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“Is that the last one?” Natsuki shifts the cardboard box in her arms so it rests on her hip, giving her room to peek around it at her girlfriend. Her question is answered when she finds said girlfriend squatting down on the pavement, heaving as she struggles to lift the slightly smaller box in front of her. “Hehe. You okay down there, Yori?”
Sayori releases her vice grip on the box, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She pouts. “It’s not budging. How the heck did you get it out of the truck in the first place?”
Holding out her own box, Natsuki nods toward it. Sayori gets the hint, begrudgingly taking it from her and abandoning her efforts with the other one. It’s full of clothing and other light stuff, so she has no problem managing it. Natsuki, however, is left with the more daunting task: the brick of a box that had defeated Sayori.
Hm. What’s in this thing? More importantly, where’s the label…? As Natsuki peers around it, she finds her answer and immediately recognizes the issue: The word ‘manga’ is marked along the side in Monika’s pretty, neat handwriting. Earlier, before she had to leave, she’d helped them with filling and unloading the… truck… Damn it. So that’s why neither Sayori nor Natsuki had expected to run into this particular struggle.
The box may be small-adjacent, but boy oh boy is it crammed to the brim with books. ‘Tis the curse of a good collector. Natsuki stalks the perimeter like a hungry predator on the Savannah, eyes flicking up and down in an effort to size it up. She’d been going to the gym lately, building some muscle—not a whole lot, but some —so maybe she has a shot at making this look like a piece of cake. The goal she’s been working towards isn’t exactly box-lifting, but hey, let’s not forget that Sayori’s arms are basically cooked pasta noodles. The box could be full of nothing but packing peanuts and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.
“Good luck,” Sayori encourages only somewhat skeptically, adjusting her grip as Natsuki hears the telltale sound of cardboard slipping against her palms. “That thing is denser than you back in the lit club days. Ehe. Don’t death stare me, I’m trying to be helpful!”
“Uh-huh,” Natsuki hums back, finally latching onto the box and giving it a firm tug. It offers a fair bit of resistance; it turns out her collection is—uh, what’s the word?— heftier than anticipated. This is a good thing usually! More books! Just… It’s maybe not quite so good right now. She’s better at carrying things when the weight is more distributed, more evenly spread out. A centralized lead cube isn’t a fair test.
As Natsuki finally wrenches the thing off the ground, she can feel Sayori watching her with rapt attention. Does this make her look hot? Almost as if to answer the question, Sayori giggles quietly then immediately sucks in a breath of air and ducks her face out of sight. Yeah… that’s a no. So much for being optimistic.
“Huhp,” Natsuki grunts, finally lugging the box up past her waist, letting her get a decently good grasp on it. “Could you— hhf— get the door? Like— Hip check it, babe, give it a good— hoo, Christ— booty bump. Oh, shit. It’s slipping—!” But as the startled cry of panic leaves Natsuki’s lips, the load suddenly lightens. When she tilts her head around the tattered brown corner, there’s a very, very familiar pair of round blue eyes blinking back at her.
“Good now?” Sayori asks, grinning at Natsuki as her cheeks flush.
They step carefully toward the double doors leading into the apartment building lobby, shuffling to and fro until they wobble their way to the front of the elevator. Sayori doubles back to grab the box of clothes, and they’re officially done bringing boxes in from outside. Yippee-fucking-ki-yay. Now all that’s left is getting them up.
Ding.
The doors of the elevator slide open, and Natsuki shoves the manga box through while Sayori carries the other. They stand there, watching the numbered lights flicker on as the elevator ascends, panting ever so slightly. Natsuki turns to Sayori, this inexplicable feeling washing over her as the situation starts to register. She’s about to finish moving into her and Sayori’s apartment. Her and her girlfriend. Five years ago she was spending half of her life in a book closet; terrified of her dad, terrified of her identity, terrified of her feelings and the world and fucking everything. But now she’s in an elevator and her life has just begun.
“What?” Sayori asks, a lopsided smile on her face. When Natsuki is quiet, she shifts the box to one arm and brushes a few stray hairs out of her face—that had probably gotten stuck to her forehead from sweat, honestly—then leans and presses a kiss to the very top of her head. Neither say anything more, but they don’t have to.
See, that’s the thing about the two of them, Natsuki thinks as the elevator takes its sweet time opening up to their floor. (Floor three, in case you were wondering.) They don’t really have to say all that much to work. Sure, both are massive chatterboxes and still drive Monika and Yuri up a wall with their endless rambling, but that’s just because they enjoy talking. But the silent exchanges, the little actions, everything the world doesn’t see, is just for them.
“Wait here!” Natsuki exclaims suddenly, unlocking their door and dragging the manga box through the entryway backwards. Then she takes the remaining box from a startled Sayori and plonks it on the first clear surface she sees. Natsuki returns to the doorway, a teasing smirk playing at her lips. “May I?”
“May you what?” Sayori asks, an eyebrow quirked. “With you, that could mean holding my hand or setting off a bomb.”
Natsuki rolls her eyes. “That was one time.” (It was a cornflower bomb for a school experiment, she’s not actually nuts.) (Well, not in this case at least.) She shakes her head, an affectionate sort of exasperation making her heart swell in that funny, warm way. After meeting Sayori, she’s gotten used to it.
Looking at her curiously, Sayori steps closer, the smallest, littlest baby step, so that she’s hardly a foot from Natsuki now yet not in the actual apartment. And although Natsuki has grown since high school, she’s still nowhere near Sayori’s height so she tips her head back a bit to properly gaze at her. It’s another thing she’s gotten used to doing. The quizzical sparkle in Sayori’s eyes reminds her of what she’d meant to do— Right, right. Back on topic. Who could really expect her to focus at a time like this, though?
With a final once-over of Sayori, as if she needs another second to know what she looks like, Natsuki carefully wraps one arm around her waist and uses the other to hook behind her knees. In a delicate, practiced motion, she swings Sayori into her arms, carrying her in full bridal style. Those months at the gym had really paid off; Sayori might not be the heaviest person in the world, but Natsuki would’ve really hated to drop her during an important moment like this. Half because Sayori is her everything, and half because that would’ve been really fucking embarrassing.
“Wh—When did you learn how to do that?” Sayori gasps, arms firmly around Natsuki’s neck to keep her secure. Her face is pink from the bridge of her nose to the tips of her ears, and there’s something about the ‘o’ shape of her mouth that makes Natsuki feel like the strongest person on the planet.
“What, this? I’ve always been able to.” Natsuki grins despite knowing that this is so clearly a lie that she might as well be proclaiming her passion for purple prose and hefty, flowery novels. She moves forward experimentally, careful to keep Sayori in a secure position, focusing on making this moment perfect rather than the strain in her arms. The feeling of Sayori’s head resting softly on her shoulder is enough. The scent of cinnamon and vanilla is enough. Their little apartment, riddled with packed boxes and crummy furniture, is enough. She steps past the threshold, allows herself to hold onto her girlfriend for a heartbeat longer, and then gingerly pivots her back to her feet. Safe and sound.
“You…” Sayori begins, bringing one hand to each side of Natsuki’s face. Her fingertips glide through her hair for just a moment before coming to rest by her jawline once more, holding her head oh-so-gently between her palms. Natsuki had never been held like this before Sayori. Not ever. Sayori rests her forehead on Natsuki’s. “You are my favorite person in the world.”
It’s cheesy, but every time Sayori says anything tooth-achingly sweet like that, Natsuki swears something physically happens to her, and she gets more and more mushy-gushy every time it happens. Her stomach swirls and her heart pounds, thrumming against her chest like it wants to make a great escape, and she can’t help but stare and stare like an idiot. No matter the setting or the time, Sayori manages to reach through the fog and find Natsuki, then she transfixes her with a single word or touch.
So… this is love. Years and years on, she’s still learning more about what the word means.
“You’re mine too, or whatever.” Natsuki softens against Sayori’s hand, relishing the light pressure. She reaches to take Sayori’s wrist, dragging her over to the other room while still trying to somehow get her cheeks to return to their normal shade of pale.
They wind up on the couch they’d gotten from a random store going out of business, tucked beneath the blanket that Yuri had knitted when they announced that they’d decided on an apartment. It’s magnificently thick and almost criminally nice-feeling, with a beautiful pattern of intertwining whites and greys. Seriously, the thing could put Natsuki into a coma. Anyway, they snuggle up with the blanket pulled to their chins, although the way their limbs are tangled together defeats the need for a blanket at all. Neither care; they never do. Life is more fun when you just don’t give a shit.
“Do you wanna finish unpacking tomorrow?” Natsuki suggests, wrestling with a stubborn yawn. She may win that battle, narrowly avoiding it, but when her eyelids begin to flutter, she’s powerless against the clutches of exhaustion.
“Mmh,” Sayori hums in response. Her eyes are closed, Natsuki notes when she peeks over. She looks peaceful. “We have all the time in the world, right? And it’s so comfy here…”
Curling closer to Sayori, lulled by her warm body and the sensation of her arm holding her waist, Natsuki nods against her chest. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
They doze off right there on the couch at hardly eight in the evening, in the strange little apartment that’s slowly becoming ‘home’. Home has always been Sayori to Natsuki, but having a place to return to, and to call their own, is a feeling that she can’t even begin to put into words. It’s… love. Love is a home, and a person, and an unnecessarily heavy box of manga. Love is a fancy cursive label and a coma-inducing knit blanket.
Before, Natsuki used to think that she lacked the ability to care about anything at all, let alone care a lot. But now love is everywhere; she can’t move an inch without running into it somewhere. It’s in the corner of her currently empty kitchen, hiding behind the shower curtain in the unused shower, lurking inside the pages of her manga collection and between the couch cushions. It’s probably in those taped-up boxes too, but she’ll have to find out when they get around to sorting through those.
“‘S morning already?” Sayori mumbles groggily, roused from her slumber when Natsuki gets up to plug in the night light she’d forgotten on the counter. She runs a hand through her frizzy hair, still half-asleep by the looks of her.
Natsuki settles back down beside her, adjusting the blanket back around them. She unclips that famous red bow from Sayori’s hair, making sure not to pull on it as she sets it to the side. Then she combs out the tangles with her fingers, taking care to be extra gentle and not tug in places where she shouldn’t so as to not further wake Sayori up. She removes her own hairclips next, but only once she’s certain that Sayori is all set.
“Mm… Thank you, ‘Suki.” Sayori stretches just a bit, enough to shift the blanket, before growing still and calm once more. She rolls over onto her side, curling up into the fetal position she usually falls asleep best in. “I don’t like the dark.”
Leaning to kiss the side of Sayori’s temple, Natsuki hums. She fits into place against Sayori perfectly, like their bodies had been made to lull the other’s to sleep. And she doesn’t say, ‘I know you don’t like the dark’, or ‘I brought the light especially for you’. These are unspoken things, the sort of sentiment that one feels rather than hears: Fingers interlacing, knees brushing, hands on waists and shoulders and backs. Things that one just… knows.
“I love you,” Natsuki whispers through the golden darkness, because it’s the one unspoken thing that she will always, always need to say. Not as proof that she’s capable of it, but because Sayori will always, always deserve to hear it, to have indisputable evidence that she’s beyond loved.
Of course, Sayori happens to be asleep presently, snoring lightly with her face squished against the couch cushion in what can’t be a very comfortable position, so Natsuki doesn’t expect a response. But just when she’s about to allow herself to drift off as well, she feels Sayori nestling into her, subconsciously moving as close to her as the laws of physics themselves will allow her to get. And, like a second language, Natsuki feels it.
I love you.
