"Are you sure? Absolutely sure, Zoi?"
Zoisite nodded, thumping his old friend on the shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie.
Nephrite absorbed the blow and never appeared to feel it, still reeling from the bombshell that had unwittingly been dropped on him. His dark azure eyes were wide in his suddenly pale face and he looked a bit dazed as Zoisite answered.
"Hai, Neph. I know what I saw. I just didn't know you didn't already know. I was downtown to pick up some contract documents from the print shop and saw Makoto go into that fancy baby boutique, Ma Petite Enfant. She was picking up little bitty sleepers and frilly baby dresses and cooing over embroidered nursery quilts and fancy carved cradles and whatnot. She even had Minako, the shopping queen, along with her…maybe for moral support."
A faintly amused smile twisted Zoisite's lips. "Minako, being Minako, took one of the strollers for a test drive and managed to wipe out a grand pyramid display of diapers and plush teddy bears. Missed some other pregnant woman by just a frog-hair and then somehow charmed her into not even yelling. Trust me. I couldn't forget that sight if I tried."
"But a baby? Mako said there were ways to prevent… I mean, we've been careful."
"Nothing's one hundred percent foolproof," reminded Zoisite, who knew whereof he spoke, since his significant other was a medical student.
"She was sick not long ago too," Jadeite reminded them as he leaned forward on his elbows. "She threw up at Rei's while she was helping with the incense and had to go home right afterward."
"She said it was the flu," objected Nephrite, shaking his head. He couldn't forget, though, how tired she'd looked then. He'd chalked it up to her class schedule picking up and working a lot of overtime hours when one of the other waitresses at her restaurant took sick, but maybe…
"She bought a mauve and mint green layette set, Neph. I saw her." He ignored Jadeite's 'Real men don't know colors like mauve and mint' crack, scarcely hidden under a fake cough, coming from across the table. "I even overheard her say, as they were leaving, that it would be perfect for the baby when she arrived."
"She?" The idea of a baby 'she' was too much. He had to try to think of something else. He was a seer, for cripe's sake! How had he missed something this big in his own life?
"But why wouldn't Makoto tell me? And why tell Minako, of all people, first?" A faintly hurt expression began to replace the dazedly numb look and shadowed Nephrite's features, turning them stark.
Zoisite shifted uneasily in his chair, listening to the casters squeak alarmingly, and glanced at Kunzite for help. "Well, I couldn't say…exactly. But Makoto's an orphan and the girls are like family to her. The only family she had for years. Probably closer than real siblings would be, when you get right down to it. So maybe letting her in on the secret was her way of making it up to Minako for the bumpy start you guys had in the beginning. And then again, it could be…"
He trailed off, not wanting to say the words, and twisted the end of his queue in on itself. Nephrite spun in his seat, and pinned him with a ferocious glare that had Zoisite flinching.
"Could be…WHAT?"
"Well… in some ways, you know, she's more old fashioned than the others. She's all about hearth and home. It could be that she's maybe kind of embarrassed and uncertain, you know, since she's both young and not married. You haven't asked her, remember?"
"But I love Makoto. I want to marry her," blurted out Nephrite, digging in his coat pocket for the little black velvet box he'd been carrying around. He snapped it open and a fat emerald, cut in the shape of a heart and ringed by tiny diamonds, winked up at him. "I've had the ring for a while now."
Jadeite let out a long, low whistle at the size of the gem-studded ring.
"But you haven't asked her yet," piped up Kunzite for the first time, looking even more sober than usual, a feat some would have considered impossible. "Have you?"
"No," admitted Nephrite, his shoulders slumping. "Send me up against a youma any day of the week and twice on Sundays and I won't even flinch. Tell me to lay down my life for her or for Endymion and I would, in a heartbeat. But imagining asking Makoto to marry me makes me break out in a cold sweat. I just keep thinking, what if she said no? Then where would I be? Worse yet, what if she looked at me like…like…?"
The 'before' and 'back then' remained unspoken, as Nephrite was unable to get the words past his lips. But all four rugged male bodies shuddered in rueful understanding as each man remembered all too well what his Silver Millennium lover's face, wracked by pain and ashen with betrayal, had looked like before, back then when the Shitennou had slain the senshi in cold blood while under the demon Metallia's thrall.
"Maybe," mused Jadeite with a reflection and maturity that was unusual for him, "you need to stop thinking about that and try to move beyond it so you can start concentrating on how you feel about her being pregnant. About being a father." He shot his friend a quick little sidelong glance, uncertain of what response he would get. "How do you feel about that?"
Nephrite suddenly looked more dazed than ever.
In his mind's eye he could see a gently smiling Makoto, curvier than ever, her stomach softly rounded with his child. He could see too, the gold and emerald bands on her hand as it rested protectively over her gravid belly. Then the image of a cherubic infant…no, a girl, with petal soft, round cheeks, pink rosebud lips, downy nut brown curls and shining gemstone eyes superimposed itself on the picture. Would, he wondered, a child of theirs inherit his sapphire gaze or her emerald?
The mental image grew more detailed. He could hear Makoto humming a lullaby, ever so faintly off key, as she cradled a nursing, pink blanket-swaddled bundle to her bosom. He could hear infectious baby giggles and the soft patter of bootie-clad feet. He could almost smell the sweetness of milk and baby powder. He could hear a toddler girl's innocent voice calling him…
The vague, goofy smile began to slowly curve his lips until he was wearing a full fledged, giddy grin. Abruptly he leapt up and grabbed his friends, dragging all the startled men halfway across the table in a crushing group hug.
"Sweet Sol, congratulate me! I'm gonna be a DADDY!!!"
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When a tired Makoto arrived home from work late that day, she stared bemusedly at the candle-bedecked, china-laden table, wondering if she'd missed some anniversary somehow. She couldn't think of any and finally had to give up, resorting to asking.
"What's going on?"
Nephrite poked his head out of the kitchen and she couldn't help but smile at the picture he made, in his teriyaki smudged, vinaigrette streaked, 'Kiss The Cook' apron, one of her chef's hats perched drunkenly on his head. He appeared to be hiding something behind his back and Makoto blinked, knowing a frisson of fear for the state of her kitchen.
"Oh…you're home." he muttered nervously. "Why don't you go change, hon, and maybe put your feet up for a while I get things on the table? You do so much of the cooking; I thought I'd cook for you tonight instead."
Truth to tell, Nephrite had been cooking, at least as well as he was able, all afternoon. With help from the guys, he'd created a special meal in hopes of conveying to Makoto that he knew about the secret and that it was okay to tell him. They would sup on baby back ribs, baby peas and carrots, and a couscous and baby corn salad. He'd even dropped off at Makoto's favorite bakery, and though he'd winced at the place's name (A Bun In The Oven), he'd picked up a dozen or so pink iced petits fours that they specialized in, the fancy little sweets she teasingly called baby cakes.
And after she'd told him, he would remind her how much he loved her and how much he loved their child because it was a part of her. Then he'd ask her to marry him. And he wouldn't take no for an answer.
Makoto's uneasy feeling began to grow, but when he gave her a gentle shove in the other direction, she went, since her feet were starting to hurt in her saddle oxfords, which lacked something in the arch-support department.
When he called her to eat, the candles were flickering gently and she sniffed approvingly at the dinner (he'd improved by leaps and bounds since he'd moved in with her), but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. With unnatural quietness, they dined. She enjoyed the sweet peas and tender new carrots, the smoky-sweet meat. But the silence was terribly fraught with dangerous emotion. And when he broke it, starting with, "Sometimes in life things happen that aren't planned," Makoto knew something was very, very wrong.
She set down her flute of sparkling cider with a table-jarring thump that rattled the china and pinned him with a look that brooked no deceit. "Nephrite, what on Earth are you saying? You've been dancing around telling me something all night. Did you set up this whole thing to try and tell me gently that you've met someone else and we're breaking up, because I can tell you this, if you did, it's not working."
He stared at her as if her hair had gone green…which, dammit, sometimes it was, she thought. As if she'd announced she was an alien…which she definitely was. Oh hell! Her life was not fair! He was probably trying to tell her that he was taken with that brazen, red-headed hussy of a secretary she'd never liked. The one who cooed over him always told him how wonderful he was and who hadn't been known to throw things at him while in a temper…things like lightning bolts.
"What the hell do you mean, breaking up, Makoto?" he demanded. "Are you saying you want to break up? Now?!"
She blushed, unable to answer, ashamed at her outburst.
Nephrite glowered down at her. He'd never quite trusted that kissy-faced, free and easy Frenchman who taught the cordon bleu classes at her culinary school. He was, in Nephrite's opinion, far too…affectionate with women in general, and Nephrite's woman in particular. And if his sweet Makoto thought he was going to let her leave him and take off with their baby for Paris with that, that…frog in a chef's coat, well, she'd have another think coming, he could tell her that much.
"Is now a problem?" Makoto asked shakily, shoving a tendril of hair behind her ear and staring down at the bubbles fizzing in her glass. She could feel her stomach begin to heave. She shoved her chair away from the table and rose. She needed some air.
"I'd damn well say it is!" burst out Nephrite, slamming a fist on the table. The china, the glassware and Makoto all jumped. "What with the baby on the way. I know you hadn't told me, but I found out that you were baby shopping anyway. We've got to get married. I love you both too much to let you go hieing off with our daughter. "
"What ARE you talking about? I'm not the one going anywhere." Makoto gaped at him like a fish beached on the sand, wondering what in heaven's name her shopping for her co-worker Kimiko's baby-shower gift had to do with anything and when Nephrite had lost his mind. "And what do you mean, our daughter?" The rest of his sentence hit her and she dropped into her chair again as if she'd been cut off at the knees.
"Married?" she whispered uncertainly, tears starting in the corners of her eyes.
Nephrite rounded the table and, kneeling before her, dabbed at the spilled drops on her cheeks with a linen napkin. "Our baby, sweetheart. I know you're pregnant. Zoi accidentally let the cat out of the bag with this one. I just wanted to show you how happy I was about it before I asked you to marry me."
He took her chill hands in his larger, warm ones, and somehow when he pulled them away, a soft, velvet box was sitting cupped in her palms. He didn't forget Jadeite's admonition to tell her how he wanted to marry her even before he learned of the baby, least she incorrectly think he only wanted to marry her because she was pregnant.
"Gods, but I love you, woman! I've had the ring for months, honey. I just couldn't seem to find the right way to ask you. And I know this isn't it either, but it's real and it's now."
Nephrite gently flipped up the lid of the box, revealing the gorgeous emerald ring within, smiling a little as she gasped. "Marry me, Makoto, and make me the happiest man in all of Japan. Hell…all Terra itself."
He slid the ring from its compartment and went to slide it onto her left hand but paused, looking worried when she only continued to stare mutely at him. "The proper etiquette, honey, is to say, of course I'll marry you, darling," he hinted.
Her lower lip trembling, Makoto barely managed a shaky, "Hai. If you want me to, I'll marry you, b…"
Nephrite's heated lips on hers smothered the 'but' she'd been about to speak, and he scooped her up out of her chair, carrying her from the room. It wasn't until much, much later, when she lay sprawled across his chest among hopelessly tangled bedclothes that she remembered it.
"Nephrite..."
"Hrm?" he asked, gracing his fiancée with a lazy, satisfied grin. She looked damned good wearing his ring, a sheet and precious little else.
"You didn't let me say this before, but I've got to tell you." She sighed. "I'm really not pregnant."
He blinked, opened his mouth and tried to speak, but couldn't find the words. Makoto grinned, leaning forward to kiss the tip of his nose.
"Remind me never to listen to that idiot Zoi again," he finally grumbled, looking chagrined. Then he paused and stared deeply into her eyes, momentarily fierce. "You're still marrying me, Makoto," he ordered.
She laughed and kissed his nose again just because he looked so cute. "Okay."
He eyed her consideringly. "You're absolutely sure?" he asked.
"Trust me, Neph…I am absolutely, positively not pregnant."
He mulled over that thought for a moment, then grinned wickedly, stroking his palm possessively around her slim waist to her flat belly and then dipped lower, making her gasp. His breath was hot against her as he first nibbled on her earlobe, then breathed, "Wanna be?"
Her delighted laughter was answer enough.
