Chapter 25
Beta's by Black Sparrow
The first trimester ended relatively quickly for Shiori.
Nothing much had changed with the exception that she was a lot more tired than before. She balanced this out through regular sleep and afternoon naps. Kakashi tended to hover around her now a days, to be honest he looked more like an overbearing teddy bear than anything else and so Shiori didn't get annoyed too much by his behavior. He had also started to cook breakfast every day so that she didn't have to get up earlier than needed and stopped her from doing more than minimal housework.
Kakashi's former ANBU team with the exception of Gai, who was still on a long term mission also started to show up more and more often, especially when Kakashi was on a mission and Shiori was alone at home. During those periods of time it became a pretty regular occurrence that one or more of the shinobi dropped by to check on her.
A side effect of these more or less regular visits was that Kakashi's former ANBU team had started to stock up her fridge whenever they dropped by. The reason for that was that they all tended to either stay for dinner or got sent home with a doggy bag when they visited Shiori; whenever they were around she had this uncontrollable urge to feed them. After the black haired woman had found the fridge filled up for the first few times she had just sighed tiredly and accepted the gesture without further argument. Those men could be just as stubborn as Shiori herself and she really didn't have the energy to argue with them about it. Instead she made sure that there were always leftovers in the fridge to send home with one of them.
Shiori had a surprisingly tame first semester, yes she was tired and yes, there were certain smells that made her nauseous and had led to her throwing up once or twice but she didn't hang over the toilet seat like some women did. The change that she did notice more strongly was the increased sensitivity in her breasts and neck; she sometimes couldn't stand Kakashi touching her breasts while at other times she couldn't get enough of it. Her husband thankfully was more than eager to indulge her ever changing wants and needs.
Around the tenth week Shiori's libido increased exceptionally along with her hormone levels and made her nearly insatiable, every touch or slight brush between the two led to intercourse or other sexual gratification. As it turned out the foetus developed his first chakra gates in the tenth week and for that purpose absorbed chakra from its surroundings, which included Kakashi when he was in touching distance.
The silver haired Jounin also started a habit of pressing his ear to his wife's stomach to listen to the child in Shiori. With a bit of chakra manipulation he could now pick up the fluttering heart beat and to him it was the most fascinating sound he had ever heard. Shiori awoke on more than one morning with Kakashi's head pressed against her still flat tummy and listening to their baby developing inside of her.
Kakashi's ninken were just as excited as their summoner was, being pack animals they all wanted to take care of Shiori during her vulnerable state and so spent a lot of time in the World of the humans, running perimeter checks around the property and marking it up against other canine intruders. The ninken also craved physical contact with her, so while she still could get up and around without problems Shiori made it a point to stretch out on a picnic blanket in the middle of the living room when she was reading a book or taking a nap. This always led sooner or later to her being surrounded by warm dog bodies that had snuggled up to her, especially when it started to rain and snow outside.
The black haired civilian had also started to slowly withdraw more and more from the tea house, she was now only once every five days or so present and then only for a few hours. The reason for that was that Himawatari-sensei had warned her from spending too much time standing or walking around, especially after she had entered her second trimester. While her ninja guests and her personnel wondered about her absences nobody voiced anything directly to her. Shiori took this break from her normal duties in the tea house to get a got look at the books and also work through the accumulated paperwork in her new office.
At the beginning of her second trimester Shiori finally informed Sora, Ai and Emiko about her pregnancy; after all they would need to take care of everything when she became unable to do it herself. Her three head workers were out of their depths for the first few moments after Shiori had given them the news, none of them had been aware that she was in a relationship. When Shiori confirmed a grinning Ai's question if the father was a shinobi, her employees suddenly understood her need for discretion promised to keep her pregnancy a secret.
From then on all three of them had a close eye on the amount of work Shiori was doing and had no qualms to send her home more than once so that she was unable to overexert herself. The rest of her staff clearly knew that something was up but they didn't mention it to their customers or in her direct presence. They had been drilled long enough now to be discreet and it started to show in everything that they were doing.
As a result quite a lot of the single service staff had started relationships with ninja.
When during Shiori's fourteenth week her figure started to change nearly unnoticeable and as a result Kakashi spent every free minute worshipping her body. There was nothing more fascinating to him then the continuing growth of their child.
He wasn't the only one to be honest; she had caught the other members of Kakashi's former ANBU team glancing speculatively at her middle more than once. But none of them dared to even entertain the thought of touching her stomach, especially not since the incident when Kakashi growled threateningly at Raido for steadying Shiori when she had overbalanced. The silver haired shinobi had looked just as astonished as the rest of the room but then had simply shrugged and said 'Instincts' without the slightest bit of remorse or embarrassment and had pulled Shiori into his arms and out of reach of the other males. To calm down Kakashi' possessive side Shiori had bared her neck for him and let him do whatever he wanted with her for the next ten minutes before she threw him out of the house with Genma to buy some more groceries. Inwardly she could only shake her head laughing, she was glad that Pakkun and the rest of the ninken had started to explain more about their instincts and how their decade long bond with Kakashi's family had noticeable influenced their behavior. The summoning bond that was created the moment the contract was signed only boosted these effects and especially now that she was pregnant and Kakashi was constantly on a high from her hormones the stronger instincts and characteristics shined through.
With the beginning of the second trimester Shiori suddenly had a lot of time on her hands thanks to her decreased hours in the tea house and the fact that Kakashi refused to let her do more than cooking and a bit of garden work. And so the mother-to-be had started to search for new projects to occupy her time with, one of them was their finances and other affairs. Since their marriage they hadn't really changed anything concerning their finances with the exception that Kakashi had added Shiori to his will and bank accounts and had increased the amount he transferred for the upkeep of the house.
The black haired civilian now did the same her husband had done and also updated her will with an extra clause for her unborn child. After that she turned to their finances and finally started to invest the money of her husband into ventures that looked promising. Shiori also set up a savings account for her child in which a monthly payment from both their accounts would go. They had discussed the pro's and con's about merging their accounts but had decided that this would not only attract attention but could also lead to possible fights should something go wrong financially, there were of course some positive aspects but both had agreed that they weren't worth the possible consequences.
Another project of Shiori's was the back yard and the woods around it. After initially planting the bushes and vegetables about a year ago she had only done a bit of maintenance, now that she had nothing but time the blue eyed woman added new plants and also started to map out the woods behind the garden. On her long walks she was always accompanied by either Kakashi or at least one member of Kakashi's pack.
The first time Shiori distinctly felt her baby kicking was during her seventeenth week. She was outside in the sun when she suddenly felt this unmistakable flutter in her stomach, since then her unborn child had been more or less actively exercising in her belly. Overall Shiori could feel the movements becoming stronger with each week until Kakashi could also feel their baby kicking during her nineteenth week. When their shinobi friends had dropped by on the same day Raido had concernedly asked Shiori if Kakashi was on some kind of strong pain medication because the grin that had split his face had seriously creeped out his comrades.
During her twentieth week of her pregnancy, Shiori ran across a just returned Gai after walking back from a visit at her tea house. The green clad shinobi lost balance at the sight of her slightly protruding stomach and after checking that nobody was present profusely congratulated her on her pregnancy. Shiori thanked the eccentric ninja for his kind words and promptly invited him to dinner the following day.
On that evening Kakashi's former ANBU cell was finally completely in attendance and Shiori laughed tears while watching the antics between them, the dynamic changed once more with the eccentric clean clad shinobi in attendance.
Gai was easily absorbed in the unspoken guard duty of the pregnant Shiori. The taijutsu expert was quite happy that there was once more a regular contact between his former ANBU team mates. Like the other shinobi he too quickly learned to enjoy Shiori's delicious food and pleasant company.
When Shiori brought up the preparing of the baby's room a week after Gai's return, she was suddenly confronted with five overeager ninja who were reading baby catalogs. The first time she had seen the tough as nails shinobi seriously discussing the different benefits of baby beds she had to sit down because she had laughed so hard. On the other hand the over eagerness of the males in her life also led to the bedroom diagonally across from the master bedroom being painted and furnished completely in one day. Shiori had thankfully put down her foot and had chosen a calming and gender neutral yellow instead of a color like vivid green as Gai suggested.
In the next months the room was filled with soft blankets and plush toys the five excited ninja brought back with them from their missions. And in typical ninja fashion Genma and Gai had started a competition about who brought the better presents back, it got so much out of hand that Shiori had to outright ban them from buying presents until the baby was born. Raido and Kakashi had watched grinning while Shiori had set ground rules for the two pouting shinobi. In the meantime Tenzo had stood aside and shook his head at his senpai's antics, while he listened to Shiori putting her foot down regarding the overzealous behavior of his comrades the Mokuton user already went over the wood toys he could make for the youngest Hatake in the coming years.