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hannahssimblr · 4 days ago

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I am helping Gitte in the kitchen. The extractor fan roars, and everywhere there are spills, a toppled bag of sugar, a sticky puddle of redcurrant jelly, bay leaves, onion skins and needles of rosemary litter the floor underfoot. I open the oven to a billowing waft of steam. “I think the thing is ready.”

“The potatoes or the pork?”

“The pork thing. What’s it called again?”

“We can call it roast pork for you.”

“Yes, but what’s the proper name?”

Gitte chuckles and pulls an oven glove over her hand. “We say Flæskesteg, but you don’t need to.”

“Flæskesteg,” I murmur it, and Astrid’s sisters laugh. They can’t contain themselves each time I attempt something in Danish. “Oh, it’s wrong!” they’ll cry, delighted by my ineptitude. “Not like that,” and they’ll make me repeat a word, four, fives times until it is right. It feels like blind luck. My ear cannot pick up on the tiny discrepancies, and I won’t remember the right way in ten seconds, but I enjoy entertaining them. The Christmas-eve-dinner clown.

“Now say ‘rødgrød med fløde’,” says Mia, the middle sister, taking a knife to the red cabbage, and behind her comes an exasperated groan from Astrid. “God, stop bringing that up. He cannot say it. How long will it be funny to you?”

“It’s alright,” I interject swiftly. “It’s good for me to learn. If I want to really know who Astrid is, then I should know her in her native language, so… every little helps.”

“How romantic,” says Pernille, the eldest, distracted as she pries her eight-month-old’s fist from her earring. “And what have you learned so far?”

I grin, self-indulgent. “Vi snakkes ved.”

Everyone applauds, and I bow.

“That’s just something he’s heard me say on the phone,” says Astrid in this apologetic voice, as though personally responsible for my total incapacity for languages. “I’ve been teaching him more, but many of the sounds are difficult.”

“Like teaching a baby, then,” Mia says. “You go through the alphabet sound by sound.”

I smile at the infant behind her, drool all over his chin while Pernille bounces him on her hip. “We’re in this together, you and me. Right, Felix?”

He gurgles.

“Ah, my phone,” Pernille says, reaching for her pocket. The baby squirms. “Hold him, won’t you, Astrid?”

My girlfriend pales. “Oh, well–”

“Just for a moment. Take him.”

Astrid holds him at arm’s length. Her chubby, giggling nephew kicks the feet buttoned inside his bodysuit. She grimaces. “Hey.”

Mia calls after Pernille. “It’s Jacob?”

“Ha! No,” she shoulders through the door and into the hallway.

Gitte purses her lips. “Hold him correctly, Astrid. With his head supported.”

“I don’t know how,” she whines. “I’m not good with babies. They don’t like me.”

“Nonsense.”

“They don’t,” Mia snipes. “They are born with an instinct about her.”

“Oh, give him to me,” Gitte abandons her saucepan and marches to retrieve the baby. “Look, like this,” she says, holding him against her chest. “Really, Astrid, it is not difficult.”

She shrugs. “Okay, sorry. I just don’t know.” She joins me in the kitchen, muttering to herself as she washes her hands in the sink. Her movements are short and jerky, yanking open the drawer, pots and pans clanging as she pulls one free. Whack onto the stove, ignitor clicking, blue flame roaring to life, but I am happy watching her. She’s more real here, in Denmark, than she has ever seemed before. Astrid, with that pouty face, talking back to her mother. The tone of voice she uses — she never uses that around me. In Berlin, she is so cool and indifferent, keeps the world at an arm’s length, impassive, unphased, but here she is something else completely.

Yesterday, when we arrived, I zeroed in immediately on a childhood photo hung in the hallway. Little Astrid with a shock of white hair, sitting in a paddling pool in a pink swimming costume. “Oh my God, look!” I said. “Proof you used to be a child. I’ve rumbled you, Larsen. You thought you had me fooled.”

“Oh, stop,” she said. “I hate that picture. I’ll go through the house and take them all down if you can’t contain your excitement.”

I found more later anyway, in the study, among the books on shelves in the living room. Casual ones, candids of her finger painting at the kitchen table, or scowling in a photography studio at eleven, maybe twelve, that awkward age where a child becomes conscious of themselves, gap toothed with braces, shrinking away from the lens. I wanted to take a photo on my phone just to prove it was real.

“I hope you aren’t missing your family too much today,” Pernille says, at dinner, now, the table flanked on three sides by windows so coated in condensation from our cooking that they have obscured the expansive view of the fjord. At four, the sun is mostly gone, and we sit in candlelight.

“No, I’m delighted to be here, actually.” I scoop potatoes onto my plate. “Christmas at home is always the same thing, and I get fairly tired of it. It’s pretty cool to learn about other traditions.”

“Well, your family will miss you, I’m sure,” says Gitte, and I nod. “Yes, I’m sure they will.”

At the head of the table, in his high chair, Felix gurgles with delight. His pureed food smeared on his face, on his bib and on the tray. He decides to eat it off without his hands, and Pernille tuts, “Oh, Felix,” she says, and soothes him with gentle Danish as she attacks him with a wet wipe. Gitte watches on with adoration.

“Your first Christmas with a baby in the house for quite a while,” I comment.

“Ah!” she says. “Yes. I love babies. They are wonderful to have around.”

“Lucky for us, you stopped at three,” Mia says. “This house hardly fit us as it was.”

“It fit the babies, but maybe not quite the personalities.”

I’ve got Felix’s attention now, pulling stupid faces at him. My peekaboo skills excite him so much he is bouncing around in his seat, hands waving about like he wants to applaud me but doesn’t know how yet. I add in some sound effects to up the ante, all sorts of “yoop!” noises to accompany the visual comedy. He laughs with sheer glee. Joyful little shrieks.

“See?” Astrid says, throwing an exasperated hand. “I do that for him, and he doesn’t like it. He just looks away from me, completely bored.”

“He knows you don’t mean it. And by the way, you don’t do that.” Mia circles the tines of her fork in my direction. “Definitely not so energetically.”

“Well, I’ve made faces for him. I’ve tried.”

“You’ve never made a face so expressive in your whole life. Maybe you’ve gone so far as to grant him a weak smile with your mouth closed, but that is all.”

“I have certainly smiled, Mia. I know how to smile.”

“Well, I am sure you are used to it being enough to get a man’s attention, but you might have to actually try with an infant.”

Gitte shuts her eyes and clutches her forehead as though wrestling a migraine. “Please don’t argue. Not today.”

I roll a potato around the centre of my plate. “If it makes you feel better, it’s kind of something you learn. If you haven’t been around babies that much, then I can imagine it’s hard to know what to do. To be honest, I kind of know babies, so.”

Pernille, then. “You have babies in your family?”

“No, not right now, but my sister is quite a lot younger, so I’m used to the whole baby thing. Actually, sometimes I still kind of forget she’s not a baby, like, I used to be giving her bottles and spooning pureed food into her mouth and now she’s, like, painting her nails and going to the cinema without parental supervision.”

“And what age?”

“She turned eleven in September, so there’s nine years between us.”

“She was a surprise baby?” says Mia, and I huff out a laugh. “Well, no. I was the surprise. She was the plan.”

“Oh.”

“It’s fine. I’m not, like, upset about being accidental. It’s just the facts.”

“So, are your parents married?”

Astrid interrupts before I can reply. “It’s not polite to ask personal questions. Jude doesn’t want to talk about that.”

I hesitate, awkward about being spoken for, but shrug at Mia as the conversation moves swiftly on. This has become a pattern for Astrid and I, skirting around personal things, but never delving in deeply for fear of, I don’t know what. Vulnerability? Becoming too emotional about it all? I know the same level of detail about her life as she knows about mine. I know why her father isn’t here, about the acrimonious divorce, the other marriage, and the other child. There was the nameless stepfather, too, “our wicked stepfather,” come and gone within three years, leaving nothing much behind but a contempt in the sisters for American canned-laughter comedy shows and motorcycle enthusiasts. I don’t know how Astrid feels about that. Not really, but assume she doesn’t care. There are reasons, naturally, for her mutual contempt for Mia. But they are mysterious, sisterly reasons, too tedious to share. Astrid doesn’t bother to explain herself. Doesn’t need me on her side, when she already knows she’s right.

Beginning // Prev // Next

I want to thank the amazing @sirianasims for her help during this entire arc. I knew hardly anything about Denmark, and knew I had written myself into a corner when I decided to making Astrid Danish in Lucky Girl just for the hell of it - I never predicted a visit to her home. For teaching me about Christmas traditions and recipes, common baby names, tidbits of language, and helping me to understand what it feels like to be in Denmark, this arc would not be remotely accurate without Siri's guidance <3

#lucky boy 2011 #almost 2012 though woo #remember what Evie was doing in her timeline?#fighting with her family and then attacking kelly in the pub #lmaoo mess #very excited for this arc anyway #because i think it's interesting #plenty of relationship stuff #and what is this story about but relationships

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lovedrunkheadcanons · 1 year ago

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(Arranged Marriage Fic) Read on AO3

RATED M

The clock struck five in the morning. Contaminated test tubes and beakers were wet in the sink. A bright green bar nearing 65% completion was loading on a large computer screen surrounded by monitors. Shoko was busy in her lab, observing a single drop of blood, splotched between two thin slides under a beaming microscope. She hadn't left work since yesterday. You’d think after all these years hunkered down in the school’s basement like an obsessive recluse, she’d be used to the loneliness. She could already hear poor Ghost yowling for his breakfast, but there was no room for pause. The blood sample results from the New National Theater had finally come back, but Shoko was only interested in one.

The jujutsu doctor’s lips drew together in concentration, suspending the tail end of a depleted cigarette. Screw resolutions. This was far more important than her respiratory health. Her findings so far were not as she’d hoped. The red blood cell count was starkly lesser than last week. She reckoned about a third of them had vitiated in that timeframe, even with the aid of reverse curse technique, but how? How? The discovery troubled her. She would start from scratch again if need be. After all, there was still more testing to be done.

Exhausted, Shoko wiped the beads of sweat off her brow and smothered her depleted cigarette in the ashtray. The computer monitors increased to 66%. She just prayed her hypothesis did not hold the truth.

Nanami Kento removed the strainer of brewed oolong leaves from the Royal Copenhagen he had sitting on a tray; a teapot and two cups with matching saucers, Blue Fluted Full Lace. They were heirlooms once owned by his late great uncle, who subsequently died of a stroke three years ago; another Henriksen lost. He had no wife or children and his mother didn’t want them, despite their value, so she bequeathed the china over to him. Not that he ever had a reason to use it. The full set of plates and fine tableware cost more than his apartment lease. He mostly kept the novelties for decoration. And perhaps nostalgia.

But not today.

Today he had a guest.

Nanami closed the lid on his uncle’s Copenhagen teapot and lifted the tray to walk back inside the living room of his small, one-bedroom sized apartment. It wasn’t the grandest place in the world, nor the cheapest. He could afford a much bigger unit if he wished, yet the space was well accommodated. It was furnished with all the essentials befitting of a bachelor; functional kitchen appliances, a washing machine and dryer, a brand new air conditioning system, and modern furniture. He had picked the farthest unit down the hall, so he wouldn’t be subjected to the loud elevator cranking up and down the many floors. It allowed him some peace and quiet in this bustling, wayward city known as Tokyo, granted, if you ignored the endless stream of ambulance sirens, blaring jumbotrons, and cries for help.

The part-time Jujutsu sorcerer entered his living room and acknowledged his guest sitting on the sofa.

“I apologize for bringing you out here like I did. I’m usually not this spontaneous.”

Nanami set the tray down along the coffee table and handed his guest a teacup. Hannah smiled at her host warmly and took the blue and white china from his hand. The porcelain clashed with the pink roses on her dress.

“Not at all, it’s perfectly alright,” she assured him. “I hear you’ve been busy with work, so this is me intruding on your time.” She looked down at the coffee table. “Anyway, I hope you like the rødgrød. Satoru mentioned you were Danish, so...”

Nanami sat down on the leather armchair, opposite her, and glanced at the small portable crockpot she had brought atop the table. Rødgrød med fløde was as much part of the Danish diet as cheeseburgers and fries were to the American. People preferred eating the berry porridge with custard or poured over freshly baked bread. Everyone loved it. Nanami hadn’t tasted the dessert since he was a young boy visiting his grandparents on holiday. Hannah had used raspberries and cherries for hers; exactly how his mormor used to make it. The tarter, the better.

Well, there were those waves of nostalgia hitting him again. He’d sample a bite later.

Satoru had dropped his wife off at his place that afternoon and hurried to go “run some errands.” Whatever that meant. Nanami had no choice but to leave the office. As ever, the Six Eyed moron liked to make things difficult and keep his whereabouts elusive, in addition to getting his lineage wrong.

“A quarter Danish,” Nanami clarified, loosening the lavender silk tie around his neck. He hadn’t been allotted time to change out of his business attire. “My grandfather was born and raised in Denmark, however my grandmother is Swedish.”

Hannah looked positively delighted.

“Ah, a Swede and a Dane,” she exclaimed. It would explain his blond hair. “That’s quite a match. The closest I got to living in Denmark was Germany. Did your grandparents ever alternate between countries?”

“For a time,” the quarter Dane replied. “But my grandmother has lived alone in Aarhus since my grandfather’s passing. I still get Christmas cards from her every year. She’ll be ninety-one this October.”

Unable to stop herself, Hannah heard the word “Christmas” and blurted the next question out loud without thinking.

“Oh. So you’re Christian?”

She could see the tug pull on the corner of his lips, barely noticeable to the untrained eye, and instantly regretted it. He was so cool, you’d think he hadn’t reacted at all. The quarter Dane shook his head. “Mom had me baptized in the Lutheran church as a baby to appease my grandfather, but the buck stopped there. She wasn’t very religious and I myself hold no beliefs.”

Hannah felt her cheeks burn hotter than the tea she was sipping, flushed with embarrassment. Her shoulders sagged. Of course he wasn’t Christian. What a foolish thing to expect? She felt awkward.

“I see,” she said rather sheepishly. “Please, forgive me. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

Nanami nodded understandingly. He thought it wasn’t dumb of her to ask, but with introductions out of the way, they had official matters to attend to.

“Satoru said you had some information about a possible Sukuna finger.”

Hannah nervously tucked a strand of long auburn hair behind her ear, lowering the expensive Copenhagen in her lap.

“Yes,” she said, swallowing her tea and straightening her bad posture. “I think I know where one is.”

Nanami leaned back against the armchair and crossed his legs, hands folded patiently in his lap. His eyes never wavered.

“I’m listening.”

Hannah coughed. “Well, you see,” she began, trying to decide where to start. “I think nothing of them at first. My dreams - er visions - are often quite,” she searched for the adjective, “sporadic, if you know what I mean. But lately I’ve been having a recurring dream.”

“A recurring dream.” Nanami quirked a pencil thin, blond eyebrow. “I’m guessing that’s a dead giveaway?”

Hannah let slip a dry laugh. “You’d be correct. In my experience, whenever a dream is recurring, it’s usually indicative of a vision.”

“What has the vision shown you?”

“It’s hard to describe,” she continued, squinting her eyes as though aiming for a moving target that refused to stay still. “I don’t know why, but it always begins with me…drowning. I’m ever so slowly sinking towards the bottom.” She closed her eyes for a second, trying to imagine the nightmare in her mind. “It’s very dark and murky, so I can’t see anything. I’m terrified out of my wits. I try to kick and swim my way back up to the surface, except someone, or rather something, has me by the ankles and won’t let go. I fight and struggle to free myself, but I can’t. It isn’t until my lungs give out that I finally look down and…” she stopped for a second.

“Go on,” Nanami coaxed gently, waiting in silence. He wasn’t going to force her to talk, if she didn’t want to.

“Eyes,” the seer said, own eyes flitting open. She took a much needed breath from the horrid memory. “Four glowing, scarlet eyes staring at me from the black. That’s it. That’s all I see. Then the vision pivots.”

“Pivots?”

Hannah took a sip of oolong before humming in agreement. “I’m shown a film reel of things. Places, I think. I can’t remember what they are, but there is one feature that stands out from all the rest.”

Nanami also took a sip of tea. “Like what?”

Hannah placed her teacup on the coffee table and used her fingers to “draw” an invisible picture for him. “A massive red o-torii, floating above a large body of water.”

The quarter Dane’s brow narrowed ever so slightly. He knew what place she was referring to.

“Itsukushima Shrine,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” Hannah sighed. “Satoru showed me a picture of it when I told him. It’s the exact same gate. He then mentioned you were working on a secret case and that I should speak to you immediately.”

Well, it’s not so secret anymore, Nanami thought, holding his tongue. Now he understood why Satoru had been so adamant the two of them talk, but hell, what a pain in the ass. The white haired dolt could’ve explained all this on the phone, or typed a quick text, instead of wasting he and his wife’s time. Even though she was a lovely person, both inside and out. Reminded him a bit like Haibara; her kindness and selflessness towards others.

But a tad miffed by this new flux of information, Nanami rose from his leather chair, teacup in hand, and walked over to the large window overlooking Shibuya Crossing, the thousands of city nerdowells commuting below, crammed like sardines.

“In the last four weeks, a total of eighteen people have been reported missing from the shrine,” he said, staring monotonously out the apartment window. “Evidence suggests it’s curse related. I and a few other sorcerers have been called in to investigate the disturbance.”

“Then perhaps this is your lucky break,” Hannah added, hoping to shed some light on the subject.

The quasi-business man continued looking out the apartment, almost like he wasn’t listening (but of course he was). “Itsukushima Shrine is a popular tourist destination in Miyajima. We’ll be fighting heavy crowds if we search during the day. Curse activity tends to worsen at night, but then there’s high and low tide to contest with. Your presence might also be needed. Could get dangerous.” He was listing all the potential roadblocks ahead.

“Can’t we disperse the crowds at least?” was Hannah’s suggestion. “Close the shrine off to tourists?”

Nanami hummed deeply in thought. Things were never that simple. He at last turned away from the window. “You’re sure this is a vision?”

Hannah shrugged. “More sure than not.”

“And you think a Sukuna finger is hiding somewhere at the bottom of Hiroshima Bay?”

The seer frowned. She felt her confidence wane at his scrutiny. “It’s the only lead I have.”

Confined to his thoughts, Nanami walked back towards the coffee table, relinquishing his empty teacup and saucer, and plopped back down in the leather chair, hand in his chin. A disconcerted expression became him, though his eyes were fixed on the Royal Copenhagen. Hannah thought he looked far older than his real age said on paper. He was handsome, she decided, with golden blonde hair and mixed Scandinavian features, but in a battle-hardened, wise kind of way. Forever pensive and stoic, like he had crossed the river Styx and managed to survive the harrowing ordeal, but only just so. Even without the bloody cleaver knife in his hand from that night at the opera, she could tell he wasn’t much for taking days and nights off. Kento Nanami was certainly a man operating under a lot of stress.

“I can’t name anyone on the top of my head with a water curse technique,” he vexed tiredly, observing the porcelain tea set. “A diving team will have to be dispatched. Damn. It’s always a risk when we get non-sorcerers involved.”

“But maybe we won’t have to,” Hannah said, complexion brightening. “Because as it were, I know someone who might be able to help us. That is, if we can persuade her.”

Nanami’s hand fell to his lap, eyes raised. “Her?”

Hannah rested her teacup on the coffee table and hurriedly rummaged through her dress pocket for a folded piece of paper. She offered it to him.

“Her.”

Feeling pessimistic, Nanami took the paper and slowly opened it. His eyes landed on the contact’s name above, and thus the part-time jujutsu sorcerer’s face tensed into a shrewd scowl. He exhaled loudly through his nose.

A bowl of that rødgrød didn’t seem like such a bad fix all of a sudden.

Neither did some brandy.

Chapter Contents

#gojo takes a wife #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk fanfic #gojo x oc #satoru gojo #nanami kento #jujutsu kaisen nanami #satoru x oc #romance #gojo satoru

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