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"Good!" Rouichi exclaimed, sparing a smile for his friend. Sai looked better, he thought absently as he eyed the other man. There was color in his cheeks again and a vibrancy in his eyes that the redhead had thought gone not a few months ago. It felt like such a long time ago now that the short Tamakazura had failed to fill out his clothing properly. He had looked so deathly thin and fragile that the swordsman had not wanted to touch him for fear of breaking him. Sai's illness had been so bad...

Rou shook himself. Those had been dark times for everyone. The past didn't matter anymore - not when the future was looking as bright and terrifyingly uncertain as it was.

The rogue gave the room a cursory glance. "You still look like you've got half the palace's files in here," Rou complained half-heartedly, stepping over a document that had slipped from Sai's desk to the floor. It looked as though it had snowed in here for all the white scattered around the room. Stooping to pick up the file, he held the parchment out to his friend. "What do you say to digging into your sake cabinet? I uh-.." He cleared his throat. "I have some news that might take some alcohol to receive. Certainly does for me!"

Rou shrugged out of his coat and hung it over the end of the couch, the soft gingle of metal and fabric a melody that they were both used to by now. "I can tell you with all honesty that I was not in my seat very long when I found out," the redhead confided, crossing the room to join Sai at the table. He sat with considerable stiffness, his knees protesting the movement even as he settled down to rest. Rouichi did not think he'd been off his feet once since finding out.

"Thing is..." he began slowly, scrubbing one hand through his hair and searching for the right words. His brows knit together in concentration as he thought. How exactly did someone approach a subject like this? "Fei Lin and I... We-" He paused, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth and deciding to start over. "I mean, ugh- to hell with it." Exhaling loudly, Rou reached for the bottle of sake and poured himself a dish. "Fei Lin is with child and we're having a kid," he said in a rush, lifting his eyes to gauge Sai's reaction. Best just to let it out in a blurt than to beat around the bush all night, he thought wryly.

"Don't congratulate me!" Rou despaired, gulping down his sake and making a face at the empty dish. "I have heard more than enough of it from the rest of them..." he groaned, propping his elbows on the table and dropping his head into his hands. Free of the heavy coat that always seemed to make up a part of his appearance the slump of his strong shoulders and long-suffering posture were more readily apparent. He practically curled over the table.

"I don't know what to do," he whined at the table, expression pinched in a look of anxiousness rather than elation. If anyone had any doubts about whether or not Rouichi Tokushima was excited by the idea of a child they would be settled here - he definitely was not. The idea no longer frightened him now that he had had time to get used to it (well, it did a little bit), but it left him with a feeling of dread and unease that wouldn't go away. A child would mean all kinds of responsibilities that he didn't want - he would actually have to start making an effort to get back to the manor every night, instead of just sleeping wherever he happened to be at the time. He would have to be more conscious of where he went and when. He would have to start staying closer to home.

"I am not a family man." Korin had merely told him to suck it up and deal with it. Fei Lin was determined to convince him he would make a good father. Rou still wasn't buying that - there was no way he'd be able to simply settle down and raise a family as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "I don't know the first thing about kids! What the hell am I supposed to do with a kid? It just means one more way someone who wants to kill me will be able to get at me! And - Guh, even if that's not the case," he exclaimed, slumping even further, "I can't do my work for Kosakiu and raise a kid! The child won't even know its own father, I'll be away so much! I barely have time for myself as it is!"

He looked helplessly up at Sai. It was probably unfair to dump this on him, but he was probably the only one who would listen without trying to come up with some bullshit encouraging speech about how he could do it if he tried.

Rou picked up his sake dish and gulped down the alcohol gratefully. "You sound like me," he muttered unhappily, holding out his dish so that it could be refilled. Sai complied amiably and Rouichi drank it down almost as quickly as he'd been given it. Actually, he was grateful that Sai hadn't done anything but swear - however mildly he'd done it, the redhead hadn't known Sai to be the type to heavily curse even in the worst of times. He would rather curse words than politely given congratulations or sympathetic murmurs about how things would be alright. Rouichi knew how things would be. They'd go through a rough time and then everything would calm down again, like they always did, and things really would be okay. But that didn't stop him from sitting and having a good moan about it. He thought he was entitled to one, given that Rou didn't sit and whine about anything else. It just wasn't his style - usually.

"Y'know what the worst part is?" he remarked, expecting the blush that would rise to Sai's cheeks like he expected the sun to come up the next morning. "The worst part is that I'll have to stop going to those brothels," he complained, taking the bottle itself from his companion. Upending it, Rou took a long drink from the bottle itself. Truth was, he wasn't too worried about that. He was hardly faithful to Fei Lin - he had been in the prime of his game when he had married her and hadn't really stopped. Over the years his tendency to find comforts in other women's beds besides hers had calmed, but it had by no means ceased. Now, though... Now he didn't have a choice.

"Its not a matter of that," Rou replied, exhaling a long sigh and waving Sai's comment away with an airy gesture. "What I mean is, if Fei Lin found out, I think she'd beat me into the ground. And she could, you know..." he pointed out, filling his sake dish and then handing the bottle back to Sai so that he could have some as well. "I certainly wouldn't want to get into a fight with her while she's well. Now that she'll be emotionally unstable?" The redhead affected something that might have been a pout and then shrugged.

"Fact of the matter is," he added, taking a more leisurely sip from his dish, "as a father, don't I have some kind of responsibility to be a role model or whatever? If I'm out at a brothel every night and it causes problems with Fei, which it will, then what kind of role model am I setting for the kid? I don't want to be the guy remembered for having screaming matches with his wife."

Rouichi shot Sai a dark look which softened the moment he realized that his friend was teasing him. The redhead stuck his tongue out at the other man, a smirk finding its way twitchingly onto his lips. "Same thing," he countered, amused despite himself. Coming to visit Sai had been the right idea after all, he thought. Drink and friends had a way of lightening a man's mood when he was feeling down.

"I'll just have to stop, I suppose..." he mused. He was feeling less disheartened about the whole experience now he'd had a chance to moan about it to someone who wasn't going to take a pitying position and pat him on the back. It just felt good to finally get it out. "It'll solve more problems than it'll cause in the long run. Gods know I have caused enough problems for the relationship up till now." Rou took another sip of his sake. "Mn... Sorry about dropping this on you," he added.