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The street is just as Natsuo remembers it from last winter: identical houses lining both sides with neatly cut lawns and reserved, tasteful holiday decorations placed outside. A single house at the end of the block has a blow-up menorah on the lawn, all eight candles still "lit" despite Hanukkah being over already, and on the lawn right next door is a nativity scene where they're all wearing Santa hats. A brisk wind rushes past, blowing harshly against the few leaves still clinging to tree branches. Normally, the street is peaceful and quiet, a perfectly idealistic suburbia HGTV would kill for.
Right now, however, that quiet is replaced with his husband's wheezing.
If this were happening to anyone else, Natsuo would be right there with him, nearly on his knees from how hard he's laughing. But it's happening to him and no matter how much he loves his husband-- really, he does-- he also wants to throttle him.
"Are you almost done?" Natsuo asks, leaning back against the car as he levels an unimpressed look at Tomura.
"Wait, just... holy shit ….ten seconds," Tomura replies, barely able to contain his laughter long enough for the words to be intelligible.
Natsuo sighs but doesn't disagree, allowing Tomura another ten seconds to laugh before lightly kicking his calf. "Okay, are you ready to help me lie to my family now?" he asks.
Tomura takes a deep breath, unable to help a few more giggles as he stands. Upon seeing the unimpressed look on Natsuo’s face, he clears his throat and looks away. He calms down completely, leaving only the amused grin on his face, before looking back. “Okay. Ready now,” he says, “What does your family know?”
“I went to New York to work for an insurance company,” Natsuo tells him.
“And?”
“And that’s it.”
Tomura is quiet for a long moment before placing his hands on Natsuo’s shoulders. “So, we get to make up how we met completely from scratch?” he asks.
“...Yes.”
His husband’s eyes light up, mischief invading the previously amused grin and turning it into something troublesome. “How about I heroically saved you from walking into traffic because you were too busy looking at your phone?” he suggests.
Honestly, it’s not as bad as what Natsuo was expecting. It’s still unrealistic, though. “Nope. We met in a coffee shop.”
“Too boring. And cliche. Be creative. I was working as a volunteer firefighter an--”
“You’d be more believable as the arsonist, and I say that lovingly. I was your insurance agent and we hit it off.”
“Doesn’t your company have a rule against dating clients?”
“Okay, fine, I was leaving the company for lunch and literally ran into you outside.”
“Stop with the meet-cutes. We were both at the bank that got held at gunpoint, so we bonded over the trauma.”
“No.”
Tomura sighs and throws his hands up in defeat, frowning at Natsuo. “If you’re going to reject all my ideas, what’s the point?” he asks.
“If you’re going to keep giving such outlandish ones, we might as well just tell the truth,” Natsuo points out.
His husband snorts and leans against the hood of their car. “Sounds great, babe, tell your family about your job to assassinate me that went awry because you fell for my charms,” he says.
“You and I remember that very differently.”
It was less that Natsuo fell for Tomura’s charms and more that a common enemy popped up and they were forced to work together. Somehow, between running and fighting and an inexplicable number of video game references, he’d started enjoying Tomura’s company. After that, Natsuo couldn’t bring himself to complete his original mission. Instead, he somehow managed to convince his supervisors to let Tomura go so long as Natsuo took responsibility for whatever he did and occasionally answered the agency’s questions about other domestic threats.
Tomura waves off his words with a nonchalant, “My memory is better than yours.”
Natsuo doesn’t argue with him and sighs, rubbing the back of his neck as he thinks. “Uh, we met….at an arcade. I suck at those claw machine games and you just shoved me aside because there was a prize you wanted.”
He wouldn’t put it past his husband to push a little kid aside to play at an arcade, so it’s not too out of character for him. “Hmm, I suppose it works,” Tomura says, nodding once before asking, “How do you explain not telling your family we’ve been married for so long?”
Yeah, that once again complicates things. His brain already hurts from thinking this far, though, and at this point, he’d rather just go inside and get things over with. He’s always been good under pressure; surely, he can come up with a believable lie when the time comes.
“You want to wing it,” Tomura says, his eyes lighting up a little at the potential chaos he’s about to witness. He barely waits for Natsuo to nod before grabbing his hand and dragging him up to the front door of the Todoroki house.
Natsuo at least beats him to ringing the doorbell, glancing at his husband and quickly straightening his jacket before the door opens and Shouto stares at them. He looks between Natsuo and Tomura, glancing at their joined hands and narrowing his eyes slightly when he sees the ring on Natsuo’s left hand. Without giving either of them a chance to say anything, Shouto turns and shouts into the house, “Natsu got engaged!”
“Seriously?” Natsuo asks, grimacing when he hears something crash to the ground.
It’s quickly followed by Fuyumi appearing in the doorway, her eyes lit up and her smile bright. “Congratulations! When’s the wedding?” she asks, holding Shouto’s shoulder for balance as she leans forward to get a better look at Tomura.
Actually, Natsuo can run with this. Engagement is much easier to explain than marriage. Of course, Tomura doesn’t have the same thought as him, instead holding up his left hand to show off the matching ring and saying, “Five years ago.”
Shouto blinks, nods once, and turns around again. This time he shouts, “Natsu got married !”
From inside, something else crashes to the ground. This time, the sound is followed by his older brother’s gleeful voice shouting, “Holy fuck, this is the best Christmas ever!”
Natsuo groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. He can already see his father’s furious expression, his face turning red as he tries to hold back his initial instinct to blow a gasket. “Just let us in already,” he says, pushing his way past Shouto and Fuyumi. He drags Tomura in behind him and kicks off his shoes.
“Why’d you get married without us?” Shouto asks, closing the door and locking it. “Were you forced into it?”
“Whatever happened to greeting someone first?” Natsuo asks.
“Apologies,” Shouto says, clearing his throat before trying again, “Hello, Natsuo. Were you forced into marriage?”
“I love your family so far,” Tomura whispers to him, a gleeful expression on his face as he speaks. Then, he pulls away and very seriously says to Shouto, “I was the one forced into a marriage.”
“Natsuo!” Fuyumi exclaims, “You can’t force a marriage! Weren’t you raised better?”
“Why do you automatically assume I was the one who did the forcing?!”
Fuyumi looks at him and then slowly moves her gaze to Tomura. Between the two of them, Natsuo does look a bit healthier. He doesn’t spend every second holed up in a dark room staring at computer screens, after all.
Thankfully, Tomura decides to be merciful and says, “It was the situation, but we grew to love each other. The marriage is very happy now.”
Before Fuyumi or Shouto can respond, someone throws their arm around Natsuo’s shoulders, leaning on his back. “So,” Touya says, “I wasn’t expecting you to usurp my place as the family fuckup for Christmas. It’s the greatest gift you could’ve given me.”
“You’ve got a whole lifetime of fuckups for me to catch up on before I replace you,” Natsuo says, elbowing Touya’s ribs before shoving him off. He turns around to face him only to find his brother staring at Tomura with open surprise. When he looks at his husband, he sees the feeling is mutual. “Uh, is something wrong?”
Touya looks at him and asks, “Him? You had to marry this crusty piece of shit?”
“Hey! That’s my husband you’re talking about!” Natsuo says, glaring at Touya as he moves to stand between them.
“And your husband is fucking crusty!”
Tomura shifts closer to Natsuo’s back, smirking at Touya over his shoulder even as he says, “It’s fine, he’s always been this rude.”
“You two know each other?” Shouto asks, leaning back against the door like he’s settling in to enjoy the show.
“Unfortunately,” Tomura and Touya say, both of them looking disgusted at the synchronized answer.
It takes Natsuo all of two seconds before he understands and he frowns. “Through work?” he asks, looking at Tomura. When his husband shrugs, he looks at his brother. “You work with Tomura?”
“We run in a few of the same circles,” Touya says, waving a hand dismissively, as though he isn’t suddenly revealing to his brother that he’s been working with the country’s most wanted criminals and hackers for some unknown amount of time.
“I thought you were in IT,” Fuyumi says, tilting her head at Touya curiously.
“Yeah, everyone in IT knows and hates each other,” he replies easily.
IT. His brother is explaining it away as simply being in IT. Natsuo doesn’t know if it’s genius or idiotic to tell a lie so close to the truth. Either way, he kind of wants to scream out his frustrations.
“That can’t be true,” Shouto says.
“It is,” Tomura tells him, completely serious.
Shouto maintains his suspicion for all of two seconds before apparently deciding it isn’t worth it. Instead, he looks at Natsuo and asks, “How are you going to explain having a husband to Mom and Dad?”
He’d kind of forgotten about that between his siblings and the revelation that his older brother is probably a criminal. His mother is something he can handle; she’ll be sad but he can just say they haven’t had an actual wedding ceremony yet, so she still gets all the joy of helping with that. His father, however, is another matter.
Before Natsuo can try to come up with excuses, said father finally steps out of the kitchen. His face is covered in red blotches, his hair is disheveled like he just spent the past few minutes rubbing it while trying to calm himself, and the air of anger surrounding him is seriously crippled by the full-body apron designed to make the wearer look like one of Santa’s elves.
From over his shoulder, he hears Tomura snort, the sound quickly muffled by burying his face in Natsuo’s back. His shoulders begin to shake, though, and it takes every shred of control Natsuo has to not join him in laughing. “Uh, Merry Christmas?” he tries, smiling sheepishly at his father.
If anything, Enji’s face just gets redder and his nostrils flare like steam is about to come pouring out of them. The only thing that stops the anger is a gentle hand on his arm as Rei moves to stand in front of him. “Are you really married?” she asks.
“Well, yeah, but it’s only that we registered for the license,” Natsuo says, relieved that this much is actually true. Rei has always been good at sniffing out his lies. “We didn’t have a ceremony and I was gonna ask for your help planning one.”
Hearing that, his mother smiles brightly at the same time his father visibly deflates some. He takes a few deep breaths before placing a hand on Rei’s shoulder and saying, “You have a lot of explaining to do, boy.”
“Of course,” Natsuo agrees, relieved he isn’t in too deep shit. Things are finally starting to go smoothly, so there’s no better time to introduce his husband to everyone. “But, first, this is Tomura, my husband. Tomura, this is my father and mother, Enji and Rei, my sister Fuyumi, and my brother Shouto. And you already know Touya, apparently, so.”
Tomura moves to stand next to Natsuo instead of hiding behind him, nodding politely to Enji and Rei. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says, only Natsuo and Touya aware that he’s being uncharacteristically polite. “Natsuo has told me a lot about you.”
“It’s wonderful to meet you, too, dear,” Rei says, walking over and taking Tomura’s hands in her own. “I’ve heard almost nothing about you, so I’m looking forward to learning.”
Natsuo grimaces at the same time Shouto moves behind him and whispers, “Would you like some ice for that burn?”
Fuyumi barely manages to hide her laughter behind her hand while Touya doesn’t bother with pretenses at all, openly laughing as he ruffles Shouto’s hair. He pulls back before his hand can be smacked away.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Enji tells them, his voice rough but not as overbearing as it was before, “Dinner is almost ready so go set the table.”
Rei pulls Tomura towards the dining room, refusing to let him help since it’s his first time there, and Natsuo is held back by his father’s hand on his shoulder. They wait until his siblings have gone into the kitchen before Enji removes his hand. For a few seconds, neither of them speak. And then Natsuo sighs and says, “Sorry for the surprise.”
“Well, you’ve certainly made the holiday unforgettable,” Enji mutters, frowning slightly before shaking his head. “But… I’m glad you found someone.”
His hand ruffles Natsuo’s hair but he doesn’t jerk away like normal. Instead, he lets it happen and says, “Thanks. I’ll apologize to Mom after dinner.”
“Save it for tomorrow. For now, go set the table,” Enji tells him, pushing him towards the kitchen. Natsuo doesn’t turn around, but he could hear the slight smile in his father’s voice.
All things considered, this could have gone much worse. Natsuo lets out a quiet sigh of relief as he walks down the hall, unable to help a smile as he looks forward to the inevitable chaos of dinner.