Not With Haste

It's been a couple of days since Usagi's been healed, and not a moment of the time's been squandered. After all, the new school year starts altogether too soon. There's been a general absence of visible bodyguarding, since Usagi's house is nearly finished and nobody wants Fiore coming after Mamoru there -- right now, the two of them have just got back from some time at the pier with Jadeite.

They're out on one of the balconies -- the one facing the sunset -- and they're in one of the loungy chairs there with Usagi situated on Mamoru's lap. Because Mamoru is very patiently working on getting something offensively sticky out of Usagi's hair with a cup of warm water and a cloth and a brush. After all, whatever it is didn't taste like candy.

He did tell her she couldn't fidget, but she could talk all she wanted about whatever she wanted and he'd listen in detail and focus -- said he'd even take a quiz on it later if she wanted him to -- to make up for it. He's generally calm, a sort of sleepy lulled pleasure at being close to her and a relief at the lack of the dark energy suffusing his presence; it's communicated by his touch and the gentleness of his working at his task. As the sun sets and the breeze up high on the top floor grows chillier, though, anxiety gradually sets in.

It has the flavor of the anxiety he'd been fighting when they talked about the paint-filled sponges and dodging practice.

Usagi decides she very much prefers being not suffering from a dark energy soaked piece of shrapnel. She's more relaxed, Mamoru's more relaxed, and heck, she's pretty sure even Kunzite is...well, less frowny.

She isn't exactly sure how whatever it is that's in her hair got there, but she suspects it had been that little turd monster she got in an argument with. Or maybe even one of the bajillions of people who swooned at Mamoru. (Not that she blames them!)

She tries her best not to fidget, to keep him in this state of calm he's in. She decides it's a very good color on him, and will do what she can to see that it happens often!

Usagi does ramble on, of course, but ultimately decides halfway through that she won't be giving a quiz. Mostly because she's forgotten what she's started with.

But hey, she only gripes about her brother two times, and stop trying to make me like him with guilt, Mamo-chan, if you want him you can have him. She doesn't mean it, of course, because as annoying as Shingo is, Usagi's pretty sure she'd fight tooth and nail for that annoying spawn of Satan.

Usagi's not sure exactly when the change starts, but when she notices it, she falls silent, wondering if it was a different anxiety or that one she's felt festering on occasion. At first she'd thought it was over the shard, but that was gone a few days ago.

"Whatever it is, you're going to over-think it until it drives you crazy."

There's a flash of guilt from Mamoru at Usagi's calling him out on his anxiousness, and his hands slow for a moment... but he decides that she's right, and he gets back to work again, careful not to tug. "I'm nearly done getting whatever this is out," he says, and she can feel him working up to talking about whatever it is.

Still, it's a long moment before he says something again.

"You know how even though we love each other, you also love your girls? And how you liked kissing me even when I was Minori?" he starts hesitantly, hands slowing again. "And how you said you'd..." he doesn't finish the sentence, but there's a memory that flashes through her head as he touches fingertips lightly to the side of her neck, up high under her ear, then trailing them down to rest on the space between neck and shoulder.

The words are so slow in coming. He's afraid. He's very much afraid. She can feel that too.

There's a mental image of Kunzite, then, of the way Mamoru's seen Kunzite looking at him. It's the same way Usagi's seen Mamoru looking at her -- like she's the most important person in the world, like he'd do anything for her, like he loves her beyond all reason. The feeling that Mamoru gets when Usagi looks at him the same way is also there: a heady and giddy warmth, suffused with love and fierce protectiveness and blinding need.

Then there's the contrast for when Kunzite looks at him that way-- and that same set of reactions, emotions, exists there. There's a mental image then of Kunzite holding him when he was broken and confused and hurting in the Dark Kingdom, and of Zoisite doing the same when he ached and despaired and fell apart there, after the span after the milkshake incident; of Nephrite reminding him that the tensile strength of love was strengthened by quantum entanglement, that the feeling of not being alone was something he wasn't imagining. There's the feelings he had before they all went to D-Point, when Jadeite and Nephrite couldn't let go of him, and he took support and strength from them and their love for him the same way Usagi does from the love and support of her girls. There's the anxious edge-of-despair and desperate feelings of guilt and greediness and self-recrimination

I feel like a jerk for missing you this much when you're right here

from when he had to let go of Kunzite's calm and steady presence when they planted his stone in with the roses, and the times he was terrified he'd never see him again.

The comb gets set down, and Mamoru's other hand comes up to brush at Usagi's temple on the other side of her face, and she can feel his fear that she won't understand that she's still the other half of his soul and he wouldn't let go of her for everything, but that his boys are also pieces of his soul, and he loves them beyond reason, too.

And that he needs Kunzite as much as he needs Usagi, as much as Kunzite needs him and Usagi needs him. He's so afraid that she won't understand, that she'll think he's rejecting her. He can't imagine living without her love, without her completion. He can't imagine how he coped without anyone, before he met her, before he made friends, before he found his boys. He can't imagine going back to that. There are brief flashes of what he was, of how he felt, of how incomplete and undefined he felt and how he tried to ignore it--

--he leans in to kiss the nape of her neck, and his hands slide down her shoulders, down her arms, and slip around her waist to link at her belly. "Don't leave me, please. Please," he murmurs, trying to keep the desperation from his voice, managing to keep it from his motions, but it's still there. "Please. I-- I want to kiss him, Usako. It would-- it's the same but different. It's-- please don't let go of me. Please don't think I need you less, please don't think I love you less, I'll always love you, I'll always need you-- there are only so many people in this world I can touch without being afraid or cautious-- there are only so many people in this world who can accept everything I am-- please, please, this is part of who I am, too--"

Usagi is very bad at being patient sometimes. She just hopes she gets points for trying really hard!

When he starts, she's confused. Even as a shiver rolls down her spine and she bits her lip at the touch memory, she's confused by the start and the undeniable fear she feels coming from him.

(Fear of...her? What did she do wrong this time?)

Jumbled confusion even still, but slowly she's working things through.

(There's a flash of anger in her belly, both at herself and someone dead, but also relief that people had been there for him.)

But then she's realing, not just from where this is coming from, but the sudden frantic desperation and it just...

And it is better, she thinks, that this wasn't discussed when she had a shard in her back.

He's suddenly rambling, trying so hard to convince her to stay with him, silly boy.

And though, while she has the general idea, there are still some hazy things, but she knows for certain she won't leave him. She'd tried Without Him before, and though it was involuntary, its something she would much rather not go through again, especially by choice.

That's not why she turns in his lap when she's half-convinced he's going to start hyperventilating. Straddling him, she tries to get him to calm down, but he's talking faster and faster like he's trying to get it all in and she feels him begin to panic.

"Mamo-chan-- Mam--" She sighs. "Honey--"

Finally, she just does the only thing she can do. She shows him.

But she's not good with psychometry, and her way is more fun sometimes, anyway.

She kisses him, thoroughly, and tries her best to feel really hard at him. Her limbs tighten around him, because no she's not going to leave.

She gets it. The feelings he showed her, she's had similar for her girls, trying to hide them behind platonic adoration.

While this probably doesn't alleviate all his concerns, hopefully with the knowledge that she isn't going to leave him will chase away the fear and panic.

The desperation bleeds out slowly after the initial rush of relief floods most of it away; Mamoru hangs on to Usagi, kissed senseless and reassured into a calm he cannot borrow. She's seen him cry before-- more times than he'd care to admit-- and he doesn't, now; this is beyond that, and the emotions involved are all either too big for him to grasp or he's already spent everything on trying to cope with them. So: for much better reasons than any of the previous times he's let go of everything but the moment, Usa's prince falls into her embrace so that the pieces of him can stop slipping away.

It's a long kiss, and it goes, eventually, from needy to enthusiastic; it goes from enthusiastic to Mamoru still holding Usagi while she's wrapped around him, and getting up from the chair, and stumbling inside and nearly tripping, and it turns into trying not to laugh into a kiss and failing.

It's a bit later when they're finally using their words like grown-ups, after a bout of more kissing, hugs and cuddles, nose nuzzling, and such. Her hair is down, very much mussed, and his is far from kempt.

She's straddling him again, forehead pressed against his. "I may get jealous."

because i have a really jealous girlfriend,

They're alike in that way, she thinks, Usagi and Beryl. And she hates that.

So she scowls and covers it with a scoff. "Then again, I get jealous of your toothbrush. I know it's silly, but. And it's okay if I do. I mean, it's not, but not where you're concerned."

All the touch-- no, he knows what's going on, he knows, and there's a flare of something dark and insistent in Mamoru, something Usagi knew still hurt him, but didn't know until now how deeply and how badly. "You're nothing like her," he says through his teeth, hands tightening around her, quiet and fierce. Angry, but not at Usagi; angry, but not quite aggressive; angry, and suppressing trembling as if he were cold. "Maybe you don't want to share. Maybe I don't either. Maybe I'm yours, and maybe you're mine, and what we have-- what we have isn't something anyone else shares. But we don't own each other."

His obedience -- that's my reward. I do possess him.

His fingers curl tighter, almost but not quite enough to hurt, and he makes himself relax, makes himself breathe, makes himself... makes himself calm down. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Contact. Warmth. Real love. Support. All these things he has because they're freely given. He takes another breath.

More calmly, blue eyes to blue in the darkness between their shadowed faces, "And we do share each other-- with our friends, with your family, with the world... we can live with that jealousy, that's just time. You know I'll be there so fast, so very fast, if you need me, if you want me, no matter what. I'm here, Usako."

She wants to scowl and pout, because he wasn't supposed to hear that. (Or maybe he was.) She's startled by his proclamation that they don't own each other. "I know that, we're not plushies..." But its a mumble, and he probably didn't hear.

And she wants, almost more than anything, to help him. Not to forget, but to get through what he keeps pushing down. But she suspects it would be best left to those who had been there (and not making things worse stupid texts) and she could just offer fuzzy vibes when she feels they're needed.

You may have destroyed kingdoms. I would have given up a dynasty for him.

Point for her, right?

And she's happy that he gets the jealousy thing. That he (hopefully) won't blame himself for it. She wasn't lying about the toothbrush thing. She gets jealous of him, even. Of his boys, of her girls. Of the people her girls are seeing.

"Mamo-chan, if you were there every time I wanted or needed you, you'd never leave." Her words are teasing, and then she grows hesitant, anxious, a bit afraid. It's a shadow of what he felt earlier, but for a different reason. "If I get...stupid? Can you just remind me?"

And there it is-- mixed in with the concern that spikes from her anxiety, her fear, there's the sudden realization of what Usagi means, and Mamoru's instant reaction to it: warm amusement, a relative of the scoffing he used to use to reassure her as much as to annoy her. "Your hair's down, I can't even call you odango atama," he says, actually relaxing again. "And you know--"

One of his hands comes up from her waist to settle over her heart, warm and long-fingered, with a healer's gentle surety and a fighter's strength. "You know I'm here. Always. Literally. It would have been terrible if you told me no, if you told me you wouldn't have me anymore, because--"

Instead of using words, again, there's the smallest laugh and Mamoru shows her how he sees her heart, always: so bright, too bright, perfectly bright; visible from everywhere, and entangled completely with his, where sometimes it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. Far and away more shining than anyone else, an inexorable pull that couldn't be resisted if he wanted to-- and there isn't a single thing about him that wants to resist. Why resist completion?

I told you I wanted you in my space-- because you're already there.

His other hand comes up to cradle the side of her face, his thumb brushing her bangs back from her temple. "If you're afraid, love, hold tight to that. I'm never out of reach. I'll laugh at you if you need me to, and I'll show you again and again how I need you, all of you, always, even the parts you think are silly or unfair or unkind, even the parts of you that you don't like."

You found me and woke me up. And I don't want to go back to sleep, Usako.

"And it's all right. He's so happy for us, he's so happy with us-- we're what he thought he'd lost forever, losing our future and our happiness was what made him despair. But we're together again, and even if we have some mending to do, it's only mending." He laughs again, and this time it's self-deprecating, and one hand trails down and the other slides round back of her head, and he's initiating a kiss this time: there's just love. He knows he was rambling, and that's why the laughter; he's a hot mess, but there's no question he's hers. He's damaged, and the support she offers is so very necessary, even if it's true that some of the damage is better handled by those who can't be further hurt by it; she's afraid, and he'll always always hold her safe from the thunder of the opening sky. It's all there in the kiss, until there isn't anything but the moment again.

Her scowl is tempered by her smile. "Well, I can call you Jerkity Jerk-Faced Jerk."

When his hand spreads warm over her heart, both hers curl around it. And she does feel him there. She suspects a part of her always had, connected through a rose, or perhaps part of her just knew. But she also knew what it was like when he wasn't there. There is still a scar, faint but it's there. A reminder of what it was like, of the least favorite her she had. Someone who was so driven to fill that void in an almost subconscious desperate matter that she was almost insane with it, not seeing what it was she was actually doing until damage had been done. And she never wants to feel that way again, doesn't want him to feel that way, and why would she even want to?

And if her light was bright, it's because of him. Because of a wish made a thousand times over in a previous life, that would sometimes overwhelm on the darkest of nights until her pillows were stained with tears.

She was born with that wish granted, when everyone else spent ages seeking theirs. Because of that wish, that need to belong to a planet both him and his being fulfilled before she even took her first breath, the brightness of her heart could only grow from there.

She's told him before, she thinks, about the wish. She just doesn't think she's ever told him.

"I'll show you, too." It's an open ended promise. She's pretty sure it leaks through even when she's not thinking about it. "And I'll laugh at you when you need it. I probably should now, silly Mamo-chan, but I'll let it slide."

She snorts at his laugh but welcomes the kiss. She doesn't mind when he rambles. She likes when he does, except in those instances where it's powered by something bad. Not a month ago, talking more than a sentence here or there exhausted him. Hell, she'd let him read out loud from some Relative Pudding book.

He's damaged, she knows and sees this and suspects she's not completely unbroken herself still. He's damaged, but that doesn't change anything about how she feels about him. The pieces will fit back together, and those small bits that have been crumbled to powder could still be used, much like the damaged mortar of a house.

And at the end of the day, she loves all of him. So how can she even think to deny any part of him, to try and make him be who he isn't? She'll be jealous, but really, it's his happiness. And that's the most important thing.