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kusanagihaku · 3 months ago

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under this orange sky

⭢ haru x mc, 2.6k

“It’s perfect,” Haru says. His voice is thick with something honey-warm, the same kind of whiskey that burns your own lungs when you think about the stretch of a future with him. His fingers find yours, find the ring tucked neatly on the fourth finger of your left hand. “It’s perfect.” or: you try on wedding dresses with haru. on ao3 here / masterlist.

A twinkle sounds above your head as you slide the door closed behind you.

The sight that greets you is stunning – under the quiet piano music and soft warmth of the overhead spotlights sparkle huge wedding dresses, hung neatly on gold racks suspended from the ceiling. They shimmer as though moving, a silent symphony of lace and silk and chiffon that whispers into the background of the bridal shop.

You feel a little out of place; the air around the dresses alone smells more expensive than your entire wardrobe. You should have expected it, of course, seeing as to how Romeo was the one who booked you the appointment, but the luxury that swirls around your feet with every step is unfamiliar all the same.

“Ma’am?” A well-dressed staff member appears at your elbow. He bows, a stiff ninety degrees, before looking at you enquiringly.

“I, um,” you fumble to unlock your phone, “have an appointment at three?”

The staff member peers at your appointment confirmation text before bowing again and retreating into the forest of wedding dresses. You wonder if he has ever gotten lost in them.

You would, if left here alone – the white dresses hung up next to you tower well above your head. The ones closest to you are studded with pearls, an opulent showering that melts into creamy silk the closer it gets to the floor. The ones further down the rack are lined with tiny white beads; they swirl around the bodice of the dress as if around a snow-capped mountain, then trail off into a lace train that brushes the floor.

They are all absolutely beautiful.

You exhale. When Romeo said he would pay for your dress as a wedding gift, you never in your wildest dreams would have imagined dresses like these.

(Only the best for Harry and you, Romeo sniffed, and everyone present had pretended it was in disdain and not at all related to the shine of happy tears in his eyes. I’ll call up an old friend– here–)

Before you can think too much about the price tags, however, an old lady slightly shorter than yourself emerges from the snowy mountains.

Her hair is as white as the clothes that surround her, and her glasses, delicately gold-framed, sparkle as she bows slightly in greeting. The smile she gives you when you return the formality is warm.

“Welcome,” she says. Her voice is stronger than you expect. “Romeo has already sent over your measurements.”

“Oh,” you say, faintly, and follow her into the gaping maw of white.

You kind of wish Haru was with you.

Even though he’d (wisely) keep his mouth shut about how the contents of half the store could fund the entirety of Jabberwock for a year, he’d reach for your hand still, a steady rock in this stream of unfamiliarity. He’d smile at you, all soft sun and spring, then turn to face your first wedding dress appointment with the same expression he uses to face all new experiences – with a confident tilt of chin and resolute squaring of shoulders.

But alas, Haru is still hurtling his way over on the Galaxy Express, having been held back by some Darkwick administrator or another over issues with the Jabberwock caretaking, and so you have to face this on your own.

She leads you to a small clearing in the middle of the store. There is a glass garden table set up with pillowy chairs, and you recognise the initials on the grey file sitting on its surface to be Haru’s and your own.

The madame gestures for you to sit. She reaches into the grey file, but instead of pulling out a lookbook or a page of silhouettes like you expect, she removes a blank sheet of paper and sets it between you.

“I find that it helps me to imagine what the wedding will be like,” she says, mildly, uncapping a blue fountain pen. “That way I can pick out exactly what you need, you know?”

You nod. You don’t quite know.

She peers kindly at you. “Where is the wedding going to be?”

“A… a vineyard.”

Or at least, that’s the closest word you can find to describe Rui’s backyard. He’d moved to a rural part of the country upon graduation, far enough away from other humans yet close enough to a Galaxy Express station for you to visit regularly. The garden he tends to now is thrice the size of what he used to care for in Obscuary, with an apothecary taking up a sizable amount of land next to it, and he keeps up his business of growing anomalous plants for medicinal or bar-related consumption.

He volunteered a space off the side of his garden the moment Haru broke the news – what better place for a spring wedding? he had grinned, then laughed when Romeo complained about the possibility of getting mud all over his best leather shoes.

“Ooh,” the madame trills, and notes a squiggle down. “Indoors or outdoors?”

“Outdoors,” you say, and she looks up.

“Have you checked the weather?”

Your mind flashes to lilac hair and pink eyes and the biggest hug he gave you and Haru when he found out, and you laugh. “It’ll be clear.”

The madame claps in delight. “Beautiful. Have you decided on the flower arrangements?”

You haven’t, actually, but an image blooms almost instantly when you close your eyes. “Sunflowers.”

She raises her eyebrows.

Before you can elaborate, however, a chime echoes throughout the store. There is an instant, almost imperceptible change in the atmosphere, a voltaic thrum that smooths itself over your skin and settles into a familiar comfort. You barely have time to turn before he appears, all windswept and warmth, breathless at the crook of your elbow.

“Sorry I’m late,” Haru murmurs. He smells like the sun, like the electric hum of earth, sweet and solid and yours, and you can’t help the unfurl of your smile at the kiss he presses into your hair as he slides into the seat next to you.

“We just began,” the madame assures him. She eyes the way he scrapes his chair slightly closer to yours. “Now, how did you meet?”

A smile bubbles up on Haru’s face, then. He takes your hand in his. “In school.”

Days of Darkwick past flash through your mind, but here is what you see–

Meadows of pink and rolling green. Skies of blue and black and grey and everything in between, and oceans twice as rich. Paths that wind through forests and fields, through hills and pastures, through sunset and sunrise and the beats of your heart.

Through the beats of his heart, echoed with your head on his chest, on nights littered with stars and kisses.

For someone who has spent the better part of your first year cursed there is little you recall beyond the soft-bright of Haru’s laugh.

“He was the busiest captain alive,” you say, instead. “I was assigned to help his house once or twice.”

“You were assigned to save my ass once or twice,” Haru corrects, then amends, “Ended up saving my life once or twice, too.”

You elbow him, grinning; the returning beam he throws you sends a honey-thick swell through your heart.

The madame notes something else down in an indecipherable squiggle. “And when did you realise you’d fallen in love?”

You blink. That’s not quite a question you were expecting–

“Oh,” Haru laughs. “Almost instantly.”

You flush, but the sparkle of Haru’s laugh settles into the air between you, nestles itself into the intertwine of your fingers. His thumb strokes the back of your hand.

“There was this field we used to have to cross,” he says, “to get from the main campus to my dorm.”

(You remember it. You could always see the red mushroom-top of Jabberwock from across the grass.)

“When you have a distance like that, y’know, the first thing you’d think of is how much you want to get across it as fast as you can. Just to save time. I used to, uh, run across the field just to get across faster.” Haru half-turns to face you, then, still sheepish at the memory. His smile is pillow-soft, fond, a quiet adoration that soaks into the clouds of his vowels. “But after we met… I found myself walking across it more often. I’d always be thinking of how nice it would be to slow down, to be able to walk and look at the wildflowers with her.”

Oh, and the number of times you had – the number of times Haru had taken your hand in his, steady and sweet, pointed out the violets and golds and pinks and creams painting the backdrops of your evenings. The number of times he’d bumped his shoulder into yours, leaning in so close you could see where his eyelashes brushed his cheeks, where the humidity curled the ends of his hair against his forehead. The number of times he’d kissed you in the middle of that field, the number of times you’d pull away to catch the blush under his faint freckles bloom into a smile brighter than the sun.

You’d fallen in love much slower, of course, as much as the circumstances had allowed, but you’ve long lost count of the number of times you’d decided, standing in that sea of gold-green and anchored only by his hand on your jaw, that no matter how fast Haru may run, you’d do anything to follow him.

Your sun, your light. To love Haru, you think, is to be his personal sunflower.

The madame does not wait for you to respond. She rises, silently, setting her pen down on the table before retreating into walls of white.

Haru visibly relaxes into your side. His lips brush your temple as you lean into his warmth. “Romeo sure picked an expensive place, huh?”

You snort. “Understatement. How was work?”

Haru chortles. He flips your entwined hands over, so that the back of your hand rests on his thigh. “Same old. Had to show the new Jabberwock vice-captain how to feed the aquatics. Again.”

You hum in sympathy. “It’s always a steep learning curve.”

“Good thing I’m a patient teacher,” Haru muses, exasperated amusement colouring his voice.

It reminds you so much of the time he tried to train the Capybus that you laugh, too, leaning up to press a kiss to his smile. His eyes crinkle up further, crow’s feet deepening when you break apart, but he doesn’t pull away. “Missed you.”

“You saw me yesterday.”

Haru presses his nose to yours. “I still missed you.”

You can’t help the flutter of your heart; even after all this time, the sincerity behind Haru’s every word still slip-slides a giddiness under your skin. You squeeze his hand. “Good thing you’ll see me every night for the rest of your life.”

The laugh that bubbles out of Haru is dizzy and golden and free, tender with adoration. “Lucky me.”

He presses another quick kiss to your lips, before you are broken apart by a large bronze hanger being wheeled out from the forest of wedding dresses. On it is a dust-bag sleek in silver, hung neatly on its metal frame with only a bit of white floating out its bottom.

“This design has been sitting in my drafts for a while,” the madame says. She adjusts her glasses, and peers over them at you. “It’s been waiting for the right person, and well… after all I’ve heard… I think it might be you.”

You share a glance with Haru before standing. For some reason you feel more nervous than you did coming in, like whatever she is offering you is more valuable than you could ever imagine.

A staff member materialises from your left, and hefts the dustbag into a corner you failed to notice before. She unzips it on a small white podium she has set up in front of three angled mirrors.

Another staff member materialises from your right, tugging almond curtains around where she gestures for you to stand.

“You can undress here,” she whispers, before leaving you with the too-loud hammer of your heart.

You barely see what the wedding dress puddled underneath your feet looks like before the madame, standing between you and the mirror, tugs it up for you, sliding the silk up and cinching it in the right places. The fabric feels like air on your skin, light and soft; as her hands work with pins and tiny safety clips you catch glimpses of tiny pearls and gold thread.

But oh, when she steps away from the mirror, when they pull back the curtains, when you finally do see it–

It’s beautiful.

The lace covering the front of the dress is studded with white sequins and pearls, forming gently weaved branches of ginkgo leaves and five-petaled flowers. It winds its way from the sweetheart neckline to your torso and wraps around you to the back of the dress. Underneath the lace mesh is a glitter layer of chiffon, resting almost innocently over a nearly-cream silk; spilling down from your waistline are fine threads of gold.

The effect is almost iridescent. It turns the artificial warmth of the store lights into diamonds glinting off the surface of a lake, into sunlight winking off drops of dew in the morning.

As you move everything sparkles.

The strands catches the light as you shift – even though you first notice the ginkgo leaves and sequins, the bodice melts into a shimmer that is hard to pull your eyes away from. It glints a bright gold under the lights, gold like a kiss, gold like lips pressed to your temple to your cheek to your lips. Gold like solar flare through the fire-red of Haru’s hair, gold like the scent of sun in the crook of his neck.

Gold like a dawn that breaks without either of you noticing, like a sunrise that steals over you when you’re asleep in Haru’s arms. Gold like a promise hummed into your hair, like a vow murmured wordless into the tips of your fingers. Gold like the inside of your ribcage at the end of Haru’s laugh.

You hear a faint gasp from the madame, and a louder one from Haru. When your eyes meet his in the mirror you find him pressing his fist into his mouth, eyes wet with tears.

His name is loaded on the tip of your tongue, and yet you are almost afraid to break the magic of the moment, of Haru’s eyes trained on you, tears sparkling on the thick of his eyelashes. You twist slightly to face him, hand slightly outstretched; he takes an involuntary step forward, and another, and another, hands reaching out for yours.

As you turn you catch sight of the train of the gown. The lace at the edge of the train is different this time, a field of wildflowers embroidered with white beads that shimmer with movement. They wink at you when you turn; you blink, and suddenly you are back in the Jabberwock fields with Haru, bathed in the gold of sunset with grass and glittering wildflowers underfoot. There is wind in your hair and you are laughing at something or another, Haru’s loud cackle in your ear and mushroom-top of the dorm looming in the distance. His hand is in yours, warm and solid. Your heart is in his, sure and sweet, one step away from the frozen edge of forever.

“My, my,” the madame is saying, “I knew it would be perfect–“ but then Haru is there, cradling your jaw, tipping his forehead onto yours.

It is.

#tokyo debunker #haru sagara #tokyo debunker x reader #for the three (3) haru lovers on my dash #inspired by his wedding card... the moment i saw it i gasped...#didn't help that i recently accompanied a friend to go try on wedding dresses #might turn this into a wedding card series if my brain rots enough!! we'll see #anyway hehe didn't manage to fit it in but #gingko leaves are supposed to represent resilience endurange hope in adversity etc etc #and i just think that's very mc and haru!!!#this was a bit rushed but putting this out before the hotarubi chapter drops bc once it does i will not be talking about anything else #SORRY I REALISED NO MENTIONS OF PEEKABOO NOOOO #lin writes

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