Hey all! This is the first fanfiction I've written in a while but it kind of came to me. This is not really a happy ending Naru x Mai, sorry :/

It's kind of based off of my dislike and fears of marriage and severe commitment issues.

Anyway, I hope you like it!

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Ever since I was a little girl, I'd dreamt of a love like my mother and fathers'. Even though I was young when they both died I could see that they loved each other until the end. With looks they shared that made my face twist in that way a child's face does, brief kisses they shared, giggling like school kids and holding hands. I'd understood that maybe it was those small things that made them love each other for so long, that made them never forget what they had. I always thought that it was the little things that made relationships last forever.

I thought that I'd found that in Naru. It was amazing the way it had turned out. He'd returned from England an almost different man. He'd become a man that laughed, and smiled and never stopped asking for tea but added please to the end of his request. He started living in a way I hadn't seen him live before. I'd found myself falling even harder for him every day he smiled and I smiled with.

In the beginning I'd fallen for the way that he performed silly little magic tricks with a coin, pulling it out of random places. I'd fallen for the way his eyes lit up in certain times, especially in cases when something particularly puzzled him. I'd fallen for the way he gripped my waist with a tight grip (as if afraid to lose me), or his lips tightened when frustrated. I'd even fallen for the way he spoke; how he mouthed certain words like 'future' but especially the way he said 'I love you' and 'I do'.

I loved the way that he woke up, slightly grumpy because he wasn't a morning person, with messy hair and a yawn on his lips. I loved our night time routine, where he was usually sitting in his study with a book open in front of him, eyes drooping but lips pouting in a childish way, denying the fact that he was tired. I loved the way he showered, because no matter how hard he denied it I could hear him sing some English songs that he completely denied was Lady Gaga, even though we both knew the truth. I even loved the way he'd sleep; on his back with his arms crossed over his chest, little man snores leaving his mouth which I thought were adorable.

But, slowly I realised things were changing. We'd been together ten years, married seven, and I denied it all. Suddenly, his laugh didn't enthral me as much anymore. He stopped with the magic tricks; stopped trying at all really. I couldn't blame him because I realised that I wasn't trying either. I'd noticed that he didn't grip me around the waist anymore, and if he did his hand was loose (I felt like it was a warning that he was letting go of me). I'd stopped loving the way he said future because when he mentioned it I just felt frustrated, like it was just chaining me down. When he told me he loved me, I began to feel guilty.

His moods in the morning began to annoy me, and I no longer stood in the door way and smiled at his petulant behaviour because it annoyed me. I was over the way he acted like a child, and the songs he sang in the shower had the same damn tune and the same damn lyrics. I wanted it to end. It really hit me though, when I found myself on the back porch of the house we'd chosen together, in a jumper that made me feel more secure than my marriage did. I'd been kept awake because those little snores followed by huffs of air were no longer endearing to me, but instead kept me awake more than the nightmares.

When I stared at the ring on my finger, it felt like a manacle, chaining me to a relationship I thought would last forever.

"It's over, isn't it?" I'd asked as we sat in the same booth, in the same café, below the same office that we'd been frequenting every damn lunchtime for the past nine years.

"Yeah…Yeah, I think it is." And that was it.

It was what I'd never wanted to happen, but was relieved that it was. It was like I was happy that my childhood nightmare was finally coming true, because I couldn't take it anymore. I'd never, never wanted to wake up after ten years of loving someone, just to realise that I didn't. I'd also never wanted a mundane, run of the mill marriage, but that's what I'd gotten. I'd hated the routine from the beginning but I'd stuck with it because I loved him and I believed that it could work.

I'd always wanted the happy ever after, the fairy tale that my mother and father never got to finish. But I supposed it wasn't going to happen; not for me and not yet. This was everything that I'd been terrified of: it was never falling in love that I'd been scared of; it was falling out of it. My chance at a forever after had failed.