"Did they get new chairs?" Tests the spring of the cushion, scoots up to the edge of the seat, then sinks back again. Arms draped over the sides as he looks over at her. "Are these new chairs?"
"You know, I've never actually used them." She thinks her meaning is obvious from her tone, but then remembers who he is. Sighs to herself as she watches her point sail right over his head.
He's sat forward, bent at the waist to look down at the chair's legs. Sits up again, nodding to himself. "Yeah, babe, these are definitely new chairs. Or maybe—?" Pulls one leg up, twisting around to his side, laying his head back. Shuts his eyes for a whole three seconds, and then back upright he is once more, a smug smirk on his lips, pleased to have solved the mystery so definitively. And his friends say he's oblivious. "Yeah, definitely not the ones I fell asleep in last time."
Mimi leans back on the pillow and waits. If she were petty, she'd countdown to the moment of retribution on her hand, but they're not alone. And because luck has always been on her side, the technician has already turned towards him, the open tube of ultrasonic gel in her gloved hands hovering just over Mimi's exposed abdomen. "You fell asleep while your girlfriend was in labor?"
Bingo.
Her turn to smirk as she watches reality slow down for his perception of it to catch up. "Uh—,"
"Yes, Taichi." Smiling sweetly at him, adjusting the soft towel spread across her lower belly, settling into the most comfortable position for the routine appointment. "Please, tell everyone about how I was in hour seventeen of labor giving birth to our second child, and I looked around the room for a little support, and where were you?" Tilts her head to the side, exaggerating the search through her memory.
His thought process plays out visibly across his face, and yet he still manages to surprise her. "Okay, so," directing this to the tech, who's still staring at him, mouth stunned open, "we'd just closed General Assembly, right? It was two straight weeks of the most mission activity any of us see at UN Headquarters, meaning we're up at three, four in the morning until half midnight if we're lucky, and—,"
"Good morning, Ms Tachikawa, Mr Yagami, sorry I'm late." Their OB-GYN smiles brightly upon entering the room, still tugging into one of the sleeves of her white coat. She'd been with them for years, Mimi attached to her warm demeanor and level headedness, finding a kismet soul in what Taichi privately found to be a well-meaning if scatterbrained cheerfulness. Hers is a very busy clinic, though, with a strong word-of-mouth reputation. Both sons had been born under the attentive charge of their team of midwives and nurses, and were still cared for by pediatricians in associated clinics. Lucky, to say the least. "Traffic was a bear, wasn't it?"
"And the traffic!" Sounding a little strangled now, both of Mimi's brows rising at his uncharacteristic desperation. "There was so much traffic going to the airport, and from the airport, and—and, even with diplomatic clearance, like, don't get me started on airport security these days, it's unbelievable what—,"
The snug slap of the doctor's latex glove around her wrist interrupts his awkward rambling, the sound snapping the technician's attention back to the present task, narrating each step to the procedure as it would occur, per clinic standard. The tech applies the gel evenly before handing the transducer to the OB-GYN, who wheels up next to the left side of Mimi's bed, Taichi moving to hover on the other side. He's still looking a little ruffled, until Mimi winks at him, and his shoulders sink. Mouths a Can't believe you at her, and she mimes dramatically dozing off, faking a silent snore. Squealing laugh muffled by the kind of kiss he uses when he's trying to shut her up, grinning against her mouth.
Their amused doctor clicks through the readings, scanning each ultrasonic photo she makes. "All right, now, hold for a minute here. That's how you two ended up back again this time, isn't it?"
"Last time," vows Mimi, holding the side of his face, thumb tucked into his dimple, his soft stubble under her palm.
"What you said last time, too." Kisses the inner bridge of her hand.
"And whose fault is that?"
"Ours." Taichi laughs when she wrinkles her nose, laying her head back on the pillow. Looking up at him through long, curled lashes, that soft early glow flooding her high cheeks in dewy pinks. She's been beautiful all his life, but the primal part of his brain will never get over what the gorgeous sight of that rounded swell on her does to him. "We're cursed with a talent for making some damn cute blobs, Tachikawa."
Mimi snorts, fingers twining between his, resting their hands together near her shoulder. Her gaze softens at the monitor screen tilted in their direction. Murmurs to herself, a happy hum, "It is a cute blob, isn't it?"
"Hm." Their OB-GYN leans forward, squinting through round glasses.
Taichi keeps his tone casual, ears pricking at what Mimi hasn't noticed yet. Aware of the kinds of subtleties in tactical changes in situations that left people who didn't know this about him surprised by the attention he could wield, when he wanted. "Right, doc'?"
"Excuse me," the doctor says, distracted, and already turning to the technician, her voice clipped of all good humor. They spoke not in a whisper, but not audible either.
Mimi hasn't drawn her eyes from the monitor, searching through the thin cluster of pixels with eager affection, warming to how novel this could still feel, third time through. She always considered the twenty-week ultrasound the first moment of meeting, from hearing the heartbeat to taking home the printed picture. She and her baby could now be properly introduced. She'd waited all her life to meet them.
Taichi hooks his thumb around under her hand, pressing his thumbprint to the center of her palm, where her pulse moves. She glances at him, sensing his mood shift. About to tease him for it, how he always got during these appointments. The best father she could have asked for her children, so much so she'd allowed herself to be furious with him for only fifteen minutes when the second line on the fourth stick she'd peed on in a row had still shown up clear and undeniable three months ago.
It hadn't been her best moment, admittedly.
Barely eight in the morning, and he'd been yelling at her from the kitchen to hurry up and finish in the bathroom so she could come help him wrestle their eldest into the last clean kindergarten uniform they had as the child sobbed over the uniquely cruel injustice that was being sent to school again when he'd just gone the day before, their youngest taking advantage of the lack of supervision to swiftly remove his soiled cloth diaper and drag it behind him as he slingshot himself around the flat on inexplicably speedy toddling legs. The kettle was whistling on the stove, the washing machine groaning at the ceaseless effort of cleaning the bedsheets one of her sons had peed through yet again the night before, Taichi's work phone was pinging nonstop as he spoke in barely withheld frustration into his Bluetooth headset mic on another overseas call, Mimi's assistant was running late to pick her up for an important all-day shareholders' retreat for her company, a delivery person with their new sofa was impatiently knocking at their apartment door, and her mother was texting her with the bad news that her parents wouldn't be able to watch the children today after all, so couldn't she just find another sitter?
Mimi just sat bent over on the toilet with her hands holding up her forehead and every pregnancy test she'd taken on the floor at her feet where she'd dropped them one by one in numbed disbelief. The pressed silk blouse she'd put on only a half hour earlier had already gotten spit up on the collar, her hair hung half in curlers, her panties crumpled down around her ankles, the bathroom door was wide open because she hadn't had a morsel of privacy since the first time she'd taken a test like this, and all she could do was listen to the chaos that was her small life as another one bloomed unplanned inside her.
But then none of this had been planned, not even Taichi.
Had told Sora once, as teenagers, over a blunt the pair were sharing huddled in the back of Yamato's car during a private break from the unraveling havoc that had become Jou's farewell to medical fellowship pool party, that she'd really fucked Mimi over, winning the relationship jackpot with the most stable, thoughtful man either of them had ever known. It had always been easy to put Yamato on a very high pedestal. Everyone did, their parents included. Mimi privately found him a little too pretty and a lot too strung out on his feelings for her taste, but he set a certain standard. Sora had laughed, told her the grass is never as green as you think, and said she was too young to give up romance just because true love hadn't found her at fourteen, too. Taichi'd crawled his way over the backseat right then, unceremoniously kicking Mimi aside to demand Sora's undivided attention so he could complain about Yamato bullying him by not letting him jump off the poolhouse roof even though everyone knows he could do it, easy. Mimi had pushed right back, the pair squabbling childishly over Sora's shrill protests, until Mimi lost her composure and, desperate to get him to leave so she could reclaim her girl time with Sora, told Taichi that if he did manage to jump into the pool from the roof she'd let him kiss her, the most coveted reward she could come up with for any dare, and a sure way to get anyone to leave her in peace for a little while. He'd said an immediate no, thanks to that offer, but did fall off the trellis trying to get up to the roof anyway, breaking his leg in three places.
Stuck in a cast for a whole summer, he became the only one of their friends who literally couldn't avoid her infamous culinary experiments, reluctantly taste-testing his way through what would become her first cookbook. Fed him through graduate school, on breaks between foreign service assignments, during the increasingly rare holiday at home, and then in the days between holidays, too. Gave in then and kissed her, finally, in lieu of a verbal apology for missing her third cookbook release party, which she'd left early just to see him for the six hours of his layover. Swore he sucked out her soul through her clit on the next layover, setting a certain standard. Became pregnant not even two years later, the first time, the second, just over two years after that. They still hadn't discussed marriage, but he still wore the cheap rings she bought them as a joke at the department store next to her OB-GYN's clinic after she'd had a copper IUD inserted, assured by the spectacularly low failure rate. Unlucky, to say the least.
The tears burst through then without warning, so overwhelmed and overcome by a slew of emotions that when Taichi had finally walked into the bathroom, holding one child apiece under either arm like the wiggliest set of matching lumpy luggage, to ask her why the fuck it was taking her so goddamn long to pee, she hurled one of the test sticks at his face with such force at close range it almost scratched his cornea. This had just made her cry harder, horrified by her outburst, consolable only after a long period of making out with him on the tiled bathroom floor with their sons babbling and hollering and climbing around all over them, hiccuping through teary laughter as he whispered deliriously happy nonsense to her belly, held tight and safe in the cradle of his arms.
His fingers are tight around her hand now, too, pinching harder than normal at the skin. She stares up at him, her smile thinning at the way his no longer meets his dark brown eyes. "Mimi."
Their doctor turns back to them. She's not really smiling anymore either. "Will you both give me a few minutes?"
Mimi sits up, Taichi's hand holding firm to her shoulder. "What's wrong?"
"It might be nothing, but let me just confer, and I'll—,"
"No, but—Taichi?" twisting her head around to look at him again, then back at the pair on the other side of the monitors they've pulled back. The technician turns the sound off on the machine. Mimi lurches forward. "I don't—wait, no—but the—?"
"One moment, okay?" A quick smile of reassurance, her mouth a flat line, and the door shuts, and they're alone.
Her mouth is frozen open, eyes wide ahead at nothing. He slips an arm around her stilled shoulders, his forehead pressed to her temple. Softly kisses the wisps of her loose hair there, and she shudders, coming back to life, "Get off me."
"Mimi."
"Get it off me." Speaks even lower then, but clearer this time. Taichi parts from her, leaving her cold, her breathing coming too fast. Allows him to wipe up the cooled gel from her just barely there bump. Touches his broad hand around the tender swell so reverently she tells herself to look anywhere else or she'll scream. Finds the darkened monitor tilted away from her view, and almost does. "I was sure—," and stops, whimpering. She can't do this.
Taichi rolls the used towels and napkins and sets them aside. Climbs onto the cushioned, armless patient's chair with her, pressing every inch of his body close to every inch of hers, seeking to warm her up. When it doesn't work, he tucks his face into the curve of her neck, lips touched to the nape. "We just need to wait a minute."
"For what?" Her panic muted, entire body shivering. His hand sliding around her front to press his palm flat to the center of her chest, holding her together as their heart breaks. She curls her fingers around his, holding on tight enough to dig moon slivers into the skin of his arm with her fingernails, a life raft. "For what?"
He doesn't answer her then, or the five more times she asks.
His arms close tighter when the door opens, the OB-GYN and technician filtering back into the room, their steps synchronized, like they'd rehearsed it.
Taichi raises his head, meeting their doctor's gaze. Confusion sets in at once, heavy-handed.
Her smile is as it had been at the start of the appointment, beaming at them. "I am very sorry for the delay. I thought there was an unusual heart reading, something we didn't catch the last time, which can happen, of course. I had to be sure, and I'm so glad I did." Flicks the audio stream back on, while the tech picks up the tube of gel, motioning politely for Taichi to ease off his protective hold from around Mimi's abdomen. He does, unsure, Mimi grabbing at his arm in a panic. It's awkward to resume the ultrasound while he's curled around her, but she doesn't let him off the bed, and the clinical staff seem unbothered, really, too pleased with the confirmation of events. "Just listen. Do you hear it?"
Mimi props herself up on her elbow, Taichi on his side beside her. The pattern isn't normal.
"Oh," says Taichi, a bit stupidly.
Mimi mouths blankly up at him. "There's—?"
"Two!" The doctor beams, relieved to have good news. Even the tech is grinning.
Taichi's on his ass on the floor in the same minute. "Are you kidding me, Yagami?" shrieks Mimi, hurling the pillow at him. "Do you have any idea how big your babies are? Are you trying to kill me? How am I going to look after this?"
Beautiful, he wants to tell her, grinning wide. Catches the pillow, then the towel. Watching her try to yank at the cushion sewn into the top half of the patient's bed to throw at him next, deliriously happy. Look at everything you can do.