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Kyoya’s smile is starting to fall, you note. In this little room, you shift on the leather couch next to your husband, the marriage counsellor’s stare feels intrusive suddenly, as if she’s taking note — well she is, it’s her job to — of every move you both make, every move that only seeks to reveal the divide between the two of you despite being husband and wife.
Husband and wife.
It’s an interesting term, you muse in your head, considering that the title is emptier than the space between Tamaki’s head. There is little love in your marriage, mutual respect perhaps, but the union was one that was made for progressing your respective family businesses.
You had known that you would one day marry Kyoya since you were young, the same way you knew the sky was blue, the same way you knew your husband’s hair was black, although in recent years, sparse white hairs had started to sprout, lacing his dark hair with signs of age.
“So how have things gone since the last session Mrs Ootori?”
Ah Mrs Ootori. That's you isn’t it? You’re Kyoya’s wife before you’re human. Kyoya’s wife before any of your achievements. That’s the reality of a married woman you suppose, your husband is seen before you are.
You put on a smile, and it’s the smile you put on when someone in public asks you for directions. “Me and my husband? We are doing better,” you say, because that’s all you can say. How can you tell an outsider that you feel like you barely recognise the man you grew up with? How can you tell an outsider that the marriage bed feels more and more like you’re sleeping on the edge of a cliff without a safety harness? How can you tell an outsider about the things that are supposed to be something solved inside?
The edges of Kyoya’s lips quirk up with some emotion you can’t recognise. But as his hand moves to wrap around your waist and pull you closer to his side, rewarding you with the affection you crave of him, you know you’ve done well.
“It’s as my wife says, we are doing better,” he smiles forwardly as you look up at him.
“That’s good, I’m glad you’ve been progressing,” she says, before scribbling something down, perhaps yet another commentary on the half-lies that spill out of both your mouths, an attempt to end these sessions that Tamaki and Haruhi insisted that the two of you go for.
You’ve lost Kyoya.
You feel like a fool. You had walked into the party, holding onto his arm, smiling curtly to the people you needed to smile to. It felt amazing for a while, maybe the counselling sessions had progressed, perhaps they had fixed something, then Tamaki had called out your husbands name joyously, his faint french accent curling around Kyoya’s name in a way that yours could not.
And then your husband had unlinked your hands, heading straight for his friend, and leaving you behind, ever the fool.
You curl in on yourself, the makeup on your face, that Kyoya insisted you put on, has started to feel like paint, heavy and cloying, clogging the pores of your sensitive skin. People do not approach you, they give you a wide berth, even as your breaths begin to run ragged, as you spiral into a cycle of self-destructive thoughts. Of course they do. Everyone here has been born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and they are determined to die with a silver spoon in their mouth.
They care little for the hyperventilating wife of Kyoya Ootori, who holds nothing but their husband’s title to their name. The hyperventilating wife of Kyoya Ootori, who runs both his own company and his wife’s. They have no reason to help you, not when it is your husband who pulls all the strings.
God you need air, you need it. You can’t breathe-
Your name is called, snapping you out of the haze.
Kyoya pulls you into his chest, rubbing the top of your head. “I lost you back there,” he says softly, “shall we go to the balcony?”
It isn’t a question.
He hands you his glass of wine and you sip on it. You grimace, the wine is astringent, the way Kyoya likes it, and the way you hate it. You feel like a child as he snorts at you, it feels like he’s mocking you, a grown adult pouting like a child over wine that is much too sharp.
Mocking you, perhaps because he can, he’s your husband, and he now plays an integral part in your family’s business, and there’s no way you could leave him now.
“I want to go home,” you say.
“Why?” Kyoya takes his glass back, taking a sip.
You wonder what you look like to outsiders. Perhaps you look like the definition of love, drinking wine on the balcony.
That would be nice. To be the definition of love, you think as you reach for Kyoya’s much too acrid wine and try to ignore his equally acrid gaze. You try not to get irritated as he glances back into the ballroom, rented by the Suoh’s for the night to celebrate Haruhi’s first pregnancy.
You’re no fool, you know very well your husband’s affection is held by both his blond friend and his brunette spouse. It’s in the stutter of his lips as he climaxes, T’s and H’s threatening to spill over instead of the syllables of your name. It’s in the way he never holds you after sex, instead choosing to turn away and gaze out the window. It’s in the way he stares at the photos on his desk, fingers feathering over his friends, your wedding photos the furthest from him on the desk.
You can’t blame him you suppose.
It was never your intention to get married to your upperclassman, but marriage was not a concept you intended to venture into, not in your woman body, where you’d be enslaved to your husband. You understood carnal pleasure, you did pay visits to certain people’s quarters during your time in high school, maybe you wouldn’t have minded falling in love with them.
But your family had insisted, threatened to cut you off, it mattered not that you boasted numerous academic results under your belt, at the end of the day, you were viewed as a woman, reduced to your body, and you thought it’d be better, if you at least married someone and still had a share in the company you worked so hard to be able to take over, instead of nothing at all.
And you didn’t even have a choice in the matter.
“You’ll attend the afterparty at their house won’t you? Tamaki says you’re invited, for high school’s sake.”
Ah yes, Tamaki was always one for sentimentality and memories, he was too nice for his own good you supposed. And you doubted the couple was having much fun now, not when this party was held mainly for the Suoh Company’s sake, to let their business partners and clients come and awe and wow over the expectant mother.
You nod, because that’s all you can do.
“Do you want to see the ultrasound?” Haruhi asks, snapping you out of your stupor. You turn slowly looking up at them. “Sure.” Your mouth feels dry. Haruhi looks happy, glowing in that way expectant mothers do. You follow them quietly as they lead you through the house, to the room they share with Tamaki.
It looks different from yours and Kyoya’s it looks lived in, the sheets aren’t made, there’s a coat, Tamaki’s, thrown haphazardly on one of the dressing table chairs. Haruhi pats the space beside them on the bed, having fished out the photo.
It doesn’t look like anything to your eyes. It just looks like a tiny blob, gray and formless, and you’re not very sure what you should be seeing or saying. Haruhi points out their baby’s features, the head, the feet, the hands, and you nod quietly, unsure of what else you can do. Haruhi looks beautiful like this, you note, eyes lit up with soft delight. Like this, you recall a poem from the days of high school. It was a Sylvia Plath poem, it wasn’t very well known, but it put an ache in your chest.
Mother, you are the one mouth
I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness
Eat me.
You blink away tears. You didn’t even understand the poem then.
“Why are you crying?’ Haruhi asks, their hands wiping the tears from the swell of your cheeks, wiping the tears away from your loveless body. You reach up, wrapping your hands around theirs, feeling the love that emanates from every pore in their body, and you yearn.
You yearn for better days when you would traipse the corridors with… [REDACTED], giggling under covers and talking about all the meaningless meaningful things. You yearn for the time where you were allowed to be a child. You yearn for a time where things were easier. You yearn to be seen, not as the wife of a man but as yourself.
Haruhi reminds you of easier times, they’re unburdened by the stress of family businesses, unaffected. Their marriage didn’t mean losing everything they worked for. You envy them you suppose.
Haruhi calls out your name again, worry in their eyes.
You smile, leaning into their hand, “just hold me for a while Haruhi.”
They do.
Marriage isn’t pretty at all, you’ve come to realise. You’ve been squeezing and transforming, trying to conform to the hopes and wishes of the people around you, to hope that you’ll amount to something, trying to find your worth, now that you are worthless.
But you’ve been squeezing yourself till there’s barely anything left of you.
“Kyoya,” you say, “I know we’re not in love.”
He raises a brow, staring at you from your position on the bed, he’s leaning against the dresser. “What’s your point?”
“I know you’re in love with your friends,” you continue on, unsure of the point you’re trying to make, maybe you should have stayed quiet.
He laughs harshly, “and you’re not? You think I'm a fool? You think I don’t see how you look at [REDACTED] you think I don’t see how you traipsed around the halls of our schools with them? How are you any different than I?”
“I don’t think you’re a fool at all!” You shout, “but I’m sick and tired of it all. You took everything from me, and you don’t get to treat me like this!”
The room goes quiet, save for the sound of your ragged breathing.
The two of you are married. It isn’t your choice. It isn’t his. It’s a miserable way to live, but it’s the way that you have to accept now that you’re stuck in it.
“Can’t we try to make it work?” You ask, “I don’t want.. I don’t want… not for my… whole life… I don’t…” you turn your head up to the ceiling, blinking the tears away.
What don’t you want?
You don’t want this marriage your whole life?
You don’t want to be unhappy your whole life?
You don’t want to stay in this odd limbo your whole life, married but unloved, close, but miles apart.
Kyoya sheds the jacket, slinging it over the dresser, moving to pull your head into his chest, patting your head awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. You’ve never heard him apologise before, at least not genuinely.
“I don’t want to be like this my whole life either,” his voice is quiet, but it shatters the air. It’s as if he’s opened the lid of the airtight containers your mother would put your lunches in as a child. You scoot over, and in the quiet of the night, you hold each other, like two children caught in the rain, seeking shelter with each other.
You glance up at Kyoya, his eyes are closed, brows furrowed slightly in his sleep.
Kyoya wasn’t the person you had been in love with in your youth. He would never be them and you’d never love him the way you loved them.
But he was Kyoya and he was your husband.
And like you told the marriage counselor, you were doing better. And you were sticking together.
Well, at least in this lifetime.