Work Text:
“I got your stuff, I need thirty dollars,” Yoshiki kicked their apartment door closed behind him with his heel.
“Thank you- wait, six people gave you weird looks?! For that stuff?!” Ayumi yelled from down the hall. The bet was five bucks per noticeable stare, and Yoshiki was ready to collect his just dues.
“Listen, it wasn’t buying the stuff this time, it was asking for them. The names on these spices will put a curse on you alone; god forbid what you wanna do with them.”
“I- yeah, okay, that’s fair. Give me a second!”
Yoshiki went over to the kitchen counter to set the bag of spices down and was bombarded by Cookie and Cream. They both purred excessively, and Yoshiki immediately caved. He gave them the scritches they both desired, right behind the ears.
Eventually, his girlfriend came bounding down the hallway wearing her safety goggles. She took them off and put them on her forehead, leaving some dust in the shape of said goggles around her eyes. She finally got to the part of the kitchen where Kishinuma was standing and gave him a big peck on the cheek, followed by her looking through the bag of stuff.
“Uhhh- alright! Everything is there, I’ll be right back.” She turned around and walked down the hall to their bedroom while Yoshiki sighed and put his hands in his pockets. Of course she wanted to check first before getting his money. He can’t really bemoan the situation considering he has had plenty of moments where he messed up the grocery list. Still didn’t stop him from wanting to though.
She was probably going to take a while, so he might as well not stand and do nothing.
He also walked down the hallway but stopped halfway into it to instead turn and walk inside Ayumi's designated workroom. Bottles filled with potions and curses and other witchy things adorned the wall in front of him, while an assortment of plants faced his left. Shelves of books were on his right, and storage compartments filled the walls around the door.
He walked up to the bubbling cauldron in the center of it all and looked at what his girlfriend had currently been working on. It was a mixture of blue and pink substances, with a couple of spots of white here and there. He looked around and saw a nearly empty bottle with a label on it that said a word he would most definitely butcher trying to pronounce.
He also looked at the open book next to it, seeing that the spell in question needed some of that stuff, specifically a drop of it. He looked back at the door and heard her still searching for some loose cash and figured he’d read more to wait.
Mhm, that was interesting. But what about-
Well damn, so many words to describe what was simply a small explosion; they should just call it that for pete’s sake. This was why he never got into the stuff, too much damn reading over simple topics that could be explained in ten words! Sheesh...
Well, at least he didn’t need to read anymore (completely dodging the fact that he didn’t have to in the first place) as he heard Shinozaki walk in, counting up the money she had. “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and thirty! Thirty whole dollars for you!” As they both reached out to finish the transaction, one of them bumped the table. Then, a “drop” of the stuff in the bottle Yoshiki noticed at the start fell its way into the cauldron.
By “drop” Yoshiki meant the literal rest of the liquid that was in there.
Both inhabitants backed away from the insane amount of bubbling that didn't seem to stop. Yoshiki knew that Ayumi also knew what spell was going to do considering she was the one making it, but he very quickly decided only one of them would get hit by it in the end.
The next thing he knew, the spell went off, and he jumped between it and Ayumi.
The last thing he knew was hot on his back and dark in his vision.
---
Yoshiki opened his eyes and felt cold and warm at the same time.
Let’s see, he was on his bed in his room, the cats were on each side of him, oh, and he was shirtless. Uuhhhh-
“Oh, you’re awake! Thank god!”
The cats moved out of the way, followed by a body draping themselves around him very gently. It was Ayumi, and he all of a sudden realized that bandages were wrapped around his chest and back alongside his girlfriend’s arms. He returned the hug.
“Uh, yeah, what ha-” Wait, ow, his back really hurt. Now he remembered, “Why not a hospital?”
“Oh, right, well, you see...” Ayumi twiddled her thumbs. “The physical injury isn’t the only thing wrong?”
Yoshiki blanked for a few seconds, “Uh, honey, I love you, but can you be a little bit more specific?”
Ayumi struggled to find the words, then just bit the bullet, “So the thing is your back won’t fully heal until I can find a spell to reverse what hit you? Possibly?”
Yoshiki stared at his girlfriend, before blatantly stating “Oh, okay.”
Ayumi was the one staring now, “I’m so sor- wait, what?”
Yoshiki sat up against the wall behind him, “Yeah, alright, I get it. I know you can find one.”
Ayumi sighed, “Wow that went better than expected for all the possible outcomes I'd thought of. Don’t worry, I still promise to be sure to help you with whatever you may need throughout this while trying to get your back fixed!”
“... That was the first time you mentioned this promise?”
“The point still stands, Kishinuma!”
It would take Yoshiki a ridiculously short amount of time to realize that, holy shit, she wasn’t kidding.
A couple days went by, and while Yoshiki adored the pampering, he would get a teensy weensy bit worried (perhaps even a bit annoyed) at his girlfriend’s tendencies surrounding it. Oh, don’t worry, it wasn’t that she was rude. Even if she was a little pushy when it came to certain jobs she ended up doing, she was generally a nice person.
But right now she was being extremely nice; like, “ass-kissing” nice, and she was losing sleep in the process. Trying not only to find something to fix the situation but also try to, for some reason, “appease” him after what she did. It was bordering on self-flagellation.
But since this was Ayumi, it was really on him for being surprised.
Time to put the old Kishinuma charm to good use.
Which was him being a sneaky piece of shit, but if she finally closed her eyes for whatever reason at this point, then the reason she did so was fine by him.
---
“Ayumi.”
“...”
“Ayuuumi.”
“I’ll be there in a second, I promise-”
“Shinozaki I swear to god if you don’t get into this room right now I will stand up and we both know how much that hurts my back.”
He could hear his girlfriend sigh from her workshop. Bingo. He watched as she slowly walked into their shared bedroom. He watched her get up to the doorway and stand in it. Nope, not good enough. He jerked his head, signaling that he wanted her to come closer, and thank the lord, she did.
“Yes, what do you nee-”
Right as she got to his side, he yanked her down onto the bed and held her in his arms. He closed his eyes and waited for his kind of magic to take hold.
“Kishinuma! I have to go back to work! What are you doing?”
“...zzz…”
“Wha- did you seriously just fall asleep?”
“Zzz...zzz.”
Ayumi sighed again, either because she knew what he was doing or because she knew how much of a heavy sleeper he was, “Alright, I do need a quick nap, and your arms are pretty comfortable.”
While she couldn’t see it, as she quickly started genuinely snoring, Yoshiki had a huge grin due to a job well done. Finally, the gray on her face will just be the dust from her spells instead of eye bags. Yeah, his back was a little sorer than usual because of this, but his sweetheart was finally taking a break, and that was all that mattered.
Eventually, Cookie and Cream would walk in and join the sleeping pile of humans themselves, signifying everything was alright in their little witch family once more.