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“I’m getting sick of this cold.” Maki tilts her head back to let the bathwater, barely still warm, soak the parts of her neck and her shoulders that still haven’t registered the heat. “Think my body is starting to forget what actual warmth feels like.”
“Mm.” Yuuta nods, shifting; he doesn’t mean to poke her thigh with his foot but she doesn’t seem to mind. He’s a little tall for this - they both are - but if anything, that’s part of the charm.
Sort of.
“We should’ve showered,” Maki concludes after five minutes and the realization that her feet are falling asleep.
“We should’ve showered,” Yuuta agrees.
**
“Can we just do this first next time?”
They’ve probably wasted an obscene amount of water doing this but it’s hard to care. Yuuta murmurs a vague confession and works a lather of conditioner into the roots of her hair, noting with satisfaction that she lets out a little sigh at the firm pressure of his fingers. A month and a half in Hokkaido in January feels like a fight for survival some days, and it’s in Yuuta’s attention to her most basic needs - for food, for cleanliness, for a good night of sleep - that he finds he can bring her the most satisfaction.
He almost wishes winters were like this back home, even though they both hate the cold. It’s sweet, having this excuse to take care of her. She rarely lets him otherwise.
She’s rarely so nurturing as she is when he washes the last of the conditioner out of her hair and she tells him it’s his turn now. He likes that, too.
He’s taller than her by a good ten centimeters, and he has to bend for her to reach, but it’s not unpleasant. He can rest his head against her chest and the way her hands cradle his head as she works the shampoo into his hair almost makes him feel like she’s holding him for its own sake, not meeting a basic need. She’s not really gentle, but she presses into his scalp with the kind of firmness that’s steady and sure instead of demanding and harsh; that’s always been Maki’s way of doing things, and he’s always loved it. He can provide the gentleness - that’s what comes naturally to him - and she the steadfast certainty.
“Thanks,” he murmurs, unmoving even after she’s done washing his hair. It’s hardly comfortable to bend his neck like this, so he shifts to rest his chin on her shoulder, but he doesn’t want to move and he’s perfectly content to stay wrapped up in her for as long as he can. They’re supposed to be washing, but all he wants to do is wrap his arms around her waist and splay his palms against the defined muscles of her back and stand there, pressed to her, until their fingers prune. It’s cold outside; he’s been looking forward to returning to the inn all day and holding Maki close. It’s needed after long days of investigating a rash of disappearances in the towns around Sapporo, and it’s his favorite thing in the world.
Couples are rarely sent on missions together and he doesn’t know who he has to thank for pairing him up with his wife, but he thinks he owes that person one of those freakishly expensive gift baskets and possibly the naming rights to his firstborn.
If he ever has a firstborn.
Yuuta thinks about that a lot. He won’t mention it - they’ve been married four years and he’s never dared to bring it up - but it’s a wish he harbors in secret. He wants it, badly. He pictures Maki smiling softly at the sleeping baby in her arms, pictures himself carrying a toddler too tired to walk to the house from the car at the end of a late-night drive, pictures them both holding one of their child’s hands as they cross the street - it makes him ache, how much he wants those pictures to be real enough to capture on film. But she’s never said that she wants that and given her past, he can’t imagine that she would. So the wishes stay secret and he doesn’t tell her that he wants to make a baby with her and he wants to hold them and love them and he wants to go to work knowing that he does what he does because it cares for his wife and his child.
Maki rarely wants to be cared for, or to care for anyone but Yuuta. Sometimes Nobara, maybe a younger sorcerer she’s assigned to work with - no one else, practically. She’s never said she wanted children. She probably doesn’t want to be pregnant and Yuuta won’t ask her to no matter how much he wants to see her that way. Motherhood probably doesn’t appeal to her. So he won’t ask.
She’s enough, he tells himself. And she is.
“You’re warm,” she murmurs, wrapping her arms around him in kind. And it is warm - so warm that the shower glass is starting to steam up as they hold each other under the scalding water from the faucet.
Good.
That means he’s given her what she wants.
**
Breakfast is a hassle when it’s below freezing outside and neither wants to wake at seven, but it’s a necessary evil. Long mornings in the field demand fuel, and they’ve worked out a system: one braves the elements every morning, switching off daily, while the other sleeps.
This was Yuuta’s morning - Maki had taken yesterday and been thoroughly miserable waiting in line to pick it up - but he looks so content, sprawled out on his stomach like a starfish as he sleeps, that she doesn’t want to wake him. If he feels bad, he can take the next two days instead of just tomorrow, though she won’t make him.
She’ll never admit it - sweet things don’t come naturally to her - but she loves the way Yuuta looks when he sleeps. He’s never been a good sleeper, but when he is, he looks ten years younger, and even the ever-present bags under his eyes don’t seem as prominent. It looks as if he’s never had to worry a day in his life, and sometimes she’ll prop herself up on her elbow and stay in bed a minute past the time she was supposed to get up just to look at him. She never wakes him when she doesn’t have to.
So breakfast it is. He doesn’t wake until she returns and the door clicks open, but he looks groggily agitated when he does.
“This was my day,” he mutters, rubbing at his eyes. “You shoulda woke me up.”
“No,” she says curtly, slipping off her shoes but leaving her coat on for lack of hands free to take it off. She sets the takeout bag down in the middle of the bed. “You looked tired.”
Tired, and peaceful, and young, and handsome, and soft, but she can’t just say things like that. Her poor husband would probably catch fire and she wants to keep him around too badly to risk that. “Thanks,” he says dully, evidently already mired with guilt. “I feel like a jerk.”
“Don’t.” She sets her hand on his shoulder, then runs it back and forth a few times in reassurance. “I wanted to. Promise.”
“Mm. But you musta been cold.”
“Well, yeah, but what else is new? Cold’s cold. Someone has to deal with it and you haven’t been sleeping well lately.”
“You’re an angel.” He sits up and kicks off the covers for freedom of movement so he can pull her down to kiss her forehead. “Don’t do that again.”
“You can have two shifts if you want,” she says. “Just didn’t want to wake you today.”
“I’ll take three.” Of course he will. Yuuta is always like that, giving to a fault.
“Two,” she tells him. “Anything more than that would be unfair.”
“Seriously?”
“Two,” she repeats.
“Fine,” he sighs. “Two.”
**
“Is it just me, or do, like, all second-grades try to compensate for not being first-grades by being the most stubborn little suckers you’ve ever seen?”
“Honestly, I believe that. They’ve probably found out about our grading system.” Maki flops down beside Yuuta on the bed, not even bothering to remove her coat. “Realized they’re not all that and got all butthurt.”
“So they make themselves impossible to find,” Yuuta concludes. “You get it.”
“Of course I get it. We both just spent three hours trying to exorcise one stupid curse.”
“Hng. Maybe I should’ve gone to med school,” Yuuta huffs.
“Nah, you’re too nice. You couldn’t take having to give people bad news.” She looks over at him. “Also, too much school.”
“Student debt,” he agrees. “Guess you’re right.”
“We could’ve been accountants,” Maki suggests.
“You’d hate that.”
“True.” She pauses to think of a new suggestion. “I could’ve been a CEO and you could’ve been the guy who started off getting my coffee and made his way up the corporate ladder freakishly fast.”
“How? I’d have spent more time crying in my cubicle because someone yelled at me than I did working.”
Maki laughs - she’s loved watching Yuuta grow confident enough to make jokes at his own expense. “At least you’re self-aware.”
“I coulda run a coffee shop,” he suggests. “Worked in a bookstore or something.”
“A bookstore.” Maki snorts. “Yeah, that checks out.”
“It suits me, okay? I’m very sensitive.”
“So you became a curse-exterminator.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re not as sensitive as you think you are.”
“No, but I had to learn that.” He turns to lay on his side, facing her. “I don’t think I would’ve if I hadn’t been able to see curses and everything, you know? I would’ve liked something less...stressful. Something that made people happy, I guess. I’m not really that ambitious. Does that sound weird?”
“No.” Ten years ago, Maki would’ve roasted him into the stratosphere for that, but she appreciates Yuuta’s sweetness now in a way she never had then. “That makes sense.”
“I probably would’ve worked somewhere kinda quiet. Coffee shop, library, that kind of thing. Or maybe with kids.”
Maki raises her eyebrows. “You realize that’s, like, the exact opposite of ‘kinda quiet,’ right?”
“Yeah, true.” He scratches the back of his neck. “Babies, maybe? Are there people whose job it is to work with babies? I could do that.”
“Do you actually think you’d like that, or do you just have baby fever?”
Yuuta’s cheeks flush. “I don’t have baby fever. I just like babies.”
“Since when?”
“I always have.”
“Huh.” She supposes she’s never had a reason to know that - the only babies she’s ever seen him interact with were Gojo’s, and those ones don’t count. (She refuses to believe that man has biological children. Refuses. Never mind how nice of a picture it had made - she is not going to think about Yuuta holding them.) “Didn’t know that.”
“Well, uh...you do now.” He coughs into his hand. “Anyway. What would you do?”
She notices how quickly he diverts the subject and rolls on her side to face him. “Changing the subject?”
“No, I just wanted to ask. What you would’ve been, I mean.”
She chooses not to push. “Hm...something physical,” she decides. “I would’ve hated sitting at a desk. Some kind of athlete, a personal trainer - something like that.
“Makes sense.” Yuuta taps the tip of her nose. “I’d probably have seen you on TV and made all of my friends watch clips of you because, you know me, I can’t shut up when I see something I think is cool.”
“Simp.”
“What? You’re a hot lady doing sports on my TV and I’m a guy with a bookstore and no love life. Is it really that surprising?”
She can’t help but laugh - he’s ridiculous, and she loves him for it. “Why do you make yourself sad in all of these fake scenarios?”
“I’m good at being sad,” he says innocently. “I have the face for it.”
“Excuses.”
“And how am I ever going to meet you in these parallel universes?” He reaches over to drape an arm over her waist and she takes his cue, inching closer so he can lie on his back and she can lay her head against his chest. He likes it when she lays on him. “Not meeting you would be sad.”
“I’m stubborn,” she offers. “You would.”
“...wait, that might actually be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“You say that every ten seconds,” she says, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pulling herself flush against him. He hums at the increased contact and rubs her back absentmindedly, her thermal shirt riding up with the movements of his hand. “The last time you said that I’m pretty sure you were responding to me telling you that you didn’t look like a shark.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, that was pretty romantic.” Inumaki had decided that he looked like a thresher shark - whatever that is - and had gone around their entire circle of friends at a reunion, showing them the shark’s picture. They’d mostly agreed that he did, indeed, look like one. Maki had defended him. It had really been quite terribly romantic. “But that one’s better.”
“Hm. Well, it’s true. There’s probably plenty of parallel unvierses where you met me.” Maki isn’t usually this whimsical, but Yuuta has a way of bringing things out of her that she didn’t know were there. “One where you were my friends-with-benefits and caught feelings.”
“That sounds...incredibly painful and I’m really glad it didn’t happen.”
“Me too.” She’d probably have gone nuts, truth be told. “One where we’d known each other since we were kids.”
He shudders. “Too much like Rika.”
“Oh. Right.” Her one-time competition. “One where I was your boss and you found me irresistible.”
“Yeah, that’s...basically this one.”
“I was never your boss!”
“No, but the sentiment was there.”
“You’re an idiot, Okkotsu.”
“Mm. Using your own last name to win an argument?”
She smacks his arm. “Sweet-talker.”
“What other ones?” he asks.
“Hm...one that’s kind of like this, except that we have really boring jobs and a whole bunch of kids.” Her nose wrinkles when she laughs. “You drive a minivan.”
“I like that one,” he tells her. One of his hands slips pointlessly beneath her thermal shirt.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
**
“Maki?”
She looks up at him from where she’s taken a seat on his thigh, fingers crawling across the ridges of his abs beneath his sweatshirt before she flattens them. “Hm?”
“What...exactly are you doing?”
He can already feel his cheeks starting to heat up. He wishes his body wouldn’t insist upon reacting that way to Maki’s teasing, but he’s apparently doomed to blush like a teenager for the rest of his natural life. Fate is cruel that way.
“My hands are cold,” she says innocently.
“I can feel that,” Yuuta replies. “Why are they under my shirt?”
“Because you’re warm there?”
“Maki,” he says faintly, “there are ways to warm up your hands that don’t involve... this.”
“Hm?” Maki narrows her eyes. “This bother you?”
“Um,” he says, so embarrassed he thinks he’d like to become one with the mattress, “in a way?”
“...oh.”
He knows she hadn’t meant it that way - she’s cold, and Maki has never really had a strong sense of personal space when it comes to him - so he’s doubly embarrassed that his own reaction veers so decisively into territory she hadn’t meant to take him to. It’s not as if it’s exactly his fault that he’s always been absurdly sensitive to touch, but he still thinks biology is terribly annoying that way.
“It’s, um,” he says, his voice a little strained. “Fine. You can leave them there.”
“Uh...no,” she says, moving her hands back to the sheets on either side of him and trying not to meet his eyes. “I’m, um. If it bothers you, I don’t...need to warm up that badly.”
“Sorry,” he says, taking one of her hands and bringing it to his face in the hopes that breathing out hot air into her palm will give her the warmth she’d been looking for earlier. “I know you didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s fine.”
He gives her a pitiful look.
“Oh.” Her eyebrows lift in amusement. “I see.”
“I need you to kiss me,” he tells her. “Or I think I’m going to die.”
Far more than that, but Okkotsu Yuuta is - apparently - constitutionally incapable of articulating certain things of which he is incredibly fond of in practice but hates discussing in theory. Maki doesn’t understand it - they’re just words - but it’s kind of amusing.
“I’ll get you warm,” he offers, eyes even wider than usual.
“Can you, now?”
He nods, overeager. Maki laughs, throwing a leg across his thigh to settle in his lap. “So sensitive,” she teases, tapping his nose.
“Yeah.” His hands come to rest against her thighs and he smiles, warm all over and so relieved he feels tipsy. “Guilty as charged.”
**
“Are we too old to be on TikTok?”
“Yes,” Maki replies. She’d try to peek over Yuuta’s shoulder to see if that’s what he’s doing on his phone, but they’re lying back-to-back beneath layers of covers and she’s too comfortable to move. “By about six years.”
“But Itadori sent me this video of a baby tiger playing with a pumpkin,” he protests. “It’s quality content.”
“Oh, I think I saw that. Nobara sent me some article about that zoo giving all the animals pumpkins or something.” It almost kills Maki to admit, “I guess it was kinda cute.”
“See? Quality content.” He adds, “Gojo is on TikTok.”
“Yeah, I don’t doubt he is, but is that really the example of adulthood we should aspire to?” She doesn’t give him a chance to answer. “No. It’s the one we avoid at all costs.”
“It’s cute, though,” he protests. “He mostly just posts stuff with his kids.”
“Those kids are fake. They have to be.”
“He makes Utahime do those couples challenges with him. We could do couples challenges.”
“ No.”
“Might be fun.”
“It would not be fun.”
“It’s more fun than reading the news.” That’s what he knows Maki is doing - they always lie awake for a little while before bed, backs pressed together, checking their phones, and she always reads the news. “Which is just depressing. At least baby animals with pumpkins are fun.”
“Baby fever,” she comments.
“It’s a tiger, Maki. Basically a kitten! Have you ever met someone who didn’t think kittens were cute?”
“Inumaki is scared to death of cats.”
“Besides Inumaki. I thought he was a no-brainer.”
“You have baby fever,” Maki concludes.
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“‘Cause you do. Every ten seconds you bring up babies.”
“I do?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
“Huh.”
“We passed a couple with a baby earlier and you were staring.” Maki doesn’t know why she goes on when her point is proven, but she does. “Like, staring. They noticed.”
“That’s, um...embarrassing.”
“Eh, just biology. The drive to reproduce and all that. I wouldn’t sweat it.” She smiles. “Definitely means you’re too old to be on TikTok, though.”
**
The temperature outside has to be in the negatives, but the interior of the backalley ramen shop they’ve stumbled into after a workday that had left them with a little extra energy feels like it’s the temperature of the sun. Patrons are packed into every crevice of the floor, all in thick coats, and the steam curling above the bowls of broth at every table warms the air even more. Both Yuuta and Maki have had to take off their coats against the heat.
It hardly matters, though. Maki catches Yuuta’s eye after she bends her head to take a sip of broth and raises it again, and she observes him for a moment as she slurps her noodles. He looks more relaxed than he has in a while; his usual white tunic has been replaced by a thin blue undershirt that’s a better fit under his heavy parka, and that’s all he wears now. His hair falls in his eyes and he has to tuck it behind his ears with his free hand before he bends to take a bite. His eyes, always so expressive, widen in appreciation at his first bite of the tender pork that tops his ramen.
He’s so beautiful. It’s such a strange thought when things like that rarely cross her mind for no reason, but there it is, undeniable: he’s beautiful. Okkotsu Yuuta is beautiful. Her husband is beautiful.
Maki looks down into her bowl before he can ask why she’s smiling.
**
Maki won’t look at Yuuta as they eat, but he’s not worried. He knows that kind of evasiveness. It’s the way she won’t look at him when she doesn’t want him to see how happy she is.
He wishes she felt comfortable smiling openly when something makes her happy, wishes she realized that her happiness is his greatest joy. But she might never feel that way, after ten, twenty, fifty years - it’s ingrained in her, the need to hide her joy for fear that if it’s seen it’ll be found out and taken from her. It hurts him to think that she’d ever had to learn not to smile when someone could see her - hurts him to know that she’ll never understand that if he sees that something makes her happy he won’t be able to stop himself from giving her as much of that thing as he can - but he’s learned to accept it.
At least it means he doesn’t need to worry about her tonight.
He wants to know why she’s happy, but she’ll go on the defensive if he asks, probably curl in on herself, and it’s better to leave her happiness unexplored if it lets her keep it a little longer. So instead he smiles back at her.
“Hi,” he says, barely audible in the din of the packed restaurant.
She affords him the smallest of smiles. “Hi, Yuuta,” she replies.
He loves it when she uses his name for no reason. “You look nice,” he says aimlessly. She does - he’d been thinking about how beautiful she is with flushed cheeks and a falling-out ponytail for a few minutes now.
“I look like death warmed up,” she says flatly.
“You’re beautiful.”
“In general?” Maki raises her eyebrows. “Or now?”
“Both.” It feels good to see that she doesn’t instantly brush off the compliment this time. “Really.”
“I take it you’re in a sappy mood.” She reaches for her chopsticks.
“No, you’re just beautiful,” he says simply. “Do I need a reason to think that?”
**
Something is bothering Yuuta. He won’t tell Maki what it is, but it’s obvious. He always hides things, worrying that they’ll upset her, and she wishes he would just come out and say whatever bothers him; she intends to make sure he does.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” she asks as she washes his hair, hoping the soothing atmosphere will make him more pliant. But it doesn’t.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he says.
“Don’t lie to me,” she replies.
“I’m not lying.”
“You obviously have something on your mind.”
“I do,” he says. “But nothing is wrong.”
She lets it drop - he’ll run in circles until she does. But she isn’t done.
“What are you thinking so much about?” she asks over dinner.
“It’s...something stupid,” he says, a cloud crossing his face. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.
Well, that’s not helpful.
“Yuuta,” she tries once more, propping herself up on his chest with her elbows. “I’m going to need you to tell me what’s bothering you now.”
He looks at her, silent, and her fingers dance across his jaw, trying to get something - anything - out of him.
“I don’t want to tell you,” he tells her. “But...not because it’s bad. Just because I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m making demands of you, and...because I don’t want you to be upset, or feel like you’re not enough, and it’s sort of just something I have to live with on my own-”
“Spit it out, Yuuta.”
He stares up at her for a moment, trying to decide what to say.
“I want a baby,” he finally tells her.
Maki only freezes for a couple of seconds - of course he does. For all her talk of baby fever, it’s almost laughable that she didn’t figure this out ages ago. She’d seen the way his eyes lingered on every baby they passed, but somehow she’d never imagined that it might be longing and not simple curiosity that drove him to do it. She’d assumed…
Well, she’d assumed he would’ve told her if he did.
“I’m sorry,” he says, crestfallen, when she doesn’t reply for a good thirty seconds. “I know we haven’t talked about it, and there are a lot of reasons you probably wouldn’t want to have kids, and I was just going to keep quiet about it because I don’t want you to feel like you’re making me unhappy or...or I’m pushing you to do something you don’t feel comfortable with. But...you wanted to know.” He closes his eyes. “So, uh. There you have it. I, um...I really, really want to have a baby with you.”
He doesn’t open his eyes for a good minute, because in the silence that follows his confession, he’s afraid he’ll be met with offense or even anger if he opens them. But he feels Maki’s cool hands against the sides of his face, and he opens them.
“That’s a lot for me to take in,” she says. Her face is...neutral - he can work with that. “I’m going to need a minute to respond, okay?”
He nods, a little too eager.
“I just didn’t want you to think I was upset. I’m...not. I don’t think I am. Not with you.” Her hand brushes his jaw. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” he says, his voice small.
“I’m your wife, Yuuta. These are the kinds of things you need to tell me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he protests.
“You?” Maki peers down at him. “You think you’re going to hurt me?”
“I can’t risk it.”
**
It’s two days before the subject is broached again. Things are normal, sort of; Yuuta appreciates that. But now that his secret hope is out in the world, he feels like a coiled snake, tensed and waiting for Maki to give her answer.
“About the baby thing,” she says, helping Yuuta out of his coat. It’s one of their rituals now: body heat is best shared in their thinnest layers of clothing, and on nights when they’re too tired to bathe before bed, they help each other strip away the cumbersome outer layers of their clothing.
“Yeah.” Yuuta tries and fails miserably to sound nonchalant. “What about it?”
“I just...want to know why you want that, I guess.”
“Oh. Why I want it?” Yuuta’s cheeks flush. “Um, well...you’re going to think it’s sappy.”
“Yuuta, I’m tired of you not talking to me because you think I won’t like it.” She crosses her arms. “Please just help me understand why you want kids so badly.”
His shoulders slump. “Um...I...I love you,” he starts. “And, um, I like the idea of there, y’know, being a person in the world who exists because we love each other, you know? But...but I also, um. Wow, how do I say something like this?” Yuuta fidgets with the hem of his shirt. “I know it’s a tough ask and I completely understand if you freak out after I say this, but-”
“I won’t.”
He looks like he doesn’t believe her, but goes on anyway. “I want us to have a family,” he says simply. “I guess that’s the core of it. And...I want to be able to show you that families aren’t all terrible.” He brightens a little, realizing she isn’t upset. “I...I know I don’t have a lot of experience, but I know if we had a kid I’d just...gosh. I’d love that thing like crazy. I want to show you that. Not to fix your parents’ mistakes, but...to raise a kid who doesn’t have to take twenty years to learn how to be happy.” Like we did, he doesn’t add. “And I...I guess it’s been on my mind lately because we’ve sort of been taking care of each other since we got here, right? And I realized that I like taking care of you. And, I don’t know. If I could do that for our kid, I...just think that I’d be really happy. Is that selfish?”
Maki can’t understand why she feels like she wants to cry at that.
“No,” she murmurs, her throat tight. “No. It’s not.”
**
“Yuuta?”
“Mm?”
“You know I’d be a terrible mom, right?”
Yuuta shifts his arms to grip her waist instead of her shoulders, curled up around her like a protective shell. “I wouldn’t want to have a baby with you if I agreed with that, Maki.”
“But I would. All of the examples I have to go by are terrible and I don’t have the right personality.” She shifts like she’s trying to escape from his arms but doesn’t really try to. Unmoored as she feels, nothing makes her feel safer than Yuuta’s protective embrace. “I’m not...nice. Or, like...soft or nurturing. If the kid tripped over his shoelace and started crying” - she’s seen that happen to the eternally-klutzy youngest Gojo child countless times - “I’d probably tell him he wasn’t actually hurt and make him cry harder. Things like that. Maybe if I were like you, but...honestly, I don’t know if I really know how to love people who aren’t you.” She loves lying like this, her back pressed to Yuuta’s chest, but she has to look at him, so she turns. “I can’t understand how you would think I’d be able to raise a kid.”
“What are you talking about?”
“...Yuuta-”
“Of course you know how to love people.” He rests one hand at the curve of her waist and the other strokes her arm, shoulder to wrist, over and over. “Our old classmates? You love them. Your whole face lights up when you see them, Maki. Did you not realize that?” Yuuta looks a little too enthusiastic, knowing he has a point he can effectively counter now. “Fushiguro, too. I know you wouldn’t say you loved him, but you’re always looking out for each other. And Kugisaki? Did you forget about her?”
She stills. That’s...sort of a compelling point.
“She’s your best friend. Even she would say that, and she kinda hates everyone. Didn’t you let her choose your wedding dress just to make her happy? And you ended up with some...floofy thing that you wore just because she loved it even though you said you wanted to burn it after? If that isn’t loving people, I don’t know what is.”
“That’s...different.”
“How?”
“Do you know why I latched onto Nobara back in high school?”
“Uh...because she followed you around like a lost puppy?”
“Because she reminded me of Mai.”
Yuuta inhales sharply and Maki’s stomach sinks when he doesn’t say anything.
“Nobara was...I dunno. More feminine, I guess. Pretended to be aggressive to mask how she really felt. There are a lot of ways they were nothing alike, but...I think I met this girl who got attached to me really fast and reminded me of my sister and...somehow I got the idea in my head that maybe she could...ugh. I can’t even say it.”
“Replace Mai?”
Maki nods miserably, unsure whether to be grateful or annoyed that her husband always seems to know what she’s thinking.
“I feel so guilty,” she admits softly. “Thinking about that. Because I do love Nobara, and I would say she’s like my sister because she’s the closest thing I have to one, but...back then, I had an actual sister I was trying to use her to replace.” She hadn’t realized her eyes were moist until she rubs at them and her fists come away wet. “I was just using her, and ignoring Mai, who probably wanted me to notice her as badly as I wanted her to notice me, and...if that’s the best example of me loving someone besides you, how can you say that I’m good at it?”
Yuuta takes a moment to formulate a response - he never knows how carefully he has to tread around the subject of Mai.
“If that were all there was to it, you wouldn’t still be close now,” he says when he finally feels like it’s safe.
“I guess.”
“Look, I’m not pushing the kids thing on you. At all. I don’t want to make you do anything, all right? But...I want you to know that I think you would be good at it.”
“Why?”
“Well.” He turns her onto her side again, pressing her back to his chest, and she lets out a silent sigh of relief - this is always the most comfortable position to come back to. “You’re determined,” he says, pressing a kiss to the nape of her neck. “Seeing something like this through takes plenty of that.”
“Sure.”
“You don’t realize it, but you’re caring.” This time he kisses the side of her head. “Remember that day you took two breakfast runs in a row even though it’s you who runs cold so I could sleep?”
“That was such a small thing.”
“But it was purposeful. That’s what counts.”
“Is it?”
“I like to think it does.” He nuzzles his cheek against her hair. “And you’re a problem-solver. Great parenting skill.”
“I guess,” she concedes.
“And you say you’re not gentle, but I know you can be.” He touches her hand, curled around his bicep. “Look at the way you’re holding onto my arm. There’s pretty much no way you could hurt me, but” - he strokes her fingers, latched firmly but never harshly around his arm - “you’re still holding it like you’re trying not to crack an egg.”
“I...didn’t do that on purpose.”
“Which is even better evidence, Maki. You are good at it.”
“Only with you,” she reluctantly admits. “You’re different.”
“Hm.” He doesn’t respond any further for fear of sounding like he’s pressuring her. “Um. Well...those are my reasons. Make of that what you will.”
“I had a family once, Yuuta,” she says weakly. “And I messed up.”
“Why would you say that? They’re the ones at fault, Maki. I thought-”
“Mai, Yuuta.” She always sounds like someone’s trying to rip a hole in her chest and extract her heart when she says her sister’s name and, if he didn’t know she needed to talk about her so badly, he would hate hearing it. “I’m talking about Mai.”
“You were sixteen, Maki. You’d been raised in a family that left you with no choice-”
“But I had a choice!”
“To stay behind and be used like a pack animal for the rest of your life or to break a promise? No one would’ve blamed a kid for making the choice you made, Maki.”
“But I’m the reason she’s dead!”
“No,” Yuuta murmurs, even though he knows she won’t believe him. “ They are.”
**
“Sorry I blew up on you yesterday.”
“You needed to let it out.” Yuuta squeezes Maki’s gloved hand, swinging their joined hands in the gap between them as they walk. “I’m glad you told me all of that.”
“Um. Same,” she says, dipping her head in what could be shame or acknowledgement.
“You need time,” he says, not really asking.
“I think so.”
“I get that.” Again, he squeezes her hand. “Take all the time you need.”
“That...isn’t a no,” Maki tells him. “Just wanted you to know that.”
“It’s not?”
“No, it’s a ‘let me think.’” She pauses to make eye contact. “Is...is that okay?”
Yuuta’s answering smile is almost shy. “More than okay.”
**
It’s Maki’s turn to venture out for breakfast and she wakes an hour late to a takeout bag on the nightstand.
“You were sleeping,” Yuuta explains before she can protest. “Didn’t want to disturb you.”
“What did I ever do to deserve you?”
He smiles. “All I’m doing is reciprocating, Maki.”
**
“Sweetheart?”
“Hm?” Maki adusts her leg so that her foot wraps around Yuuta’s calf. It’s the closest contact they can get, lying back to back.
“I really think we should be on TikTok,” he tells her.
“Answer’s still no.”
“Aw, but why?”
“It’s for teenagers.”
“So is making out in closets,” he offers innocently. “And we did that earlier.”
“That was under extenuating circumstances, Yuuta.”
“Such as?”
“I felt like it.”
**
“I should’ve known a while ago.”
Yuta raises his head from the pillow. “Huh?”
“That you had babies on your mind.” She can’t believe she didn’t see it. “When I was talking about the parallel universes and your favorite was the one where we had a bunch of kids and you drove a minivan.”
“It sounded nice,” he replies.
“A minivan? Really?”
“They’re spacious and practical!”
“Oh, wow. Didn’t know I married a middle-aged suburban mom.”
“I would be a good househusband,” he tells her.
She rolls her eyes - this is a running joke. “Don’t you have Special Grade things to do?”
“Not here.” He taps her nose. “Hokkaido’s just for working and surviving and rewarding each other for surviving so we’ll get up the next morning.”
Not an inaccurate description.
**
They fly out on the 18th.
Tomorrow, now. Maki never thought she’d regret returning to a city where temperatures never dip into the negatives, but she’ll miss the simplicity and seclusion of their temporary life in Hokkaido.
“I’m kinda going to miss this,” she tells Yuuta.
“Me, too.”
“How am I going to drag myself out of bed when I don’t have to go get breakfast?”
“With incentive,” Maki suggests.
“Like?”
He’d wanted to be the little spoon tonight and she presses her cheek against his bare shoulder, taking a long breath of the homey scent of his skin just to be sure she wants to say what she’s about to.
“Would trying for a baby be good enough incentive?”
**
“We have an eight-A.M. flight, Yuuta!”
“And?” he looks so eager, eyes shining as he looks down at her, that she almost wants to let the subject drop, but the six-o’clock alarm beckons and she can’t very well ignore it. “We can sleep on the plane.”
“Yuuta,” she sighs fondly. “Baby. We need to go to bed.”
“Isn’t that where we are right now?”
“ Yuuta.”
“Sorry,” he murmurs, cupping her face. “I just...really want to get started.”
And damn it if that won’t make her melt like butter in the sun.
**
Maki wakes at six-thirty without an alarm or even realizing that she’s doing it.
Yuuta’s four minutes late.
There’s no breakfast to get and it takes them approximately twelve seconds to sink back down against the pillows and dissolve into hysterical laughter.
**
I see you, leaving early 👀.
Maki rolls her eyes fondly at the text and wonders if she should’ve been more discreet about leaving the annual Tokyo alumni reunion, but it’s Nobara - of course she’d have noticed anyway. She’s the sort of insatiable gossip who always notices and Maki kind of loves her for it.
Had to go make a baby, she types without really thinking about it, because friends deserve to be let in on things like this.
**
“I miss sharing body heat,” Yuuta announces one morning.
Maki doesn’t see any reason they should have to miss it.
(Yuuta, for his part, is very pleased with his new backpack.)
**
“You don’t have to hide your face when you smile.”
Maki looks up, her brow furrowing with confusion. “Hm?”
“You don’t usually let people see when you’re smiling,” Yuuta tells her, gently as he can. “You don’t have to, but...I like seeing you smile. You don’t have to hide it.”
“Oh.” She nods. “Um...all right.”
**
The thing about Hokkaido, they’ve found, is that it isn’t only Hokkaido in Hokkaido, and they miss their little bubble and the simple intimacy of keeping each other alive more than they’d thought they would now that they’re home.
The obvious solution is that it has to stay - the breakfast runs and the shared showers and the help dressing and undressing and the way they never slept too far apart. Those things had felt small then but here, in the bustle of city life, they’re little moments of escape, and they’re much-needed.
“Maki?”
She nudges into Yuuta’s touch as he runs a hand through her hair. “Hm?”
“I love you.”
She looks up to let him see her smile - he kisses her for that.
“So much,” he adds.
She lays her head back down against his chest. “Love you back.”