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Haruka watched as Michiru stood in the tide, rising and falling with every wave as easily as she breathed. She could feel Michiru’s breath now the way she could feel the sea when she listened to Michiru falling asleep some nights. Coming to the beach with her had become one of Haruka’s favorite little day-cations. This was the first clear day of spring. The sun beat down warm enough to make the sand hot under Haruka’s towel. Michiru looked back at her. Her hair blew around her face like a halo, like a flower blooming from the waters of melted snow.
She padded back across the sand as though the heat didn’t bother her. “You’re coming in with me today.”
Haruka pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. “You know I don’t swim.”
“I do know.” Michiru smiled. “But I’m not asking you to swim.”
“I don’t do water.” She didn’t remember why, not quite. Maybe something had happened. Maybe she’d heard the wrong story at the wrong time when she was young. But Haruka did not swim, did not wade. She’d go on boats easily enough, and, as she had to insist to Mina countless times, could bathe without a problem. Just nothing bigger than a bathtub.
Michiru knelt down next to her. Haruka hugged her knees and tried to keep looking grumpy, but she felt her face soften when Michiru put her hand over hers. “Do you see the line, where the water hasn’t reached any higher?”
“Mm.”
“I want you to stand right there. Just on the line.”
“I’m not a toddler,” Haruka said, ready for her mother’s old rebuttal that she was, otherwise she’d just get in the damn water already.
But Michiru just said, “I know,” and pulled her up. “But I’ve been in the sky with you, so I want you to be in the sea with me, even if only a little.” She squeezed her hand. “I’ll be with you the whole time.”
It was only her toes. Haruka could be brave with her toes, certainly. Definitely. No doubt. She was Haruka Tennoh, Sailor Uranus, who faced monsters and death and countless horrors with hardly a blink, she could get her feet wet without fear. But she found herself swallowing down a lump that had formed in her throat as she looked out at the endless mass of crashing water. “Alright.”
Michiru was rarely as gentle as she was now. She let Haruka set the pace, which was admittedly unthinkably slow for the soldier of speed. She did not tug or dance ahead or even talk. She breathed slow and deep and Haruka tried to follow her example, but her pulse kept getting faster as the water got closer and she kept catching her breaths going fast and shallow.
But she refused to stop. She’d go slower than the crabs that occasionally meandered out of their little hole homes, but she wouldn’t stop. The line was only a few feet away. One foot. One step. She put both feet on the line. Michiru stood next to her, and they waited. The waved slid in and out, creeping closer and stopping short and sliding back to smaller waves over and over until Haruka was sure that she’d never get wet at all. Her shoulders relaxed. And that, of course, was the moment the water slid up and over her toes.
She gasped; it was cold, it was the ocean, but it was also Michiru. It was morning coffee and the feeling of snuggling next to her in bed and the way her eyes drooped when she was tired. It was the way she played the violin and the sound of her voice. Her paintings and her breath and the way she looked at things she liked as though she’d like to absorb them but could not touch them. And it was a thousand other things Haruka had never noticed or felt before. She felt, for a moment, that she knew her fully, more than she even knew herself.
As quick as it had come, the water receded, sinking Haruka’s feet into the sand as it took grains with it. “Is this how you feel when we’re in the air together?” How many times had they been in the helicopter? Or anywhere the wind was strong?
“Not every time. Not even close to most of the time. But enough to hope you could feel it too.” She raised Haruka’s hand and kissed it.
It was like having their first kiss over again, but fearless and closer. Haruka moved her free hand to brush Michiru’s hair from her face. “Thank you.” She kissed her forehead. “Maybe, another day, I’ll go in farther.”
Michiru smiled. “I doubt that. But this is enough.” She rested her head on Haruka’s shoulder. “I’m glad you can meet me like this.”