Work Text:
The walls of Nanami Kento’s house are grey.
It’s a house furnished by a set of well settled individuals, filled with items straight out of magazines. Earth-toned furniture in slate-colored rooms, stainless steel appliances in the kitchen. Closet spaces filled with crisp suits and Italian silk, oak dressers filled elegant necklaces and signature cufflinks.
From the outside, the house you share is the status symbol the fresh-faced interns in the office yearn for. But when he comes home late yet again, tossing his jacket on the chaise and slouching against the couch, he isn’t met with the comfort his cushy salary should bring. Instead, he groans, his lower back straining against the stiff design of the couch. Nanami knows he should be grateful, but his heart can’t help but ache at the fact that despite all he’s earned, he still doesn’t quite have a home.
You make it easier for him, on the few nights he gets to come early and hear your laugh echo as you recount the tales from your day at the pre-school. How little Megumi drew those big dogs again when everyone was asked to make a picture of their families, or how Nobara declared herself queen of the jungle gym. The vision of you conducting the tiny circus you’re describing turns the corners of Nanami’s lips upwards for the first time that day, and he watches you wistfully as you giggle before sipping at your wine.
He’s lacing his fingers with yours before the happiness in your eyes dims with the end of your story. Nanami doesn’t let you go, even after you move to the bedroom, hands pressing yours into the pillows by your head, holding you steady with each slow roll of his hips. He rests his forehead against yours after he’s spilt inside you, the cool metal of his wedding band placed on the heated skin of your belly as you both make the same prayer between smoke colored sheets.
Nanami figures it’s best to let the dream die rather than continually break your heart. So he resigns himself to coming back even later, slipping beside your sleeping form, but not before wistfully looking at the door across the hall, the one to a nursery that never came to be.
And then comes the day he comes back early at your insistence, finding you standing in the middle of his stone palace with a pop of pink by your feet.
The young boy in the living room can’t be any older than three, dressed in an assortment of primary colors and mismatched socks. He’s clinging to you, little hands dug into your midi skirt as he looks up at Nanami with honeyed eyes. Nanami in turn responds by kneeling down to his eye level, as though shrinking himself will lessen the intimidating aura of his suit or hardened gaze. He expects him to further disappear into the cool blue fabric after you’ve formally introduced your husband to the child on your calf, but instead, he’s met with a smile, nearly knocked over as the boy screams “Hello, I’m Yuuji!” while running towards him for a hug.
Nanami continues to hold Yuuji in his arms long after he has exhausted himself playing with his tie. He sits on the floor across from you as you explain everything — the car crash that took his parents, the grandfather that can barely take care of himself. You talk about how Yuuji’s been waiting by the classroom door longer than all the other kids have lately, holding on to the straps on his tiger backpack as the clock strikes three.
Nanami doesn’t miss the way your voice catches up when you mention how his grip doesn’t falter even when it hits four, Yuuji smiling just as bright when you offered to take him to your home while you sorted things out. He instinctively covers the slumbering boy’s ears when you mention his grandfather’s health, as though a child his age could comprehend the words “metastasize” or “respiratory failure.”
At this point, the front of Nanami’s dress shirt has grown sticky with drool, Yuuji’s nose digging further into the dip between his pecs as he snuggles for warmth. The fact that Nanami hasn’t said a word since you’ve started talking makes you nervous, the unspoken question lingering in the air as you both watch Yuuji’s chest rise and fall in the blonde’s strong arms. He maintains his silence even as he walks towards your bedroom, tucking the boy in the sheets before looking at the door across the hall once more.
Nanami returns to the living room with his laptop in hand, wordlessly sitting down next to you as he begins his search for toddler beds.
It doesn’t take long for Yuuji to adjust to the house. He learns where his velcro shoes go when he comes back from school and that the cookies are kept on the highest shelf. He knows that he’s small enough to walk under the kitchen island without hitting his head and that he’s bigger than the coffee table. Yuuji’s barely more than 3 feet tall and needs a stepping stool to get on the dining table chairs, and yet he managed to change the way Nanami views his home.
He sees red toys in the hallway and an orange backpack that hangs next to your purse in the foyer. He sees the yellow bananas that Yuuji picked out at the farmers market because they reminded him of Nanami’s hair. He comes home on rainy days and finds Yuuji in a froggy hat, splashing in puddles in green rainboots far too big for his feet. He sees the blues and purples of the galaxy they painted on the ceiling of Yuuji’s room when he puts him to sleep.
The house is no longer the clean model home that it used to be. There’s a maze of Hot Wheels cars on the floor and stuffed animals sandwiched between the throw cushions. Yuuji’s artwork hangs throughout the house, attached to magnets on the fridge and the little paint handprints he puts on Nanami’s suit pants when he comes home from work. And though Nanami sighs when he sees the damage done to his clothes and the yellow fingerprints and crayon marks on his walls, he can finally look at his house and feel like he is home.
Nanami Kento ends up grateful that the walls of his house are grey, because they only make Yuuji shine that much brighter.