Oh, for the fic request, could you write some fluffy modern au married ikesoren, please??
If Soren had to cite one more source in APA style, he would go absolutely feral.
“Get your PhD,” Ike had said. “You’ll probably enjoy it,” he’d said.
Glaring at his fifty page thesis work-in-progress now, though, all Soren could conclude was that he was married to a big old liar.
Almost as if summoned by the thought of him, Ike poked his head into Soren’s office just as the latter had begun revising his research data for the umpteenth time. Soren didn’t notice him at first, too caught up in all the statistics on the screen, until the weight of someone’s very beefy arms fell over his shoulders, a chin perched on top of his head.
“What are you up to?” Ike asked in a hum, his voice vibrating soothingly against his husband.
“Same thing I’ve been up to for the past year, Ike,” Soren replied flatly, not looking up. “Same thing I’ll be up to for the next six months, too.”
“Any chance you wanna have dinner with me?” Ike continued lightly, used to Soren’s demeanor.
“Let me just finish this first,” Soren hummed, rubbing his eye tiredly. The words blurred on screen for a second and he wondered if it was time to invest in a pair of glasses. Ike would probably find him handsome in glasses. Soren couldn’t understand why, but he’d stopped questioning Ike’s perception of him a long time ago.
“You’ll never get up at this rate,” Ike snorted, dropping a kiss to the top of Soren’s head. The latter pretended his breath didn’t hitch, surprised by his affection even after several years of marriage. “You need to stop being smart for an hour every day to spend time with me. If you don’t get up now, I’ll have to carry you.”
“Oh no,” Soren deadpanned, adjusting a value in the data table. “What a tragedy that would- agh!”
True to his words, Ike got off of Soren, just long enough to pull the chair back and grab his smaller husband under the arms. Soren let out another noise of protest as Ike picked him up like a child, carrying him effortlessly towards the door as Soren kicked his feet in thin air.
“Are you serious? Put me down this instant! Ike!”
“Can’t hear you,” Ike teased, waddling out of the office and into the corridor.
“You’re insufferable. I can walk, you know!”
“Shoulda said that when I asked the first time.”
Their bickering continued all the way into the kitchen, although Soren stopped kicking when it became obvious that Ike had no intention of putting him down. Instead, he glared murder at the walls of their apartment as they walked, pictures of their friends and all of their diplomas and awards passing them by. Eventually, Ike reached the table and pulled out a chair with his foot, finally dropping Soren down on it with a self-satisfied huff.
“Ow,” Soren grumbled, rubbing the sore spots under his arms to ease the ache. “That hurt, you brute. You’re impossible.”
“Oh, sorry.” As always with Ike, there was nothing complicated with his apology. Leaning around the chair, he kissed Soren softly as penitence, and then walked off to get their plates from the counter. Soren took his long hair down from his messy bun in order to hide how red his ears became in the meantime.
They sat down to eat the Crimean takeout that Ike had brought back after work, if only because they were both disasters in the kitchen and probably owed their life to Mist’s meal prepping in that regard. It wasn’t anything special, but it was one of the rare meals that Soren wasn’t totally impartial to, so the stress fell easily off his shoulders as they began to eat.
“Is there an occasion to this?” he asked after a bite of his steak, tucking some of his hair behind his ear. “We haven’t had this in a while.”
“I dunno. I just felt like it,” Ike shrugged, cutting a piece of his much larger portion of steak. “Hand me the ketchup?”
“Ketchup? With your steak?” Soren glared at him and his horrendously unrefined palate before getting up to grab the ketchup from the fridge. “What date are we today? This expires on the thirteenth.”
“We’re the fourteenth, but it’s just ketchup. It’s probably fine,” Ike shrugged, putting his hand out for the condiment that Soren gave him with an exasperated sigh.
He sat back down to continue his meal. He had a bite of noodles nearly up to his mouth next, when, suddenly, he realized something that made his heart flip in his chest.
“Ike,” he said urgently, looking up at his husband, who had a mouth full of food but the very same panicked look in his eyes, having realized the same thing at once. “Today’s the fourteenth.”
“Yup,” Ike replied, chewing guiltily and swallowing before putting his fork down. “Uhh... Happy anniversary, Soren?”
“Unbelievable.” Soren couldn’t help but snort at how ridiculous the situation was. “I can’t believe that both of us forgot our anniversary. This is almost comical.”
“In my defense, it doesn’t really matter to me,” Ike pouted, still looking a little guilty. “It’s not like there’s any day of the year where I love you less than today.”
Soren choked on his noodles.
Rushing to get him a glass of water, Ike rubbed his back soothingly until the coughing spell passed.
“I’ll never get used to how casually you can say such things.” Downing his glass, Soren hoped that Ike would attribute his flushed cheeks to his near-death experience.
“What? That I love you?” Ike cocked his head, as if not understanding the issue. It drew another amused snort out of Soren. “Oh. Well, it’s true. I love you.”
“Enough with that, already,” Soren clicked his tongue in mock-annoyance, smacking Ike’s arm lightly. It drew a laugh out of his husband of five- now six- years.
“Sorry I forgot our anniversary. You’re my favourite smartass in the whole wide world.” Ike apologized once more, grinning when he leaned down for a kiss.
“Yes, yes,” Soren grumbled, throwing his arms around Ike’s neck to draw him in, and pretending not be fully invested in his husband’s lips. “You’re my favourite brute in the whole wide world. Happy anniversary, my darling heart.”
They kissed, and that was all there was to it. It was uncomplicated, like they were, like they had always been from the moment they met as children, like they still were today, twenty years later, in love, in love, in love.
Inconsequential of all else around them, be it hardships or challenges, Soren and Ike loved one another. That’s all there was to it.
