#exactly!!!

some people might think that it’s pretty quiet without the kids around (or with them, even, with their soft murmuring voices and sly smiles). with both tsumiki and megumi at school, or a club, or shipped away to some friends house for the space, there’s two less souls to take up sound.

without them, it should be only the buzzing of the house sinking into the ground, the shivering sounds of wind outside, or the hum of some animals lurking outside, waiting for whatever opportunity they can find.

or, so someone might think. but no.

instead it’s satoru, collapsed against the coffee table like he was brutally attacked and had a dagger implanted between his two lower ribs, breath shaky and pathetic.

“this is dumb,” he complains, for maybe the twentieth time.

“yup,” you answer, signing your name once again. mission reports are one thing—a very long, boring thing that you got used to when you were still in school—but children are another. there shouldn’t be this much paperwork just to keep them registered to you like some pet.

please return here if lost. maybe your phone number tattooed in their skin isn’t such a bad idea… satoru has proposed worse things.

“you know, maybe our dog ate these forms,” he suggests, “they do smell good.”

“we don’t have a dog. and they what?”

“like… a nice broth.”

“are you—don’t sniff the paper, satoru.”

satoru hums, doing just that. “i’m hungry.”

“finish your lines,” you tell him, grabbing the paper, “and then we can get dinner.”

“should’ve made ijichi do this. he gets bored on his days off.”

“he doesn’t get days off because—“

“what happened to those fancy quill fountain pens i got? the sparkly ones.”

you blink. “the what?”

satoru scribbles another illegible signature, sliding the paper over to you and grabbing the next. “the ones with our names engraved. i ordered them when you and tsumiki were looking at those drawing pencils for her summer class.”

his handwriting should be brilliant, with the delicate grip he’s got on a plain old ballpoint. satoru was trained with the highest of tutors, and you can almost tell, with the stark look of his veins running up his hand.

the ease of his fingers, and the smooth dip and curve in every movement. there are many uses for those hands—though filling out forms probably isn’t one of them.

“why would you buy those?”

“so i can pretend im a lord from the edo era, writing to my long lost lover—you, of course—from a continent away, while someone fans my feet and feeds me grapes.”

“why would i be a continent away?”

“in a valiant and romantic gesture, i sent you away to avoid catching a nasty illness making its way through the country.”

“you just wanna mess around with some concubines, huh?”

“how dare you,” satoru says, grabbing your hand—the one currently writing—with that strong grip. “i would never betray my wife like that.”

“you just messed up this one, satoru, the ink is—“

“you doubt my loyalty?” he asks, pouting. “what did i ever do—“

“i’m gonna have to print it again, and it’s getting dark already—“

“i would rather commit seppuku—“

you lift your hand, kissing his wrist and then shaking him off. satoru goes, but oh so sadly, placing his head back down on the coffee table with the sigh of a thousand disappointments.

you move the ruined form out of the way, resuming. maybe you’re getting a little hungry, too, and the sooner you finish, the easier it’ll be to goad satoru into mailing everything off before the evening is over.

it continues like this, not quite quiet even without the kids around. satoru and you fill the space easily, like you have since you met, minds connected by some strange, torturous string that leaves you reeling.

and every once in a while, satoru makes a groaning noise in the back of his throat, almost too breathless to—