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His lips press softly, tentatively, onto hers, and Takane’s heart stops beating entirely, as if she’s once again become a simple configuration of pixels and data on a softly glowing screen.
She leans into him before she can help herself, hands clutching needily, helplessly, onto the soft fabric of his shirt and crumpling it between her fingers. She can feel the harsh shape of his shoulder blades under her trembling fingers. His hands are in her hair, the skin uncharacteristically rough and at odds with the softness she’d always imagined, and she’d imagined so much before—
It’s a nice kiss, a clumsy and entirely perfect kiss, and her mind truly has stopped working in the most awful, disgusting, cliche way. It doesn’t feel like it’s happening, the warmth of his lips and his soft breaths against her skin. Takane should stop him. She should because it’s wrong, he’s wrong, she couldn’t have possibly done anything worthy of deserving this, not her— she should pull away and tell him to stop, but she doesn’t, and that long, long buildup of sheer want keeps her in place.
She feels peaceful, detached. And then Haruka tentatively opens his mouth just the slightest bit and, tentatively, as if he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to be doing (and he probably isn’t) catches her lower lip between his teeth. Takane does feel that. It’s a flash of unbearable heat through her body and the feeling of something heavy coiling in her lower stomach, and she does push him away, then.
"What—" Her voice is disgusting, weak and breathy and pathetic, and she hates the weakness she can hear there. "Haruka, I—"
"Sorry!" He steps back hurriedly as well. "Sorry. I should have asked Takane first, before doing this kind of thing."
His eyes are filled with concern that’s entirely at odds with his usual airheadedness. Takane swallows.
"…Bad," she mutters all at once. Haruka tilts his head, confused, and she takes a breath and speaks more slowly. "It wasn’t bad. That, I mean. You didn’t do anything wrong, it was…"
She trails off and Haruka smiles, innocently, that same sunny smile she’d longed for in those lonely times when she had nothing to comfort her but the quiet hum of the computer and Shintaro’s restless mumbling in his sleep. He always had nightmares, every night.
"Is it okay?" Haruka asks, tilting his head again, looking so, so childish with those eyes of a young boy which she always found so beautiful. Although— his eyes aren’t as young as they once were. They gained something from what he went through, torn up and turned into an android with a heart and body of steel and finally made whole again.
"It’s." Takane feels the old self-hatred, the old bile of insecurity rising in her throat, but she has lost her body and seen tens or hundreds or thousands of time loops like snarled knots of thread and fought bitterly and gotten herself back again, and she’s stronger now than that girl who ran up a hill so, so long ago.
She says it carefully.
"I— Haruka, I’ve always." She bites her lip, and bluntness is all she has. "I’ve always loved you, ever since before, and that’s why." Haruka is silent, and she can’t look at him or hear anything through the pounding of her heart in this troublesome body. "I don’t want you to do it for me, because you pity me. I don’t want you to ever feel sorry for me, and I’m happy with just being able to tell you, so please—"
He’s silent still, and Takane has to look up, she can’t help herself. She does. He’s looking at her. He’s smiling, and he’s looking at her. That disgusting, traitorous heart of hers stops dead again.
She doesn’t know how it happens. She can’t remember. The space between them is small, and smaller, and then it’s gone and she’s breathing in the smell of Haruka’s shampoo (the same one, the same scent she’d memorized once in a hot summer day in a small classroom) and Haruka’s arms are around her.
"I’ve always loved Takane," he says simply. "I thought you knew."
It’s all Takane needs. He’s an idiot, such an idiot, she hates him— She grabs his stupid shirt and pulls him down to meet her and presses her mouth against his, clumsy and rough and desperate.
Haruka gasps a little as they break apart, a beautiful, helpless sound that Takane wants to save as a small file in a remote folder in the back of her mind that she can access whenever she needs to. The tips of her fingers feel like they’re buzzing with electricity, and she feels for a moment like there’s nothing in her veins but data and pure energy. Takane looks down at her hands, knuckles white, grasping the front of Haruka’s shirt; they’re pale, thin, entirely ordinary.
"Hey, it’s real, right? I’m here?"
"Takane’s real."
"And you, you’re here too, right?"
"Yeah. I’m here too."