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Over the summer, Aoyagi’s turned gorgeous.
Junta tries not to stare when Aoyagi tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, soft blonde strands bright in the sunlight.
It’s not like she can’t stare. She should be able to--she knows other people are. Other People are looking at Aoyagi as she purses her mouth into a little pout and erases the lines she’s drawn, and Junta wants to put an arm around her shoulder and shout, back off, I saw her first.
It’s not like that’s not untrue. Junta loops her arm around Aoyagi’s neck and the girl just keeps drawing. But there’s a smile that softens her face now, one that Junta’s put there, and she likes that so much she draws Aoyagi close to her--close enough that her breath can tickle her ear.
Spending their study sessions outside is worth it, she decides, when Aoyagi puts her pencil down and just looks at her, looks at her with one of those expressions she saves for Junta alone. Aoyagi regards her gravely, sometimes, when Junta says something she shouldn’t--and sweetly, like now, when Junta wants her undivided attention.
But really, over the summer, she’s gotten kind of beautiful. Someone’s taught Aoyagi how to put on makeup, and Junta wonders who it was--if Aoyagi presses her delicate fingers against the soft skin of her face and puckers, like the girls in movies, before wearing lipstick.
Aoyagi’s not wearing lipstick.
She might have a stick of lip balm in her bag, jumbled in with crumbled pastel dust and flash drives. Junta’s known her for too long, and knows the shape and planes of her face (when she closes her eyes and takes little naps, furrows her brows while glaring at her laptop). She doesn’t know what Aoyagi would look like putting on makeup. With eyeliner flicked out at the edges of her hazel-gold eyes.
“Junta?” and the query is soft, her name familiar from Aoyagi’s mouth.
“Ah,” Junta forces a laugh. She puts her chin on Aoyagi’s shoulder. “Nothing, nothing.” Aoyagi doesn’t resume sketching and leans back against Junta’s chest.
Junta’s always liked being warm; she gets cold easily, and her classrooms are freezing. Aoyagi’s probably used to this by now, being Junta’s personal space heater. But the autumn sun is still warm enough that--if anybody asked, or held Junta’s hands--they’d find out that she wasn’t really cold at all.
“...let’s get lunch later,” she mumbles, and Aoyagi nods. “And tea, from that place down the road.” Another nod. “I don’t really want to do my homework.”
Aoyagi shifts, and shakes a little--she’s laughing, soft giggles low in her throat. Junta plays along, raising the affront in her voice as she continues, “Well, we can’t all be like you, Miss Comp-Sci Picking-Up-An-Accidental-Studio-Art-Minor! I have,” she huffs, laughter creeping into her own mock tirade; Aoyagi’s laughter is contagious. “I have a lot of reading to do!’
“Okay,” Aoyagi agrees, and it’s hard to tell who’s placating who. Junta savors the flash of warmth in her when Aoyagi’s giggles subside, and she’s flushed a little from laughing. She tucks her chin over Aoyagi’s shoulder again.
It’s easy to do nothing with her around, to just spend time and breathe in the autumn air with her. Junta has a hundred pages of reading and an outline due by tomorrow, but she’s warmer than a cup of tea.
Aoyagi might be her favorite person.
“Bless you, oh my god,” Junta mumbles, eyes half-cracked open as she inhales the reassuring scent of tea. Bergamot in her nose and Aoyagi’s patient face as she watches Junta wake up: it’s a routine as familiar as picking up post. “I love you,” she breathes, and offers Aoyagi a grin. “Me and this tea, it’s a committed relationship.”
Aoyagi rolls her eyes, but still makes a huff of amused noise; she goes to leave when Junta catches her by the shirt, fingers curling in the fabric.
“No, the tea likes you too.”
The joke escapes her first, and Junta could sigh from relief. Aoyagi shakes her head and sits down on the bed next to Junta, still in her sleeping clothes. Junta closes her eyes and sips at her tea, lets its taste work through her mouth and really wake her up.
Aoyagi is a quiet sleeper. Junta knows this after the nights she’s spent over--after the naps she’s seen Aoyagi catching during exams--her head buried on her forearms. Her shoulders lift and fall in gentle rhythm and she barely makes a sound, just sleeps like the dead until her alarm rings.
When she rises and turns off her alarm, she hits it with a force that would startle Junta, at first--Aoyagi was a short, skinny freshman when they’d met, and is as skinny and small as ever--but it’s terrifying when she’s angry. Junta had said that she’d seem the type to break an alarm clock for real, and Aoyagi had turned red before nodding, hesitant but honest.
“Eight o’clock lecture?” Junta asks, and Aoyagi’s sigh confirms it. “Mine’s at eight, too.”
Junta can see the bottom of her cup and swirls her tea around, dark liquid stretching and pooling as it releases another burst of bergamot to her nose. “I guess,” she frowns, “We should go.”
Aoyagi hasn’t taken her eyes off her since she’s given her the tea.
She always looks at people like that. Aoyagi studies people, has whole sketchpads full of figures she’s seen and faces she’s watched. Junta isn’t anywhere as good with people as she’d like--and it’s a strange feeling, to see Aoyagi study people so intently.
She’s used to that gaze on herself. Aoyagi looks at her like nobody else does, head tilted up to meet Junta’s eyes.
During freshman year, she’d slouch a little; small as she was, she carried herself with slumped shoulders. But she’d looked Junta dead center in the eye nonetheless. Aoyagi seems to treat everyone even-handedly, no sketch less brimming with detail than another.
People skip over Junta with their eyes when she’s in a crowd.
Over fall break, Aoyagi comes back looking different.
If people hadn’t looked at Aoyagi before, Junta distantly realizes, they will definitely be looking now.
Aoyagi runs a hand over the darkened part of her hair, close-cropped at the temple with blonde still flowing through her fingers. She looks nervous, and a little on edge--but if she wouldn’t have wanted the undercut, she wouldn’t have gotten it. That’s Aoyagi all over.
“It,” Junta tries, but something’s stuck in her throat. She coughs, and Aoyagi fusses, about to make a cup of tea. “No, I’m good,” she wheezes, and Aoyagi’s face creases into a relieved smile--the same smile she’s worn for the three years that Junta’s known her. It’s her hair, how it frames her face differently now. Junta can breathe again, but feels breathless for a different reason. “It looks good.”
“Pretty?”
Aoyagi usually doesn’t care what people see when they see her. She loses hair elastics faster than most, borrowing the one snapped around Junta’s wrist while she codes and shoving paintbrushes into her hair to keep it in a bun. She’s worn inkstained jeans and chewed on the sleeve of her sweatshirts while Junta tries to keep her clothes intact and clean, doing their laundry together in lumps just to make things a little easier.
She’s never asked if she was pretty before--Junta had assumed she hadn’t cared. “Yes,” she finally says, and Aoyagi lights up a little, soft pink dusting her face. “It was pretty before, too,” Junta adds. “Why’d you get it cut?”
Aoyagi is usually quiet, but the answer she gives is incomprehensible. She shrinks away--from Junta, for the first time in three years. Junta’s always been able to read between the lines, and Aoyagi’s silences are louder than some people’s words. She’s getting used to making forced laughter sound natural.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to--” But Aoyagi cuts her off, unnatural laughter and all. Eye-to-eye, the naked honesty that had surprised Junta so much before; that, too, is Aoyagi all over.
“For you.”
“For--” it doesn’t make sense. “For me?” Junta tries to piece it together, Aoyagi’s words and the things her silence tells her. “You wanted to look pretty?”
Aoyagi nods firmly, and repeats, “For you.” She doesn’t look as unsure as before. She just looks--pretty, yes, but the idea that she’d done it for Junta is. New.
“The--the makeup?” Aoyagi heaves a little sigh and steps in close to invade Junta’s personal space. “All for you,” she whispers, and Junta couldn’t leave even if she wanted to, not with Aoyagi looking at her like she’s the only one who matters.
“I,” Junta starts. Aoyagi doesn’t move away, hazel-gold eyes wide and bright and pretty, gorgeous, beautiful. “You--”
“Junta,” and Aoyagi doesn’t give her time to respond, yanks her down by the shirtfront and kisses her quiet. Aoyagi’s soft fingers press against her jaw, and she’s pressing her body close to Junta’s--for warmth, for comfort--and she must be telling the truth, because Junta can taste it on her tongue. She’s familiar and different, Junta’s hands winding around the softness of her waist and Aoyagi clinging close, hands cupping her face. “For you,” she gasps, and her earnest words, the bright fire in her eyes, they cut through Junta’s post-kiss euphoria.
Junta might have been dating Aoyagi since freshman year and not known it. “Is it possible,” she says slowly, “That I’ve missed something in the last three years?” And she’s grinning--partly out of nerves, truth be told--smiling and it makes Aoyagi smile back, forehead thunking against Junta’s chest in exasperation. “Was there something you wanted to tell me, Aoyagi?”
Aoyagi curls one hand into a fist and thumps it lightly against Junta’s collarbone, quiet giggles escaping her mouth. “No, seriously,” and it’s what they always do, Junta ramping up and Aoyagi along for the ride, reaction to reaction and keenly, sharply familiar. “Was there something you wanted to share with the rest of the class?”
“Stop,” Aoyagi giggles, and wraps her arms around Junta’s neck. “Junta, don’t--”
“I’m serious! I’m perfectly serious, this is a very serious matter, I’m being kissed by a very, very pretty girl, I’ve never been more serious.”
(And if Junta were really honest: the truth is that, since she’s known her, Aoyagi was always along for the ride--but usually got there first, and waited. That might matter the most. She waited, and watched, and Junta’s three years late to the finish line.)
“About me?” Aoyagi’s eyes glint with humor, and she raises herself on tiptoe just to put her mouth at the same level as Junta’s.
“Am I kissing anyone else?” Aoyagi scowls at the thought immediately. Junta tightens her grip around Aoyagi’s waist, and it smoothes out the frown. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.” Tentatively, carefully, Junta presses a kiss on Aoyagi’s forehead. “Just you.”
Aoyagi is still hovering on tiptoe. “Okay,” she agrees. “Okay, Junta.”
“Okay, Junta.” She doesn’t say much, but those are the words she means. “Okay.”
It’s nerve-wracking a little, to have Junta so close to her. They’re close all the time, fingertips touching and Junta so frequently draping herself over Aoyagi’s shoulder. But this is being close with intent, post-kiss haze clouding her head. Junta looks good, she decides, even from this close.
I’ve never been more serious.
“About me?” And she knows Junta likes to joke, takes comfort in the space where humor can bridge most situations; Junta’s idea of human interaction is a fight with words, with wit.
“Junta, don’t--” She makes her laugh all the time, Junta’s sense of humor and her quips, but also her fits of temper, the expressions she makes when she’s pleased, or angry. She likes them all, privately thinks about them more frequently than anyone else’s face, fills the sketchbook in her head with Junta’s face and her figure. “Stop--”
For you.
“For you,” and a kiss between the spaces of her words, “For you,” Junta, the name she likes saying most. The reason she’d gotten her haircut.
The reason she’d wanted to look--“pretty?”
Junta always meets her stare. When they’re together, she doesn’t have to be anyone else but herself. Junta fills in the blanks, and waits for her to catch up. She can count the days when Junta’s had a smile on her face for her, than the days without.
I have a lot of reading to do! Orange-tinged afternoons on the green, Junta’s chin on her shoulder and her warm laugh in her ears. Let’s get lunch later, and always, her response: “Okay.”
If it’s anywhere with Junta, she’d go.
She’s missed her over the summer.
They’ve texted, and called, but she hasn’t seen Junta face-to-face since the end of the spring semester. She hopes she doesn’t look too different; makeup is still a new thing, and she doesn’t have on much.
But it might keep Junta’s eyes on her for a little longer.
She’s cleaned out her backpack but there’s still residual pastel dust; it clings to her fingertips while she fumbles with the straps of her bag. Junta hasn’t said a word since seeing her, and it makes her want to avert her eyes, hide a little.
They’d agreed to meet on the green, and Junta has been too quiet. The noise of their campus coming back to life overwhelms their silence.
“... Junta?”