A/N: I'm sure the theme for this ficlet seems odd. So just in case you're curious, its existence bears credit to my being a huge Florence and the Machine fan.
lungs
Mokou takes a long, slow drag from her cigarette; as she has learned to with just about everything, she lets it last. She can feel a ton of smoke in all its thick, greyish-black glory steadily permeate her lungs, and, while it's absolutely suffocating, there's no denying this strange sense of asphyxiation is at the same time quite delightful. She's long over the coughing phase – it's almost as good as the air she breaths, now – and so she repeats herself. In, out; it hurts so splendidly.
"The bathroom? That way."
She tears herself away from the fascinating view at Eirin's window and watches in puzzled silence as Keine glances briefly at her, an uncharacteristic look of contempt – or perhaps pain – in her unwaveringly gentle hazel gaze. As quickly as this contact between their eyes is made, however, it is broken, and the teacher drags herself out of sight, in the direction the doctor has just gestured. Mokou frowns, but through her surprise she quickly, almost instinctively inhales, drowning this worry temporarily in another of a more blissful kind.
The key word being temporary; no sooner is she about to let out a smoky sigh than her precious fuel is snatched away.
"No smoking in my clinic," Eirin asserts boldly, mashing the stub of the cigarette against her counter, disregarding the stain, and throwing the thing with flawless accuracy at a rubbish bin across the room.
Mokou doesn't utter a word, but she makes her disapproval quite known as well as she aims the toxins from her breath into the other's face. The doctor dismisses said toxins with a wave of her hand, and her twisted expression becomes quite clear as the smoke rises and her client snarls her irritation.
"You ought to quit."
"Quit smoking?" Mokou scoffs, "Why in the world should I?"
"It isn't good for you."
"Don't give me that kind of shit, everyone says it is."
Eirin raises her eyebrow; not so much amusedly, but as though to say, I thought better of you. "You would take everyone's word over a genius'?"
"I would take everyone's word," the other counters, an all-too-easily provoked air of hostility beginning to ring about her, "over my enemy's."
Now, indeed, Eirin does laugh. Mokou narrows her eyes; she's never understood these heartless moon-dwellers, but Eirin is a particularly astounding, mysterious specimen (anyone who would doom themselves to a lifetime of slavery just to escape guilt of all things must be).
"I am not your enemy, Mokou. I am not anyone's enemy. In fact, I like to think myself your friend."
"Don't make me laugh."
There may be truth in that Eirin offers her services to anyone who requires them, but there is a considerable difference between friend and patient.
"Even if it weren't good for me, it can't kill."
She smiles, genuinely, briefly. It fades so quickly into a downward incline of the lips, though, that Mokou cannot be sure it had ever been there at all.
"At the very least I think I am Keine's friend," she says.
Suddenly, the watchguard's expression softens – saddens – and she gazes after Keine; at the space from which she had regarded her with such anguish only a moment ago. Maybe Eirin's right this time. Maybe just this once.
"For her?"
Mokou nods.