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Harumi’s on the steps of the monastery when Lloyd sees her. From behind, he notices her hair pooling at her waist where she sits, the white glistening in the light of the moon.
He sits next to her, nudging her slightly in lieu of a greeting. She takes a drag of the cigarette held precariously in between her index and middle finger. The smoke vapor cloud is a damp grey, and Lloyd watches it dissipate in the night sky.
“I didn’t know you were coming.”
Harumi shrugs, looking at him sideways. “I missed you.” She says it so casually, like it’s easy for her. It’s become easier for the two of them to be exceedingly vulnerable with each other as the lonely years of the Merge have passed. Lloyd attributes his open book tendencies with Harumi to his complete isolation, but if he’s being honest with himself, it has more to do with Harumi than it does him.
“You always say that.”
“It’s always true.” He’s used to Harumi’s brazen, bold statements at this point, enough so that he has the ability to keep his composure and not gape at her in shock. It still gets him every time albeit the truth of the matter. Harumi misses him. Harumi thinks about him.
She takes another puff, longer and more drawn out.
Lloyd furrows his brows. “That’s not good for you.” When she doesn’t answer, he asks, “How long have you been smoking? How many times a day?”
Harumi rolls her eyes. “And if I tell you, you’re going to go all helicopter boyfriend on me.” Lloyd stiffens at the nonchalant use of the label. His arm is pressed against Harumi’s, so he’s sure she notices. She doesn’t say anything about it, though, and keeps talking. “Don’t worry, babe, I just started smoking three months ago. I smoke twice a day.”
“I’m not being a helicopter –”
“You are,” Harumi says drily, amused. “It’s cute that you care, though.”
“I’m glad you think it’s cute that I’m worried about you getting lung cancer,” he replies, annoyance seeping into his tone.
“You worry way too much,” Harumi tells him, matter-of-factly. “It’s the end of the world, a few cigarettes aren’t going to kill me.”
“You don’t know that!” He sounds incredibly indignant, and he knows Harumi finds it funny with the way the corners of her lips turn up in a lopsided sort of smile.
“You should try it,” she says, handing it to him. He looks down at her offering, and then back up at her.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Well, I’m offering it, aren’t I?”
Lloyd resolutely doesn’t look at her as he takes the cigarette from her hand, a thin little stick the size of his finger. He rolls it between his thumb and index, stalling. “I don’t know how to.”
Harumi beams, all cat-like. “I thought it’d take more wheedling than that.” He doesn’t know what to think about the implication of him giving into Harumi as quickly as he does. She’s always had that effect on him – back when he was eighteen and naive, and even now, twenty-three and none the wiser when it comes to her. Although they’ve spent years with no one but each other, they haven’t broached the conversations Lloyd wants them to. They’re in a weird limbo with each other, where they kiss and have sex and sleep over at each other’s places, and Lloyd is okay with it. (Kind of okay.) He wishes he knew what they were, but anything with Harumi is enough for him.
“Just try holding it up to your lips and breathe in.”
“Oh, sure, that’s a great explanation.”
Harumi huffs in faux irritation. “It’d be easier if you just tried doing instead of asking stupid questions!”
“That wasn’t a stupid question,” he argues back, but he does as she says. He lifts the cigarette to his mouth and shakily inhales. Lloyd immediately starts coughing, eyes watering from the aggression of his involuntary outburst. It tastes disgusting – not at all like the secondhand smoke of a campfire or even the singed items Kai had accidentally burnt over the years. The back of his throat itches unbearably, like needles pricking his larynx. He swallows hard once he stops coughing, but the sensation doesn’t go away.
Lloyd feels light-headed – dizzy, almost. He rests his head on Harumi’s shoulder for balance. She doesn’t move away. “That was terrible,” he grumbles, passing the cigarette back to her outstretched palm.
She appears unfazed, reasoning with him instead. “It’s always terrible the first two times. You get used to it, though.” She pauses. Lloyd can feel the steady rise and fall of her chest. “How’d it taste?”
“Like fucking shit.”
“I bet,” she agrees. “It gets better. Or you get more used to it, I dunno.”
“I’m never getting used to that,” Lloyd retorts wanly.
Harum hums, noncommittal. She toes a loose rock in the cement of the steps with her boot, kicking it. They’re both silent for a few moments. It never gets awkward with Harumi, though. Lloyd is perfectly content with sitting with her and doing nothing. “How was your day?” she asks, breaking the quiet.
Lloyd lifts his head off of her shoulder to face her. “It was okay. I tried a new recipe – some sort of lemon bar.”
“Were they any good?”
“They were okay,” Lloyd says. “I burnt it, kind of, but I thought they were edible. You can be the judge of that when we go inside.”
“I mean, I’m sure whatever you made is better than anything I can do.”
“The bar is low.” Harumi is not a cook, to say the least. Or a baker, or anything food-related, really.
Harumi scoffs, affronted. “I’m going to cut your hair in your sleep,” she threatens, but she’s laughing.
“Oh, and watch me sleep too, while you’re at it? I’m sure you’d like that.”
“You make me sound like some kind of freak,” Harumi whines, jutting her chin on his shoulder.
“I don’t see you denying it,” he counters.
“Touché,” she says, giving in, grinning. She sits up straighter, and then, “I have an idea I’ve been wanting to try with you.”
“Do I want to hear it?” Lloyd asks, mordant.
“You do,” Harumi nods sagely, schooling her features for the shortest moment. “It’s like … I blow smoke into your mouth –”
“You what?”
Harumi conveniently ignores him. “And then I kiss you, and then you exhale the smoke.”
“That sounds stupid,” Lloyd says, but despite his inhibitions, he thinks it sounds more attractive than he’ll let on. He swallows thickly, Adam’s apple bobbing, thinking. If she persuades him a little more, pushes his buttons – well, Lloyd isn’t entirely opposed.
Harumi sighs exaggeratedly, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees, chin resting in the palm of her hand. She looks up at Lloyd from the angle she’s at through her eyelashes. “Yeah, maybe, but you’re supposed to do stupid things with me.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
Lloyd crosses his arms, adamant. “No.”
“Oh, come on.” Harumi, with the flair for dramatics, scoots down a step so she can drape herself in his lap, stretching like a cat. He looks down, and her head is on his thighs. She looks up at him; he looks down at her. “Just try it.”
“I feel like I’m being peer pressured.” He moves his hands to his sides so she has more space. She’s beautiful – she’s always beautiful, and he’s seen her so many times that he thinks he should be used to it, but he never is. Her hair frames her face gorgeously, and he reaches for her forehead, thumbing her bangs away from her eyes.
She snorts. “Is that something Master Wu told you about?” The hand with the cigarette is lazily sprawled, grip slack.
“I read, thank you very much.”
“Something other than those dusty scrolls about coalescence?"
“Yes! Books!”
“Like what? Romance novels?”
Lloyd doesn’t dignify her with an answer, and that alone tells Harumi all she needs to know. Her Cheshire cat smile prompts Lloyd to roll his eyes.
“Can we kiss normally?” He steers them back to the point at hand.
“We could.” She sounds begrudging in a wry sort of way.
“But you’d rather kiss me and give me secondhand smoke so I die from lung cancer.”
“You’re not going to get lung cancer by kissing me like that one time.”
“It’s never just one time with you.”
“If you hate it, I’ll never ask you again.”
“Never?”
“Never,” Harumi echoes. She looks so sincere, and Lloyd is easy, and well – he can’t say no to her.
“God, okay, fine,” he gives in, glaring at her as she sits up in excitement, adjusting the way she’s draped across him, her legs in his lap, now. She’s moved up to sit on the same step as him, her arm slung around his neck for balance. He can feel the cigarette brush his bare skin slightly. She cups his chin with her free hand, grinning.
“Hi,” she says. She’s close enough to him that he can count the pale freckles sprinkled on her cheeks, close enough to count her eyelashes, to see the gold flecks in her hazy pink eyes. Lloyd’s stomach swoops pleasantly, warmly.
“Hi,” he whispers, voice threatening to crack. He swallows hard.
She looks at him like he’s the only thing, the world behind them fading into nothingness. Harumi’s gaze is invariably intense; she looks at Lloyd like she’s going to devour him whole in an adoring sort of way. (Lloyd would let her if she asked.)
She pulls her arm back, taking a long, overexaggerated draw of the cigarette. Lloyd watches her intently, and then she drops it next to their feet as she puffs the smoke into Lloyd’s mouth.
It’s a warm sensation, and he feels less of an urge to cough it out the way he did the first time. He doesn’t have much time to dwell on the burnt, dark taste of the smoke before both of Harumi’s arms are around his neck. The way her mouth is on his is a familiar sort of ache, he knows what she tastes like, the residue of her strawberry lip balm lingering. She kisses him longingly, like there’s something more she wants from him. (He doesn’t fault her for it; he wants more than this on-and-off they have going on.) He kisses her just as hard, hungrily. Her hands card through his hair as she tugs him back, and he blows out the smoke, panting hard.
She opens her mouth, presumably to ask him how it was, but he doesn’t give her the opportunity to speak before he’s on her again, swapping spit, slick and wet, and Lloyd doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of her. She bites his lower lip, and he whines involuntarily. He feels her smile against his lips, the way she shifts in his lap to get comfortable.
“I take it you liked it?” she asks, voice husky between the smoking and intensity of their makeout.
“It was alright,” Lloyd says derisively.
“Alright, my ass,” she mumbles.
She kisses him again, the promise of lemon bars and coming inside forgotten.