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“Come on. It’s real simple, right?”
“Deh~”
“No!” Ryuji leans forward, and drops his forehead briefly against the tray of the high chair. “R-yu-ji! Three syllables! You put three syllables together when you say ‘dehdehdeh’! And why ‘dehdeh’? Why not ‘dada’?”
“What are you doing?”
Ryuji straightens up, glances sheepishly at his wife as she comes back from collecting the wet wipes. “Trying to get him to say my name.”
Akira laughs as she takes the spoon away from Ryuji. “You know he’s still a little young for that,” she says as she guides it to their son’s mouth. “And don’t try to get him to say ‘dada’,” she chastises, and then grins. “We want him to say ‘mama’.”
Slipping his arms around her waist, she doesn’t see his eyeroll. It’s playful. “Do we?”
“You should teach him to say my name,” Morgana chimes in.
“Hell no!” Damn that cat! Why had they kept him again anyway!? Ryuji swivels around to glare at him. “There is no way we’d be teaching him that!”
Morgana pauses in licking a leg, one leg stuck up obscenely in the air. “Why not?”
“I’m not teaching my son to say your name as his first real word! And are you sticking your tongue out at me?!”
Morgana gives the leg another lick and then sits up straight, tail swishing. “Don’t be so ridiculous. Not everything is about you.” He stretches, and then jumps up onto the countertop.
“Get off the countertop! Jeez!” Ryuji relinquishes his hold on Akira to march across the kitchen, making a grab for Morgana.
Banter aside, they had long ago worked out their differences. Everything had changed after the end of the Phantom Thieves, and, well… Morgana is already Akira’s ‘pet’ when Ryuji had asked her to marry him. A package deal, Morgana had said, and he would have sworn he had given him the cat equivalent of the shit-eating grin. He didn’t mind him so much anymore. They just fell into the same old routines, sans the maliciousness of a few years ago. Mostly. Unless they really pissed each other off.
Morgana launches himself from the counter right as Ryuji makes to grab him; the cat ends up balanced precariously on Ryuji’s shoulder, claws digging in– “Ow! Ow, dude! Your butt is in my face!”
“Just stop squirming– woah!”
“Ow, dammit! ”
“Ryuji,” Akira scolds, but her voice is directed away. She probably isn’t even watching them.
“Sorry.” He huffs, grabbing Morgana around the middle to pull him away. “I’ve got you now, cat. What are you gonna do??”
And very deliberately, Morgana licks a stripe up Ryuji’s hand.
“EW!” Morgana ends up back on the countertop with a soft thud. “You know I hate that sandpaper crap! Don’t ever do that again! Gross!” He scrubs his hand over the offending spot, and then pouts as Goro giggles from behind him. And then smiles, because, well, his son is laughing. There’s, like, no better sound in the world than that, right?
His son laughing, and Akira grinning as she sweeps the spoon along Goro’s mouth to clear away the… what’s he eating, anyway? Corn, carrot, pumpkin… well, that sounds disgusting, too. He’s made the mistake of trying that stuff before. Except the fruit. That isn’t bad. None of this picture is bad, save the crawling feeling on his skin where Morgana’s tongue had been.
“It’s really not funny,” he remarks, nudging at Akira. “And you!” he announces, leaning in to tickle at Goro. “It’s not worth laughing over! Don’t give that Mona any more ammunition for his tricks!”
“Mo~”
“Huh?”
“NA!”
“Wait, what did he–”
“Moooo… na!”
Ryuji stops, and then looks at Akira. Slowly. Because this has all the making of a horror movie in the works. “Tell me he didn’t just say what I think he said.”
“Wait!” Morgana says and jumps the distance to the table as if fueled by the action in the room. “Did he just say my name??”
“Hell no!”
“Ryuji. ”
“He said my name!” Morgana boasts.
“No!” This can’t be happening. This can not be happening–!
“Mona!” Goro exclaims, and waves grabby hands towards Morgana.
The cat! The cat got the first word! “Noooo…! Anything but this…”
“He even knows me. Look!” Morgana stretches forward to put his paws on the edge of the high chair tray. “He knows me! He knows my name!”
Ryuji doesn’t know when Akira had started laughing, but she’s practically crying from doing so, now; mirth has drawn elated tears into her eyes as she shoos Morgana away from the tray. “I’m sure he doesn’t,” she says lightly. “But he doesn’t know ‘kitty’ yet.”
“All he knows is that something big and fuzzy’s standing there,” Ryuji mutters, and then raises his voice. “Wait a second, tell me this isn’t happening! You can’t be our son’s first word!”
“Mrrrrrooww, but I am!” A flick of the tail.
“This sucks!”
It certainly isn’t his ideal choice of first word, but… well. It is still a first word that isn’t ‘dehdehdeh’ or ‘bababa’. (But he hadn’t even said no! yet! But Mo, with a na on the end–) That’s progress! And it is kind of stupidly fitting that his first word would be that cat’s name, wouldn’t it? That’s totally just the hand he was dealt in life, coming second to Morgana, he thought with sarcastic fondness. First he had had Akira all to himself, granted even if he was a cat during all that time, too, then he got Akira when she had gone back home and all that time spent apart, and he still can’t help but quietly fumes if he’s reminded Morgana had saw Akira naked first (“H-Hey, wait! It was an accident!”). So of course he got the first thing out of his son, too.
Ryuji breathes out half a laugh, and then a proper one, bracing his hand on the table as Akira looks at him. “Can you believe this shit?” he asks. “Unbe-freaking-lievable.”
It doesn’t matter that it’s unbelievable, because Akira is still smiling. Softer now, probably product of their son’s first word, or maybe the fact that Ryuji is laughing. He always smiles when Akira laughs, after all. That’s the other most beautiful thing in the world. She pushes a piece of her hair out of her face and replies, “I can believe just about anything these days”.
“Yeah, man.” Ryuji wants to kiss her, and kiss his son, and not demand the cat off of the table. They had saved the world and got their happy ending– sans Mona as a first word! Morgana would never let him live this down!– and if he could believe that? Anything was possible. “That’s for sure.”