krystalkatzficz | The Midwife part 9

“How…How do you know who I am?” Nino asked almost rudely staring at the doctor while the name buzzed around in his head. He was sure that he had heard it somewhere before but he couldn’t quite place it. The man’s smile widened as his eyes a gentle hot chocolate colour danced playfully in his rounded face as they ran up and down him. He was irritatingly attractive, even if his eyelids gave him a sleepy appearance, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to reveal tanned and surprisingly muscular arms.

“You’re wearing the uniform of a midwife and as you’re the only male Midwife that I have an appointment with I made an educated guess” Satoshi answered and Nino flushed brightly his hands moving almost to cover the baby blue uniform that he was wearing. “I assumed that you would be a little exhausted after last night so I was going to buy us some coffee before you arrived”

“Last night?” Nino repeated feeling more than a little dazed by the man whose smile only increased as he nodded slowly saying;

“Your delivery”

“You know about that?”

“The whole village seems to know about that. In fact, I heard about it the bait shop this morning. The woman there was impressed” Satoshi chuckled and Nino, much to his annoyance found himself flushing hard when he was sure that Satoshi’s eyes became appraising looking him up and down slowly with something of a nod “You seem to be rather famous around here”

“It’s a small village and the Matsumoto’s are a big part of it” He whispered not knowing what else to say. The man was nothing like the person he had been preparing himself to meet and he felt as though he had been thrown through a loop. He tried his best to recover but it was a difficult thing and in the end, he just stayed silent while Satoshi continued to grin looking him over again.

“I see, but from the way that it sounds it was a difficult birth, so congratulations”

“It was my first solo, so I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. Mother and baby are doing well” Nino knew that his cheeks were now burning with pride and he wasn’t able to keep the excitement out of his voice but he didn’t really care. He was extremely proud of what he had achieved and he didn’t care who knew it.

“And that’s the best outcome we could hope for. So, where is the best place for decent coffee around here?”

“At home? We don’t really have many coffee houses.” Nino admitted with a small smile remembering how hard that had been on him when he and Etsuko had first moved back her after college. They had fallen into the trap of having their coffee served in all kinds of ways and then had to suffer with the thick sludge that they served here. There was a posh hotel about 45 mins away but the prices had been scary when he had taken Etsuko there on their last date. “There is a bar that sometimes serves coffee if the machine is working”

“Ah, not a good idea then. I might have to risk what’s in the staff room, though it was looking rather more mud like than coffee when I last checked” Satoshi’s nose wrinkled for a moment and then he sighed giving a small shrug “But I suppose it will have to do. Come on then Ninomiya-san”

“Um, right” Nino nodded suddenly feeling nervous at the polite formal way of address and his stomach churned again feeling like there was an army of butterflies dancing around inside of it. He swallowed and bowed his head following the doctor into the hospital.

The path to the office was familiar as he had walked it not so long ago when he had first gotten the job. He had been warned then the director would be leaving to spend a well-earned retirement with his family and that the position might only be temporary based on the decision of the new director and Nino wondered if he was walking to his doom. Satoshi didn’t seem to be all that bad but that might had just been a way to get him to relax and it was possible that he would change when they reached the safety of the office.

TBC
A/N: I hope that this is okay ^_^