Chapter Text
Kobayashi doesn’t dream. Well, she dreamt once or twice as a child, but not anymore. When she does get a night’s sleep, it’s not vibrant, nor colorful, nor cinematic nor even idyllic. It’s black and it’s quiet and it’s over as soon as it starts.
No, Miss Kobayashi does not dream. She just doesn’t.
It’s a quiet morning, with the sun fading in through the trees, its burning light squirming through the leaves to reach Kobayashi’s eyes. The air is warm but not sharp, a comfortable breath on her skin that doesn’t alarm her senses. It’s.. blurry, though. The trees are all fuzzy brown lines with puffballs of green leaves atop them, and the grass beneath her hand is barely distinguishable as grass.
“Miss Kobayashi!” Tohru’s sweet (familiar) voice exclaims, and she runs up to her, holding something shiny in her hand. “I brought your glasses for you! Oh, poor Miss Kobayashi, can’t see a single thing..” Tohru coos, along with some other statements of similar flattering and doting tones. She slides Kobayashi’s glasses onto her face, and the smile Tohru’s wearing comes into view. “There we are..” Tohru grins, all toothy and not entirely human, and Kobayashi feels a small smile quirk at her lips as well.
“Thanks, Tohru,” she utters, unsure of why her cheeks feel a little warm. Tohru doesn’t seem to notice, either that or she doesn’t care. She simply looks upon Kobayashi with that same old fond expression, fiery eyes seeming to calm at the sight of her.
And Kobayashi wakes up.
Though a bit confused, Kobayashi manages to go throughout her day as normal. She’s nearly forgotten the dream ever happened by the time she gets home, finding Tohru perched on their outdoor porch, arms resting on the railing. The wind pushes her pigtails over to the right, blowing them over, sometimes overlapping blonde with blonde. It’s nearly hypnotizing, but luckily for her, Kobayashi is no love-struck maiden. She manages to pace over to the sliding door, and open it up.
Upon the sound of the door breezing open, Tohru turns her head, and her eyes seem to shine once they land on Kobayashi.
“What’re you doing, Tohru?”
“Oh, nothing – just watching over the city while the clothes dry.” Tohru waves her hand dismissively, a smile plastered on her face.
Kobayashi looks to her, brows furrowing slightly, and she moves forward to stand beside the taller woman. Neither of them speak, simply exchanging odd glances and shared silence.
When nighttime falls, after she tucks Kanna and Ilulu in, Kobayashi finds Tohru once more. She pauses, takes a steadying breath, and then speaks. “Tohru.”
Tohru looks up to her, attentive as always. “Yes, Miss?”
Kobayashi sighs out a sentence in that same mezzo-alto, nearly flat tone: “Do you want to sleep in my room tonight?” And she swears up and down, she hasn’t seen Tohru so overjoyed since the day she asked if she could fly.
This time, she’s not in a field. She’s in some sort of weird dressing room, surrounded by fancy kimonos, murals on the walls, various tools for ancient makeup techniques that Kobayashi might’ve learned some bits about during some time in her history class but definitely doesn’t remember now.
Just when she questions what the hell this is all for, Tohru walks in, glamorous as ever. She’s dressed in full kimono, obi, obijime – the whole shabang. But what really strikes Kobayashi is her makeup. Her eyes are touched up with a red eyeshadow, lips tinted red, but it doesn’t strictly look Japanese. Mixed with some other kind of traditional makeup, probably.
While she’s been busy dwelling on the origin of Tohru’s makeup, Tohru’s been collecting makeup, brushes and the like, some pastes and powders that seem long outdated considering the era of Japan they live in.
Uncharacteristically curious, Kobayashi pipes up. “What’re all the tools for? Your makeup looks done.” Tohru giggles, like she’s said something funny – maybe something stupid. “My makeup? Miss Kobayashi, have you changed your mind about letting me do yours?”
Kobayashi’s eyebrows raise. She what now? She considers telling Tohru to put her tools away, to spend her time touching up someone else, maybe someone prettier, but then she looks at Tohru’s face, at the glimmer in her eye. She sighs, shaking her head, though she wears a smile nonetheless. “No, you can go ahead. I wouldn’t say yes if I wasn’t going to follow through.”
Tohru beams, and right away, Kobayashi knows she’s made the right decision. Tohru pulls up a chair, coaxes Kobayashi to sit, and she takes the hint. Tohru holds some abura in her hand, waiting for it to melt with her hand’s warmth.
“Tohru, how come you know how to do stage makeup?” Kobayashi queries, genuinely confused. Tohru’s a foreign girl with a foreign name. How come..?
Tohru’s lips curve upwards, snaggletooth poking out. “Miss Kobayashi, I didn’t just come into your house making up words. I’ve known about Japan for a while now – spoken the language too, Miss.” The white wax in her palm finally starts to melt. “You don’t live as long as I do without learning to speak a couple inferior human languages.” When Kobayashi gives her a look, Tohru gives a little chuckle. “But, Japanese.. Isn’t too bad, Miss,” she looks Kobayashi right in the eye, incredibly fond. “You make it sound like the best language, Miss. Whenever I hear you speak, I, I think..” When Tohru realizes Kobayashi hasn’t stopped her yet, hasn’t interrupted her, hasn’t given her any sort of look, she continues, though in awe. “..I think it’s becoming my favorite language, with how it rolls off your tongue, with how nice you sound speaking it. I really like your voice, Miss Kobayashi.”
Kobayashi doesn’t think she’ll need the blush. Her cheeks are red enough.
Tohru’s arms are warm from where they worm around her waist, but Kobayashi wakes up sweating cold. Another dream, one about Tohru complimenting her? What the fuck is with her brain this week?
With a trembling sigh, she turns over, and heads back to bed.
Again, this dream slips her mind, until she comes home (late, again) to a dead silent house. It’s nearly 11 PM, and not a speck of dust dares to move, no voice dares challenge the chorus of singing crickets outside. Kobayashi can hear the sound of her own breath, of the air coming and going through her system.
She heads in to check in on Kanna and Ilulu – both of them are snug in their blanket, huddled together and catching some good zs. Yet, just when Kobayashi turns to check on Tohru, the woman in question suddenly appears before her very eyes. Even when it’s nigh impossible to see anything in this light, Kobayashi can see her, clear as day. And so they retreat into what has gradually become their room, Tohru propping herself on the edge of the bed while Kobayashi slips her tie off from around her neck, undoing her ponytail. She flicks on a lamp, and the room eases into view.
“..Tohru, I have a question,” Kobayashi’s voice chimes, beautifully soft mezzo-alto creeping into the silent air, breaking it apart with a gentle push. Tohru’s eyes, already on her, fixate on the way her lips move. “Of course! What.. would that question be, Miss Kobayashi?” Tohru replies in earnest, her voice higher, perpetually more energetic.
Kobayashi pauses, takes her glasses off, and walks towards Tohru. Light steps, steady, and she sits beside the dragon; she drops her glasses in the small box atop her bedside table, not confident enough in any respect to meet Tohru’s yearning gaze. “Japanese isn’t your first language, right? What.. did you speak, back home?” Kobayashi questions, and Tohru’s brows furrow. “Back.. home? Miss Kobayashi, I thought you’d know where home is for me by now.”
For a minute, a second, a breath, Kobayashi doesn’t know what she means: and then she understands it, all at once. The empty rooms of her apartment (without Tohru), the fracture in her favorite pair of glasses mended only with duct tape and agile, determined fingers. Tohru’s teary eyes as she smiled at her, the knock on her door, the black portal atop the sky – she knows well what ‘home’ is to Tohru.
Here, it must be.
Kobayashi looks to her, amber eyes shining with an emotion she can’t quite understand, even when it’s coming from within herself. She clears her throat, looking up at her. “I know.. I know. I meant.. Where your family was from, where you grew up,” she takes a breath to collect those scrambled thoughts of hers. “You are who you are now because of.. then. Because of the dragons and humans around you. I don’t only like who you’ve come to be; I want – I want to know more about you, Tohru. I want to know so I can know you a fraction as well as you know me.” Her voice comes to a tiny pianissimo, a quiet admission of something deeper than she’d ever uttered before.
She can see now, in this light, Tohru’s glistening eyes, slightly agape mouth, dusted pink cheeks. Tohru nods, scraping her sharp nails against a small portion of the bedsheet. “Well.. where I was from, they used to speak Latin, but the language changed a lot when I revisited where I was raised..” she shakes her head. “It had only been a few hundred years, yet still!” She huffed, but then took a deep breath and got back on track. “Where I was from.. Well, for goodnight, we’d say bonanòtte.”
Kobayashi’s eyes widen slightly with this new discovery. “Bonanòtte?” She parrots, and Tohru giggles like a schoolgirl.
“Miss Kobayashi says it so funny.. But it’s so cute, I don’t even care!” Only adding to the strange giddy fit, she kicked her feet, eyes shut tight as she smiled. It, however, only took a minute or two for this giggling fit to subside. “Ahaha..! Anyways, goodnight, Miss Kobayashi. Goodnight and bonanòtte!”
“Goodnight, Tohru.” Kobayashi replies, a faint smile upon her lips as she turns the lamp back off.
This time around, the air is lively with the sounds of bottles clacking against each other, people speaking loudly in a language Kobayashi can’t understand in the slightest, and the shuffling of people huddled too close together. Bright flames that sing from the lanterns illuminate the walls, but countless shadows overtake the floor,
Kobayashi casts her eyes towards the middle of the room, and there she is, yet again.
Tohru, dressed in a white top with large sleeves that gathered at the very end. Blue skirt, with a shorter red skirt on top, and a small apron-looking baby blue skirt atop that. In her hands an 8 stringed instrument with a curved back, though she did not touch any chords. Tohru, with her hair down and her hands drumming against the wooden curvature of her instrument. Had Tohru always been this beautiful?
“Mia mugliera? Éssa… mm, sí, sí… arrivá… quase mó…” Tohru’s voice was the same, even when you could barely make out the words — but, good god, Kobayashi understood nothing. The only thing she was familiar with was Tohru’s bright smile, even now, when discussing something Kobayashi didn’t know with someone Kobayashi didn’t know. She stepped forward, towards where Tohru was sitting, and Tohru caught sight of her immediately. “Miss Kobayashi!”
“Am I interrupting anything, Tohru?” Kobayashi implored, to which Tohru rapidly shook her head.
“Of course not, Miss Kobayashi! I was waiting for you, you know..” and know Kobayashi certainly did not. Suddenly, of course, when Kobayashi had finally caught a breath in this strange place, Tohru ran up to the far end of the room, climbing onto a barely elevated wooden stage.
“Pe mia bella, perfetta mugliera!” Tohru exclaimed, to which the foreign crowd cheered, and she began to sing for her lover, strumming along chord after chord after tremolo break after chord. She sang her heart out, and at one point, said something Kobayashi could grasp — “Miss Kobayashi, come on stage, please!”
Nobody else had any clue what Tohru was saying, which, while it should’ve (and would’ve, in any other scenario) reassured her, only made her cheeks flush with embarrassment. Resigning whatever was left of her pride, Kobayashi stepped onto the stage, looking down at Tohru while she sat in her chair and continued to strum along. Tohru, after a couple of seconds, nodded down, beckoning for Kobayashi to kneel. Kobayashi took the hint, squatting slightly so that she was at eye level with the dragon girl. “Miss Kobayashi,” Tohru started, looking at her with blown pupils and shimmering eyes.
“Te voglio bbene,” Tohru whispered in a voice sweet as honey, and before Kobayashi could question what that meant at all, Tohru’s lips pressed to her, soft and plump, her chest becoming a stage for her heart’s violent beating. It was all Tohru, soft, warm, touching her, that probably terribly expensive instrument dropped to the floor as she abandoned the chair and grasped the sides of Kobayashi’s face, instead, brushing her hair back, and oh, she —
Kobayashi shot up in her bed, panting in order to catch her breath, still left with the aftertaste of Tohru.
Shit.