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The wind is warm the night they decide to leave the party early, because Momo and Mai have had far too much of these people they've known for what feels like several lifetimes, and Kamo's birthday isn't all that important anyway, and the sun is setting and Momo insists it looks better from the sky, too. The real straw that broke the camel's back was that Todo had turned on Takada-chan's latest live special in the middle of the celebration, and Momo just couldn't take it anymore. The ensuing chaos had been a great cover to slip out, anyway.
Mai's arms are wrapped delicately around Momo's waist. Despite being too interested in guns and gachapon machines, everything Mai does is delicate. She's cute like that. Momo keeps her eyes trained ahead as she takes them over the schoolgrounds, up to just the right altitude where the view of the sun dipping lazily behind the horizon is unfettered by trees, hills, or buildings.
She stops the broom midair, sucks on her teeth. Mai's grip around her waist shifts, and Momo can sense the question before she even opens her mouth to ask it, so she replies preemptively:
"Yeah, this is it," she declares, voice raised the way she always does when she's giving callouts on a mission. It's just habit. "Too many clouds, though."
"It's fine," Mai dismisses. "Your hair's the real thing in the way."
"Oh, please," Momo scoffs, and Mai laughs, warm and bubbly and genuine. Momo smiles. She hates rewarding that kind of uncute behaviour, but some objectively annoying, boorish things, like making fun of a girl's hair, manage to be sweet when Mai does them.
"I can see just fine," Mai says again, this time scooting up on the broom so her chest is pressed against Momo's back. She leans her chin on the top of Momo's head.
"I told you," Momo says. She adjusts her grip on her cursed tool. For some reason—who could really say—her fingers feel sweaty. "They're the best seats in the house."
Mai grunts acknowledgement. She shifts so her cheek is resting against Momo's head instead. Her fingers are interlocked tightly on Momo's stomach. It takes every ounce of Momo's willpower not to put her own hand over them.
"Nobody could do this but you," Mai finally praises. The sky is getting darker and darker by the second now; they came up here later than Momo wanted. It's not the first time they've come to the sky together, not by far, but it feels like it, doesn't it?
Maybe it's just the lighting getting to Momo's head.
She nods, gently so as not to displace her junior. "I'm a real asset," she agrees, "and everyone should praise me more. I mean, I'm not asking for much. How many missions would be totally fucked up if not for me?"
"Oh, all of them."
"Exactly! That's exactly what I'm saying, Mai-chan. Every mission would be dead in the water without me. And Kamo—oh, he's the worst of them!"
"Just the worst."
"And so cruel to you, too, not to mention poor Miwa-chan—I mean, you'd think him and his dumb arrows carried every mission, as if we all needed him to lead us..."
"Clan boys, am I right?"
"You said it!" Momo smacks her broom with one hand, jutting her bottom lip out as she pouts. "Well, I guess you're more used to that sort of thing than I am. Are they all so crass?"
Mai's quiet for a moment. She gets like that sometimes, Momo's noticed, when she strays too close to something real. Momo can be discreet when she needs to be, but why does she need to watch her words around her beloved Mai? There's something there that nobody's seen, she's sure of it, that she doesn't even know if Mai herself knows how to describe. It's bringing her pain, which brings Momo pain, too. Too selfish to voice, of course, but Momo's not going to deny herself in her own head. The sky grows blacker and blacker.
"Yeah," Mai finally breaks the silence. "But he's stuffier than most of 'em, though."
Nodding, Momo considers this. "You can't ever get married to some ugly, gross man like that," she decides.
This seems to shock Mai. The laugh that escapes her is more like a bark, the kind she reserves for when she hasn't had time to come up with something more acceptable.
(If Momo could bottle the sound, she would. Even when she's caught it on video by chance, it's never been quite the same as the real, raw thing. Something about the airwaves, maybe?)
"Hey, no complaints from me," Mai jokes, finally moving one hand from Momo's waist to jostle her shoulder. "Like hell I'd spread my legs for—"
"Mai-chan!" Momo interrupts, hissing it. "Not cute! Not at all cute!"
This makes Mai bark laugh again, even though she's trying to hide it behind her hand. Momo has to crane over her shoulder to watch it happen, the sky framing Mai's face like she were a painting.
"Put your hand back," Momo orders, rolling her eyes and smiling. She lights the lantern attached to her broom with cursed energy, washing them both in teal. "It's dangerous not to have something to hold onto."
Mai mumbles something noncommittal, mm, okay, and her hands are clasped on Momo's stomach once more within a moment.
They stay like that a while. Momo starts drifting lazily, taking them on a slow tour of the campus from the sky. Out here, in the city but only barely, Momo imagines every single star that's ever died is shining on them.
"I'm serious, though," she finally says.
"I know."
"No, I really am," she insists, gripping tighter at her broom. "You can't get married to a man like that."
"Trust me, I'm not jumping at the opportunity."
"When you graduate," Momo continues, sweat beading down her back for reasons she is too stubborn to name, "I'll have an apartment in the city."
"What's that got to do with it?" Mai asks. The way her brow is furrowing is audible in her voice, the adorable way her nose wrinkles up when she doesn't get something identifiable in the lilt of her words.
"It's going to be filled with the best decor in the world," Momo continues, unimpeded, "and I'll have a room made up for you with all of your favourite things. I know you've never lived anywhere but the school and that awful compound. You don't even know how good things could be."
"Oh," breathes Mai.
"I'm not taking no for an answer," Momo adds, even as her own brow furrows and her cheeks feel hot and it's so infuriating how her body refuses to echo her determination. She knows what she wants, and she knows what will make Mai happy, and she knows how intimately connected they are. It can all be so easy, so long as she doesn't screw it up. "You're going to live with me, and that's that. And I'll cook for you, since all you make is that fried stuff which is so bad for your figure, and you can do the laundry, so it'll be equal exchange. And by then you'll be able to make way more than a bullet, so—I've thought it all through—you can sell the things you construct, and I'll deliver them on my broom. And we'll never have to see those ugly, scary things you hate so much again, not directly. It'll be easy," she concludes. She hates that there's a note of desperation in her voice as she adds, "It'll be nice."
Mai is quiet for too long. Momo's not going to take it back, though; if this is a test, she's not going to fail. It's only when the grip around her gets tighter and Mai laughs again, softer but still spontaneous, that Momo lets herself exhale.
"You wanna be my little housewife?" Mai teases. Momo scoffs, affronted.
"What's wrong with that?" she demands. "It's not like I'm going to get married to some ugly man, either."
"I can't see that for you." Mai leans down and Momo feels a light pressure on her scalp, something she only belatedly realises is a kiss. Her palms feel sweaty enough to slip off of the broom, so she grips it twice as tight. It wouldn't do to die right after something as wondrous as this. "Alright. It's a promise. Once I graduate, I'll be your live-in deadbeat girlfriend."
"Mai-chan, how many times do I have to tell you?" Momo scolds, unable to stop herself smiling. "Talking like that is so uncute."