Title: The Squeaky Third Wheel
Rating: pretty SFW
Wordcount: 1181
Pairing: FeMC/Shinjiro
Summary: Pharos's favorite person has had an eventful evening with her boyfriend, and Pharos is full of questions about it.
Note: FeMC is Kotone this time, because I am so pleased that she gets her own version of the musical.
She'd fall asleep soon, Kotone promised herself. The faint green glow washing in through the window indicated how late it was. But Shinjiro's chest was warm against her back, and his heartbeat resonated through her bare skin; as lulling as the rhythm of his breath was, she didn't want to sleep through a moment of it.
He shifted in his sleep, curling his arm a little tighter around her. She nestled against him with a contented sigh. If she fell asleep after the Dark Hour, she could still get a solid six hours' sleep. And if she skipped breakfast—
"Hello."
Kotone scarcely avoided a boyfriend-rousing startle. She instinctively yanked the sheets up to her chin as her eyes locked with a pair of curious blue ones.
"The next full moon is in two days," Pharos added.
His failure to adjust his usual volume made her wince. "This is really not a good time," she whispered.
"It isn't? This is when we usually talk." With a soft chuckle, he vanished and reappeared on the edge of the mattress. "This is the first time we've spoken in someone else's room."
If she'd fallen asleep an hour ago, maybe this wouldn't have been happening. Kotone hoped the blush blazing over her skin wasn't hot enough to wake Shinjiro. "Could you please whisper?"
"He can't hear me."
As nice as it was to be reassured of that, the awareness didn't filter down to Kotone's adrenaline levels. "Could you please whisper anyway?"
Pharos vanished again, to reappear with his face mere centimeters from hers. "Of course! Whispering is fun. It's as if we're sharing a secret." He tapped his finger against his lips.
"Yeah, barrels of fun. So the full moon's on its way, I promise to be extra-careful, thanks for checking in, good night."
He frowned. "You're not going to fall asleep already, are you? There's something I was hoping to ask you about."
They'd already covered the state of the moon, which meant they were probably on to cryptic metaphors. "What is it?"
"You were having a lot of fun earlier, weren't you?"
Kotone tried very hard to convince herself that this might have been about anything other than the evening's activities. "Like, at tennis practice?"
"No, I mean after you took your clothes off."
She cringed. "Oh god. Um. You see, when two people love each other very much, sometimes that's where babies come from, unless you really don't want any babies right now, so you—don't touch that!"
Pharos looked up from where he'd been investigating the little wastebasket under Shinjiro's desk. "Oh, I know all that," he said cheerfully. "I'm always with you, remember? Even in health class." He winked in and out to perch on the corner of the desk nearest her. "I was just curious because you'd never done that before. Why not?"
Kotone couldn't decide if this was better or worse than a discussion of the mechanics. "Well, it's... special," she said at length. Her hand squeezed over Shinjiro's. "It's something you only do with someone you love."
"But you love your other friends, too, don't you?"
"That's different." She hoped Pharos hadn't been paying attention to her reactions when Akihiko showed up at the beach in a tiny scrap of a swimsuit or when Yukari asked for help rubbing sunblock on her back; she absolutely was not up for a late-night discussion of the complexities of attraction. "It's more like... having one person in the whole world who you want to share everything with."
Pharos cocked his head. "Why only one person, though?"
"Well, obviously, because... You know. Because." Flustered, Kotone tried to rationalize monogamy: "It's really intense. You'd probably wear yourself out, trying to love more than one person that way."
"Hmm." Pharos flickered closer to the bed and frowned. "But you're the most precious person in the world to me. Don't we share everything?"
Pop quizzes in class were so much easier to handle. Kotone chewed her lip before replying, "That's different, too. You're—" confusing and weird even by the standards of someone who regularly shot herself in the head to summon monstrous slivers of her psyche— "more like a part of me."
Looking more thoughtful now than sad, Pharos replied, "I see. That kind of love requires sharing to be something that both parties strive for, but can never perfectly achieve. That's what makes it special, isn't it?"
"Something like that, yeah." Bothered by how serious his expression was, Kotone added, "I love you, too, doofus, just differently. Don't mope."
Pharos beamed. "I'm so happy to hear you say that. May I ask another question?"
Caught up in a rush of warm feelings, she nodded automatically. Shinjiro's breath tickled the back of her neck.
"Now that you have a lover, are you going to stop masturbating?"
Kotone's mouth fell open and let a series of uncoordinated vowels tumble out.
Shinjiro stirred. Nuzzling his nose into her hair, he muttered a string of nonsense in which the only recognizable words were "dammit," "Fuuka," and "zester privileges."
When he stilled again, Kotone said into the blanket that she had pulled up over her face, "Because you're always with me. Right. Ummm. No? I mean, that's different, too?"
"Oh, that's good," Pharos said brightly. "You always seem to enjoy it so much."
For the foreseeable future, she was unlikely to enjoy it at all. "We really need to talk about boundaries sometime. Later. Good night."
"Good night, my dearest."
That was not getting any less creepy, no matter how many times she heard it. Maybe, Kotone thought, everyone with a Persona also had midnight visits from a weird little kid of their own, but no one ever talked about it. "What about you?" she whispered, twisting around from the space where Pharos had vanished to face Shinjiro. "What's inside your head?"
He snored.
"Really, though," she said, a little louder. "Does anything ever wake you up in the middle of the night?"
The strange light of the Dark Hour glinted from the slits of his eyes as he mumbled, "You."
She giggled and reached up to touch his cheek. "Sorry. I missed you."
"The hell is that s'posed to mean?" He snorted, but she could see a faint, bemused blush creeping over his face. "Look, you promised you'd sleep if I let you stay here. You're gonna get sick if you keep staying up late."
"So I'll sleep in a little tomorrow."
"Don't even think about sleeping through breakfast. If you do, I'm not savin' you any pancakes."
She hummed. "Strawberry pancakes?"
"Tch, you drive a hard bargain." He curled his arm around her back, tangling his fingers in her hair. "Now go to sleep, okay?"
Smiling, she let her hand fall and closed her eyes. With her head tucked to his chest, she listened to his heartbeat and tried to will her own in time with it.
"He's still awake," Pharos whispered conspiratorially. "Actually, I think he's been awake all along."
Kotone wadded the blanket over her ears.