husband!nanami post shibuya
content: MDNI, angst, hurt w/ comfort, burn scars, brief smut, pregnancy mention, finding happiness again
AUTHOR'S NOTE: happy final day of nanami week <333
i'm so so so grateful to everyone who read my stories!!! thank you for all the support and kind words, i hope you'll stick around to see what else i write <333 (and if you don't, thanks for taking time to be with me now, i had the best time this week)
art by @/zeilorene0 on x - divider by @/pixopix
The day your husband came home from work with half of his upper body covered in burned scars was the day your world as you knew it fell apart.
No longer could he hide the truth from you about what he did for work. No longer did you wonder if he was lying to you the entire time you’d been together, because now you knew for certain he was.
“Oh my god, Ken,” your hands flew over your mouth, your body immediately began to shake at the sight of him walking through the front door. Your feet hardly cooperating as you tried to make your way to him quickly. You stumbled into the coffee table, feet still moving as you steadied yourself against the wall.
He was wearing a loose t-shirt and sweatpants, something you rarely ever saw your husband in. A pair of unfamiliar glasses sitting on his nose as he looked at you with shame in his one working eye.
“Darling, I think you should sit down,” his words were soft, a note of agony in them as he approached you with his hands raised.
Your body collided with him, his strength steadying you as your hands frantically roamed over him, trying to make sure it was really him.
The last twenty-four hours had been hell, his service going out as he worked Halloween night in Shibuya. Only to get a call from someone you’d never heard of saying your husband was currently receiving treatment for injuries. You could hardly believe what you were hearing, he worked in finance, what could he possibly be doing late at the office on Halloween that would injure him?
Unfortunately that was all the information you were given, the number no longer in service as you spent the remaining time pacing your home. Your worries consuming you as you thought of anything and everything that could have happened to him. The man in front of you now, with burn scars like you’d never seen, hardly seemed real at all.
“Are you in pain, I’m so sorry,” you tried to pull away but his arm snaked around your waist, holding you against him as his other arm drifted into your hair.
“Baby, I have something to tell you,” his voice was filled with anguish as he held you tighter, breathing in your scent.
You pulled back, his hand leaving your hair to immediately wipe the tears you hadn’t realized were spilling down your cheeks. Your heart was beating wildly, your chest felt heavy as a sense of premonition washed over you, “What happened?”
Kento gently guided you back to the couch, both of you sitting next to each other as you stared at him. The air in the room grew heavy with anticipation, your heart constricting the longer you waited.
“I want you to know I’ll never forgive myself for lying to you,” the words were hoarse, his voice barely working as the first tear slipped down his cheek. Your mind was spinning, a sick feeling of dread creeping up your spine as you listened. “I almost died at work yesterday.”
The words invoked a cold feeling snaking down your spine, the truth as terrifying as ever once it was voiced. Your voice was quiet, filled with fear at the answer he would give you, “Ken, I don’t understand. How is that possible?”
You listened silently as your husband told you of what he really did for work, what jujutsu sorcery was, what his role was in their world, and how yesterday one of the most frightening attacks in history occurred in Shibuya.
You were silent because you could not decide what emotion was most prevalent. Was it sadness because you could’ve lost your husband at any moment and never understood why? Was it anger because you were kept in the dark the entire time you’ve known him? Was it fear because life before today was not the life you thought you knew? Or was every emotion one singular feeling that suffocated you in the weight of the truth?
The tears were hardly noticeable to you, even as they flowed easily down your face and fell onto your shaking hands. How could they be noticed when your head was pounding and your chest felt like it would implode?
“I’m so sorry,” his voice was a whisper, but it felt like a bomb going off as your body crumpled inwards.
You could hardly breathe once the sobs started, hardly forming the words, “I could’ve lost you.”
Your husband’s arms pulled you onto his lap, you could feel his body shaking from his own tears as he held you close. The pressure on your chest was unbearable as you clenched his shirt in your hands, shoving your face into his familiar warmth as you tried to come to terms with everything.
“Please, don’t go back,” you whispered, snaking your arms around his waist and pulling yourself closer.
“Never,” his hand was stroking your hair, “they’re allowing me to retire.”
“I don’t understand how you’re not in pain,” you murmured, letting your hand drift into his newly scarred one.
“Our doctor worked on me for hours, making sure I healed properly,” his voice was quiet in a way you’d never heard. “Getting used to it will be something.”
“What do you mean?” You pulled away, looking at him, taking note of his now milky left eye, his hair that had been scorched away. He was still yours, as handsome as always.
“I can’t stand to look at myself like this, I’m not the man you married anymore,” a bitterness underlying his words.
“Yes you are,” you were firm and unyielding, even as he tried to shake his head. “You think you’re not because you look a little different?”
“A little different?” He scoffed. “I can’t see out of one eye, half my hair is gone, and my wedding ring hardly fit over my scars today. You consider that a little different?”
His words were like a slap across your face, and for the first time since you’d met him, you flinched, your body subconsciously moving you away from the source of pain.
His sharp intake of breath was loud in the silence, “Fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”
“You don’t have to be strong in front of me. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to do things that make sense. None of that matters to me, I just want you,” your hands gently reached up, cradling his face as you held his gaze. “I’m here, and I always will be.”
He nuzzled the right side of his face into your hand, turning his lips to place a brief kiss to your palm. His voice was so quiet, barely audible as he whispered, “Can you do something for me?”
“Anything,” your answer was immediate.
“They don’t-” his voice was gruff, “they don’t know if my hair will grow back.” The truth was loud, something you could tell that wore down on him immensely. Your heart ached as he spoke his request, “Will you shave my head?”
“Yes, baby,” you whispered, placing a soft kiss to his lips before standing.
The entire walk to the bathroom was silent, and it was silent up until you turned on the electric shaver. You worked gently across his head, watching in tortured silence as his blond locks fell to the floor. A piece of him falling away that you could witness with your eyes. The sight of tears falling along with the strands was your undoing, your own beginning to fall along with the mix.
When you were done, he stood slowly, kissing you softly before heading into your bedroom and laying down.
The silence was unbearable, the shadows haunting his eyes at every hour of the day as he moved through life like a husk. Even the brief shuffling of feet when he finally needed to eat offered no respite, because he no longer asked what you had cooked, no longer made small talk.
Every time you noticed a new habit, it broke you, like keeping his left side away from you. The lack of physical affection you had grown used to, needed like air, was no longer a part of your life. The way he no longer drank anything warm, his familiar cup of coffee in the morning discarded. The showers that ran cold, no sign of steam in the bathroom, the only indication he had been in there was the dampness in the air. The glasses flung across whatever surface, his hatred for them apparent in his treatment of them.
Every time he spoke his voice was rough with disuse, but you feared pushing him would break him. And you did not know what you would do if you really did lose your husband.
After weeks, possibly more than a month of quiet, it finally broke when he burned his hand on the stove. You had just finished cooking, he was quietly coming in behind you to tidy up the kitchen when you heard a hiss of pain and the sound of his hand slamming onto the counter, rattling everything.
“Goddammit,” the words were biting, spoken through gritted teeth. Your head whipped over, seeing him clutching his right wrist as his breath heaved in and out.
“Kento, honey, are you okay?” You asked quietly, standing slowly in the fear that you would say or do something wrong.
“No,” the word was a groan, a quiet admission that set off a bomb inside of him. You watched as his hands started to shake, his back still to you as he slammed both of them on the counter. “I’m not, and I probably never will be. I can’t fucking live like this anymore, pretending like I’m fine when we both know I’m a walking disaster!”
You gently placed your hands on his back, keeping your voice soothing as you spoke, “You don’t have to be fine.”
“You deserve a husband who functions normally, who is normal” his head fell forward limply, but he did not shake off your touch.
You let your hands drift apart, grabbing his hips and softly nudging him to turn around, your voice pleading, begging him to understand, “I want you, as you are. I need you as you are. Ken, come back to me.”
“I don’t think I can, not like this,” the words crushed down on your chest, your windpipe burning as you processed what he said. His eyes closed, the tears falling down his cheeks were reflective of your own.
“Then we need to do something, I’m not going to lose you,” your hands drifted up his chest, settling on his cheeks. “Look at me, baby.”
“I can’t,” his voice was broken, a silent plea for you to give up on him.
“You have to, I need you here with me,” you pulled his face down closer to yours. “I ache for you, in every meaning. I will always love you, please let me love you.”
His eyes finally opened, that familiar hazel color and the unfamiliar milky one gazing back at you had a small smile turning your lips upwards. His arms snaked around your torso, pulling you closer for the first time in weeks.
A breath left you, weight slipping off your chest as your smile became more genuine, your words a whisper between the two of you, “You have no idea how much I wish you could see yourself like I do.”
“I love you,” he whispered back, his lips meeting yours and that familiar wave of warmth rushing through you at the contact.
“I love everything that you are, there is nothing that would ever make me stop loving you,” you murmured, pressing your lips back to his as his arms wrapped around you tighter.
He pulled back, setting his face in the crook of your neck as he inhaled deeply, “What did I do to deserve you?”
“Existed,” you answered simply, letting your body mold to his as you held him, the feeling of tears falling on your shoulders had you clutching him tighter.
“I’m going to get better,” it was a quiet conviction, a promise to the both of you that he saw through.
You saw his effort when he started getting professional help. Saw how hard he tried when he placed kisses on the back of your hand, let his fingers drift across your hair as he passed, saw the shudder run through him as you placed kisses across his scarred hand.
He started drinking tea, letting the bag steep for longer than necessary in order to let it mostly cool, but it was a step that made your heart swell. He asked for your help picking out a chain for his glasses, letting you know that it was the feeling of them that bothered him. He threw them around because he wished to take them off so often, the foreign feeling on his nose and ears grating.
The first time you saw him smile, weeks later on Christmas Eve you almost cried. He saw your expression and smiled harder, turning away from you in an unfamiliarly shy gesture. You were bounding across the room, forcefully turning him back to you as your own smile met his. He caged your face in his hands and kissed you deeply, groaning in your mouth at your eagerness as you met his tongue desperately.
When you two stumbled into bed, his first sign of hesitance hit as he reached for his shirt. Your hands closed around his, a silent offering that he accepted as you both slipped it over his head.
He was so beautiful, so strong, you couldn’t help yourself as you started kissing all over him. Both sides of him. You missed him so much that you kissed every part he let you until he was dragging your face to his and kissing you so passionately your mind emptied.
When he finally slid inside of you, your hands holding his face near yours as you looked into each other's eyes, the first tear slipped from you. His lips met yours gently, the slow rocking of his hips as he moved inside of you, so familiar, so full of love. The two of you held each other closely, savoring this intimate touch you shared as your bodies remembered one another.
He began finding himself, remembering who he was before he was a sorcerer. Reading more often even as he began preparations to open up a small bakery. Cooking meals for the two of you again, surprising you with your favorite after a long day at work. Letting you run your hands through the hair growing back slowly, evenly across his entire head. Even mentioning a trip to Malaysia that the two of you took in February before the grand opening of the bakery.
Nanami truly found himself again, understood his purpose in life the day you handed him a takeout box from the bakery. His brow furrowed as he looked down at the small box, wondering why you’d gone out of your way to visit the bakery when he could’ve gone.
“Open it,” you encouraged, your blinding smile entirely too contagious as he began to take off the top.
Inside, staring up at him, was a test. A test that showed two full, unmistakably pink lines.
“What?” His eyes were wide as he looked at you, his glasses slipping down his nose as he shoved them up higher to get a better look. “What is that?”
“You know what it is,” you smiled, pulling a mug from the cabinet, hidden behind all of the ones he started buying as a hobby. You held out the newest one, three words spelling it all out for him.
WORLDS BEST DAD
He blinked slowly, looking between you, the test, and the mug.
“I’m going to be a dad?” His voice was a mix of joy, confusion, and utter disbelief.
“I think that’s what that means when I get pregnant,” you laughed lightly, watching as he slowly set the box down before taking the mug from your hand and setting it down gently.
He kissed you, so tenderly, the silent words passing between you as his hands settled on your face. He pulled back ever so slightly, his words a soft brush against your lips, “You are the light of my life, and I promise to you now I will cherish you and our baby until I take my last breath.”
He kept that promise, you thought as you watched your grandkids run around your backyard. Their laughter carried to you as you looked over at your husband's familiar face, the slight dusting of gray at his temples becoming a rush of happiness for you. Along with those lines that had formed around his eyes and mouth, from all the years of smiling. And those familiar glasses, hanging from the chain around his neck.
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