Work Text:
Rin has been frantically looking through her suitcase for almost fifteen minutes. She had just been unpacking when Hiori left to grab their meal tickets for the hotel diner from Reo (they both forgot to grab them since they were so jetlagged) and Rin is still rummaging through it when she returns.
Hiori places the cards on the nightstand where she knows she won’t lose them and Rin can find them easily. At first, she’s inclined to mind her own business, which is what she would want if she were focused on looking for something, but Rin’s heavy sigh draws her attention.
She sounds frustrated, especially considering that Rin is usually pretty quiet about her annoyance when it’s not Shidou-induced, so Hiori figures this is important and she might as well ask.
“Something wrong, Rin?” She asks as she sits on the bed she claimed earlier. Rin has moved on to her duffle bag and starts to dump it out, apparently tired of trying to be neat about looking through her belongings.
“I think I forgot my sketchbook,” Rin grunts as she sifts through everything she dumped out and, sure enough, no sketchbook.
Hiori can help with that.
“Use mine,” she offers, already standing to get it out of her bag. It wouldn’t be the first time Rin has used her sketchbook. Usually, Hiori doesn’t like to share it, it’s not anybody’s business what she’s drawing in her free time, but with Rin, she’s never minded.
“No,” Rin says, Hiori stops and turns to her, head tilted in confusion.
“No?”
Rin shakes her head, “I need my multimedia sketchbook, your flimsy one won't work.”
Hiori would like to argue that her sketchbook isn’t flimsy, but it is. It’s the one Ego handed out (threw at them) on their first day in their freshman illustration course. She has another one but it’s bigger and a pain to pack so she didn’t bother. It’s not like she planned to work with paints or anything during their two-week trip.
“Tomorrow we can tell Reo ta’ take us somewhere with art supplies,” Hiori suggests optimistically. Rin furrows her brows in the way she does when she disagrees with something or feels frustrated and is trying to be calm about it.
“I need it tonight,” she says quietly as she shoves her stuff back where it goes.
Right, Rin likes her routine. A lot. Hiori would like to help but she isn’t a magician, she can’t just wave her hand and conjure up a proper sketchbook for Rin to use so she feels a little useless. They can’t go out and get one either, it’s nighttime and they're in a hotel in Berlin so they aren’t even familiar with the streets. Reo looked about ready to go to sleep when Hiori was just in her room and she’d hate to wake her up. She’s kind of stuck.
“It’s fine,” Rin says into the silence, “I can skip one night, it doesn't matter.”
She rises to her feet and Hiori watches her. Rin runs a hand through her hair and tugs on the end which Hiori realized a long time ago that Rin only does when she’s stressed. Hiori frowns.
“Ya can paint on something else,” She suggests.
Rin turns and raises a brow at her, “On what? The walls?”
Hiori cracks a smile, “me?”
Rin blinks, and then she blinks again.
“What are you talking about?”
Hiori shrugs, “It’s just a thought. I don’t mind letting ya paint on me, only thing is I’ll have ta’ wash it off.”
“You really don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” She smiles more widely as she watches Rin consider it, “I’ll lay down, ya can paint on my back, take a few photos, and I’ll clean up. Ya get ta’ keep yer routine that way, right?”
“I guess,” Rin mumbles, she looks down at her duffle bag again and sighs as she gives in, “Okay, take off your shirt.”
***
They place down one of the massive hotel towels on the bed so they don’t get acrylic paint on the bed. Hiori gets adjusted as Rin prepares her palette. She lies on her stomach and drags a pillow from the top of the bed to rest under her chin and she props up her phone so she can watch something while Rin works. It's not very different from how she’s seen people lied out for a back tattoo when she drops by the tattoo parlor where Rin has an internship.
It’s not too uncomfortable, a little cold without anything on her top half but she should be fine.
Hiori starts to feel an anticipation and she can’t place her finger on why. It’s not like she’s getting a tattoo (though she supposes if she were to let anyone stab a needle into her skin a million times, it would be Rin), and it’s not the first time she’s let Rin draw on her but that only ever went as far as a doodle on her arm or a practiced hand tattoo with a graphic pen.
Despite it all her heart is drumming a little too quickly and off rhythm in her chest as she feels the bed dip with Rin’s weight. She keeps shuffling closer until Hiori can feel their legs pressed together and Rin sits close to her. She’s warm.
Suddenly the warmth shifts, and Hiori feels it settle again but this time it’s on top of her and she can feel Rin’s legs around her. Hiori shoves her face further into the pillow and tries not to seem too embarrassed by it. She can only hope that Rin can’t see her neck and ears growing warm.
The cold, wet feeling of paint pressed against her jolts her out of the embarrassment, and this time she can’t hold back her surprised sound.
“Cold!” She squeaks.
Rin’s hand flattens against her back to stop her from moving, “Stop moving.”
“Sorry, that's just really cold.”
“I thought you liked the cold,” Rin muses, then her paintbrush is gliding along Hiori’s back again.
Yeah, when she’s wearing a jacket not when it’s being smeared across her skin, but this is what she signed up for and Rin’s weight settled on her and the hand steady against her lower back made up for it.
Hiori usually likes to be alone, there's comfort to be found in silence. There’s no judgment, no expectations, and nobody to stop her from having her own thoughts and emotions. She feels the same way when it’s just her and Rin. More than that, she feels good. She gets the kind of comfort that was always missing in her home where it always felt like a game of house.
Rin never judges her for wanting a break or trying something new, or being flawed. When Hiori wants privacy, Rin has always given it, and sitting in silence with her feels just as productive as any conversation.
Hiori has never felt that before.
It’s more than that though, Hiori gets all these complex feelings and desires around Rin that she doesn't know what to do with, or if she should do anything at all.
She’s adjusted to the cold feeling of paint on her back by now, and they’ve fallen into a comfortable silence that Hiori could easily fall asleep to. A random gameplay is running but it’s mostly background noise as she finds herself getting drowsy.
Rin’s voice surprises her when she starts speaking, “Uhm,” she starts hesitantly, which is weird because Rin isn’t usually hesitant about anything.
Hiori turns her head halfway, mostly because that’s all she can do with Rin still on top of her. She can still see her out of the corner of her eye.
Is it a bad time to point out that Rin is gorgeous? Sharp teal eyes meet hers and that heat Hiori got rid of only a while ago comes rushing back to her face.
“Something wrong?” She asks steadily.
Rin purses her lip and the hand that isn’t holding a paintbrush slips up her side to her– oh her bra is definitely in the way. Hiori shivers at the tickle of Rin’s fingers on her skin.
“It's in the way,” Rin tells her quietly. Hiori casts one more glance at her, then she turns her head to rest her chin against the pillow again.
“You can take it off,” She manages to say into the pillow, “I don’t mind.”
When it falls silent Hiori turns her head to look up at Rin again, “Nevermind, I’ll just work around it,” She says quickly.
Hiori shifts until she can reach beach and get a hand on Rin’s thigh, she tenses when Hiori touches her but relaxes just as quickly, “It’s fine,” Hiori reassures, she hopes Rin isn’t paying too much attention to how obviously flustered she is, “Just unclip it.”
Rin pauses then nods and Hiori turns back into the pillow before she explodes or something.
It’s barely anything when Rin unclips the fabric and moves it out of her way. It’s genuinely nothing, Rin isn’t seeing anything Hiori isn’t okay with and it’s not like she’s turned around, or like she’s doing anything more than helping Rin keep her routine. Rin continues painting and the world keeps spinning but Hiori’s mind wanders.
She fights to stomp down that feeling and whatever it might mean until Rin is done painting on her, which is sooner than she thought it would be.
“I’m done,” Rin announces and her weight on Hiori shifts as she moves off her, probably to get her phone.
She swipes it off the nightstand beside Hiori’s bed and settles back on the bed,
“Hold still,” She says, Hiori hums in agreement right before the shutter of her phone goes off a few times. Hiori waits until she seems done taking photos of her work to start to move. Rin stops her to clip her bra for her then Hiori sits up.
“Can I see?” She asks.
Rin looks off to the side and clutches her phone a little tighter.
“It’s not like it’s anything good,,” She grumbles.
Hiori frowns and leans into her side. Rin allows it, even if her head drops and she refuses to meet her eye.
Hiori leans forward to get a look at her phone, “Everything ya make is good. Honestly, ya got real skill.”
Rin tenses and turns to look at her and Hiori gets a good look at how red her face is. She’s never seemed to take compliments very well, they are always met with anger or aloofness. Hiori doesn’t expect her to react any differently than usual, it’s just nice to put it out there.
Hiori would like to say more, tell Rin how amazing she is, let her know that Hiori thinks she’s the most beautiful person on earth, Tell her she’s perfect and her art is meaningful and beautiful even if just because it’s hers. Hiori wants to tell Rin that she likes everything about Rin. She wants to tell Rin that she loves her.
…Loves her?
“Fine,” Rin agrees, shoving the phone into Hiori’s hands. She shakes the thought away, now is not the time.
She looks down at the screen and marvels at it. She really can’t believe that’s on her right now,
It’s an angel, surrounded by a cottony white light that feathers off into skin. The strokes are bold but careful as they always are when Rin paints. The closer she looks at the details, the more it looks like–
“It’s me?” She says under her breath. She’s imagined a million times what it would look like if Rin drew her, but she never built up the courage to be annoying enough to ask.
“Ya see me as an angel?” She teases a bit more loudly as she turns to Rin who is already frowning at her.
“It’s not you,” She denies.
Hiori raises a brow and looks at the painting again, “Really? So ya based this off of another girl with cyan hair and eyes? I’m jealous.”
“It isn't– shut up, I drew from imagination.”
Hiori tries not to take that to mean Rin is thinking about her enough to be rooted in her subconscious.
“It’s so pretty, I kinda feel bad that I hafta wash it off,” Hiori laments as she hands the phone back to Rin.
“It’s fine,” Rin says as she stands up to gather the paint pallet and towel lying on the bed, “I can do it again on a canvas.”
“Really? I thought ya didn’t like painting for other people?”
Rin turns to her briefly then continues putting her paint back where it goes, “I’d do it for you.”
She says it quietly enough that Hiori almost misses it. Something warm sparks in her chest and runs warm through the rest of her body. That “loves her” from earlier rings through her head, Hiori loves her, she loves Rin.
”I love ya,” She blurts out, it rolls off the tongue smooth and easy and it feels so damn good to say.
Rin drops the palette and brushes she is holding. Hiori briefly feels a little bad for the cleaners that they have to clean acrylics out of the floor but that thought is swiftly swept away as Rin approaches her.
A million thoughts run through Hiori’s head. This was a mistake, Rin is going to hate her from now on and they have to share a room for the next two weeks, what was she thinking?
Hiori’s lips part around an apology, but it never makes it past the point of just being a thought before Rin is all in her space and her vision, thoughts, and senses are completely engulfed with Rin.
It takes a moment for Hiori to process the warm press of lips against hers but when she does she’s quick to melt into it.
Hiori had imagined what it would be like to kiss Rin, but it was always a fleeting thought that she shook away before it could go too far. She never thought it would actually happen.
When Rin shifts her weight until she can rest a knee on the bed beside Hiori, she snaps out of her thoughts. She wraps an arm around Rin before she can get the wrong idea like Hiori doesn’t want to kiss her, and pulls her closer.
Honestly, Hiori has never kissed anyone before. She never had time, but she’s hoping that she’s doing it right. For the most part she’s copying Rin, mirroring the way her mouth moves against Hiori’s. It's a little hard to focus on technique when Rin’s lips are on hers, crowding her further back against the bed.
It’s overwhelming, her head spins as she lets her hands slip up Rin’s side and her breath is stolen away. She should probably be a little worried about the fact that neither of them have breathed for longer than what’s normal, but she’d be fine with suffocating if her final moments were spent with Rin’s lips against hers.
Rin pulls away first, and the weight of what they just did, of what Hiori said before it, hits them at the same time. Suddenly Hiori is a lot more interested in staring at her knees and out of the corner of her eye she can see Rin touching her fingers to her lips gently with a dazed look.
“I meant what I said,” Hiori says when they’ve been sitting in silence for long enough.
There’s a long pause before Rin responds.
“I know., I–” Hiori steals a glance at her when she doesn’t continue. Rin is facing the opposite way, when she runs a hand through her hair Hiori can see that her ears are still red.
“I do too,”
“Huh?” Hiori says, a little dumbly.
“I love you too,” Rin says louder this time. A grin spreads across her face, so wide it makes her cheeks hurt.
“Ya do?”
“Don’t,” Rin grits out, “Make me say it again or I'll take it back.”
Hiori is pretty sure that isn't how it works but she doesn’t indulge in the desire to tease Rin about it, she can always do that later. She opens her mouth to say something else, ask what they are or if anything changes between them.
“Shut up, don't say anything at all, go shower or something before the paint kills you.”
“Aw ya care so much,’ Hiori teases, but Rin is right, she needs to wash this off and a shower would be good to cool down and clear her head about what just happened and what she wants to do with it.
She takes a risk before she goes to the bathroom and leans forward to steal another kiss from Rin. It’s just a peck and it lands more on the side of her mouth than in the center like she intended, but the surprised hum from Rin and her flustered face is completely worth it.
“Go shower,” Rin grumbles, shoving her away. Hiori smiles at her over her shoulder as she goes and maybe she’s tricking herself, but she’s pretty sure Rin smiles back a little,