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HEY! THIS IS THE LAST PART IN THE SERIES!! DID YOU READ THE OTHERS?!!
“Oh, what a darling couple?”
Ochako grinned, pinching the back of Katsuki’s arm as she pulled him closer, “Thank you! I don’t know what I did to be so lucky.” She rescued her best friend from being beheaded.
Before that, she’d snuck out of the house to meet a strange child, who could have really been anyone when Ochako thought about it, in the woods after seeing a streak of light hurdling toward the earth but-
It all seemed to work out in the end. “Right, Ryo?” Ochako beamed, looking up at him as the vein in his neck throbbed in annoyance.
Katsuki sighed and said the only thing that he could muster. “Tch.”
“Oh!” the old woman squealed as she gathered their purchases in a sack. “You two are just absolutely adorable!” She handed the sack to Katsuki. “Do an old woman a kindness and make sure you come back through when you have kids, yeah?”
Ochako blushed, nodding her head excitedly.
Katsuki sighed and turned away with his ears burning.
“Thank you so much,” Ochako bowed.
“Of course, Mei,” the old woman cooed, gently patting her head. “Oh! I threw some extra snacks in there and a couple of packs of fertility tea for when you kids are ready! I know your parents have to be asking about grandchildren.”
“Oh—” Her parents never really mentioned much to her about having kids or whether they’d be excited to be grandparents. Ochako figured she’d be expected to have children whether she wanted them or not. “They sure are! Thank you again!” Ochako chirped as she made her way back to Katsuki.
“Is that all, Mei ?” Katsuki questioned, raising his eyebrows as they moved through the town.
She rolled her eyes, shrugged, and looped her arm around his. “We needed fake names. And every other person is named Mei and Ryo, so no one will think twice.” Ochako couldn’t count the number of people she met with those names. “Seriously, every other person in our town was named Mei or Ryo.”
“Tch.”
“If those guys are after us-” And there was a very good chance they were. “-they will probably go to every nearby town asking if they’ve seen someone suspicious, and since we’re not sneaking through the woods-”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re a fucking genius,” he grumbled without any real bite or annoyance.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Ochako had been surprised when he hadn’t put up a fight about traveling through villages rather than taking his usual route under the cover of thick forest. “Look-” Her hand slid down his forearm to his free hand as she intertwined their fingers. “-we’re a couple of hours out from the campsite. Let’s just be ordinary, boring people for a little bit, yeah?” She tilted her head, pulling him before her as they paused.
Katsuki studied her for a moment. “You want me to court you or something?” he questioned, tipping his chin up with a smirk.
It was Ochako’s turn to roll her eyes. “No.” She tried to move away from him, but Katsuki pulled her back to him. “It’s too late for that anyway, but you could take me out on a date.”
“We’ve been on dates!”
When?
“How many mornings did we have breakfast together and then spar?”
“What?”
Katsuki vaguely gestured.
“That’s not a date,” Ochako giggled, swinging their hands together as she pulled him toward a little pub. “This is a date.”
Katsuki scowled as they approached the run-down building. “We have food at home.”
“You sound like an old man!”
“You know what I meant,” he complained, still following along with her plan to have a meal. “We have better food at home.”
Ochako couldn’t argue with that. She didn’t understand how they were thriving as nomads, but she benefited from it. The pubs in Ochako’s childhood village were mainly places for people to get a drink and chat. “True, but we should still go on a date.”
Katsuki sighed.
“Right now.” Ochako moved so that she was leaning against his chest. She looked up at him, eyes wide and pleading as he scowled down at her. “Please?” she questioned sweetly as her lashes fluttered.
“You-” Katsuki growled, the noise rumbling deep in his belly as he looked up to the sky. “How the hell am I supposed to say know when you’re looking at me like that?”
“What?”
“Like you don’t know!”
She didn’t.
Well- Truthfully, she didn’t think she had that kind of effect on him.
Ochako would have to be stupid and delusional not to acknowledge the obvious tension between them. Things between them were intense before she could remember him, but now things were almost painful. “Sorry,” she pouted.
He squeezed his eyes shut, dropping his shoulders in defeat. The tunic she’d stolen had stretched over the muscles of his chest in a way that was more erotic than him walking around without a shirt. “Would it make you happy?” he questioned, looking up at her.
Ochako nodded. She didn’t trust her voice to answer.
She couldn’t, not when his words ran through her like a warm fire.
“Okay,” he huffed, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze as he led her inside.
The meal wasn’t great.
Saying it was good would be a stretch, but it was edible, warm, much more than she would have gotten in her childhood home, and she didn’t have to cook.
Ochako wasn’t sure where exactly they were, but it seemed like war had ravaged this community as well. The chairs and table looked like they’d lived through hundreds of lifetimes. The dishes and cups were cracked, chipped, and scratched so much that Ochako was afraid she’d break them if she dropped her spoon a little too hard. And yet-
It was the perfect little date.
“I wish we could do this more,” Ochako hummed as her finger lazily danced around the rim of her mug.
Katsuki raised his eyebrows. His chair creaked as he leaned back in his seat.
“Just-” Ochako wasn’t sure how to explain it. “- exsist , ya know?”
“Not really.” He shifted forward as an elbow came to the table.
This was the first time in a long time she wasn’t reminded that the world was in shambles. Even though the effects of years and years of war were still in front of her, Ochako was able to see something beyond it. “I-” She reached across the table, opening her hand to as she lowered her voice. “Not worry.”
Katsuki shot her a bitter smirk. “I’m, we’re -” He took her hand, stroking her fingers. “We’re leaders.”
“I’m not.”
“You are my wife,” he told her as he laced their fingers together. “You are the other half of my soul. You might not be aware of the power you carry, but you possess it.” His gaze burned over her. “As you possess me.”
Ochako wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say to that.
“How about this?” Katsuki questioned, slowly letting go of her hand. He stood up, dropping several coins on the table. “Let’s find an inn for tonight.”
“I thought we were going to try to meet up with everyone tonight,” she wondered.
He shrugged, “They will be there in the morning.”
Ochako didn’t know she was capable of smiling so wide.
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What was she supposed to do?
Ochako huffed, twirling her fingers around the tunic she’d stolen from Katsuki. He’d thrown the shirt off as soon as they’d walked into their room, and Ochako had thrown it on as a nightgown when he’d taken his turn in the washroom.
“Of course there’s only one bed,” she mumbled looking at the piece of furniture as if it had personally offended her. “I don’t know what I was expecting.”
They were married.
Husbands and wives shared a bed.
Ochako was also quite sure that soulmates shared beds as well. Eijirou and Mina weren’t exactly quiet about their activities even though their tent was on the other side of the camp. Not to mention, the sounds of intimacy weren’t hard to miss in the still of the night.
And yet, she was still surprised by this turn of events.
Katsuki stepped out of the bathroom, torso glistening and pants slung low on his hips.
“Oh stars,” she whispered, trying not to stare too hard.
She’d seen him more without a shirt than with one, but there was something very different about him being shirtless now.
When they were alone.
With a bed.
Away from everyone.
“I can take the floor,” Katsuki offered, throwing the towel he was using back into the wash room.
“No, no, no,” Ochako protested, shaking her head frantically.
“You’re not sleeping on the fucking floor.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know. We can share the bed.”
He stared at her.
“I’m your wife. Your soulmate-” There was something still very, very weird about that word she couldn’t wrap her head around. “I want us to share a bed and a tent.”
“Okay,” he nodded.
She returned his nod, “Okay.” She took a deep breath as she walked over to the bed and claimed her side.
Katsuki sauntered toward the table, extinguishing the candle with his fingers before making his way to the bed.
Ochako pulled the covers up beneath her chin, heart thudding loudly as his footsteps got closer.
The bed shifted and creaked as his weight settled next to her. With a sigh, his body relaxed into the mattress.
“This bed fucking sucks,” he groaned.
She giggled as Katsuki draped an arm over his face. “It’s comfortable.” Ochako rolled over to her stomach, draping her body on top of his. She leaned close to find his eyes in the dark. Without thinking, she reached up to play with a tuft of hair on his forehead.
“Feels like a bag of rocks.”
“I mean, I remember when I was younger, I needed a new mattress. My mama was able to get some potato sacks and sew them together, but we didn’t have feathers, wool, or spare fabric, so we filled the sack with dirt and straw.”
He scowled, “The hell?”
“We weren’t the only people in the village like that. I mean, some were better off,” Ochako rambled as she idly traced her fingers over his collarbone. “My friend Tenya’s family was better off because they were old money, but-” No one could escape the effects of war. “How are we okay?”
Katsuki’s arms went over her back and held her against his chest. “We don’t draw our resources from one place,” he explained, voice rumbling as his fingers walked up and down her spine. “In addition to the main village in the mountains, we have small settlements in different locations to grow our food and care for our livestock. We change locations every year to protect our assets.”
“Can we go to the mountains sometime?” she whispered. “I want to meet your parents.” Ochako recognized that there was a good chance she’d never be able to see her own parents and friends again. War had broken the country for a century. It would probably take another for peace to find them.
“We’ll see them,” he promised. “You know you’ll have to stay there when you bear our children.”
Despite not having any relevant experience, Ochako knew exactly how babies were made. “You haven’t kissed me yet.” She wasn’t sure how she’d been able to speak when her body was burning against him. “Why are you mentioning children?” she whispered as her nose brushed against his.
She could feel his smile before catching the flash of white in the darkness of the room. “So kiss me then.”
“You’re such an ass.”
Before a boisterous cackle could escape him, Ochako grabbed his face and pressed their lips together. She swallowed his laughter as his arms held her tighter against his chest.
She nipped his bottom lip, smiling as he moaned. “I-” she murmured, pulling away from him. “I’ve been waiting to do that for a long time.” Ochako brushed their lips together in a brief caress as she let her thumbs stroke the plans of his face.
“I waited longer,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “It almost killed me to leave you that night.” Katsuki allowed his hands to caress her back as he breathed her in.
She hummed, melting into him. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember.”
“Hey,” he breathed, lifting her head so their eyes could meet, “you don’t apologize for that. That night-” Katsuki sucked in a breath. “If I’m being honest, it was probably the scariest moment of my life.”
Ochako wasn’t so naive to think that his recent injury had been his only.
“I heard you screaming when your father-” He couldn’t even say it. Katsuki clenched his jaw, turning away from her for a moment. “I prayed that you were okay. I promised the gods or whoever the fuck whatever they wanted if it meant I’d get to just see you again.”
“I told myself it wasn’t real,” she whispered as their foreheads met. “My parents said that I burned myself, so-” Ochako had no reason not to believe them.
“If forgetting me kept you safe so I could find my way back to you, then whatever happened in the past is the past,” he told her. “I have you now, and you have me.”
She sighed, feeling at peace for the first time in a while. “I need to get you a gift.”
His brow quirked, confused.
“Mina said that we need to exchange things so everyone knows that I’m yours,” she reminded him suddenly. “Well, I need to give you something.”
“I still have the piece of fabric you wrapped my arm in that first night.”
She gasped. “How?”
“It was all I had for years, Maru,” he shrugged, bringing his hand between them to touch the red beads around her neck. “We exchanged things almost two decades ago.”
Ochako hadn’t believed in fate.
“You were always mine.”
Maybe it was real. “So it seems.” She kissed him again, this time with less innocence and hesitancy. Her fingers pulled at his hair as she straddled him. Even though she was already as close as she could get to him, he was somehow too far. “I just wish we had more time together.” Ochako couldn’t help to think about all the years they’d lost because of war.
They could have played together.
She could have chased him in the meadows, running barefoot between trees, and splashed in the pond on really hot days.
Their parents could have been friends, maybe. Well, Ochako knew she wouldn’t be able to control thst relationship, but she and Katsuki could have been regulars in each other’s homes.
It would have been funny to see him as a bumbling preteen.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he mumbled, voice warm and husky with affection. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
They did. “Okay,” she whispered. Ochako knew they had a lot to figure out, but this was all that mattered at the moment.
The word, the war, the uncertainly, and tomorrow didn’t matter.
They had each other.
End.