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…Mukuro falters. She pulls away from Hotaru—slightly, remaining in her hold, but not close enough nonetheless. She itches. She needs to be close to her, needs to hold her. This aching, burning feeling in her chest, the rapid heartbeat so intense she could feel her skull echoing with every thump; it's familiar, painfully so, but she can’t act on this. No, there’s no way she'll let herself.
But Hotaru—beautiful, sweet soul he is—he cups her cheek, his thumb carressing the freckled skin. She remembers him going on about how much he loves her freckles, tracing them like the constellations he so deeply adores.
“Are you okay?” it asks quietly. Her hushed voice sends shivers down Mukuro's spine, and though she dreads to answer the question, she at least indulges in the soft sound of Hotaru's voice. “We don't have to do anything, you know. I don’t mind if we just sit like this.”
Mukuro struggles to meet her eyes. “We kissed last time. It was… easier, then.”
It's a small, quick confession. Her heart pounds so harshly, she's certain her dear friend must hear it. Perhaps even feel it, the beating echoing through her body. Thumpthumpthumpthump. Racing heartbeat, pathetically rushing to keep up with her mind.
“But that's different, isn't it? A-And in your defense, I initiated it.” Hotaru nervously laughs. “But I… don't want to kiss you if you're not ready. And it's okay if you're not!”
So sweet. So gentle. Though it's cheesy, Mukuro associates Hotaru's laugh to the soothing song played in a music box, even if it's slightly awkward sounding. Her eyes linger on his face, capturing the pretty violet-pink gaze and then trailing down towards his face.
Beautiful.
(Mukuro wants to rip Hotaru's face apart.)
…She stiffens.
“Is it possible that,” she mumbles, grasping at some kind of distraction, “that you… initiate it again?”
Hotaru stares quietly, its eyes twinkling at the request. “Of course.”
And just like that, Mukuro’s heart is set alight with that small spark. The girl leans in, her hold on Mukuro’s face become just slightly more firm. Her lips meet hers and sparks fly in the air around them, casting its glowing, dizzying spell.
Like clockwork, even if they've only done this once prior, she closes her eyes, pressing against his lips. Her hands find their way to his sides, while he pulls her by the chin and breathes deeply. It's only been a few seconds, and already does she feel like she's suffocating—but her desperation tempts her onwards for the beautiful angel practically sitting in her lap.
In the midst of this sweet sensation, Mukuro can't help but wonder; does Hotaru feel this too? The suffocation, the need to press on regardless, not quite minding if one of them were to die by the other’s hands. Or lips.
Hotaru inches closer, somehow, hardly breaking for breath. Even so, Mukuro can feel the way she's haggardly breathing air through her nose, softly humming into the kiss. Her lips are soft and taste of strawberries—a product of the lip gloss Junko lent her and never took back—whereas Mukuro’s are more chapped, for she didn’t own as many makeup products as her sister.
Will Hotaru ever tell her what she tastes like? Does she taste of strawberries too, or something completely unfamiliar?
Or, perhaps, does he only taste blood in her mouth?
…The entrancing hum of her dearly beloved friend suddenly becomes a short yelp of pain.
“Ow—”
Hotaru pulls away.
Mukuro's heart fills with shame.
Her hands come undone from around its waist, her lungs leaping out of her body for air. Hotaru pulls its hands away from Mukuro's face, leaving her cold in the absence of its sunkissed warmth. It gingerly touches the spots on its waist, almost as if she had gravely injured it by simply holding on too harshly. A fear takes over Mukuro in that moment, the thought that she has hurt it.
“I-I'm sorry,” she sputters, caught in an utter loss. She looks down at her hands, resting in her now empty lap. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Huh?” Hotaru looks up, seemingly at a loss for what the apology would be for. Her violet eyes shine under the soft glow of her bedroom’s lamp, and all at once, Mukuro feels even more ashamed of sitting here. On Hotaru’s bed, in Hotaru’s room, kissing her the way she is, drawn like a diseased mosquito to fresh blood; what an embarrassment she’s become.
Hotaru’s gaze pierces through her, sharper than any knife. He’s not angry, no, definitely not, but in those few seconds, she recognizes that brief look of pity on his face. It’s almost as if he already peeled back layer after layer and exposed her insides, picked at the bits under her skin and ripped the flesh from her bones, leaving her bare and vulnerable in a way she’s never been prepared for.
“I’m sorry,” it says, relaxing a little. It manages a soft laugh, dropping its shoulders and its arms. “I don’t know why that freaked me out so much.”
The words form simply and straightforwardly on Mukuro’s tongue. “I hurt you.”
“O-Only a little—!”
“Even so!” Mukuro presses on, raising her voice just slightly. Her stomach twists, her eyes flicking down to Hotaru’s sides. Though she tries her hardest to seize her quivering voice, she can’t help the way she’s suddenly been reduced to a guilty little kid. “I hurt you,” she repeats, as if the words hadn’t settled in the first time.
She doesn’t look at Hotaru’s face. She hears her stumble over what to say a few times, like she doesn’t quite know how to reply. It’s sickening.
“You didn’t mean it,” he settles on, lowering his voice to match her tone. “A-And I'm okay, see?”
Hotaru gently pulls on Mukuro's hands, guiding them back to its sides. Like puzzle pieces, her hands know the exact way to curve to perfectly fit against it. The very action makes it melt, leaning into her embrace, as if fulfilled just by being able to be held.
“We can try again,” Hotaru prompts this time, looking into her eyes hopefully. Those beautiful eyes of pink and violet quietly beg her, like a sad puppy aching for love. “Just… be gentle.”
You don't know how to be gentle, a voice in Mukuro's head reasons. Her hands tremble around Hotaru's waist, and her eyes follow the movement of her own hands.
How much pressure would it take to see her ribcage pop out of place?
Mukuro places her hands back in her lap.
“I can't do it,” Mukuro confesses quietly, a sharp contrast to the volume of the evil that tempts her to push her luck; to the evil that consumes her, disappointing girl she is, and makes her think she should be worthy of something as precious as this. As precious as Hotaru.
“Oh.” Hotaru falters considerably, his body shrinking a little away from her. It hurts worse than being stabbed; perhaps its more like pulling the knife out slowly, feeling the blade slide out of her body tortuously.
Its frown gives way to a small, reassuring smile. “That's okay. I won't force you, silly. We can… keep going at our own pace. I promise.”
“No,” she whispers, shaking her head. “I can’t do this to you. You don’t deserve this, Hotaru.”
“…I don't understand.” Hotaru adds an awkward giggle, almost as if trying to avoid what this meant for them, worst case scenario. “Do what to me? Did I do something wrong…?”
“No,” Mukuro replies, faster this time, quickly shooting down the notion that could make her think this was in any way her fault. Her hand wraps around Hotaru's wrist, trying to ground her even though anyone but Mukuro should be doing such. “It's—”
And foolishly, in her disappointing attempt to her own voice gets stuck in her throat—replacing any essence of the words she wanted to say was an ugly hiccup, unbefitting for a soldier and undeserved for such a disappointing girl.
“I will hurt you,” she warns, ever so quietly; it’s not so much of a threat than it is a fact of some kind, like a prophecy foretold by that clairvoyant in their class.
“What do you mean?” The initial hurt in his voice replaced with a tone of confusion. Like a puppy, he tilts his head—but he keeps his distance. As much distance as he can while being on her lap, anyway. “Mukuro…?”
“Even when we're like this,” she says with a more firm tone, vaguely gesturing between them, “I just— I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Thinking about what—?”
Hotaru's gentle prod is so much more foreign to Mukuro than she thought it'd be. It's different. It's not—
“What's your problem now?”
—it's not like her. Mukuro remembers her clearly.
“Ikusaba.”
Mukuro hated being addressed by name. Her hand latched tighter around the gun, to hide the fact she was shaking from adrenaline. She wasn't scared, and she didn’t want to give any reasoning for her commanding officer to think she was afraid.
”Yes, ma'am?” she replied quickly, her eyes trained on the fallen girl across the street. Mukuro knew better than to look her training officer in the eyes.
“Hand over your gun.”
“Pardon, ma'am?”
Mukuro was only twelve then. Months of rigorous training, of being kicked so hard in the stomach she'd throw up blood later that day, of fasting until she could hold her own in a sparring match without fainting. It was all Mukuro ever wanted, to be praised by someone pushing her past her limit. She always did want to be useful.
“Your gun, Ikusaba.”
Mukuro remembered why she looked up to the woman so much. While she was given a home here in Iraq, it still remained so unknown to her. Among the sea of faces where Mukuro stood out, her current commanding officer had also been Japanese. Mukuro never learned her name—never knew anyone's name, for it never mattered to start with—but she could clearly tell. She was the only to ever speak to Mukuro in Japanese, rather than English or Farsi. She recognized the potential in Mukuro faster than anybody else. In turn, she was infatuated with the idea of living up to her expectations.
So when Mukuro was asked for her gun, her heart sank. She passed the weapon to her superior, like a child giving up a beloved toy.
“What happened, ma'am?”
The woman studied the gun, dark brown eyes boring into the object in her hands. Then, she let out a sigh of disappointment; and though it wasn’t the first, Mukuro felt the kick to her stomach all over again, even while she was standing up straight.
Then, wordlessly, she walked forward, crossing the street covered in ash and dirt and blood. Like a dog, Mukuro followed in tow—though she didn't dare let her head hang low. She approached the body of the fallen girl, who Mukuro had shot not even two minutes ago, then kicked her over with a simple flick of her boot.
Nothing had to be said. Mukuro took one look at the body and gravely understood her error. The bullet's exit wound at her shoulder, far off the true target. The soft rise and fall of her chest, slow yet rhythmic.
“When you shoot,” the woman started, pocketing Mukuro's gun and holding her hands behind her back, “you shoot to kill. Now you have more of a mess on your hands.”
Mukuro’s first assignment had been an utter failure. Months of all that training leading to this, her very first time out on the field, and a still breathing teenager. She couldn’t be more than a few years older than Mukuro, maybe sixteen or so. She was unconscious, passed out from hitting her head, but there was a terrified look on her face, illuminated by her sweat under the sunlight and the dirt stuck to her skin. But she wasn’t dead.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t act like this gets you out of it. You still have to kill her.”
Mukuro turned to her commander, waiting for her to pass back the gun.
Though at her inaction, the woman pulled the weapon back out of her pocket, unloading the bullets. The cartridge fell to the dirt, clambering just beside the unconscious teenager. She couldn’t help the confusion that washed over her features.
“You’re out of bullets. That was your last one.” The woman put away the gun, speaking the scenario into fruition with the same monotonous, commanding voice. “You will not get far enough from a bomb after you drop it, and your knife was compromised in battle. How do you know when someone is dead, Ikusaba?”
Mukuro chose her next words carefully. “When they stop breathing?”
“When their heart stops beating.”
She didn’t ask her next question aloud, but the woman continued on anyway, answering her confusion in one fell swoop.
“If all else fails, you have your hands. Seize her heart, Ikusaba.”
“Mukuro?” it whispers, sharply dragging her back to the present.
“I’m sorry.” The words stumble out of her mouth—her voice, despite being monotone, feels so incredibly weak. “I’m sorry.”
Still, the ghost of the memory lives on, for her eyes don’t meet Hotaru’s again. She stares at her chest, mulling over the memory like it's happening all over again. Her hands—
“What are you sorry for?”
…It's only now Mukuro realizes her hands are clasped around Hotaru's tight. No one would dare try to snatch a gun from the Ultimate Soldier, but she held onto Hotaru like a gun that was her lifeline.
There's something wrong with Mukuro. Terribly wrong. She's always known there was something awful about her, a quality embedded deep within her own bones that sealed her fate as one of the worst people to ever walk the Earth. She could use her skills for good, to make the people around her proud, but she was never fit for the idle, domestic life that a small part of her yearned for.
Because Mukuro Ikusaba is a rotten, disappointing girl—and all she can think about when looking at her beloved friend is—
“I want to rip your skull open.”
At the words, Hotaru's eyes widen, his body leaning away from her slightly. “What?”
Mukuro would prefer shooting the both of them dead. “And I can't stop thinking about it. Imagining it. I don’t know why— I don't know what's wrong with me.”
Hotaru appears lost for words for a few moments. It opens its mouth, then closes it; then it repeats the gesture a couple of times, desperately grasping for any words. It pains Mukuro to sit in this silence. Awful, terrifying silence.
“Hotaru.”
So she keeps talking.
“I want to know what your insides look like.” Her voice trembles as she voices the It's a disgusting confession. It reeks of all the horrible things no one should have ever known about Mukuro Ikusaba. Had she been given the choice, she'd go back in time and make sure Hotaru was never close enough to her to have made her love her so dearly. “I want to see the light leave your eyes, your blood gushing everywhere—part of me wants to know how hard the stains would be to remove after.”
In Mukuro's mind, she can already see it. Like a horrible scene out of a movie. She pushes Hotaru down to the floor suddenly, right when he least expects it so he can't fight back at all. She climbs on top of him, ignores his exclaims of confusion as he struggles to get free. He cracks a stupid joke, maybe, that maybe Mukuro loves him more than he assumed, but she doesn’t laugh.
A killing machine doesn’t laugh. It only kills.
So it plunges its nails into the skin of his neck, soft and easy to tear with enough force—and it ignores Hotaru's scream, cut off by the rip of its larynx, and continues to rip the skin layers downward. Numerous arteries and veins are destroyed by that point, but you're not dead until—
“Seize her heart, Ikusaba.”
—her pounding heart is in its hands.
The machine's inexperienced hands dug through the body, messily breaking the bones of the ribcage. It broke four parts off, sloppily discarding the bone and cartilage to the side in the pool of blood. Killing machines aren't particularly neat, Mukuro learned; they just kill mindlessly. On command. On instinct.
Its never seen a pair of lungs slowly breathe in real time. The girl grasps for her final breath, and then the lungs go still. In those few seconds, it couldn't help but gingerly place a finger against the organ, feeling it until certain it was totally still. A sick part of this machine, among all the horror-filled actions it was carrying out, took an odd joy at seeing it happen. Had it done its job? Had it finally done something right?
“Ikusaba, what are you waiting for?”
The woman watches the machine. Almost instantly, it's like her words have pushed a button on a remote controller.
And its hands dig into the girl's body—
—just past Hotaru's lungs–
—gently pushing it to the side and grasping it in its hands—
—a pounding heart, slowly beating for the last few times—
—a new layer blood rushing down the machine's hands from the torn vessels—
—and with the disgusting squelching filling Mukuro's ears, it dares to look up—
(—at the girl's face, discomforted and exhausted and yet almost peaceful with her eyes shut—)
—at Hotaru's face, her face remaining in a face of shock; her eyes shot open and a tear running down her face.
Its gears turn and all it can think is I warned you I warned you I warned you, I told you this would happen, but Hotaru's always been stubborn, so persistent and stupid, and Mukuro's never been able to tell him no.
But it looked up at its commander, eyeing the organ in its hold. For the first time, she looks satisfied. People don't praise machines verbally, but she did so that day.
“Well done, Ikusaba. Ease up on the mess, though. Gotta work on your efficiency also. But you've completed your mission.”
“…Mukuro!”
Hotaru worriedly presses its hands against Mukuro's face, cupping her cheeks. The light in its eyes are back. Its shirt is still in tact.
Mukuro looks down at her hands. No blood.
“I've been trying to talk to you, but… it seemed like you zoned out.”
A stupid question lingers in Mukuro's mind. She can't tell what's real at the moment; the line between her mind's imagination and reality feels blurred, and everything feels as if its overlapping. “Um- Did I say somethig weird?”
Hotaru looks mildly disturbed. “Um, yeah. Really weird stuff. You just detailed how you want to rip my heart out.”
Mukuro feels her heart drop, shame replacing where the organ once was. She looks away, though it's a bit difficult when Hotaru keeps her hold on her. “I'm sorry. I don't… I was telling you there's something wrong with me.”
There's a pause. Hotaru lets out a small sigh.
“Oh… I've heard worse, actually.” He shrugs, brushing off whatever horrible words had left Mukuro’s filthy tongue. Whatever she had said, he didn’t seem too bothered somehow. “I mean, not as graphic, but… it was kind of intriguing to hear it the way you said it.”
It pauses, shaking its head. Mukuro doesn’t get a chance to question the girl.
“That said—! It was still pretty bad. Had anyone else said it, I'd be really scared, actually.”
Confusion washes over her. Her eyebrows furrow. “You're not scared?”
“Um,” Hotaru chews on the inside of her cheek, “I mean, it's you. I'm not scared of you.”
It's a bewildering statement.
“Why?”
“Because you don't seem like the type to hurt me.” He states it so simply, like its fact and not at all based on his own perceptions of her. “For all the time I've known you, I've never seen you purposely hurt me or anyone else. Maybe you're a little weird and offputting sometimes, but not dangerous.”
“Purposely,” Mukuro repeats, emphasizing out of concern. “But I hurt you just now. I'm going to hurt you again.”
“Is it that you want to hurt me?” Hotaru asks, raising an eyebrow.
At the question, Mukuro's heart leaps. She doesn’t want to hurt people, she just does. It's a given that she'll harm whoever comes her way. If Mukuro didn't want to hurt someone, she'd steer clear of them for their sake.
But if that's the case, her brain quickly supplies, why have you gotten so close to Hotaru? You can't even keep to your own word.
There's only one person in the world that Mukuro was allowed to be around, knowing full well she'd never hurt her in anyway. Hotaru, very obviously, is not Junko. That means it's susceptible to the danger that is Mukuro Ikusaba. It is not safe.
“I don't want to,” the disappointing Ultimate Soldier mumbles, shutting her eyes to avoid looking at Hotaru. “I would rather die than do something horrible to you.”
“Oh,” is all that leaves the star mapper's mouth for a moment. There's some kind of recognition in the tone, like she suddenly understands—but how can she understand something that makes no sense to Mukuro herself?
Hotaru releases Mukuro's face from his hold, opting to scoop up her hands in his own. “I think I get it. How often do you get thoughts like these…?”
It's a question that she's not sure how to answer, in all honesty. She's never really paid attention to it before. They're usually very easy to ignore; it's only now, as Mukuro realizes what being intimate like this must mean, that the violent depictions of her own nature have really ramped up. Like a warning, forbidding her from continuing any further, barring her from reaching out to the bundle of light that she wants to hold close to her chest and never let go.
“A-A lot,” she admits, practically struggling to speak the words aloud. “I don't… know what's wrong with me. It's never been this bad before.”
(Maybe it's a sign I shouldn’t be with you. Indirectly, I must be trying to protect you. This is for the best.)
Mukuro's never been such a selfish freak.
“Um, okay,” Hotaru starts, its tone unbearably soft and gentle; similar to that soothing music box again. (She still wants to rip its face apart as it speaks, but she ignores it better now, focusing on the feeling of its hands on hers.) “Mukuro, do you know what intrusive thoughts are?”
She's heard of it a few times. “Somewhat.”
“Well, they're like… unwanted thoughts. Disturbing ones.” Hotaru squeezes Mukuro's hands, her warmth radiating onto her cold skin. “They kind of pop up randomly, and you can't really control it. Does… that sound familiar at all?”
Mukuro's never known how to feel about vulnerability. It's dangerous to be so easily read on the field; she's meant to be unpredictable, one step ahead of her opponents.
The unfortunate part, however, is that there's a part of her that craves the recognition he’s just given her; her heart warms in a way she knows is undeserved for someone like her. It feels so nice to be seen. The affection she currently feels for him almost hurts. How could she feel so intensely about someone like this?
Mukuro gently nods, though another question plagues her mind.
“Hotaru?”
The girl flushes at its name being said aloud. “What's up?”
“How do you know I won't do anything to you?”
How can you trust someone who can't even trust herself?
“What if I accidentally hurt you again? What if it's worse than just grabbing you too hard?”
The question forces Hotaru to think for a few moments—but the silence doesn't last as long as Mukuro expects it to.
“Those thoughts of yours don't dictate who you are as a person,” she says, bearing a small smile. Her hands reassuringly squeeze Mukuro's once more. “Speaking from experience.”
(Mukuro's eyebrows furrow. She doesn’t get to ask.)
“You're still my Mukuro, though.” There's something about the word “my” that makes her heart jump in her chest. “And my Mukuro wouldn’t hurt the people she loves.”
Loves. Mukuro feels her lips curl into an ugly smile; that unfamiliar expression that she's slowly learning to grow into these days.
“Thank you.”
Is it so terrible that she wants to kiss him again?
It is, that voice in her head reasons once more. Don't be selfish, now.
“…Thank you for putting up with me.” Mukuro tries to steady her beating heart. “I’m sorry for ruining the moment.”
“Eh?” Hotaru pouts at the words. “No! No, no, don't do that. Just don't.”
It sounds angry. She shouldn’t be as terrified as she is in this moment, but the idea of upsetting it on top of everything else—because she had somehow not already made it angry—is so utterly painful. Somehow, even worse, the very notion that she'll be called disappointing and stupid for her attempt to remedy things makes it feel as if Hotaru's taken a gun and shot her itself.
“I'm sorry,” she says quickly, bracing herself for the sharp words—
“Ah— No, no!” This time, she sounds more frantic, anxiously releasing one hand and waving it rapidly. “I wasn't… Gah, I was trying to stop you from apologizing. B-Because it's not your fault! Honest!”
Mukuro feels another apology daring to flit past her teeth.
“Plus, I…” Hotaru carefully places his hand back where he had it previously, sandwiching Mukuro's hands in his own. His eyes, twinkling starry skies they are on a clear night, opt to stare down at their intertwined hands, already embarrassed at whatever would be next to leave his mouth. “I'm not used to hearing you put yourself down, and I don’t think I could get used to it. You're really cool to me, you know? A-And… I don’t want you thinking that all the weight's carried on you.”
She falls to a silence that's hard to put into words. Mukuro has never had a way with words, not unless she was barking orders or confirming she had heard a command herself. She never talked back to Junko beyond gentle reasoning or agreement, and she hardly spoke to the others in her class anyway. There's only so many conversations she can have with the energetic trio of Asahina, Naegi, and Maizono before they figure they've been talking to a dull brick wall.
So, it's not surprising Mukuro's fallen quiet, only staring at Hotaru with some kind of awe. How can a girl listen to such a detailed thought of how to kill it—rip its heart out literally, as a means of overkill—and still have a million kind things to say?
“With sad behavior like this, it's a shock nobody's eaten your heart yet, Ikusaba. Watch yourself.”
Another flashback threatens to pull Mukuro under. She finds herself squeezing Hotaru's hands—the only sign she has that the moment she's in right now is real.
What occurs in Mukuro's mind seems to fly past Hotaru, however, for she returns the squeezes to her hands and wears a sweet smile. It must have encouraged her to say whatever else was on her mind, because—
“I guess, for the record, what I'm trying to say is…”
Hotaru looks up, looks Mukuro right in the eyes.
“I—”
He hesitates.
“…I really, really care about you.” It nervously exhales, like it had been holding its breath without realizing. “I'm not ‘putting up with you’—do you really think I'd kiss someone I barely tolerate?”
Her words are followed up by a small laugh. It pierces through the tension and eases it all at once, and whatever defenses left in the Ultimate Soldier quickly crumble beneath her.
There's not much more for Mukuro to say. All she can do is smile as much as her lips will stretch, her face warm from all the affection she's received. Hotaru—beautiful, sweet soul he is—does this to her so often. She's never had much of a sweet tooth, but he would be her exception any day of the year.
The feeling lingers still. She wants to kiss it so badly, just to be closer to the sun already sitting on her lap. A selfish desire, she knows, but she also knows it would comply if she asked. What is she to do with this kind of power? Is someone like her worthy of this privilege from it? Surely not, right?
“What… time is it?” Mukuro mumbles, suddenly aware of how long they've been sitting here. It provides a quick transition out of such a heartfelt conversation, giving Mukuro the space she needs to mentally recompose.
“Um,” Hotaru glances around, seemingly registering the passage of time herself. Her eyes supposedly land on the alarm clock behind Mukuro, strategically placed a distance from her bed. She remembers her saying it helped her get out of bed in the morning. “It's quarter past four. Enoshima-san's expecting us, isn't she?”
It's not like Mukuro had forgotten. She would never dare forget anything that's important to Junko, even though all she talks about how boring her own photoshoots were. They mean a lot to her despite it, Mukuro knows.
By extension, she knows they meet a lot to Hotaru now, too—though he's no model himself, after almost a year of doing duo photoshoots with Junko, it's become part of his schedule.
“She is, yes.”
…And right now, she should get up and help Hotaru get ready—preemptively brush out its hair or something so Junko will complain less when they show up.
But…
“Uuugh,” Hotaru groans, pressing her forehead into the nape of Mukuro's neck. “I don't wanna go yet. I like sitting here.”
Mukuro's heart skips a beat again; she actively fights herself to not have a physical reaction to the action and the words.
“We can stay like this,” she suggests, moving her hands so that she's holding onto Hotaru. The words are quiet, filled with some kind of embarrassment, but she takes the shot anyway. “If you want.”
He lets out a soft hum directly into Mukuro's neck—it's hard to tell whether he realizes this or not. “I'd like that. If that's okay with you.”
“…Alright.”
Mukuro slowly leans forward, resting her chin on Hotaru's shoulder in turn. She doesn't have the courage to relax completely.
But perhaps, at the very least, she can slowly get used to the sun enveloping her in its warmth.