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Naminé was not good at little things. She was beautiful, witty beyond measure, possessed of great eloquence and the world’s most endless reservoir of patience. She was not, apparently, good at making scrambled eggs.
Roxas discovered this when he walked out to find the kitchen on fire at seven in the morning.
His hair was sticking up at all ends and his t-shirt was across Naminé’s shoulders instead of his own. She looked as composed as ever, diligently attempting to put out the fire that triggered their smoke alarm with the same look she must’ve used to confront Larxene whenever she was in a mood.
Roxas watched his girlfriend struggle for just enough time that he knew she didn’t have it under control and then stepped up behind her to wrap her up in his arms from the rear. His fingers slipped over her hips as he pulled her close, nestled his neck against her shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek.
“Roxas,” she greeted him, perfectly calm despite the fire that was consuming their stove.
“G’mornin,” he managed. “Makin’ eggs?”
“I am trying my best.”
Roxas kissed her on the cheek and stepped, shirtless, up to the figurative plate. He didn’t know how she set fire to everything. He wasn’t sure it mattered. With a wave of his hand, he cast a ray of frost over the flames and washed it all away. Spokes of ice consumed the burnt pan, the scorched stove-eye, and even the burnt eggs in the skillet. He stared down at them while he scratched his tummy.
Naminé was as dignified as ever despite the hectic situation. In an effort to save her image, the most regal woman he knew cleared her throat as if she were about to give him the world’s most necessary advice.
“Surprise,” she managed, tone flat.
“You were cooking me breakfast?”
“In bed, no less,” Naminé confirmed.
“Want to try again?”
Roxas turned back to look at her with his hands at his side. She looked a sunset in the midmorning, stripped except for the gray and white t-shirt hanging off of her shoulders. It was too long for her, its hem covering the borders of her thighs, its sleeves down to her elbows. Roxas wasn’t all that much taller than she was, but he was a lot thicker.
Naminé was a wisp of smoke — a vein of gold burnt into human skin.
Her arm snaked behind her back to wind in against her other elbow. Perhaps doing her best to look cute, or maybe managing it incidentally, she offered him a feeble smile.
“So long as you help.”
Roxas couldn’t help the loud chortle that burst out of him. He pulled her in for a peck on the lips and ignored the pout that followed as he cleared the ice from the stovetop. It took a few minutes to get it all done; in that endeavor, Naminé was infinitely more helpful. Riku was teaching her magic, and though she hadn’t learned much yet, she could definitely melt a little ice.
He held out a bowl to collect the water while she thawed everything out with a careful hand and the most focused expression he’d ever seen. When it was all over with, he poured it down the sink and grabbed some butter out of the fridge. The eggs were already gathered on the countertop.
It took a little over five minutes to scramble and cook them up. One minute for the butter to melt across the skillet, maybe thirty seconds to crack the eggs.
“Thank you,” she whispered, when they were sitting together on the counter’s edge and enjoying their scrambled eggs. She typically liked her eggs poached instead of scrambled, but the breakfast was supposed to be for him in the first place. She hadn’t meant for him to do everything.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m sorry you had to help make your own breakfast. You always do the cooking.”
“I like cooking,” he laughed.
“I wanted to do something nice for you.”
“You always do nice things for me,” Roxas replied, now looking a little worried. She was poking at her eggs, so fragile that she might join them on the plate. Roxas put his food down and rubbed a hand across her lower back. He traced out little, serene circles under the fabric of his shirt, relishing in the smooth of her spine and the little crease that marked its resting place.
“You know Naminé,” he continued. “You don’t need to do things like this to make me happy.”
“I know,” she managed.
Naminé put her plate next to his. Her fingers wound together over her lap, thumbs atwiddle.
“It’s just… you do so many little things for me, I wanted to do something for you to show that I appreciate it.”
Roxas smiled.
“Just thinking about me shows you care. I do those things for you because I love you, and because I know you’d do those things for me if you wanted to,” he said. “But you don’t have to. You show your love in other ways.”
Naminé didn’t seem so convinced. “Do I?”
“Well, you don’t really compliment me or anything, and sure, I guess you don’t really buy me things either… but you’re there for me. You always were, even when nobody else was,” Roxas explained.
“You trusted me with the truth when my best friend wouldn’t. It’s because of you that I’m even alive. You literally escaped an evil space wizard for me.”
“More of an evil space vizier,” Naminé whispered.
DiZ was not much of a wizard.
“Radiant Garden wanted you to be their princess, and you told them no,” Roxas continued. “Why?”
“I wanted to spend time with you instead.”
Naminé finally looked up from her lap to meet Roxas’s blue eyes. In the kitchen that morning, he looked so much like Sora. So much happier than he’d been even a year ago, when Naminé first joined him above the usual spot. So much more alive than two summers before, when he didn’t know the truth, when he was condemned to fade. It never occurred to her just how important she was to him.
Just how different his life might be without her.
Roxas loved her for that.
“You’re so much sweeter than you think,” Roxas chuckled, rubbing her back soft and slow. “You do all these worldchanging things for me all the time. If I were the one who set fire to the stove, I bet you’d have thrown yourself on the fire to make sure I didn’t burn.”
“I would have probably tried put it out first,” Naminé admitted.
“And scolded me for burning the house down.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be so careless.”
Roxas playfully flicked her forehead and Naminé let out a loud ah!
When he kissed the sore spot and pulled away, she was already smiling again. Roxas was good at grounding her. When she got carried away in the weeds, he could always pull her back. He was determined like that — stubborn, fixed.
No, that might not have been it…
Reliable, perhaps.
With a contented sigh, Naminé relaxed.
“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s get back in bed. It’s too late for breakfast, but I’m not hungry anymore anyway.”
“That may be because we just ate,” she pointed out, giggling a little.
“Well, that, and you can’t burn the house down from the bedroom.”
“Riku has been teaching me to light candles with fire magic, you know.”
“Is that a threat?”
Naminé pushed him off the countertop by the arm and then sidled by him, turning so that her raindrop hair fell like gold ink around her red cheeks. It all caught fire in the twilight cast through the kitchen window, and for the thousandth time, Roxas fell head over heels in love with his girlfriend.
“Perhaps. There is, I suppose, only one way find out.”