New Adventures in Parenting

by red_river

Summary:

“Shinichi had a bit of an unexpected reaction to the latest antidote…” Dr. Araide was saying.

“Cut the platitudes. Just put Shinichi on the phone,” Rei snapped. And then froze as he heard, unmistakably, the sound of a baby gurgling.

He could feel Araide wincing. “Maybe I’d better send a photo.”

*

After a mistake with the APTX antidote, Shinichi gets stuck as a seven-month-old infant. Rei and Akai, unwisely, decide they can handle that. Mission 110 spinoff.

Notes:

Next installment in the Mission 110 'verse, sort of : ) I haven't put it in the formal lineup of stories because Shinichi turning into a baby is slightly less plausible than the rest of that. But I saw a fanart of adorable baby Shinichi with these two, and I couldn't help myself. Thinking this will just be a few one-shots about Rei and Akai trying to handle a newborn.

Nominally set in the Mission 110 universe, where Shinichi (Conan), Rei, and Akai, becoming a family of convenience for the sake of their cover and then becoming something a lot more irreplaceable than that. It's Akai x Rei, but mostly just family vibes.

Chapter 1: Survival

 

Rei paced in front of the couch, trying not to jostle the baby on his shoulder. It was hard to know if he pulled it off, since he just kept crying. No, not crying. Full-on screaming, clearly working through the seven-month-old’s equivalent of an existential crisis.

He’d never been good with babies. Probably because babies couldn’t be charmed like café patrons or skillfully manipulated like corrupt politicians. But this wasn’t just any baby. It was his baby. His kid—Kudou Shinichi. Even if his only resemblance to Rei’s troublemaking little detective right now was those big, heartbreaking blue eyes.

Rei had always known that two teenagers trying to back-engineer the Apotoxin antidote through trial and error was a recipe for disaster. But this…this had not been on his radar. Dr. Araide had joined Sherry’s project, now that he knew the truth about Shinichi. So it was Dr. Araide who’d called, two weeks ago, his voice so deliberately calm Rei’s heart practically stopped.

“The important thing to keep in mind is that he’s safe and healthy.” Which Rei knew you only said when whatever came after it was unimaginably bad.

Rei looked up at Akai. His eyes were sharp, his posture loose—but it was the kind of loose Rei knew meant Akai was mentally tallying the guns in his trunk. In the background, Rei could make out the sound of Miyano Shiho cooing as she placated…a cat? What was he hearing?

“Shinichi had a bit of an unexpected reaction to the latest antidote…” Dr. Araide was saying, before Rei lost his temper.

“Cut the platitudes. Just put Shinichi on the phone,” he snapped. And then froze as he heard, unmistakably, the sound of a baby gurgling.

He could feel Araide wincing. “Maybe I’d better send a photo.”

How it happened, no one had explained in terms Rei could understand. But what had happened was unmistakable. Kudou Shinichi, seventeen-year-old detective, sometime seven-year-old reluctant elementary school student, was suddenly seven months old again. And trying to fit his pudgy foot in his mouth, per the photo.

Everything after that was a blur. Rei loosely remembered shoving essentials into a duffel bag and locking the house while Akai made some surprise-family-getaway excuses to the neighbors. They cleared out the baby aisle at the local department store and picked up fast-tracked birth certificates and photo IDs from Agent Starling for their new cover identities on the way to an anonymously rented townhouse (courtesy of the Kudous). Rei was a little annoyed that the FBI could apparently fabricate flawless fake documents, with his country’s official seals, at a moment’s notice. But then Dr. Araide was at the door with this strange, squirming creature in a baby carrier—and Rei’s life turned upside down like he’d flipped his car on the freeway.

It was nothing like he’d imagined. Rei thought he’d known what it meant to be exhausted, to be utterly wrung out. But being a triple agent with an international crime syndicate had nothing on being a new parent, he’d decided. Every day was a series of little battles he inevitably lost: like, hygiene, or eating something besides Shinichi’s half-chewed Cheerios. Shinichi was cute—of course he was cute, especially in his purple panda sleepsuit, or at bottle time, or when he yawned and stuck his whole fist in his mouth. And yet he was still so stubborn. Rei didn’t know how he could be locked in a contest of wills with a kid so young he still had the Babinski foot-curl reflex.

He’d tried asking Kudou Yukiko how she got through it the first time. But all he got back was a text that said You’d have to ask the nannies <3

The baby hit that one pitch—the one Rei was convinced he’d invented, that went like an ice pick through his eardrum. He rubbed Shinichi’s back, staring in a sort of blank-eyed despair at the yellow duckies on the baby’s blue onesie.

“Come on, Shinichi. Maybe just give it a rest for five minutes?”

Shinichi fisted a hand around a clump of Rei’s hair and yanked. Which felt like a firm no.

It was just a run-of-the-mill ear infection. Another ear infection. Nothing to worry about, Dr. Araide had assured him over the phone—with a little less patience each time Rei called. “Repeat infections are common in kids his age. His immune system just isn’t that well developed yet.”

Shinichi’s immune system hadn’t been well developed as a seven-year-old. These days, it was more like ground zero for bacterial warfare. Shinichi had been a good sport about it—for a baby—the first few times. But now he was very done with it. And so was Rei. But not Shinichi’s ear canal, and it got the final vote.

Rei glared down the hall, toward where Akai was still luxuriating in the shower. (Any more than thirty seconds alone was a luxury, at this point.) Rei had shooed him off because he smelled like a whiskey distillery. Which was partly Rei’s fault, for splashing Akai’s highball glass over him. But mostly Akai’s, for pouring himself a double shot in the first place and then having the gall to tell Rei that he was just taking the edge off.

Shinichi squirmed and pressed his hot little cheek into Rei’s neck, seeking a comfort he didn’t know how to give. Rei brushed his lips against the baby’s soft puff of hair.

“I know, kiddo. Just one more night, okay? We just have to get through one more night.”

That’s what Rei kept telling himself, anyway.

One more night, and Shinichi’s fever would break. One more night, and he’d start sleeping for more than forty-five minutes at a time. One more night, and Rei would figure out how the hell he was supposed to do this.

Dr. Araide was confident Shinichi’s body would revert, given time. Three months was his best guess. They just had to survive that long. But survival was pushing them to the brink.

Rei stared unseeing at the clutter on the coffee table. The stuffed elephant. The sticky pacifier. The fuzzy ice pack shaped like a Brontosaurus. An empty bottle teetered on a pizza box Rei hoped was from yesterday, not last week. His intelligence reports were piling up unread in his inbox, and he could feel himself losing IQ points every time he jerked up to the scream Akai had nicknamed Satan’s alarm clock. The closest he’d come to cooking in two weeks was a batch of lumpy, half-raw pancakes, made one-handed while juggling baby Shinichi and whisper-flaying Kazami over the phone for calling during naptime. He barely recognized the man in the mirror, disheveled and exhausted and clinging to his last nerve.

And for all that, he was still screwing it up.

The baby wailed. Rei blinked a little heat that was definitely not tears out of his eyes, rocking Shinichi uselessly against his shoulder. His baby was in pain—inconsolable. And there was nothing Rei could do for him. He couldn’t bicker with Shinichi—couldn’t overrule him—couldn’t get a grudging little smile when he brought home coffee-flavored popsicles for the kid’s sore throat. He was terrible at this, just like Akai had said he’d be.

(Well, maybe Akai hadn’t said that—more like, “Are you sure we can handle this?” staring warily at the some-assembly-required baby crib teetering in their shopping cart. But that wasn’t a vote of confidence, so it was functionally the same thing.)

It was probably the sleep deprivation talking. But somehow, Rei was sure Shinichi would know how bad they’d been at this. And how much better he’d deserved.

Footsteps in the hall. Rei turned to find Akai watching them, working a towel through his damp hair.

“Is he feeling any better?” Akai asked.

“What do your eardrums tell you?” Rei snipped. Absurdly irritated with Akai for being clean and freshly shaven. Rei’d had a shower that afternoon…but that was before the mashed sweet potato shelling of Shinichi’s last feeding. He was pretty sure by now, he just reeked of desperation.

Shinichi turned his head sullenly away from Akai—still holding him responsible for administering his last set of eardrops, maybe. Rei didn’t know if babies had long enough memories to hold a grudge. But he wouldn’t put it past his baby to be the exception.

“Can you get…?” he started to ask. But Akai had already slipped into the kitchen to prep Shinichi’s bottle, covertly lacing it with amoxicillin, like he was poisoning a corrupt CEO instead of just dosing a seven-month-old. It had worked so far. Rei walked Shinichi to the window, so he wouldn’t witness the crime.

Of all the things Rei hadn’t thought he’d miss about Shinichi with all his mental faculties, being sick was near the top of the list. Shinichi was not an easy patient. Actually, he was an impossible patient, because most of the time he insisted he wasn’t a patient at all. Like last fall, when he’d caught a bad cold from one of the little germ assassins in Ms. Kobayashi’s class, and still tried to sneak out and join Takagi and Chiba on a jewelry heist, so stuffed up he sounded like he’d swallowed a duck whistle.

Rei had caught Shinichi in the entryway, blocked the kid’s path as he struggled to wrap a scarf around his neck without sneezing all over it.

“No one’s leaving the house with a fever over a hundred,” Rei told him, waving the thermometer.

To which that little brat had the audacity to say, “You first.” And since Rei clocked in at 101° to Shinichi’s 100.5°, he had to call in sick for his café shift, too. Which was ridiculous, because Rei was an adult, and not in danger of melting his brain with a garden-variety fever. (Though he was a public health hazard, Akai pointed out, since he worked in food service.)

Rei didn’t like letting his teenager get the best of him. But two days tucked up on the couch with Shinichi, playfighting for foot space while Akai brought them cranberry juice and tom kha soup from their favorite Thai restaurant…well, that part of it, Rei would gladly do again.

He could only remember one time his sick kid hadn’t been impossible. The last time—the time he’d been trying not to think about.

Back in his own body for a few weeks, Shinichi had gotten himself tangled up in a case: an organized crime case, chasing a serial killer who was disguising his victims in among targets for the Russian mob. It was the kind of case Rei never wanted Shinichi within a thousand feet of. But Shinichi was a detective first, and he never knew when to quit—not even after a close shave with a few mob enforcers left him bleeding out in an old warehouse, clinging to consciousness while Rei and Akai screeched through Tokyo at 120 kph, begging him over the crackly speakerphone to hang on.

For four hours, sitting in the hospital waiting room with Akai’s hand tight on his shoulder, Rei thought they were going to lose him. But in spite of literally impaling himself on a rusty chunk of rebar, Shinichi had come out of it with two arrests and mostly unscathed. Well, he’d lost his appendix. But if you had to lose an organ, you could do a lot worse.

Those first few days after they brought Shinichi home from the hospital, Rei thought everything was back to normal. But Shinichi was just off. Three weeks later, this kid who’d never let a twisted ankle get in the way of riding his skateboard down the freeway was still just curled up on the couch, picking at his favorite pesto gnocchi casserole and falling asleep to Detective Samonji.

That was worrying. Still, Rei didn’t realize he was actually in trouble until the next week, when Shinichi got an invitation to one of Hakuba’s mystery parties.

Shinichi lived for those kinds of things—especially when he was in his own body, and could go as himself. Rei had been all ready to push back on him going, while fully intending to lose that argument. But Shinichi barely looked up as he said, “Maybe send it along to Sera? See if she’s up for it?”

Rei moved his sandwich plate aside so he could perch on the couch, one hand on the boy’s back. “Shinichi? Hey. What’s going on?”

Shinichi shook his head. “Nothing. I’m just so tired,” he said, before rolling over and dozing off before the soccer game even came back from commercial.

He was recovering too slowly—the effect of his exposure to the APTX antidote, Sherry thought, his seventeen-year-old body eating up his metabolic resources. The organic chemistry was a little over Rei’s head. But he’d agreed with her plan to administer the next drug early, force a transformation back into Conan.

“Whatever you have to do.” That was what he’d told her over the phone. Forgetting how dangerous the word whatever was.

The next morning, Rei dropped his kid off at Dr. Araide’s office. And what he got back was…this.

Rei had stopped walking. Maybe that’s why the baby was screaming, his tiny lungs heaving in his chest. Rei looked down into that curdled red face and experienced a moment of total dissociation, his stomach churning like he was going to hurl. This was all that was left of his kid. And for all Rei knew, this was all that would ever be left of Shinichi. Haibara and Dr. Araide didn’t think so. But they hadn’t thought this would happen, either.

All Rei had right now were assurances, estimates, theories. No one could promise he’d get Shinichi back, just as he had been. And Rei honestly wasn’t sure he could handle that.

“Bottle’s ready.”

Akai had come up behind him. Rei breathed in sharp and pushed Shinichi into Akai’s arms, shoving past him. “Great. Can you give it to him? I just…I need a minute.” Trying to blink the prickle out of his eyes before Akai caught it. But of course he did; never had the decency to miss anything.

Akai hooked him by the elbow. “Rei—”

“Just give him the damn bottle,” Rei ground out. But Akai wouldn’t budge, his grip tightening as he tried to lock eyes.

“Rei, if you need anything—”

“I need Shinichi!”

The words were out before he could catch himself. Rei wiped a hand across his mouth. He had this horrible, sick ache in his chest, like just breathing was going to turn his stomach inside out.

Akai watched him like he was a detonator about to blow. Then he slowly held out the baby.

Rei choked. “Not like that.” He pressed his fingers into his aching eyes. “I just…I need somebody to steal my phone trying to get classified PSB files. I need someone to give me shit for the sweet potato in my hair. I need someone to ignore me for his book and beat me at gin rummy and ask me how to lace a cigarette with strychnine, so I feel like I’m in control of one goddamn thing.”

Akai’s face softened, too knowing. “We’ll get him back,” he said, trying to ease Rei into his arms.

Rei jerked back, his eyes stinging.

“You don’t know that! You can’t promise me anything. I spent so much damn time trying to keep him alive, and he’s just—gone.” And now he was shouting, which set the baby off again. Shinichi writhed in Akai’s arms, his wail throbbing in Rei’s skull. Rei pinched his temples. “Shinichi, please, just…” He stopped, not sleep-deprived enough to think he could negotiate with a baby.

“Rei—”

Rei shook his head, eyes blurring. “I can’t do this, Akai. I can’t lose him—”

Akai caught him by the back of the neck. “Rei, look at me.”

Rei didn’t want to. He let Akai tip his chin up anyway, the tip of his thumb massaging soothing circles into Rei’s clenched jaw.

“He’s right here, Rei,” Akai said softly, hefting Shinichi higher on his shoulder. “He’s safe. He’s…mgh.” Akai broke off with a grimace. “He needs a diaper change, but…”

Rei stared at him. Then he was laughing—a little choked up, sort of manic. Still the first time he’d laughed since Shinichi got his foot stuck in the applesauce jar that morning. Akai pulled him in and held him easy, his callused fingertips digging just right into his cervical spine, soothing the tension out of the base of his skull.

A tiny hand fastened in his T-shirt. Shinichi stared up at Rei, all red-faced with little tear stains on his puffy cheeks. Which was heartbreaking. Suddenly Rei remembered exactly who this was, his heart bruised for a whole different reason as he bent and pressed his forehead to Shinichi’s, nose to tiny baby nose.

“Hey,” Rei whispered, looking into those big blue eyes. “I’m sorry about that, kiddo. I’ll get it together, okay? So… don’t give up on me.”

Shinichi’s pudgy fingers touched his cheek. Probably just because he was obsessed with faces right now. But Rei was taking it as forgiveness.

Akai thumbed Rei’s hair back behind his ear. “All you had tonight were his leftovers. Let’s grab some takeout from that restaurant we found the other night—the place with the world’s best orange cauliflower.”

Rei huffed, biting down a smile. “Pretty sure that was the starvation talking.” It had taken hours for Shinichi to fall asleep that night, and Rei didn’t dare move, cradling the baby in his aching arms while Akai fed him with a pair of disposable chopsticks. It was a good memory, though. “Maybe less oil and more starch tonight,” he said. His stomach felt a little queasy, probably from three days of no sleep and too much coffee.

Rei let Akai handle the diaper change while he called in the order for pasta marinara and garlic bread from the Italian bistro up the street. Then he settled on the couch, holding up his arms for the baby and the bottle.

He might be flattering himself. But the baby seemed to be reaching for him, too.

Akai dropped onto the couch behind Rei—just right to wedge between him and the stiff cushions, to give him something to lean against. Shinichi gave a sad little whimper around the bottle. Akai grabbed the blue bear-shaped nasal aspirator off the table and pressed it to the baby’s nose, sucking up the snot he’d been wiping all over Rei’s shirt.

“I’m never going to let him forget this,” he murmured.

Rei’s laugh stuck in his throat. He let his head loll back onto Akai’s shoulder, too exhausted to fight it.

“It takes fifteen minutes for the amoxicillin to kick in. Can you just…not move for that long?”

“As long as you need,” Akai said. Which felt like the answer to a bigger question than he’d asked.

Rei closed his eyes as Akai’s thumb raked the short hairs at the nape of his neck the wrong way, a pleasant little tingle like an electric shock. It grounded him, put him back in his body. Affirming with every touch that he was strong enough to lean on.

Maybe throwing whiskey at him had been an overreaction. Not Rei’s first of the week. He was trying to block out the memory of the great egg roll meltdown of two days ago, when he’d searched through the bag of Chinese takeout twice for the missing, waxy appetizer bag and then slammed Akai with a very mature, “You do these things on purpose.”

Or last week, last ear infection, when he’d slumped on the bed next to Shinichi’s crib, refusing to shower or eat or even take a power nap because “He’s just going to be up again in ten minutes.” Which came out a little petulant. But Akai hadn’t called him on it. Just nudged his thigh against Rei’s and prodded him in the back with a pizza box, cajoled him into eating a couple of slices. And when he fell asleep that night, with Akai’s arm heavy across him and Shinichi’s tiny, petal-soft baby hand gripping his finger, Rei felt for just a second like maybe they could pull this off, piece this splintered family back together.

Rei glanced at Akai. Not as suave as usual—his hair ruffled, his green eyes tired and a distinctive banana-mush handprint on his black sweatshirt. And yet, looking at him put this tender ache in Rei’s chest.

Rei knew he wasn’t at his best right now. And neither was Shinichi. And Akai was just…still here. Fighting through it. Warm and steady against his back.

“Don’t leave,” Rei said. He felt Akai’s gaze on his face. Rei kept his eyes on Shinichi, tracing those little fingers in his shirt. “Just…don’t get sick of us and bail. Okay?”

Akai shifted. But he was just leaning in, close enough for Rei to feel the hum against his skin as he murmured, “Can’t get rid of me that easy.”

Shinichi was finally falling asleep. The baby kept blinking up at Rei—never let it be said this kid couldn’t be stubborn at any size—but those blue eyes were getting heavy, his head sinking into the crook of Rei’s shoulder. Rei set the bottle down and nudged Akai with his elbow.

“Hand me the thermometer. I want to check him again.”

“I have something better.” Akai scrounged around on the coffee table, worked open a plastic bag with the stealth befitting a sniper. Then he planted a ladybug sticker on Shinichi’s forehead, smoothing the cheerful cartoon bug down on his flushed skin. “Found this at the pharmacy today. It monitors his temperature continuously for forty-eight hours, so you can check it without waking him.” Akai rested his chin on Rei’s shoulder. “Seemed like a tactical improvement.”

“Don’t try to turn buying baby gear into a covert mission,” Rei muttered. Though he was a little charmed, in spite of himself.

Akai seemed to know it. He peeled off a green-and-coral butterfly and stuck it to Rei’s temple, smirking.

Rei rolled his eyes. “Classy.”

Akai chuckled. Then his eyebrows drew together, a wary look on his face. “Rei?”

“What?” Rei’s heart sank. He grabbed the hand mirror Shinichi had been making faces into yesterday and held it up. Green numbers glowed on the butterfly’s wing: 101.

Rei’s stomach gave an ominous rumble. Akai leaned back on his hands.

“You’re probably going to want to skip that takeout.”

Chapter 2: Recovery

Akai pressed his cool palm to Rei’s forehead, careful not to wake him. He was a light sleeper, usually too light to get away with that. The drugs had him on the ropes tonight.

He was still warm to the touch, but the butterfly sticker on his forehead indicated normal temperature, and he was breathing easier, no crackle of congestion in his lungs as he inhaled. He’d be through it by morning. Akai chased a wisp of blond hair out of his face, smiling as Rei turned into his touch.

It had been two long days in the Yamazaki household. (A common last name Jodie had picked at random for their cover IDs, though Akai got a little amusement from the fact that it was also a brand of Japanese whiskey.) Rei and Shinichi sick at the same time had been about as much hell as expected. Shinichi recovered first, but with his immune system already shot, Akai couldn’t risk him catching Rei’s cold. All that made sense was to keep them apart.

The baby hadn’t seen it that way. He took it as a personal betrayal—at least, Akai assumed that’s what Shinichi was screaming in his ear. The only time he calmed down was when he forgot about Rei for a few hours. Which Rei inevitably put a stake through, by shouting at Akai through the door about infant antibiotic dosages and his very specific bottle routine.

“Try to take it easy, Rei,” Akai had told him that morning, not for the first time, as he helped Rei strip out of the shirt he’d sweated through.

Rei’s glare was almost as piercing as the baby cries from downstairs. “How am I supposed to do that, when you’re so clearly incompetent?” But Rei was always a little short when he was under the weather, so Akai wasn’t taking it personally.

Shinichi was the only one Rei really tolerated looking after him while he was sick, Akai reflected, smoothing the blanket over the man’s shoulders. Rei had to know Akai was the one sending him vitamin C and bowls of minestrone soup—but Shinichi delivering them gave him plausible deniability, and denial seemed to be fundamental to Rei’s sense of self.

Silently, Akai eased out of Rei’s quarantine room and moved down the hall, to the master bedroom. Shinichi was still asleep in the bassinet next to their bed, a small miracle. He must be feeling better, too. Akai dropped onto the mattress and scraped his fingers over his tired eyes.

This morning, stomach a little weak, Akai worried he was catching what Rei had. He’d fought it off through sheer force of will. Still it put him in an old memory: the last time they’d all been sick simultaneously, a twenty-four-hour flu bug that wiped out the entire Okiya-Amuro-Edogawa household.

They hadn’t been living together long yet—three months, maybe, what Akai thought of as their early days, his alliance with Rei still tenuous and Shinichi a little gun shy. But a bad stomach flu was a great equalizer. Luckily, the Kudou house had enough bathrooms for everyone to get their own. Akai could still call up the pattern of the wallpaper as he lay stretched out on the cool tile next to the seashell bathtub, staring blankly at Yukiko’s designer bath curtain and counting the minutes until he had to get up again, lurch through the house to leave pain meds and Gatorade at Rei and Shinichi’s respective doors. His only proof the others were still alive was the intermittent sound of a shower coming on and his phone occasionally dinging, Rei debating what they’d be up to eating tomorrow and Shinichi begging him never to mention food again.

At one point, Shinichi had gone dark for too long. Akai leaned back against the Jacuzzi tub, head buzzing as he typed out, Come on, kid, you have to text something. And got back a photo of the toilet from a horizontal angle, which told him all he needed to know.

Akai’s lips twitched. He traced his thumb over the baby’s foot, marveling at the curl that went through his toes. Shinichi’s eyes blinked open—just looking at him for once, his mouth wide in a tiny baby yawn.

“Hey, kid,” Akai murmured, lifting Shinichi onto his shoulder. “Let’s get you dressed. As soon as he’s up, there’s someone who’s been dying to see you.”

He couldn’t know what that meant. Still, Akai swore those eyes got brighter, the baby cooing a little nonsense into his ear as they headed for the changing table. Akai traced his knuckles soft down Shinichi’s spine.

He was still in there, that kid sending a snarky picture of a toilet, the one Rei missed so much. They just had to keep it steady, until he was back where he belonged.

Chapter 3: Investigation

Rei leaned back against the kitchen counter, scrutinizing the man folding baby clothes on the couch.

Akai was a hard read—especially when Rei was sleep-deprived and all three of his remaining brain cells were focused on working the new coffeemaker. But he’d spent the last five years or so obsessing over this man, for better or worse. Those quick, efficient movements; that crinkle of his forehead, slightly pinched; the ruthless execution of every fold, like Akai was disarming a bomb instead of disentangling staticky little baby socks…that wasn’t Akai just doing the laundry. That was Akai brooding.

From his perch on Rei’s hip, Shinichi shook a plastic rattle, banging it against Rei’s elbow. Just a little reminder to make eye contact every thirty seconds or so, unless Rei wanted him to get squirmy. According to the baby books stacked on the nightstand upstairs, high alertness and prolonged eye contact were typical of babies with high intelligence (which was definitely Shinichi). And also of babies who were hell to get to sleep. (Just Shinichi all over.)

“What’s wrong with him, huh?” Rei murmured against Shinichi’s hair.

The baby burbled around his pacifier, as if sharing a theory. Rei knew that was wishful thinking—in terms of cognitive skill, his kid ranked somewhere between a housecat and a potted geranium right now. But it eased the ache of missing his brilliant little detective to look into those sharp blue eyes and imagine him conducting investigations, just like he used to.

The case of the mysteriously spinning mobile. (Just fluid dynamics and the bathroom fan, but Shinichi thought it was fascinating.)

The case of the missing car keys. (They were in Shinichi’s mouth, where everything ended up, and Akai was an idiot for dropping them on the coffee table.)

The case of the baby block caltrops arranged at the bottom of the stairs. (Okay, that one was on Rei—he hadn’t noticed them falling out of his sweatshirt pocket and landing right where Akai would step on them on his way down at three in the morning. But in his defense, Shinichi was wiggly and Rei was very tired.)

Just this morning, they’d solved the case of the vanishing squeaky giraffe. (It was shoved down the crack of the couch, and Akai got an elbow in his ribs for joking about Shinichi testing out body disposal sites already.)

And now he had another one: the case of the sullen co-parent.

Rei couldn’t pin down when it had started. But he’d first noticed something off that morning, when Akai brought baby Shinichi downstairs looking like he’d fought to the death with his adorable Stegosaurus-printed onesie.

“What is this? A baby straitjacket?” Rei demanded, scooping up the seven-month-old straining to get out of Akai’s arms. And out of the onesie. Not possible, since Shinichi was practically tied into it.

“He wouldn’t cooperate,” Akai half-explained.

“So you put him in restraints?” Rei asked, wiggling the little foot that seemed to be stuffed into a sleeve.

“That was self-inflicted,” Akai insisted, looking…well, on anyone else, Rei would have said petulant. But this was Akai. So he must be misreading it.

“You just have to entertain him,” Rei explained, not for the first time, as he unfastened Shinichi’s onesie to start over. “It’s like you’ve never had to keep a target engaged.”

“Not by blowing raspberries on his stomach,” Akai agreed, as Rei did just that. Then disappeared with the trash bag, before Rei could interrogate him about that strange look on his face.

Rei squinted, watching Akai try to balance one more baby outfit on the Jenga tower next to him. What had him so preoccupied? Angst at the length of their sentence? Rei’d had a bout of that last night, when he pulled open the drawer of the changing table and his brain short-circuited at the rows and rows of gleaming white diapers, plus the knowledge that they’d probably go through thirty times that.

Or something less dramatic. Alcohol withdrawal? Injury? Maybe he’d punctured something while putting the crib together yesterday, and didn’t want to admit he’d been bested by furniture with cartoon duckies on it.

Shinichi’s pudgy hands reached for Rei, grabbing at his blond hair. Which seemed cute, until he got hold of that one strand that must be connected right to Rei’s supraorbital nerve. Rei blew his hair back, considering.

Akai wasn’t asking for anything. And Rei was exhausted—a crushing, bone-deep exhaustion he hadn’t known in years of working solo undercover and running on four hours of sleep. Whatever was wrong with Akai couldn’t be that serious. Would it be so bad to just go upstairs, snatch a two-minute shower, and then lie down with Shinichi, and pretend he’d never noticed?

Shinichi’s rattle prodded his cheek. Probably incidental. But Rei knew that if his kid was here—his real kid, the one who could do complex quadratic equations on that spinning mobile over his crib and wouldn’t be caught dead eating a spoonful of mushy applesauce—he’d be giving Rei that look, for thinking about ignoring whatever weird emotional knot Akai was tied in.

“He just likes to be impossible,” he informed Shinichi. Then he marched to the couch and stopped in front of Akai, giving the man’s knee a hard nudge.

“Are you in liver failure?” he asked.

Akai blinked. “What?”

Rei leaned in and pressed his fingertip between Akai’s eyebrows. “This pinched thing going on right here. Usually I can’t get that kind of reaction from you unless you’re losing a major organ. So—out with it.”

Akai’s gaze darted from Shinichi to Rei, and back. “It’s nothing,” he insisted. An embarrassingly bad lie, for a secret agent.

Rei nudged him again, harder. “I’m serious, Akai. I only have fifteen minutes before I have to subdue Shinichi into a nap. I don’t have time to pry it out of you.”

Akai’s lips twitched. “Going to give him hell again today, kid?” he asked, reaching out to smooth down the baby’s hair. And couldn’t hide a tiny flinch when Shinichi squirmed the other way, shunning him.

Something clicked. Rei looked at the sullen sniper on his couch and let out a soft, disbelieving breath.

“Akai Shuichi,” he said, incredulous, “are you sulking because your baby doesn’t like you?”

Akai stiffened. Bullseye.

“I’m not sulking,” Akai insisted, rising and gathering the stacks of baby clothes into his arms. Classic deflection body language. Rei thought even Ms. Kobayashi would have seen through that.

“You know it’s not personal,” Rei told him, wincing as Shinichi got that chunk of hair after all. “Araide said there was a good chance he wouldn’t bond with anyone, after how disorienting this has to be for him.”

Akai shrugged tightly. “I know. And he has you, so. He’s fine.”

Rei shot him a flat look. “Self-pity, Akai, really?” he called at the other man’s back, as Akai disappeared up the stairs with the laundry. Rei chuckled, feeling smug. “He’s ridiculous, isn’t he?” he told the baby, bopping Shinichi’s nose. “Serves him right. He didn’t even want to keep you.”

Okay. Maybe that was a massive oversimplification. But who was going to call him on it? The baby?

Casually, Rei made his way up the stairs, bending to pocket the tiny socks that had slipped off Akai’s pile. He’d seen Akai blistered from a .9mm near miss. Bruised from interrogation. Even free bleeding from making his getaway through a plate-glass window and doing his first aid with whiskey and duct tape. And yet it was a baby who hurt his feelings.

Rei probably shouldn’t be enjoying it as much as he was. But Akai was annoyingly perfect at almost everything. It was nice to see him struggling for a change.

There hadn’t been much time to prepare before baby Shinichi was dropped in their laps. That first night, Shinichi had been a little skittish with both of them. But Rei had made it work. If Akai was sore about it, he could always try a few of the bonding suggestions that were all over baby blogs.

Look into his eyes while he’s feeding. Cuddle up together when he’s sleepy from his bottle. Pick him up when he cries, so he associates you with safety. Hold him while he falls asleep…

Fine. Rei had been doing most of that, and he didn’t want to share. Akai had done some things, though. Like dosing Shinichi with his amoxicillin…which the baby fought like it was potassium cyanide. Or giving him his bath yesterday…though he forgot to cover Shinichi’s eyes, and the trust seemed to be broken there. Rei had thought maybe they were getting along better, when he got a ten-minute shower in peace. But it turned out Akai had just taken the baby into the laundry room, so Rei wouldn’t hear him screaming.

Rei leaned his shoulder against the doorframe of the nursery, lips twitching as he watched Akai tuck baby clothes into the dresser. Okay. Maybe he was a little cute, brooding over this. Ridiculous. But cute nonetheless.

It was nice to be Shinichi’s easy favorite. Finally. But Rei knew how much he needed it sometimes, to look down into that face and see his kid, even just an echo of him. Maybe Akai needed that too.

He glanced at Shinichi. The baby seemed to be in a pliable mood, just sucking away on his pacifier.

“Get over here,” Rei said, stepping into the nursery.

Akai sighed. “He just wants you, Rei.”

“Well, honestly, who could blame him? You’re an acquired taste.” But Rei was smiling as he laid Shinichi down on the changing table, stripping him down to the diaper again. Shinichi kicked his wiggly baby legs, happy to be free. “Take your shirt off,” he threw over his shoulder.

Akai’s eyebrow quirked up.

Rei rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t flatter yourself. It’s not for me. I’ve seen you shirtless too many times to be impressed. Unlike our new neighbors, who you scandalized yesterday, walking out to the curb in your boxers.”

“You said get the trash out,” Akai reminded him, pulling his T-shirt over his head.

“Well, I didn’t think I had to specify it wasn’t clothing optional,” Rei grumbled. Then he lifted Shinichi and settled him into Akai’s arms, against his bare chest.

The baby sank into him immediately. Akai breathed in a little short. Maybe because Shinichi’s tiny fingers were digging into his skin. Or maybe because those big blue eyes had turned to look up at him, Shinichi’s face curious and his feet kicking over Akai’s arm. Rei gave the baby a look that said, Play nice.

“What am I…supposed to do with him?” Akai asked, a little stiff.

“Well, first off, stop holding him like a grenade,” Rei suggested, gratified when Akai relaxed. Rei soothed the backs of his fingers down Shinichi’s soft cheek. “Skin-to-skin contact precipitates bonding. His heartbeat, his breath—they’ll sync up with yours. It’s primarily for newborns. But we’re new, as far as he’s concerned.” Rei exhaled softly. “It just…lets him know he’s safe. And that he’s yours.”

“More yours than mine,” Akai admitted. But his eyes were warm.

“Well, you’re also mine,” Rei pointed out, easing in close. “So I guess I can share.”

Shinichi cooed up at them. Rei’s heart gave a soft, aching squeeze—on account of the baby, not the sight of Akai cradling Shinichi’s head in his big hand, swaying slowly back and forth. The tiny part of his lizard brain that liked that…he could write that off as nutrient deficiency. Rei slid his arms around Akai’s waist.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he murmured. “I’m only letting you borrow him for a while, because you looked so pathetic.”

Akai chuckled. “I’ll take pathetic.” His features softened, his callused thumb tracing slow down Shinichi’s forehead. “Still slow to trust, this kid. I guess some things never change.”

Rei gave him a playful nudge. “So win him over. You’re obnoxiously good at that…especially with your shirt off.” And then sauntered out and left them to it, gratified to have made that stoic man smile.

Chapter 4: Adaptations

1.

 

Akai woke up staring into a pair of beautiful blue eyes. Not the ones he was used to.

Rei always looked some cross between flustered and put out to wake up in Akai’s arms. At least Shinichi seemed to be in a good mood. Probably because he’d gotten his pudgy baby fingers around Akai’s cheek and given it a good yank.

“How’d you get in here, kid?” Akai asked, the words a little slurred.

The baby gave a happy screech. Akai didn’t think it was language, necessarily—more like, Shinichi had observed that when a human being made a noise at you, it was customary to make one back. His favorite was a high-pitched Pterodactyl shriek, which Akai enjoyed more when he’d had more sleep.

He blinked bleary eyes at the clock. Seven thirty—barely two hours since he pulled off a stealth maneuver and gotten Shinichi back into his bassinet without waking him. Usually, working the night shift meant he got to sleep in. But somehow, Shinichi had turned up on the half-size mattress on the floor of the nursery, where Akai had dropped like a stone after putting the heaps of laundry away. Someone had even closed the door behind him, so he couldn’t crawl into the hallway and take a header down the stairs.

With a groan, Akai sat up. “Come on. Let’s go find your co-conspirator.” He hefted the baby under one arm like a football, which Rei hated but always made Shinichi scream and kick his happy feet.

He found Rei in the kitchen, a half-full cup of coffee at his elbow and something sizzling on the stove. It smelled temptingly like real food. Akai leaned his hip against the counter, nudging the bottle opener out of reach before it went in Shinichi’s mouth.

“Your assassin found his target.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rei said. A little stiffly, like a witness giving false testimony. The hint of red on his ears was a smoking gun. Akai’s mouth quirked up in a smile.

“No? So it wasn’t you who dropped Shinichi on me like a baby wrecking ball?”

Rei tossed his hair, giving whatever was in the skillet an aggressive scramble. “Well, if I did that, which I’m not stipulating to, I can’t be held responsible for him waking you up. He could’ve settled down with you instead.”

“Intention follows the bullet, Counselor,” Akai said drily. They both knew this baby too well for that.

Rei huffed. Not the sharp, I’m-contemplating-putting-this-pencil-through-your-carotid huff Akai had been getting since the first day they met. This one was more desperate—like his eyes as he spun to face Akai, hair still sleep-mussed and his apron tie dangerously close to going in the tofu scramble pan.

“Look. I’m hungry, all right?” he admitted, that fierce flush darkening his cheeks. “I just wanted something that didn’t come out of a carton or a greasy pizza box, and Shinichi wasn’t having it, so I just needed fifteen minutes. And you looked so peaceful,” he added, like an accusation.

Akai assumed that was the crime he’d really been punished for. It was hard to stay irritated, though, when he had that look on his face.

He’d known Rei a lot of ways. As the smooth operator who could slip a keycard out of someone’s pocket with just a flick of his wrist; as the man who lay shoulder to shoulder with Akai for six hours in the bed of his pickup truck, smeared in blood and lighter fluid, waiting for the MPD to roll away after an op went a little sideways.

He never thought he’d see Rei this way: pushed to the edge by someone who didn’t weigh fifteen pounds. But that impeccable secret agent—poised, self-possessed, perfectly put together—it turned out he got a little cranky when he hadn’t had a good meal in forty-eight hours. And he didn’t like to be dirty—especially dirty that was more like sticky, Shinichi’s baby hands forever smeared with something he liked to wipe off on Rei’s shirt. And when he was low on sleep, his composure slipped, and he let those little exasperations get the better of him.

Rei probably wouldn’t like that anyone knew him so well. But it was worth a few early mornings, Akai decided, to be the one he took his walls down for.

“I think you’ve got him on the ropes, kid,” Akai murmured to the baby. Shinichi kicked his legs in excitement, taking out an empty bottle like it was a skyscraper in a Godzilla movie.

Rei sighed, exasperated. “Okay. What’s it going to take for you to hold him for ten more minutes, so I can actually finish this?”

“One of whatever you’re having,” Akai decided, his stomach rumbling at the thought of actual food.

Rei rolled his eyes and turned back to the stove. “Fine. At least he won’t be gnawing on your pizza crust again like a feral raccoon.”

“Not in front of witnesses, anyway,” Akai agreed, amused. And let Shinichi smear his sticky hands down the shoulder of Rei’s sweater, because he deserved a little revenge.

 

 

2.

 

Akai dozed in the recliner, listening distantly to the whisper of Rei folding the laundry while he and Shinichi played on the couch.

“Where’s the baby?” Rei murmured, his voice soft and fond. “Where’s the baby?”

Shinichi burst into giggles every time, his little feet thumping against the couch.

Akai’s lips quirked into a smile, though he didn’t open his eyes. He could have dragged himself upstairs. But it was almost easier to sleep here, despite the occasional piercing shrieks. There was something primal about it—hearing the low cadence of Rei’s voice, knowing on an elemental level that they were safe, that they were both within reach.

He drifted off to that sound, not conscious of anything but the distant gurgle of baby laughter. Then Rei’s voice suddenly jerked him out of it, sharp and urgent.

“Akai! Where’s the baby?”

Akai lurched out of the recliner, staring bleary-eyed at Rei on the couch. “What? What do you mean? Where is he?”

Rei shot him a withering look. “That’s what I’m asking you. Where’s the baby? Where’s Shinichi?”

Akai swore he heard that giggle from somewhere. He spun around, scrubbing his palms into his eyes, struggling to keep them open long enough to see anything. “He can’t have…he was right here—”Akai broke off as he barked his shin on the coffee table, biting down the curse.

The pain woke him up. A few things registered that hadn’t before. Like how strange it was for Rei to be just sitting there on the couch, instead of tearing the house apart looking for a baby on the lam. And though his voice was sharp, Rei’s body was still perfectly relaxed, his shoulders easy as he rested one hand casually on the pile of unfolded laundry. And now that Akai was looking closer, two of the baby socks in that pile seemed to be connected to chubby baby legs, which thumped as the laundry let out a high, happy shriek—

Rei lost control of his smile as he swept the baby up out of the pile, holding him high covered in staticky little socks. “There he is!” Rei singsonged. Shinichi burbled in excitement, his puff of hair sticking up in a faux hawk.

Akai slumped boneless onto the couch beside them, shooting Rei a look. “Not funny, Rei.”

Rei chuckled in his throat. “Really? Because he thought it was hilarious,” he said, bouncing Shinichi on his toes.

“Pretty sure he liked the ice cube you put down my shirt yesterday, too,” Akai replied. The baby giggled, shameless.

“Well, what can I say? He has a fantastic sense of humor.” Rei lifted Shinichi into Akai’s lap, just in time for the burble of spit on the baby’s chin to plop onto Akai’s pants. “I have to get dinner started, or we’ll be eating dry Cheerios again. Why don’t you play peekaboo? That only takes a few brain cells.”

Akai shook his head as Rei headed for the kitchen, humming. He’d had this sense yesterday, too, trying to shake the ice cube out before it went down his pants. Rei was feeling playful again. It was a damn good look on him. Though Akai could do without the throbbing goose egg on his shin.

“Next time, we put one over on him,” he told Shinichi. And shook his little foot, to seal the deal.

 

 

3.

 

“And what exactly is going on in here?” Rei asked from the doorway.

Akai glanced over his shoulder, keeping his core tight so he wouldn’t squash the baby flailing and gurgling underneath him. His loose tank top brushed the baby’s kicking feet.

“Shinichi and I are working out,” he said.

Rei braced the laundry basket on his hip. “Mhm. And would you say Shinichi’s getting much of a workout, just lying there waiting to be crushed?” But his voice was light—probably because Shinichi was giggling, letting out a high, happy trill as Akai dropped for another push-up.

Four weeks into this, Akai could feel his sanity slipping. Jodie seemed to have noticed, too, the last time she called for a status update, and all he had to report was that every grocery store on this side of town was sold out of Rei’s preferred brand of organic applesauce.

“Shu, you remember that undercover thing SSA Fuentes always said, about holding onto something that makes you feel like yourself?”

“Vaguely,” Akai replied, trying to maneuver Shinichi’s legs into the baby overalls.

“You might want to look into that,” Jodie advised. And then hung up quick, like what he had might be contagious.

The gun range was better for stress relief. Unfortunately, it also had more exposure, and Akai’s cover identity had fewer reasons to be there. He’d have killed for an hour in the fitness center built into this the townhouse complex, but he couldn’t get Rei out of the house for that length of time.

So Akai was improvising. A three-mile run through the park every other morning, with a stop by the playground to chat with the old woman who monitored neighborhood comings and goings like she’d been trained in countersurveillance. And then a home workout routine using Shinichi in place of a kettlebell. Baby sit-ups. Baby lunges. Baby power lifting. The kid didn’t seem that heavy, but after fifty reps, Akai was feeling it.

It was basic stuff, the fundamentals he didn’t usually spend much time on. Still, Akai liked the way it put him back in his body—the seamless movement of joint and muscle, the easy focus that came with exertion.

Shinichi’s favorites were pushups. He squealed and kicked his feet every time Akai’s face got close to his. Which was as good a reason as any to do ten more.

“I suppose this counts as mental engagement,” Rei decided, abandoning the laundry on the couch and dropping down next to them. He stretched out one foot and tickled the baby with his toes. “What’s he at, Shinichi? Should we make him go to fifty?”

Akai wiped a sweaty strand of hair back with his wrist. “It’ll have to be a hundred, at this point.”

Rei rolled his eyes. “You’re showing off for a baby? Really?” He seemed more amused than exasperated, though. “Why don’t you work on something with more practical applications?”

“Like…wrestling?” Akai suggested. Then grabbed Rei by the ankle and yanked him flat onto his back, swinging over Rei’s hips to pin him casually to the rug.

Rei’s eyes flared. Shinichi gurgled out a laugh, kicking his polka-dot socks like he was doing a three-count. Akai smirked.

“I think he’s ringing the bell for round one.”

“Very funny,” Rei said, nudging his knee into Akai’s ribs. “I’m not wrestling right next to the baby.”

“Don’t want him to see you lose?” Akai guessed. “I can go easy on you, since you’re out of practice.” All he got out before Rei kicked his leg out and flipped them over—just as Akai had expected. Rei blew his bangs out of his face.

“Who exactly is out of practice?” he asked. The baby laughed in delight, and Rei scooped him up, bounced those little feet on Akai’s stomach. “You want to wrestle too? Get him, Shinichi—give him a jab-cross,” Rei encouraged him, bopping Akai’s chin with baby fisticuffs.

“That left hook is looking pretty good.” Akai chuckled, remembering the flat look Shinichi gave him every time Akai dragged him down to the basement for his weekly thirty minutes of self-defense. And the look of horrified teenage embarrassment on his real kid’s face any time he’d walked in on them like this, tangled up on the floor.

“Hey, Rei, do we have any more triple-A batteri—oh God, never mind,” Shinichi broke off, one hand up to block them out.

“It’s not like that—” Rei called after him from the living room rug, where he’d been working out a kink in Akai’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to know,” Shinichi shouted back. “I have to go do anything, in any room that’s not this one. Just don't traumatize me before I put on my noise-canceling headphones.”

Rei leaned back on his heels. He lifted one eyebrow, swaying the baby side to side. “Well? Aren’t you supposed to be working out? Go on—give us a few sit-ups.”

Akai teased a thumb down his knee. “If I do, can I get a kiss?”

Rei hummed, eyes bright. “Guess you’ll have to do one and find out.”

There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver, with both of them up there. Akai made it work, pulling his body into a sit-up, and got his reward—a slobbery baby kiss right on the cheek.

Chapter 5: The Third Law

Akai dropped onto his back on the couch, stretching his long legs out until his feet bumped the armrest. Something squeaked under him. It felt like Shinichi’s teething giraffe, wedged down in the gap between cushions just right to jab into his spine. But he didn’t have the energy to move.

He squinted at some email on his phone—something from Jodie, cribbed notes from the FBI status meeting. The words blurred on the bright screen. Akai rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. He could function on less sleep than this—had stayed up thirty-six hours straight for a mission once and still nailed his nine-hundred-meter shot. Somehow, that didn’t take it out of him like being jerked out of a dead sleep by the baby whimpering in his crib at three in the morning, Rei groaning with his cheek pressed into Akai’s T-shirt.

It’s probably my turn, he’d admitted last night, blinking up at Akai with heavy eyes. Not moving, though—like he was hoping Akai would take the night shift again. Which he did, every time.

I’ve got him, Rei, Akai murmured against his jaw. And then spent two long hours walking up and down the hall while Shinichi fussed against his shoulder, tiny baby fingers fisted into his hair. They hadn’t seen the sunrise together, but it was a near thing.

Akai dismissed the email. Formally, he was on some kind of leave anyway. Informally, he wasn’t sure he could shoot his way out of a paper bag right now.

Except for the thump of the dryer going, the house was quiet. He’d lost track of Rei and Shinichi half an hour ago, when Rei swept the baby up off his playmat and into the kitchen, humming a few bars of some pop song under his breath. Akai had finished cleaning the living room—taken out the trash—started yet another load of laundry, the second already today.

He hadn’t done so much laundry since his field training unit at the academy, a lot of long days crouched in the rainy Virginia hills until he had mud all the way down to his pocket lining. This was worse, though. Because these weren’t discount black T-shirts from a three-pack he could wash with hand soap in the sink at the gym. These were little panda jumpers, and mini overalls, and bright blue baby socks about as long as Akai’s pointer finger, and one fuzzy little hoodie that honest to God had bunny ears. Akai liked to put the kid in that one after his bath, before bedtime, when both Rei and Shinichi were getting tired and cranky. Sometimes, it was the first thing he’d done all day that made Rei smile.

Everything Shinichi wore was washable—no one was cruel enough to make handwash baby clothes, or not the brands they were buying, anyway. But they still needed to be inspected and pre-scrubbed for avocado stains and chunks of mashed banana, for Cheese Puffs, Cheerios, kiwi, or anything else Shinichi had managed to snag and tuck into his tiny pockets. Akai had watched him shove a whole toast stick through the tiny little Velcro gap in his onesie while Rei’s back was turned, and then look up with the most guileless blue eyes while Rei praised him for finishing off his lunch. It wasn’t exactly a lie. But baby Shinichi definitely had a deceptive streak.

Akai slid idly through the pictures on his phone, smirking at Shinichi’s pink llama onesie. Six weeks in, it still threw him—trying to line up that brilliant kid who could communicate flawlessly in Morse or maritime flag code and downed coffee like he was getting paid for it with the squirmy, giggly little hobgoblin kicking his chubby feet while Akai fought him into his pajamas. They didn’t talk soccer or Sherlock Holmes much anymore; these days, Shinichi’s top interests were crawling, getting his head stuck in the bars of the baby gate, and fussing like he’d been abducted whenever Rei walked out of his sightline. Not to mention catching every cough, bug, and sniffle that came within a hundred feet of him.

Akai hadn’t been sure they could handle it. Some days, he still wasn’t. But at four a.m.—when he was staring blearily at the clock, debating whether to make a play for the crib or just let Shinichi sleep where he was, on Akai’s chest on the living room floor—he held onto the fact that they were getting some terrific blackmail.

“So this is where you’re hiding out.”

Akai looked up. Rei stood beside the couch, Shinichi burbling on his hip. It was still strange to see Rei carrying a baby instead of a gun. But he had the one-handed tuck down.

Shinichi had a little speckle of milk around his mouth, and he was clutching his soft zebra stuffie—the one Akai had caught so much hell for taking along to a high-rise roof in his rifle case. Well, he’d caught hell for taking the baby. Akai didn’t think Rei really cared if that zebra had sharpshooter ambitions.

Shinichi gave some shriek that was either Akai’s name, butchered, or just that kid calling him ugly. He dropped the zebra onto Akai’s chest like a ballistic missile. Then he looked up at Rei, delighted, and said something that sounded like, “Uh oh!” His new favorite sound.

Rei smirked. “Uh oh,” he echoed, snagging the zebra and handing it back. Which really just encouraged him.

Akai chuckled. “Looks like he’s got gravity figured out.”

Rei rolled his eyes, hoisting Shinichi a little higher in his arms. “Yeah. He’s been working on that one all day—mainly with my phone.”

For a moment, Rei went quiet, looking him over. Akai wondered if he was in trouble for slacking off. But all Rei said was, “Scoot over.” Then he flopped onto the couch and slid-shuffled into the curve of Akai’s body, back to his chest, Shinichi kicking his feet on the cushion next to him. Rei kept one hand on the baby’s back, so he couldn’t slip off.

Akai studied his face. It had been a while since Rei leaned into him like this—by choice, anyway. Since Shinichi’s transformation, he’d been too wired, both of them focused on getting out alive. Sometimes, on the nights they spent on the couch waiting for the baby Tylenol to kick in, Rei fell into his shoulder like he just needed somewhere to land, someone to hold him up for a minute.

This felt…more intentional than that.

Akai swallowed. Rei had thrown on one of his old sweatshirts, the blue one with San Francisco across the chest. He smelled like baby shampoo and bananas and fabric softener. Not sexy, exactly. But something else—something that kicked Akai’s heartbeat up a notch, made him want to press his forehead to the nape of Rei’s neck and breathe him in. He draped his arm over Rei’s waist—all the way over Shinichi, too, cradling that small head in the palm of his hand.

“Hey, kid. You giving him a hard time?” Akai asked, fluffing Shinichi’s hair with his thumb. A downy baby puff, like it’d been washed recently.

Shinichi babbled at him, emphatically shaking the zebra. Akai didn’t know what that meant. But at least it was happy babbling.

Rei shook his hair back with a sigh. “We managed to get down some oatmeal and blueberries, and a little applesauce. Though most of that wound up in his hair. Didn’t it?” he said, pinching those chubby cheeks. Shinichi laughed, his delighted baby giggle.

Akai considered the two of them, the heaviness of Rei’s body and the dark circles under his eyes. Then he reached for the blanket lumped on the top of the couch and pulled it down over all three of them, right over Shinichi’s head. He trapped the blanket under his forearm at the edge of the couch, making a little tent.

Rei nudged him with an elbow. “Don’t suffocate him.”

“He’s fine,” Akai said. He hooked his chin over Rei’s shoulder and flicked the blanket up with his thumb, just high enough to catch Shinichi’s eyes. “Peekaboo.”

Shinichi’s eyes widened with delight. Akai dropped the blanket again, then popped it up, chuckling at the look on his little face.

“Peekaboo.”

He liked Shinichi’s smile. But it was Rei’s smile he was really after, that reluctant curl at the corner of his mouth as he watched Akai entertain the baby with one thumb.

“Lazy,” Rei accused.

Akai gave a slow smile. “He likes it.” He rolled his hand up, and Shinichi shrieked, banging the stuffed zebra against Rei’s elbow in excitement.

Rei scoffed. “Of course he does. He gives you too much credit for minimal effort—always has.” But there was no bite to it, his voice half exasperated and half something else, a little softer. His lips twitched as Shinichi chirped under the blanket, begging him to do it again. “At least you’re solidifying his grasp on object permanence.”

Akai popped the blanket up. Rei faked a gasp, and the baby gasped with him, his little mimic. Akai chuckled. He missed long afternoons at the shooting range, or playing chess with Shinichi while he and Rei debated locked-room murders over the breakfast bar, Shinichi garbling his point about the weakness of hotel chain locks around a spoonful of key lime custard. But these days, this was pretty much what passed for entertainment around here.

“Gravity, object permanence…I should try for Newton’s laws of motion next,” he murmured into Rei’s shoulder.

Rei rolled his eyes. “You think he really needs to know force equals mass times acceleration?”

Maybe, Akai mused, given how hard the kid kept banging his head into the corner of the coffee table. But he didn’t need to bring that up again. “I was thinking inertia. Objects at rest would like to stay that way.”

“Not sure Newtonian physics is going to fly at three in the morning,” Rei grumbled. “But I’d take that over you serenading him with the Scarlet Investigator theme song again.”

Akai wasn’t sure which was more humiliating. Being the man having conniptions over some cringey movie theme song. Or being the man singing that cringey theme song to his baby because he’d lost his last shred of self-respect an hour ago.

Akai did a hundred things every day he’d never expected to do in his lifetime. Playing peekaboo. Testing the temperature of the baby formula on his wrist. Tickling Shinichi as he named every bone in those little feet, pinching the baby’s toes to make him shriek. Or, their latest family activity: dinnertime dance parties with Shinichi strapped into the papoose on Akai’s chest, singing along to an endless stream of boppy love songs, just trying to keep the baby entertained long enough for Rei to cook something that didn’t come out of a jar.

They’d tried Two-Mix, Okino Yoko. But what Shinichi latched onto were early ’90s pop songs. Songs Akai hadn’t heard in decades—and now couldn’t get out of his head.

“Are you humming ‘Every Heartbeat Belongs to You’?” Jodie asked, incredulous, when she dropped by a few days ago and caught him giving Shinichi his afternoon bottle. “Pretty sure I danced to that at my freshman homecoming.”

They were dancing to it too—not that Jodie needed to know that. Akai really only knew how to slow dance, so his was just a shuffle, side to side between the island and the kitchen sink, kicking Shinichi’s little penguin socks to the beat while Shinichi waved a rubber spatula like a lighter at a rock show. He was sure he looked like an idiot. But he wondered if Rei had any idea how cute he was: humming over the stove, shaking the parsley and pepper shakers like maracas and reaching over to bop Shinichi’s nose with the end of his wooden spoon.

“Every Heartbeat Belongs to You” was Shinichi’s favorite. And Akai’s, too. Ever since last night, when Rei punctuated the chorus by kissing Shinichi’s pudgy cheek—and then leaned up and kissed Akai, too, right on the corner of his mouth. Akai caught him around the waist and kissed him again, deeper, as long as he could get away with, until Shinichi was whapping his cheek with the spatula and Rei was laughing against his mouth, pushing Akai back with his fingertips.

“Trying to make me burn the first real food we’ve had all day?” Rei asked drily, turning back to the bubbling cream sauce. But his eyes were bright, his smile easy in a way it hadn’t been in weeks. And Akai would love that song forever for that.

He looked down. Rei had bent close to press his forehead to Shinichi’s, their noses bumping softly together while the baby grabbed at his bangs, cooing at him in a language of his own invention. Rei chuckled.

“Mm. I know. He is, isn’t he?” he said, throwing Akai a look over his shoulder.

Akai raised an eyebrow. “I’m what?”

“Eavesdropping,” Rei admonished, swatting at him. But there was a playful little twist to his mouth, his voice teasing in a way that made Akai’s chest ache.

Newton’s third law was in his head: the law of action and reaction. The one that allowed for equilibrium—all forces precisely balanced, all objects meeting on equal terms.

Equilibrium wasn’t usually a word he reached for, with Rei. But sometimes, in moments like this, Akai wanted to believe there was some essential gravity between the three of them: that for all their sharp and jagged edges, if he lined them up just right, they could fit together after all, an unknowable arrangement of forces and weights that kept them perfectly in balance.

Shinichi tugged one bright strand of Rei’s hair—too hard, maybe, from his wince. He was cooing again, a soft little ay ay ay. Just another sound. But he made that sound a lot, looking at Rei.

Rei blinked, his eyes a little bright. “Yeah. Rei. I’m here, Shinichi. I’m not going anywhere.”

Akai swallowed against a tight throat.

Shinichi was more baby than brilliant detective right now. But every once in a while, Akai caught a flash of the real kid in there. Like his flat look when Akai knocked a full bottle off the counter and all over his sweatpants. His sheer stubbornness, whenever he got hold of Akai’s keys. The way that kid still loved to talk—well, less talking, more an endless string of vowel combinations that he was workshopping. But Akai recognized the gleam in his eyes, that sharp mind making sense of the world all over again.

And how he was with Rei. The way he could crack Rei’s chest open, make him glow, make him smile. The way Shinichi was home, for Rei, like nothing else ever had been.

Akai kissed the slope of Rei’s shoulder, let Shinichi curl a tiny fist around his trigger finger. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for these two people. Even if one of them currently fit in the picnic basket.

Rei’s eyes had gone serious, his touch gentle as he combed Shinichi’s staticky hair down with his fingers. “Do you think he knows what happened to him? Or who we are?”

Akai shook his head. “He knows you love him. That’s all anyone needs to know.”

Rei didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he reached down and laced his fingers over Akai’s, sliding them into the grooves, and pulled the blanket up quick.

Shinichi gave a delighted baby shriek. Rei huffed.

“Peekaboo,” he whispered, resting his cheek on Akai’s shoulder.

“We’re right here, kid,” Akai promised.

He didn’t know if any of this was going to stick. Shiho had said Shinichi’s memories of all this would be scattershot at best. But if he did remember anything, Akai hoped it was just this: the sensation of their arms around him, the certainty that he had never been alone.

Notes:

Thanks for going on this little adventure with me. I have at least one more small Oven Mitt idea for Christmas...we'll see what this family gets up to next <3