Chapter Text
Part II
She found him sitting on the little bench outside of that one coffee shop at the edge of Arisugawa-no-Miya park, the small one with the bicycle hanging upside down from the ceiling in the picture window, and Mamoru was possibly in a mood even fouler than hers when she sat down in the seat next to him.
Besides, it was the oldest trick in her self-help book. If she was feeling like she was in a hole she couldn't dig herself out of, digging someone out of theirs at least made her feel worthwhile.
"You look like you could use some company," Usagi said, and made herself comfortable completely uninvited.
He sighed, then hit the back of his head against the glass behind him.
"Did the old-man-clothes shop stop making purple pleated pants?" she asked slyly, propping her chin up in her fist.
At least he snorted.
"No," he said, the ghost of a smile playing around his lips. "They still stock my clothes just fine."
"Darn," she grinned back.
And there it was. A full smile, one of his warm ones just for her. She kind of wanted to fist-pump.
He nodded his head towards the entrance of the café. "Do you want something?"
She threw him a look. "I always want something."
He threw her a look back, but this time it was more affection than exasperation. Turning in his seat, he lifted his hand, signalling the barista.
She tugged off her mittens (baby blue plastic wool this time, Mamoru glared at them), and grabbed the tiny little menu tucked behind the edge of the bench. The name of the cafe was embossed in pretty cursive script. "What's good?" she asked, scanning it.
"The coffee."
She pulled a face. He chuckled.
"It's literally in the name. Nem: Coffee and Espresso."
"Do they have milkshakes?" she interrupted, completely ignoring him.
"No."
She pouted.
"Ramune?"
He shook his head, she pouted harder.
"I heard their Daifuku is supposed to be good."
There we go. Finally something good. Without waiting for the barista to have to come outside for her, she hopped off the little platform and walked inside. But when she walked back out, unpacking her Daifuku and grief-mrompfing into it, the back of his head was back against the glass, his gaze forlorn and kind of lost.
Her heart fell, and she watched his profile for a second. He looked absolutely heartbroken, his eyes full of sorrow, his shoulders limp and hanging as he stared unseeing into the distance.
Nodding, she moved back onto the platform in one big leap, startling him, and sat back down next to him carefully, brushing her jacket over her bum, because the wood was cold.
"So what's got you sighing that much for real?" she asked right out, and he proved her point by sighing even harder.
He lifted his coffee cup to his mouth, the steam playing around his nose, and kept looking into the distance. For a while she thought he wouldn't answer, but then he surprised her.
Looking down into his coffee cup, he shrugged. "I'm lonely," he answered.
And it punched her in the face.
"In a nutshell," he continued. "And I don't want to be."
Her whole body froze. She didn't know why this shocked her so much. Why his words threw her so much, except—
As always, he could immediately read her stricken, affected mood. "Sorry," he apologized, turning his face and looking her directly into the eyes.
What the fuck.
"No!" she cried. She hit her fist and her Daifuku against the bench.
He jumped, surprised. Lifted an eyebrow. "No?" he intoned, a sliver of his usual amusement in his voice.
She felt like stomping her foot like a cranky child. Her voice certainly sounded like it. "You're not supposed to be lonely!" she protested vehemently.
His other eyebrow joined the party, but his doubtful, tilted smile was back. "I don't think you get to decide that, Odango."
"No!" she cried.
He turned, watched her.
"You're my friend!" she cried on, as if it made sense.
But most shockingly, he recoiled in confusion. "I am?" he asked, and she gaped.
"Yes!" She shoved him in the shoulder. Of course he was, what the hell! "And as my friend, I'm not gonna let you be lonely!"
He huffed the smallest laugh. A little snort. "I really don't think that's how it works, Odango."
"Well, it'll just have to!"
He laughed again. It was such a beautiful sound, if just too faint.
But then it fell again, that smile, completely erased. He swirled his coffee in his cup.
"It's more a specific loneliness. Not a general one," he said quietly.
She frowned, confused. "So it's about…?"
He kept silent for a beat. Swallowed. Looked back up and into the distance, and she waited it out.
"A girl," he whispered eventually.
...Oh.
And why that one threw her so, she did not understand. But it did. Low, straight into her guts. She swallowed it down.
He turned his head again, found her eyes. Shrugged in that sad, apologetic way.
Usagi crossed her legs, then her arms. "Well," she started. "I hate her already."
One side of Mamoru's lips quirked up.
And then he sighed again.
"It's not really her fault," he said.
She raised her eyebrow just like he always did, because she'd learned from the best.
He shook his head at her. "Well, it really kind of isn't."
"'Kind of,'" she asked, and he threw her a look for kind of throwing his own words back at her.
But this time, when he lifted his cup back to his lips and stared out into nothing, he did not eventually elaborate.
And so, when it dragged on too long, she slapped her hands against her knees, clapping against her black skinny jeans.
"Well, I'll just have to make you feel less lonely, then," she vowed loudly.
He did smile then, when he turned his head. "As I said," he said in that eye-rolling tone that was all affection and all Mamoru. "It's not the friend kind of lonely I'm feeling."
"Pfft," Usagi snorted. "One friend maybe can't make up for that, but 10 certainly can. And let me tell you, I can easily be as overwhelming as 10 friends all at once. We're going shopping tomorrow, baka, I need a fake bridesmaid dress."
And this time, he really, genuinely laughed.
Usagi beamed.
"I mean it," she said, clapping her knees. "You're not gonna be lonely while I'm around, now drink up, and get your ass off that bench, you're treating me to Cremia—"
"It's 2°!" he cried in offense, but she threw him a look, as if that was any argument against ice cream.
But she just jumped up, put on her mittens, and made him drink up.
He did. Smiling oh-so-softly, and she felt a little better immediately.
Tuxedo Mask still saved her. But it was like it had been in the beginning. When he waited around to make an entrance. Only swooped in when she was in danger, and otherwise stayed back.
It made her throat constrict and the tears fall, so angry at herself.
He was still always there. She felt him. Even when he didn't show his face because they got it handled, she knew he was watching, but kept away. And when he did step in, blocking her, distracting the enemy for her, lifting her out of harm's way with trembling hands and too-modest touches, he never lingered around.
She had no one to blame but herself. And her stupid heart pointed out that she'd now done it before he ever knew what she was like.
She'd disappointed him.
One night, she stopped him.
She followed him exactly two rooftops before he turned around, because Tuxedo Mask always knew if she was there. He was too observant to be snuck-up on.
"Tuxedo Ma—" she started, but he interrupted her.
"Why can't I know?" he asked her, eyes ahead and at the neon lights of Tokyo.
Her throat constricted, pinched tight and painful and she couldn't breathe.
"Y-you know that we—"
He shook his head sharply. "No."
And then he whirled around. Walked the two steps to her and closed the distance between them completely. He stooped and stood so close she could see the flecks in his irises behind the mask, so close every harsh intake of his breath brushed the fabric of his costume against her skin.
His voice broke.
"All I want is to be able to say your name..."
And with that, her tears bubbled over.
His gloves caught them, his thumb brushing against her cheeks.
"Why can't I know?" he whispered.
Her words were watery. Choked up. "What if I'm not the kind of girl you would want?" she cried.
He frowned as if the mere idea were absolute nonsense. "That's impossible," he said darkly.
But he couldn't possibly know that.
She sobbed, pressed her hands against her mouth, and fled.
She sat on a cold stone bench on a cold afternoon that felt like a cold night because January afternoons were dark and did that to you, and she didn't want to go home and not tell her Mama why she was looking like that.
There was another downside for secret relationships. You couldn't cry in anyone's arms when your secret partner/probably not enemy/probably no longer boyfriend decided he had enough of your crappy bullshit.
And so Kimi-chan square it was, forlornly people-watching in the cold and singling out the lucky bastards who walked in pairs with an envious stink eye. There'd been a girl who'd slipped her bare fingers into her boyfriend's gloves. Man.
But she kept sighing, kept sitting there even when the temperature dropped even more and she started to shiver and the sky started to mist the softest powder of snow on her ever so slightly.
When she held out her hand and caught one in her purple cheapo mittens, just before it melted, it was a perfect little ice crystal.
She shivered and sighed.
And then jumped, because a tattered, old, and deliciously warm green jacket fell over her shoulders.
She looked up startled, found Mamoru's eyes as he stood right behind her, hands still raised where he'd dropped his most offensive piece of clothing on her with half a smile that looked kind of sad and an inquiring tilt of his head.
He was in a thick scarf and turtleneck, except it wasn't his usual black one but that thick sophisticated wool kind that looked like little braids in dense anthracite-colored threads. It looked warm, but this time he shivered too.
"You don't need to do that," she said, turning her eyes back down and stroking her mittens against the thick lapel of that old jacket and smoothing it against her purple windbreaker.
He'd changed his clothes over the years. Combined them better. But staples like this one still appeared in different combos, and it made her smile in strange nostalgia.
"You looked cold," he said with a shrug as he sat down next to her, that pretty profile as lost in thought as she was, and brought one leather gloved hand up to sip steaming, smelly coffee in a bamboo to-go cup, then held it with both hands afterwards.
"I know you have a decent coat, why do you never wear it?" he asked her as his eyes tried to follow where she was looking, what she was watching.
"There's coffee all over it still because I'm useless at adulting," she said right out with a dejected sigh, because with Mamoru, she didn't feel like she needed to pretend.
He only nodded, as if it was the most normal thing to procrastinate getting your seasonal clothes in shape all season, the occasional snowflake fluttering against his hair and melting there.
"Bring it with you next time we see each other," he said with an absentminded shrug, and took another sip of his coffee.
She furrowed her brows, turned to look at him, jacket brushing against its rightful owner.
He shrugged, gave her the most melancholy encouraging smile and flicked his eyes back to the couple she'd been watching last. "I have a good dry-cleaner I go to almost every week anyway. It's no hassle to just bring it in with mine."
She straightened. Blinked. Hard. That was… one of the nicest things he'd ever offered.
His face turned to her just slightly. "What?" he asked, side-eyeing her, before they moved back on to the next couple.
Her throat suddenly felt full of overwhelming… something.
"I'll do that," she whispered, tucked her purple hands between her thighs to warm them up beneath the fabric, and let her eyes stray back to the next couple as he absentmindedly nodded.
They were cute. Looked happy. Tall guy, smaller brunette girlfriend in a cute wool hat. Leisurely walking down the street, the guy's arm slung around her shoulders as they chatted. Assholes.
She noted that both Mamoru's eyes and hers were following them down the road as they disappeared around the corner, then switched onto the next couple and did the same. Looking, most probably to everyone who might be watching, like those cats in the videos where you filmed the cats and not the tennis they were watching.
"Can I ask you something?" Usagi asked into the quiet.
He gave the slightest, most nonchalant nod, not turning to look, one elbow on one dark, slim-jean-ed knee, sipping from his bamboo cup.
"You know, with me being undateable and so on,"
But with that, his frowning eyes flew to her, full turn, concern shining from them.
"You know that I was a teenager and a dick when I said that."
She threw him a shrug. "I mean, you weren't wrong."
His brow furrowed even more. "I was."
She rolled her eyes, leaned over to nudge his shoulder with hers, but he was a stiff, unmovable board and his frown only deepened. "Just go with the argument please."
His eyes narrowed even further, but he nodded in that 'do go on' way.
She huffed, straightened her back, frowned into the distance, collected her words. "If you, like," she started, "were in a position where you dated a girl you thought was like, really amazing. Like, if I had pretended to be like, super great and super capable and like, super super duper—"
He'd fully turned on the bench. Tense as a brick, glaring. "Usagi."
"No, please," she shook her hand in his direction, interrupting him. "Like. Say you dated me. And I would paint you this picture and pretended to be really great. But then beneath that is me. Like, then you find out what I'm really like, undateable disaster and all," she rambled out. "Like, how deeply disappointed would you be exactly?"
And with that, she turned to look into his eyes again, and recoiled a bit when they were painted in quiet fury.
His words were cutting menace. "Is this about your 'boyfriend'?"
But she recoiled, too, worked up and irritable. "Did you just use finger quotations?" she glowered, overreacting. "Because what, I invented him? Undateable, unladylike girl like me has to make up a guy who likes her—"
Yet with that, he looked absolutely horrified.
"Usagi," he cut in angrily, eyes snapping. "If he doesn't like you the way you are, he's the biggest idiot on the fucking planet."
She frowned.
But he went on, eyes blazing, turned and leaned dark and angry into her personal space. "I'm really sorry I said these things to you. They're horrible. And they were wrong. You're perfect the way you are. But please, don't take something an infantile asshole on the street said to you over half a decade ago to mean any sort of truth about your character."
She glared at him, but then it fell. The fight leaving her, and she slumped, looked back at the street.
And with her standing down, it seemed contagious. His features fell, he sat back, but she felt his eyes still cutting into her profile.
"It's not only you who thought that way about me," she admitted quietly.
He sighed. Turned back, his eyes back to following her gaze on people on the street.
"The words that we feel attacked by the most are usually the ones that have already been hurting us, Usagi," he said equally quietly, sadly.
Her brow furrowed in utter confusion. What was that supposed to mean?
But then his gaze hardened. He stretched out his legs, crossing them prettily at the ankles. His bamboo cup met the surface of their stone bench with a dull little clack as he placed it beside him, empty.
Her heart sped up when his earnest eyes met hers.
"If he thinks these things," Mamoru said, slow, enunciating every word, "he doesn't deserve you. Please dump the fuck out of him."
She curled up her nose, turned her gaze away, pulled at the corner of his large green jacket to bury herself in it further. "It's not like that," she said.
He sighed, long and hard. Leaned forward, elbows on his knees, watching her sideways. She felt his eyes.
He got up only after a while. Picked up his bamboo cup and held it between those elegant leather gloves. Towered over her and gave her a long look she only slowly returned.
It was strange. Being stared at by Mamoru like that never felt wrong. Never felt weird. It only felt seen.
No matter how long she stared right back.
But he was the one to break it first tonight. Still that serious gaze, but with a slow tilt of his head, a swish of his hair, and she only now realised it had stopped snowing. "I want you to be happy, Usagi," he said.
The words curled around her heart. Softer than she'd expected. And she sighed, and curled her lips up in return, to give some of that back.
"I want you to be happy, too," she whispered back. Because it was the honest truth.
He smiled, nodded, and left her with his beloved green jacket still around her shoulders.
In the end, it was nothing more than a thought that took root in her brain that allowed her to face her fears and truly make herself feel naked. Truly allow herself to be seen.
The words that we feel attacked by the most are usually the ones that have already been hurting us, Usagi.
Mamoru's words had rung in her head so long and so hard they sounded foreign and weird and somehow spoke to her on a level she did not understand.
She hadn't understood what he'd meant when he'd said them. She still wasn't sure she understood what he'd actually meant to say when he said them.
And yet they'd worked in her. Posing for fake party pictures where she helped other people fulfill their unfulfilled expectations of society by orchestrating make-believe. Watching them go to such great lengths to pretend to be something they were not just to fit in better, it worked in her.
She was terrified Tuxedo Mask would look at her and be disappointed. Because people had looked at her in the past so often and had been disappointed, and now the stakes were so much higher than they always were.
But what was hurting her was not anything he was doing, or even saying, or even hypothetically thinking. What was hurting her was her experience. Her anticipation of expectations that had been hurting her all her life.
And it wasn't only 'their' expectations of her from others. They didn't come from outside, not anymore. No one made it their business to scold her for grades or lack of focus now that she was expected to handle these things on her own. Not even Luna was scolding her on what she ought to be doing instead anymore. Those days were over. Maybe they'd just given up, she didn't know. Or maybe they'd accepted that this was just who she was. So no, it wasn't only the expectations others had of her, it were expectations she'd learned to have of herself. A picture society told her she was supposed to be in the colors of her flaws, but the colors never changed. And they kept hurting her because they put the finger right on the things she was never to be flawless at.
But…
Maybe it wasn't so unforgivable to not be flawless.
Maybe it was ok to be a delightful disaster. Maybe it didn't need to hurt her when people focused more on the disaster. Maybe it wasn't her job to please everyone. Maybe it was ok to not be totally complete on your own, to have puzzle pieces missing to be filled by people who were better at these things than you.
After all, there were so many people who saw her flaws and nagged at them, but with the people who truly mattered in her life, that didn't mean they didn't still stick around, it didn't mean they didn't love her anyway.
Maybe it was time to figure out if he would stick around, too. Or maybe even whether or not he expected those things of her, too, in the first place. And maybe, if he ended up not liking her the way she was, maybe Mamoru was right. Maybe that was his loss. And maybe that didn't have to mean he could not still be on their side, when worst came to worst. Even if he chose not to want to share her bed, maybe he could still choose to follow her in battle anyway. Because if anything, she did trust Tuxedo Mask to follow Sailor Moon. And she was Sailor Moon, flaws and all.
And while these things sounded good and logical in her head, they still terrified the fuck out of her. They required more bravery than she'd ever needed facing any youma.
Usagi didn't wait for a battle that he might lurk around for and not show his face if he wasn't needed. She didn't wait for a situation where her adrenaline was already spiking high, her fear for her life affecting her fear for her heart when he looked at her and asked for answers.
No. About a week after Mamoru's words had taken root in her thoughts, she transformed, knowing Tuxedo Mask would feel it, and then she waited on the one rooftop she knew to be a minute away from that balcony door where he lived.
It was a weird time of day. The middle of the afternoon on a random weekday, and she waited for a while, overthinking and worrying that this was stupid. He was probably at work, wherever he worked, whatever he worked as. She'd probably worried him, made him antsy and anxious to get out of his obligations for literally nothing. It was brash and unthinking of her all over again. She should have done that at night, what had she been thinking? And so when that thought came to her, over an hour later on that roof, shivering and cold in the middle of winter on a rooftop in a fluttering mini-skirt, she panicked and turned to leave, cursing herself and her stupidity.
Of course, when she turned around to hop off the building, she saw him standing right behind her, watching her.
His cape rustling in the wind, his hair flowing beneath the hat.
The anxiety climbed back up her spine, paralyzing her.
"How long have you been here?" she asked, her voice shaking a bit with her nerves, and maybe the cold.
"Just a minute or so," he said, distant and unreadable, but so, so searching.
He didn't comment on the elephant on the rooftop. That there was no battle. Where they were. What that meant. He just waited for her to speak.
After all, he'd been waiting for her to speak for a while.
Her heart raced, her chest hurt, she felt dizzy. All the small hairs rose on her skin in fear. She'd never been so terrified. And yet she held his gaze, and then she spoke. Because he was here, and this was what she needed to do.
"It's not Luna," she pressed out, voice shaking.
His brow twitched in utter confusion about a name he's never heard, and then his eyes scanned her, focused with a start on her shaking hands, the way they clawed into her skirt.
"And it's not that I don't trust you," she continued, oh so agitated. "I trust you with my life." She swallowed, pulling at her skirt. "I trust you with anyone's life. I trust you with the world and the life of any princess and with any stupid mythical rocks. I trust you so much that I think if it comes to it and we're at opposing sides, that I'll be inclined to think your side would be the right one to be on."
She'd yelled it all out, and afterwards, his eyes were blown up wide.
It made her falter. Made her heart beat even harder when he… didn't say anything.
"It's not that," she murmured, quietly now. "I promise it's not that."
Down on the street, a group of children were scream-laughing in that way little children tended to do, and it travelled up in nonsensical sound so very unfitting the mood up here.
She jumped a little when in one stride, he came close. Exhaled harshly when he came so close that he filled up all her senses, leaning down. Eyes flashing as he searched her gaze in that intense, scanning way he always tended to look at her, trying to see.
"Then what is it?" he asked her eyes.
She freed her lip from a sharp bite she didn't know she'd been abusing it with, exhaled up and against his chin, her neck craned to look up at him. "I'm terrified," she admitted almost inaudibly.
His brow tensed. "Of me?" he asked, and her breath stuttered.
"No," she said, frowning. "I don't know. Maybe!"
At that, his eyes flashed with hurt behind the mask, and so she hurried to explain.
"But also of me!" she cried, and her hand flew up and clawed itself desperately into the lapel of his jacket, begging him to understand what she had trouble saying.
She breathed hard, he waited.
She kneaded her fist into the fabric. Spoke to his jacket, to his chest, and not at him. "Sailor Moon is a symbol," she said with difficulty.
He shifted. She knew, would she look up, he'd look confused again. His hand was already lifting to her elbow.
She huffed, went on. "She's a hero. She stands for things. She's…"
She swallowed.
"She's… she's… She's if you take me, and put a filter on everything that's atrocious. A big giant floating censure bar on all the things I don't want you to see of me. She's the very best of me, but she's only the best of me and—"
With that, his hands were on her. On her face, stroking down her hair, but she stubbornly focused on his chest. Spread both hands against the crisp white shirt. Felt the way his heart was hammering beneath her palm, and it showed her he was as nervous as her, and maybe it was ok to feel this way.
"Underneath this, I'm only me. I'm not a superhero. I'm only me. I trip and fall and stumble through my life, my attention span is that of an overexcited squirrel, I chew my pencils and I lose a lot of jobs that I don't manage to fit in and that's not only because I run out at random times to go fight bad guys that I can't explain. I'm not Sailor Moon beneath the costume. Not always. Not really. But you like Sailor Moon."
His breath rushed out in a way that felt… important. But she still didn't look up. Couldn't.
She didn't look up when his fingers brushed at her chin and she didn't look up when he stepped so close that their bodies touched all over. When he stepped so close she could feel him tremble, too, stooped above her, curled around her.
But she listened when he spoke.
"Close your eyes," he hushed against her lips, earnest and intense, and she listened immediately, momentarily. Relieved.
When he lifted her, she let herself fall into his arms. She clawed at him, fingers in the fabric, warm from his body, wrapped her arms tight around his shoulders, and then she climbed him. Pressed her face into the crook of his neck and clung to him like a monkey, weird and intense and needy. And when he jumped with her in his arms, she knew where they were going.
The slide of a balcony door, the ripping sound of curtains across rails, all while she was still clawed to the front of him, his hand on the small of her back, barely needing to hold her up with the way she'd clawed herself around him.
And then his arms were around her, hugging her back as he stood with her in the middle of this room when she didn't let him go.
She needed a moment until she dared to open her eyes, clinging to him, her cheek pressed against his neck. But when she did, she started.
The room was dark. But not as dark as it had been the last time she was here. It was light outside and the thick curtains couldn't hold all that light out. She could see the shadows of an open kitchen on one side, the bed on another. She could see it was tidy and small, and she clung to him harder.
And his hands stroked down her back and waited it out. Waited it out when she clung even harder, pressed her lips desperately against his neck, his throat, his ear. Inhaled and bit and kissed, and all the while, his fingertips only scratched lightly up and down her spine.
When she eventually descended, it threw her all anew. It was dark, yes. His black tuxedo, the black of his hair, it all melted in the shadows, but she could still see him in the faint light. He didn't detransform - hadn't even removed his hat and he always removed his hat - and he was standing in a dark apartment that was his and that she could see, if only in black and greys.
Slowly, she reached up, and his eyes flashed when she took the top hat off and flung it blindly to the side.
He stayed really, really close.
"You're not a symbol to me," he said, and her skin jumped. "Not in the way you think."
She ripped her eyes up then, finally, saw his eyes look at her in that searching, searching way.
Slowly, with careful movements, he took his gloves off. And then, in the most tender, heartbreakingly gentle way, his fingers made her feel electric. They were so unfairly warm against her freezing skin when he ran his fingers oh-so-softly down her arm, up her leg, everywhere she was naked, goosebumps rising in the wake of his touch.
"I'm not blind," he breathed down at her. "I've seen you stumble through every battle all these years. I catch you. I see your fear, every time," he said, and she couldn't help the whimper. Couldn't help the way her hand flew up to cover his, so he would touch her more, firmer. "I admire that you get up afterwards. Every time."
The last, he spoke right against her lips, his face slanted over hers, but he didn't kiss her. And then he smiled, and she felt the pull of his lips against her skin.
"I also happen to find people who stumble a bit through their life very endearing."
She exhaled harshly, shuddering. Clawed at the fabric of his jacket, but then he stopped.
Then he stepped back.
"I can be a giant jerk," he told her from a slight distance, and she gaped at him, her very skin crying for him. "Especially when I'm overwhelmed. And I suck at articulating how I feel. I close up when I'm scared and then I push people away."
And her heart puckered. Painfully. That… He also— She—
She stepped towards him, wide-eyed, and he took another step back immediately, his head tilted in that way that felt so awfully familiar.
"But…" he said slowly, holding her gaze. "If that's what it is? If you're scared…?" he asked.
She held her breath when he did reach out. In the most modest way, he reached out to push a stray lock of hair behind her ear, watched the passage of it as he did so.
"I can wait for that. I can try to do my best so that you feel you can show me one day what you don't want me to see." And then his eyes flicked back to hers, and she'd never loved him more. "I can also accept when you never want me to see."
Her chest exploded. How? How could he be so friggin' patient with her. So accepting? Here this man stood, telling her he would take it if this went on forever, if she was never ready to give him what he so clearly wanted. And somehow, it was all she'd ever needed.
It made her fall harder than she'd ever thought possible.
It came out confusing, visibly so. She growled. His eyebrows jumped up in confusion, and he gasped when she pulled at his jacket, pushed at his chest, yanked at him. His mouth popped open in surprise when she attacked it, made a gurgling sound when she licked her tongue into his mouth, until he finally got the memo and his hands fluttered to her side and his mouth opened wider in a moan and he finally kissed her back the way she needed him to.
His hand shot around her, cupped her ass and squeezed along to his shuddering breath right down her lungs. And when she pushed him off her with a yank, gloves at his chest, his lips were kiss-swollen and his eyes more confused than ever before.
But then she pushed him more, and he collapsed on his back, bouncing off his mattress ever so slightly, and his eyes flashed in a different way.
She climbed on top of him and he groaned, her fingers clutching at his jacket, pulling him up to her lips as she fell down at them, and his mouth was wide and slanted and fucking heaven and his tongue her favorite dessert.
He was whimpering hard when her hands clawed at his shirt, pulling it from his pants, and she leaned down to lick a line against his heated, warm skin. From the hem of his pants to the dip in his chest, lifting the fabric up as she went, then pressed her ear against his heart like a weirdo only because she couldn't get enough of hearing it beat so very, very hard.
His hand in her hair, bare fingers stroking down her scalp, pressing her there, and she was ready to cry.
When she looked back up, his head had shifted the pillow, and she froze.
His eyes searched hers, bewildered yet again as to her reaction, but—
Her silly lemon pajama top lay in his bed. It lay by his pillow.
Tuxedo Mask had found her pajamas in his apartment, flung god-knows-where, and now it lay with him in his bed, weeks later. He slept with her clothes, her smell, a reminder of her in his bed, and it made her chest constrict because it could not contain the feeling.
His gaze was searching, as always. Watching.
"Close your eyes," she whimpered down at him.
And of course. Of course, he closed them without hesitation, and it made tears spring to her eyes - she didn't know what emotion they were made of - before she closed her own lids as well.
She leaned over him, found his lips blindly, clumsily. Puckered her own against the corner of his mouth and then his lower lip, before she whispered, "Detransform."
He gasped against her mouth, but this time he didn't ask to clarify. He just did it, and she felt the shift of clothes underneath her, beneath her hands and thighs and chest and belly. No thick coat this time, but thin fabric, the same for both his top (T-Shirt?) and his pants (...sweatpants? Pajamas? In the middle of the day? What was it?) and maybe this was all a mistake, because she immediately wanted to sit up and look and—
Squeezing her eyes shut even harder, she exhaled against his shuddering mouth, and then she detransformed as well.
His voice was this hoarse, quivering, pained thing when his hands shot up around her, and she knew he was exploring blindly just as she had done. Clumsy, wild hands against her ass, her leg, her arm, gliding and feeling and searching frantically for hems.
She helped him, caught her blouse and ripped it from her skirt, then contorted to get it off and fling it away, accidentally swatting at his hands. But they found her chest anyway, warm hands slipping and stroking and following the band of her bralette to her back.
He ripped at it, frustrated grunts, and she chuckled right at his mouth, reached back for the (for once) well-practiced art of unseeing bra-removal, and when it fell away, his guttural moan was music to her ears.
She didn't know where he'd wanted to kiss exactly, but she knew the places he found were unusual, wild. He licked up her skin, rubbed his cheek against the underside of one breast, inhaled and pressed his face against her, and she curled her hand into his hair and he jumped when she appeared to slap him in the face instead.
They both snorted at once. It was so absurd, his chuckle so beautiful, but however weird the places he found, she wanted more. Following the contours of his skin wherever it may lead, dragging her teeth against muscle and softness and precious hardness that she instantly recognised.
He huffed hard, his face in her hands tensing, when his hands couldn't figure out the situation of her clothes, and she laughed into his mouth and he gobbled it all up and it was the best sensation ever. "Tights," she informed his lips, and got an "Ahhh," in return, before his hand travelled up, surer now, and slipped inside. Because, well, tight mini skirt on high-waist tights was pretty hard to figure out just by touch, she figured, and she pushed her hands into her clothes along with his and then dragged it all down her legs, his palms digging tight into her limbs and it felt fucking damn reverent.
She pulled his underwear down directly with his pants, accidently poked her closed eye with his jutting dick. He attempted to sexily drag her panties down with his teeth but lost his grip somewhere mid-thigh and then weirdly bit around her leg in an attempt to find them again before he grunted and just pushed his hands down her legs, and then pushed them back up to her clit, changing her amused laugh to a hissed moan immediately.
It was absurd. It was weird. It was glorious, and she couldn't get enough. Pushed back against his hand, pressed her tongue against whatever bit of skin she was currently catching, felt the hard jut of his cock rub against her in the weirdest places to the sound of his frustrated snorts.
But when she had his cock in her hand he hissed through his teeth, and she found the tip of it almost as weeping wet as she felt herself.
And then he twisted. Stretched. When the first thing clattered and clashed and he cursed and 'Ouch-ed' his way through the motion, she understood he was reaching for something unsuccessfully. Until he was back on her skin and his hands somewhere in the general vicinity of her shoulders and he spoke against her cheek.
"I'm gonna turn around and get a condom," he said, voice apologetic. Meaning, I'm gonna open my eyes. Her stomach flipped.
But then he added just a small murmur, and her heart flipped, too.
"Get behind me," he said, and then waited.
She did. Move behind him, that is. And this man held his promise and didn't look, because he waited until she was at his back, and only then did she hear him shift, move. The sound of a drawer. The sound of ripping foil.
And because he was a better person than she was, clearly, she opened her eyes like a douche, thundering heart and all. But obviously, all she saw was his back, moving in the dark. Muscled skin and jutting spine, sitting at the edge of his narrow bed she'd almost fallen off twice in the past ten minutes or so, his face leaned down towards his dick as he rolled on the condom, his infuriatingly pretty butt shifting against the sheets.
And then he was done, his spine lengthening, his hair shifting across the nape of his neck, and she held her breath.
"I'm turning back around," he breathed.
Her eyes blew wide. Temptation so strong. She almost—
But then she shut her eyes tight, tight, tight at the last second, and his hands stroked back over her skin, making her sigh in utter frustration.
On top of her now, his lips hit almost in weirder places. She could tell so well he was doing it with his eyes closed. The crook where her boob curved into her armpit, or just to the side of her clavicle, running his lips in weird diagonal movements down her chest and kissing wherever he could reach.
His fingers fumbling even clumsier than before - and so beautifully shaky - running up the inside of her thigh first before orienting anew, then his fingers at her opening and rubbing up in search of her clit that his fingertips didn't quite find at first from this angle until her gasp told him he hit jackpot, and he rubbed in the way she showed him against a wire-mesh fence.
She clutched at him, warm skin beneath her palms and his lips against her shoulder, when his dick did the same, his fist dragging it ever so slightly too high, trying to poke, before she reached down to help him along and he finally slipped inside.
His sigh was more of a whimper, hers a long exhale.
He sunk slowly, savoringly, and it was perfect. And when he was in all the way, filling her out and clenching around him, she reached out. Pulled.
He collapsed on top of her, panting, her cheek against his hair, her fingers clawed into his scalp.
He didn't move his hips, waited for her always, pressed so deep inside of her, twitching and worked up.
It wasn't much of a conscious decision. She just blinked her eyes open, and knew she didn't want to close them again. Of course, she only saw his ceiling. His face cradled in the crook of her neck, her hand in his hair, his breath so labored against her throat, waiting.
But…
"Open your eyes," she whispered.
He jolted. The movement pressed his dick inside her harder, and she mewled through his startled "What?"
"Open your eyes," she moaned again, and stroked her fingers down the nape of his neck.
And then she let go of his head. Dropped her hand down to his side, instead.
He still didn't move, not for a moment. Until, with an anxious sort of sequence of worked up breath, his arms moved to her face, his own lips still pressed against her neck.
"Look at me," she whispered.
Lifting himself up around her, so, so slowly, time stopped the second she saw his face. She couldn't breathe. She flared up all over. She tingled and her blood screamed and her eyes must have been pure shock, too, when she looked into the shocked eyes of Chiba Mamoru, currently naked on top of her and buried deep, deep inside of her.
He found his breath first. It bubbled out in a whoosh, and it kind of rushed out as an incredulous laugh, his eyes jumping between both of hers and his hands stroking against her face, brushing back her fringe, the hair from her face, cupping it, caressing it, over and over and over, thumbs against her cheeks, her eyebrows, holding her.
"Hi," she said, shocked.
"Hi," he bubbled out, his lips stretching, grinning, then shaking his head at her in utter disbelief. His laughter was wide-eyed surprise, but she knew. She knew it was wonder. Relief.
It was so fucking right. How could this be so right?!
He never let go of her face. Never stopped stroking his thumbs down her cheek, even when, only a little later, he started moving.
When she whimpered this time at the sensation of his cock letting go and coming back, his eyes were that searching, piercing, hyper-alert look she'd known of him for years, his thumb at her lip to catch every tremble of it.
It was the slowest, gentlest sex they'd ever had, the slowest sex they'd ever have, the best moment of her life. And he saw her and he kept seeing her and her heart was as friggin' full as she felt of his cock deep, deep inside.
And when he sunk back in next, it was so slow she pinched her hands impatiently into his butt, shuddering, and he fucking grinned.
"You kind of have a boyfriend, yeah?" he grinned against her lips.
She flushed, heat crawling up her chest, her face, and he laughed so delightedly, so happily, his thumbs drawing circles against her face in a touch more tender than she could ever have imagined as he slowly, slowly rolled his hips back against hers.
She shuddered, stretched on his cock and he bit his lip but never looked away, and she curled her face against his hand.
"Do I?" she asked, heart beating, and this time his eyes flashed and when he thrust into her next, it was hard and deep and possessive.
"Oh, you do," he assured her with the most determined, vindicated look in his arsenal and she shuddered.
His hands cupped her face so tight. Almost shook it. "You definitely do," he implored, eyes wild, and he thrust back inside to her keening sigh. "God, Usako," he groaned, "Yes, you do."
She whimpered, lifted her hips, rolled her hips against him to meet this slow dance in the middle, and his thumb kept stroking her cheek under her bated breath, her wild eyes as she willed her brain to take in every moment of this, every molecule of him in and on and around her so she would never forget this miracle moment.
And then he leaned down and kissed her. Met her lips just as he'd fully sunk back into her, and her shudder into his mouth met a moan of his own. It was the most tender stroking of his lips, the most tentative touch of his tongue, the softest kiss they'd ever shared. As if they were doing this for the very first time, and maybe they kind of were. All of them, at least.
"You promised to make me feel less lonely, remember?" he breathed into her lips, and kissed her just a little harder.
Fin