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*
It is only supposed to be a study date.
She hates math – and really, who doesn’t, except super-smart people like Ami and Mamoru – and she needs to pull her grade up. Mamoru, of course, offers to help – and she likes his apartment, likes the feel of it. It clears her mind, strangely enough; there’s just so much space. He has so little materially, and yet she feels the immenseness of his very self whenever he touches her – it’s a strange dichotomy.
So she sits at the coffee table against the hardwood floor, her knees tucked under her skirt. It’s only her third time in the apartment, since the first time – waking up in the sunset, his long shadow in the doorway. She hasn’t seen the bedroom since that night – but she doesn’t think about that, just keeps her mind on math, on numbers and figures, on the bookshelves lining the living room, the stark white paint.
He sits on the sofa – plain, black, she thinks he might need a new one, eventually – and waits until the noises she makes are too dramatic to ignore. He is a careful tutor, methodical and paced.
She wonders if he is so careful in all ways.
“I give up,” she says at last, leaning her elbows on the coffee table and looking up at him. Lengths of her hair sifts and falls against her bare arms. Spring is here in full bloom; she likes the feel of the sun on her skin.
He peers at her over his book, glasses low on his nose. Her fingertips curl against the wood of the table, itching to touch. It’s been so quiet – so quiet, and she’s still settling into it. He is too, she thinks. Slowly, she’s sinking into his life as he is hers.
“You never give up,” he says with a slight smile.
She thinks of the locket, waiting at the shop to be fixed. She thinks of the breathing room, the space they have; her mother thinks she is staying at the temple tonight. Maybe she will.
But there is something else that drives her movements, into the flipping shut of her textbook and rising, rising onto the couch. Her cheeks flush; she is still shy, even with him. But his book falls away to the sofa as she shifts next to him, and his hand slips at her hip, fingers sliding across the smooth skirt of her dress. His palm flattens at the small of her back.
“I pick my battles,” she says with a shy little smile.
Mamoru tilts his head against the back of the couch, eyes bright. “You’re doing better with it. Don’t you think?”
She bites the inside of her lip and slides across his lap, sitting lightly on his thighs. She can feel the hitch of breath in his chest. Her hair slips and settles between them, pooling in his lap. There is the warm press of his other hand at her bare knee. “With what?” she murmurs.
“With math,” he says through a laugh.
“Math?” she teases, leaning in. Her teeth scrape at his bottom lip
His hands slide over her spine, up to cradle her neck, the back of her head. She tilts her head and kisses him, soft and slow. She reaches up and lifts his glasses off his nose as she shifts closer. He’s there, solid and warm and full of life under her, his fingers pulling and tangling lightly in her hair, his mouth cool and gentle. There is a muscle memory she can’t escape here from lives past, but there’s something else – she wants him, Mamoru. She thinks she always has, even since that first strange meeting in the street.
He murmurs her name, the endearment still new – and there, there are his hands at her thighs and it’s too slow and too fast at the same time. Her fingers slide across the line of his throat and jaw and she feels the push of his fingertips at and under the hem of her skirt, with just pale bare skin for him.
“Is this too fast?” he breathes against her mouth. She hears it, the scared lonely boy from years past, in his voice. His face is warm and she smiles, smiles so brightly she can’t breathe.
“Be quiet, Mamo-chan,” she says finally, kissing him quiet.
It isn’t about what’s special, or what’s right. Here, she can be selfish, and so can he.
*
Two days later, she slides into their usual booth at the Crown, and immediately Minako point at her.
“You,” she chirps.
Usagi glances from Minako to Rei to Makoto to Ami, and sighs. “Rei – “
“You did not show up at the temple until eleven at night!” Minako crows. “You are holding out!”
“I am not,” Usagi grumbles, and shoots a look at Rei, who has the grace to look a little sheepish.
“You can’t hide anything from her,” Rei says exasperatedly.
Minako sniffs, twirling her straw in the air. “And why would you, really. I’ll always sniff it out.”
“There’s nothing to sniff!” Usagi retorts, flushing. There is the phantom memory of Mamoru’s mouth on her neck, his fingers dragging high up her thigh, and she wants to stay, all she wants to do is stay, but her mother is waiting and he is so careful and cautious –
“Oh my god,” Minako breathes.
Makoto swallows the last of her milkshake and tilts her head, eyes narrowing. “Hope you’re being careful.”
“Stop!” Usagi squeals, and the girls laugh. “It’s not like that – “
“Wouldn’t blame you if it were,” Rei says with a grin. “You two were always like that before.”
It’s on the tip of her tongue to ask before when – but Usagi watches the other girls smile and nod, and she thinks oh – before. There are memories of theirs that she cannot touch, that have not surfaced. Sometimes it’s like living underwater, moving slowly towards where and what she is supposed to be as she tries to be who she is now. All of them have settled into this new pattern, this new realization of life and times, it seems; she is far behind, she thinks.
“We’re just – we’re spending time,” she says at last.
Minako grins and wiggles her eyebrows; Usagi just sighs. “Well, we’re trying anyway. He’s busy and I’m busy and nights are all we have, and stupid curfew and parents –“
“You have options, you know,” Ami pipes up gently.
“Four of them, very willing,” Minako adds with a smile.
“Just try and break it up over the week. What are you, monkeys?” Makoto murmurs.
Usagi flushes and they laugh, but it’s a gift. It’s something that they can give her, a smoke screen; it is very reminiscent of lives past, and she can’t help but smile. Circumstances change, the world changes, and yet they remain, giving constants. Even the smallest gestures mean everything in the end.
In the spring sunlight, over milkshakes and half-finished homework, they laugh and talk. For a moment, everything is light and free, normal.
*
Just a day later, it is nighttime, the scent of cherry blossoms still heavy in the air. She sits with Mamoru on his balcony, her gaze shifting back and back to the bedroom behind them. There is no space between them, as it should be. The Friday night lights of Tokyo twinkle and sharpen at them, hiding the soft slip of the moon in the sky.
His hand shifts at the small of her back, fingertips skimming the strip of skin between her blouse and skirt. “It’s late,” he murmurs into her hair.
Usagi sits up, shifting her thigh across his lap. Her hair is loose around them, undone in waves. She thinks he likes it this way too, light in the breeze. “I was waiting for you to say that,” she murmurs, cupping his face in her hands.
Mamoru tips his head back, raising a brow. “Your parents will kill me if you’re home late.”
“Not tonight,” she says with a grin.
His hands slide over her thighs and under the hem of her skirt. Tonight it’s just been dinner, and ice cream, and talk and softness; nothing dark or nagging at their heels. It feels very normal; she wants to get used to it. She wants him to get used to it, to not being alone.
“Not tonight?” he repeats.
“Well – tonight – I –“
He leans up and kisses her, stealing the breath from her. She feels and smells earth, grass and wind; there is longing in the touch of his fingers on her thighs, the curl of her hands in the collar of his shirt.
“I want to stay,” she breathes against his lips.
There’s a pause, a breath pushed against her mouth from his. She opens her eyes and he’s worried, noble, annoyingly old-fashioned. The question is on his tongue and she kisses it from him. His fingers sink between the warm of her thighs.
“I have a plan,” she murmurs, the breath hitching in her chest. It is Minako as the smokescreen tonight; she wanted to be the first in on the plans, as if it is some secret mission. Really, it’s as simple as she doesn’t want to leave him, she never wants to leave him; Minako has always been the one to give her that much, in all times and spaces.
She tells him, between breaths and sighs and a move inside. He carries her through the glass sliding doors and pours her into the bed, following. He laughs and bites at her throat as her hands slide over the breadth of his shoulders. It is warmth and safety, cocooned in his sheets. His fingers are warm on her bare skin and she touches in turn, hope brimming eternal.
“It’s a good system,” she murmurs sleepily in his arms, her fingers curling into the cuffs of his shirt, too long for her. “No one is alone.”
His mouth is in her hair, his hands at her waist. “I think so, too,” he murmurs, voice low in her ear. He holds her like he always has; she is safe, and free.
She tips her head back and kisses him, her eyes falling shut. This, she thinks, is how it should stay – how it will stay.
For her, hope is eternal.
*