Work Text:
The house was quiet. Kurara’s wing of it was, anyway. She’d not ventured out of her room even after hearing the low rumble of the garage door opening and closing, the grinding of tires on the pavement. Her parents were gone, as far as she could tell, but she needed to wait long enough to be certain they weren’t going to immediately come back. A forgotten item, maybe, or a mishap that delayed their trip. She wanted them gone, all weekend, so she could celebrate without having to perform her role as the perfect daughter. The one who was regretful of such a valuable deal for the Oosuzuki family falling through.
Hard to do that when she was nothing but elated.
She looked down at her own hand, flexed her fingers, splayed them out against the backdrop of her bedspread. No ring on her finger. Not even the faintest indentation of one being missing. Nothing but unmarked skin, utterly her own. Uncovered by her mask, Kurara’s face had brightened into a smile that tugged at the muscles of her cheeks, stirring them from the languor of disuse.
No engagement, no ring, no endlessly boring meetings with insufferable suitors—none of whom would truly be worthy of an Oosuzuki anyway, even if they were from some of the other most prominent families in the TRC. Just her. For about five seconds longer, until her doorknob started to rattle. Legs tucked up underneath her, Kurara turned in bed to face the door. It exploded open as soon as she did. Kyoshika was a blur of red and white, ponytail flying behind her like a banner. The Holy Jumanji Sword—safely sheathed, at least—knocked into one of Kurara’s bedposts with a loud thunk.
“Ugh, Kyoshika! What has you charging in here like some kind of crazed beast? Bodyguard to my illustrious self or not, you should have at least learned enough etiquette to understand the concept of knocking on closed doors if I’m not expecting you. Has over a year at the Oosuzuki estate really taught you so little, or are your brain cells just deprived of all the blood being redirected to your— oof!” All the wind was knocked out of her before she could continue. Rather than Kyoshika’s face, flushed from running and her berating both, Kurara was staring straight up at her canopy. She was flat on her back, pressed into the mattress by Kyoshika’s body weight. Warm, intimate body weight that threatened to distract Kurara from the fact that she was supposed to be annoyed.
“My apologies for my brazenness, Kurara-dono,” murmured Kyoshika. She rocked back a little, propping herself up with her hands instead of crushing the life out of Kurara’s smaller frame, but neglected to get off of her entirely. “My enthusiasm consumed me momentarily! I’ll take whatever punishment milady sees fit for that oversight.” It was funny, sometimes, to convince Kyoshika that she was really in trouble and then watch her squirm, but there was an excited sparkle in her eyes that told Kurara it wasn’t one of those times. Without her mask on, Kyoshika could read her too well.
“Your enthusiasm for what, then?”
“Our honeymoon, of course! Is it not the perfect opportunity for us to celebrate it while your parents venture out to the opposite side of the Complex? I do so wish we could go on a meaningful journey of our own, but memorable experiences can still be had right here at home, don’t you think? After all, there are dozens of slice of life manga with that concept, are there not?”
Probably more like hundreds, Kurara thought, but far be it from her to correct Kyoshika on the subject of manga. They would get stuck in a spiral of Kyoshika either info-dumping and quoting scenes or lamenting the fact that there was still so much she had left to learn about her favored method of entertainment. Neither path was one Kurara wanted to go down when she could instead figure out why the hell her girlfriend seemed to think they were married.
“Yeah, yeah, there’s lots. We have fun without going out all the time. Sometimes without even leaving the bedchamber.” She waved a dismissive hand, range of motion constrained by the fact that Kyoshika was still on top of her. Unmoving, looking down at her with a flushed face and gleaming eyes. “But what honeymoon, Kyoshika?”
“Ours.” No brain cells at all running around that head of hers, were there? Kurara sighed. Resisted the urge to clap her hand to her forehead. She could try to be nice, if Kyoshika was in a romantic mood.
“So you said.” She could at least raise her eyebrows and give her a skeptical look. Sometimes it was nice to take advantage of being able to make small expressions like that while her mask was off. “I’m not sure if you know this, darling, but honeymoons usually come after a wedding. And a reception. And a consummation. All the things I just successfully avoided going through for the sake of the Oosuzuki clan.”
“That’s exactly my point! This is how we can celebrate you avoiding that dreadful engagement! We can have a wedding of our own right here and now, with no one to stop us. I even brought rings.” Kyoshika shifted, knee digging uncomfortably into Kurara’s hip as she fished around in her pocket for something. She withdrew a closed fist, which she held out in Kurara’s direction before turning palm up. Her fingers unfurled, and there were two rings pillowed against her skin.
They were plastic toys from a gacha machine. The fake “gems” inlaid in them were big and gaudy, reflecting their faces as they looked down at them together. They didn’t even pretend at being diamonds. They were a bright, shiny red, imitating rubies. Not at all a traditional wedding choice, even if they were real, but Kyoshika was looking at her with such an earnest expression, like she’d saved up months’ worth of wages for them instead of winning them at the mall.
“Do you like them, Kurara-dono? They reflect my passionate love. I triumphed against the claw of misfortune to obtain them for this very day.”
There were so, so many scathing things she could say about all of that.
“They’re nice,” she said. “Very you. But things were only officially called off yesterday. You haven’t been to the store since then.”
“I had them ready.” Kyoshika puffed up with pride. “I believed in your ability to secure victory under any circumstances. And I was right, wasn’t I?”
“You were,” Kurara relented. She would have liked to add something snide, like only by chance, but that would be insulting herself just as much as it was Kyoshika, by implying it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that she would have achieved her aims. So she swallowed it down, and only repeated, “You were.”
Kyoshika, still prideful, beamed wider. “Does that mean you’re amenable to having the wedding I planned? I abstained from writing vows, thinking you might like some, er, creative freedom with all that.”
“You don’t know how they go, do you?” She reached out, tugged gently at Kyoshika’s ponytail. When her foolish girl first moved into the Oosuzuki estate, Kurara putting hands on her like that would have caused a sharp jerk of her head, at least. Then, she didn’t react at all, except to regard Kurara with a look of indulgence.
“I know very well! I simply see no need to recite them when the words of my beloved Kurara’s heart are all the sweeter.” She withdrew her hand with the plastic rings, long enough only to readjust, until one of the rings was clasped between her thumb and forefinger, outstretched towards Kurara’s hand once again. Kurara stretched out her fingers and watched it slide onto her ring finger, painted plastic too big, shifting up and down past her knuckle every time she moved her hand.
“Uh huh. And no honorifics all of a sudden? Forgetting your roots as a fakeass samurai, my dear?”
Kyoshika kept smiling right through it. Couldn’t fool her anymore, not about the important things. “If we are to be wives, not merely bodyguard and mistress, it’s appropriate, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Guess so. I have no complaints, but you’d better stick to it if that’s what we’re doing. No changing your mind and deciding you want a divorce.” No liars. No making a mockery of whatever emotions had accidentally bloomed between them over so many hours spent together. She would not run from one sham straight into another. But Kyoshika had never had an appetite for deception. Kurara doubted she was even capable of it. It was one of her favorite things about her.
“Of course I will. You have me by your side forever. Well, and the Holy Jumanji Sword, of course! She will serve as my maid of honor.”
“Of course she will. Do you have a dress for her?”
Kyoshika’s lips parted in a tiny ‘o’ of surprise, eyebrows climbing up behind her bangs. “I did not even consider such a thing! Oh, how I wish I had planned ahead to get her some appropriately festive garb. I hope she’ll forgive me my oversight.”
“She’s your most intimate friend. If there was anything she’d choose not to forgive you for, it wouldn’t be forgetting to get her a bridesmaid dress.” Kurara huffed out her amusement before it could mutate into something more biting. She was trying. Out of love, she was trying.
While Kyoshika blustered on, embarrassed, Kurara thought to take a glance down at herself again, since she was no longer being so desperately pinned to the bed. Kyoshika was sitting there quite normally by then, and Kurara’s heart rate, too, was returning to something more like normal. She was dressed only in casual loungewear, not having planned even to see off her parents.
“If I’m getting married today, I should think I deserve to wear something a little more festive, don’t you?”
“You’re right,” Kyoshika declared, everything else forgotten in the face of a demand from her beloved. “In fact, that isn’t even enough. Don’t you need, er, something green, or…?”
“It’s something blue. And something old, new, and borrowed, if we’re going with that old rhyme. But I’m not that worried about following some superstition from long before the TRC existed. Supposing it’s true, would it even apply to a situation like ours? I doubt it.” Someone else might have read between the lines and accused her of calling their wedding fake—which it was; that didn’t stop it from meaning a great deal to her anyway—but Kyoshika didn’t. One of the many reasons Kurara was with her and spurned the advances of every family-approved suitor. “If you think I deserve more, you could—”
“—Give you a pre-wedding bath!” Kyoshika finished, talking over Kurara in the process. “I’ll shampoo your hair and wash your back for you. The perfect entrance into our married life.”
“Perfect for you, maybe,” Kurara muttered, but in the end, she relented and didn’t make any attempt to overwrite Kyoshika’s suggestion with what she was going to say instead. Their conversation soon moved to the vast bathroom in her suite, Kyoshika picking her “wedding” clothes for her along the way. Honestly, her taste wasn’t terrible, even if it was helped substantially by the fact that she could only choose between things Kurara already owned and tolerated. Her skills in pampering Kurara were far from awful too. The bath turned out to be a nice idea, surprising only because it was so rarely that Kurara indulged her girlfriend in such vulnerabilities.
She let Kyoshika dry her, dress her, and comb her hair. All the things that might have normally fallen to a lady’s maid, but that Kurara preferred to simply do herself. Kyoshika couldn’t stop rambling about her enjoyment of it, and so Kurara muttered that maybe she could do it more often if they were to be wives.
She was carried back out to the bedroom proper, lavished in kisses, and laid down her opinions on Kyoshika’s own wedding outfit.
“I think it suits you. You look pretty.”
“Then no more preparations are needed, right? We can get on with our vows?”
Kurara had taken possession of the other ring, and she held it in her hand then, reaching out so that she could slide it onto Kyoshika’s finger where it belonged. Her own ring nearly slid off in the process—she wiggled and flexed her fingers to steer it back down.
“That’s right. Let’s get started.”
The rainbows and butterflies would all fade away by the end of the weekend, of course. Her parents would return from their trip and would not be inclined to just accept her word that she was married, especially not to her bodyguard. It would be a long, difficult road trying to talk them out of setting up another arranged marriage and into accepting Kyoshika as the one she wanted to spend her life with. But it would be a worthy battle, for the sake of the one who made her happy like no one else, and Kurara had never allowed herself to lose an important battle before. She wasn’t going to start then.