I wrote this as a vacation of sorts from my normal writing. Meaning it was largely impulse, with very little attention paid to the stylistic structure.
Just sayin'.
.
Pairings: Tsumugu x Ryuuko, implied ? x Ryuuko
Warning: Contains swearing, sex, OC, mild spoilers and character death, plus a trigger warning for mental illness. Possible OOCness.
Cover art by 雅 on pixiv.
A/N: In Mandarin, the ideogram for 'Matoi' means 'to wrap around, entangle or to bother incessantly'.
.
Close the language-door,
and open the love-window
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.
-Rumi
.
She's just a girl, he kept reminding himself. Just a girl.
If only he didn't glimpse in her at times the soul of the woman she was to become.
.
It had been easy at first. She was a threat, and a brat to anyone who cared to look: gutsy and loud with a scrawny child's build. Those two natures incited enough conflict in him by themselves–his life's duty against his reluctance to wear the blood of innocents–but no matter. He would do his job.
And kill the girl with hair the color of his sister's above the neckline of those cursed clothes. Whose neck and wrists were just as slight, just as easy to snap. His soldier's discipline could rein in his torrid rage, but not diffuse it. Could hold steady his aim but not his will.
But no. The abomination wanted to protect her, if such monsters could be believed in. More importantly, she had obviously worn it for some time.
She was harmless (safe)–for now.
It was only as the maelstrom in him ebbed, for the moment, that some part of him he didn't realize he still possessed got ripped up a little more at the painful resemblance to Kinue's own spunk.
.
Unsurprisingly, his task of occasionally shadowing her soon led him to discover sides to her different from his sibling.
Obviously Kinue had been more polite and grounded than this tomboy. She had also been taller in life, more graceful, while Matoi was a 5' 3" brat who talked and moved like she was forever out of her element.
That's because she's a darn hothead and teenager.
Maybe, maybe not. Matoi would probably never lose that red streak in her bangs or dislike for spicy food though, and those things were never Kinue.
He wished, for all the world, that these differences meant he was less absorbed, more focused on the important tasks at hand. By now it was clear she had a distinct personality of her own, and that had done nothing to help lessen his distraction at all.
Was it because he saw a mirror in her reluctant understanding? Because she, too, had probably woken up reaching for her weapon some nights, then her only companion? Because she must wandered so long after the gravestone, so driven and lost, to earn a bearing so scarred and strong? And if he wanted a trace of gentleness, there was the way she handled strays, the way she sometimes smiled and how she never turned away eccentrics most people wouldn't call friends.
Shut up.
(He was not a pedophile. He was not.)
.
Her stiff-peaked breasts, still not that much bigger, didn't bounce too dramatically at his thrusts. The sweat-tinted hips beneath his fingers though, had gained ripe woman's curves, and the legs keeping his balls bouncing against her opening were longer. Like her fighting, her movements in bed were mind-consumingly passionate.
AH, Kina–gase–
Fuck, that cramped, fever-warm passage! The way it gulped softly around him, the way she canted her hips forward to present her emptiness to his dick did not betray the fact her hymen was untouched mere minutes ago.
Kinagase!
He grunted and jerked his fist one last time. Quietened after the high.
A vicious hand sent the porn mags flying from the table. The other clean one covered his face.
He needed a woman.
.
The war had been won.
All known Kamui and Goku Uniforms were finally annihilated, and their research data with them. Senketsu himself had chosen self-destruction, to protect his beloved partner against his inevitable blood-thirst. For that, if nothing else, Tsumugu was willing to acknowledge it, he, as something more than creature.
His great mission was now complete. But to what cost? The lives of an innocent and, though, he had once hated to admit it, the man he had grown to call his best friend. The mercenary in him said two people were considered minor for collateral damage, and he had never hated himself more.
Matoi had disappeared after the carnage.
Should he let her be? Go to some island where he'd always wanted to take a vacation, make sure she never saw him again? Never got close to the terrible events he was now sure to represent?
No.
She would have to face the reality, sooner or later, if she was to truly move on. Accept that the little child-woman had been slaughtered simply because she treasured her, that her teacher, despite the chasm in skill, had stepped into the onslaught to save her.
But for now, he would let her be. For now, he wasn't the right person, wasn't Kiryuuin, wasn't someone close enough to have her sorrows rest on his shoulder. For now he couldn't see her face and see her, not–God–Mikisugi's bloodied smile and ruined form; he–
He would call up acquaintances. A trained psychiatrist. Someone to counsel her, someone else he himself could lean on, and a third to help arrange her lodging. Then he would go somewhere, wherever she wasn't, and toast his fallen comrade every day with the lameass coffee he'd always liked, until the wound his name was became duller. There would be time.
(The frantic drumming in his chest was ignored.)
.
"Kinagase? You awake?"
"Yes."
Sometimes, he regretted assigning Matoi to Kurae. His voice used to mean nothing but a pleasant chat and irrelevant reminiscing for their alma mater. Now, even as he tried, all he could associate it with was those damn monthly assessment reports.
(flinches at loud noises reluctant to be in public areas patient responded to treatment with panic attack)
In any case, that tone could never imply something good.
"She's gone."
.
Typical brat. Just when she'd stopped having the nightmares.
Thank you for all your help, Kurae-san. I'll never be able to repay you for all you've done, but I hope that this little will suffice.
Matoi's trustee had called to inform that her therapy sessions would be paid in full. Whatever sum Tsumugu had shouldered beforehand would be recompensed as well.
Don't worry, I promise you I'll be well. It's just…time for me to take charge of my life again. My treatment too. Please don't come looking for me.
It wouldn't be too irrational to track down Matoi's trustee or go up to Kiryuuin and demand her whereabouts from her, would it?
"Kinagase," Kurae warned. No sympathy on his face, but then he knew how that would go over. "She needs a fresh start. Alone."
Please tell Kinagase thank you, and not to search for me too.
Fucking brat.
Fine! He would act like the fucking adult.
His tensed fists slowly loosened, but the note in them was already crumpled.
.
He'd given his word and he intended to keep it. He intended to.
Just, just what the fuck was this OBSESSION?! Why the fucking hell was he still not entirely free of her?!
Every single day. Every single day he looked into the mirror, wanting to dye his crest a less vivid red. Days that turned into weeks into months, but sometimes he would still spot that hairstyle on a teenage girl and half-turn his neck. Even when he walked into bars to wind down (escape), he would find his consideration lingering on women more petite and outspoken, and that wasn't counting flashes of the damn culprit in his own recurring nightmares, where this time, he didn't even bother suppressing the urge to wipe away her tears.
Not that he really didn't know the reason. It was also why his brain would never scent matcha and jasmine, or look at travel magazines again without thinking "Kinue."
But she was the family whom he'd shared more than twenty years of his life, the blueprints and darkest vulnerabilities of his person with. What was a strange girl compared to all that?
Eyes burning with a will that refused him death, with a singular command that he trust (hope), that he trust this to her because she was not helpless, because reality was bigger and more forgiving than his soul-maddening (self-)hatred and his responsibility, first and foremost, was to live–
You can shut the FUCK up!
Well, at least one of us is making it out of this. Promise me–
NO, MIKISUGI, DON'T YOU DARE–
Promise me you'll be happy in my place, Tsumugu.
Fuck you too, Mikisugi. Bastard had never played fair.
Muscles bunched up. Loosened. Slumped onto themselves for a second. He drew one heavy, rattling exhale. Ok. Alright.
A year, Matoi.
You have a year.
.
The next time they met, she had grown to be everything he'd imagined she would be. Almost.
"Kinagase," she said, by way of greeting. Twenty months since he last saw her and a handful of sporadic interactions before, and she never forgot. Her gaze was wary but steady and clear, and framed, perhaps, with just a hint of weary shadows.
"Yo." He replied, instead of saying something completely stupid, like, you were brighter in my memories and hopes.
.
He should've expected it. After all, she was Isshin's daughter, whose parents had raised him on a farm.
Still. A degree in horticulture. With a part-time job at a bakery.
As far as one can imagine from holding a weapon.
His mouth quirked from bitter amusement. He himself hadn't been that much of a fighter before Kinue's death, or after Mikisugi's either.
At least she had a lived-in apartment. He himself hadn't bothered to stay for long anywhere. Pa'ia Town, Chincoteague, Beaufort. Then up to Alaska, where he had an old friend, followed by a week shelling out rupiahs and speaking in rudimentary Indonesian. It was only in a bar, entertaining an interested beauty that he was beset by a sudden weariness, drawn by a longing to hear the syllables of home. He arrived in Narita three days later.
Of course, not everyone had a powerful billionaire sister to take care of them, though a doctorate from a top-ranking university could be just as useful. For one, it allowed him to negotiate the contract for his present job, therefore creating weekly opportunities to track her down. Which was why he was now sitting in front of her.
Watching her brew and serve tea with as many clatters and clanks as possible. He stifled a snort. Some things never changed.
(Neither, apparently, did his cursed fascination with her, however jaded and faint.)
.
Time had increased his patience nonetheless.
Certainly the uniforms and graves hung between them, ever since he first entered her doorstep. Her recovery, according to Kiryuuin, had also been progressing nicely. Yet there was something to be said about the lengths she went to in avoiding sharp objects, using a peeler for fruit and buying her meats chopped or minced.
The only pairs of scissors in the house were the plastic kind meant for children.
In any case, he had broken enough things and chances to last a lifetime, and subtlety would cost him little.
That didn't stop him from showing up more than he had concrete reason to, or being utterly himself when around her. Seriously, how messy could a table get? He didn't remember being this bad as a college kid.
(And no, age doesn't necessarily clash with mohawks, Matoi. Live with it.)
So she was the one who chose when to break their peaceable silence. Starting, naturally, with Mikisugi Aikurou.
"Aikurou," she began, slamming down her tankard.
"Mikisugi," he corrected her, already tense. Despite the months to rehearse this in his head, he still did not feel prepared.
"Aikurou," she insisted. Apparently, a drunk Matoi was very brazen and stubborn. And intimate. Her hair made a faint scratching noise against the fabric as her head lolled against his shoulder. Tsumugu gritted his teeth.
Note to self: never, ever let Matoi have more than three beers.
Her next utterance was so soft he nearly missed it. "Why?"
He closed his eyes. Not this. "You know why."
"No," she laughed quietly. "No, I don't." In the flash of neon lights, it seemed as if her eyes were moistened.
He turned, and waited for her to look at him. "You do." And what he meant was, you'd better, because Matoi or no, if Mikisugi had died to have his deep affection for his "little battle-goddess", the worth he'd placed in her denied–
"I cannot," and there was a tonal catch of grief, "It wouldn't make sense. It wasn't worth it," She slumped down, head nestled in the sanctuary of her arms. The barest tremor limned her body. "It was all not worth it."
And just like that his existence had winded back five years and three months; only he was staring at a teenage version of himself, and not a half-crazed twenty-four-year-old . But a different tinge to pain did not change the lack of a cure, so he softened the tentative fingers, then a tentative palm, that he rested on the spine of her slowly curling form.
.
They could've pretended the hangover the next day erased everything. Made it so Tsumugu might or might not have sat wordlessly, a stolid presence beside her, while she might or might not have cried. Part of him, the long-suffering part that was impatient to grasp the opportunity right within his hands, balked at the idea of letting this go. Another portion of him, comfortable in isolation, felt an oddly aching relief.
Then Matoi walked out of her room with her head raised and looked at him with trust in her eyes.
.
Still, proceeding from hereon was as far from a walk in the park as you could get. So Kurae was a godsend, even if Tsumugu will never tell him that. (Ok, just maybe not directly to his face.)
"See, that's always been your problem," The other man's frustrated voice sounded through the phone, dripping 'why-am-I-doing-this-again' clearly even from thousands of miles away. "You don't talk."
"I behave sociably when I need to," he pointed out.
"You know that's not what I meant. And for God's sake, don't you dare go leaning on liquid courage for this, unless you want her to freak out over your long-standing attraction before she even considers fancying you."
Tsumugu choked. "How–"
Instant laughter. "Have you listened to yourself lately? I'd already suspected it when you paid me to treat her but…damn. You're truly, well, gone." Another chuckle. "I'm certainly going to miss going cruising with you."
"…Kurae, we haven't done that in years."
The responding mirth sounded louder at his expense, but the curve on Tsumugu's lips felt more honesty than smirk. After all, one had to own up someday.
.
He heard the cup break, but even then he never saw her tears.
Matoi might appear clumsy and rough most of the time, but there was a comfort in the way those palms registered and curved around shapes. So when he heard a crash of glass, he hadn't come stumbling loudly down the corridor, expecting a cut finger. Instead, he'd released the safety on the gun he always carried–some prices were to be paid to win back the peace of your sleep–and crept quietly towards the kitchen.
He really would've preferred living intruders. There was nothing he could do about dead ones. He couldn't even reach across the short space between them, lest he broke the illusion of a petite girl that probably stood, from the way Matoi held herself, near her left elbow.
Well, this was going to take a long time. He breathed steadily through his nose as he slid down, assuming a cross-legged pose. "Tell me what color she liked" was the first question to float across, in what would become a sea of dialogue lasting half the afternoon.
It took much to pass the job of keeping a memory and its love alive to another person, after all.
.
In light of everything, Matoi's eventual "Why are you here?" was nearly overdue. And far too concise. There were so many other whys he could see on her face, like, "Why go out of your way for my treatment?" "Why stay?"
(And maybe a slack set of eyebrows to spell her wait for a confirmation for what she already knows knows knows)
Another time and he would've laughed at the irony: a man possessing enough vocabulary to hold postgrad lectures, process political debates and read Thomas Pynchon, but not enough to answer terrifyingly simple questions. At that moment though, he was too busy doing his best to act normal as he ejected his verbal invite.
.
Red roses had to be the sorriest cliché in the whole dating business. Yet red roses were her: eye-catching and flaring with thorns. There was nothing to be done about their appearance of thoughtlessness, so he opened his mouth to ask for a dozen; maybe with something more creative for the wrapping and little complementary flowers.
That was before he noticed the spiky red dahlia hybrids and thought, yes.
(In fact, the flowers and their table setting conveyed so well what he couldn't the past few weeks that she blushed upon seeing them, so that when she said "I need to think about it", it gave him every reason to hope.)
.
Sometimes it was too easy to forget how inexperienced she was still, in certain facets of life. Her initial homelessness, followed by the bloodshed, survival and loss had swallowed parts of her; embedded themselves into the very way she stared at the world and carried herself. So much so that he almost couldn't believe the way she'd yelled "yes" and spoke defiant words but wouldn't look at him, so embarrassed and blessedly unmarred.
It wasn't just finally having the answer that had him pulling her to his chest in relief, despite the half-hearted thump it cost.
.
To be honest, he hadn't expected that "yes" either, after replying "I don't really know" when she had asked, "Why me?" He, as he was finding out, was not one to love blindly, without acknowledgement of the other's faults.
But she had to see that as well, because nothing much changed after that "yes". They still argued, grumbled and spent time talking and doing mundane things together. In fact, to casual observers, it would've been easy to miss the way they were around each other almost all the time, by text or in person. How easily quarrels receded. And behind the curtains, where he would brand his lips with her fingers' every callus, and from whence co-mingled laughter would sometimes be heard.
It would certainly surprise these hypothetical onlookers when Kinagase moved further from his workplace months later, so he could easily take the Shinkansen.
Not that he cared. The fact that he spent more time staring at her eyelashes than was healthy and could now sculpt her hands from memory was nobody's business.
.
Nevertheless, their decade-wide age gap was not lost on him. Which was why the first time he occupied her bed was not even close to his guilty fantasies by a long shot.
Staying overnight at each other's regularly meant he was bound to find her like this sooner or later, wide awake at two a.m. Because he knew her and himself well enough, he did not ask if she'd tried the recommended relaxation techniques, but whether she'd like some tea. Dispensing comfort had always been a personal horror of his, yet as he sat down beside her, it did not feel half as awkward as it should to swap stories. In fact, he was easily halfway through anecdotes from his travels when he turned to find her fast asleep.
He had sworn he would only stay just a little longer, to study her face under the nightlight. It still felt as if mere minutes had passed before a tremulous hand traced his own, which suddenly wasn't there anymore the second he stirred.
Without doubting his senses. Blurry vision aside, the morning light had her flushed ears thrown too sharply into relief.
.
Of course he was aware that she'd long since ceased to be a debt or unnameable obsession. The full import of that only hit him, however, as he walked up to her on the park bench, her outline a sunlit mercury. When he was struck again by how small she really was; how strong, happy and adamantly believing she could and chose to be, despite everything. And that he didn't dare question what he would do, just to ensure that this was how he would always see her.
There was no moment more perfect for his inner bachelor to panic. The rest of him though, that had buried and boded and craved said to hell with it.
.
That wasn't to say they ever became the most compatible of people. Age has and will not deprive him of his temper, just as it will not hers. And sometimes when they go out, he's not just imagining 'cradle-snatcher' in the body language of the bystanders. They can also both be very mule-headed, and a little terrible around words–thank God for Post-it notes. Kurae would likely play an exasperated bystander to their mini-dramas for many years yet.
But much of the time, they somehow meet somewhere in the middle, and exist in singular moments. Like when Ryuuko flicked at the frown dotting his forehead as he was nose-deep in his reports, and laughed when he scowled at her, "Brat", but let her lead him on chase into the nice weather outside anyway.
.
(*Owari)
.
And uh, I've never watched Kill la Kill before (the fic's a gift), so honk if this is OOC. Any feedback is welcome, but please do not expect me to re-write this. Too emotionally worn and lots to do (plus 4 rewrites in the 'In' tray).
Thanks for reading! (*hurries back to other overdue writing/ drawing projects and rl work*)