"Woah!"

Taiga, overburdened by a laundry basket and a gradually swelling stomach, suddenly rocketed backwards from the third step from the stair landing.

"Oh for the love of..." Ryuuji muttered as he deftly caught his wife who was tumbling down the stairs. For the fourth time. That day.

He grabbed her by the waist, just barely saving Taiga and their unborn child from falling to their deaths.

In the ten years he had known her, she had not grown so much as a centimeter and she was just as clumsy. Pregnancy apparently did not change her reckless attitude a fact that infuriated Ryuuji to no end.

Never mind he was already worried about her small body holding up under the exhausting work of carrying and delivering a child.

Never mind he was worried genetics were against their child who would probably either look like a Yakuza or be the size of a gnome, influencing his life before they were even born.

No, he had to play damage control, seeing to it that his wife didn't kill herself every other day.

"Dammit, I told you, you wait for me when you walk upstairs!"

"Ryuuji, I'm not a child," Taiga said in mild indignation, unraveling herself from his grasp.

"No, but you have a child with you who's expecting you to take care of him while he's waiting to be born."

He gently rubbed her stomach which promptly bumped his hand as the baby kicked.

Ryuuji grinned, his face flush with happiness and pride.

"Did you feel that? He kicked! It's the first time I've felt him kick!"

"Congratulations you've graduated from being beat up by me, to your unborn son," Taiga laughed.

But Ryuuji was too excited to respond to her playful jab.

"Good boy," he said, "Now listen to Daddy...you look like Mommy, okay? You don't want to come out of there with Daddy's ugly mug, believe me..."

"Shut up, Ryuuji, don't tell him that!" Taiga swatted him gently. "You have a great face. I married that face. Do not insult the face."

"I look like a thug!"

Taiga gave him a serious look. "But you're not."

"But I look like I am." he insisted.

Taiga took his hand and cupped his face, kissing him sweetly on the lips.

"But you're not," she repeated, "I fell in love with you because you're a great person even if you look like Scarface's bastard child. "

"Hey, now..."

"And our son," she paused thoughtfully, "will be a great person too. Like his Daddy. I don't care what they look like. They're still our child."

Ryuuji looked at her softly. He grinned again.

"You're right. I fell in love with you because you weren't as big a bully as you pretended..."

She snorted. "You wish, mongrel..."

"...so even if he's a tiny, psycho looking mutt..." at the last word he tickled her teasingly and she strained not to laugh.

"...he'll still be a good person. Because we'll raise him to be. Right?"

Taiga looked up at him, face red from restrained laughter and flush from his words.

"Right,"

She gripped his hand...


...She gripped his hand as the last of her contractions left and the baby boy, somewhat premature, was laid on her belly.

Ryuuji was crying and stroking her hair and their son's cheeks as he wailed his first breaths of life. A fighter. A dragon. A tiger.

"He's gorgeous," he managed through his tears.

Taiga brushed her baby's thin black hair, not loosening her grip on her husband's hand.

"We'll have to wait for him to open his eyes to see if he got your face, Ryuuji."

"Mmm," Ryuuji gulped, brushing his tears and taking deep breaths to calm himself.

"Think he'll be as short as me? He's pretty tiny..."

Ryuuji grinned. "Who cares?"

Taiga smiled blissfully. "Yeah, you're right."

Because he was there and alive and healthy and beautiful and theirs.

Because their child would be a dragon and a tiger, the best of both of them.

Because if he was small and looked like a thug, all it would mean was that there was another palmtop tiger in the world.

A/N: I finally got around to watching ToraDora! And even though I'm not very far in it, I really like it. I guess I have a soft spot for bullies-turned-friend/love interest plots and I love nurturing mama!Ryuuji. The idea of him fussing over a pregnant Taiga amused me hence this story. I also really love in the show how both Taiga and Ryuuji feel frustrated and boxed in by how people see them partly by how they look,a so I wanted to write a story where they worry about this with their own kid. By the way, they are 27 in this story and they call the child a boy because they already found out it was going to be a boy.

Thank you for reading and feel free to review if you are so inclined!