Work Text:
Haruka looked so much younger when she was asleep. Maybe it was the peace on her face, an unimaginable stillness on someone who had been born for movement. Maybe it was the absence of emotions, of the fear on her brow and the joy around her eyes. Or the way her hair had grown a little too long, and made her look like an unkempt teenage boy.
Of course, Michiru was too careful a driver to ponder the issue for more than a glance, eyes quickly returning to the road ahead; though she could easily picture how Haruka looked anyway, lips slightly parted, hair tumbling delicately into a single gracious curl on her forehead, eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings from a dream she was having - no nightmares for her Haruka anymore.
Michiru had spent so much of her life looking at Haruka that it sometimes felt as if her image was imprinted behind her eyelids, the light of the sun lingering under closed lashes.
And yet it wasn’t enough; it was never enough. But that didn’t matter, of course: the pleasure had always been in the looking, in the trying and failing to remember exactly the line of her jaw or the shadows of her smile.
For a moment, Michiru was tempted to pull over quietly and open her sketchbook. It was very rare for Haruka to be so still - even in her sleep, she was always thrashing about, and so Michiru held her like iron, never letting her go, never letting her free. But an unmoving Haruka was barely Haruka at all, and in the drawing she would look like a stranger, and so what was the point, when Michiru couldn’t capture her?
She had never managed to produce a good likeness of Haruka anyway. She wasn’t made to be drawn, to become one with the stillness of an image. And how could Michiru’s pencil accurately show the joy that came with every one of her movements, that drew the eye to every one of the motions she made and made it impossible to look away?
Haruka wasn’t meant to be drawn, and yet Michiru’s sketchbook was filled with an array of discarded attempts.
Was it love or egoism or that human habit of defying fate ?
Michiru glanced at Haruka again and decided to keep driving. She seemed to be sleeping so well, Michiru didn’t want to risk waking her.
And the day was falling quickly anyway.
Haruka’s stillness made her seem so unreachable, and it was hard not to think about the always lingering possibility that she would one day be moving no more, escaping forever. But wasn’t it always so between them, the infinity of a space Michiru longed to fill ? Yet there were no whispers so soft they could speak directly to her soul, no touch so deep it could join them forever.
It didn’t stop Michiru from trying - from wanting.
All love and egoism and that human habit of defying fate.
There were nights when Michiru dreamed of eating her alive, taking her in in a frenzy of teeth and flesh, melting Haruka to her skin until she flowed in her blood. There, she could keep her safe, against her heart, hidden from those that would take her away. There, they would never be parted again, and finally she could be hers.
- of course, she’d never tell Haruka of this particular fantasy.
Michiru had always known, always, that she wanted more out of Haruka than she could ever give. She had long accepted it; wasn’t it how she wanted it to be, after all? She loved a distant star, and so her heart must yearn and her hands must be held back by her lying mouth. There were some things she knew better than to burden Haruka with. No more than her sketchbook could ever hold her image, Michiru couldn’t own her completely, no matter how much she wanted - needed- to. After all, Haruka’s nature was to escape.
Michiru’s greatest love; twisted, absolute, the art of a beautiful heartbreak.
And yet...
And yet, Haruka let her drive her car.