carefully everywhere descending

Not quite Christmas yet, but have some post series winter themed bookworm fluff nonetheless. Also, I'm not sure what the appropriate reaction to reading a poem you really enjoy is supposed to be, but I'm pretty sure that immediately linking it to your favorite pair isn't it.

"… You didn't have to come with me, you know. I can see you freezing from here."

A sigh. "And you can keep saying that all you like, but it wouldn't have been fair to make you go alone and we both know it. Besides, it's really not that bad! I'm just… still adjusting to the winters in Heimdallr, that's all."

Machias sent the witch a dubious sideways look as they traversed the snowy streets of the capital, most of the groceries from their earlier shopping trip safely tucked in his arms. While she wasn't quite shivering, the rapid puffs of air he could see in the frosty night were a dead giveaway, as were her arms wrapped tightly around her torso.

"If you say so," he conceded, a light touch of concern to his words. "I can see how it might take some getting used to though, especially since you've never gone through an extended one before."

"You can say that again," Emma mumbled under her breath, sounding faintly amused despite it all. "It wasn't as if our village was any warmer during this time of year, but I suppose I was spoiled by the Hexen method of staving off the cold."

"Which was egregious abuse of magic, I'm assuming."

Emma gave an indignant sniff at that before fixing him with a mock glare that reminded the gunman that she was exceedingly attractive more than anything else. "I would hardly call the occasional use of spellcraft 'abuse', Machias. Besides, it was a good excuse for Vita and I to practice our fire arts. It was win-win more than anything else."

He chuckled a little, sending a fond look her way. "I'm sure. Mind the steps," he cautioned when they reached a small walkway, reaching out to grasp her unoccupied hand. "Snow on wood's far more slippery than snow on brick, particularly when the wood is as old as this."

There was no doubt that it was the voice of experience talking, and that made Emma's eyebrows raise just a bit. "You sound like you know firsthand," she teased, their fingers entwining.

He grimaced, the embarrassing memory of taking a tumble and ending up in a snowdrift bubbling up from beneath the surface, and even now he could still hear the ever-distant peals of laughter from his sister echoing in his ears. "That's a distinct possibility."

"Hehe. Well, I suppose I'll defer to your judgment. After all, if we rushed, fell, and dropped everything we'd have a hard time explaining to Celine why we came back with no milk," Emma said, deciding to file that particular tidbit away for later, for when she had time to ask and he had time to answer.

"Oh, of course. Celine's milk supply is always a grave concern of mine," Machias deadpanned, making a face when Emma giggled again.

A few moments of silence passed as the pair left a trail of footprints behind them before Emma turned to look at the green haired man, an expression of curiosity on her face.

"What did you do? To stay occupied during winter, I mean," the witch clarified, stopping as white flakes began to once again leisurely drift from the sky.

He shrugged, considering. "Nothing all that interesting," he began, letting his gaze swing over the snowy landscape and up to the cloudy horizon. "Unsurprisingly, I usually stayed indoors unless I had to leave to make sure that Patiry and Kargo didn't kill themselves."

She made a commiserating noise, recalling all too clearly the pair's tendency to create a tiny bit of chaos every time they had showed up. "I'm sort of ashamed to admit it, but it's a little too easy for me to picture that," Emma said, the image of a scowling, bundled, and far tinier Machias marching out into the cold having immediately popped into her head, and the gunman recognized the slight grin on her face for what it was.

"It wasn't nearly as cute as you think, Emma."

"Oh, I don't know. It certainly sounds cute to me," the brunette teased, her grin only growing wider when she saw him look away in embarrassment, a mild flush coloring his cheeks.

"… Hmm. Well. Anyway," he coughed, and it never ceased to amaze (and amuse) Emma how much quicker he was to collect himself compared to their younger days. "Besides that, I usually studied chess records or listened to the radio with Sis. And read, of course."

"Of course," she echoed, her voice ringing with a jovial note that their shared passion never failed to elicit. "Celine always told me that the reason I needed glasses was because I could never stop myself from reading when I was supposed to be sleeping, but it always seemed to be worth it at the time."

"There's no doubt about it!" Machias asserted, his back ramrod straight, and if Emma closed her eyes it would take no effort at all to picture him in Class VII red. "I was always told not to leave anything until tomorrow that could be done today, and as far as I was concerned the same thing went for books. It's criminal to leave a good story unfinished, and…"

He trailed off when he saw the arts specialist regarding him with undisguised amusement, and to his chagrin Machias felt the blush return with a vengeance.

"Believe it or not," she began mildly, cocking her head a little, "I think I tried a similar argument on Celine once or twice."

"… How did that go?"

"About as well as most of my attempts at arguing with her went."

"Ah. Poorly, then."

"It wasn't as if the damage hadn't been done by that point. Let's face it, Machias; our eyesight was utterly doomed from the beginning, our torrid affairs with the written word being the tragic flaw at the root of it all," she intoned with as much faux drama as she could muster, and the bespectacled man couldn't stop the corners of his mouth from twitching upwards.

"Ugh. If that's the case, I'm still not sure how you got away with functional vision sans glasses whereas I'm borderline blind without mine," he grumbled facetiously.

Well, mostly facetiously anyway.

"Hehe. Maybe you ended up reading even more than I did, then. All that studying, perhaps?"

"That couldn't have been it. I kept all my academic review for the daytime for when was fully awake; the nights were solely for letting my mind explore while my body wound down, if that makes sense."

Her eyes softened, the tell-tale sign of a reliable partner in crime. "It does. There isn't anything quite like letting your imagination run free in someone else's wonderland… though I have a feeling that our respective ways of doing that differed a little bit."

Machias snickered at that in a way that neither thought he would have been capable of once upon a time. "Something tells me you've started making your way through my side of the bookshelf."

Emma shrugged and smiled, not bothering to deny it. "When I have time. As it turns out, I rather like your taste in mysteries. And it's not as if I haven't noticed you doing the same thing."

She doesn't tell him that she's never actually seen him flipping through her collections of fables and folklore. What caught her eye instead were various minute creases and folds where there hadn't been any before, marking where the reader had chosen to linger just a tiny bit longer than they strictly had to; they were bookmarks of the best sort, because they told a story all their own.

"Guilty as charged." He adjusted the bags briefly, making sure that the paper was in no danger of ripping from the weight. "Your clan has some fascinating tales, Emma. I'm incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to read them."

"… You know, it sounds an awful lot like you're only interested in me for my books when you phrase it like that."

"Oh?" Machias challenged, the playful lilt in her voice music to his ears. "I wouldn't go that far, though I'll admit there's an element of truth in there. I mean, the joint collection we possess is rather impressive, wouldn't you say?"

She let go of his hand to draw hers upwards with an exaggerated gasp of betrayal, her delicate features scrunching into a halfway-decent facsimile of outrage. "So, the truth comes out! You only ever wanted me for me for my reading material," Emma 'accused', her sapphire eyes glimmering with unconcealed mirth.

"My nefarious plot, uncovered at last. And I was so careful, too. Does this mean you'll want to call an end to the arrangement?"

Her lips quirked up. "Hardly. While I admit that having the foundation of our relationship based on false pretenses isn't exactly what you would call healthy… our combined bookshelf really is quite something. I suppose we could keep up the charade for a short while longer."

"For the books," Machias hastened to add, unable to keep from chuckling.

"For the books," Emma agreed solemnly, only able to hold the façade for a second or two herself before she too broke and collapsed into a fit of giggles against his side, making a happy noise when she felt him kiss the top of her head through the thick hat that she wore.

If anything, the bookshelf symbolized just how far they had come since Machias had offered the witch a place to return to after her various trips across Erebonia, rationalizing that Heimdallr was more central to the rest of the Empire then the Hexen's village, so if she was going to keep on travelling… wouldn't it make sense to come back there, instead?

Considering how little the house was even occupied in the early days of the Empire's newfound peace - his role as an inspector meant that he was on the road just as much as she was - there was no way this should have worked.

Much to the surprise of absolutely no one that knew them, Class VII's consummate overachievers made it work anyway.

It was slow at first, all small things; an unspoken cooking schedule for when they were both home. A healthy stock of both coffee grounds and tea leaves because neither would ever concede that particular front as long as they drew breath. Machias noticing that the house just seemed so much emptier when she and Celine were gone, and Emma waking him up one night when he had fallen asleep on the couch with a sheaf of reports, snuggling up next to him with a whispered 'I'm back' and a sigh of pure contentment, a black cat curled at their feet all the while.

It wasn't a surprise to either of them when his room became their room, really.

"You're not getting rid of me that easily, Machias," Emma mumbled against his coat, her cheeks flushed with cold along with something else far more appealing, and his gaze drifted down to the graceful curve of her neck for a moment or two before he managed to steer himself away from the gutter he was about to leap into. "You'll be stuck with me for a while longer yet."

Promises, promises.

"That's the punishment for my deceit, is it? Well, there are worse trials one could endure. How long of a sentence do you feel is fair, then?"

Her blush was darker and her tone was bolder when her hand found his own once more, his fingertips tracing the ring hidden just beneath the fabric of her glove with her gaze remaining steady all the while. "If my memory serves me correctly, I seem to remember us agreeing on 'forever'."

Forever. How she loved that word.

Machias grinned, the sudden warmth in his chest managing to overpower even the intense cold surrounding them. "We always were ambitious. Speaking of which, did we ever come to a consensus on the alternate wording of 'as long as we both live'?"

Emma shook her head in fond exasperation, her covered thumb running its way across his wrist. "It's far too cold for semantics, dear."

The gunman raised his eyebrows. "And yet you're out here in spite of my telling you exactly that less than an hour ago."

Her patient sigh had the quality of a teacher instructing a particularly obstinate pupil, and he wasn't sure if he should have been offended or amused. "I am, because again; it wouldn't have been fair to let you go alone. And besides," she went on, staring at him (and like looking at the sun, her gaze never failed to reach inside of him and spark embers of rapture). "If I had stayed at home with Celine, that just means I would have worried about you. You wouldn't have wanted me to worry, right?"

"Ugh," came his groan of defeat, because he had always been somewhat susceptible to that particular gambit and she knew it because she knew him. "There's only so many times you can play that card, you know," Machias continued, pushing up his glasses with the back of his hand in a futile gesture of defiance. "Mark my words, I'll learn to ignore it eventually."

He was lying, she knew he was lying, and he knew that she knew he was lying. But damn it, it was the thought that counted.

She giggled again.

"Hey – " he began, and that was as far as he got when a droplet of water splashed close to his eye without warning, startling Machias into blinking furiously like a theater puppet - or a combat shell - gone haywire. "W-What was – "

"Some flakes got in your hair and melted," she helpfully explained with a smile, her hands coming up to gently brush snow out of his parted bangs. "It's starting to come down a little harder now, it seems. I should really knit you a hat at some point; going around with your head uncovered isn't good in weather like this."

"Thank you for the thought, but you really don't have to."

"Oh, maybe I can make you one with cat ears! That way you and Celine can match, at least during winter."

"… Okay, now you really don't have to."

The brunette gave him a small pout even as her palms slipped down to cup his cheeks. "You don't want to be warm?"

"I-I can be warm without cat ears!"

"You don't know that."

"I'm willing to take my chances."

"Celine has them and she's usually warm."

"Celine is also an actual cat."

"You're kind of like a cat sometimes."

"I most certainly am not."

"Hehe. Now now, I did say kind of."

"Hmph," he grumbled, more than a little in awe of how she could still throw his world off balance without even trying, and before he could say anything else he was interrupted by Emma sliding her arms around his neck with a quiet, familiar ease, any tension that he had melting away at her touch.

(Strawberry. Her hair always smelled like strawberry).

"Hi."

"Hello."

"I still want to make you that hat," she teased, her fingers running their way through a mess of dark green.

"No ears. That's my only request."

"We'll see what my constructive impulses end up doing. I can't promise anything, though," Emma answered, and she silenced any further protests when she stood on her tip-toes and guided her lips to his in a tender kiss.

They'd gotten better far better at it – after years of dancing their unique dance, it would have taken two truly inept people not to – but the electricity that ran up and down her spine whenever he touched her still made her shiver even now and she didn't think it would ever stop.

It bewildered her once, the idea that any person could make her feel like this, make her feel dizzy and short of breath and alive in the most overwhelming way possible, and it was only when she saw the look in his eyes after she had worked up the courage to tell him that she understood the blade cut two ways.

"… Does it scare you?"

"No. At least, I don't think it does. It might confound me, mystify me, astonish me… but not scare."

"No?"

"No. You could never scare me, Emma."

"I love you," Machias breathed when the pair broke apart, their foreheads resting together with his fingertips grasping her slim shoulders lightly, sounding for all the world like he had given voice to humanity's most sacred truth. It was a truth that she treasured and adored deep within her soul because it was also a truth that she shared without reservation; something immeasurably precious that belonged to them and only them.

"I love you," she whispered back, a bright smile lighting her features when his thumb came up to brush across the soft skin of her cheek. "Even though you're a spoilsport sometimes."

"How long have you known me for again? Regardless, I think I can ignore that last one, considering how easy you're letting me off for my ulterior literary motives," and her silvery laugh rang with joy in the frigid air.

"Oh, that's right. Poor you, being forced to endure the burden of a happy wife."

"I'm sure I'll be able to cope somehow," and it was the understatement of the century considering how full his heart felt at the moment. "Happy, huh?"

"Mm-hmm. Very happy," Emma agreed, letting her head rest against the warm weight of his chest and taking a moment to savor the soothing beat before looking up at him with wide, guileless eyes. "Let's go home?" the witch asked, and she smiled when he smiled, because she knew that he was happy too.

"Sure."

After taking a few seconds to rearrange their shopping bags, the pair set off again, the brunette leaning against the man's side as they marched in sync in an attempt to stave the chill off.

This did not go unnoticed.

"Remind to heat up some water when we get in, Emma – I'm sure a freshly brewed cup of coffee would warm you right up," and she rolled her eyes because the smirk was practically audible.

"That's a good idea, though I need to ask; did you mean tea? Because I'm quite sure you meant tea."

Another game, another stalemate.

"… Hot chocolate?"

"Hehe. I suppose that's a fair compromise."

"Indeed, but I promise you now; I'm going to turn you into a coffee drinker yet!"

"I wish you the best of luck with that. You have forever, after all," Emma teased warmly, giggling when she saw him turn to the side with a loud huff that didn't sound at all annoyed.

And far above the streets of Heimdallr, the snow continued to fall.

"somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands"

– E.E Cummings

AN: This entire fic was based off a piece of fanart I saw on Twitter one day; while my reading comprehension for Japanese is non-existent, the image of Machias and Emma taking home groceries in the snow just got in my head and wouldn't let go. I seem to enjoy writing pairings in quiet domesticity anyways, but these two really seem to work for me in that regard; I dunno, maybe it's just easier for me to picture these two in particular as adults for some reason. I tried to keep anything timeline-related as vague as possible so as to leave room for Sen IV developments, but to be honest I don't have a damn clue where to even start predicting possible events there, so...

And because any story with Machias and Emma needs at least a little snark from the peanut gallery:

OMAKE

"Welcome back," Celine greeted, entering the kitchen and gracefully winding herself around Emma's legs for a scratch. "The cold didn't bother you guys too much?"

"Only a little. Machias and I bundled up before leaving, so it wasn't too bad," the brunette assured her partner, her fingers sojourning through soft fur as the feline purred. "And before I forget…"

Celine's eyes lit up when Emma set the saucer of milk down, and she eagerly pawed over to start lapping up her treat. "Gotta love the perks of a home base," the cat mused cheerfully.

"… Mmm."

There was something strange in that last noise that made Celine stop halfway and look at her partner suspiciously, her golden eyes narrowed in thought.

Let's see, slightly elevated heart rate and breathing, bright eyes, flushed… cheeks…?

… Oh, damn it all.

"I'm sleeping outside again, aren't I?" she grumbled, already knowing the answer, and when Emma made an 'eep' noise and turned an even brighter red all doubts were removed.

"T-That's – "

"Save it," Celine sighed, shaking her head as she started on the milk again, now gladder than ever that Emma had taken the time to knit her that muffler in Ymir. "Shameless, the both of you."