Work Text:
A photograph on the table you share.
“My favorite story is the one we started writing the day we met. So, a toast, to you,” Kento raised his glass in your direction, “my best friend, my love. May we author many more chapters together.”
Another four photographs on the mahogany. A lovingly crafted timeline of your days together.
Teluk Cempedak in the background, the horizon made askew by the shaky, inexperienced hands of the hobby photographer who couldn’t resist the incredible need to capture a rare, perfect moment. Your new engagement ring catching the last sunrays of a dying day. You and Kento slightly off-center in the foreground – incandescent, lighting up each other’s worlds with a perfect, unfathomable love.
You shift the timeline over, introducing three photographs to the beginning.
The first: a candid, courtesy of one Haibara Yu. A high school-aged Nanami Kento, warm smile gracing features that were far softer back then, and a much younger you, hands positioned mid-gesticulation. The two of you completely immersed in one another.
The second: another candid, taken only a second after the first. Nanami’s smile gone and replaced by a scowl, glare honing in on the two trespassers behind the camera, and you, staring straight into the lens with confusion.
The third: Gojo Satoru’s head taking up three-fifths of the frame, your brows pinched as you scold him, but not Yu (never Yu), and Nanami’s attention fully on you once again.
-
“What are you up to?”
You perk up, the familiar voice capturing your focus as it always does, and pluck your headphones from your ears as you turn in your seat to face your husband. “You’re home!”
Kento touches his lips to your crown before you pull him in for a proper kiss. “I finished early,” he explains between kisses. “I rushed home hoping you would be around. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” you sigh. “I’m hoping things slow down now that it’s almost Spring.”
“They always do,” he says. Kento reaches for the photograph on the top of the small pile in front of you, the ones you have yet to sort, and rests his head atop yours as he looks at it. “Is this from our first date?”
You smile. “It is. So’s this one,” you reply, grabbing another from the pile. You hand it to him, and the air around you trembles with one of his baritone chuckles. Kento separates himself from you for a moment so that he could pull a chair up next to yours.
“Let me help,” he says, and he moves the array of photos in order to accommodate the two new additions.
-
“What if I walked you home?”
You bit down on your bottom lip, trying your best to maintain a neutral expression. “What do you mean by what if?”
His uncharacteristic indirectness betrayed his nerves, so you believed you knew exactly what his intentions were. But if you were going to move forward with… whatever this was, he was going to have to tell you exactly what he wanted. You needed to know if he wanted what you wanted.
He picked up on this immediately, and after choking down the same nerves he had felt back when you were young, he spoke.
“I’m not quite ready for our night to end, and I don’t want to have to wait to spend more time with you.” He got up from his seat and offered his hand to you. “Can I walk you home?”
You took his hand.
You walked much father than you needed to, taking every wrong turn in an effort to make the night last just a little longer. You paid no mind to the world outside of the microcosm the two of you had formed – one you would not have emerged from had it not been for the encroaching light of the rising sun invading your bubble.
Eventually your footsteps came to a halt at the foot of the stairs outside of your apartment building.
“This is me. Thank you for walking me home.” You cleared your throat, breaking the uneasy silence between you. “Oh, before I forget, can I get a picture of you?”
“A picture? What for?”
“Your contact image,” you explained, pulling out your phone, “I like having one for all of my contacts.”
“Alright,” he agreed. “But only if I can have one of you.”
-
You hesitated before grabbing the handrail and starting up the steps, desperate for the sun to tuck itself away just so that your time with Kento wouldn’t come to an end, but knowing full well that the world simply doesn’t work that way.
Wishing for miracles was a new feeling for you, but one that he somehow managed to coax out of you. Nanami Kento made you want more than you had ever wanted before, and it scared you. Your life and your work were all about giving. Were you even allowed to feel this way?
“Wait.”
You straightened up and pivoted to face him, eyes now at his level and full of a hope that you hadn’t ever felt before, fully directed at him.
“Yes?” you whispered expectantly.
“Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow?” He briefly glanced in the direction of the sunrise. “Or, rather, tonight?”
Your eyes widened. “So soon?”
Nanami blanched at your response, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he had expected you to say. “I apologize, is that too soon? I know it’s short notice and I know you’ve been extremely busy-”
“No,” you laughed, interrupting him, “no it’s not that, it’s just… usually this is the part where I would spend the next 24 to 48 hours wondering if you were going to call me, or if I should call you…”
“You won’t ever have to wonder with me.” He took your hand, pulling it from the rail, and rubbed his thumb across your knuckles. “I want to see you again. Romantically and outside of work, I mean. Preferably soon.”
“I’d like that very much, actually.”
He gave your hand one last squeeze, sneaking a glimpse down at your lips before meeting your gaze again.
“I’ll call you later, then.”
As his fingers slowly pulled away from yours, you spoke. “You won’t ever have to wonder with me either.”
He stopped. “Then tell me this: is this the part where I ask you if I could kiss you?”
“I think it is.”
He raised a hand to cup your cheek, your heart raced towards him, and the earth shifted.
“Can I kiss you?”
“Yes.”
The drifting tectonic plates of your lives crashed into each other. The moment was perfect. Seismic. Years of longing and unresolved feelings finally coming to a head as you led him across the threshold of your apartment and unfastened the buttons of his shirt.
“Are we moving too fast?” he asked.
“No.” In the brief moment you had pulled away from him to reply, you had also removed your top. He took you in his arms once again and you pressed against him, every inch of your body aching to be touched. “We have a lot of lost time to make up for.”
-
Kento clears his throat, and your lip twitches upwards upon seeing the faint blush spreading across his cheeks.
“It was a good night,” you say teasingly.
“It was a great night,” he corrects. His hand finds yours under the table. “A perfect night.”
“Counterpoint: our wedding night was even better,” you joke, gesturing towards the first photo you had pulled from the pile, the one taken during the small reception after your intimate ceremony.
“I would argue that we’ve had several perfect nights,” Kento says. He picks up his picture – the one you had taken to be his contact photo – and hands it to you. “This one was particularly special, though.” He taps his visage, some years younger in the image. “You can see it in my face here. I was already so in love with you.”
Nanami Kento, mostly illuminated by the rusted lamp outside of your apartment building, the muscles of his face relaxed into a perfect not-a-frown-but-not-quite-a-smile.
You furrow your brow. “You look the same as you always do.”
Kento laughs. “That’s because I’m still in love with you – I’ve always been in love with you.”
“Well, what about my face?” you ask, handing him the photo he took of you that night.
The image captured your futile attempt to tamp down your excited grin. The immense happiness you felt that night was painted on your face in vivid color.
Kento hums pensively. “I can see that you were very much in love with me by that point.”
“That is so embarrassing,” you groan exaggeratedly, making it clear that you actually possess no shame when it comes to how much you adore your husband. “I admit, with us spending so little time together recently, it got me thinking about how we’re not exactly making any new memories. I guess it made me want to look through our old ones.”
Kento embraces you suddenly, and the two of you immediately relax into each other’s touch, feeling more at ease and more at home now that you were together. You stay like that for a few minutes, until your breaths sync and all tension has escaped your body.
“Let’s take a picture,” he says.
“Right now?” you ask. “We’re not exactly doing anything worth documenting.”
“Of course we are,” Kento says, smiling at you as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens up the camera app. “Every moment I get to spend with you is a moment worth remembering.”
You return his smile and grab his face, peppering his cheek with kisses as he laughs and taps the button on his screen, capturing second after second of picture-perfect bliss.