myrtlebroadbelt:

Fictober 2018 // Day One

“Can you feel this?”

Bungo was on his hands and knees, scrubbing away at the parlor hearth, when Belladonna’s voice cut through the quiet behind him. He let out a startled shout and thumped his head on the brick.

“I felt that,” he grumbled, rubbing his scalp as he straightened up to face her.

Without a word, Belladonna reached down to take his hand, and before he could protest that it would ruin her dress, she placed his sooty palm flat against her belly — which, it should be mentioned, was swollen with five months of pregnancy.

Bungo sighed. They had been through this routine all month — Belladonna sneaking up on him when he was reading or cooking or using the bathroom. Each time, she would grab his wrist and ask if he could feel the baby moving.

And each time, Bungo would wait for a kick that never arrived. He would shrug and suggest “maybe next time,” or “perhaps we should get a lock for that door,” and Belladonna would grow ever more frustrated, assuring him that she had just felt it not ten seconds before, and if he would just wait a little longer…

They had started sitting side by side at the dinner table so he could keep his hand on her belly while they ate, in the hope of catching it unawares. Bungo tried not to be offended that it only seemed to move for its mother.

He expected the current attempt to be no different, but he knelt there patiently nonetheless, feeling nothing but the rise and fall of his wife’s breathing.

And that’s when it happened. 

Just as he was about to give up and return to scrubbing, he felt something. It wasn’t what he had expected — not a kick or a shift but a long, rolling vibration against his fingers. He swore he could almost hear it.

“That’s it!” Bungo sprang to his feet and held Belladonna by the shoulders, turning her sleeves just as sooty as her skirt. “I’ve felt it! It’s finally happened!”

Belladonna didn’t say anything, only wrinkled her brow and tilted her mouth as if she were about to cry. Her lip trembled, and Bungo pulled her into his arms, soothingly rubbing soot onto her back.

“I know,” he cooed, tears prickling the corners of his own eyes. “That’s our baby.”

At that, Belladonna burst into sobs. “No, it’s not,” she wailed.

Bungo, thinking he had misheard, pulled away to look at her. “Pardon?”

Her frown was so deep it threatened to pull the rest of her face down with it. “That wasn’t the baby,” she hiccuped. “I missed second breakfast.”

She buried her face in her hands and continued to cry, while Bungo stood blinking, trying to come to terms with the fact that he had just become teary-eyed over his wife’s rumbling stomach.

“Right,” he said at last with a sniff, and patted her on the arm before turning toward the kitchen. “I’ll put the bacon on.”