Ranko sighed serenely, curled up sidewise in a plush blue velvet chair. Her bare feet were on the seat of the chair next to her butt, and she was hugging her knees with her chin resting on them. The Pacific Ocean lapped lazily against the beach just outside the open sliding glass door leading to their fourth story balcony, but Ranko’s back was to it, instead staring at the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Her sleeping wife.
Just the thought of it gave her shivers, though part of that could have been due to what she was wearing. From a functional standpoint, the nightgown might as well not have been there at all; its sheer white material left absolutely nothing to the imagination and it provided no warmth whatsoever, but she had chosen it for form over function. It was only purchased to serve one purpose, and it had done so gloriously. The accompanying white satin panties, with the word bride stamped on the front in gold foil, that lay on the floor more than a meter from the bed served as further evidence that the evening had gone exactly to plan. Well, except for the parts that had gone even better, Ranko thought with a furious blush.
Ranko breathed deep of the sea air through the open balcony door. It was nearly eleven in the morning, and Ranko knew that normally Akane would be furious with herself for sleeping so late, but yesterday had been a long day, capped by an even longer night, and Ranko did not begrudge her a moment of rest. She’d not been separated from Akane for longer than it took to use the restroom since the start of their wedding ceremony, and while she wanted nothing more in the world than to bask in the company of the woman that would be her partner for the rest of her days, she was grateful for a little bit of quiet time to process all the ways that her life had turned upside down in the last forty-eight hours.
She played idly with her wedding ring on her finger, listening to the seagulls squawk outside the window in their excitement over the discovery of a fish for lunch.
Any one of the life-changing events she’d experienced since Friday afternoon would have been enough to cause her present state of contemplation, but all of them at once? Gods, she was like a kid at Christmas, and she wasn’t sure which shiny package of new, exciting feelings she wanted to investigate first.
She smiled peacefully at her resting bride as she thought about what Akane’s father had done for her. Her father, she reminded herself. That was a term she could use again, for the first time in years, without bile in her throat. She was a Tendo now, not just in her heart, but on paper, too. It didn’t feel like when she first arrived at the Phoenix and crafted herself a whole new identity, but in a sense, it almost did. In truth, it felt more like Soun and Akane had backed a cement truck up to her life and filled in all the holes under the surface of her backstory to give her a stronger foundation to build a future on.
She’d never even considered that her absence as Ranko Tendo from any family birth registry would hold her back on getting things like a passport. While college was a dream she could have resigned herself to give up on, she would have been far more hard-pressed to surrender another fantasy she’d long held in her heart. She often dreamed of a day when she could whisk Akane off to some fancy place like Paris, buy her whatever she wanted, and show her the sights. And then, at the end of the night, after some romantic, candlelit dinner in a little bistro cafe somewhere, Akane would be seated front and center in some packed arena while Ranko gave the concert of her life for her number one fan, in music and in life, and invited twenty or thirty thousand other people to watch too. That dream would have been dashed as well, had it not been for Akane and Soun’s intervention, and Ranko would have never even known it until it was gone.
But now, she knew that by the time she got home, Soun would have already filed the form with the city government, and within a week or two, she would get an official letter in the mail certifying the backdated birthright Soun had bestowed upon her. From there, it was just a matter of a photocopy machine and a stamp, and she would be enrolled in Minato University for next year. She had no idea what she’d decide to study, but that was of almost no consequence to her. She was going to get to stand next to Akane, all cute, and cheer on the love of her life. If that had been her whole lot in life - if she’d been born for no other purpose than to stand in Akane’s shadow and encourage her to success in every endeavor she undertook - she could have died happy. She couldn’t imagine thinking that way back when she knew a selfish kid named Ranma Saotome, but after all this time, watching Akane sacrifice again and again to propel Ranko to heights she could never have dared to dream, Ranko felt like it was the least she could do in return.
She opened up the little black notebook with her band’s logo on the cover that lay on the nightstand, flipping past the lyrics of There Are No Words until she reached a blank page. Pulling the disposable ballpoint pen out of the spiral binding, she drew two pairs of kanji characters. And then she did it again, this time adding tiny little flourishes and concentrating on every detail of her handwriting. She smiled almost giddily down at the repeated characters. Yep. That’s me! Orchid girl. Ranko Tendo. Forget the dress, and the makeup, and the absolutely stunning custom engraving that would be wrapped around her finger for the rest of her life. Forget the fact that for reasons unknown, hot water no longer threatened to thrust her back into a form she’d long left behind. Even her name itself felt prettier than it did the day before yesterday. She blushed with a dreamy smile as she wrote out her name again, remembering something Akane had said about an hour after the impromptu adoption ceremony where Ranko had chosen the new form of her name. She’d called Ranko her flower girl, and it sent a little flutter through Ranko’s heart even just remembering it now.
Gods, how her stomach would have turned three years ago at the thought of being called such a thing. Or the thought of, really, anything that had happened yesterday. Her wedding dress. Slow dancing with the man she now called her father. Her face flushed crimson as she adjusted herself in her chair, the soreness in her lower body reminding her of certain details of the evening in the hotel room after the wedding that would certainly have broken the mind of Ranma Saotome. But Ranma Saotome was long gone, and now, through the benevolence of some force or happenstance she could not name or explain, his ghost could never return to haunt her again. Not in body, not in identity, and not in blood. No longer did she feel like everything that made her her had a giant asterisk on it, some fine print that would unravel the whole thing if somebody ever got curious enough to look just a little closer.
She grinned, remembering the lyrics to one of her newest songs - an anthem she had written to encourage thousands of girls to reach for more and take command of their own destinies. Never did she expect that she could avail herself of her own advice less than a month later. She whispered the words almost breathlessly to herself, ensuring they could not wake her sleeping wife.
“So, let this be your ‘I want it’ song, and shout it to the rafters. You have waited far too long to start your happy ever after…”
She flipped to a new blank page in her little notebook, reminding herself to grab a new one from the merch display behind the service bar of the Phoenix when she got home. This one was nearly spent, the majority of it having fallen casualty to the futile development of There Are No Words.
I really am living in a fairy tale all my own, Ranko thought with a brighter smile than the girl she saw in the mirror two years ago would have ever thought possible. I mean, I had the magic curse, the heroic love interest, the secret identity to keep me hidden from dastardly villains, the singing about every little thing I feel, the dresses… fuck, the dresses…” She allowed herself a single noiseless chuckle. Even a wicked stepmother, sorta, except she was only wicked for a little while. And to top it off, I had the magical wedding, where everything almost went wrong but somehow ended up just perfect in the end.
Okay, Akane. You win. I concede. I am a princess after all, and you are my happily ever after.
She jotted down a few characters, musing on how it felt, all of it. Dragging herself across the threshold of the Phoenix to discover a family that loved and accepted her. Going back to school. Meeting the band, and everything they’d done and had yet to do together. And Akane, gods. Akane. Any one of those things was too much of a blessing to believe, but all of them, in two years? Hell, in one lifetime? And then she got to officially become a Tendo, and she got to become Akane’s wife, and she got to potentially leave the specter of her masculinity behind forever - all of it just yesterday?
If someone wrote the story, nobody would ever believe it, she thought with a grateful sigh.
She barely noticed she was still writing, but when she had finally ran out of blank pages in the notebook, she beamed at what she had written. Oh, yeah, she thought with a grin. This is the one. I know it.
Ranko peeked over the spine of her spiral notebook at the slight stirring on the king-sized bed. Closing it ever so carefully and quietly, she set the notebook and pen down on the nightstand and watched. There was another stir, and another, and each one sent a jolt of excitement into Ranko’s heart like she was a puppy waiting for her morning walk. Without waiting for Akane to open her eyes, she crawled onto the bed, nuzzling herself under Akane’s right arm and curling up in a tight ball beside her. She purred happily as she felt Akane’s wrist bend around her shoulder at the edge of consciousness, and burrowed even closer to her wife.
Home. This is home. Right here, with you, Akane. Forever. No girl could ever ask for more.
“Mmm…” Ranko shivered as her eyes fluttered open, her breath catching in her throat. She lolled her head to the side, her mouth hanging slightly open as she looked up into Akane’s loving gaze. Akane leaned over her wife, holding one of the white roses from the floral arrangement made from their combined bouquets like a paintbrush and dragging it slowly across Ranko’s skin. The barely-there lingerie Ranko had worn to bed provided little protection against the excruciatingly silky petals of the flower that made its way down her neck and between her breasts.
“Good morning, beautiful,” Akane said quietly, a contented smile painted across her lips. “I love you.”
Ranko did not answer in words, but she did nod her head with a quiet purr and flash Akane a soft smile of her own. She arched her back slightly in involuntary response to the flower’s touch as it reached her navel and reversed direction. Held captive as she was, on the knife’s edge between sensibility and surrender, she could do naught but shiver and stare pleadingly into Akane’s eyes.
“After you came back to bed, you fell asleep cuddling with me. I didn’t have the heart to wake you when I got up; you were just so cute all curled up like that.” Akane simpered fawningly over her partner. “But I decided I couldn’t wait to see you any more.”
“He… hi.” Ranko opened and closed her hand in an attempt to wave, her nerves short-circuiting under the tantalizing torture of Akane’s teasing. After all of the attention she had received last night, her nerves screamed for touch even more than they usually did.
Akane giggled brightly. “Hi to you too, princess. So, what do you want to do with the first day of forever? We could head down to the beach, or try to find something to eat…” She bit her lip coyly as the rose dipped for the briefest of moments below Ranko’s waist. “Or, maybe I’ll just do this for a few more hours.”
Ranko whined loudly at the suggestion, and Akane couldn’t tell if she was begging for mercy, or for more. Ranko wasn’t entirely sure, either. All that existed in her universe in that moment was a single white rose and the face of the woman she loved.
“Oh, alright,” Akane said with a bright giggle in mock exasperation. “I suppose if I’m going to ask you a question, I should probably let you speak long enough to answer it. So, what would you like to do today, Mrs. Tendo?” She lifted the rose from Ranko’s skin, and after taking a few seconds to reboot her nervous system in an effort to regain control of it, Ranko rolled onto her side and wrapped her arms around Akane’s forearm.
“I want to be your wife today.”
With a blush and a nod, Akane laid the rose on Ranko’s pillow next to her head. “You’re gonna do that every day from now on, my love.”
Ranko purred happily, kissing Akane’s wrist as she clung on to her forearm. “I can’t wait.” She had no idea what was available to do in the little beach town Kage had delivered them to for their honeymoon. While she did have one idea of how she might like to spend the day, it didn’t involve her getting out of the pillowy king-sized bed. Quite to the contrary, it involved Akane getting back into it.
“Did you know that you are the most beautiful thing in the whole world, Ranko? I could just sit here and watch you smile forever.” Akane stroked her cheek, and Ranko nuzzled her face into her hand.
“You’re gonna do that every day from now on, too,” Ranko echoed.
Akane bent down until her lips were but a centimeter from her wife’s. “I can’t wait.” She closed the gap between her lips and Ranko’s, running her hands down the side of Ranko’s neck and feeling her quiver through the kiss.
Akane sat up in the blue plush chair, having decided to do so in the last second before she lost the will. “Come on, princess. Get dressed, and let’s go find somewhere I can show you off.”
Ranko bounced to her feet excitedly. She knew there were obviously limits, given the stigma of their relationship and her celebrity status, but the idea of making Akane proud to have her on her arm filled her heart with song. Letting her sheer negligee fall to the floor, she flitted to the open closet door, running her fingers lovingly over the pearly corset of her wedding dress that hung off to one side next to Akane’s. A part of her almost wanted to put it on again, as uncomfortable and unwieldy as it had been. She wanted to feel that special again. That perfect again. But as she looked over her shoulder at Akane sipping her tea and watching her sway with the music in her heart, she knew she would anyway, regardless of what she wore.
She instead chose her favorite lace dress, the one embroidered with thousands of tiny roses. The dress Akane had picked out for her to wear the morning after the first night she’d spent with Akane. The dress she was wearing that Christmas morning when Akane proposed. It had always been her I belong to Akane Tendo dress, and no day in her life had that felt more true than today. Besides, Ranko thought with flushing cheeks, I’m not quite ready to be done wearing white.
She bent down, reaching into the red suitcase on the closet floor for a matching set of light pink undergarments. She lifted one leg to step into her panties, but stopped partway, her face turning so red that Akane thought steam might come out of her ears. Ranko covered her face with her hand as Akane looked up from her tea and giggled at her.
“What’s the matter, Ranko? You okay over there?” Akane smirked devilishly. She already knew exactly what the problem was, but she quite enjoyed making her wife squirm at the thought of admitting it.
“I, um…” Ranko squeaked through the gaps between her fingers. “I’m gonna go grab a shower quick before I get dressed, if that’s okay.”
With a taunting little laugh, Akane nodded. “Yeah, might not be a bad idea, flower girl. I love you.”
The pet name did little to assuage her blushing as Ranko headed for the ensuite bathroom. “I love you too, Akane.” She reached into the shower stall, turning the temperature knob to its coldest setting and then pulling the stopper in the wall to divert the water flow from the bathtub faucet to the shower head. There was a part of her that was tempted to brave hot water again, just to reconfirm to herself that the unexplained change in the parameters of her curse had not been a delirious fever dream, but she thought better of it.
Her muscles still ached, and she wasn’t sure how much of it was due to the fight she’d been in yesterday morning, and how much could be attributed to the thorough workout Akane had given her once they’d made it to the hotel. She resolved to give Akane the credit as she stepped into the icy stream of water with a quiet yelp.
