Chapter Text
Kobayashi woke up with a start, panic setting in deep underneath her skin. She raised a hand to her cheek, finding it burned -- was her hand cold, or her face warm? She found her vision blurred, head spinning, thoughts clouded. Wiping a sweatdrop off her cheek, she rested her hand back down on her bed. What.. was this? This feeling of her heartbeat, going so fast she reckoned it should be counted by the second (instead of the minute)? Her face was warm, but the rest of her was trapped in a petrifying cold, despite the blood being pumped within her flesh.
This wasn’t like her family shaming her for her looks, or being laughed at by her classmates; this problem was internal. Where do you run when it lies within you? Where could she flee to -- where could she possibly go with this? The image of Tohru, glowing, holding her glasses; a makeup brush; an instrument; Kobayashi’s own face in her hands?
What can she do when she realizes it’s grown within her without her realizing? That fluttery feeling, the heat on her cheeks, the frazzled sensations in her chest? She knows what it’s called, but.. No. No. She wasn’t in love with Tohru. She wasn’t allowed to be in love with Tohru. Tohru was sculpted by hand, perfectly round eyes and high nose and rosy cheeks all crafted by someone who knew what they were doing. She was made with a nice figure, with healthy hair and a tall stature. She was made to capture the gaze of any passerby; Kobayashi was made to settle for whatever poor man found her halfway attractive, not a woman entirely out of her league.
Whatever poor man. Forgetting about her thoughts for a minute, Kobayashi looked out the window, finding it was nearly solid black. Her eyebrows furrowed, so she looked to the clock for an answer. That answer turned out to be “it’s 6:00 in the morning”. She facepalmed, and then looked to her hand. Was that.. trembling?
Oh, to hell with it. Back to bed with her, so she could forget about the fire burning in her chest and the tremor in her hands, both of which refused to subside. So she closed her eyes, folding her hands together for warmth, and turned over, ready to go to bed. Then she waited for the silence to lull her to sleep. Her consciousness did not give. So she counted sheep, watching as their scrambled outlines leapt over fences, but the count never faded into the background. Her consciousness did not give. So she took a deep breath, then another, and focused on nothing at all, and the darkness did nothing to ease her mind. She let out a stuttered sigh, and turned over, eyes peeling open with a reluctant slowness.
There was nothing there -- just the ceiling, barely visible in the dusted, blurred muddiness of her vision. There was nobody knocking at her door, and -- nope, no dragon-children at the foot of her bed.
Just her. And, somehow, that was the worst part.
Kobayashi didn’t sleep until the next night, when she had already drank her worries away. She probably won’t admit to anybody the nature of the dream she had that night.
It didn’t even seem like a dream at first -- on account of it being so normal. Her and the dragons on a busy morning like any other, Tohru cooking up some eggs for Kanna before she headed to school, Ilulu yet to peel herself from the couch to eat her toast and get ready for her part-time job, still dressed in her favorite oversized t-shirt.
Kobayashi sat down at the table, giving her coffee a mellow blow before she took a sip. It tasted exquisite, just like Tohru always made it. The only dragon-- no, woman-- no, person she knew who could make cheap store-brand coffee taste like sweetness, like home. A hand found its way between her shoulderblades, yet for some reason, Kobayashi wasn’t startled at all.
“Good morning, Miss Kobayashi!” Tohru exclaimed, as energetic as always, but nowhere near ‘noisy’, somehow. Her hand on Kobayashi’s back gently stroked up and down the uppermost bit of her spine, applying no pressure at all. It was like Tohru was infusing her with warmth, quieting her overworked body and tired mind. She let out a contented sigh, and looked up at the woman above her.
“Good morning, Tohru”, Kobayashi replies, quieter and lower but no less pleased. She quirks a brow as she sees Ilulu and Kanna approach the door, panicking slightly as she checks her watch. All she registers from the numbers there is that it’s not time for her to go yet. “Ilulu, Kanna, why are you both heading out early?”
“Bribery”, Kanna said, in her small and bright tone, so of course Kobayashi just nodded and sent her off with a hug. Then, two seconds later, she processed the spoken word, and spun around to Tohru -- whose cheeky grin and smiley eyes immediately broke into what could only be (accurately) described as Tohru’s “oh shit, wife’s mad” face. But instead of going off on her, or loading her with questions, Kobayashi let out a deep sigh, her body wilting slightly with all that she exerted. Tohru ticked her head to the side, expression now tinged with concern, and then Kobayashi practically fell onto her. Well, not practically. She did.
It was now that Kobayashi began to question things. Like why it was so easy to fall into Tohru’s arms and stay there, coddled against her chest like a child in need of comfort. Why Tohru didn’t panic when this happened despite her initial reaction, just soothed her, just pet her lower back (ever so careful over that spot that always ached) and let her melt. She grabbed onto the back of Tohru’s dress, just above the tie on her waist-- not for stability as much as it was for comfort. To just… latch onto her and let everything else be. Something was absent here, something was wildly wrong, and yet she didn’t care at all. If anything, the only thing she thought she might regret about now was being the only one to get their fill. So she brought her head up to the crook of Tohru’s neck, and whispered something to her that made Tohru burn up, and sputter, and her hands scramble across Kobayashi’s back in a feral manner, like a rabbit ran from a fox. Yet Tohru didn’t push away from her. If anything, Tohru only pulled her closer.
Kobayashi realized when she woke up what was missing: shame. And it made sense, because that was what colored her in full for the next day. And the next. And the next.
All she wanted to do was forget, so she wanted to drink-- but she didn’t want to drink with Takiya. She’d been drinking more heavily lately, so she’d probably end up saying something (about all this), and he’d worry. She couldn’t drink at home, either, or Tohru would get on her case, and the last thing she needed to do was try to explain any of this to her. “I’m having dreams about you, but they’re losing substance and I’m starting to think the only purpose of them is to let me think of you without subconsciously repressing it” would be fluent Tohru for “I command you to pass out on the kitchen floor this instant”, and she wasn’t keen on dragging Tohru to the couch, or figuring out how to resuscitate a dragon. She imagined for a second having to call Lucoa for help, and shuddered.
The point was, she really didn’t know what to do. There was nobody she could tell any of this, not without sizable repercussions. While the repercussions in question certainly varied depending on the person, (“No, Elma, 70 cream puffs will not make me feel better, but thank you”) they were still certainly repercussions. Consequences. People would fuss, or change their routines or behaviors around her, might go out of their way to help or avoid her. Things would shift. Life would be different, again. And Kobayashi thought that she would rather die than make any lasting impacts on her life while all her stupid brain could think about was (wanting) Tohru.