"Hey," Aoi says, her head on Sakura's lap and her hair long between Sakura's fingers. They're sitting on a bench - crammed, really, because it hardly sits two and a half average people and Aoi insisted on squirming around until she could lay on her back, making her legs dangle over the cast iron armrest - at the edge of this lush green park that doesn't even have a proper name, that's how small it is, just a few trees and benches and plenty of pink-white blossoms. Aoi smiles upside-down and cranes to meet Sakura's eyes. "We should get one," she says, and quirks up that smile that always makes Sakura's knees weak. (It's smallish and crooked and perfect.)
And at first Sakura simply says "mmhm" and carries on combing her fingers through Aoi's hair, because this kind of exchange - this game of Sakura, look, let's get it! - happens often, and often Sakura willingly encourages it, because ... well, because why not. The reasons for them to not do this or that don't stand up well to the overwhelming fact that they are alive, will be alive, continue being alive second after second. So they are wasteful and spend petty cash on Hello Kitty running shoes and donut machines and slip'n'slides.
But she catches herself this time because they're at a no-name park, not a mall. Or a shopping channel. (Thank heavens. How does Aoi even stand those.) "Get one of what?"
Aoi flings out a hand and gestures vaguely at the park. "One of those!"
On these nice days, when the weather is warm and smells like just-passed rain, the families from nearby bring their children to climb trees and have picnics and pick blossoms, and that's all Sakura can see when she follows Aoi's hand. "So far as I understand, it is not acceptable to buy people."
"Y'know that's not what I mean!" Aoi twists over to lay on her stomach and that's even more crowded, enough that when she has to squirm to pull her legs back up over the armrest Sakura figures to just reach over and pick her up until she settles herself. It ends up with Aoi folding her arms over Sakura's skirt, knees pulled in under her and feet tucked down over the edge of the bench. She props her chin up on her forearms. "I mean," Aoi says, and glances out towards the park again, and red starts creeping up her face. She sinks down so that her eyes just peek out over the blockade of her arms.
Sakura is about to chide her, smiling, something like you are nearly twenty-six years old, Aoi, you can't hide behind my legs no matter how small you are in comparison to me (even though Aoi would stick out her tongue and say something like not small, funsized or big words for the girl who only started callin' me Aoi a few years ago!) when Aoi shrugs up her shoulders and says, "You know, a kid."
She didn't, actually, know.
Aoi buries her face into the bomb shelter she's made out of her arms and sort of yelps, curling up tighter like a defensive mechanism, she's some kind of frightened animal to be soothed and stroked back into calm. Out on the park grounds children laugh and squeal and run, do circles around bunches of trees, collect flower petals and sticks. Sakura - she doesn't go quiet, not when she's so quiet to begin with, but she knows that if anyone can read the different ways her muscles shift it would be Aoi and surely she's tensed and stilled.
Out on the park grounds, a woman calls out and a child runs full speed into their mother's arms. Sakura rests her hand on the curve of Aoi's spine.
"Would you like one?" she says to the woman curled up on her lap. Aoi mutters something into the cloth of her skirt. It takes a few pulls on her shoulder to coax her to sit up, and when she does, her face is wholly flushed.
"Well, um," Aoi translates, extremely fixated on the crack in the wood of the bench seat. "I mean, if you don't want to, I mean, that's fine, it's not like a... pressing issue..."
Even after years and years, she still has that same habit of reaching for her hair when she's nervous, touching at the little strands in front of her ears and the clips at the back of her head. Sakura takes her hand when it starts to pushing hair back behind an ear. (Sometimes it still baffles her how small so much of Aoi is, how she can neatly hold both of Aoi's hands in her one, and she'll easily lose time tracing out the little shapes of Aoi's fingers.)
"I would gladly raise a child with you," she says, "but you haven't answered my question."
Aoi answers her by widening her eyes up and blinking out a smile and taking Sakura's face in her hand and kissing her. Not like teenagers frightened in the dark, curled together on a strange bed and wondering if they'll see daylight again, but like two people who have long lives to live.
When they leave the park, Sakura says, "a little girl, though," and Aoi says, "oh, definitely, definitely! No boys allowed here." Sakura has the feeling that Aoi is not at all listening when she tries to explain that that's ridiculous, the large majority of the dojo's students are boys, but Aoi keeps her hand held tight and nods in the right places so she supposes it doesn't much matter anyway.