A/N: As always, thanks for the reads, reviews, favorites, and follows! We're one chapter closer to Kanda finding out what's going on, but first: family dinner...

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Family dinner was surprisingly nowhere near the fiasco it usually was. But that was easily explained. Despite what Tyki had threatened, the whole family wasn't actually there. The twins had gotten themselves kicked off the flight before the plane had even finished boarding; I both wanted to know what happened and didn't want to have nightmares about it, so I didn't press for details. Lulubell had decided that work was more important than a family dinner whose sole purpose was to mess with me, and while that stuck up attitude of hers annoyed me, I was thankful that I could always count on her to be a mature adult. There were others missing too, but with a family as large as ours, it would have taken far too long to find out why every single one of them had skipped, and I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, so I elected not to go there.

Neah gave Kanda a really hard time throughout the meal, but nowhere near as hard a time as Tyki was giving him. That normally would have been strange, but Tyki knew that I was pregnant, so it was pretty much a given that he was going to be more of an ass than usual. And because Tyki was being so rude and pigheaded, and he was the one who had actually met Kanda before, Sherril and Adam also got in on it.

It was expected that they would act like that towards my boyfriend, but it was especially frustrating tonight. I may not have been able to predict Yuu's reaction to the news that I had yet to tell him, or known whether or not we were still going to be together once he knew, but none of that would change the fact that I was carrying his child, and that meant that I needed my family to approve of him. So it irritated the crap out of me that they weren't even trying to be nice to him.

Yuu took every jab they threw at him, remaining calm and collected despite the very inappropriate comments. I genuinely couldn't tell if he was unbothered or if he was just acting that way, but either way, I was thankful that he was keeping his temper in check. The last thing I needed that night was for him to lash out at someone the way he used to lash out at me.

But everything changed when Skinn took a swing at the waitress.

It was normal behavior for him, and nothing money couldn't fix, so the family just let him be violent. Plus their sick sense of humor found the whole thing funny. I often wanted to stop Skinn's outbursts, but the one time I had tried, the others had made it painfully clear that it was not my place to do so because I was a girl, so I bitterly held my silence. Skinn's reasons for complaining were usually monumentally stupid and completely unfair to whichever employee was on the receiving end, and no matter what the server said in their own defense, his short fuse would burn out. After that, there'd be violence, followed by a frantic 911 call and threats of a lawsuit, which would immediately be silenced by the ridiculous amount of cash the others just happened to have on them.

Today, Skinn was upset because his brown sugar barbecue ribs weren't sweet like candy, which was beyond stupid - why would a restaurant ever serve meat that sweet? It was also completely gross, and I was the one with pregnancy cravings telling me that chocolate sauce on nachos sounded good. I tried not to gag at the thought, and of course, gagging triggered my morning sickness, and I found myself bolting to the restroom to throw up.

When I returned to the table, Skinn's complaining had escalated to yelling that had attracted the waitress, who was doing her very best to try to understand what his problem was so that she could help fix it. I wanted to defend the poor girl, but I knew exactly what would happen if I did, so I kept my mouth shut.

Kanda had clearly not gotten the memo that we were supposed to ignore Skinn when he got like that, which was my own fault since I had forgotten to say anything about it, and he looked completely appalled by the fact that everyone else was ignoring what was happening. I tried to send him a silent signal that that was just how things worked, but he wasn't looking in my direction. He was keeping his mouth shut though, so at least he wasn't going to make a scene.

But while Yuu may have been content to stay out of it while Skinn was simply shouting, that changed completely the moment he got violent. The second Skinn started swinging his fist, Kanda was on his feet, intercepting the punch. He caught Skinn's fist, using his momentum to swing him around and face-plant him on the floor. Even though Skinn was more than twice his size, Yuu pinned him to the ground quite easily, and he held him there until he quit struggling and passed out.

I expected everyone to get angry at me, because it was my boyfriend who had acted out of turn, but instead, the others all applauded. (Well, everyone except Tyki, but that wasn't strange given what he knew.) They continued to tease Kanda through the rest of the meal, but it was in a very different way now that he had their respect. I definitely didn't get it. It was beyond weird to me that stopping Skinn had made them like him, while all it had gotten me was a lecture about knowing my place, but I wasn't going to say anything about it. I needed them to like my boyfriend and questioning them would only ruin that.