Work Text:
The moment Michiru's heels neatly click on the white tile of their apartment foyer, she takes off her gossamer shawl and sighs as if she has slipped off a larger weight from her shoulders. "Home at last," she says, quietly content.
Haruka closes the door behind them, lingering as she watches Michiru, her back to Haruka, slowly undo herself: she shakes her hair loose from its bun, unfastens the winding ties of her lace-up high heels, lets her hand glide up her leg to her waist to the nape of her neck. She stills. Turns her face to the side so only her profile is visible.
"Was that a good show, too?" she asks, red lips quirked into a smile.
Haruka can feel her face ignite the same color as Michiru's lipstick. "I-"
"I'm just teasing you," Michiru laughs. It is a sound as clear as water, as light as mist. "I would like your help in unzipping my dress, though. I can't quite reach." To prove it – as if Haruka didn't know, as if she hadn't been the one to trace a path up Michiru's spine to seal her creamy skin from unworthy eyes – she stretches her arm back, all curves and sinew, and blindly feels around for the zipper. Indeed, she is just short of it.
Haruka closes the distance between them and takes the zipper between thumb and forefinger, but she does not yet work it. She places her other hand flat on Michiru's back, dipping her head at the gentle slope of Michiru's neck. And then she works the zipper down, slowly, murmuring, "That was also a good show." Michiru shivers, deliciously so. She's not the only one who can tease.
The dress is fully unzipped, and the halves of the dark cloth sea it has parted hang down. The dress straps stay put on Michiru's shoulders. Michiru curls a finger beneath one of them as she turns back to Haruka.
"Thank you," she says, bending to pick up her shoes, coy smile returning as she straightens. "I'll finish changing in the bathroom and take a bath, I think."
She swishes away. Haruka watches. Of course.
Haruka loosens her bow tie as she begins to dress down herself, following Michiru to their room. Unlike Michiru, who has left her shoes and shawl and jewelry neatly where they belong, Haruka tosses her bow tie and tuxedo jacket at the bed, with only the latter successfully landing there; she wriggles out of one shoe and three steps later from the other; she sits down on the feathery bed to brusquely unbuckle her belt and tug off her socks and pants. With that, she flops on her back, sighing: a little from being tired, a little from being at peace. She turns her head so her cheek is cool against the wrinkled bedsheets, so her eyes are on the closed bathroom door, so her mind is on Michiru beyond it.
Everything Michiru does is flawless. Aristocratic. In another life, she was a princess, and it shows. She's more of a princess than the Princess, Haruka chuckles to herself. But Michiru could not rule a kingdom. That isn't her. One person, though – one person she could rule, heart and body and soul. And that person would want it, would love it, would rule her back.
Well, Haruka thinks, corner of her lip dryly quirked up, she might have more control over me than I do over her.
Michiru had had the sink running, and it had become a fuzzy background noise to Haruka. The water ceases its steady susurration, leaving a brief hole of silence broken by the bathroom door opening. Haruka expects Michiru's hand to peek out, holding the dress so Haruka may hang it up for her.
Instead, Michiru fully opens the door, and Haruka takes her in in a second stretched into a lifetime. Her hair is held back by a fluffy headband, her face is cleansed of makeup yet still glowing, her bare body is so soft and divine as to have come to life from an artist's sketch. The dress is spilled on her outstretched arms.
"Would you be so kind as to put this up for me, Haruka?" she asks, politely enough, but Haruka hears the undercurrent of her tone all the same.
She gets up, but not without a sweeping glance of all of her. It is what Michiru wanted, and it is what Haruka does. Then Haruka, eyes level on Michiru's, takes the dress from her, purposefully brushing their hands.
"Anything for you," she says, with her own politeness, and with her own lacing of something more.
Haruka's part of their wardrobe follows no order; it is not messy, but it is not organized. Michiru is as stringent in how she sorts her clothing as she is in everything else. Haruka easily finds where the dress should go and hangs it up, then considers the differences between them tangibly in front of her. And she considers that despite them, they fit into each other like perfect puzzle pieces. Just as they once did, long ago. Time and death, as final as they are, have not kept them apart. They never will.
She wanders back to their room, beginning to unbutton her dress shirt, but the sound of water lapping turns her head up. Michiru had left the bathroom door partly open.
Smiling to herself, Haruka goes in.
Weak moonlight comes through the window, mingling with the yellow flames cast by a few candles Michiru has set about. The scent of flowers flirts with Haruka's nose. But not as much as the look and smile Michiru gives her.
"You don't skimp, do you?" Haruka asks, sitting on the cold floor by the tub.
"I know how to treat myself," Michiru replies, shifting in the water to cross her arms on the bathtub's rim. Stray droplets roll down the tub and are drunken greedily by Haruka's shirt.
"All you're missing is some classical music."
"Oh, but I do have music playing." Michiru rests her chin on her arms. "I can still hear my violin. Can't you?"
Haruka closes her eyes, remembering Michiru's earlier performance, sublime as always. She didn't play her instrument so much as let it speak in the language of music, in the dialect of her selected piece: from melancholy sonatas to joyous concertos, Michiru was the vessel of her violin. It had been crafted to sing, and sing it did under Michiru's delicate hands, reverberating through the performance hall and to Haruka's very being.
"I can hear it," Haruka says, opening her eyes to meet Michiru's.
Michiru smiles. "Then don't go asking me silly questions."
She has to laugh at that.
Michiru settles into the water, leaning her head back. Her neck is smooth and bejeweled by droplets of water.
I should kiss them away, Haruka thinks, and she does, with a touch as light as air. It is ordinary water from the tap, yet in it Haruka can taste the salt of the ocean. It seeps from Michiru sometimes. On her lips. Between her legs. On her skin, like this.
Haruka withdraws. Michiru's eyes are solemnly on her. In them, Haruka can see the eons they had to wait in vast nothingness to be reunited. And because Michiru had awakened before her, had to further wait while knowing the other half of her knew nothing of their past and future, the longing that lurks in her gaze always, always steals Haruka's breath.
"Kiss me more," Michiru whispers, but Haruka is already doing so. She holds Michiru's face like it's made of glass, like any firmer touch would break her, even though she knows Michiru is made of hard coral. Her strength is root-deep. Despite it all, Haruka is gentle with her.
At first, anyway.
She flutters kisses from Michiru's neck to her lips. She finds herself against them. This is the person she swore her love to in a past lifetime just as in this one, and this is how she proves it. She presses with more insistence, and Michiru welcomes it, sitting straighter to allow Haruka to hold more of her and hold her back. Michiru channels the waves of the ocean in the way she moves under Haruka. One of her hands wraps around Haruka's neck. The other bunches on her dress shirt, pulling her over the bathtub in a sharp, swift motion.
Haruka yelps as she splashes on top of Michiru. Michiru laughs; Haruka's ears turn pink.
"You didn't have to yank me in!" she says.
"Oh, please," Michiru says, both her hands curled around Haruka's neck. "You liked it."
And she had. They know each other too well.
Haruka huffs mock annoyance. "My dress shirt is soaked now."
"Then why not take it off?"
Haruka pauses, briefly drowning in Michiru's gaze. She feels the air leave her lungs, but it leaves quicker the more her eyes drift down.
She's mine, she thinks, heart thumping at her mouth, and I'm hers.
She leans in, one hand fumbling at her shirt buttons, the other curving around the small of Michiru's back. The Earth's sky and ocean may never meet, but as she whispers her devotion to Michiru's collarbone, she wishes she could tell them how beautiful it is to be together at last.