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“and you laugh. loudly- head tipping back. and while your eyes are on the ceiling, I am mouthing something too heavy even for this steady night to shoulder. ‘this is not a joke.’ I mouth. ‘love me. love me.’”
— Salma Deera, Letters from Medea
There is no time like the present. She whispered those words in Hitoka’s ear, as she pushed them down onto their mattress, ready to make them a wreck.
That was okay.
She kissed violently, daringly, fearlessly, while Hitoka felt like they were falling behind, coming in last place in whatever game they were playing.
Her hands were calloused, but they held Hitoka so perfectly, they think they made themself believe those hands were nothing but soft and kind, good hands, belonging to an even better girl.
There is no time like the present as she takes Hitoka down in a feverish kiss, lips pulled up into the softest of smiles, the same hands exploring their abdomen—those hands were so cold but they both laughed and Amanai told them a star had just been born.
Was that it?
The heavy realization that they might have
loved the girl that was above them, teeth on display, her chest exposed—more beautiful than a million stars, more perfect than the continuity of infinity.
A star was born that night.
And Amanai's thumb traced their hip, 1 2 3,
a circle formation.
A star was born and Hitoka called it loving a girl, loving Kanoka Amanai.
There was no time like the present when Amanai was kissing their neck, pressing little pecks to all of Hitoka’s moles, calling it her own little galaxy.
There was no time like the present when Amanai was breathless above them, saying nothing—
the silence should have been a given.
There was no time like the past when Hitoka woke up alone, showered alone, cried alone—alone in the same skin Amanai—Kanoka had stripped them of the night before.
No time like when her hands explored Hitoka’s body as if their entire world hadn’t been on the verge of collapse.
No time like when Hitoka felt like their body was a temple and not a burial ground.
They weren’t anything.
And maybe some part of them always wanted that—except not with Kanoka.
They wanted, more than anything to not just be nothing to Kanoka.
So Hitoka repeats to themselves that Kanoka will be back—that she’s not actually gone, she’ll be back again, and she’ll take Hitoka down, falling onto a bed the same as falling into a bottomless pit. “She’ll be back” because repeating those words provides Hitoka with a false sense of control— because lying to themselves was the most effective way of dealing with all the thoughts running through their head.
So Hitoka repeats and repeats until there is a girl on the other side of their door, smiling brightly as if the floor hadn’t been stolen from under Hitoka’s feet. And they open the door. because Kanoka is beautiful and her voice drowns out Hitoka’s insecurities like the bluest waters and her touch is warm and her body is the only place Hitoka wants to get lost in.
First, she comes in.
Hitoka makes them tea and there is tension and silence and Hitoka wants to place their hands on Kanoka’s cheeks and kiss her until Kanoka gets it.
Gets that them—whatever they are, means more to Hitoka than prayers and stuffed animals from childhood.
There is something too good—too pure and too full about the way Kanoka—Amanai makes their belly warm with just a smile—the only thing Hitoka feels they have left to lose.
But there is no kiss. Just silence.
And then their back is against the wall as they feel themselves melting through the drywall while Amanai is pulling up their shirt and pressing feather-light kisses to Hitoka’s neck.
There was a soft press of lips, their hands are on Amanai's hips, letting their fingers caress the exposed skin like the world would end right after.
Amanai kissed like she’d miss the train to the city for Hitoka. And Hitoka kissed back with all the strength of the highest tide in the smallest ocean.
The room ran a fever, over 200 degrees and they were burning up like stars, tangled in each other’s limbs—lips slotted together like a key to ignition.
Chernobyl was the pit of Hitoka’s stomach—warm, radioactive—beautiful.
Amanai was a nuclear war—broad shoulders, long arms caging Hitoka to the bed—the ground, while the earth exploded behind her.
There was hair stuck to their face and there was Amanai, below them, covered in a sheen of sweat,
so, so, so, so, fucking beautiful.
So beautiful it was to watch the girl below them smile, lips curling to form the crescent shape of the moon while Hitoka let their hands explore, curious, impatient, looking for the Summerland, looking for every bit of light that seeped out from the grooves and curves of Amanai’s heavenly body.
She looks up, and her lips move—there is a plume of smoke escaping as she says “Hitoka” and Yachi thinks that maybe this is it.
Amanai is the rapture—taking Hitoka home—tightly protecting all the good left in the world within her arms.
“Amanai—”
There is another kiss—and another, lost within the frame of time in which those events took place.
Skin to skin, sticking like glue while sweat covers both of their bodies and their breaths are shallow.
Hitoka doesn’t know the time but they do know that beside them lays the body of the brightest and most beautiful star in the universe.
Amanai is warmth and she is love and Hitoka drapes their arm over Amanai’s bare torso and whispers for her to stay.
Maybe Amanai is asleep.
(She’s not.)
Hitoka draws shapes across the expanse of skin on Amanai’s stomach and hopes that they won’t wake up to an empty bed
and that Amanai won’t go back to being Kanoka until she knocks on Hitoka’s door a week after they’ve last had sex like nothing happened and push at all of Hitoka’s buttons until tea is abandoned and clothes are abandoned and sanity is abandoned as they fall on the same mattress they always end up on.
It’s a simple request, for Amanai to stay and keep the bed warm and for Hitoka to make her breakfast and have her walking around in Hitoka’s clothes and maybe get a cat and—
They’ve known the body besides them since they were fifteen and sixteen and twenty and twenty-three and they’ve been doing whatever they’ve been doing for the past year and Hitoka is growing tired of having to take off their skin and going about everything as if Amanai wasn’t the only thing they wanted.
So, the sun rises, and Hitoka rises, and the body that laid beside them the night before is long gone.
Hitoka is left with all the fallout and ash from the explosion known as Kanoka Amanai, and they’ll sweep it again, every single week because being Hitoka, showing up at their door on a weekly basis, being that was enough—Hitoka liked being that.
So Hitoka sweeps and the sun and moon continue to yearn in their circular nature and it’s Thursday again and Amanai is on the other side of the door and Hitoka already left the broom and dustpan beside their bedroom door.
Amanai takes them down, bed like an ocean, endless, beautiful—killer, and she kisses Hitoka with all of the love in the world on her tongue while they slip out of their skin once more.
Hitoka’s bones are old and broken, but they surrendered to Kanoka Amanai the moment she created life from Hitoka’s nothing.
They kiss and they kiss and they kiss until they have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, Hitoka too afraid to sleep while Amanai’s breaths are steady.
And they wait and wait and wait for Amanai to swim to the top, get up and go—but it never comes.
It’s 07:02 in the morning and the once inevitable disappearance of Kanoka Amanai never comes and Hitoka is exhausted but the body beside them is real, and she’s alive and she’s beautiful.
It’s 07:02 in the morning and Hitoka is placing their arm along Amanai’s torso and pulling them in, whispering for them to stay, and closing their eyes to rest.
It’s 12:35 and they’re awake and there’s a girl beside them, dressed in clothes that look all too similar to Hitoka’s own and she’s smiling down at them and
There is no time like the present—Amanai looking at Hitoka and Hitoka looking back. The afternoon sun is peeking behind the still shut blinds and Amanai speaks a low "good morning"
And Hitoka understands what she is really saying.
There is no time like the present, two people in a room, surrendering to each other.
There is no time, not when Kanoka defies every single law that makes the universe just.
There is no time and there is forever and there is the present, a moment they both share.
There is nothing like Kanoka Amanai.
(There is nothing like Yachi Hitoka.)