Chapter Text
One of the servants was sobbing in the kitchen again. You didn't need to ask why. Lately it had become a daily occurrence.
Your husband's doctor had been experimenting with new treatments, and each one only seemed to excel in providing a little more hope to be shattered.
Making your way through your house, your senses became cloyed with the overpowering perfume of incense. It promised healing and protection from evil, but in a more practical way, it covered the scent of sickness.
"Get out!" Muzan snarled from his futon as you stepped into his room. His long black hair was spilling down his back and shoulders like streaks of ink, his face pallid and covered in a sheen of sweat. "I don't want pity."
"Well, good, because I'm not here to give it to you," you said, stepping between the shattered pieces of a priceless vase littered across the floor. You'd loved that vase. It was a wedding gift.
"Then why are you here?"
"Do I need an excuse to see my husband?"
He said nothing, but averted his eyes as you crouched at the end of his futon.
Your brow knitted when you saw the blood on the sheets. "Your hands…"
Curling his fingers to try to cover the bleeding wounds, he made a disdainful "tch" sound and shook his head. "It's nothing."
You got up and went to fetch his wash basin and two rolls of bandages. "Well, that 'nothing' is staining the sheets–"
"To hell with the sheets." He glared at you as if daring you to challenge him. "Curse these fucking sheets. Curse this bed. Curse those good for nothing servants who tiptoe around me like their steps will shatter my body. Curse the fucking doctor and curse you too."
It took him a moment to catch his breath; a moment where you simply looked back at him and let him get his anger out. In his position you would be angry too. Hell, you were angry.
Finally, Muzan took a deeper breath and held out his bleeding hands, permitting you to tend to them.
Thankfully the wounds were not too severe. In fact, as you cleaned them it seemed absurd that such shallow cuts could bleed as much as they had.
Your eyes met his briefly as you bandaged his palms. "What did the vase do to anger you this time?"
His frown lessened. "I'm just… tired of this."
"I know."
There was nothing more you could say that Muzan hadn't heard a thousand times throughout his life. Everyone was sorry. Everyone said they would pray for him. Everyone knew someone who had been cured of similar illnesses by putting a little extra ginger in their tea, or meditating daily, or taking walks, or sleeping with an onion beside their bed, or a thousand other absurd and pointless "cures."
He had never admitted it, and likely never would, but you suspected that the only reason Muzan tolerated your company was because you spoke to him like a person, instead of some delicate and unpredictable thing.
Muzan looked down at his hands as you tied off the bandage. "Alright, your wifely fussing is done for the day. Leave me in peace."
"Absolutely not. You haven't performed a single husbandly duty in return." Brushing your thumbs across the backs of his wrists, you bowed your head and gently kissed the peaks of his knuckles.
A quiet chuckle finally emerged from him as he caresses the curvature of your cheek with his fingertips. "You only married me because you want my money."
"No, I was forced to marry you because my parents want your money."
His lips tilted into a faint smirk. "Is that so? Well, they probably won't have to wait long."
A sudden ache rose in your chest. Though the day you would have to be without him loomed ever closer, it wasn't something you were ready to confront yet. "Don't say that."
"Why not? It's the truth. Nothing that fraudulent doctor tries is working. I'm getting worse." He lowered his gaze to the sheets, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet. "Send the servants in to change these."
"The servants are cowering in the kitchen," you said, pulling the sheets from his futon and bundling them in your arms. "I'll go and wash them–"
"No." His hand on your arm halted you, his grip weak and unsteady. "Don't go. Don't… just stay a moment."
There was a side to Muzan that he only permitted you to see. Behind the snarls and the bad temper there was a frustrated and frightened man, desperate for an end to his pain.
Before your marriage, your parents had prepared you, telling you that Muzan had no redeeming qualities besides wealth. He was rude, cruel, humorless, and he was sick. The doctors did not expect he would make it past twenty, and then you would be a wealthy young widow with enough riches to give her parents a comfortable life. You were assured you wouldn't care about his passing; Muzan was a monster and the world was better off without him.
But as you lay on the futon beside him, wrapping your arms around his fragile frame, there was only one thing you would change about your husband.
"I wish I could take this pain from you," you whispered, stroking his hair back from his brow. "I wish I could endure it for you."
He closed his eyes and relaxed into your caress. "I wouldn't want that."
While his eyes were closed, you leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss on the crease between his eyebrows, and then another on the bridge of his nose. There was nothing monstrous about him.
"Do you want to try to sit in the garden with me tomorrow? The flowers are all in bloom and the sunlight might do you some good– at least for your soul."
"I want to. I don't know if I'll have the strength–"
"Then I'll carry you on my back," you smiled as the corner of his lip curled ever so slightly.
"You would, wouldn't you? You damned stubborn headed woman." He chuckled softly, raising his hand to rest his fingers on your cheek. "When I finally face the gods and demand to know what the fuck they were thinking when they cursed me with this life, you will be their rebuttal. They'll say ah, yes Muzan, we gave you a weak body and a shit heart, but we also gave you that insane woman who refused to leave you and loved you more than you deserve to be loved."
You laughed and Muzan smiled fully for the first time that day. Lying there on the futon, surrounded by shattered porcelain, you held each other; your adoration like an island of calm amid a sea of pain.
The love between you was patient, quiet, and always whispered like a secret. Your husband's delicate fingers wrapped around yours, bringing your hand to his lips.
His breaths were gentle and warm against your skin as he kissed your fingertips. "I'm sorry I can't love you the way you deserve to be–"
"Don't. You love me in your way and I love you in mine. One day we'll be reborn and find each other again, and we'll do all the things we can't do in this life."
He hummed softly. "I doubt I'll be reborn. I'm probably going to hell."
"Then I'll go to hell with you and we'll perform unspeakable acts of passion in the flames."
He opened his eyes just enough for you to see the look of mock disdain in them. "Such a vulgar wife."
"Oh please, the filth that drips from your vicious tongue."
A smirk titled his lips. "You once said my tongue was my only redeeming feature."
"Hah, I did?"
"You did." He closed his eyes and let his lips linger on the pulse point of your wrist. "The next good day I have, I'll remind you of just how redeeming my tongue can be. You can be the one lying here helpless while your husband devours you."
This man. This terrible, wonderful man. You could love him for eons if the world would only let you.
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The cicadas fell suddenly silent, snapping you from your sleep. It took you a moment to remember where you were, that you had fallen asleep in Muzan's arms on his futon. He had been nestled against your breast, your fingers gliding through the dark waves of his hair.
But now night pressed against the windows. You had slept through the entire evening and Muzan was no longer beside you.
The hairs on the back of your neck prickled, the fear that something was watching you from the bottom of the bed.
And then you saw him.
Muzan stood tall, straight-backed and firm, as if illness had never curved his posture. His smile was a sickle, his once deep, dark eyes now crimson. As crimson as the blood staining his nightshirt.
"Muzan?"
The air pulsed with danger. Every muscle and sinew in your body tensed as your nerves fired off warnings. This was not your husband. This was something else, neither human nor beast, wearing the visage of the man you loved.
"What are you?"
Those were the last words you ever spoke.