you are apologizing for." She closed her eyes and leaned forward, pressing against the side of his face.
"I'm sorry for something. I know that much."
"Silly boy, not even sure what you're sorry for," she said, with a cotton soft smile and even softer sound in her voice. "You're so wound up in love that you don't even know when you're hurting others."
"What..." The other trailed off as he started to pull away, as if he'd been injured by some unexpected trap.
But she caught his unprepared mouth in a pressing kiss, sight unseen , all lips and firm affection and the sighing breaths of one exhausted human into the mouth of another. This was not the hungry kiss she'd delivered many times, especially early on after they first met. This was the firm press of one mere human against another. No hunger, no desperation, no lust. Simply the affirmation and love from her mouth to his. A plea to remember that she was there, always within reach.
Obanai sighed into her kiss and it went right to her heart.
Her hand clutched at his waist, not to move to him closer to her but a suggestion that she could if she wanted to.
"You need to sleep," she murmured at the same time she broke the kiss.
"I know but I can't..."
"What... what if..." Mitsuri's exhaustion addled brain scrambled for a solution. He needed to sleep but anxiety kept him from doing so even when she was taking care of the baby.
He nuzzled his face into her hair, a gentle yet almost animal gesture, a movement born of need and desperation rather than from human thought.
He spoke into her hair because speaking her face, into her mouth, was too frightening. She could sense that. It was easier to mumble frantic sentences into her cotton candy hair.
"I know it's insane," he whispered, so quiet that she wasn't even sure he meant for her to catch his words. "To lose even a fragment of you means the end of the world to me. I know that's crazy. No one sane thinks like this. I've felt I'm going crazy once our daughter was close to coming into this world. I knew that once she was here, my heart was out of my body and it- it hurts so much, Mitsuri. My heart is out of my chest and my heart is crying when she's hungry or scared or especially when the sun goes down and it's dark out."
Mitsuri's heart kept fracturing, each piece of her all encompassing heart kept breaking but keeping in place, because she knew what he felt. She still needed to keep it together.
She closed her eyes to keep her tears from overflowing her lash lines. "I know what you mean."
"I-"
"No, I really do," she protested, voice weak and quiet against his jawline. "When she's not crying, she's looking up with your eyes."
Your eyes.
She knew that was the phrase that reached deep into his chest like a key and and tuned some hidden lock. The simple sentence had him trying to hold back a tiny hiccupping breath from the storm swirling inside his rib cage.
"She's got - It's not my eyes." He tried to hide the tears he kept at bay in front of those beautiful mismatched irises, but the tremble in his voice gave everything away. All he could manage to choke out in an incomplete sentence was, "Too green."
Mitsuri wanted to pull back, to tell - no, to order him to stop worrying, as if a simple command would correct every issue that brought her husband anything less than warm joy. But Mitsuri knew people didn't work like that. Hell, she knew she didn't work like that and that was just a sample size of herself.
"You can't do this forever," she said calmly but firmly into his ear, chased by a kiss. A gentle phrase, a soft voiced command.
"I know. But I can go a very long time like this."
"Obanai, you..." She sighed, a touch frustrated she wasn't getting anywhere. "If you won't give up this very-much-not-healthy-way-to-deal-with-anxiety deal, then what's a way we can make it easier?"
A listless shrug was all she got in return.
"Darling, it's unlike you to not have an answer," she chided but didn't sound like she meant it.
"Can't be right all the time."
She pursed her lips while her brain spun wheels in place, going nowhere. Until finally she came up with an idea. Perhaps not a great idea but it was an idea, which was better than the none they had seconds ago.
"If you're not going to sleep well, why not just sleep badly out here while I take her?"
"What?"
"Well, if you're just going to lay awake in the bedroom because you're wound up about her being out of your sight, why not just stay here on the couch?" She padded the cushion in the practically nonexistent space between them. "I'll keep an eye on her for a few hours and you can maybe- probably? - doze a bit."
He blinked at her, a little surprised. "You don't have to-"
Oh dear, she was going to have to pull out the big guns. She rarely manipulated him like this but this really was for his own good and the good of their family.
She ducked her head down a little and peered up at him. Her mouth pursed into a perfect disappointed pout. Not fussy but sad. Her face gazed up at him with pleading eyes that all but begged with words.
She heard a sharp intake of breath, a signal that she won. She rarely gave him the doe eyed look because she hated to play on the fact that he almost never told her no, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
As exhausted as he was, she caught the suggestion of color across his pale cheeks.
He swallowed and tried to clear his throat before speaking. "I mean, if that's what you really want."
She blinked slowly, eyes kept locked onto his. "I do want that."
She fought hard to keep a smug smile off her face. He truly was weak to her, no matter what else was going on.
But then he shook his head, as if trying to clear the cobwebs from his brain. "You'll get bored sitting up all night with no TV or-"
Ah, one last resistance and she doubted it was a token gesture. He was going to worry and fuss over his two girls, even when run ragged by his own standards.
"You act like that's a huge hurdle. Really, as smart as you are, you didn't think that I could just wear some headphones while watching something on my phone?"
Still he shifted uneasily, not quite ready to hand back their - their, not just his - daughter.
"Mitsuri, really, you should be the one getting some decent sleep. You're the one who puts up with fuc- with customers all day. I just cook."
"If you don't give me my daughter back, then I'll just stay up all night here with you so neither of us will get sleep."
"That's not-"
"And if you don't at least try to sleep, then we won't open the restaurant tomorrow."
Now that was a real threat. His eyes widened a fraction and he drew back, more than a little aghast.
"Are you kidding? Shutting down for a whole day?"
"Yep! And if you try to go open without me, I'll call the employees and tell them not to come in for the day, so you'd have to do everything by yourself."
It was mean and she knew it.
"That's not fair, Mitsuri. That's a whole day of not earning-"
"Or you could hand her over to me and try to nap on the couch," she said as she settled back into the couch cushions and held her arms out. "See? Easy solution."
"This is blackmail."
"That's making sure you get just enough rest so you don't fall down and crack your head. If you get hurt, we'll have to be closed for more than a day."
"If you tell the delivery boy and the new girl to not come in-"
"Obanai, they have names."
"OK, if you tell Akira and... and..." His eyebrows furrowed as he desperately tried to recall the name of the new girl they hired to take over hosting duties while Mitsuri recovered.
She gave a playful punch to his shoulder. "You are too tired to even remember her name. She's been there for months now."
"I didn't remember it even when I was getting enough sleep. I don't like her."
"You don't like anyone who isn't me."
"I like you and I like our baby. End of list. Anyway, whatever the new girl's name is, it doesn't matter. I'll fire them if they don't come in."
But Mitsuri knew an empty threat when she heard it.
"You know that they would probably be relieved to be fired. They wouldn't have to deal with you all day."
"You got me there." At least, he was self aware about his difficult personality.
"I'm serious, Obanai. I'll do it."
The uncharacteristically stern tone in her voice made him look suddenly grim.
"I know you will," he said before sighing loudly, bordering practically on dramatic. "I didn't know I married the world's meanest woman."
She gave a mock gasp of offense and gave him another faux punch to the shoulder.
He winced as if hurt, but couldn't hide his laughter and his uneven, relaxed grin. "Alright, alright, boss girl. I'll hand her over."
Gently, as if he were delivering something made of glass and spun sugar, he shifted the bundle of warm blankets to Mitsuri's waiting grasp.
Automatically, she adjusted the baby in her arms and peered into the pink face.
"You hear that?" Mitsuri cooed to the baby who was so deep into sleep that even being handed over did nothing to disturb her. "Your papa's going to rest up while you and I spend some girl time together."
"I don't want to interrupt girl time," Obanai said, but his face creased into something anxious and tense. His eyes stayed locked on the baby and Mitsuri saw his hands automatically clench, as if clutching for something that was no longer within his grasp.
She smiled at him and held the baby close. "It's alright, darling. I won't be more than a few steps away, even if I get up to walk her around. Our living room isn't that big."
But he still looked worried. "You want me to get you my old headphones? You can at least listen to something on your phone."
She wanted to say that she was content to just read a book or watch late night tv game shows on mute, but his eagerness warmed her heart. He clearly wanted to be of help, even if it wasn't helping at all. Best to let him do something and get it out of his system.
She gave him a faint smile and said, "Sure, that'd be nice. But it's right to sleep afterwards, mister. That's an order."
He was up and already on his feet and down the hall, where she heard him shuffling through some unpacked box from their last move.
She called out, "You really don't have to go through so much trouble."
But he either ignored her or couldn't hear her as he dug through a box of assorted junk.
Fortunately, his self appointed quest took only a couple of minutes. Then he padded back down the hallway and triumphantly slid a pair of old headphones over her head with the grace and dignity of someone bestowing a tiara onto a new princess.
"There we go," he said, as he carefully pushed her hair out of the way and the cups settled over her ears. "That good?"
She nodded, unable to open her mouth for a moment, lest she cry a bit over his tenderness.
"Where's your phone?" he asked, his voice muffled through the ear-cups.
She tilted her head towards the coffee table.
But he didn't immediately twist around to grab her phone off the table behind him. Instead, his fingers lingered her hair, taking care to ensure the voluminous cotton candy locks were tucked behind her ears. And even when he'd completed that task, his palms smoothed over the top of her head before he planted a kiss so light against her forehead that she barely felt it.
She knew she should scold him for using up what few quiet hours in the night to fuss over her, but truly she couldn't help but bask in the attention. For someone as prickly and bad tempered as him, it felt amazing that he treated her as something delicate and precious. And who was she to resist the charming effects of being made to feel so special?
He balanced her phone on her knee and plugged in the headphone cable for her unasked.
"Do you have something downloaded?" he asked.
"Yes. I'm perfectly capable of operating a phone myself, Obanai."
"Are you too hot? Too cold? You usually run warmer than me-"
"Obanai! Go to sleep!" she hissed, trying to emphasize the command without being loud enough to wake the baby.
He raised an eyebrow. "I was going to turn off the lights but if you insist..."
Damnit. She didn't want to have to get up with the baby just to turn off the lights.
"Fine. Turn off all the lights, if you don't mind. Except the one in the kitchen!" she hurriedly added. "If I get a snack, I need to be able to make my way around without bumping into anything."
Mitsuri's definition of a "snack" was a ready-made full meal Obanai stocked up for her every week. Their fridge was packed tight with things for her to eat at any given time. Her already high metabolism cranked up and burned through calories faster than usual since she became pregnant and the problem only worsened when she started feeding the baby. Not getting enough sleep only increased her frequent hunger. Most days it felt like all she did was eat, sleep, and make sure the baby was fed and cared for. She must have staggered into the restaurant on autopilot for weeks because she barely recalled working.
She watched as Obanai flipped all the lights off and sat heavily down on the sofa next to her. He seemed to sink down, as if finally all his muscles gave up. His eyes fell shut, as if even his eyelids were too heavy to keep open any longer.
Here I am feeling sorry for myself and he's even more tired than me .
"Sleep, darling," she whispered as she brushed a hand over his inky black hair.
He didn't bother to crack open his eyes, but he asked, "You sure?"
"I'm sure that I'm sure."
"You don't need anything else?"
"I'm sure."
"And I'll be... I'll be right here if you need something and... and..." The end of the sentence blurred into a mumbled slurry.
With one hand on the far side of his head, she gradually guided him to lay down on his side. His head came to rest on the couch next to her hip. He curled up, tucking his feet under a random pillow at the other end of the couch.
She marveled at how neatly he fit on their cheap little couch, how small he actually was, barely taking up much more room than most pets. It was easy to forget he was not a big man. His force of personality made him seem larger than what his frame actually contained.
But still he didn't quite give up yet.
"If something happens-"
"If a monster breaks into the apartment, I'm the biggest person here, so they'll eat me first to get a decent meal. I'll be sure to yell and wake you up."
"Don't joke about that," he mumbled but the corner of his mouth curled into the suggestion of a smile.
Within a quiet few seconds, she could already see his face relaxing as sleep won its battle over him. His breathing slowed and, just like their daughter, he quickly fell asleep.
Funny. In all her years of knowing him, he'd always been a light sleeper, taking forever to fall asleep and waking up at the slightest sound. She was usually the one who was out cold the moment her head hit the pillow, while he tossed and turned half the night.
Maybe our girl inherited this terrible sleep schedule from him?
Not that she would hold that against him. She would never blame him for any of the annoying... habits their darling girl had.
She brushed a few stray hairs away from his face, tucking them neatly behind an ear, while she silently admired his sharp features.
So handsome. Pretty.
When they were younger, she wondered why he'd never gone into modeling. He didn't have the height for it but he had the face for it. And those eyes - those eyes! - seemed to pin people to spot when they first caught sight of him. Herself included.
But now as Real Adults with Real Adult Responsibilities, she thanked some unnamed god that he'd stuck to what he enjoyed - cooking. After all, his looks were wonderful but their restaurant stood out in the memories of hundreds or even thousands of people who visited their restaurant over the course of years. Thousands of meals cooked and served together, thousands of days spent hand in hand at each other's side. And now, another life added to their own. Maybe more one day, but it was too soon to say while they were currently overwhelmed with their daughter's nighttime neediness.
Mitsuri meant to turn on something on her phone. Some music, a quiet movie, something with sound. Instead, she found herself immersed in the near silence. She heard three sets of quiet breathing - Obanai's, the baby's, and her own. With the headphones on with no accompanying noise, her breathing reflected back, sounding louder than normal. The headphones made it easier to track her breathing and forcibly slow it down after a tiring day.
What little late night traffic there was outside seemed far away. The sounds of cars and people mellowed over distance and evening humidity, until it reached Mitsuri's ears as nothing more than the sleeping sighs of a city. Far away, someone played music with a heavy beat far too loudly for this late hour, but the sound dampened to a faint pulse through their closed windows, no louder than bare feet padding quietly across the floor.
Mitsuri fought to keep her eyes from drifting shut. Between the night's lull, the twin breaths from her most loved people in the whole world, the comfortable warmth of the baby, and her own new found exhaustion, it took more strength than it should have to not sink into the downy darkness behind her eyelids.
But she would curse herself for falling asleep after she chided Obanai so much for avoiding it. That would be the worst!
She took a sharp breath and blinked rapidly, jarring herself into waking up a little bit. For the next few minutes, at least.
She almost wanted to laugh at how silly this all was.
She didn't know what she did to deserve such a kind husband and the chance to have such a quiet, happy life. She must have done something worthy in another life.
"I'm so lucky to have these small problems," Mitsuri whispered contentedly to herself.
