So… how come you get to read this now? A whole while ago, Antigone2 asked for smutty prompts on her tumblr. I replied with something along the lines of "Youma causes sexy-feels." – you, know, the good ol' sex pollen trope. A few months went by, until Antigone2 talked to me about it again, saying she hadn't forgotten it. After we talked about it a bit, she put the "4 authors, 1 prompt" idea on the table. And while it terrified me at first (because, you know, I prompted this to HER and now I'm writing it, too? but also got EXCITED, because it means I get to read this prompt THREE MORE TIMES while playing around with it myself?), here we are. Because, most of all, this trope is a challenge. It's one of the fun-est there is, and at the same time, seen from the consent lens, one of the most problematic. But damn did I have a load of ideas in my head for this, and turns out, it was extremely easy to write in the end – meaning, you're looking at 16k words that I wrote, if I calculate right, in the span of maybe 8 hours over 3 days. So, as difficult as this trope is, I definitely had ideas for it. Trying what I like to try: Take topics that can go problematic very fast and try to keep them sexy while chucking the problem. At least that was my goal. You tell me if I succeeded.
Anyway, so yeah. Technically, this story would fit into my Lemon Tree series. But I wanted it to stand alone, so people who read the other three BRILLIANT stories in this "4 authors, 1 prompt" extravaganza get to find it better!
Soooo. On with this show…. This is a "If this goes on"-type of fic: What if the break up arc never ended throughout canon. Thus, think canon convergence from the break up arc, years later – so, really, you're looking at a Post-Stars "What If" with the break up arc still intact, in a universe that was much harsher to them (and definitely went a little differently, since their love has helped them in canon through many a battle.)
Also, since the break up arc is all 90s anime!verse, this fic is, too, for the most part (just, y'know, all the things about the 90s anime I imagine would have turned out differently, if they hadn't been together for it! But don't dwell too much on it, lol, because I don't either.) So, anyway, no Manga!Mamoru means no active healing powers for Mamoru, and more jerkery and buried emotion.
La Douleur Exquise
A Short Story for the "4 Authors 1 Prompt" Challenge
Part I
"Ugnnn," Sailor Moon grunted, face twisted in pain. The odd-looking creature had struck her against the shoulder, drawing blood and sizzling black where the gooey substance had hit her way too deeply, and she catapulted her body out of the way on instinct, when her opponent got hit by a roaring dose of Sparkling Wide Pressure.
She hit the asphalt at… not the best angle, and cried out again.
All in all, this definitely wasn't her best day.
Ami shouted instructions and explanations. They went completely over her head. Something something anomaly, something something manifestation.
The good old, usual anomaly. The kind that had popped up regularly ever since the Black Moon Clan just disappeared all those years ago from one day to the next, along with that mysterious, strange little girl. The kind that Ami liked to describe as a 'paradox' – a mistake in time and space, an anomaly. Showing up again and again, soon almost since she could remember – not extremely hard to beat, not extremely threatening, and certainly not out of the ordinary kind.
Yet, this had caught them at a bad day, and in the middle of the night.
She propped herself up, saw the monster coming at her from the side – she guessed she was the weakest link today.
"DODGE!" she heard Mamoru's aggravated, exasperated, overall angry voice.
It caused her to clench her teeth in a flare of irritation – as if she didn't know, who does he think she is? For how many years had she been doing this?!– and it caused her to react too slow.
He screamed her name - frustrated, angry, feral – and pushed her out of the way as if plucking her from the air. She'd jumped too slowly, and now she hit the asphalt again with her chin, as Tuxedo Mask fell on top of her, crying out along to her groan.
She smelled the sizzle of blood and goo. It came from his leg.
She released a sigh of relief, when she finally heard Rei's voice call out Flame Sniper – late, so late to the battle - and clenched her eyes shut against the wave of intense heat that set the creature aflame in agonized howls, and the stench of burning goo.
It fell to ash in moments. The smell lingered.
Guess this one didn't like fire.
He clambered off of her immediately. She had to close her eyes against the rush of tears that threatened to flood her eyes – a mix of everything from pent-up frustration to the agony of feeling him flush against her like this, and the far worse agony to have it end.
She was such a hopeless, sad woman.
She groaned when she pushed her palms against the ground to lift herself up. Rolled her eyes when he, injured and all, knelt back down to help her up and hissed the air through his teeth when he took inventory of her injuries. Ever the doctor.
Well, this would certainly all bruise real hard.
He ripped his mask off – the way he usually did when she was injured and he needed to see better, even as Ami lowered herself down next to him with a flinch directed at her bleeding shoulder – a little marmalade glass full of monster ash already in her hand. Mamoru took his tuxedo jacket off, pulled his shirt from his pants.
Usagi swallowed, even when she didn't want to. Swallowed again, when the smooth skin of his stomach was bared to her eyes for just a second, as he ripped at the crisp, white section of cloth that had formerly rested against his abdomen.
"You're gonna need stitches, this time," Ami said in a small, apologetic voice towards the hole in her shoulder, while Mamoru dabbed white against red, and it all turned to red really fast.
"He's bleeding, too," Makoto remarked from the sidelines, arms crossed, fingers digging into her elbows.
Usagi's eyes flew to his leg, even when a hiss escaped her lips from the pain.
He was drip-drip-dripping blood onto the ground. A small puddle had already formed, and she gasped, and narrowed her eyes at the same time.
She pushed at him. He glowered.
Why did he always have to do this? Endanger himself because he didn't trust her.
"WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THIS?!" she finally yelled at him, too late, too angry.
He understood, of course. Yelled right back. "WHAT? SAVE YOUR GODDAMN LIFE? AGAIN?!"
"UGHN!" she grunted, pushed at him again. Like a petty kindergartener, and he barely shook as he was moved slightly back, and pressed the cloth back to her bleeding shoulder with narrowed eyes and lips pressed into a thin line.
It was bleeding rather hard.
But she was angry.
He always did this. Always overreacted, always pretended she was in mortal peril and yelled at her for it and injured himself because of it – because he didn't trust her to do the job she'd been doing for the past nine years.
She pushed again. Harder this time.
He fell back and cried out, and it pulled at her gut, but she glared at him, even when he glared at her much harder.
"Ami can do it," she spat out, and grimaced when she got up even under Ami's loud protest to not do so.
Ami was a doctor, too. In training, anyway. She didn't need to face Mamoru's condescending eyes.
She heard his frustrated, angry grunt, and his top hat being flung across the asphalt, when she hobbled away, steadied by Ami and Rei on each side.
She was out of earshot, but not eyesight, when she glanced back. Saw Makoto help him up.
"Is he gonna be ok?" she whispered. Her tone had dropped, turned sad. Defeated.
Ami nodded. "His is broad, but superficial. Nothing he can't take care of completely. The Golden Crystal will take care of it in a couple days. It might scar a little, though."
Usagi nodded.
"Yours will definitely scar," Rei said, voice angry and a little bit accusing, and Usagi nodded again. With a shrug, this time, and she cursed herself for the action immediately after, as it pulled at her shoulder. The Silver Crystal was great with injuries, too, of course. But the deep ones still were left behind to tell tales of battle in little, silver markings all across her skin. Most of them thin and delicate, some barely visible, almost faded, but a handful of others deeper, thicker, here to stay until she died.
Just then, Minako ran towards them. Transformed and ready, Artemis in tow. And she skidded to a halt with an apologetic look and then dawning horror when she took in Usagi's state.
"I'm so sorry, guys, I—"
Yeah. She got that. This superhero thing was a bitch when one needed to adult.
Especially with your ex-boyfriend on the team who was constantly raging mad at you for every tiny mistake you made.
It was hard watching him. It was harder not to.
And it was so unfair. The universe was so absolutely mean. She could barely even remember the few short days they had had together, after… what had been the names of that alien couple?... and the day he'd told her he did not want to be with her just because Endymion had been. It was a shadow in her mind, and yet she could not shake him off, as if his stupid face was imprinted on her heart, a giant stamp on her soul that said, 'Just that guy. Forget about the rest'.
She could barely remember, and yet she couldn't forget.
He was her doom.
She learned she'd absolutely started to hate seeing him blush. It happened only seldomly – an attractive, flirting barista here, a forward co-ed there. And every time it happened Usagi felt like she'd lost him all over again.
It was hard to watch him. But she couldn't stop. She'd never learned how to stop.
Especially when... years in, dates started to be on the agenda for him again. Not often, mind you. Once or twice a year. But often enough.
Some of them came and went. Others stuck around for a month or two.
Usagi hated the fact they were nothing like her. Sophisticated, adult women with sleek dark hair and perfect eyebrows and perfect everything, talking about Kant and organismic biology and book reviews about Pulitzer Prize winners, and he talked to them calmly with a straight face and none of that tease.
She hated them.
But she hated no one more than this one girl who broke out of the recipe. Blonde, extrovert, happy. She wasn't exactly like her, but yet... close enough, she guessed. She wore immaculate outfits, but they were bright and a little quirky. She talked about biodiversity and area-effects, but she stumbled over her words from time to time and got some of them wrong, and he corrected her with smirky smiles.
She wasn't exactly like Usagi - she was kind, but not loud. She was lively but never accidently impolite. She was open but never intrusive without meaning to.
Usagi felt she was everything she had brought to the table - but better. Smarter, more collected, more adult, more... more.
Oh, how she had hated that girl.
Yet... even her...
It broke Usagi's heart all over again when he flinched every time this girl would do anything that was... that level of almost her, but not quite. As if he hated even every littlest reminder of Usagi.
The day she'd shown up with her hair in two stylishly low pigtails…
He had looked at her so appalled, it tore Usagi's heart out, and he'd informed the girl he would not be seeing her anymore with Usagi sitting only one booth away to witness the whole thing.
He could not stand to even be with anyone remotely like her - and it crushed her.
Ever since that day, years ago, when she was 14 and her reborn magical prince tore her heart out in his hallway to the backdrop of wilting roses, she'd clung to the belief that… if she would just study more, be more diligent, more graceful, more like Ami and more like Rei and more like... this girl, then maybe it would be enough. Maybe he would like her then. Maybe she could get him back like that.
But he seemed to despise even a perfect version of herself.
There was no hope.
It was the day she'd accepted this. The day she'd - after years of this torture - accepted that the person she was born to love would never love her back.
It was freeing in a way. Even when she knew something in her had died.
And so, they'd settled into a routine. She no longer fought to get him back, and he, in turn, stopped avoiding her like the plague – even when she could see his smile was never the same again.
In fact, even the dates practically came to somewhat of a stop – at least a visible one – she'd supposed she just no longer saw them, once she wasn't on the lookout for them anymore, or maybe he was trying to be sensitive.
At least, they had been able to work mostly civilly together from then on. Even if it obviously irritated him that he had to keep the necessary contact.
But, whenever their conversations – after a battle, a team meeting, a chance encounter (and there were loads of those) – turned unexpectedly warm, almost sweet – the dates would show up in plain sight again. As if he needed to prove to himself there could never be any feelings for Tsukino Usagi – or maybe he felt he needed to prove it to her, lest she get ideas.
Like... like that one time. Her 19th birthday. Mina had insisted to set her up on a date with this guy she knew from her theatre rehearsals, insisting one ought to have a date on their 19th birthday (and their 18th and 20th and 22nd and really, all the birthdays). He'd been sweet, dancing with her in the club in Shibuya that Mina had all squirreled them into, joking with her, buying her drinks, and dipping her low on the dancefloor, causing her to giggle through most of the night.
She hadn't even known why Mamoru had showed up in the first place. But he had been leaning against the bar with Motoki at his side, chugging drinks as he glared at her from afar. Or maybe her date, she wasn't entirely sure.
Just that, way later, when she'd run into him on the way to the restrooms, and he'd looked so sexy in those skinny jeans and button down, and his eyes were a little clouded from the alcohol...
She'd been tipsy herself. She knew. Otherwise she wouldn't have curled her hands into his shirt like so, wouldn't have glided into his arms so seamlessly like that.
Just that... that day, he didn't push her away. Instead, he held her tight. So, so tight, and so, so long, and she felt him bury his face into her hair on the crown of her head and inhale with a groan which in her cloudy, intoxicated memory had sounded almost needy in a way. They'd just... stood there. Hugging, his heartbeat thumping against her ear as she clawed her hands into his back, and she buried her nose into his warm, perfect chest.
He'd smelled so painfully like home.
He'd ended up pushing her away still, obviously. But it took him a while. In fact, Usagi supposed he'd most probably not even realized at first who it was he'd been hugging so tight, so long, drunk as he'd been, and pushed her away the moment he ultimately did remember.
Sure enough, it had taken him two days and she'd started seeing him everywhere with one of those uber smart, uber sexy girls hanging from his arm, and he didn't speak a direct word to her for several weeks, except rude, annoyed directions in battle.
She sighed. Don't worry, Mamoru. You've driven the point home that you wished you could do this whole deal without me.
Right now though, as she was watching him enter the café and greet one of Mako-chan's sweet colleagues behind the counter, he was doing none of these things.
She watched his walk closely, looking for a hobble, any indication on whether he was doing all right (her heart insisted to know) or that he was doing worse than her (her pride was loud sometimes, too), when he wordlessly sat across from her and smacked a newspaper on the table.
She jumped a little, started. Miffed that she, herself, couldn't keep the flinch off her face as the movement pulled at her stitches.
And how his eyes flashed when she did.
They turned soft, so soft, as he blanched, for a second, and inhaled sharply.
She blinked and fell into a frown – it seemed to break the momentary spell, and his eyes narrowed again.
"Have you seen this?" he asked instead, stabbing the paper with an obnoxiously elegant, long finger.
Why must everything on the man be friggin' perfect.
The paper was folded neatly, peculiarly, to a page that discussed two people in a coma. High schoolers.
She blinked when she glanced across the page, and her father's name caught her eye as the author of the article.
They'd been found naked. Two friends in a park. Comatose. Locked in a ... compromising position.
Usagi blushed bright red and stopped reading. She missed the way Mamoru's hand started to clench and unclench as she did.
It was the park that Ami had located that latest rift in.
But...
She frowned.
"Ask your father about it," he said, voice a little raspy. And as he so often did, he immediately got up, left the booth without a goodbye, raised a hand in greeting towards Makoto who walked in as if on cue and turned around as he passed her by. She stopped to shout something after him that Usagi couldn't hear but probably was sweet - because this was still her Mako-chan, and she was always sweet. He raised a hand over his back, kept going.
Always on the run from her. Never a second too long in her proximity.
Usagi sighed, wrapped both hands around her creamy, trusty, thick cookie milkshake. But when Makoto slipped into Mamoru's vacated spot, Usagi couldn't keep from lowering her forehead to the tabletop. It hit the wood with a hollow thud.
She heard Makoto's deep sigh, felt a gentle, strong hand pat her head, stroke softly between her hair buns and along her scalp, soothing as if Usagi were an injured kitten.
"It's gonna get better one day," Makoto said - softly, full of pity, absolutely automatic.
She'd been saying it for nine years.
"I bet Minako could set you up on another date?" Makoto said, and Usagi could just imagine the flinch-y little smile that carried through her voice.
Usagi shook her head, forehead moving against the cool wood, and sighed again.
Usagi shifted the clear files full of paper clippings and transcripts under her arm, as she moved to unlock the door to her and Mina's apartment. It was a little harder with the paper stack clamped beneath her armpit, and several plastic bags hanging from her wrist, so she struggled a bit.
She nearly dropped it all, when Mamoru opened her door from inside.
She blinked.
He cleared his throat, and moved to relieve her of the bags, while she still stood frozen with her key in the air.
His skin brushed hers when he slipped the plastic off her wrist, and she scrunched her eyes shut momentarily before she shook out of it.
He cleared his throat once more, and his voice seemed a little dry when he spoke. "Sorry, I'm early."
She nodded, moved with even less grace than usual since she was now conscious of every fibre of her body so close to his, when she moved her arms out of her coat, flung it across the low dresser in her genkan with the files, and bent down to unclasp the flap of her cute but impractical heels.
He fidgeted a little – eyes first on her legs, and immediately anywhere else.
"Minako let me in…"
She nodded, and it took her a little while to free her feet from their confines, and he'd already started towards the kitchen. Always fleeing from her…
His voice came from within when she padded after him a moment later.
"You bought too much, again."
She rolled her eyes. Swallowed thickly when she realized again how tiny her kitchen was when Mamoru filled it out.
She usually loved it. The tacky wallpaper they'd attached to the ancient kitchen cabinets, the funky, childish kitchen gadgets strewn around the little space they never actually used, but which made the room a happy place.
Whenever Mamoru stood in it, in felt like mockery. It was so easy to imagine him being here for different reasons…
He unpacked the bags of snacks and boxes of instant food she'd carried home. Instant ramen in all sorts of flavors and colorful cups, but also instant yakisoba in slightly bigger packages, and steaming bags of nikuman. All the world of instant noodle and dough that Lawson had on offer for her tonight, plus several boxes of individually wrapped popsicles.
This time Mamoru rolled his eyes. It was November, after all.
Usagi crossed her arms across her chest. Too afraid she'd accidently reach out as he moved around the place as if he lived here, opening up cabinets, reaching inside to extract bowls and chopsticks and glasses, opening bags and pouring chips and opening her tiny and way too full freezer compartment to push the popsicles inside with an annoyed sigh.
"Where's Minako?" Usagi asked, her voice a little tense. She opened the freezer door just as he'd closed it, just to spite. The box basically fell towards her, and he shook his head when she started unwrapping one and left the rest on the counter.
"Said she had an important, last-minute errand to run." He shrugged, took the box, and opened the freezer back up, and stuffed it back in. His eyes flicked peculiarly to the popsicle, and her lips, as she moved it to her mouth, only to immediately look away, clearing his throat. "But I guess she just didn't want to be alone with me."
Ahh. Right. Makes sense. Usagi nodded, even when Mamoru couldn't see it. He'd turned his back to her and filled up her kettle even though the girls where nowhere to be seen yet. Obviously watching her eat this thing was not among his favorite sights in the world.
She sighed. Her eyes flicked to the red numbers of the digital clock on her microwave. Twenty more minutes until the girls would arrive.
They'd moved their weekly Wednesday senshi meetings here, ever since Minako and Usagi had moved in together. Reasoning that it made sense, since both of them were the ones who were notoriously late – not that that reasoning always worked out (one could be late to everything, also going home!), but it did more often than not. And since Mako-chan had the spare key anyway, it had been decided.
Usagi's wildly beating heart, every single time, wasn't really sure what she felt about the fact that Mamoru was always rather early for anything. It meant they'd been having these few moments alone – whenever Minako was out, and she was out a lot more on Wednesdays than usual, or she made herself incredibly busy with lame excuses and loud fake phone calls from her room.
And while he had quickly learned to busy himself in her apartment, setting up everything for the meeting that neither she nor Minako usually managed, Usagi was left to stand around and keep herself from staring at his butt.
"How's your shoulder?" he asked, awkwardly, back still turned to her. He'd started to do her week-old dishes.
She shrugged. It had healed to an angry little, puckered line. Ami had removed the stitches only yesterday. In a week or two it would pale.
She pulled the popsicle from her mouth with a little pop.
"What's another scar?" she said nonchalantly.
Her dishes clanked loudly, when the spoon he was cleaning fell from his soapy hands into her favorite ramen bowl. Usagi jumped a little, startled.
"Don't say it like that," he almost growled.
She rolled her eyes once more.
"How's your leg?" she asked, instead, and popped the ice pop back into her mouth.
It was his turn to shrug. "It healed up."
She nodded.
There they were, then. All their small talk used up. Usagi felt the silence like a thick veil.
Sucking that popsicle suddenly sounded incredibly loud in her ears, and she saw his shoulders tense.
"Did you talk to your father?" he said a little while later, as he rinsed the last bowl and put it on her drying rack.
She nodded. "Yeah," she said. "He's been busy."
There'd been multiple cases since Mamoru had first dropped the article on her. Her father had worked every single one, lucky for her.…And he did love Usagi's routine lunchtime visits to his office to bring him Mako's homemade bento, gushing how caring his daughter was in stressful times as these, and Usagi did feel slightly guilty, since she was mostly doing it to steal his intel and press him for info.
Mamoru nodded, wiped his hands on the flowery dishtowel Usagi couldn't quite remember last replacing it, really, if ever.
"Anything new?" he asked, awkward as ever. It was a redundant question – they were going to talk about it in – she flicked her eyes up to the clock – thirteen minutes anyway. He didn't know what to say, either. So, she indulged him.
"Lots," she said. "And Ami's doing her third scan as we speak. Luna and Artemis are with her. They'll be a little late."
He nodded.
"How's—"
He was interrupted, and Usagi was a little glad. That question usually ended with things like, 'How's the job search', and 'How's the office, still hate it?', and neither were things she particularly wanted to talk about. Especially with Mr. Always-Successful.
Minako barged in, skirt flaring, holding up the latest case file accusingly, shaking it. "What, we just leave stolen evidence in the hallway now?"
Usagi flinched, shrugged her shoulder and lifted up her hands in an apologetic gesture, packing all the nonverbal meaning of 'what can I say, my brain turns to mush when he's around, why do you leave me alone with him anyway?' into her eyes that she was capable of.
But Minako already paid her no mind again. Instead she leafed through the file, started reading, and absentmindedly opened the freezer. She took a popsicle from the box and left the box on the counter.
Mamoru sighed exasperatedly, even when Minako had already left the room.
It was hard to stifle her giggle, and so she grabbed two bowls of snacks, jammed a big bottle of milk tea in between her elbow, and carried them out into their tiny living room, even when she heard her freezer door being shut with somewhat of a louder push.
A key turned in her lock again, and Makoto entered with Rei in tow. Usagi moaned at Makoto in greeting, as she carried fluffy, perfect, leftover goodies from the café, with the kind of deep, belly moan that made Mamoru stiffen somewhat. By the time everyone had settled in, Mamoru had filled up the instant ramen cups with water from the kettle, Usagi had her cheeks covered in powdered sugar, and Minako had declared the senshi meeting on the 'Sex Pollen Case' open.
Usagi scrunched up her nose mid-chew, even as Rei exaggerated the very eye roll that Mamoru tried to hide.
"Are we calling it that?" Makoto asked. "Doesn't that sound, kinda…"
"Insensitive? Ridiculous?" Rei threw in.
Minako rolled her eyes and attached specific pages from the files to their big living room window with Totoro washi tape.
She heard Mamoru sigh behind her. He'd long ago given up pointing out that taping stolen evidence to a window with the lights turned on at night in general might not be the best idea. But the place was tiny, the window faced a highway bridge, and Minako kept saying he was paranoid.
She knew the pages, of course. She'd pickpocketed them herself, practically one by one, out of her father's office, copied, and replaced them. What was new, mostly, was Mina's slightly illegible, slightly pretty handwriting all over them in all the colors of the rainbow. It was her job to get the evidence, Minako's to make sense of it.
And she usually did.
The first column of documents taped to the left side of the window were parts of transcripts of witness-interviews of those that could see that weird bubble (that at least some people claimed to have seen along the rift Ami had identified) when it popped up, but nothing had happened to them.
The second column where a conundrum of hospital statements, witness statements, clippings of her father's articles with heavily underlined paragraphs, and highlighted interview transcripts of one of the two people who had woken up from their comas in the beginning of the week. Of which – Usagi was especially proud of that – Usagi had even managed to get a copy of the original audio file – her father had left the USB stick in the computer when he headed to the vending machine to get more coffee. So, overall, the actual victims. And to say these made her blush was an understatement.
The third column were notes on Ami's area scans.
At last, Minako taped the newest evidence over the victim column – no notes on them, yet, obviously. Her father had interviewed witnesses for the latest victims last night only this morning.
"Two more?" Makoto asked, concerned.
Usagi nodded solemnly, but she couldn't keep the blush from her face.
These two new additions to their macabre collection were an extraordinarily young professor and her student TA. They'd been discovered right away – just as they had touched the weird 'bubble' and collapsed, asleep. Witnesses had called an ambulance, tried to get them to wake up. By the time they did wake up – utterly weak, drained, almost lifeless, they'd still found the energy to …. copulate… right there and then in front of the helpless paramedics, before collapsing mid-act and not waking up again.
Minako tapped the window where she'd drawn crude stick figures of all the current victims, with names and ages and occupations written across. Some of them were really quite young… 17, 18, 22, 17 again...
"So," she said way too cheerfully, and Rei raised an eyebrow at the tone. "We have two horny high schoolers, two horny college freshmen, two horny athletes, two horny colleagues, and now a horny professor and her student, all fucking themselves into a coma as if possessed after they touched a wobbly, invisible thing that keeps popping up from time to time and that only they can see that turns them momentarily into sleeping beauties, all at a rift in space and time filled with leftover Black Moon energy."
"Don't forget they keep doing it," Makoto threw in, slurping around her instant ramen, and Minako nodded.
"Right," she said, uncapping her purple marker and drawing a circle around Monday's article.
The first two victims – the high schoolers – had woken up. The boy had ripped his IV out, and in unresponsive tunnel vision had barreled across the hospital hallway and found his partner's hospital room as if by magnetism. The girl had woken up immediately, and they'd romped with her still attached to the machinery, until they passed back out, still buried within each other.
They'd been confined ever since. Separately. That interview, when she'd woken up again had been… interesting to listen to.
Usagi wet her lips and chanced a glance towards Mamoru. He'd crossed his arms, blushing harder than she was.
As if Minako had heard her embarrassed thoughts, she pressed the play button on her laptop, and Usagi felt her cheeks start burning again.
The girl – her voice incredibly pleasant – was moaning, and what sounded like writhing. "You don't understand! It's under my skin. It's burning. I need him! I need him to fill me up, you don't understand. I'm on fire without him, I—" Then she broke off, and hissed, breathing harshly through her nose and squeaking in this almost pained, staccato way as she… came.
"RIGHT," Rei said, and leaned over to press the stop button over a protesting Minako, claiming that 'we're only now getting to the good bit!', and Makoto mumbling how she really felt weird about having this kinda evidence at hand.
And of course, of course, Usagi just had to glance at Mamoru again. But this time, he glanced right back, cheeks aflame, and they both looked away as if caught. She shifted in her spot, embarrassed.
"So," Rei said loudly, slightly annoyed. "Do we know how to stop them from … you know … fucking each other till they pass out for the rest of time?"
"Good question!" Mina said brightly, raising her purple pen high, and waiting that dramatic pause that the girls all hated.
"I've no idea!" she finished, just as brightly.
"Ugh," came the collective chorus.
"Ami has a few ideas, but… just ideas for now. But," Mina continued, and circled one of Ami's notes, "we do know that once Ami completes her third scan tonight, she can calculate to some matter of high probability when the bubble will pop up again, whether or not we see it!"
Well that, at least, was a start.
Usagi shivered a little, crossed her arms, and rubbed her gloved hands quickly along her upper arms – the small part of her that her fuku left completely bare, besides her thighs.
Her eyes flicked to the clocktower in the middle of the park. Their clocktower. Their park. Go figure. The park was friggin' huge – could that stupid bubble stuff not have turned up anywhere else?
The two hands aligned with a little click, and it was midnight.
As Ami had predicted, a little ways next to them, one silvery-golden bubble appeared.
Usagi blinked. It looked pretty, even. Strangely, alluringly pretty, in fact, the longer she looked at it. Like a marble, but translucent… just like a soap bubble, yes.
A very beckoning, pretty soap bubble.
Venus hrmphed beside her, Mamoru cocked his head into the direction of the weird sight as well.
"So, you're sure about this plan?" Venus asked.
"It's not a plan yet," Ami said, immediately, visor up.
"But… you're sure it would work?"
"I ran the numbers on a 0.01 probability of error. I'm 99% sure, with a remarkably narrow confidence interval, and we're pretty damn significant here," Ami repeated, with a sigh.
"The plan is stupid," Rei cut in, and Ami nodded her head, agreeing.
The (not-)plan was this: Ami was fairly certain the trick lay with the bubble itself, as well as the weird falling-asleep part prior to the sex-forever part.
Since their last meeting, two more victims had woken up (the college freshmen), and both guys, though pretty frenzied just as the high schoolers had been, barely able to form proper sentences around their need, had managed to supply that the sleep-in-the-bubble part had been rather… crucial. A weird dreamscape that had induced the lust, in which they'd already started their… activities. After they'd touched the weird sex bubble and promptly fallen asleep, what had looked to the outside observer to be mere minutes of sleep (3 minutes and 46 seconds for the couple that had been timed from start to finish), to them, in a kind of intense, shared dream, had been hours. And it had drained their energy rather significantly.
Comparing the data of all three previous scans, Ami had been able to conclude that the bubble was expanding. But also, since it seemed to be getting thinner and thinner as it grew, that it had the capacity to… pop, for a lack of a better word. (Ami had used a better one.) But only if the ones touching the bubble and going into sex dream-space had enough energy that it wouldn't be depleted all too soon, or at least, a little longer than 3 minutes and 46 seconds. If it had leached enough energy, so Ami's rather tentative conclusion, it would burst. And with it, the weird sex dream magic, too.
In fact, Ami was fairly certain, given some time, it would pop all on its own. But not before it had rendered tons of other people into catatonic sex loops, by the rate it was going. Unless, of course, it got to leech off someone really powerful to jumpstart the breakage.
So, who better to try this out than a Sailor Senshi? They had the energy of a whole planet inside of them, after all…
So, go in, pop it, no more sex pollen.
Yeah, Usagi really wasn't sure what she thought of this, and glanced back at the marble warily.
"So, who does it?" Venus asked.
Ami looked appalled. "What, you want to try this out, now?" she said in her 'Are you daft?' voice.
Minako waved her comment away with a flick of her wrist. "I mean… I could always go in alone, you know?" she said. "I have no problems masturbating this thing into oblivion."
"Minako!" Jupiter yelped, scandalized.
"What?"
Rei rolled her eyes. "C'mon, you said yourself. It only works in twos. AND the bubble picks who goes in."
"So, what, we need a guy?" Mako asked, confused.
Even when Ami shook her head, mumbled a "nah, just pairs," their eyes turned towards Mamoru. All mask, and top hat, and scowl, and Usagi tensed.
"No way," he said, voice low and menacing, with a slow shake of his head.
Mina rolled her eyes. "As if I would." And then, "so, what if I, say, take a date?"
Ami flinched, started typing. "Only significant on a 10% error probability anymore, but… well, better than nothing? Just…"
"Just?"
"Your date would not have your levels of energy," Ami said, still typing. "Might not… y'know…"
"Hm." Minako frowned.
"But, guys, this is only hypothetical. We shouldn't do this, yet. I haven't—" Ami threw in, again.
But Rei interrupted her. "What if I go in with her?"
Venus smirked, slow and suggestive.
Ami blushed, but nodded. "That should work."
"Right!" Mina extended her hand to Rei. "What do we do, where is this bubble?"
"Not now!" Ami repeated, exasperated, even when she tipped against her visor to flare up her holographic interface. "Um, but, the bubble would be somewhere abouuut…" she said, stretching the words, turning around her own axis in search.
Usagi blinked, felt her stomach plummet, started blubbering. "Wait," she said, wide-eyed, glancing back at the clearly visible bubble that was right there… "You… You guys can't see it?"
Ami stopped in her tracks, all eyes whipped to her this time.
"What… can you?"
Her eyes flew to the bubble… as did Mamoru's, and then their eyes met.
Oh no.
Ami's eyes widened, looking back and forth between Mamoru and her, and to her hologram, and the spot they'd both been looking.
"Wait!" Rei said, eyes even wider.
Yes. There were two people here who could see this. Mamoru and her.
Mamoru started shaking his head, fast and erratic. "No!" he said. "I'm not doing this!"
Usagi sighed, and she pursed her lips. Her gut clenched painfully. Right. Because having sex with me in a dream would be the most disgusting thing you could just about imagine.
Her heart fell, and the corner of her lips, too. Because I would.
"Well," Ami said, her voice significantly drier now, blushing, "technically… I think you could try to just… um, withstand it. You know, not act on the … um, stimulus, while it drains you and grows?..." She trailed off, shook her head a little. "It might work. It should still… pop. But, you know…"
Usagi blinked at her, and Ami blushed harder.
"I mean, if you can't… withstand the… pressure, I mean, you should probably work the, um… logistics out beforehand." Ami's head was beet red by now.
Usagi exhaled a shaky breath. Her hands started to tremble. She cursed herself for the fact that her whole body was prepared to jump right in there right now.
She hadn't even thought about the possibility before… but honestly, this might be her only chance to ever…
She shook her head.
"Because you do have time, you know. We don't need to do this tonight," Ami added, immediately, once more. "In fact, we absolutely shouldn't."
"Ami's right," Makoto said, alarmed, now.
"I won't have sex with her," Mamoru pressed out, and ran his hand into his hair, knocking the top hat right off.
Usagi's insides flared up in anger. He didn't even look at her when he said it. As if she wasn't even there.
It was childish. It was petty. "Well, I guess then you got nothing to fear," Usagi bit out, and strode purposefully towards the translucent marble. Wondering briefly, if she went in, would he automatically fall asleep, too, or just her? Did they both have to touch it, or did one of them suffice?
He caught her arm by the elbow. "Wait!" he said, alarmed, eyes wide and fearful, at the same time the girls all exclaimed the same.
The anger drained from her system, and she deflated. The look in his eyes…
She sighed, arm at an awkward angle the way it was firmly gripped by his gloved hand.
He's freaking out…
"Really," Ami said, her voice a little frantic now. "We should not do this today. Let me run more data. Please."
She started. If they started with the princess and need for protection shit now, she was gonna yell. But, there was still this look in his eyes.
He absolutely did not want to do this. And she would never force him.
Usagi sighed - ignored the insistent pricking sensations behind her eyes where the tears threatened to form. How many times could one be rejected by the same person over and over again?
Her shoulders fell, and she swallowed around the painful lump in her throat. "Well," she said, finally, "but the bubble is choosing me." She threw it a wary look again. It looked too pretty, too enticing. "What if ... like Mina-P said, what if I take someone else? A 'date'?"
"NO," Mamoru boomed. She frowned at him.
Usagi blinked. "I mean...I'm sure I could just… take all of the hit? I wouldn't let them get harmed…"
She didn't look – well, she didn't want to look, but she did. And she saw both of Mamoru's fists clench.
And then Minako spoke, and Usagi's eyes widened. How unfair to bring up him, Minako knew that Mamoru—
"You know," Minako said too calmly, too calculating. "We could also contact Kinmoku… ask Seiya to join you?"
Usagi gasped, when Mamoru strode straight into the bubble.
She felt her knees buckle, but didn't feel the inevitable hit to the floor, only heard Mamoru crumble to the ground where the bubble was, that little ways away, immediately.
It felt like drowning, this type of falling asleep.
AN: So, here you go, guys ; ) I am leaving you with an evil, evil cliffhanger until early next week. (But it's only a two-parter, so fret not ; ) ). Anyway! Let me know what you think, please!
Also, I have some thanks to give out. My beta, Uglygreenjacket, as always, but this time, also to Antigone2 and Irritablevowel, who are in this party with us, and it almost felt like a constructive little workshop, the way we worked this thing, and I am so grateful for all your input and feedback! And then there was one more person I absolutely have to thank, who listened to me work this through and helped me out when this was still in its draft, and my beta could not see it yet, because we were working the same trope! So, thank you so much for THAT, TinaCentury!
Either way, don't worry guys, you will only have to wait a couple days for Part II. Alas, while you wait, you can also check out Antigone2's first chapter in her Moonbeams and Lemon Dreams series, which is the first entry in our 4 authors 1 trope challenge. Let us know what you think of this challenge so far!