#marriage problems

Your gaze lands on him washing a dish in the sink, its porcelain details flying over your head. He looks so focused, like it's the most important thing in the world. A mission, one he cannot afford to fail. You glance back at the flowers, watching them nearly collapse under their own weight, supported only by the stalks of their neighbors. 

Why does he do this? The favors, the gifts? You only properly see each other once a week, and even that gets cut short. You could live with it before. A temporary arrangement. A barrier to deal with together. At least until the two of you reached a level of affluence satisfactory to him. 

Clearly, you had been mistaken.

Most days it's as though he never reached home. The only signs of his existence touching your skin being folded laundry. Shining floors. A neat pile of french toast covered by a plate with your name on it. Is it to somehow buy your lenience at the long hours in an empty house? To ensure your tolerance of his love for a paycheck over his love for you?

Does he think you're that easy? That cheap?

"Do you like them?"

His voice is soft. So soft you almost miss it in the churning soup of your mind. Your eyes reach his, dark meeting light. 

He dries his hands, breaking the momentary connection between you. Wrist exposing a band of beige where his watch should be. "The flowers, I mean."

You don't respond, unsure what to say. Agreeing would mean you've once again been bought by his tactics. That you didn't see through his clear act of apology, his silent pressure for repeated forgiveness. Denying would hurt him, maybe even cause him to pull away further, deepening the growing ravine within these walls. A ravine that would soon become impassable, no matter how large the bridge, how advanced the strategy.

But agreeing would mean you've been bought.

You look away from the shrine encasing the hyacinths, choosing to focus on the cold hardwood touching your feet. On the pale grey fabric of the couch wrapping beneath you, foil around half-consumed produce.

"They're…fine."

Coward.

It isn't in you. To speak scathing words wrapped in thorns of bitterness. Claw at concrete until your fingers bleed with desperation for what you want. The best you can do is layer a lie upon another, hoping the rug won't leak the caked dust swept beneath it. 

Your fingers curl on the fabric of your skirt, printed taffeta crumpling upon your lap. The floor creaks as he exits the kitchen, making his presence louder than it already is. You watch him pause from the corner of your eye as he presses his weight on a floorboard. He somewhat laughs, mumbling to himself—or is it to you?—about needing to fix that. Yet another thing to do on his ever growing list of tasks. 

Are you too just another task?

As he sits beside you, you can't help but sigh, ugly feelings lacing the sound, escaping from their vault. No, not a vault. A sieve, mistakenly identified simply because it too is made of metal. It too is a cage.

He stills, body frozen at your apparent emotion. As though unsure how to proceed. As if you're a time bomb he found beneath his bed, something to be dealt with slowly. Cautiously.

You want him to ask what is wrong so you can lie that I'm fine, so you can go back to this charade, this game the two of you have created, this push and pull, like the tides and the moon, like gusts of wind and billowing sheets–

He takes your hand instead, halting your thoughts. It's his eyes that are the moon now, not your characters in this convoluted game. Wide, shining, their depths swirling with a myriad of emotion. Hope, fear, uncertainty, certainty. Like an oxymoron of sorts come to life.

"You're upset."

So that's the certainty.

You scoff lightly, forcing your tone into one of humour. One you'd use if you were telling a joke. The words 'You're wrong' spin through your head and turn to a thick gel in your mouth. You try your usual 'I'm fine,' the sentence crumbling on your lips. 

His eyes grow even more concerned, pleading with you to tell him. To just speak. To break through the sense of your chest constricting in on itself, the cage wrapping tighter and tighter around your lungs and heart. Threatening to squeeze and leave them a crimson mess floating within your torso, unfixable by even the most skilled surgeon.

You close your eyes—the weight of his hand heavy on yours—burdened by the choice before you: to speak or to continue the play. The sound of his ticking watch wrapped in your fingers echoes between the two of you, the only voice in the room. The sole judge, executioner's blade high in the air. 

If, when you choose to look at the world, when you choose to look at the weighing time in your palm, it is even, then you shall speak. Odd, and your silence will be kept within the confines of your ribs. Kept today, tomorrow, the decade after that. Buried in the ashes to be scattered in the wind. A secret nobody shall hear.

~~~

To be a Demon Slayer, you must be ready to sacrifice everything to protect those who cannot protect themselves. What a well known fact this was to you, for you had not one but all four your spouses were a part of the Demon Slayer Corps., your husband being the Sound Hashira even. Tengen took his job very seriously, as did Suma, Hinatsuru, and Makio, enough that they were gone more often than not, exterminating some demon terrorizing the good people of Japan with style as he liked to say. You were proud to call them your spouses, heart always beaming with fond pride at hearing their stories on how they saved civilians and lower ranked demon slayers alike, and even more happy that they always returned home to you.

However, since your run-in with that village demon nearly nine months ago now, it had become harder for you to cope with their absence, to watch them leave from the gates whilst swallowing the bitter pill of reality that reminded you that it may be the last time you see them. Your fears increased with every departure, anxiety damn near suffocating you as you struggled to function, to find rhythm once again in your life even after all of this time. All you wanted was for them to come and stay, to have a peaceful civilian full of laughter and their bubbly personalities, knowing that all five of you were safe and sound within the wisteria walls of the estate.

These feelings seemed to have increased rapidly since Tanjiro, Nezuko, Zenitsu, and Inosuke stayed at your home, Nezuko lighting your inner desire once again to settle down and have a child of your own, much like Hikari first did. You were a month shy of your nineteenth birthday, the same age your mother became pregnant with your eldest siblings Tsuna and Tsunamaru, and a piece of you wanted the ability to mother a child that looked just like your husband with a headful of silver-white locks. Tengen had been quite adamant on not starting a family until he and your shared wives retired, believing it to be “undesirably flashy” to leave his children at home whilst being out and about slaughtering demons. It was honestly frustrating to you, having to be left at home while they ventured together and being denied the possibility of filling that loneliness with a wanted child simply because Tengen wished to wait till they all retired. When was that going to be though? It could be years before they decided to settle into civilian life, to no longer race across the countryside en-route to their next mission even though they dispatched a demon just hours before. So much of your life was on hold because of their occupation and it left you feeling upset and unsatisfied more days than not, especially when Hikari was unable to work alongside you throughout the day.

You let out a sigh of defeat as you finished mending a pair of Tengen’s pants, tying the knot with a bat of an eye and placing it to the side. It had been a righteously beautiful day outside, one you refused to spend inside wallowing in your feelings. Instead, you had gotten dressed and went to work, cleaning up your entire garden and more; you tended to the koi pond, Hinatsuru’s meditation garden, picked up and organized the training field, and tidied up your shared bedroom and craft room as well. To someone who knew very little of you, they would simply believe that you were an active person who chose to keep busy and make good use of their time and resources. However, anyone with any inkling of your personality and quirks knew that when stressed or upset, you clean, organized, and hurried about even after everything had been taken care of. Those were the days that all the kakushi and a majority of the staff steered clear of you, aside from those closest to you, they being Nao-san, Nana-san, and Kiki-san. Never did you snap but you were often either kurt or lost within the sea of your mind, reminiscing sweet memories or longing to make new ones with your spouses and the friends you had come to make since Tengen brought you home. Since Nezuko and Tanjiro’s meeting with the widely-dreaded Muzan Kibutsuji it seemed that demons were on the move, with all of the hashira constantly away from their estates nowadays. Your bi-weekly girls’ days with the Love and Insect hashiras, the Butterfly Girls, and your wives had become obsolete in the past few months, no one having the time to sit down over tea and homemade treats while talking simple gossip.

With your spouses’ gone, your sparse social time now non-existent, and the needling baby fever increasing, you felt quite out of sorts in matters possible. Your mood seemed to be worsening by the day and no matter what you or anyone else did to lift it, it only made everything worse. Nana-san and Kiki-san had attempted to whittle your feelings and thoughts from you, seeming to be worried about your increasingly troubling behavior and attitude and you would simply brush them away and seal up the cracks in the mask of cheerful indifference you wore nowadays.

Perched on the edge of the back engawa, you were doing your best to soothe your sad, heavy thoughts by busying yourself with clothes that needed mending, specifically Tengen’s uniform at the moment. Gliding the needle to and fro without a word, you watched as your mending gradually came to fruition, having been working on this particularly nasty gash on the left pant leg for nearly an hour now. You had been tempted to scrap the bottoms altogether, with the gash being so large, but you had ultimately decided against it and gotten to work. Much to your annoyance, you had gotten a late start to your day, waking well past the sunrise, and it felt as if you were behind on everything since you roused from your heavy slumber. Today also was a bit hard to swallow solely due to the fact that it had been nearly three weeks since you last saw any of your spouses, Makio having left to assist Tengen, Hinatsuru, and Suma who had already taken off to the east for yet another mission. That meant much of your downtime had been spent alone and longing for at least one of their attentions’, damn near crying as you laid alone underneath your shared gigantic comforter in a bed most definitely not made from a singular individual.

A soft breeze danced by your sitting form as you successfully tied the finishing knot, promptly sticking the needle into the pin cushion resting at your left side and adding your current spool of thread to the small basket beside it. Once that was finished, you lifted the trousers from where they laid in your lap, taking your handiwork in with a calculating gaze to ensure you had done well.

“Your work is remarkable as ever, spirit flower.”

A squeak of surprise left your lips as you jumped to your feet, eyes growing wide at the sight of your husband’s hulking figure standing just a few feet from your current position, a fond smirk sitting on his sculpted face.

“Tengen, you scared me!” Swatting at the man in retribution, you found your wrist being caught without a speck of effort, a pout sitting on your painted lips as a smirk sat on Tengen’s.

The Sound Hashira pulled your wrist towards his large frame, causing your own body to fall into his own, his face only inches away from your own. “My apologies, my sweet one, but I just couldn’t resist myself. Your reactions are always a spectacle to behold!”

Huffing in indignation, you turned your face from the man, “You’re just lucky I finished the stitching of your trousers or I could have pricked myself!”

“I believe someone of your prestigious pedigree could manage to avoid such an unflashy incident, spirit flower,” Calloused fingers came to gently take hold of your chin, lovingly guide your face to once again gaze at Tengen’s handsome one, fond adoration deep as the ocean present in his hypnotizing pools of cerise. “You are stunning as ever, my love, just as any wife of mine could be. I can only hope you haven’t worked yourself too hard in my absence, hmm?”

It was well-known to everyone who knew of your existence that neither Tengen or the girls were overly pleased with how hard you worked yourself sometimes, the four of them often arguing for you to rest more and allow the staff to handle estate matters. Such protective behavior increased following your attack but you had simply thanked them for expressing their concerns and went about your typical business. Your response to their objections was something that still proved to be a sore subject that was rarely broached in hopes of avoiding an ultimate conflict between the five of you. However, it seemed that Tengen was now willing to open Pandora’s Box.

You chose to humor him instead of addressing the jab he had just thrown, playfully rolling your eyes with a chuckle, moving to touch the tip of his nose with your own. “I minded my limits, Tengen. You don’t need to worry so much, love.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree, spirit flower,” Head dipping down to your neck, Tengen’s teeth playfully biting at the flesh below your well-sculpted jaw, enticing a wave of warm pleasure to thrum within your thighs.

A gasp of your husband’s name escaped your name at the feeling, body melting willingly into his chest as your head flew backwards, allowing the shinobi full access to your neck, something Tengen wasted no time in taking advantage of.

Teeth nipping at the sweet spot between your shoulder and neck, Tengen’s chest rumbled with want. “Such a beautiful image of exquisiteness you are, spirit flower. Been fantasizing about you since my departure, being to taste your gorgeous body on my tongue, to feel you like this.”

“What a good girl you are.” His right hand came to seductively fondle your left breast, his mouth coming to rest at the shell of your ear whilst pleasured whimpers escaped your muffled lips. “Show your daddy how good you are, spirit flower, let me hear your beautiful symphony of wantonness.”

“Hnn, Tengen, please!”

You moved to press your lips against the man’s very own, tongues wrestling for dominance which the hashira ultimately obtained, adjusting your bodies so your hips came to straddle him from where he laid on the engawa. His member met your core deliciously, inciting a high pitched moan from your lips when he grounded it against your pelvis just right.

Another moan escaped you as you pulled your lips away, voice shaking with pleasure as the man returned his attention to your neck. “Want you, Tengen, want your baby!”

What had been an intense fire of lustful pleasure seemed to dwindle down to a mere spark in just a second, Tengen freezing beneath you and in turn halting his ministrations on your neck.

“What did you just say?”

Not even noticing what you had said in your lust-drunken state, you looked to your husband in worry. “Tengen, what is it?”

“What did you say?” The air grew tense with his question, your walls instantly rising in possible need of defense when the man refused to make eye contact with you.

Sitting up, you forced your urges from the forefront of your mind and dug within the rich earth of your subconscious for whatever Tengen could be suggesting and it was in that moment that realization hit you like a kunai to the heart. You froze from your place atop your husband, mouth hanging wide in horror that you had let something so damning escape your lips-!

“I-it was nothing, Tengen, just some foreplay, that’s all!” Your veins froze at seeing your husband your husband unable to look at you, his face bearing not even a shred of any emotion, something that only occurred when the man was incredibly disturbed. “Tengen?”

His hands came to grasp your waist in a way you could not describe as harshly or softly, an even medium of urgency present in his movements as he set you to the side without a word. “Tengen please, I-!”

Your words fell short at seeing the usually exuberant man enter the house without a word, never turning to look at your messily dressed person, tears pricking at the edges of your (e/c) irises, desperation slamming against the bars of your ribcage.

Scrambling to your feet, you fervently raced to stop the man with an outstretched hand, your fingers coming to wrap around his left wrist in anxious despair. “Tengen wait! Just let me explain-!”

“You don’t need to explain anything.”

Time seemed to come to a halt around you, your gaze never leaving Tengen’s rigid body, internally screaming for him to turn around, to just give you damn moment to try to mend the rift-! Much to your relief, the man slowly turned to face you, but the moment his fuchsia orbs met yours you knew there was nothing you could do.

“I understand that remaining home alone without myself or our wives can grow lonesome, Y/N. The life you presently live is not one I wish to provide you in the slightest, so cold and deplorable.” He ignored your attempts to object, continuing forward with raging bitterness on his tongue. “But it frustrates me that you dare risk bringing a child, one of our flesh and blood into this demon-infested world, simply to quell your loneliness! You have seen what the world has to offer individuals incapable of defending themselves like yourself! It is already a constant burden on my shoulders to keep innocent civilians safe, let alone keep you out of trouble when you continually disregard my orders! I am sorry your waste of a father gave you to me as payment, that I cannot provide the stability and family you desperately crave! Perhaps I should have left you to a husband that could satisfy your wants since it seems I nor Hinatsuru, Makio, or Suma aren’t enough for you!”

The silence that followed his violent was deafening. Tears cascaded down the plains of your (s/c) cheeks in a downpour, shaking hands clutched tightly to your chest as you found your world crumbling beneath your feet. This is what your husband truly thought of you, a person so egotistical and shallow that they would only care about themselves and no one else? That you were so problematic that Tengen had pondered returning you to the man who neglected and abused you for years, the very same man he swore to kill if he were ever to see him again? Were you selfish for being lonely, for wanting a child that possessed Tengen’s silvery locks and your (e/c) eyes, for dreaming of a day where your spouses’ came home permanently with demons eradicated? Did the girls view you in the same light?

Tengen was lightly panting from his rant as you simply stared at him, unable to look away from the man you loved, the one who doted on you and your wives without a second thought. The same man that loved you supposedly though it seemed he simply tolerated you, seeing how much of a burden you were to him and his wives. He was already so tense from his work, body weighed down by countless responsibilities and guilt-ridden thoughts, the shinobi didn’t need you adding to the fire nipping at his heels.

Quiet as a mouse, you stepped away, curling into yourself in an attempt to get away from the Sound Hashira. “I am sorry to have been such a burden to you, Tengen-sama. It was never my intention to cause you nor your wives so much grief. I-I’ll ensure my things are packed and ready for transport by sundown, so as to not add to your building responsibilities, my lord.”

You slipped past the man before he could utter another word, hurrying inside without abandon and down the hall to your designated craft room. The door was urgently flung open and the moment it was eased closed, and your body was bathed within darkness, emotion heavy sobs threatened to pour from your lips like a waterfall, unable to be contained. Just one slip up had cost you everything: your husband, your wives, your home, your heart. Why could you just not keep your mouth shut?!

Unable to answer the question on the tip of your tongue, you quietly padded over to the closet and slid the door aside, revealing the item you never thought you would need again. The leather of the travel bag was coated in thick dust, testifying how long it had been since you had need of it, it having been three years since you arrived at the Uzui Estate with it in hand. How terrified you had been, so scared to upset your new husband, to do something wrong that would enact his wrath just as it always did your father’s, and you had finally done just that.

Your hands moved without thought, your consciousness elsewhere as you packed only the essentials, not wanting to weigh down your bag too much in case the journey ahead of you was long and arduous. By the time you completed the task at hand, the sun had come to sit in the center of the sky, signifying that it was now noon, which meant you had plenty of time to leave and seek shelter before the sun set.

Taking your travel bag in hand, you stood to your feet and exited the room as quietly as possible, sliding it shut behind issue. No one came across your path as you drifted silently down the estate halls and out the front door, the only sound being the soft chatter emanating from kitchen at the end of the back hallway. Your heart slammed aggressively within its prison as you traveled down the stone path with wet cheeks, never looking back at the life you were leaving behind. All you could do upon slipping out the front gate and onto the main road was that Makio, Suma, and Hinatsuru would forgive you for leaving without saying goodbye one last time. Where you were going, you had no idea. However, you did know that you could no longer cause the loves of your life so much anguish, and with that in mind, you began your trek into the unknown with a broken heart and a shattered marriage in tow.

~~~