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13
“You’re going to make someone fat and happy one day.”
Yuji remembers that offhanded aside vividly, and the way his grandfather had said it even moreso – sitting around after dinner, empty bowls of miso soup in front of them both. Takes it to heart, really. Years later, he can still recall that scene and the swell of pride in his chest at his grandfather’s words, and the idea it had planted in his thirteen-year-old-mind – good food equals girlfriend.
Perhaps an oversimplification, but ample cause for an impressionable young mind with no shortage of excuses to practice his kitchen skills to put a little more effort into dinner than he has to. After all, it’s probably going to win him the love of his life one day. It’s gotta work – Grandpa said it would, and Grandpa has a grandkid, which means he had a kid, which means that he had to have had game sometime, and Yuji is smart enough to know that when someone with a good track record gives you advice, you take it and run with it.
So he polishes his skills as often as he gets the chance, because someday he’s pretty sure he’s going to thank himself for his killer hot pot.
**
15
Kugisaki Nobara is definitely worth cooking for.
It takes Yuji all of twelve seconds of acquaintanceship to arrive at the conclusion that his classmate has many compelling marks in her favor: sharp, feisty, gorgeous. She’s tiny, which he kind of likes, because he thinks the hugs where he feels like a wall shielding a much smaller person in his arms are the best kind. She makes him laugh. It’s like they share a braincell, and it’s a little bit ridiculous how wonderful Yuji thinks that is. She’s decisive and ruthless in a fight, ribs him incessantly, seems like she’d be fun to kiss. And – best of all – she loves to eat.
Yuji loves a lot of easily-identifiable qualities in a girl: height, a shapely derriere, soft hair, a sense of humor, kindness, guts, a geeky streak (because he has to talk about movies with someone). He likes the kind of girls he could challenge to a contest – holding their breath, push-ups, making the most “that’s what she said” jokes in a day – and he likes the kinds of girls who’d be his best friends if they weren’t the objects of his affection. And he loves girls who love to eat.
Food is wonderful. He thinks the best people are the ones who get that. Food brings people together; it sustains life – but mostly, it’s just good, and maybe that’s why cooking is a good pickup tactic, he thinks. He wants a girl to smile at across the table, whose hand will brush his as they both reach for the last mushroom to dip into the hot pot. (He’ll let her have it.)
Nobara is lots of those things, but she’s especially a girl to smile at across the table.
At first, it’s little things – bringing a container of his meatballs to share after class (even if he has to give Fushiguro some to save face, which is fine – Fushiguro is great), bringing kasutera to Inumaki’s impromptu birthday party (Panda’s doing) because apparently it’s his favorite and he knows Nobara will eat it if she comes.
Then he dies. Kinda.
“Please date me” food becomes a peace offering. He plies her with matcha roll (Gojo barely even leaves her a slice) and homemade onigiri, begs her forgiveness with a thermos of soup on a cold afternoon. And maybe it’s the food, or maybe she’s just relieved he’s not dead, but it works – she thaws towards him, and he redoubles his efforts, and he thinks there’s nothing better in this world than the happy noises she makes when she’s eating.
He likes her so much. It’s kind of dazzling, how much he does, and he collects a list of her favorite foods and guards it like a state secret so he’ll never have to stop telling her how much.
It’s late October when she smiles across the table at him over his hot pot and tells him that, for all he’s useless, he’s a damn good cook.
**
16
She’s dead two days later, but it’s not until it hits Yuji that she’ll never smile across the table at him again that it sinks in.
He has other things to think of; he hides and cries until his tears are spent and comes back out to face a world that won’t slow down even for death. He stops asking, stops mentioning her name; he doesn’t ask anyone to remember, even though nothing terrifies him more than the thought of being the last one to forget, and he plays Kenjaku’s game the way he knows she’d have hoped he would.
He isn’t there when she wakes, and it’s only when the dust settles that he sees her through the haze it leaves behind. And he needs to see her whole again, needs his hands to remember what it feels like to sustain life instead of taking it; he’s in the kitchen the night the games close, and she’s sleeping again when he sets a slice of her favorite strawberry Christmas cake beside her bed.
He wakes to a hand shaking his shoulder and Nobara’s groggy voice, asking where the rest of the cake is.
“I know it’s somewhere,” she says. “Where is it?”
She’s right, and it’s not as if he’s tried to hide it, but he feels a little guilty for not knowing she’d probably down the whole thing in one sitting if given the chance. “Okkotsu’s room. We were hiding it from Gojo.”
“Okay,” she says, then gnaws her lip. “I don’t know him. You gotta go get it for me.”
“It’s eight.”
“And?” she pouts. “I want breakfast.”
Yuji thinks he might be in love with her.
“Eat breakfast with me,” she requests, though it’s really more of a command, then her lips tip up in the tiniest of smiles. “Cake for breakfast.”
That really doesn’t sound half-bad, and it sounds half-amazing when it’s with Nobara.
**
“Is it weird to say I’d marry this thing?”
“Um. No?” Yuji shrugs. “But, like…why are you being nice?”
“You made me cake.” She takes a moment to swallow a bite, hunched over the coffee table, before she continues. “Empty flattery means I get more cake.”
“Empty?” Yuji’s face falls. “You mean you don’t like it?”
“No, idiot, I love it. I just don’t believe in complimenting men.” She stabs her fork into the cake and comes up with another overgenerous bite. “Inflates their egos. No one needs that.”
“…gee, thanks.”
They pause for a moment, chewing.
“You don’t have to be nice to make me cook for you,” Yuji says after the silence has stretched on a beat too long. “I mean, I always have, and you used to be really mean. But…like, the fun kind.”
She pauses, chewing slowly, to formulate a response.
“I’m mean to two kinds of people,” she tells him. “People I like and people I hate.”
“So…everyone?”
“No, I’m neutral about most people. Like…say, Inumaki. I don’t pick on Inumaki ‘cause I don’t have strong feelings about him either way, y’know? But I like you. So I tell you I think you have the intelligence of a flip flop.”
“Oh.” She probably means that platonically, but he’s still touched. “Thanks?”
She stabs her fork into the cake again and frowns when she sees how little is left. “Were you worried about me?”
“Worried about you?”
“Never mind.” She seems to clam up, which is odd – Nobara never freezes. “Why would you? You had to think about staying alive-“
“Every day, yeah.” He looks up. “I…thought about the night we had hot pot.”
She smiles. “That was a good hot pot.”
“I thought about how we’d never do that again,” Yuji admits. “I hated thinking that.”
“Oh.” Nobara’s eyes drop again to her cake. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
“Last thing I wanna do is make people care about me and then go and make ‘em worry,” she says. “Easier not to make ‘em care in the first place, but you…yeah, you didn’t really…fall for it.”
“Nope.” He cuts another slice of the cake with the side of the spatula and slides it onto her near-empty plate. “Sorry.”
“Well, at least I get cake out of it.”
He’s not sure why he blurts out, “I wanted to see you smile again,” and he cringes when he does – it’s an unbelievably corny line, and he sort of hates himself for it because he knows Nobara will hate it, but she just rolls her eyes.
Oh.
That’s Nobara-speak for ‘stupid idiot,’ which is Nobara-speak for ‘I care about you.’ (Or maybe ‘there’s no hope for you.’ It can be either one, depending on the context, which isn’t really helping Yuji to decipher her meaning right now – no matter. He’ll choose to be optimistic.)
“Sap,” she mutters.
**
18
They’re silent the whole way back from their graduation mission, even though they passed, because it was never about the grade. This is it – the last time they’ll be together like this – and it’s so sobering that neither Yuji nor Nobara, despite their mutual dislike of emotional sobriety, wants to say much. They’re content to snack on Yuji’s shrimp puffs (homemade, of course – he’s a prolific stress-cook) in total silence, or at least they want to appear that way.
Yuji’s hand lingers in the space between his thigh and Nobara’s, too fearful to move.
Nobara’s eyes dart over to the curve of Yuji’s jaw every few seconds, then back before he can see that she’s staring.
“Yuji,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Yeah?”
“Last mission.”
“Last mission,” he repeats.
Another hush falls over the car; she breaks it. “You should kiss me.”
“I should,” he agrees without thinking, then adds, “wait, what?”
“You should kiss me,” she repeats.
“Um…that would be cool.”
“We’re never going to be together again,” she says. “And, I mean. I wanna try. So kiss me.”
He nods vigorously, choosing to ignore the first part of that sentence. “I would love to,” he says solemnly, and leans over but only succeeds in knocking his nose into hers.
They right themselves, try again – Nobara tastes like shrimp puffs, but so does he, and her lips are chapstick-soft, as if she’s been preparing for this. Maybe she has. He wants to dance at the thought, but mostly he just wants to kiss her more, and he does, because – wonder of wonders – he can. She wants to kiss him just like he’d hoped she would over hot pot, over Christmas cake, over squid-ink pasta, over that stupid French chicken dish she’d made him recreate for her birthday, over tonkatsu. ‘
He’ll see her again, he knows, because he’s not going to let that not happen. Not now. Not ever, hopefully.
“I think I’m in love with you,” he says, so dazed he doesn’t know what he’s saying, and in the front seat, Megumi lets out a longsuffering sigh.
**
22
Yuji really doesn’t seem to be as bothered as he should be by the hole in his shoulder where, an hour ago, there’d been a chunk of rebar (he has that first-grade curse’s surroundings-manipulation technique to thank for that). That should worry Nobara, but it would be stranger if he was taking a threat to his safety seriously than if he wasn’t, so really, his smile isn’t anything to worry about.
Nice to see, too, even if he’s a little loopy after surgery.
“Hi,” he says with that same dopey grin.
“Hey yourself.” She sits beside his bed and shakes her head fondly. “When are you gonna stop ending up in the hospital?”
“Psssh. I’m fine.” He flashes her a smile that’s only a little bit more coherent than his last one. “D’worry. Really. ‘m good.”
“Forgive me for being a little concerned when my boyfriend just got impaled.”
“Yeah, that hurt.” He winces. “But ‘s all good! Doctor says it’s-“
She knows not to listen to that. “I’m pretty sure that what the doctor actually said was that you couldn’t move your arm for a month or whatever.”
Yuji deflates. “He said I’d ‘make a full recovery.’” Then he looks back over at Nobara – first at her eyes, then at her lips – and smiles. “C’n’I have a kiss?”
“Itadori Yuji.”
“Worth a shot.”
They’re both quiet for a few seconds before Yuji decides he needs to keep talking. Figures. He never has liked silences, even with Nobara.
“I had a realization earlier,” he tells her. “When I was getting rebar shoved through my shoulder.”
Nobara winces at the thought. “Can you maybe not sound like that’s no big deal?”
“Says the one with literal inhuman pain tolerance?”
“Not like that!”
“So do you want to hear my realization or not?”
“Of course I do.” She scoffs – bold of him to assume she doesn’t want to know every thought in his stupid brain. “What was your near-death epiphany this time?”
He has a lot of those. At least Nobara’s brushes with death don’t usually come with life-altering realizations.
“We should get married,” he tells her.
“Funny.”
“No, seriously.”
“We’re twenty-two, Yuji.” It’s not as if that’s never come up, but always as a someday kind of thought – she knows Yuji well enough to know that he doesn’t mean it that way now.
“We could die tomorrow,” he counters.
“Well, yeah, but-“
“I’m not dying without putting a ring on your finger.”
Nobara raises her eyebrows. “I had no idea you felt so strongly about it.”
“Mmhm.” He smiles lazily. “Wanna be all official and everything.”
It’s…a very Yuji thought. She’ll give it that. “Well, that’s…spur-of-the-moment.”
“I’ve been told I’m very impulsive.” He laughs. “Megumi said that.”
“Oh, wow, I’m shocked.”
“Utahime said so too.”
“Yeah, because you are.” Surprising how smart Utahime can be when she willingly married the single most unbearable person Nobara’s ever met. “You literally just proposed to be an hour afte a surgery to get a thing of rebar out of your shoulder.”
And then it catches up – the enormity of his request, the fact that Yuji never means anything more than the things he says in the hospital, the fact that he wants a life with her badly enough to reach for it when it’s an objectively terrible idea. And Nobara’s cheeks flush.
“You…actually want to marry me.”
“Duh.” He reaches for her hand. “Wish I had a ring. There was always food when I did this in my head. And…y’know. We were, like…five years older. But five years is a long time to not get killed.”
Sad, but true. “It is a long time.”
“Yeah.”
“There was food when you planned this?”
“Chilean sea-bass.” Her absolute favorite. “And Christmas cake.”
“Aww. You know me so well.” She ruffles his hair. “Y’know this is an awful idea, right?”
“Yup.”
“You know we’re, like…babies.”
“That’s me,” he agrees. “I’m baby.”
“You are.” He is. “Lemme think, okay?”
**
It’s two months before Yuji’s arm is Chilean-sea-bass-ready again and Nobara is neither surprised nor any less thrilled when she walks in to the familiar scent of something baking. But if he’s going to ask her properly, she’s not going to stop him – she isn’t going to say anything if it jeopardizes that.
She doesn’t have to wait very long.
“So,” he says, and slides an open ring box across the table. “Before we get eaten by curses?”
Nobara is surprised, because she can’t possibly be this stupid, but she nods.
“Before we get eaten by curses,” she agrees. “Yeah. I will.”
**
23
Gojo Satoru loves nothing more than an excuse to throw his clan’s money at a bad idea, and he takes to the Itadori-Kugisaki wedding with aplomb. “Whatever you want!” he offers, waving around the clan’s credit card even though they all know he’s less generous than he is spiteful and easily-amused. “You only get married once, after all. If you’re lucky.”
He’d winked, as if he isn’t himself so obsessed with his wife he can barely walk straight. Such is Gojo.
They’d only ended up wanting a few splurges, though: neither cares about the venue when they can hold it on school grounds, and invitations are pointless when everyone they’d ever want to invite already knows they’ve got a default spot on the guest list and would show up demanding to be let in even if they didn’t. They can’t let an outsider on campus, so hiring a DJ would be pointless; it’s really only a nice sound system they ask for – that, a dress whose price tag would make anyone with a conscience sweat, and the best food money can buy.
Even that’s been a struggle – Yuji wanted to cook, because, as he tells everyone and their mother and their second cousin twice-removed, “that’s how I got her to date me.” (Not really true, but it hadn’t hurt.) Not a single person had been willing to allow that, which is a shame because they all know very well how good the food would be. Never mind. If he’s going to do something this ridiculous, he’d damn well better enjoy it.
And it’s…an odd wedding. Fumi and Saori are thoroughly confused but not enough that they don’t still manage to cry; Nobara’s grandmother can barely remember Yuji’s name; all four of the Gojo children are color-coordinated and the three girls (their brother sits quietly by his mother, far too shy to cause trouble) run amok, shrieking with delight at the opportunity to get grass stains on their skirts. Maki firmly suggests that Gojo ‘get a handle on his demon children,’ which goes over about as well as expected. Inumaki might be drunk but no one can really tell, since he’s not saying a word. Megumi keeps his best-man-and-maid-of-honor speech to a single sentence: “don’t ruin your lives.”
Yuji finds that very touching. And he likes the chaos, because it’s exactly what anyone who knew their friends would expect: Megumi’s not a man of many words, Maki is too blunt for her own good, Gojo will never miss an opportunity to show off his obnoxiously beautiful children, Inumaki is a wildcard – all known an expected. And for a group who’d warned them so fervently against ‘rushing into things,’ they all seem happy that they had.
“’Bara,” he says, poking her with a fork, then gesturing to a slice of Christmas cake with the tines. “Cake?”
“You want to feed me.” It’s not a question.
“You wouldn’t let me cook for you-“
She rolls her eyes. “You do realize that you have however long it takes us both to get eaten by curses to do that now, right?”
He steals a kiss for that, then stabs a forkful of cake and holds it up. “Indulge me?”
She obliges and swallows with the sweet, dimpled smile most people don’t know that Kugisaki Nobara – Itadori Nobara – is even capable of. “Yours is better,” she tells him.
“Mine is better,” he agrees. This time it’s Nobara who steals a kiss. “Next time.”
“Next time what? We’re never having another wedding.”
“Gojo would love that.”
Nobara rolls her eyes. “Gojo just loves dressing his kids up.”
“No, Gojo loves it when Utahime-sensei gets dressed up.”
“Also true.” It’s strange to think that their relationship status now is the same as the one they’ve loved to poke fun at since they were teenagers, but there are worse examples to have had, Nobara thinks. If nothing else, Gojo is a little less inclined to bug his former students when he’s this stupidly in love. Stupidly in love, she thinks, in the most private recesses of her mind – that’s me.
“Just one,” she says, tapping the tip of Yuji’s nose. “Then anniversaries.”
“With better cake.”
Nobara smirks. “And better entertainment.”
“What are you talking about? Inumaki trying to dance is great entertainment.”
“Yuji-“
“And Gojo’s kids? They’re entertaining.”
Nobara rolls her eyes. “Didn’t Maki literally just call them demon spawns?”
“Yeah, but Maki’s wrong sometimes-“
“Maki’s always right. How dare you.”
“You’re very entertaining,” he goes on.
“Mm. Headed in the right direction, but…” she raises her eyebrows suggestively. “I could be much more entertaining.”
**
Nobara’s pretty sure the people at an extended-stay business hotel in Bangkok don’t appreciate how entertaining she is, but her husband (since when is she the kind of person who has a husband?) does.
So much that he’s apparently trying to seduce her with food again.
Or maybe he just loves her, and his favorite way of loving is by feeding people. Either works. Either way, it makes her happy, watching him stand in front of the microwave as some frozen thing neither had been able to identify from the label on the bag at the grocery store turns and turns.
They are, as they’re quickly discovering, broke. And neither wants to abuse Maki’s generous donation of a spare Zenin credit card, provided for their budget honeymoon as a wedding gift, or willingly spend hours in a place where it’s not appropriate to start removing clothes at a moment’s notice – so dinner usually means trying to decipher the identities of frozen meals at a Thai 7-11 with no knowledge of the language whatsoever. It’s not very romantic, but neither were the circumstances of their marriage, so it sort of fits. Besides, Yuji – for all his culinary skill – will eat anything, and what looks like rice with shrimp isn’t a half-bad bet. And Nobara is just fine with anything that allows her to eat in nothing but a bathrobe.
They really are on the same wavelength, she thinks. And as bad of an idea as it is – as hard as reality’s going to hit when they get home – being married is fun, moreso than she’d ever imagined it would be.
“Okay, this one looks a little better than last night’s,” Yuji comments looking down into the container as he pads back over to the bed. He’s just in sweats – another way in which he and his wife are of one mind, that unswerving belief in the inherent superiority of loungewear – and he pokes at the rice with his chopsticks to evenly distribute the hottest clumps of rice so they’ll heat up the rest of the bowl. (Apparently he thinks it’s easier to do that than to leave it in as long as he’s supposed to – go figure.) Once he’s satisfied with the distribution, he lifts a piece of shrimp and some rice. “Try?”
She knows this drill by now – the first bite of what they’re sharing is always hers. It’s ridiculously sweet, but Yuji always has been.
“Weird texture,” she decides.
“Hm.” Yuji takes a bite, then nods. “Yeah. Super weird.”
“Makes me miss your cooking.”
Yuji lights up. “Really?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, it did get me to marry you.”
“That’s definitely not what got you to marry me.”
“You sure ‘bout that?”
**
They have an apartment now. It’s a happy little apartment, theirs is - cramped, with a couch that used to be Gojo’s and a fridge that barely works and a bedroom full of far-too-fine furniture Maki had sent over from a vacant Zenin property out of spite. It always smells like curse ectoplasm and detergent and takeout or Yuji’s cooking, no in-between, and Nobara compensates with enough Wild Pine Air Freshener to choke a grown man; its decorations are so mismatched that she’s given up. There are pictures on every wall and Megumi hates all of the ones he’s in, which is nearly all of them. There’s dried blood on the couch from patched-up injuries that neither knows how to get out or cares to, and it’s surprising how much less of a slob Yuji is than his wife. The neighbors are forever complaining about the noise - the TV, the arguments over whatever’s on it, the breathless pleas that no one with a middle school diploma could misidentify, the loud music they sometimes play when life calls for frantic dancing around the living room (it’s really more like flailing) - but neither cares. If they’re evicted, they’ll go and live with the Gojos. (Utahime will let them in exchange for free childcare. They’ve discussed it.)
It’s a good place to be young and newly-married and hopelessly in love.
**
24
“There.” Yuji settles back against the wall, shifting to fix the pillow behind his back so the outlet behind him won’t dig in, and then so that Nobara can sit comfortably between his legs. She’s always been tiny, but right now she feels like she barely weighs anything even with her full weight resting against his chest; it takes a moment for her to settle, and once she does, Yuji sets down the warm thermos he’s holding and wraps both of his arms around to rest against her stomach. “Better, princess?”
“No,” she says miserably, her head leaning back weakly against his shoulder.
He’d known to expect that, but it still worries him, and he frees one hand to pick up the thermos again. “Do you think you could keep broth down?”
“Dunno,” she says faintly. “Don’t wanna eat.”
“I know, princess.” He’s found himself using that endearment a lot lately, especially because Nobara seems to favor it when she’s sick. “But you gotta try, okay?”
“Yuji,” she whines, “sick.”
“You might feel a little better if you drank some of this,” he tries again. Perhaps not on the nausea front, but she wouldn’t be feeling nearly so weak if she had something in her system. “I made a bunch of this, so if it helps, I’ve got more.”
“I really don’t want to.” She turns to rest her cheek against his shoulder. “’m just gonna throw it up.”
“Maybe not. You gotta eat eventually.”
“Definitely yes. My body hates me.” Her face scrunches in irritation. “I hate this, Yuuji.”
“I know you do,” he says gently, and raises the thermos to her lips. “But it’s been a long time since you’ve eaten, okay? You should at least try it.”
“Hmph.” Nobara doesn’t seem happy about it, but her weak hands wrap around the thermos and she sighs at its heat. She could probably lift it herself – it isn’t as if she’s dying, even if a couple of brutal days of morning sickness have made it hard for her to keep enough down to have much energy – but Yuji doesn’t want to risk it, so he supports her hands around the bottle as she raises it to her mouth to drink.
Things weren’t supposed to end this way, with two little lines and Nobara struggling to keep down chicken broth – it isn’t something they’d really discussed, because what’ll become of their own lives always seems so uncertain that making a new one seems impossible most days. But they’re not really cautious enough to be surprised that it’s happened anyway, and Yuji, at least, welcomes the unexpected in at least this one respect. They both do – nothing about their marriage has been carefully-planned, anyway – but enthusiasm is a tough ask from Nobara when she can’t eat without being sick.
Yuji worries about that. Morning sickness is perfectly normal, and apparently this isn’t even an extreme case, but he’s pretty sure she’s not supposed to be getting thinner, and she seems to be. He wants her to get this broth down, start to feel better and bring the color back to her cheeks so she can grow softer and rounder like she should be, but today might not be that day.
He can only hope.
“’S good,” she says weakly after a few sips. “Think anything would taste good right now.”
“No kidding. You have to be starving.” He drops a kiss against the crown of her head. “Any better?”
“It’s literally been thirty seconds, Yuji.”
“Ooh. Sarcasm. That’s a good sign.”
She huffs weakly, without any bite. “Hilarious.”
**
“What’s the baby want for dinner?”
Nobara pouts. “You never ask what mom wants.”
He smiles – never fails to, hearing her refer to herself that way. “I was getting to that.”
“Huh?”
“Eating for two, right?” He looks at her oh-so-innocently. “You get two dinners. Duh.”
She’s not sure if that’s how it works, but she’s never going to complain about that. “And this is why I love you,” she replies, kicking her feet up on the table, both hands resting against her stomach. It’s always in the way these days, but it makes for a nice table when she needs somewhere to put her hands or a bowl of rice.
“Ah, so you do love me. Last I heard you were going to make me sleep on a floatie thing in the pool.”
“It’s called a raft.”
“A raft. Right.” Their apartment doesn’t have a pool, so it’s kind of an empty threat, but he’d gotten the hint. “Still. Nice to know.”
“You deserved that.” He had. He’d had the gall to insist that water was wet when it obviously wasn’t. “And I love you when you make me extra dinner,” she says sweetly, even though there’s hardly a moment she doesn’t love him and they both know it. She’d never have rushed headlong into a lifetime without the total trust that comes with loving Itadori Yuji so fiercely she’s not sure what to do with it, and she’d never feel so confident in her ability to weather this sort of change if not for the knowledge that he was just as adamantly in her corner. But she’s hungry now – always – and the extra dinner doesn’t hurt.
Not at all.
She’s feeling a little more appreciative than usual, actually, and she swings her legs down and pads over to the stove to wrap her arms around Yuji’s waist and press her cheek into his shoulder.
“I do,” she says again. “I love you.”
She says it so infrequently, and usually far more lightheartedly than this, that Yuji can’t help but freeze, then soften.
“Love you too, princess.” She smiles – oh, how she loves that nickname. He gets a pair of arms around his waist for that. “Oh, wow. Full hug. I’m honored.”
“Shut up. ‘m feeling clingy.” She rubs her cheek against his shoulder. “’n happy. Prob’ly won’t last.”
“Mm. Y’know, my grandpa told me I was gonna make someone fat and happy one day-“
“Check and check,” Nobara teases.
“Not fat.”
“Tell that to my jeans.” She sighs dramatically. “So inconvenient that being this sexy makes my pants not fit.”
“You are,” he agrees. “Very sexy. Glad we’re on the same page.” He chuckles, then pauses. “Y’wanna know somethin’?”
“Shoot.”
“’member how I used to cook for you back in high school?”
“And I never let you stop? Yeah.” She giggles. “That was smart of me.”
“After my grandpa said that, I kinda got it in my head that I could pick up girls by feeding them.”
“That’s why you were always cooking for me?”
“Uh…maybe?”
“You absolute idiot,” she says, but she’s utterly delighted and they both know it. “That was your pickup tactic?”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
She rolls her eyes. “Trust me, Yuji, it wasn’t the food.”
**
27
Nobara knows what’s going on as soon as she walks through the door and takes a good sniff of the air wafting into the entryway from the kitchen.
“Chilean sea bass,” she says, walking into the kitchen and leaning in the doorway. “You’re gonna ask me for another kid, aren’t you.”
Yuji freezes with a wooden spoon in his hand, paused in midair. “Hi, princess,” he says warily.
“Yuji-“
“Can’t I just want to make you a nice dinner?” he sets down the spoon and raises his hands in self-defense, backing away from the counter. His face is red enough to give him away, though. “Geez. It’s like I’ve-“
“You were the one who suggested we ask Megumi to watch Haruki,” she points out, “and the sea bass…”
“What if I’m trying to seduce you?”
She raises her eyebrows. “You’re probably doing both.”
Yuji wilts. “Maybe?”
She shakes her head fondly. “I’m not gonna bite, you know. I mean, I think we both figured we’d have another one eventually.” Though not really on purpose - it’d taken exactly two and a half years after Haruki’s birth for the two of them to forget that they were supposed to be mindful of the fact that, were they not careful, they’d probably spawn again. “What surprises me is that you hadn’t figured out we already had.”
Yuji looks like he might faint.
**
35
“I dunno why we’re watching this.”
“Me neither.” Nobara picks up the last piece of her slice of cake – she can’t eat a whole one anymore, to her eternal regret – and pops it in her mouth whole. “Sucks.”
Yuji falls back against the pillows. “But I’m too tired to change it.”
She swallows, then slots in by his side, resting her head on his shoulder. “Happy anniversary, huh?”
“No kidding.”
Forget special-grades – four kids under the age of ten are going to be the death of the Itadoris.
“These used to be a lot more fun when I didn’t think I was going to fall asleep standing up all the time,” Nobara comments aimlessly.
“Yeah.” Yuji can’t help but smile at the memory. “Pretty sure that’s how we got Tatsuya.”
“Wasn’t that Naoka?”
“Dunno.” Yuji reaches across to take Nobara’s empty cake plate (paper – they’re not washing dishes on their anniversary). “Cake’s good, though.”
“Always.” Yuji’s Christmas cake is all but sacred Itadori lore now – it’s not only Nobara who loves it anymore. It’s also their one and only anniversary plan besides sending the kids off to spend the night under Yuta and Maki’s watchful eyes and snuggling in their rattiest clothes until someone forces them to wake up. She pats Yuji’s shoulder. “Still got it.”
“You don’t, though.” He pouts. “You only had one slice.”
“Babe. I’m thirty-five.”
“And?” Yuji blinks down at her innocently. “I had three.”
“Because you went to the Gojo Satoru school of eating amounts of sugar that could kill you and being totally fine.” She swats at his shoulder. “Some of us get sick when we do that. Do you want me to get sick?”
“Getting old sucks,” he concludes.
“Getting old does suck.” She reaches over and pokes at a spot where grey’s beginning to show through the roots of his hair. It always makes her smile – she never thought either of them would get this far. “Least we got old, though.”
Nobara seems like the type who’d be too vain to make a statement like that and mean it, but she does. Getting old is a precious thing in this line of work; to be a sorcerer and thirty-five and married and raising a family is good luck indeed. She’d never thought she’d think that when she was younger and convinced that it’d be best to remain unattached, but her life’s since been filled up by a series of happy accidents, and it’s hard to regret them.
“We got old,” Yuji laughs, pressing his cheek to her hair. “Crazy.”
She’s feeling a little playful, and she tugs him down to kiss her before he can dodge. “Let’s keep getting old.”
“You’re funny if you think you’re gonna get rid of me, princess.” Now it’s his turn to tug her into a kiss. “Just promise me something.”
“This oughta be good.”
“Don’t dye your hair.” He shifts down a little to meet her eyes. “Even when it starts getting grey. Don’t dye it.”
“O…kay?”
“Just…leave it like it is.” He presses her forehead to hers. “Is that mean? I know ‘s supposed to be embarrassing. Maybe I’m bein’ selfish, but…I wanna watch your hair go grey. Know I got to watch you get old.”
“Yuji-“
“Promise, princess?”
They’re ridiculous, thirty-five and cuddling like teenagers; he’s ridiculous, extracting promises with almost no effort, calling her ‘princess’ without an ounce of self-awareness, and she’s never been happier with the choices that’ve led her to this moment.
“I won’t. And we’ll get old together,” she says. “I promise.”
If fate decrees she can’t keep it – well, fate can go and shuffle off this mortal coil, because she sure won’t be, with Yuji’s arms around her, Yuji’s promise to keep, Yuji’s warm hands tethering her to this side of reality. She’ll wring a lifetime out of nothing if she has to.
But she knows she can. That’s the thing about Itadori Nobara: once she’s got her mind made up, it won’t move.