Archive of Our Own

Most people don’t think white suits Maki, and usually, she would argue that they’re right. If she can’t wear black, she’d rather wear something with a little more life in it, and had unknowingly assumed that she would whenever she had thought about her wedding.

Now, in layers of heavy white brocade, she barely recognizes herself.

Yuuta had wanted a shrine wedding and as quiet a reception as possible. Maki, who’s never had enough opinions about weddings to care, had conceded, and on at least four occasions wished she hadn’t, but now…well…

She still isn’t sold, she has to admit, playing with the sleeve of her red-lined overcoat.

“You look lovely, Zenin-san,” an attendant who had come with the price of the kimono rental says with a bland smile. She adjusts the wataboshi so it sits straighter on her head and stands back to admire her handiwork; Maki has to stop herself from correcting her name.

“Thanks,” she says, toneless.

Odd is what she looks. Everything from the bulky layers obstructing her movements to the juxtaposition of her mottled skin with the pure-white hood that partially covers her face looks out-of-place, and she tells herself that it’s only for an hour or so, but it’s hard not to flinch at her reflection.

White is worn, or so she’s been told, because a bride takes on the colors of the family she marries into. When she was young, that idea would have made her want to be sick. Now it is about the only redeeming quality of these over-fussy clothes, because there is nothing pure-white about the Zenin name, and if today she blanks herself to take on a new one, she’ll be all the better for it.

It feels like it’s been hours by the time she’s finished preparing; it probably has, but she hasn’t checked. An attendant helps her slip her socked feet into zori sandals, and she shuffles out onto the engawa with tiny steps that take practice to get used to before she can safely raise her eyes.

It’s hard to tell with the bright midday sun in her eyes, but Yuuta’s look like they might be moist.

She falls easily into step beside him beneath the red wagasa umbrella, and between looks at the snow-covered ground to keep from stepping in a sloshy patch that’ll wet her socks, she sneaks glances at Yuuta. He’s a little red in the cheeks, maybe from the cold or maybe just because things like this still make him bashful, and stately in his black-striped hakama. Loose things, Maki has learned, always have the effect of making him seem even taller, more imposing, and yet there’s a gentleness in his shy expression that is winsome nonetheless.

Hi, he mouths to her, catching her mid-glance, and smiles.

The somber music of the shrine-masters a few steps ahead feels at odds entirely with the uncharacteristic lightness in her chest at the look he gives her, and she replies, silently, hey.

Pretty, he mouths.

She rolls her eyes so he won’t be able to tell that she’s pleased. Damned softie.

A damned softie, maybe, but one she’s tied to for life, and one she doubts she could or would wish to be rid of no matter what she tried. It’s a little staggering here on the precipice to think of just how long that is, if they are as lucky in matters of survival as they have been so far, but Maki pushes that down.

Day by day. Okkotsu Yuuta has never once not proven himself to be worth it.

**

Yuuta’s hands shake.

The first cup of sake is so small that he thinks it’ll be a miracle if even half of it ends up where it’s supposed to. Briefly, he wonders if the rental shop charges extra if their wedding clothes come back stained with sake drops that shaking hands hadn’t been able to contain, but Maki is smiling a little when he looks at her, and he can’t dwell on cold feet for long.

He probably takes his traditional three sips too quickly in his haste not to drop the plate, but he counts it as a success.

Maki, when it is her turn for the first cup, is steady where he had not been, but that doesn’t surprise him. She is as cool as the breezes that occasionally ruffle the wall hangings in the open pavilion, composed – it isn’t her way to be nervous in ways that her body reveals. She is not the one who feels that marrying the person beside her is a change so monumental that she might drop something. Her reassurance, he knows, will have to come later.

Or maybe it should’ve come before, when she was dressing in a shiromuku she could not more obviously dislike. He has a feeling that whatever might have made her hands shake is over and done with already. They’re well-matched that way, he thinks. They had not fallen in love for practicality’s sake, but there are ways that they suit each other that he doubts few high school sweethearts can claim.

His hands don’t shake when the shrine maiden hands him the second sakezuki, and Maki’s eyes when they meet between their turns to drink tell him that she noticed.

Of course she noticed. Sometimes it amazes him how finely-attuned she is to the parts of himself even he sometimes misses.

Of course, he thinks, buoyant – I love her.

There had, to Yuuta, never been any proper ending except this one. He had worried when he was young that Maki wouldn’t take to it, but she’d warmed to the thought of being stuck with him over the years, and part of him wants to discreetly kick his foot against the tatami in celebration of that fact – that he gets her forever. That she, who never does anything that she does not want to, wanted him to have her forever.

She looks a little smug when he reads out the words of the wedding oath, and though smugness is not a very Okkotsu Yuuta thing to feel, he can’t help but agree.

Take that, she seems to be saying, to everyone and no one in particular – a thoroughly Maki thing to be thinking at a wedding. He probably won’t ever share her uncanny ability to turn absolutely anything into an act of spite, but it still makes him bite his lip so he won’t laugh before he’s finished reading. From the corner of his eye, he catches the badly-concealed look of exasperation on Momo’s face in the distance, and it’s only by biting his lip even harder that he keeps himself quiet until they’ve offered the tamagushi branch.

Breathe, Maki mouths to him when she gets the chance, and he really does try, but it’s only the exchange of rings and the opportunity to take Maki’s hand for the first time since this morning that keeps him from bursting out laughing.

Maki’s hands are strong and rough with the callouses of an expert with weaponry, but they’re smaller than his own, and he’s always liked the way his swallow them up. He can’t help but notice that anew as he slips her ring onto her finger and gives her hand a gentle squeeze between both of his own, nor when she lays his broader hand across hers to steady it while she returns the gesture.

There’s so much these hands haven’t done yet that they can now that they belong to her. If it weren’t gauche, Yuuta would lift her hand to his lips and kiss it for that alone.

**

Maki remembers trudging through processions of dozens at Zenin weddings as a child, surrounded by relatives whose blood she wished she didn’t share, and it is a little bit odd to be at a wedding of her own with one living relative and a group of witnesses as scant as the wedding processions of her childhood had been overcrowded. But, she thinks, it’s better this way.

To end the ceremony, the families of the newlyweds are supposed to drink together in celebration of their tie to one another, and though Maki doubts any of the guests standing in for family feel more tied-together by this marriage than they did before, it makes for a nice picture. Gojo is not really much of a relative on Yuuta’s side, and Maki would really rather not think about what Megumi is, and Momo is not family at all – but it fits, sort of. His family, hers, and, in the absence of Mai, the next-best thing.

It is awkward, knowing a woman she almost never speaks makes up half of her wedding guests, but she had loved Mai in her final years of life where Maki had failed to, and for that she is in their debt. It only seems right that she be the torchbearer for a sister who hadn’t lived long enough to see her married.

She looks at Momo, who is looking at Gojo, and then at Yuuta, who looks like he might cry, and wonders what Mai would think of all of this if she were in her rightful place. Probably not much. Maki’s memories fade with the passing years, but she doesn’t think the memory of Mai’s ever-present scowl will ever grow less vivid, and she would probably be wearing it now.

Maki likes to imagine that it would only be a front, though, because Mai never was good at expressing herself. In that world where she is here and drinks her ceremonial sake too fast in a vain effort to forget that her sister is making eyes at a wet noodle of a special-grade, Maki thinks she would’ve made things right long before. Thinks her sister would complain endlessly about her taste in men and had the confidence to say so to her face.

She likes that thought. She thinks it’s a testament to the soothing effect of the intervening years that she sees Momo where Mai should be and only feels a little pang of regret.

Yuuta reaches for her hand when they stand to leave, and when nobody is listening, she bows her head and murmurs, “I was thinking about Mai.”

He doesn’t say anything, but his thumb caresses hers, and she knows that he understands.

**

The next time Yuuta sees his wife, she looks like she’s going to the gym, and this is so utterly expected that he doesn’t even laugh. It’s the way of nature: of course Maki would shed layers upon layers of fussy wedding clothes for her favorite pair of leggings and a baggy zip-up as quickly as she could. Of course an hour of stripping away the formality of the ceremony layer by layer would culminate in a Maki who walks out the door of the changing room in gym clothes and grabs Yuuta by the collar of his shirt to yank him down and kiss him in the hallway with no regard for anyone watching.

A terrified shrine maiden who can’t be long out of high school skitters away as fast as she can and Yuuta would stop to apologize if his lips were not occupied with more pressing matters.

“I was right,” she says, still gripping his collar on either side, when she pulls away. “We shoulda just eloped.”

She’s smiling too widely for him to believe that.

“Yeah,” he says, playing with the drawstrings on her sweatshirt. My wife, he finds himself thinking. My wife. It is a thought he thinks with every inch of his body, and he still comes up wishing he could think it harder. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Too many layers, and you taste like sake.” She pokes the tip of his nose. “You need a mint, Yuuta-kun.”

He thinks he might faint with the dizziness of his joy, and all he can do is nod mechanically. “Prob’ly.”

Maki, who knows well what he looks like when he’s spacing out, taps his forehead. “You okay up there?”

Funny – Gojo had asked him almost the same question a little while earlier. Granted, that had come in the midst of a lecture on the ins and outs of married life that had been part instruction, part encouragement, and almost entirely mortifying, but still.

My wife, he thinks, and suddenly the effort of standing feels like too much.

“Sorry,” he says. “I think I might need to sit down.”

**

Maki hadn’t known that Yuuta meant to make a tactical retreat when he’d said he needed to sit down. She’s not exactly surprised – he likes to go off somewhere by himself when he’s overwhelmed – but today, of all days, letting him go alone wouldn’t sit well with her. She is, after all, the cause of this fit of passion, and she has the decency to feel remorse at having put him in this state.

She knocks on the driver’s-side window of Yuuta’s car and waves when he lifts his head from the steering wheel and looks at her.

Hi, she mouths. He unlocks the doors. She uses the bar beneath the seat to push it back as far as it goes then climbs, unceremoniously, into his lap.  

He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t tense up, so she knows her presence is welcome. She digs her fingers into the spare fabric of his black hoodie, rests her head against his warm chest; he drapes his arms around her.

“I won’t talk,” she says. “Just couldn’t let you wander off and die on me.”

That is as romantic as Maki ever gets, and Yuuta, who knows that well, bends and kisses her hair in response.

It’s eerily quiet outside the shrine. Even the sound of wind through the leafless branches of trees seems muffled by the snow, and the far-off sound of a creek barely registers. Maki wonders if that’s why Yuuta liked this shrine so much when they were looking for a venue – he likes quiet things. She prefers distractions, but she thinks there’s something to be said for the quiet here that lets her hear Yuuta’s heartbeat when she lays her head on his chest.

“We’re gonna have to head out soon,” she says quietly.

“I know.”

“You okay?”

“Mmhm.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Want me to drive?”

“You drive like you have a death wish,” Yuuta murmurs against her hair.

“And you drive like a grandma.”

“Yeah, but I’m safe.”

“Fighting over who drives,” she laughs. “Guess we really did get married.”

“Did you just say something sappy?”

“Of course not.”

“That was sappy.” He nuzzles his nose into her loose hair. “’s okay. You’re allowed.”

“I’m not sappy.”

His arms tighten around her like they always do when something makes him happy, and this time, when he bends to kiss her, he brushes his lips against the shell of her ear.

“My wife,” he whispers against the still-damp spot he’d kissed.

Maki’s face feels hot, though she wishes it wouldn’t. She supposes she’s never thought about how sensitive ears can be.

“Well, yeah,” she says, trying to sound blasé. “That was the point of all that.”

Okkotsu Maki, she thinks, and is pleased with herself, with him, with the way things have ended up. It has a nice ring to it, Okkotsu Maki.

That’s her.

She thinks that name is going to feel heavier than she knows what to do with when it sinks in, in all of the right ways.

**

Anyone who has ever been in a car with Maki knows that a car with Maki in it is a silent one. She’s a stickler about that – no music, no mindless chatter. Conversation is only for essentials; cars are for getting from here to there, not for the things that happen between. But after she turns the key in the ignition, she reaches for the volume dial and cranks it up.

Yuuta looks over at her in goggle-eyed shock, and she laughs, shaking her head as if he should’ve seen this coming. One hand on the wheel and the other on the dial, she flips through stations until she finds one she likes – the oldies station, Yuuta guesses – and stops, then turns out onto a deserted forest road and hits the gas.

“Really?” Yuuta says over the blaring music and revving engine. “Since when do you like old stuff?”

Maki just laughs. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her laugh this much in a single day before. Maybe she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Maybe that was a given. Maybe that’s what days like this are for – remembering the sight of Maki laughing while she tears out of the shrine’s parking lot too fast to an old song she would scoff at on any other day forever.

She nearly crashes into a parked car when she tears into the parking garage with no less speed and no more caution than she’d left the shrine with, narrowly misses it, honks to announce their arrival to the crowd waiting by the elevator for their arrival, turns to Yuuta, puts the car in park as she’s leaning over to kiss him, and says, full-chested, “I love you.”

This, he thinks – this is why every fairytale ends in a wedding and why every other song on the radio is about love.

“You’re gonna hit something someday,” he says, then, “I love you so much,” and kisses her and kisses her and doesn’t pull away until he hears a fist rapping on the passenger’s-side window and looks up to find Nobara glaring at him through the glass.

She smiles, of course, as soon as Maki looks over at him, bouncing on her toes in excitement that was decidedly not there for Yuuta, and he shakes his head fondly when the rest of the reception guests stream out of the elevator doors to greet them.

He takes her hand when she steps down from the driver’s side and kisses it when she’s on solid ground, and for once, she lets him.

**

Maki had given Yuuta his way with the ceremony mostly so she could have hers with the reception, because if there is anything she finds less appetizing than two hours of dressing for a fussy, traditional series of rituals, it is four more hours of entertaining guests she wouldn’t even have invited if she had her way in a dress that makes her lungs ache. She has no taste for glamor and even less for social niceties, and when given the choice, she had opted for this without even thinking about it.

Besides, Gojo had offered them free food and the use of the ritzy apartment he rented in his bachelor days and never saw the need to let go when he got married, and that had been all the enticement she needed.

It’s a cozy reception, if not a quiet one. No one is dressed up except for Nobara, who treasures her vanity so much that she would dress up to milk a cow, and there is no agenda for the afternoon, only a gathering of the very few people Maki and Yuuta care to celebrate with. A superbly perplexed delivery boy receives the tip of a lifetime when he shows up outside Gojo’s twentieth-floor apartment with the pizzas and hot wings they’d requested. There is, not exactly by anyone’s request, what looks like an entire refrigerator of beer. No one even comments on Maki’s workout clothes.

It is, in other words, exactly what she wanted.

“I still can’t believe you invited Gojo and not me,” Nobara is saying, loudly, when Maki returns from the kitchen with another slice of pizza. “Honestly. Where are your priorities?”

“Hey,” Gojo squawks. “I’m family.”

“I’m family too, you idiot!”

“Hey, now, no need to get rowdy,” Gojo says, holding up his hands in surrender and clearly enjoying this far too much. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t get to see Maki-san in a shiromuku because of you!”

“Nocchan,” Maki says, leaning into Yuuta as she settles back into her spot on the couch, “what makes you think Gojo is the person you would’ve replaced?”

Nobara looks more offended than Maki has ever seen her, and Yuuji, apparently, thinks this is the funniest thing he’s ever witnessed, at least if the way he laughs until he looks like he’s in respiratory distress says anything. Nobara elbows him, he pats her shoulder and tells her to lighten up, and this sets off a squabble that produces nothing that lasts except a haggard expression on Megumi’s face.

Usually, Maki would sympathize. Today, she’s too happy to bother.

“Yuuta,” she whispers, grasping the hem of his shirt.

Everybody is distracted now – their former classmates with Yuuji and Nobara’s argument, Momo and Noritoshi playing with one of the Gojo daughters somewhere off in a corner where no one is drinking beer, Gojo trying unsuccessfully to get Utahime to let him feed her a chicken wing – and in the chaos, Yuuta turns to her, smiling as if he’s gotten away with something. “Yeah?”

She leans in and kisses him, just quick enough to register.

“No fair,” he murmurs, and leans back in to kiss her for long enough that the feeling lingers long after she pulls away.

“Ew,” Yuuji comments when they pull apart again. “Get a room.”

Maki’s cheeks flush, but then, she can’t exactly be surprised that someone in a room full of people was watching them. Smug, she finds that she does not care nearly as much as she used to who knows what she was doing.

“Grow up, Itadori,” she says cheerfully, throwing a leg across Yuuta’s lap. “What are you, twelve?”

Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next month or year or two, Maki will probably forget what it feels like to be so buoyant with happiness that she doesn’t care who sees. She will remember that she’s never been a demonstrative person and that it should embarrass her to be seen like this. It won’t last, this bubbly fugue state in which she forgets herself because everything rational is crowded out by the thought of Yuuta and all of the things that it means to be his. Maybe she’ll remember this day and how she acted and be ashamed. Maki knows this.

But Maki is tired of keeping her composure, and today of all days seems like the one on which she ought to be allowed to let go. She thinks of Mai for a minute and feels sure of it – that this is the kind of life that’s for the living and lost on the cautious. That this is the kind of thing that Mai would have wanted for her if she ever grew old enough to be honest with herself.

Every day that a sorcerer wakes breathing is a victory against the odds, and this one feels like a thousand. Mai probably knew that Maki would feel that way someday. Wanted that for her.

Besides, she thinks that love is a thing worth letting go a little for. Yuuta taught her that.

“To the Okkotsus,” Utahime says after one too many beers, lifting hers to tap against Megumi’s across the table, and though she’s probably drunk, it feels as genuine as anything.

“To the Okkotsus,” Gojo repeats, then gently pries the beer from his hand after he clinks it against his soda.

“Hey,” Utahime whines. “Give me that.”

“To the Okkotsus,” Yuuji says, toasting Megumi, then Inumaki, then Noritoshi and Momo who’ve come back to the fold for this, and the toast makes its way around the circle – to the Okkotsus, to the Okkotsus, to the Okkotsus – until it reaches Nobara at its end.

“To Okkotsu Maki,” she says, “and that wet cat over there,” and even Yuuta laughs.

Okkotsu Maki, again – yes, that is worth celebrating.

**

Yuuta’s face falls when he steps through the doorway of the honeymoon suite. He never would have chosen this hotel if not for Gojo’s insistence that he ought to spend his wedding night somewhere ritzy, and maybe he should have refused, because one of the things he always forgets is that ritzy places like this go the extra mile. And the extra mile, when it comes to things like this, usually involves rose petals.

And Yuuta’s sinuses do not like that one bit.

“Stay outside,” Maki says as soon as she peeks around the doorway and sees what has him so concerned. “I’ll handle this.”

“Maki-chan-“

“I said I’ll handle this, Yuuta.”

He backs away, figuring that it’s useless to fight her on this, and stays obediently outside the door for the five minutes that it takes before Maki calls him back in. When he returns, there are no more rose petals on the bed or the floor, and he doubts that there would be any if he checked the bathroom, either.

He smiles, then turns a little concerned.

“Honey,” he asks, “what’d you do with the petals?”

“Threw them off the balcony,” she says innocently. “Why?”

Leave it to Maki.

“Thanks,” he says, mildly concerned that management is going to reprimand them for that. “You’re, uh, too kind.”

**

Maki doesn’t really know whether to feel more relief at the hot water washing away the last traces of her makeup from the ceremony or apprehension, because outside the door, she knows Yuuta is wondering what she’s doing behind it.

Nobody would guess that a man she’s been with so long has never seen her naked, but he had wanted to wait, and Maki had readily agreed. It had given her time to get used to the idea, something Yuuta had probably known that she needed. Eased off the pressure. She hadn’t been ready when they’d decided. But tonight is different.

She could have let him shower with her instead of asking to go off alone, but she hadn’t. And he may seem endlessly patient, but he probably wishes she had; he’s probably sitting on the bed trying to distract himself with things that can’t hold his attention the way the thought of his wife in the shower does. Probably waiting.

When she steps out of the shower, she lets out a breath into the steamy air that doesn’t slow her racing heartbeat and wonders why, when she fears so little, this one small, beautiful thing is so daunting.

She knows that he wants her. She knows that she wants him. She does not know why it isn’t simple to dress in the black lace underthings that Nobara had given her as a wedding gift and button one of Yuuta’s stolen dress shirts over them and come out with her hair still dripping and ask, “could you dry it?”

Like she’s planned. Like she knows how to do.

He stands when she steps out of the bathroom like he’s been waiting all his life, gulps like a fish, fists and flexes his hands at his sides – and he can’t even see what’s beneath his shirt. Maki smiles, even though she hadn’t thought she would, and hands him a brush and a hairdryer, and sits; he makes it through five minutes before he stops the dryer.

“Maki,” he says, shakier than she’s ever heard him, “if you’re trying to tell me something, I think it already worked.”

Oh, she thinks, and wishes she could turn and put her arms around him, because there’s something about that bashful quiver in his voice that makes her want to hold him.

“I’m not doing anything with wet hair,” she says, laughing softly.

The dryer clicks back on, and his hands work through her hair more than they need to to dry it, but she had known they would. They both need a primer, a setup that will make the payoff irresistible; otherwise she doesn’t even want to think about how long it’ll take her husband to work his way up to it. This will do.

She wonders if he notices her moving to unbutton his shirt when he’s brushing out her just-dried hair. She turns, her hair falling to cover some of what the open shirt no longer does, and concludes by the way his eyes widen that he hadn’t.

“I needed a minute,” she says.

He swallows hard, nodding gravely.

“Yeah,” he says, his throat stuck. “I think I did, too.”

**

It’s nothing. It’s not as if Yuuta hasn’t ever had a hint of what it would be like to see all of Maki, all her scars and the things she shrinks to cover. Everyone does this, most people multiple times with multiple people – it’s nothing.

But he is not most people, and Maki is wearing his ring and his shirt and black lace beneath it, and it is not nothing.

“Maki-chan,” he says shakily, “you know I’m not going to be good, right?”

She fixes him with a look that is, as is Maki’s ilk, utterly unromantic.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” she says, crossing her arms over her bare torso. “Who the hell is good at anything the first time?”

Harsh words, but, like so many of the things Maki says that he doesn’t take well, meant as lovingly as any ever could be.

“It’s just,” he says, flushing, “you’re beautiful.”

“Yuuta, I don’t get what that has to do with anything.”

“It’s hard,” he says. “Knowing you’re this beautiful and I’m not going to do you justice.”

Her lips and hands are as gentle as her words are sharp when she takes his face in her hands and kisses him, slow and languid and with all the patience of a woman who knows what a task it is to be entrusted with Okkotsu Yuuta’s care.

“Get your head out of the gutter,” she murmurs against his lips. “It’ll make this a lot easier.”

“Maki,” he laughs, hanging his head over her shoulder, “you’re wearing that and you want me to get my head out of the gutter?”

“I liked you fine without the sex and I’ll like you fine if it’s not that great, okay?”

“That’s…not very romantic.”

“Sorry,” she says, kissing his shoulder. “Think I wore out the romance a couple hours ago.”

She probably did, and he’d never ask it of her, but still, he laughs, because he knows that some part of her that isn’t speaking feels exactly the same way he does.

**

“Yuuta-kun.”

Yuuta is silent as Maki traces the outline of the second wedding band he’s added to the chain around his neck, cool against the warmth of his bare chest. It shudders a little beneath her fingertips, and he manages, barely, a shaky “yeah?”

“Does this feel weird to you?” she asks, and presses her flat palm against his chest.

Yuuta’s fingers wrap around her wrist, and in the dimness, with all the lights switched off, she can only see the silhouette of the movement when he shakes his head.

“No,” he says raspily. “Weird’s not what I’d call it.”

He lowers his head, presses his forehead to hers, and Maki, sitting on his knees, takes in a sharp breath. It is not the first time that he’s held her face in his broad palm this way, or touched their foreheads, or caressed her cheekbone, but none of the other times were supposed to lead to this.

They’re not waiting anymore. That is a feeling Maki did not expect to be so novel.

“What would you call it, then?”

Yuuta, silent, hooks his finger beneath the delicate strap of her bra and lowers it. His lips brush the indentation it left behind; she shudders; he repeats the motion on the other side, but draws it out this time, dragging his knuckles down the burned skin he passes as he eases the strap off her shoulder.

“Yuuta,” she murmurs, suddenly shaky, “answer me.”

She can still feel the patch of damp where her wet hair had touched the back of his shirt, but she doesn’t think that’s why she shivers.

He fumbles with the hook without taking the shirt off, and when he’s eased it off, he pulls back to look at her, a silhouette in the half-darkness, seated near his waist and covered with nothing but his thin, damp white shirt.

He murmurs an uncharacteristic curse so soft that at first she barely hears the word for what it is, and she doesn’t find that she needs her answer anymore.

He might call it want, or longing, or the relief that follows longsuffering years spent waiting, or perhaps he would only say her name. Those are the things, at least, that are written on his face, and in his hands when they cradle her waist beneath his shirt, and his lips when they meet hers. Things Maki reads instantly because they mirror her own hesitation, her own eagerness, her own desire.

“You’re my husband now,” she says, hushed, trying not to disturb a silence that has already been broken. “What are you going to do about it?”

He looks at her and lets her read his answer on his face, and Okkotsu Maki, for once, is satisfied.