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“Sick of the questions I keep asking you/ they make you live in the past”
Phoebe Bridgers, “Halloween”
Sitting on her blue loveseat, foot propped on the coffee table, Rangiku paints her toenails bright pink while wearing nothing more than pink lace underwear and a white tank top. Today, she is officially eight weeks pregnant, which means that not only does the baby have a heartbeat; they are four weeks closer to being able to tell people. She’s going to tell her parents, and then Toushirou. Since Toushirou gave Gin her address when he came back into town, she’s going to tell him that he is directly responsible for Gin impregnating her. Toushirou will probably make a face and tell her that she should have paid better attention in biology, but she knows that he’ll be happy for her.
Gin is in the kitchen, washing dishes, while she thinks about their baby. She sometimes talks to the baby in her head, telling them all about the world outside of her womb. Kenpachi trying to get people to commit crimes, Momo’s cute kids, Izuru’s new haircut. She even promised the baby that they will never know that lizard Aizen, although there is a chance he could come back and try to ruin everything again.
She frowns to herself when she thinks about Aizen, staring off into space. She shakes her head, not wanting to give him her energy, and decides to talk about the baby with Gin.
“What should we name the baby?” she asks, looking over her shoulder. Gin puts a plate on the drying rack before looking at her.
“Name the baby?” he asks. He thought that they had seven months to come up one.
“Yes, name the baby.” She puts the brush back in the jar of nail polish, choosing to leave her toes a wishy-washy shade of pink.
“Does it even have an audible heartbeat yet?” he asks, knowing the answer. Rangiku puffs her cheeks, because he was at that appointment too, and even though the heartbeat was inaudible she got to see him sit back and blink as it sunk in that there is a little person that he put in Rangiku. Gin tries not to laugh at the expression on her face. “We can’t name them without seeing them first.”
“Well, what if it’s ugly?” Rangiku asks. Gin wonders where she gets all these questions from, and why she keeps switching up the terms of engagement. First the baby needs a name, now they might be ugly. He loves her with all of his heart, but he’d be a liar if he said that she never annoyed him.
“Then I guess we have to leave them on a hill to die of exposure,” he says, “it’s what they did in Ancient Greece.” Rangiku chooses not to respond to that one, deciding to just tell Gin how she wants their baby to look.
“I want them to be creepy like you,” she says. Gin snorts.
“Creepy?” he says, “I thought I wasn’t a creep.” It was when she told him that, all those months ago, that he realized how well she really knew him.
“Cute creepy,” she says, “like, they fake being creepy to be off-putting.”
“Now I’ve heard everything,” he says, “you want a cute creepy baby like me? Why’d you let a creep put a baby in you in the first place? Ran, we really need to talk about your decision-making,” he laughs to himself, drying his hands.
He walks over to the loveseat where she sits, frowning at him. She’s cute when she’s mad, and he still can’t quite believe that he gets to hang out with her forever. It feels like an undeserved win, even though that’s not how the universe works. He doesn’t even mind that he had to move back here, or that Byakuya of all people is now one of his closest ‘friends.’ Izuru is more of Rangiku’s friend now, and Gin’s parents are dead. Byakuya is probably the person he is going to tell, and Gin still can’t decide whether or not that is a good or bad thing. Kaien will probably want to know. They aren’t friends, but he is the kind of boss who wants to know about his subordinates’ lives. He’s supportive.
While he sits there thinking about this, Rangiku stretches her legs onto the coffee table and sits back, resting her head on the back of the couch. She’s trying to think of another question to annoy Gin with.
“Are we going to get married?” she asks, “my parents will want to know.”
“If you ask nicely,” Gin says. Rangiku’s eye twitches, which makes him smile. “Did you want it to be a surprise?”
“No,” Rangiku says, recovering herself, “I just want you to want to be with me that way.” She doesn’t need assurance that he’s staying, since he has made that more than clear. But she does like the idea of being together until one or both of them are dead, and then hooking up again in the afterlife, even if they are old and wrinkly.
“We’re having a baby,” Gin says, tilting his head to the side, “how much more could I want you?”
“Well, we’re only twenty-five,” she says, “which is kinda young.”
“So, you want extra commitment?” he asks.
“No, I want all of your commitment,” she replies, tapping her fingers on her flat tummy. “I’m going to get so fat that I’ll have stretchmarks. I just want to know that you take my sacrifice seriously.” Gin tries not to laugh, because he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings over how funny he thinks this all is. Like she could ever be unattractive to him. He doesn’t think it’s possible.
“I don’t know what’s more committed than scrambling our DNA, Ran.” He eyes the slope of her nose, how it curves down from her brow and ascends to the tip. “It feels a little late to get married.”
“I just want you to want to get married,” she says, turning her head to look at him. “We don’t have to.”
“So, if I propose, you might say no?” he smiles in his serpentine way, stretching forward as she slumps onto her side, so he can hover over her.
“I was going to say yes,” she huffs, moving onto her back. “but after this conversation, it could be a no.”
“Now that’d be funny,” he says, pressing his mouth to her neck. His scruff makes her neck tingle, and she’s still a little annoyed with his non-answers, so she thumps his chest and blushes when she feels his mouth curve up into a smile against her carotid.
“Gin!” Rangiku struggles to sound authoritative.
“I’ll propose if you promise to say no,” he says, pressing his tummy down into hers.
“I hate you.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” he hums, “and you have to slap me for the audacity of asking in the first place.” She turns to give him her cheek when he goes to kiss her mouth, which does surprise him a little.
He pulls back and frowns, while she turns back to smile at him. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he murmurs, sitting up. Rangiku wraps her legs around his waist, smiling. “The audacity of pulling away too soon,” she hums. Gin thinks about correcting her, saying something like where is the audacity in wanting explicit consent, but, on the other hand, he agrees that it takes a certain audacity for a man to turn away from Rangiku. She calls, he comes running. It’s their way now. Taking her top lip between his teeth, he sinks into her, rolling his hips until she tells him that he’s home.