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“Honey?”
“Yeah?!” Veth hollers, bagging the sandwich and fruit slices and maybe a couple chocolates and neatly crimpling the bag shut. Sure, their apartment is right above his shop, so he could just make himself something in the kitchen… but she likes giving him a hand-packed lunch. It’s the little things! Especially today, when he has a meeting with those pharmaceutical bigshots. Her heart swells with pride - her Yeza, her smart man!
Yeza rounds the corner, still in his nightshirt, with one of the button-downs she hasn’t seen in a while thrown over his arm. “I - oh, thank you -” Even years later, he loses his train of thought when he sees her sometimes. Like she’s hot, and not, you know, not. Just has to pause and plant a kiss to her temple. She’s the luckiest woman in the fucking world for every moment she can make this genius speechless.
Still. There was something like worry in his tone, and he can’t be worried now of all times. She won’t let him be, if she can help it. “What is it, Yeza?”
“Oh! Yes.” He presents the shirt to her and pointing out a missing button, the threads sticking out like splinters or shards of bone. (Veth has to blink that away.)
“Do you know if we have any spares? I know these things usually come with one or two, but I didn’t want to mess up your collection. Or steal from it.”
“Stealing’s fine.” Veth dismisses it with a wave of her hand. “Besides! You wouldn’t find it there anyways.”
Yeza blinks. “Oh.” And then, “ Oh. Why?”
Why, he asks, because he’s her husband and he knows her. He knows that she has thousands of buttons - big ones, little ones, rare antiques, modern takes, the whole shabang. She’s taken them from blouses and pants, labcoats and purses, craft sections and trash cans, even well-dressed fucking teddies. Thoudands - a pretty fucking great collection, and one she’s proud of.
He knows, and he knows she’d never pass up on a button. Not even the most bland and boring and beat-up ones. (Those were a little too much like a little girl forgotten in the back of every family picture, and she treasures those most. Well. Almost most.)
Point is: she gets it. Veth? Not having a button she had easy access to in her collection? Definitely cause to ask why.
So she pulls out her necklaces.
It’s all buttons, of course. And she’s pretty sure Yeza is vaguely familiar with the mess of them, if not the individual dimes and moons and eyes of color.
She points to one - kinda squished behind two big flat ones - and pries it into the light with her nails. And then she pulls the necklace over her head, the familiar clatter some sort of protest. Hypnotic sound, one she loves - can’t let it her distract her right now. Focus!
“I kept it here,” she says, already fiddling around for her knife. (well, some people would call it a dagger. Doesn’t matter!) “Not to be weird or anything. Just - all the ones from your shirts. Or Luc’s. They’re just spares, right? And I figure, if I have them on me, part of you is with me. Always.”
That always hangs between them, heavy. The buttons move in her hands. Click-clack. She gets to finding the right thread to cut the one Yeza needs loose. “Anyways! It’s silly. And means that if you need them, I have them here. Here:”
There it is! She angles her knife to cut the beige button loose. The needle and thread should be in - which drawer was it -
Yeza’s hand is on hers. Gentle, but firmly easing the blade’s edge away from the button.
“Always,” he echoes. Clears his throat. “Actually - you keep it. I’m sure there’s another fancy shirt I could wear.”
“Are you sure?” Veth asks, oddly shrill. Not sure why. “Sure? Because - Luc didn’t do the laundry last, night, and -”
He squeezes her hand, runs a thumb over her knuckles. His eyes are creased so perfectly, shiny (the best, crisp black buttons) behind his glasses.
“I’m sure, honey.”
Yeza eases the necklace back over Veth’s head, smoothing the buttons among their kin on her chest. And then he’s rushing off for another shirt, yelping when Veth slaps him on the ass as he scrambles past.