Chapter Text
“If we’re not married in 7 years and we’re still single, let’s just marry each other, okay?”
Amber looks over at her best friend, surprised. She never thought that Lumine would bring up marriage of all things. The two of them are only high school seniors, marriage is hardly something that is at the forefront of their minds when exam season is right around the corner.
The look on Lumine’s face is unlike anything Amber has seen before— there’s a level of seriousness and intensity that makes Amber sit up a little straighter in response. “Uh y-yeah. Okay. Definitely.”
“Promise?” Lumine grins and holds out her pinky.
Amber can feel her heart pound faster in her chest at the idea of even making such a promise— granted a foolish one that would never come true but still. Nevertheless, she returns the smile and loops her pinky around Lumine’s.
“Promise.”
Wildfires are dangerous, this much Amber knows. They can move quickly, creep through the underbrush unannounced and then suddenly flare up right in your face, hot and hungry for more fuel.
There’s no warning for a wildfire sometimes. They come and go as they please— despite all the effort and sweat and tears and water that humans put in to try to fight them and put them out, sometimes it just isn’t enough. Amber has been on the frontline against enough wildfires to know this.
All you can do is just contain the fire as best you can and let it burn itself out.
Lumine is a bit like a wildfire, blazing into Amber’s life without any warning, burning red hot. Amber can’t help but stare in awe at the fire before her. She had always had a fascination with fire— the brilliant flames, the flickering light that it gives off, even the intense heat. It all ties up together into one beautiful vision that Amber can’t tear herself away from.
When Lumine walks into the room, she’s all that Amber can see.
Her presence is overwhelming and comforting all at once— the very fire that threatens to swallow Amber whole and leave nothing but ashes in its wake, but also the fire that fills her entire body with a warmth that she so desperately craves. It’s hard to deny a force of nature.
Which is how Amber finds herself in this situation, watching Lumine unpack the last of her clothes and place them into the closet on the far end of their now shared bedroom. The papers had been signed, their rings exchanged. The engagement ring and matching wedding band catches in the light as Amber sets down Lumine’s last box of belongings.
The rings feel like an insurmountable weight on Amber’s finger, chaining her down inside of a house that is quickly catching fire. She likes the way they look, Amber surmises, Lumine had just produced the rings out of nowhere when they went to go sign the papers.
It feels strange.
On one hand, this has always low-key (high-key) been her dream— to marry Lumine some day. She had been so hopelessly in love with her best friend of many years for so many years, perhaps even from the very second that she laid eyes on the blonde in that third grade classroom. On the other hand, she wishes so desperately that this marriage was for real and not part of a silly promise that she had made when she was still young and foolish and a way to get Lumine’s parents off of her back. Mr. and Mrs. Viatrix could be very imposing and intimidating when it served them best.
She shudders at the memory of Lumine’s parents catching Amber helping Lumine sneak back into the house after a highschool house party ended way later than they thought it would.
“Amber?”
The sound of Lumine’s voice snaps Amber out of her thoughts. “Yeah?”
“Where do you want me to put my suitcase?”
Amber blinks, looking down at the very worn and battered silver suitcase that’s covered in stickers from many different places. As a respected up and coming journalist, Lumine had travelled the world the second she graduated with her journalism degree from Favonius University. Her credentials included a very long list of articles ranging from breaking news stories to simple reviews from all over the world. Her passport was filled with an equally large amount of stamps from all the different places Lumine had been to.
Looking at the suitcase makes Amber suddenly feel woefully inadequate.
All of these things are markers of how successful and accomplished Lumine has become. In the seven years since they graduated from high school and gone their separate ways, Lumiune has soared high, blazing bright in the face of late nights and final exams and the life of a responsible and respectable adult.
“I can put it in the closet in the hall for you,” Amber replies brightly, trying her best not to think about how cool and amazing Lumine is— they are married now.
Would it be weird to be jealous of your uhm… wife?
“Oh, thank you!” Lumine follows Amber into the hallway, a few unfolded items of clothing in her arms
The hall closet is pathetically empty.
Very pathetically empty.
Amber doesn’t have a lot of things. Her apartment is sparsely furnished, comfortable but sparse. It’s more of a place for her to sleep and shower and occasionally eat in. She spent most of her time at Fire Station 893. If she had known that she would end up in her current predicament she would have spent more time picking out furniture and decorations— not just because she feels slightly embarrassed at how plain everything looks, but also because Lumine deserves nothing but the nicest things.
She pushes the two winter jackets, one of which is a jacket they gave her at the fire station, hanging in the closet to one side and slides the suitcase into the open space to their left.
Satisfied with their arrangement, Amber turns to find Lumine already poking through the fridge, her hoodie tossed to the side already.
“Hey babe, what do you want to eat for dinner?”
The casual use of the pet name makes Amber blush. She had forgotten that Lumine liked to refer to her friends as such. This isn’t the first time that Lumine has referred to her as such but in the new context of their current relationship and living situation, Amber still finds herself flustered like the first time Lumine called her that.
“We could order takeout,” Amber shrugs, picking up Lumine’s discarded hoodie from the kitchen counter. She recognizes the hoodie immediately. The silver and blue fabric has definitely seen better days, but this is definitely Amber’s old track hoodie.
“Oooooh. That sounds delicious. How does the Good Hunter sound?”
Amber is still staring at her old hoodie, too caught up in the fact that Lumine had kept it after all these years, to answer.
“I didn’t realize you still kept this,” Amber replies offhandedly.
Lumine smiles, “Of course! You gave it to me after you won your last track meet! How could I throw away a gift from you?”
The sincerity of Lumine’s statement is enough to make Amber turn away, blushing even more furiously now. She begins folding up the hoodie against herself, tucking the neck of the garment underneath her chin as she smooths out the creases in the sleeves. A familiar scent washes over Amber, a scent that is so distinctly Lumine that it brings a goofy smile to Amber’s face.
Light floral scents mixed in with something else that reminds Amber distinctly of being caught outside in a storm— rain perhaps. The long-awaited rain that would wash over a tired and parched land, washing away the sweat and soot that covered the weary humans who dared stand defiantly in the face of a fire. The rain that soothed the strange turmoil in Amber’s chest right now.
Hastily, Amber drapes the hoodie over the back of the couch before she could do anything immediately foolish, resisting the urge to bury her face in the soft fabric.
“So an order of chicken mushroom skewers, and an order of their Flaming Red Bolognese?” Lumine is scrolling through the menu on her phone while she nudges the fridge door closed with her foot.
“You better order mild,” Amber reminds her best friend— wife— with a teasing look. “We don’t want a repeat of the last time you were here.”
“Hey! Last time, it was just extra spicy!” The blonde protests with a pout.
“Uh huh,” Amber raises her eyebrows and nods at her in doubt. “Can we get the sticky honey roast too?”
Lumine smiles as she makes her way around the kitchen, opening random drawers as she continues scrolling through her phone “Don’t worry. I already put in two orders of it.”
“Two orders?” Amber echoes dumbly, her mind is already wandering to the thought of sticky honey roast, practically salivating at the prospect of it.
“Yeah! It’s your favourite. I know you’re going to finish at least an entire order by yourself. “ Lumine shrugs noncommittally. “If I get two orders, then you can take any leftovers with you to work tomorrow for lunch.”
Triumphantly, Lumine pulls down two tall glasses from the cupboard that she just opened and fills them with water. Coming around the side of the small kitchen island, she hands Amber a glass of water.
Amber is certain that she’s doing her best impression of a fish out of water, gaping at Lumine in disbelief. The fact that Lumine still remembers what her favourite order from the Good Hunter after all this time boggles Amber’s mind. Nobody else that Amber knows remembers her order from the Good Hunter.
Lumine must mistake Amber’s expression for something else because she quirks an eyebrow up at her, “Should I order three?”
“No!” Amber nearly yells, shocked out of her disbelief. “Two is enough,” she adds, slightly quieter.
“Alright.” Finger tapping on the screen, Lumine makes her way back to the kitchen counter where she picks up her own glass of water and takes a long sip. She looks over the top of the glass at Amber sternly, “Drink the water. You’ve been helping me move things all day in this archonforsaken heat and I know you haven’t been hydrating properly.”
Amber does as she’s told, sipping at the cool water. Lumine is right, she hadn’t realized how thirsty she had gotten.
“Now that dinner is ordered,” the blond puts her phone away in the butt pocket of her denim shorts and fans her neck with a hand.
It’s hard not to stare at the pale skin of Lumine’s neck that she’s now drawing attention to, a thin sheen of sweat coating visible in the evening light. With more willpower than Amber thought that she had, she forces herself to look away.
The last thing she needs is for her best friend— wife— to catch her staring.
Archons she is never going to get used to calling Lumine that.
“Hmm. I know you don’t have air conditioning installed. It’ll be hot tonight...” Lumine continues, unperturbed by Amber’s silence, a teasing grin on her face.
“I have a fan?” Amber squeaks apologetically, she takes another sip of her water..
She really wasn’t prepared to have another person living in her apartment and it is quickly becoming apparent how woefully inadequate her space is. How did she even manage to survive here for all this time?
“How do you feel about sleeping in the nude?”
Amber chokes on her water.
Marriage is strange.
Lumine has always imagined that it would be some magical life-changing event where everything would make sense, clicking into place like a missing puzzle piece. But now, the papers have been signed and the rings sitting pretty on her finger, it feels like nothing has changed at all.
Well some things have changed.
It feels strange to have a place to return to at the end of a long work day. Granted, a lot of her work day happened inside Amber— their now shared apartment, but the fact that it wasn’t a hotel room or a short term rental is a welcome change.
She doesn’t need to live out of her suitcase, for one. She can also buy new things without worrying about running out of space or how she was going to transport things to her next place.
With a long sigh, Lumine leans back in the very comfortable desk chair that Amber had bought for her just the other day. Life has settled into an easy routine for the two of them which is honestly something that Lumine finds herself delighting in its simplicity.
Ever since she graduated, she has been on the move. Her job took her from one city to the next, one nation to another, reporting on many different things. Everything is so interesting and new and different and Lumine wanted to see all of it, experience all of it, write about all of it.
After three long years abroad, though with brief interludes back in Monstadt for a few weeks in between, Lumine is ready to just… stop moving. She had gotten the okay to move back to Monstadt on a more permanent basis and leapt at the opportunity.
The ringing of her cell phone makes her sit up in the chair, startled. Who could be calling her?
A picture of her brother flipping her off pops up on the screen.
She should really change that— giving Aether her phone even for thirty seconds was a bad idea.
“‘Sup, nerd.”
“How’s married life, binch?” Aether’s voice is tinny over the phone, but Lumine can hear the smugness just pouring off of him.
“Freeing,” Lumine replies evenly. The twins may be thick as thieves and close as hell, but she isn’t about to let Aether be smug at her expense even for things like this. Especially for things like this.
“Yeah? Mom and dad bought the marriage?”
“How could they not?” Lumine scoffs, “We legitimately got married.”
“Yeah, I know. They had Yanfei check over the marriage certificate and all the other documents. I can’t believe you really did it.” The noisy clickety-clackety of a keyboard in the background nearly drowns out the last few words of Aether’s sentence.
“Could you please stop working for a second while we are on the phone?” Lumine grumbles. “I had no other choice, you know this.”
The typing stops.
“I know they put you between a rock and a hard place. But it seems like you found a way out haven’t you?”
The sounds of the office echoing faintly in the background of Aether’s workspace in the void left behind as he stops typing is a heavy reminder of what could have been.
“Yeah.” Lumine sighs. She really wished that it hadn’t come to this.
The ridiculous ultimatum that her parents loomed over her in the last few years.
They would pay for her college tuition and all her expenses, but afterwards she had to either come work for the family company or get married.
Ridiculous right? Who puts that kind of an ultimatum on their kids?
Honestly, it felt like her parents just pulled the dumbest idea out of thin air to try to make Lumine work at the family company. What would be impossible for Lumine to do and therefore have to come work for the family? Get married.
She wishes that she just stuck it out with student loans instead of being stuck in something as dumb as this.
Her parents were the CEOs of a major airline and shipping company— Viatrix Air. While she understood that her parents always wanted the twins to work in the family company, Lumine had no interest, no matter what benefits or perks or steady income they had to offer.
Sure, things were rough for a while when she was a freelance journalist travelling all over the world in her suitcase, but she was determined to do everything herself. She was going to make it on her own, with no help from her parents, even going so far as to make it a point to fly on every airline but Viatrix Air.
Aether started working at Viatrix Air the moment he got out of college. For that, Lumine would be eternally grateful for. She knew that it wasn’t his first choice of career but with him working there, it seemed to have appeased their parents somewhat This gave Lumine more freedom and time to follow her heart out into the world, looking for the next story to write about.
When it became clear that Lumine was not going to come work at Viatrix Air though, that’s when the blind dates started. Lumine can still remember the last girl that her parents set her up with. Blonde, a little odd, but not unattractive.
Just odd.
And very much not Lumine’s type. She was nice though, and still liked all of Lumine’s social media posts and occasionally texted her with updates on her pet bird, Oz.
In an effort to just avoid all the awkward blind dates, here she is. Her grand idea to get her parents off her back was to get married and it seemed to have worked thus far… plus, no, there was no plus to this.
“So you told her right?”
“What?” Lumine blinks dumbly, confused as to what Aether is referring to.
“You told Amber that you like her right? That you’re wildly and madly heads over heels in love with her?” Aether states like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
“Aether!” Her shriek of indignation echoes in the empty apartment. Paranoid, she gets out of her chair and does a quick walk around the place, even though she knows Amber is at work right now and Aether isn’t even on speakerphone.
“You didn’t tell her?” The sound of disbelief in her brother’s voice is almost offensive.
“No! How could I tell her!” Lumine hisses into the phone. Satisfied that Amber isn’t hiding in a closet or under the bed, she returns to her chair.
“You married her!”
“And?”
“You’re such a useless lesbian, Lumine.” Exasperatedly, Aether sighs, the sound of a pen clicking in the background.
“Listen, I don’t even think she feels the same.” Absentmindedly, Lumine rotates the engagement ring and wedding band around her finger. The feeling of metal sliding over her skin is a grounding sensation as she tries hard not to think about the stupid crush she’s had on her best friend for over a decade. The possibility of ruining their friendship by telling Amber how she really felt is too real and too much for Lumine to even think about.
What if Amber decides that real feelings in the mix are too much and wants to break things off with Lumine? Then she’d have to go back to her parents' company and she would lose her best friend. That’s a lose-lose situation if she’s ever heard of one.
Even her terrible terrible joke when she first moved in about sleeping in the nude echoes hollowly in her ears, bringing a flash of red hot heat of embarrassment across her cheeks and neck. In hindsight, she should not have made that joke at all. Her stupid mouth running off before she could stop herself, that’s a joke that would’ve been appropriate had they not been married .
Now everything feels too real, too much, too close.
“She agreed to marry you.”
“Because she’s a good friend! It’s just legalities anyways. And now we split the rent, there’s additional benefits— “
“Friends don’t marry each other!”
“Oh, do you hear that? That’s the sound of the pizza I actually wanted arriving at my door.” Lumine starts, ready to hang up on her twin. Aether means well, she knows. He just takes his role as the older sibling (by fifteen minutes) very seriously.
“Hey! You know that I’m just concerned about you, right?”
Lumine falls silent for a long moment, for someone who wrote words for a living, words sure were failing her now.
“Yeah,” she says finally. “I appreciate it, Aether. If I need anything I’ll text you, but can you trust me to know what I’m doing?”
Aether lets out a long exhale, “Yeah. Sorry. You’re a grown adult now. I shouldn’t meddle in your business.”
“It’s okay. I know you’re just trying to look out for me. Thanks for running damage control with mom and dad.” Glancing at the time, Lumine nearly does a double take. It’s almost four in the afternoon. Amber would be coming home soon after a long day saving lives, putting out fires— all that heroic firefighter stuff.
They had gone grocery shopping the night before— she could whip up some grilled tiger fish for dinner and have it ready by the time Amber gets home.
“Hey, I gotta go. Amber will be home soon and I want to have dinner ready for her.”
“Gay,” Aether remarks, amusement evident in his voice. “Bye. Love you!”
“Love you, nerd.”
The line hangs up with a sharp click, leaving Lumine in an empty apartment with her thoughts. She gives herself a moment to sit, just to let the reality of her current situation recede to the back of her mind. Sometimes, it's very difficult to focus when you share a small living space with your crush who is also your wife but doesn’t know about your ridiculous crush.
It’s hard to believe that Amber even agreed to her ridiculous (literal) proposal in the first place. Sure they had the promise that they made in highschool— one made half in jest, even if Lumine was dead serious about it. Amber had been dating someone out a few years ago and Lumine wasn’t even sure that the firefighter would be up for tying the knot with her best friend when there were so many other people out there who would be falling over themselves for someone as wonderful and kind and caring as Amber, when Lumine was just… well Lumine.
Maybe it helped that Lumine was very clear in her proposal about her parents and the ultimatum and how she really needed to get married. Pity tends to have a way to be very convincing.
Pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind, Lumine gets to work preparing dinner for her wife.
Her wife.
She stares into the well stocked fridge blankly. It feels like the true reality of her current situation has crashed over her even though she has known this fact for the last while.
Her wife.
What had she gotten herself into?