"There you are, Miranda. I wanted to show you someth-are you alright?" Lenalee said quietly to the woman slumped over a scattered pile of reports; surrounded by an accidental fortress of reference books. When Miranda looked up, all she could see were wide eyes filled with the cold, safe light of the library's attendant golems. They nearly covered for the faint blush.
"Y-you… what? I'm fine… But I need to read… for tomorrow's mission…"
"They'll keep. Come with me." The smiling girl said, taking hold of the woman's hand. Miranda, her legs complying, tripped over the tangle of chair legs and her's only to be caught, and righted by a laughing Lenalee. She pulled her away: out of the room, to the spiral stairs and elevators, guided by the light pressure on her wrist.
Miranda, being dragged along like a kite in the girl's power as they raced up the tower, memorized the touch that, though simple, made the wonderful, warm, confusing, feeling of chosen-ness well up as if her lungs were filling with tiny bubbles. There was a trapdoor in the ceiling, and when there wasn't; time stopped. Sound stopped. Everything stopped except the stars. The clear night held lights that she'd never seen through the soot of cities, and clouds that now massed below their feet.
Miranda barely noticed the gentle pressure on her wrist lift. "They're… So many… Thank you…"
The girl was leaning on the low wall, gazing off, as if trying not to look at the woman. "They are." She said "But I also wanted to ask you something."
"What... did you want to ask me…" Miranda said, her base state of low grade panic reasserting itself.
"Calm down… and bear with me. This may come out wrong… I was wondering if I could ask how… what you want from me."
"Want? That's a clinical way to think…" Miranda said, and turning her face away out of habitual propriety, whatever that was, muttered "You've already done more for me than I could ever…'
"It works." She said, still staring away through the redness that welled under her eyes, and her struggle not to acknowledge it. "From the way you are around me, I'd think that you either want to be like me, or … ahem… me… I'm willing to help you train if that's all it is, but I thought I'd… ask." The girl's feeble attempt to hide her head in her folded arms only lead to the shiver as the cold of the stone support slowly sapped her.
Miranda looked around, desperately searching for a hint about how to cheer the girl. The girl that was so talented, and resilient, and was letting herself be transparent… for Miranda… and Miranda alone. The stones and cold stars offered nothing.
That made it harder. Miranda knew exactly what was going on in the mixed up anxieties and false confidence, and worry that stemmed from too much loss and too little privacy. No one had ever bothered to lift her out of that… at least no one she cared to remember. What was supposed to happen next.
On an impulse that vetoed her brain, Miranda moved in close, parted the curtain of black hair that hid reddening cheeks and brushed awkward lips against the revealed ear. It was going to go wrong, lips too chapped. It's your own damn fault, Miranda, you always bite them when you're nervous. Breath too fast, fingers shaking, poking. God, why did the wonder girl focus on the perennial failure. "I guess there's no fooling you." She eventually came up with. Quietly, quaveringly, she tried to cover her own burning embarrassment with simple admissions.
Lenalee's head raised slowly, staring forward once the awkward intimate gesture broke. When she looked at Miranda again the blush was gone, unless it had transferred with their touch, augmenting the blood in the woman's cheeks. She was smiling, brightly, honestly, and it lit her up, made her look like she'd float away if she didn't keep a hand on Miranda's cheek. When did the hand move? She didn't know, but the fingers that trailed along her face, gently guided her eyes to close, and then dragging dark trails down from the shadows and the self-inflicted boundary lines.
"Why… I mean… I haven't done anything to deser…" Miranda said, only to be interrupted and her mind wiped blank by arms encircling her, and fingers entwining themselves in hair around her neck.
The smile broke for a second. "You don't need to" she said sternly.
"But I'm no good at…" Miranda started to insist but found a finger on her lips.
"You're fooling no one but yourself, Mistress Lotto." The smiling girl said, releasing the woman's voice. "Would you like to try something? I've got a few ideas..." she lightened her hold on shoulder stopped her exploration of the woman's features, and waited patiently.
Miranda looked over all the things that could go wrong, at the speed of a worrier in the heat of a moment. Every consequence was worthwhile, she decided… well… except one. She wrapped her arms around Lenalee's waist feeling layers of fabric an metal shift to accommodate her. Just slightly.
"I- I- I think I do" Miranda said quietly "Just… we're still wearing our innocence… Isn't that sort of…"
"It's said that when warriors love each other they fight all the harder. I'm sure the innocence will understand." Lenalee said between laughs. "In any case? Want to test it?"
"What's the test?"
"Come with me, see the world as I see it" her touches traced their way under thin knees and along the spine trying so desperately to curl a woman into a shell. Miranda was lifted up in the surreal strength of Lenalee's arms. Wiry, gentle, but carrying an utter impossibility of frailty or failure. "Do you trust me?" The girl whispered.
The whisper seemed alien: concepts that couldn't possibly come from reality being implied in the questioning. It made her pause, grappling for words. Feeling the arms beneath her relax led her to the words "How could I not?" which came in barely a whisper.
There was a moment where the girl waited in silence. Her gaze tracing the sharp lines and gentle curves that could be seen by stars and the waxing half-moon. It held enough light to bring a heat like sunburn to Miranda's cheeks and the simplicity in her smile conjured every word of thanks and fear of impossibility to the woman's mind. No sign of unease could rise to the surface during those probing, patient moments.
And she jumped.
The girl jumped as if to reach the watchful morning star, if only the God given powers that weighed down her feet and anchored her to the water and air that she stood on would let them escape.
The lightheaded gift of altitude grew stronger and richer in the cold as the height of the arc was reached. Mira whispered, "Invocation" under her breath and the tugging of the ground, now far below, ceased entirely.
"Why, Miranda Lotto, are you attempting to impress me?" Lenalee said with an almost suppressed giggle
"W-was that the wrong thing?" Miranda said, squirming and curling up to avoid those eyes. "It just seemed… like it would come next…"
"I was going to say that it is working." Lena said, craning her neck to look in at Mira, and accidentally sending them spinning.
"W-we should avoid using names in here… Sounds will escape the bubble when I deactivate… and explanations…"
"Understood"
Without the harsh pull of gravity, it was a grasping, desperate thing just to avoid slipping apart, and as Miranda tugged at a sleeve of Lenalee's coat to keep her close she found the treacherous fabric slipping down the girl's arm. As Lena tried to put her arms around Miranda's waist, her own hands found the back of the girl's neck, lips pressing gently to the other's, not unaccompanied by a blush, and her legs tried their best to wrap around the other legs and meld with them.
Lenalee laughed into the kiss at the feel of Miranda's shudder as her touches reached the dark boots. The innocence had reacted to weightlessness by trembling, unsure whether to hover or shoot off into the sky. She whispered in Miranda's ear "I suppose it must be strange. Everything below my waist is numb right now."
"Oh! Sorry, I can…" Miranda started to waver and blush and loosen her grip, but Lenalee silenced her with a kiss, rougher, more exploratory than Miranda's careful ones.
"No, just relax, I have ideas. I've had ideas about you for a while now. Would you let me try them out?" The breath in Miranda's ear saying things almost distracted her from thinking of what these ideas could be, but there were so many ideas that blossomed in her mind that she just hid her face in Lenalee's neck, embarrassed at having thought of them. "Can I take that as a yes?"
Miranda nodded against the girl's neck sure enough that a hand came up to cradle her nose which had knocked itself against the girl's collar bone painfully several times. She was still too embarrassed to make a sound, and pressed herself into all the hollows the girl's clothed body presented her with, any way that the girl could be her shell. She could feel every roll of the girl's laughter.
Fingers brushed aside the hair on Miranda's neck, she found her shell pulling away from her, and though she tried to get back to that comfortable place, it was soon replaced by lips on her neck, fingers at buttons. Silver buttons that separated them, slowly being undone. Chill coming upon her as fabric was pulled back from her shoulder and teeth nipped at the pale skin exposed. Shivers coming upon her as a heel was brushed, ever so lightly, along her inner thigh. And more as it was brought upward closer, with the care of a puppeteer.
Miranda, coat and shirt hanging open, corset exposed, felt as some of the lessons she'd been taught, about what to wear in front of people, how to act in company, how not to look like a… lady of easy virtue… fell away, far down to the ground, past the tower, and through the clouds. She would never be like this in front of them. This was the way Lenalee wanted her to be. Something about that was extremely liberating. She looked in the girl's eyes, patient eyes, which had felt her movement and waited for her. "I mean yes, Lenalee. Yes." She said, as her hand took Lenalee's carefully and she brushed lips over the fingers, and then, to the girl's jaw.
Lenalee started giggling enough that she bit at her hand, still clutching Miranda's to stifle it. The girl's legs were slowly brought up to wrap tightly around Miranda's waist, sending waves of vibration through the bound flesh, along the steel bands most intensely, making her tremble so violently it was a wonder that her heart regained its beating.
Needing to find a way to bring herself back, Miranda hooked an arm around Lenalee's neck, drawing the girl's head into her chest. She fumbled at the hair ties which held the girl's black hair. Pulling them away, and burying her fingers in the freed hair, she admired the way each freed strand waved vaguely upward like seaweed, toward the moon, but would stay in the ripples that her fingers left, until Lenalee would move her head.
The girl brushed lips over the woman's eyes, nose, lips, jaw, spreading her over-abundant kohl to each place, no matter how delicately placed, there would be a mark. These warriors were so careful about their caresses that they blushed at their hesitation. They had seen each other fight. They had seen each other suffer. They could barely touch each other for the chance of becoming one of the many things that she would heal from.
The woman's coat was slid off her arms, and they spun with the force of throwing clothing to the ground. Lena's legs loosened, her hands gripped Miranda's hips, so that her legs could come back to her. The girl managed to spin, with her hands as the axis and only minor accidental kicks to Miranda's head. Or was it Miranda who spun? The moon and the ground were utterly uninteresting now. The girl drew her legs to hook knees around the woman's shoulders, every muscle that she had honed in strength and definition pressed into Miranda's sides. "Hold these for me." She said, straight faced but just barely, looking over her shoulder to see how confused the woman was. The confusion nearly melted before it could be read. "Are you alright?"
"Oh… err… Yes…"
"having second thoughts?"
"No…"
"Then everything is fine." She gave a blinding smile, but as she turned back to sliding her fingers along tapes hiding the rows of buttons that held up her pants. Miranda found herself biting her lip in anxiety, and at the heat shooting through her ribs which were not to be dwelt upon in company. Each button levered out of its eyelet intensified anticipation, yet when her pale, light starved thighs were freed from sliding fabric, Miranda turned them in, involuntarily, hiding her vulnerability, ineffectually.
She felt as if her spirit was floating free, many times the size of her body, enfolding and caressing and supporting them, and her energy was being given to Lenalee. She felt a disconnect between her excitement and her fatigue, and in between those feelings were the two of them.
In between those feelings were the light trails that Lenalee was drawing in goosebumps with her finger nail. Lightly asking for Miranda to relax, and just making her giggle and close up more. The soft flesh that Miranda hadn't trained away embarrassed her at these close quarters. But it seemed to fascinate Lenalee, she was poking at it, finding the places that pulled laughter out of Miranda, pulling heat out, pulling movement out.
Miranda's relaxation allowed Lenalee access to areas that had been hidden, she ran fingers down jagged indents in the woman's skin. Embarrassed that they had been seen Miranda pressed her face into her shoulder, and it's resident boot. She had to pretend that she wasn't squirming. Lenalee stopped for a moment before brushing her lips over them instead, each one she could until she could stretch no father down. "What are you embarrassed about?"
Miranda's fierce stripes told a story of when she grew nearly overnight. They were the start of a time when she could barely walk without tripping. Barely talk without someone mentioning her gangly arms, and lanky legs. And as Lenalee's forehead and pokes nudged the garment down her shins, the trophies of those embarrassments marked themselves in dark and light splashes. "they aren't parts of me that I like to…"
"Miranda" The girl unwound a leg, nearly bare apart from tight shorts, her skirt, and her boots, brought it away from the woman, displaying delicately, at a right angle to her body. Miranda swallowed. "look at me. You aren't judging me for mine. These legs are seen as tools and weapons, and sometimes I believe that. But they're part of me." Lenalee said, in as steadfast a voice as she'd ever used. She arched her back to reach and Miranda found her empty hand guided along the girl's thigh. Feeling marks that Miranda had never noticed on the girl. The marks, gentler ones from growing, and harsher from fighting crossed her no less intensely than Miranda's. "We aren't made of marble, Miranda. Why should I expect you to be polished."
"Oh…" Miranda breathed, as Lenalee's soft voice commanded the world to redefine itself, clarify itself.
"You're all you need to be." The girl said, looking at her nails quizzically. Shook her head. She slid down the last piece of Miranda's cloth so that it too gathered somewhere near the woman's ankles, again she was anchored to her waist with both hands. Straightening her other leg, with the grace of a dancer, the warrior spun around her hands, armoured feet tracing crescent moons through her lover's vision. At the stop, she straddled Miranda's waist, legs entangled with the other's, toes pulling at shins, back straight, and fingers guiding lips together.
Lips opened as Miranda's hands buried themselves in the girl's hair and they moved over one another. A way to continue the dance that wound through their many rhythms. The two tunes, merged and manifested in the flowing freedom of their liberated hair, which flew every way and tried to tangle with the other's.
Miranda held Lena's waist as she arched backwards, not opening her eyes, not allowing their kiss to end, with a hand. The girl's hand felt its way down Miranda's body, intent on separation. The careful pads of her fingers made the first touch of the inevitable place. She felt the evidence of that inevitability, and opened her eyes "I didn't mean to tease you…" She started. She stopped. In a strange kind of peace. A smile flickered into being at the dissonance: this was not what she'd been told would happen. The girl, mysterious as ever, pulled her frustrated shaking innocence up, her hand holding the heel loosely, between the part she'd prepared.
The dance gained another step, and a few more tunes. As the trembling calf was drawn along as if it were a whetstone the night before battle, Lenalee, the warrior, found her pace. Releasing her pressure the moment the woman's groans became too intense. Bringing it back as lips touched, neck, collar, breast. Soon the girl learnt Miranda's beat, and captured her voice, breathing it between their lips to hide it, once, twice.
Fatigue was overwhelming Miranda, even as the sphere, that isolated them, kept Lenalee full of energy. Lenalee started to pull the woman's pants back. "but you didn't get to …" Miranda started to protest wearily.
"Next time then" Lenalee said as she kissed Miranda's eyes again. It was enough to coax her into a trusting half-sleep.
The sphere started to collapse, catching the woman as she started to fall, Lenalee guided them gently to the ground.
…
The feeling of arms holding her yielded to the softness of a mattress under her. Eyes opened and the girl whose lingering presence was enough to make the tired woman swoon again murmured, gentle, and sweet, but strong, "If only you knew how redundant it is for you to try impressing me."
The morning came too early. It came with a knocking at the door, insistent, but with the abbreviated rat tat tat of embarrassment. "Hmm whaaa… What did I do wrong!?" Miranda called as she tripped over her shoes on the floor and pulled a housecoat over her uniform that she had neither taken off, nor closed before passing out.
"Err… nothing… I think… It's Komui, he wants to do the mission briefing fairly soon." Miranda tried to pull the door open but just hit it with her panic.
Finally the door opened. The boy standing outside turned out to be Allen, bearing coffee, evidently as a peace offering. He also had that unreadable smile. Hopefully this wouldn't be too awkward. He was holding a cup of some brown liquid. "I know it's early, so I got you some tea from the kitchen."
"Isn't that usually Lenalee's job" she asked.
"And usually happens to exclude this time. Please, accept it." He held out the cup which Mira cautiously slid her hands under and around. There was something papery he had slid along the bottom of the cup into her hand. His smile said nothing of his thoughts to the men wandering the corridor blearily, or to Miranda.
"Thank you, Allen. That was sweet." She murmured, turning back to her room, shutting the door, setting the cup down, unfolding the note:
Told K nighttime sound was wind.
If secret: safe w me. If not: saw nothing
Your move. Good Luck.
Well that was a thing... She got changed into her spare uniform, thankful that it would cover nearly all of the marks. Nearly all… She took a bristle brush to her hair, forcing it to become a mass of feathery locks that curled in around her darkening jaw.
As she left she saw Allen knocking at Lenalee's door. Same smile, same way he held the cup. She had to walk past and found him slightly too much in the way for her to get past without knocking into him. "So sorry, Miranda… It seems I'm a bit clumsy today." And that seemed a bit suspicious, especially with the brush against her hip that his hand had made.
"No problem, Allen, We all have moments like that."
Setting off again towards the chief's office she put a hand in her pocket where Allen's hand had been, a hair tie of Lena's that had not been there five minutes before… If that boy did any more to cover for her she'd start feeling incompetent. But still… it was enough to bring a slight embarrassed blush to her face.
If she'd been playing poker, she'd have lost there and then.
…
In Komui's office were gathered a thoroughly confused looking Reever; Allen complete with his smile; and Lenalee tired as it was possible to be. Of course there was also mountains of paperwork and Komui… but those two were inseparable.
"So Lenalee, and Miranda, you two are to recover innocence that the finders are convinced exists in a convent located in the alps. We're sending you because for some reason the nuns are only allowing female finders into the building proper…" Komui seemed incredibly tired. "but that said, you can't have missed the strange burst of sound that happened last night. Allen says that there aren't any nearby Akuma, but be careful out there. Okay?"
"You're sending just the two of us?" Miranda asked.
"are there objections?"
There was some eye contact but Lenalee spoke first, "No, it should be just fine. The two of us… compliment each other nicely."
So I know for a fact that I'm not the only one who ships these two to the moon and back. Come on! Help me correct this grievous lack of femslash.
The longest period of work I got done on this was to the tune of "St. Jude" by Florence and the Machine on repeat. Which seems fitting for this pairing, especially from Miranda's point of view.
All rights are Hoshino Katsura's, despite my wishes to be as talented as her.
Please Review, I need to know my annoying habits.