Heirot

Rai looked at the both, sensing something but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. "Eh... I don't know," she said and shrugged. "Never been to a parent's day before...." She skipped up and down, holding there hands and kicking dust into the air.

Mizuki sighed, smiling. She swung Rai's arm gently back and forth between them, thinking about the Parents Day. If they went they'd actually be considering as a family. Married and everything. How would Soran deal with that? She wondered but decided to push it from her mind.

"We'll go." she said finally.

"Yay!!" Rai said happily, grinning of at Mizuki and skipping higher. She looked back at Soran, tilting her head.

Soran grit his teeth tensely at Mizuki's reply. He wasn't thrilled by the idea, but something in Mizuki's eyes made him refrain from protest. "When is it?" he asked, managing to sound indifferent.

"Uh... tomorrow!" Rai said and smiled, though something about Soran made her want to do otherwise. She might be short, but she could still catch the glint off of someones eyes. She still had that strange ability to be perceptive to someones feelings. Soran was unhappy.

"Good, well then we'll make plans for that." Mizuki said and smiled encouragingly at Soran. They walked down the road back to their house and several people stopped to look. Soran, the town's rogue, having a family? It perplexed the mind's of the people who were used to his indifference.

Mizuki could've even sworn she heard a few sobs.

Soran didn't say anything further as they returned to the house, but he was thinking about parents' day. He was telling himself he was concerned that openly affiliating himself with Mizuki and Rai could put them at risk should someone choose to target him. His lifestyle was one that afforded many enemies, and his social habits were ones which allowed few allies. Really, though, he knew there was another problem. He disliked...no, he hated schools and everything affiliated with them. His education had been rocky and saturated with cruelty. He was technically responsible for the fact that his own schoolhouse was burned to the ground, along with its staff and most of the children living in his home town. Make all the excuses he wanted, he simply had an instinctive and, he knew, irrational loathing for the construct of school.

But that made him all the more desperate to succeed at this 'parents day.' He no longer wanted to be held back by his past. To him, this represented one more bridge he had to burn behind him.

And he was going to have to be social with the other parents... The rogue clasped and unclasped his fingers, forcing himself to relax. But he wasn't exactly the king of lightening up.

Once they got to the house, Mizuki gave Rai something to eat in the kitchen and munched on a peice of bread herself. She offered some to Soran, who seemed tense, thinking about something that was bothering him. She put the bread in his face so he'd see it and watched him carefully.

"Calm down, I'll be with you." she told him. He was worried about Parent's Day, she knew it. "If you want, I'll hold your hand through the whole thing." She teased.

Rai ran inside and bounced on the couch up and down. She then fell onto her bottom on the couch and fell over, curling up to take a nap. Well, she pretended to take a nap.

"That will hardly be necessary," Soran said sourly, folding his arms on his chest as they walked in and Rai flopped into the couch. "What purpose does such an event serve in the first place?"

"It's just fun for the children." Mizuki said smiling and stood beside him. "Don't you want to see Rai have fun? We can't always be off fighting bad guys you know." she giggled. "It'd be good for Rai, especially after everything else..."

"I suppose so," Soran acquiesced, pulling his expression into a more palatable one. "Perhaps it will be fun." The word fun sounded unnatural coming from him, but his heart was in the right place.

After that, it was a normal evening in their house. They ate, they spoke, and finally it was time to sleep. "It's late. I'm going to turn in," Soran said casually from where he'd been reading on the couch, watching Rai do homework on the table. He stood and began walking to his room, stopping as he met Mizuki on the way into the hall. "Goodnight," he said, looking at her almost longingly for a moment before trying to walk past her. There were good reasons he couldn't sleep with her, he told himself. Besides, who knew if she even wanted that. He could appear weak just by suggesting it.

Rai yawned, staring at her mathmatics book with droopy eyes. She yawned again, her head falling further and further forward until finally it rested on the table.

After she had scooped up the tired Rai and placed her in bed, Mizuki turned to go to her own room but ran into Soran in the hall.

"Goodnight," he said to her. She recongized the look in his eyes. She felt herself holding the same look when she day dreamed to herself. Badly she wanted him to hold her like lovers do. Maybe he wasn't ready, she always thought, He may need more time. But they couldn't make excuses forever, could they? Then again, was the intament touch that important? Could they live together without touching one another...?

Probably not. One of them would eventually snap, and it would most likely be herself.

"Soran," she called out to him softly, stopping him before he dissapeared for the night behind his door. They've spent nights together before, but always because they were comforting the other, not because they wanted to be that close. She felt stupid and silly for even thinking like this, but whether or not they touched they were still lovers, and lovers shared beds. "Can I stay with you?" she looked at him with her eyes desparatly begging him not to turn her away.

Soran's eyes flashed wider for a moment. "I-...." His gaze froze onto hers. He shouldn't. He really shouldn't.

"Yes." He held out a hand to her, worry and longing glowing through him.