Pairing: TezuTori
Futurefic, followup to Forty-Love. Angsty, stressful, familial obligations that have to be fulfilled. I love this pair.
Disclaimer: If they were mine, I'd be richer than hell right now. My bank account says they're not.
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He didn't want to do this.
Tezuka Kunimitsu finished his preparations, smoothing a hand over the front of his traditional wedding garb. He shot a look in the mirror, and frowned; it only added to his stern expression and made him more forbidding. Anyone else would look happy and perhaps nervous on a day like this. He simply looked as he always did, which rather neatly hid the fact that he was ripping himself to shreds inside. He rose, and exited his dressing room, only to slip into the room next door.
Inside the other room, Ohtori Choutarou was pacing. He was dressed nicely, though obviously not as part of the wedding party. He didn't want to be part of the wedding party. He was here because Tezuka wanted him here, but the moment the ceremony was over he was going to be out so fast he left people blinking in his wake. As the door opened, he looked up, not bothering to hide the pain in his brown eyes. He knew, intellectually, that Tezuka still loved him, but that didn't change the fact that every second of this was sending daggers into him.
Tezuka crossed the room with dispatch, gathering Ohtori into his arms. He hated doing this. He hated putting Ohtori through this. More than anything he wanted to steal the other young man away and get out of here...but duty was duty, and duty and tradition had a siren song all their own that he was helpless to resist. He merely held on tightly for a moment, before pulling the taller youth down for a kiss that communicated quite clearly how upset he was over the whole thing.
Ohtori returned the gesture, his own kiss speaking rather clearly of desperation. He wasn't given to such things, being even-keeled by nature, but even the slightest prospect of being parted from Tezuka was prone to make him panic. Eventually he had to come up for air, and opened his eyes to look down into steel-grey ones full of heartache and heartbreak. It was slightly reassuring to know that his longtime companion felt exactly the same way about the whole thing.
Too soon, they had to part. Too soon, the ceremony began. Ohtori lingered in the back of the room, watching in silence as his companion took a delicate young thing from an old, proud Japanese family to wife. As the final words were spoken, he watched Tezuka lift his head and look out over the assembled folk...and caught his gaze. Written there was more pain than he could have imagined, and a wordless apology for putting him through all this. As soon as the groom looked back down at his new wife, he took the chance to escape.
That night was the longest of both their lives.
Ohtori didn't budge once the entire evening, nor did he sleep a wink. He spent the entire time curled into the corner of his bed, hugging his knees to his chest, eyes open. If he closed them, he'd see the whole ceremony. It had to be the worst moment of his life to date. Nothing could compare with the stab through the heart the entire experience had been.
He was so sunk in his fog of misery and grief that he didn't hear the key in the lock of his apartment's front door. He didn't register the footsteps in the hall, didn't realize the door to his bedroom was opening. Nothing got through...until warm arms wrapped themselves around him and someone pulled him into a tight embrace. He closed his eyes, inhaling the familiar scent of an understated cologne, feeling a great deal of his tension melting away as his beloved held him tightly.
He was loath to move, even as one of Tezuka's hands lifted his right one. The feeling of something sliding down his ring finger got his attention quickly, though, and he opened his eyes to see something there that hadn't been before. It didn't look like much; decently wide, some sort of darkish metal with two thin threads of bright silver wrapping around it. He blinked, then looked up at Tezuka, who was smiling faintly. He noticed his partner had a matching ring on his right hand, in contrast to the simple gold wedding band on his left.
Tezuka's words were quiet. "Gold has a tendency to bend under pressure, to break easily, or melt at a low temperature," he murmured. "Titanium, for all its understated elegance...is virtually impossible to break." Ohtori blinked, looking at the ring again. Titanium, threaded through with platinum; two of the hardest metals known to mankind, the most likely to endure. "I felt it a fitting symbol, since nothing man can create can break what we have."
It took a moment for Ohtori to wrap his mind around that. When he did, though, a brilliant smile curved his lips. He'd had to endure a dreadful experience, but now he had concrete evidence of their love, in the form of the band around his finger. He reached up, pulling Tezuka down to kiss him soundly. In spite of it all, they'd made it through this together, and tomorrow would see them heading off to yet another tournament, writing another chapter in their story.