You can blame mary jane. And grammar and I are currently not speaking. I'm not on the best terms with proofreading either. They are just such bitches
Fuu could hardly force her feet down that dusty path, keeping her body ramrod straight and firmly pointed away from the splintered path her companions were wandering down. She had used every ounce of her resolve to conjure a parting smile for the two. While she cared for them both it was the sound of Mugen's geta she was trying so hard to drown out. Their metallic whine and wooden thud was a painful symphony to her unwilling ears. She surged forward and did not look back because if she did she had no strength left to turn back forward and walk away. And frankly there was no home for her inside the departing pirate's arms. She walks forward swinging her arms and humming a tune to ignore the fading chorus of thunk-shing.
Mugen cocks back his head and ambles away, swinging his feet in such a way that he can focus in on the rhythmic thunk-shing sounds they made. His body is hunched in a relaxed way and his muscles are loose by sheer will alone. He will not pause and look after her again because the sight of her back growing smaller made him unreasonably mad despite his nonchalant façade. His palms were sweaty and clenched in his pockets and a single muscle ticked haltingly in his jaw as he turned his back to her. He had died and returned for her. A small part of him sneers, ever obedient, whatever it takes whatever she wants. But another small part of him railed against just disappearing down his own little dusty path, hedged in tall green grass. He should just take what he wants, his mind growls inside hm. He lets out a tired laugh and wonders what he wants and just where would he take it? His thoughts are bitter and so is his laugh. Where in his aimless life of thievery and crime and murder could he carve out a place to nurture her, he could spill his blood to protect her but what else did he have to give?
One sunny day a boy and a girl walked down diverging paths.
More than a hundred years later they cross again.
She growls angrily and tries to steady her hand so the tray of drinks doesn't pitch out of her trembling fingers while she feels the drunken boy's sharp tug on her shirt. He is laughing heartily and telling her to hurry the fuck up with his drinks. She jerks out of his grasp and storms away to fetch him another carafe of sake.
"Though you hardly need it," she snarls under her breath as she loads up her tray with glasses and carafes.
Her brown eyes narrow acerbically as she draws near his table. Her assailant was the mayor's son and a total piece of shit. A slew of his gross aggressive friends hung around him like a foul odor. The whole thing made her mad. And nervous.
Muted light leaps across the scuffed hardwood floors as a body slides nimbly into the restaurant. For some reason her world melts around her and her chest feels incredibly too full at the mere sight of him. His dark shaggy hair curls roguishly at the temples of his face and eyes that stop her dead in her tracks seem to pin her down. She can't breathe because he has stolen her breath, stilled its shuttered escape just shy of her parted lips. He slides into a booth and looks up at her with those sharp grayish eyes. They burn in such a painfully familiar way that she can't believe she has never met this man before. His long legs assume a lax posture and his arms drape easily across his chest. He seems to have melted into the seat, though Fuu can see the lean muscles coiling fluidly beneath his bronze skin, belying the strength beneath the unconcerned attitude.
"What can I get you," she breathes feeling for all the world as if she has done this before.
"Water."
His voice is raspy and rumbling and pleasant, it makes her insides flutter in a warm, liquefying way and suddenly she is afraid because she feels overwhelmed and her blood is hammering a staccato thrum in her ears.
Before she can muster the effort to break his gaze a sharp angry yell issue from her drunken customer and break her hushed stillness. She pins a strange harried half glare on him and turns to her asshole patrons even as he beckons for her attention.
He cannot tear his eyes from her, and his hard, guarded heart flares violently in his chest. He has to resist the urge to clutch it as she stares at him with her soft pink lips parted ever ever so softly and big soft brown eyes mooning up at him. He wonders what her skin tastes like but he feels like he can already describe her smell. He is thrown off but refuses to show it; instead he drapes himself languidly along the worn bench of the booth and asks for water. His body hums in anticipation of something he does not fully understand because though he has felt a similar thrill course through his veins many times before it is somehow cheapen by the sheer speed of its onset and foreign fascination. She seemed so new and so familiar at the same time and his head swam with this sudden onslaught.
When she glares at him, bewildered like himself, and moves to turn his hand darts out and attempts to grab her wrist. She swishes out of his reach and moves towards the roiling thicket of dumbasses.
"I thought it told you to hurry up," he snarls and flings an outstretched hand into her tray. Ceramic cups scatter to the ground and sake sprays through the air in a glimmering fount, soaking her and the floor with the potent sake.
She cries in dismay and starts as his clammy hand jerks on her arm.
Déjà vu envelops her as a long bronze arm thrusts her behind a lean back. She can hardly believe the crack that rings out when he strikes the wasted brat across his slack jaw. Blood erupts from a massively split lip and pours down his chin in cerise rivulets.
"What the FUCK?!?"
The blood gurgles in his mouth as he screams.
The man wedged in front of her only snorts in derision and picks absently at his nails, totally disregarding his presence.
He only really feels the curl of her small fingers through his roughened ones where they hang by his sides.
He smiles and thinks of sunflowers and swords and pink and the cry of gulls.
She looks up at his wild snarl of dark hair and the strong proud set of his shoulders and feels unfailingly protected for the first time in her life. She thinks of soft grey fur trailing up her arm and anger and feels the unnamed thrills and sees bright blue bands and hears the low enticing laugh of a man who knows what he is doing.
She doesn't know who he is but she feels him taint her mind before he can so much as whisper his name.
He has never set eyes on her but knows he will wake up to her in the morning swaddled in his sheets and his favorite red t-shirt.