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“What is it?”
Akko was barely intelligible, toothbrush hanging out from the corner of her mouth. She blinked slowly, movements sluggish under the weight of drowsiness, and somehow she managed to yawn while brushing her teeth. Diana smiled. There it was—the little gifts of her marriage.
“You’re staring.” Akko squinted.
“I’ve been doing that every morning for the past twenty years or so.”
Akko laughed, playfully rolling her eyes while she reached for the faucet. “Twenty? Dear me, I might have to renew my subscription soon.”
“I don’t recall an identified date of expiry,” Diana played along, bumping her shoulder against Akko.
Akko grinned back. “Don’t ruin my excuse to marry you again.”
They were in the bathroom, going through the motions of just another morning of many they’ve had together—and of many more to come. Diana found comfort in this routine: Akko would tap her toothbrush twice along the edge of the sink to get the water out, then she’d stretch another time to rouse her bones. She often wore a worn-out tee too small for anything other than sleeping, and the roughly thirty seconds that her arms spent stretching overhead exposed a portion of her midriff.
And since Diana was a woman of routine it was only prudent that she indulged herself with an appreciative look. As she had done so. For the past twenty years.
Today, however, was a little different from the countless mornings they’ve shared before. Yes, she was staring, and while Akko was always wonderful to look at there was something else. Something small yet endearing, something which she wasn’t sure how Akko would take to if she found out about it.
She played with the hem of her nightgown, brushing back an unruly bundle of brown behind Akko’s ear.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Diana hummed. “Well, maybe something?”
“Is it a bad something?”
“Not at all!”
Akko placed a hand on her hip, “are feathers popping out of my hair again?”
“No—wait—what do you mean again?”
“Nothing never mind,” Akko quickly pursed her lips, trying not to laugh.
Now, Diana was pretty sure that Akko wouldn’t mind this new observation, but she still wanted to go about it as tactfully as she could.
“What is it?” Akko whined, lips beginning to pout in impatience.
Diana ran her hand along Akko’s hair wondrously. “There are grays in your hair.”
Just two or three strands, barely visible but there. She wondered why it fascinated her so—why the discovery of it fit so snugly in the embrace of how their cluttered bathroom felt like home.
Her (admittedly dramatic) line of thinking was disrupted by a fit of giggles. Akko’s giggles.
“What’s funny?” Diana blinked, arms coming down to circle her waist.
“Nothing,” her smile was bright.
Diana chuckled back. “No sigh of disdain at the inevitable passage of time and aging?”
“I kinda like it,” Akko admitted.
“Do you?”
“Mhm.”
Akko went up to her tiptoes, bare against the cold tile of their bathroom floor, and gave Diana a quick kiss on her nose. Then another on her lips.
“Dia?” Akko was whispering. “We did it.”
“Hmm?” Diana hummed against the crown of Akko’s head, holding her.
“We’re growing old together.”