Chapter Text
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we just married each other?” Shizuku asked over a late lunch.
Across the table, Kiyoharu took a bite of rice. He set his chopsticks down with a precise click. “It could be nice.”
There were still faint prints on his cheek, echoes of the wrinkles on his pillow case. They were both jet lagged from their late night flight in from Barcelona.
“Nothing would have to change,” Shizuku said. She tried her hardest to mean it.
Kiyoharu shrugged. "So it's decided," he said and resumed eating like they hadn’t just agreed to get married over lunch, the least romantic meal of the day.
*
It’s cold the morning they decide to go to the registrar’s office. At the train station, the sun is bright and cheerful. It's fall, but the leaves are still clinging faithfully to the color green, refusing to change colors just yet.
On a cerebral level, Shizuku knew they were boarding the train during rush hour, but it had been months since she'd been home and she was unaccustomed to the crush of people trying to board at this hour.
"Did you miss this?"
"Of course.” There was nothing about Tokyo she didn’t miss when they are away. "The trains are always on time."
Shizuku snagged a seat, while Kiyoharu grabbed onto one of the rails above her. He scrolled through his phone as he swayed with the motion of the train. To her left and right were strangers, their arms brushing against hers, barely noticeable.
"This is it," Shizuku said as they stood outside the doorway. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
"What about your mother?"
"Well, we can deal with her together, because when they finish filing the paperwork she'll be your mother too."
Kiyoharu took the steps up to the door. He opened the door with a flourish and said, "After you."
There was nothing to do but hold her head high and glide through the door as gracefully as possible, her hand warmer now for having held his.
The white tiles under their feet are luminous.
*
They were the first couple to turn in their paperwork that day.
The woman at the kiosk checking everything was filed correctly looked bored even as she murmured a polite “Congratulations.”
The license she handed over had come fresh out of the printer. The edges were unwrinkled; the paper still seemed warm.
*
The dishes from yesterday were still in the sink, but the dust motes floating in the kitchen in the morning light seemed brighter, even more golden than the day before. The apartment felt different, owned, and Shizuku stood on the threshold of the future for a second to marvel at it in this new light of joint ownership even as Kiyoharu stepped forward casually.
He took off his shoes, plugged in his phone, and started on the dishes.
There he was, half of a two time WDC World Champion pair, scrubbing at the pan she'd used to grill fish last night, cheerful pink rubber gloves flopping at his elbows. And here she was: years and years of partnership behind her, and a marriage license in her bag built on something half sincere.
“I’m going to take a nap," Shizuku declared as she stepped through the front room, placing her coat on the couch, feeling the cool wooden floor against her socked feet. "Feeling a little jet lagged."
Kiyoharu looked up from the dishes and grinned, just a quirk of his lips that made something in her chest stutter and lose its rhythm for a second. "Sweet dreams," he said.
*
The liminal spaces associated with travel had grown on her. The vague blur of hotel rooms in her memories now shaped every room into somewhere she'd been before. Here were the two beds, the two washed out scenic pictures depicting local flora framed on the walls. There was the desk chair that was always a little too high or too low for the desk it was pushed against.
The tackiness of bar soap that's been wrapped in plastic. Wood furniture, chrome accents, the soft swish of slippers on carpet, on floor boards.
Shizuku always has trouble falling asleep at home those first few nights.
Everything was unfamiliar. The sheets felt wrong, and the air was too humid. The singing of the garbage truck on certain days grated on her nerves, waking her just when she was just falling asleep.
This was another arena that Kiyoharu seemed to have no problem surpassing her in. Not only was Kiyoharu incredibly talented on the dance floor, but he also had peerless mastery of the art of falling asleep anywhere at any time.
Some might even claim his talent borders on narcolepsy, but he was a light sleeper, waking up under Shizuku's hands with barely any resistance, ready for the next leg of their journey. It was that openness in those moments after he woke up that Shizuku daydreamed about sometimes when she had an idle minute. What would be like to be on the receiving end of that kind of trust, that fearless reciprocity, if it were deliberate instead of a sleepy holdover from the dream state? He was usually so remote, and there were still days, even after all these years, when she couldn't be sure what he was thinking as he gazed impassively out at the world through amber eyes like stone medallions.
There were days when Shizuku had herself convinced that the only way she could ever desire Kiyoharu was as a dance partner, as someone to sweep through the crowd with, cut a swath through the competition with, master a piece of choreography with and nothing more.
But it was hard to convince herself of that fact when something tender bloomed between her ribs when she caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye, whether he was sleeping or stretching or doing the dishes. It would have been better to not look at him like he was anything more than her dance partner, but stealing a glance was like the pleasure pain of sucking on sour hard candy. That is to say, good while it lasted.