Okay, so…yeah. I am SO sorry. Before I could go farther in this story, I got talked into going further in my schooling (to become a veterinary technician instead of just a veterinary assistant), and just…yeah. I've been seriously stressed and just…yeah. ANYWAY, I am so sorry for how long this took, and I really hope you guys will forgive me/still be here reading this. I just want you all to know (all those of you who took the time to leave such encouraging and descriptive reviews), that it was rereading this story and your reviews on it that motivated me to continue with this. You guys are the best, and I hope you'll continue to support me now that I'm finally back!
Even the Stars Grow Older
Three: Of Cramped Cars and Teen Angst
It was cramped.
Not like, crowded restaurant cramped, but like, hip-to-hip, some stranger on your lap in the school cafeteria cramped.
Poor Akari was, of course, caught in the middle of it, along with Sakurako (who had initiated what had quickly escalated into an all-out brawl with Himawari for the window-seat, only to be shut down because it would make no sense for the much curvier bluenette to sit in the middle). Chinatsu was on her left, glaring out the window, her elbow resting against the door frame, her chin resting on her open palm, the light from the window highlighting the sharp, attractive contours of her face.
As entertaining Sakurako and Himawari were, her ears were starting to ring. Sakurako's soprano was much more grating than Himawari's feminine alto, but Chinatsu was growing equally irritated by the more mature bluenette's inability to just let even one of Sakurako's stupid comments go without responding. Glancing over at her best friend, Akari's mouth twisted into a sympathetic smile, an imaginary sweat drop beading at her temple. Chinatsu responded to this by making a rather unattractive face, sticking her tongue out and wrapping her hands around her neck, pretending to gag at the 'old married couple'. Akari giggled, but quieted quickly, flushing brightly due to the odd, but not entirely unpleasant, sensation bubbling up in her chest.
Noticing her friend's sudden silence, Chinatsu's snarky gesture morphed into a look of concern, and she removed her hands from around her neck so that she could place one on Akari's arm. The redhead subsequently jumped, causing the pink-haired girl's frown to deepen all the more. "Akari-chan? Akari, are you alright?"
Flushing deeper with the conscious effort it took not to choke on her own saliva, Akari nodded. It was nothing out of the ordinary—Chinatsu often forgot, or even outright abandoned, honorifics altogether. It was certainly nothing to blush about. On an entirely unrelated note, Chinatsu smelled more like strawberries and vanilla today…
"Um!" Akari coughed out, just as she saw Chinatsu's full, pink lips parting to question her again. "Yes, I'm fine, Chinatsu-chan," she replied with a ridiculously wide smile. "Just a little cramped, I guess. I'm not used to long car trips either."
"Hmmm," the pinkette hummed, her gaze shifting to the rows of fields out her window. In one swift, graceful movement, she wrapped a surprisingly strong arm around Akari's waist, pulling the girl tight against her, further away from the perpetually squirming Sakurako. The redhead, her heartbeat now dangerously arrhythmic, opened her mouth to question her best friend's actions, but no words came out. Luckily, that had never stopped the human battery that was Chinatsu. "All that bouncing doesn't help, right?" she quipped, jerking her head toward Sakurako, who was now squealing in pain, as Himawari had managed to get a hold of her ear. "Besides, the last thing I need is you barfing all over me to make this trip even more fun." The pink-haired girl winked.
"H-hey!" Akari replied, indignant, but proud of herself for being able to vocalize even that much. Chinatsu's scent was now overwhelming, and she had yet to remove her arm from around the redhead's waist. Akari shifted, unable to settle for some reason. She was tempted to tell Chinatsu that she was still cramped, just in a different way—however, something familiar, yet quite foreign tugged at her stomach when she contemplated pulling away, so she kept her mouth shut. After a few more minutes, Chinatsu's grip loosened, the arm around Akari's waist retracting to instead loop through the redhead's arm in a fairly typical gesture of friendship. Still, Akari couldn't quite force her color to return to normal, and she instead settled for looking toward her feet, seemingly deep in thought.
Next to Sakurako (less than two feet away, given their current cramped conditions), Himawari watched her two friends, brows furrowed, eyes dawning with comprehension.
"Ouch, ouch, ouch, itaaaii~ Himawari, let go!"
Sakurako's yelps alerted the bluenette to the fact that she was still gripping the blonde's ear, and she shot her frienemy a look before releasing her hold. "Now shut up and let the rest of us have some peace and quiet," she ordered, averting her gaze out her window and trying her damndest to ignore the fact that Sakurako's squirming had left the blonde practically in her lap, and also (especially) the fact that Himawari didn't really mind the extra weight.
Another hour or so in, and the slight pressure in Himawari's lap had morphed into dead weight as Sakurako fell asleep, one leg tucked between both of the bluenette's, her body turned toward Himawari and her head resting heavily against her shoulder. Glancing up, Himawari could see Yui's knowing gaze in the rear-view mirror.
She could also see Kyouko's lecherous eye-brow waggling, but chose to ignore that.
She had one arm draped around Sakurako's back, as it really had nowhere else to go, and her fingers were trailing lazy patterns over the blonde's fabric-covered skin, for which Himawari didn't have an excuse. If Sakurako woke up this second, she mused, there would be a lot of squawking, denial and shoving hands. Really, you're still such a child, she thought to herself as her hazel eyes fell to the top of the sleeping girl's head.
Unconsciously, she leaned closer, only realizing this when flyaway blonde hair tickled her nose. She blinked—she was close enough to count each hair on the top of the girl's head, and she could feel Sakurako's warmth on her lips. As if in a trance, she closed the remaining distance (a centimeter or two at most, in reality) and pressed her lips firmly, thoughtfully to the blonde tresses. She stayed there for a long moment, until a movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she raised her gaze just slightly to meet with a half-amused, full-teasing look from Chinatsu, who had one eyebrow raised as her blue eyes flickered between the two 'enemies'. Instantly, she flushed a pretty pink, averting her gaze to the back of Kyouko's headrest. She was an older sister; it was just second nature, habits that had been built up after years of playing second mother to Kaede.
Only it wasn't that at all, and Himawari was well aware of that. The habits may have been formed over the years, but the emotions behind them weren't any she'd ever associate with her younger sister.
As the car sped over a bump and Sakurako's head fell to her ample chest, Himawari nervously cleared her throat. She didn't like the idea of dealing with the aftermath of Sakurako's childish mannerisms when the blonde inevitably woke up, nor did she like to think about why she was so content holding her like this. "Um, Funami-senpai," she asked, her voice slightly rough from lack of use over the past hour, "where were we stopping for the night, again?"
She knew, of course; they were going to meet Ayano and Chitose at a Hilton hotel several hours out of the city in which Comuket would be held, and then complete the trek tomorrow. Anything to break the silence, however; moreover, anything to stop her from overthinking, as she was so prone to doing.
"Ah—just another half hour or so," came the reply. "Sorry you're squeezed in back there, by the way." Yui shot her a sympathetic look in the rearview mirror.
"At least it's finally quiet," Chinatsu quipped dryly. Like Sakurako, Akari had fallen asleep, though the pink-haired girl seemed significantly calmer than Himawari felt. The bluenette felt a brief pang of sympathy for her slumbering redheaded friend; it was clear that there was something there, at least for Akari. If Chinatsu didn't feel anything in return (she was much more difficult to read than her easily-overlooked best friend), she was certainly not making things any easier on the poor girl with her casual touches and invasions of personal space. Himawari made a mental note to have a word with Akari before they returned home; at the very least, she could be a sympathetic ear. A part of her wondered whether Akari was even aware of her own feelings, though.
She heaved a sigh, the movement prompting Sakurako to unconsciously snuggle closer, burying her head in the bluenette's chest. Sometimes she wished they didn't have to grow up and face their feelings; that they could have just perpetually remained carefree and blissfully ignorant. Of course, Himawari had been well aware of her own feelings for Sakurako for years, if she was entirely honest with herself. Most of the time, however, it was easier to lie to herself (at least when she could convince herself to believe it). In middle school, she supposed a part of her had been hoping that she would grow out of it; after all, Sakurako was lazy, selfish and annoying, and there was no rational reason for Himawari to feel the way she did for her childhood friend.
But the years had come and gone and she was beginning to realize that she may never outgrow Sakurako, and the feelings that realization brought with it confused her more than anything had before. Glancing down at the blonde head resting against her chest, she wondered whether going along on this trip wasn't perhaps the stupidest decision she'd made in quite a while.
And God only knew what Kyouko had up her sleeve on top of everything else.
The sun was just beginning to set as they pulled into the hotel parking lot. Ayano and Chitose had apparently beat them there, unless somebody else owned an incredibly purple Volkswagon Bug.
The rear door of Yui's beat up station wagon was all but flung open as both Chinatsu and Akari practically poured out of the back seat, holding each other up, as both were still woozy, the pink-haired girl having given in to sleep about half an hour before. Kyouko spun over to the two, presumably to glomp Chinatsu before she was entirely awake and aware, only to be met by a blunt palm to the face from a decidedly grumpy pinkette. Akari winced as Kyouko toppled backwards—she knew from experience that waking Chinatsu before she was ready was all but a death sentence, though she almost preferred grumpy, violent Chinatsu to still-dreaming, lustful Chinatsu, whom Akari had the misfortune to meet at a sleepover the previous year.
"Get off!"
"Carryyyy meeee, Himawariiii~"
"You are such a child, Sakurako!"
"I'll love you forever~"
"Ugh, Sakurako, I swear, you…"
The group turned to see a beet-red Himawari emerge from the other side of the car, Sakurako draped over her back like a ragdoll.
Chinatsu coughed, "Whipped," into her hand, blinking innocently up at Himawari when the red-faced bluenette glared at her, while Akari awww'ed at the sight.
There was that feeling again, she thought, her chest clenching as they made their way into the lobby of the hotel, the long-suffering Himawari dutifully giving the lazy Sakurako a piggy-back ride. She was snapped out of her reverie by a scoff to her right, and her head snapped to Chinatsu, who rolled her eyes and stretched languidly, giving Akari the sudden, vivid impression of a freshly woken panther. "If those two don't fuck out their issues on this trip, I swear to God…"
"Chinatsu-chan!"
The pink-haired girl cackled as Akari smacked her arm without any real force, scolding her for her crassness.
Across the room, Chitose watched her best friend's posture stiffen the second Toshino Kyouko (!) entered the lobby; if she hadn't known better, she would have thought that perhaps Ayano could actually sense the blonde's presence without even seeing her.
Smiling serenely, she sat back and waited for the decidedly noisy group to make their way over so that they could assign rooms for the night. This, she thought, was going to be an interesting trip.
Luckily, she remembered to pack extra tissues.
A/N: I'm sorry it sucks—I have a hard time getting to the actual action in a story, so it always seems kinda slow and boring up until then, so I'm sorry if I bored you guys to death with this D: I hope you'll all stick with me through it, though, because it will get better! I already have some ideas :) Please leave a review, tell me what you thought, let me know if you're still around so I'll know to continue with this (because there's no point uploading if nobody is reading, lol). Next chapter will be the hotel rooms, maybe some party games to kill the time ;)
Again, I am SOSOSO sorry for the delay! Life caught me and…yeah. Stress. Anyway, thanks for reading! I know this wasn't the best chapter by far, I still have to get back into the habit of this story, and I know this wasn't great. I hope it wasn't terrible, though! Please do review! :)