Every night when Maki slunk back into the home she and Kaito had made for themselves, she was greeted not with the sight of her boyfriend and favorite person, but with the small cage that sat just down the hall from the front door. At the sound of the door opening, the creature inside the cage would begin to stir, and by the time Maki had locked up, taken off her shoes and tossed aside everything else she carried with her for work, there were sounds of scratching coming from the cage. "Yes, yes, I know you missed me," she'd call towards the animal that was desperately waiting for her to come release it, and she would crouch down in front of the cage to open the door.

Hopping out with ease was a long-haired, soft brown rabbit that would binky around and flop on Maki's feet, looking up at her with one dark eye that she couldn't tell the difference between iris and pupil in. "You're such a spoiled rabbit," she'd tease, pulling a foot away to use it to gently tickle underneath the rabbit's chin. "I don't think anyone else would take this much care of you, Bunbun."

As the creature she was speaking to was a rabbit, she didn't get much of a response, but when she got both of her feet free of the rabbit's fur and started heading for the bedroom, Bunbun would follow her, oftentimes zooming ahead of her and flopping against the door. She'd laugh as she let her pet inside, watching as Bunbun ran straight to the cage that was set up in there and climbed in, getting settled amongst the bedding in the bottom of it while she closed the cage's door tightly. That was when she'd strip down to nothing and change into her pajamas, crawling into bed next to the fast-asleep Kaito who didn't know a thing about her nightly routine with her pet rabbit.

What he did, know, was that she loved that bunny almost as much as she loved him, and he was frequently having to watch her take care of the rabbit before she would do anything else. "C'mon, Maki Roll, it's not gonna kill him if his dinner doesn't come at the right time," he said on one of her nights off, while she was setting up Bunbun's dinner of hay and fresh vegetables in a bowl right near where the humans were going to be eating. "You're makin' me starve waiting for him to have some gourmet dining!"

"Rabbits need company, Kaito, and since he's here alone I'm the only company he gets. I'm not neglecting him just because someone with working legs and thumbs refuses to make his own meal sometimes." Dropping the last bits of what she'd prepared into the bowl and watching as her furry friend began chewing away on his hay, Maki looked at Kaito and saw gears turning inside of his mind. "What, you thinking about how you're going to cook yourself something tonight? Just because I'm here doesn't mean I have to do it for you."

"But it tastes better when you cook it," he pointed out, "and I have to make myself a lot of dinners when you have early nights on the job. Sometimes it's just nice to have someone else do the cooking."

"Doesn't change the fact that Bunbun needs to be fed too. But now that I'm done with him, I'll get started on our meal, I guess." There was resentment in Maki's voice, but she didn't mean anything by it, as it was a regular argument they had about her taking extra-good care of Bunbun. Kaito just didn't understand how someone could love their pet rabbit so much, and she wasn't going to waste her breath explaining the multitude of reason why she cherished the little guy.

Except, as she found out, he did understand her love, and he wanted to help out with things however he could. That was his reasoning for surprising her with a rescue rabbit for her birthday, another long-haired bunny that was incredibly skittish and shaking as he presented it to her. "I…don't think I asked for this," she bluntly stated, looking at the poor creature she'd been given. "I mean, I'll take care of them, but I was perfectly fine being Bunbun's companion, we had things down to a science."

"The lady at the shelter said it's best for rabbits to be in pairs, and when I mentioned that Bunbun was a he, she gave me this li'l guy and said he'd be a perfect friend for him." Kaito was grinning as he watched Maki adjust how she was holding the smaller, darker rabbit before choosing to set him down and letting him dart behind a bookshelf. "She also mentioned he's gonna need some extra love, and I thought that'd work great with you, since you love Bunbun so much already."

"I'll look into acclimating rabbits to each other, and thankfully I've already got two cages, but this is going to be a lot of work, Kaito. Do you realize what you've signed me up for?" He didn't, because he hadn't thought more about the present than the fact that Maki already had one rabbit, so a second shouldn't have been a problem. "I'm just glad you made sure to get a second male, I don't know what I'd do if we suddenly had a whole warren under our roof."

"A whole…what?"

She stared blankly at him. "A warren. Family of rabbits. You know what happens when you have a male and a female together, don't you?" He chuckled and reassured her that he did, he just hadn't known what the term she used meant. "Oh, well, now you know, I guess. Does he have a name?"

"The cage said his name was Brownie. Didn't think I'd want to change it without you knowing, so the papers still say Brownie on them, but it's up to you." Kaito's grin had long disappeared, but hearing that Maki was at least warming up to the idea of having a second rabbit in the house was making it creep back onto his face. "I think the lady at the shelter really wanted him gone, she seemed super eager to give him to me."

Having grown bored with the conversation and worried about her new pet, Maki was walking away and going to see where Brownie had gotten off to, so that she could show him his cage and begin getting the house ready for the bunny bonding that was needing to happen. "I'm sure it's because rabbits aren't a popular pet, and you walked right in asking for one instead of any other animal. She was probably over the moon about someone giving him a new home, honestly."

He accepted that answer and went to go do something else, leaving Maki to fish out a rabbit from where he'd gotten himself wedged in his frantic attempt at hiding. As she carried him into the bedroom, passing Bunbun's cage where the lighter rabbit was in the middle of a nap, she felt something strange about the creature in her hands, but she shook off her worries, thinking that neither Kaito nor someone at an animal shelter would lie about something. Once Brownie was in the former bedtime cage of Bunbun's, Maki hopped up onto the bed and began looking into ways to make two male rabbits bond together, so that they could cohabitate without causing any issues. She found many resources that looked to be time-consuming, but when it came to her furry child (or children now, thanks to the gift), she had to do what was necessary no matter how long it took.

More cage pieces were purchased, claws were gently filed down, and soon the process of bonding the two was in full swing. Kaito would often find Maki in the bathroom with the two, part of the cage separating the bathtub with one rabbit on each side, looking like she was about to pull her hair out in frustration as they didn't seem to be interested in each other. There were a couple spats between the rabbits (and their humans, Maki taking it very personally when Kaito's gift rabbit attacked Bunbun through the cage), but after weeks of spending almost every day doing some bonding activity, the day came where Bunbun and Brownie looked like they were able to get along.

It was a moment of truth when she pulled the cage away and let the two interact, and for a few seconds everything seemed to be perfectly fine, Brownie giving a binky while Bunbun hopped over him, but then—"Kaito, I thought you said Brownie was a male rabbit!" Her scream was audible through the house, teeming with anger, and he rushed to see what was going on.

When he peeked into the bathroom she was staring down at the rabbits on top of each other in the bottom of the tub. "I…was told he was. Is he not?" he asked, coming inside to see what Maki was so angrily watching, and he visibly paled at the sight. "Oh geez, uh, maybe they're both just guys who really love each other?"

"I told you I didn't want to have a warren under this roof!" Maki was too shocked at what had transpired to take any action, but once the rabbits separated she was taking them back to their cages, not even speaking to Kaito while she worked. It wasn't his fault that he'd been lied to about Brownie, he thought he was doing her a favor by bringing her home a second rabbit and instead he'd caused more of a headache than she'd ever wanted.

Just over a month later, four little lionhead babies were born in the bottom of Brownie's cage, and even though she'd sworn up and down many times she didn't want to have all those rabbits to take care of, one look at seeing her grandbunnies and Maki's heart was lost to them. Of course, she wasn't going to allow their family of rabbits to grow any larger, so she had Brownie spayed and had the babies taken care of once they were old enough (she'd been told when she got Bunbun that he couldn't go through the surgery, otherwise he would've been fixed long before there'd been a problem), and she happily spent her free time raising her little warren she'd never asked for. And Kaito, the accidental instigator of the whole situation, could only sit by and watch as she treated all six rabbits with the same love she'd treated Bunbun with to begin with, proving that her love of the animal had never been out of wanting him to feel like he had a companion, but out of her wanting to make sure he got to live his best life.

A/N: as with Kaito being obsessed with his garden in the previous fic, here we have Maki obsessed with her pet rabbit for the animal prompt