So, here it is, my exchange fic, and I hope my giftee likes it most of all (and that I was successful in deceiving you, Beej ;) ) She wished for Love Square and Established Relationship with a side of Fluff, and while some of these seemed to contradict each other at first, I hope I came out succeeding to marry all of these themes! Anyway, have a comedy in three chapters! I hoped I managed something you will love, Beej! Mwah!
My always thanks to my lovely beta Uglygreenjacket, who also organized and hosts this exchange for us! Thank you so, so much love! And also, a broad, broad thank you to my friends! For writing parties, for keeping me sane while I'm going insane, for helping me brainstorm when I'm stuck, for being this little internet enclave while I'm going up the walls! This crisis is crazy for us all, and I could not be more grateful to have you, and honestly, that's includes all you people who always have such warm reviews for me, who interact with me on tumblr, and who root for me! I hope all of you enjoy this, and that it's a little distraction from this crazy, crazy world.
Either way, here's chapter 1!
Deception
Written For Beej88 in the Usamamo Spring Exchange 2k20
Tuxedo Mask did that low crouching thing again: the one where he landed with spread, bent knees on the balls of his feet, the tuxedo stretching across his infuriatingly attractive thighs. With no effort at all he folded himself up so outrageously elegantly, all long limbs and gorgeous, smirking lips directed at her.
He moved like a dancer. Like a wet dream. He moved like those people who just knew how to move their bodies in the most flattering way instinctively, like those people who felt at home in their skin, who stood tall with drawn back shoulders and confident movements. Those people you just couldn't help but glance after, those people you couldn't help but be attracted to when you saw them pass you by even if you tried to deny it really hard, even if you squeezed your eyes shut in order not to look.
Two beats in her chest and he'd untangled himself back to his way too perfect height, and Usagi tried not to swallow her lungs, even if it was perhaps a lost cause.
One beat more and he was by her side - too close, again, she could feel his cape flap against her leg, and looked straight at her, when he reached to his side.
One hammered beat of her heart more and he threw his cane in a wide arch across the street without looking.
She looked, though. Whipped her eyes from his and over to its trajectory, and it hit the youma straight in the nuts and pinned it via its ridiculous loin cloth against the neon lights that exploded in glass and blue electric sparks. All sounds drowned out by a high pitched howl through fangs and green lips, and the crystals previously aimed at Sailor Moon shattered against the ground in pretty, sparkling shards that reflected all the neon colors all around.
Wow.
And then her heart slipped into her panties because Tuxedo Mask's voice was at the shell of her ear and the fabrics covering his chest ever so slightly pressed against her back.
"Your turn, Sailor Moon," he purred at her, and his breath against her neck spread goosebumps along her skin.
She shuddered, stepped away, whirled her head around so hard her hair slapped against his legs, and glared. His lips only quirked up harder at one side.
She didn't look, either. At the youma, that is. Just raised a gloved hand to her tiara above her angrily puckered brows, yanked it off, and shot it blindly at the youma behind her.
Judging by the youma's instant howl and the bright light show reflected off the impressed expression on his face, she must have nailed it like a badass.
Tuxedo Mask blinked just as her tiara returned to her and she snatched it up blindly, plucking it straight from the air and shoving it back against her scowling face, and she'd never moved her glare away from him.
He looked so impressed it made her feel awfully smug, and she tried so hard not to show it.
And why was Luna never around when she nailed this shit, man?
"Not bad," he complimented with an easy smile, all chin tilted down at her and simmering eyes, even if he still stood way too close.
She told him she has a boyfriend, goddammit.
They had this weird, silent contest nowadays. Who was the most badass. Jumping off buildings and disappearing into thin air with their farewells, making impressive and over-the-top entrances (he kinda won at both of those), crushing it with the youma-defeating (at least there, she was uncontested champion.)
And damn, was he coming on strong. And every time she put him in his place, it seemed to only drive him to try harder, made him somehow even more gleeful at it. That smile was so infuriatingly entertained.
It was infuriating.
(It was also fucking hot. And she hated it. Because no. Never. She already had the perfect man at home, excuse you very much, Tuxedo Mask - a man who also had amazing thighs, so there.)
And so Sailor Moon scowled harder, and thus ultimately, as wholly distracted as she was, the only indicator that something was wrong was via the change in Tuxedo Mask's face. The way his eyes flicked up in sudden shock and he threw himself in front of her in a flash like an idiot ready to defend her because that's what the guy did a lot.
How many times did she have to flaunt the fact she was a way stronger superhero than him to finally make him understand she wasn't the friggin damsel here?
But yeah, turns out the youma had a second youma with him. This one a bit quicker, unfortunately.
Her eyes flickered in confusion when it wasn't a youma after all, though, but that infuriating man in a grey uniform again. Flaring nostrils and blonde, slightly curly hair. He looked too young for that hateful snarl on his lips, the tense angry set of those eyebrows painting his face into rage.
It happened fast. Uniform-guy was glowing, floating even. Usagi barely had time to grab at her tiara again. One moment he pressed out a mirthless laugh, the next he sidestepped Tuxedo Mask, flicking him away with a forceful push of energy that flug him off as easily as a bothersome insect, and his hand curled around Sailor Moon's throat.
A terrified noise cut through the air and Usagi was surprised it wasn't her who'd made it. In the split second she had, the man's eyes glowed almost blue, maybe aqua, something turquoise, and his lips curled into a smile that made Sailor Moon's heart lurch into her stomach in that really, really bad way, this time.
Before he could squeeze, though, before he could so much as twitch his finger, Sailor Moon lowered her eyes into a scowl, curled her fingers into her tiara and pushed it at his chest. She fell from his grip into warm, careful arms as the force of Sailor Moon's attack flung him off of her and into the nearest wall, because excuse her but she was a badass. He cried out in sharp pain with wide eyes and that dark glint, his grey uniform straining black and his glove red as he staggered to his feet.
Her heart beating in her throat, she tensed her fingers and the tiara spun again in the air, digging deeper.
His cry was sharp, his face a snarl.
"I'll come back for you, Sailor Moon," the man said, clutching his injured side and ignoring Tuxedo Mask as if he wasn't even there - like he always did, as if he was a foe absolutely beneath him - and the air shimmered with his slow-ish disappearing act. Her tiara clattered against the wall as it lost purchase.
Yet, before he'd disappeared completely, just a ghost of his form flickering in and out of visibility, not even a fraction of a second, he flung off a wave of energy at her and it propelled every last pebble and dust particle in the vicinity to be hurled in her direction with projectile speed.
She flung up her arms. Something grazed her cheek and she winced until nothing hit her, abruptly, because the thick, red lining of a cape was covering her head to toe and she was pressed against a warm body.
When the air had settled, she breathed deeply. Remained standing there for a moment, a bit shaken. That was close. He'd never come so close before.
"What a dick," Sailor Moon muttered under her breath, and the roll of her eyes in her voice seemed to have the power to make Tuxedo Mask untense.
With another flap, the cape (it was surprisingly soft!) slipped from her form.
She was about to make a joke, but when she could see Tuxedo Mask's face again, it was tense and concerned.
"Don't worry, I can totally take him," she said with a confident shrug, and finally, Tuxedo Mask's lips curled into some semblance of a smile.
"You got him good," he replied, and stepped up closer to her.
Sometimes Tuxedo Mask really, really seemed to forget personal space around her. It was a bit confusing, since he seemed the reserved type.
He had Serious Face, again. He had that whenever she was struck. Whenever she was, he'd tense and glue himself to her side.
And so, it wasn't unusual that the indicator that she was a bit injured were Tuxedo Mask's instant Serious Eyes on her face.
But it was nothing, she touched her gloved hand to it, and the pristine white was dusty, sure, but came away clean. No blood. Barely a scrape, surely. Didn't even hurt.
"Of course, I did," she said with a petulant glare as if he'd challenged her superhero-capabilities.
But he didn't take the verbal bait and instead his hands were on her face and tilting it as if he were allowed to, and she was too shocked and too affected by his proximity to say something.
"You're hurt," he said with a wince, and it was ridiculous, because she was sure it was barely anything.
"You should see the other guy," she tried to joke, and he didn't take up on it, once more.
His hands were gentle, careful, his eyes that concentrated single-minded inspection as he studied her none-wound in a way that she was very used to from someone else, because Tsukino Usagi was a klutz, (and let's face it, Sailor Moon was, too) and she did a lot of things that warranted this face. A lot of things that were actually bad.
(Like that time she'd just moved in, ironed-on that handy fakey-tape-for-people-who-can't-sew onto the curtains completely naked as you do when it's summer and you just moved in with the Most Gorgeous Man On Earth Who'd Just Run Out To Get Them Breakfast, and promptly sat on the hot-iron. She still had a fading hot-iron-shaped scar on her butt and had never heard the end of it.. Either way, she's had worse than an itty bitty scrape just last week alone, when she kicked the couch accidently and banged up her toe so hard it came out green and purple.)
Still, her voice came out weird, and it was the reverent way he touched her, she knew it. "I'm fine," she rasped.
Her voice was too hoarse, Tuxedo Mask was too close, and he had exactly the right height, exactly the perfect warm, and when he stroked a gloved finger along her jaw his gaze shifted to hers and she couldn't hide the goosebumps and the attraction, and her heart jumped when he stroked a wisp of hair behind her hair.
"Please be careful," he whispered. It was kind of a beg.
Her eyes widened and she stepped out of his touch like lightning, pressed her lips together and glared and HATED the flutter in her chest.
"I have a—"
"Boyfriend," he finished, and the half smile was back. "Oh, I know."
And yet, with the wrinkle of her nose, his lips tilted up further, awfully sexy on one side of his mouth. Smiling like this was all some sort of joke she didn't get.
Never, she reminded herself, and glared. Never ever ever. Nuh-uh. Tuxedo Mask might be handsome, but she was taken, and happy, and perfectly content, and he could suck it, he would not phase her. At all. Ever. Nuh-uh. She was wholly unaffected. She was.
She tried to silently sneak into the apartment, but he was sitting right there, open balcony door, fluttering eyelash-lace curtains, windswept hair and calmly leafing through a book.
"So, how is she?" he said evenly, legs crossed one over the other so prettily, not looking up from his book as he turned a page and Usagi nearly jumped a mile into the air, startled.
"Huh?" Usagi squeaked stupidly because she was winded and bad at this and seriously, this sneaking out and lying and making excuses was by far the worst part of this whole secret superhero identity thing.
But Mamoru's eyes lifted from his book and he shot her that amused smile and shifted against Usagi's floral and rabbit cushions that he'd all wholeheartedly embraced when she'd moved in.
"Naru?" he reminded her so very helpfully.
Er, right.
Well, good thing she was a scatterbrain at the best of times and this was all pretty normal for her. She guessed. She hoped.
She felt her cheeks heat and cursed them silently. " Uh… um. Fine," she stammered, and walked into their shared living space with entirely too stilted movements, and cringed.
He watched her, lips tilting up on one side as his eyes roved over her incriminating legs and hips, then flew back to his book, smile playing around his mouth.
"And?" he prompted, not letting it go, and Usagi wracked her brain, blanching. What excuse exactly had she used this time?
He lifted one perfect arm to the back of the couch and it usually was his nonverbal invitation to come snuggle. Because Mamo-chan was too serious to outright demand snuggle, he was more sneaky than that, and usually she'd grin and tease him for it and be outrageously annoying and he'd roll his eyes and love it and snuggle her close, tease and all, but this time, again, she shifted her weight from side to side and stalled.
He'd feel her frantic heartbeat like this and might know she was lying and she couldn't risk it.
"And what?" she stalled some more.
If he noticed, he didn't show. Instead, he smirked, eyes twinkling, and her heart throbbed.
"Did she eat her engagement ring?" he said, clear amusement tinging his words, and Usagi refrained from slapping her forehead, because goddamn was she bad at this.
"Um... um…"
He didn't let her off the hook. Instead, his eyes were downright entertained. "I didn't know they were engaged," he offered.
She swallowed and carried stilted legs to the open kitchenette and wrenched the fridge door open so hard that everything inside rattled. Someone outside was laughing very loud and it carried across the open balcony door.
"It's uh…" she said, yanking a bottle of milk tea from the fridge and hanging on to it, "uh...very new."
"Oh yeah?"
She untwisted the bottle cap and didn't turn, and her face was just so fucking hot and ugh.
She only spoke after downing half the bottle, and her voice was weird, and she faced the open fridge door as she spoke and begged the strawberries and leftover Coco Curry inside for moral support. "Uh, yeah. Yeah. He, uh, asked tonight! Yes. The ring was in the cake. That's why."
"Ah. I see," he said, and Usagi jumped, because suddenly, his voice came from directly behind her. She turned around and there he stood towering over her, this pretty, pretty man.
"That's a shame," he added.
But her brain was too slow on the uptake and he knew it was unfair when he did that. "Huh?"
Somewhere in the back of her head this was all a peculiar parallel. The way he got incredibly close, just like Tuxedo Mask had before, and it was a little strange, that fluttering in her heart. She blamed her nerves for the spike in her veins. Because this was her guy and they'd been together like literally forever and he's had his dick in her a thousand times at least, but suddenly she was as shy and affected as she'd just been with Tuxedo Mask a few minutes ago and holy shit.
He studied her face, stroked his finger along the sensitive skin of her jaw, beneath her ear, where she'd been struck. With a frown at her scrape, he stroked a wisp of hair behind her ear - it should BARELY BE VISIBLE BY NOW UGH, and really, it was all startling déjà-vu.
It all got stuck in her throat and suddenly she remembered she ought to keep going, started to stutter, scrambling for something to explain that new addition to her face, but he interrupted her calmly.
"That his romantic proposal was ruined like that?"
He stroked the back of his fingers against her cheek, her jaw, her neck and followed them quite seriously with his eyes, and really, she was wholly unprepared, her arms flopping out to brace herself against the counter behind her and she almost dropped her milk tea. "Huh?"
"Umino. And Naru. The engagement," he said, the pad of his thumb running down her throat and she swore her heartbeat was hammering against him to greet him.
She was surprised she wasn't a blinking neon sign. 'I'm lying to you, Mamo-chan', her pulse must scream at him in deepest, shameful regret. "Uh, uh, yeah. Yeah!"
His hand stroked her throat so gently. Emotion in his eyes she couldn't place, as his face darkened and his fingers turned even more tender, his look utterly preoccupied.
And then he leaned down, pressed the softest kiss against her jaw, then moved them slowly, one soft, tender, puckered kiss at a time, down her neck, and with his lips he chased away every last phantom memory of an evil general's hands around it laced around a spike of fear. Even though Mamo-chan couldn't even know she needed it, and she melted in his hands.
It all shot a little through her veins and ignited her. She was pretty sure she hadn't been that turned on in ages, and absolutely blamed the thrill and the fright and the way Mamoru's fingers just knew how to touch her so well, and NOT Tuxedo Mask and certainly not because—
"It's… it's a shame…"
"It is," he said, and lifted her, his warm, strong palms flat against her butt and digging deep and pressing her up against him, and the fridge rattled again loudly as he pushed her up against it and his tongue into her mouth.
She dropped her milk tea.
The day she'd become Sailor Moon had started like any other and it wrecked her mind that that was only 6 weeks ago because it felt kind of like a lifetime now.
Like most mornings, she'd woken up as Mamo-chan had the audacity to attempt to get up to get to class at godawful-early-o'clock and tried to disentangle himself from her death grip on him, and managed to convince him to five more minutes of good-morning snuggles that turned into twenty, so that he had to leave with his hair still wet from the shower and his breakfast in brown liquid and caffeinated to-go form from the vending machine at the station.
Every night she'd swear she'd get up with him the next morning to get an earlier start to the day and every morning she'd snuggle back into his vacated warm side of the bed, pull her trusty old comforter over her shoulders and sleep until the sun was so high that it blended her through the balcony door.
That morning, she'd gotten up, checked her phone in bed, got out only for jam toast that she then promptly carried back to bed and stroked the crumbs back from the sheets because Mamoru got testy about crumbs in bed, and she only just got her pocky-in-bed rights back in dire negotiations, opened up her app and answered a few messages from clients for tomorrow's afternoon group (they wanted a specific Fujiya tour! Strawberry shortcakes all afternoon across Tokyo! Woot!)
Really, her life was kind of perfect. She fell asleep on the rise and fall of the most precious chest in the world every night, knew what it felt like to be looked at with pure and utter adoration even when she was being an absolute nutcase, and kinda got to eat for a living, what could be better?
She loaded up a few new available dates and uploaded a few photos from her last tour, brushed her teeth and did her hair with little bows on top of her buns with a tiny, glittery pokeball in the middle of each, packed her camera bag, and locked the door behind her as she made her way to Toshima to meet a group of tourists at the new Pikachu Sweets Pokemon Café in Ikebukuro for the short tour.
On her way back, it all happened so crazy fast. One second she'd been pondering if she could restyle one of her overalls into a peko-chan look for the Fujiya tour, and the next her life had changed. One rescued cat from a bunch of mean kids later and before Mamo-chan ever came home from his Thursday study lab, she found herself hyperventilating with her face between scantily clad knees in an outfit that had just appeared on her body out of magic ribbons as a talking cat calmly explained she had a destiny.
By the time she got home later that night Mamo-chan was long in bed and she'd fought a monster at Osa-P of all places and met Tuxedo Mask and freaked the fuck out and later sat on a beam of Tokyo Tower because she could and asked Luna 20 questions until the nerves calmed down a little.
In between, there'd been a moment Usagi had almost been excited.
She'd just transformed into a superhero and defeated a monster and what the hell and god, she couldn't wait to show Mamo-chan.
"...Who's Mamo-chan?" Luna had asked in alarm as she hopped after Sailor Moon on a friggin rooftop that she was running on like it was nothing, and Usagi had beamed down at her shiny new animal sidekick and maybe this had all made her a bit high, because she was kind of fluttering inside as this was all frankly way too weird. She felt like she was in a shojo manga, honestly.
"My boyfriend!" she'd answered dutifully and with a bright, proud lilt to her words, and her feline companion had hissed and arched her back like a proper cat, and it startled her and burst her excited bubble quite abruptly.
"Usagi!" Luna had snarled, stern. They'd stopped on top a building close to Juuban-dori and a neon sign flickered light against the adjourning walls of buildings. "You can't tell your boyfriend! Absolutely not!"
Sailor Moon drew up short. "What?"
Luna hopped up on the sign, its backside to them, and thus was closer to Usagi's - Sailor Moon's (holy fuck!) - face. "You can't tell anyone!"
Usagi's face felt tight, her shoulders tensed, surely there could be an exception, Mamo-chan was the most trustworthy person on the planet, and really, this was non-negotiable, because how could she hide something like this, and—
"Usagi," Luna said sternly, as if reading the turmoil in her face. "It would bring you and everyone you love in grave danger if the enemy were to find out. You can't. Absolutely not."
Suddenly, her mind was back with the monster. Except this time, it wasn't Naru's mom whose face had contorted into a monster's features, but her own Mama. It turned into a film in her head, until all her family were monsters, and Mamo-chan the helpless victim. She blanched.
"But…" she stammered, faltering. "He wouldn't tell anyone… I swear he wouldn't... "
Luna sharply shook her fur and it vibrated through her. "What if he refuses to leave you alone during attacks because he gets too worried?" Luna said with a bite to it. "What if he gets into the line of fire?"
Her heart dropped into her gut and she paled even further, because… because...
That was… very much a Mamo-chan thing to do, yes. Yes, it was.
The image in her head turned into its own little horror show. The monster's head twisting and twisting again in that 180° angle except this time the body it held was Mamo-chan's lifeless one and it sent ice through her veins.
"Oh god… Luna…" she gasped, searching her new cat's eyes. "How am I ever gonna hide this?!"
She primly sat on her front paws, they touched side by side as Luna sat up with a straight back and an air of authority that was kind of eerie in a cat but nevertheless there.
"You don't have to tell him everything, do you?" Luna said.
Usagi sputtered. Started pacing on a random rooftop. "I tell him what I eat everyday," she cried out. "I send him selfies and photos of cute things I spot during the day. I tell him what I dreamed about in the mornings and what I plan to do tomorrow in the evenings and when anything new and exciting happens which is always and I text him like, a gazillion times per day. He's gonna notice. He can't not!"
But Luna was absolutely unimpressed. "You're gonna think of something," she said with an air of finality to it.
"I live with him," Usagi tried to reason, tried to make her understand. "In a one-room apartment."
"It seems he isn't always home," Luna reasoned back with a calm, straight face.
"He's my person," Usagi lamented, how could Luna not see how futile this even was to attempt?! "I'll marry this man!"
It was with her legs dangling from Tokyo Tower and her mind filled with outrageously outlandish new information and words like youmas and dark kingdom that they'd circled back to Usagi's problem at hand.
"Aren't you like, a tour guide? You're out regularly at odd hours!" Luna threw in as her newest suggestion.
"Gourmet Guide," Usagi corrected with a purse of her lips.
"That seems like a perfect cover. Can't you just say you're doing that?"
She shook her head, snorting, and then nearly fell off the beam when the lights turned off at what apparently was already the stroke of midnight and wasn't it just noon and she'd only just simply saved an innocent cat?
"That's such a stupid excuse," Usagi mumbled thoughtfully.
"What, why?"
She scrunched up her nose. "He's invested! I tell him stuff! He joins me sometimes for bigger groups in the evenings! He interprets for me the few times I have an English-speaking group! He'd notice!"
"Well, then don't let him!" Luna reasoned. "Or tell him you forgot a group! Or you're testing new places!"
She pursed her lips and freaked out.
She'd still been freaking out when she'd snuck home through the peculiarly open balcony door at 2am (Mamoru never left the balcony door open…), almost fell over the couch in the dark, and crawled into bed and under warmed covers.
He grunted in his sleep and shot an arm around her immediately to pull her against him. He was warm and so was the bed, and his tank top that he wore to sleep had ridden up and his boxer briefs were soft cotton and his bedhead ridiculous and how could she ever be able to keep this from this man, how?!
His arms slung around her, trapping her between sinuous muscle, hard bicep and broad chest pretty much in reflex, and he felt like home and he shifted to tuck her securely beneath his chin even when he was practically asleep, or something like that, and her heart hammered in her chest.
"I had the strangest dream," he rumbled in his sleep and beneath her ear, his voice so heavy and low and sonorous with sleep it broke and vibrated in his chest.
"...yeah?" she squeaked, and curled a trembling hand into his shirt.
"Mhmm," he hummed against her, and turned a bit to nuzzle his face into her hair. She shifted like a puzzle piece that was made to fit him, and slowly started to relax. He was warm, the bed was warm, this was all going to be ok.
"Where were you?" he breathed, his eyes still closed, that voice still such a rumble, yet slightly more awake now, and his hands around her starting to stroke into her shirt, starting to gently glide against her spine.
His words were slurred and tired and conversational. They were curious and normal, half asleep and trusting, and it would be the first blatant lie that she would ever tell him which wasn't something along the lines of, 'I have no idea where these crumbs came from!', and she suddenly felt too hot and like she couldn't do it.
"Naru!" she pressed out. Too fast. A bit too loud, and his eyelids fluttered into a frown, then pulled her closer.
"I was at… at Naru's," she croaked pitifully and her voice broke. "There was… something with her mom."
He grunted, barely awake, barely listening, and it turned into a distracted hum as unconsciousness was claiming him once more.
Her hands curled tightly into his shirt and she clung to him, and at least this first time it really had not been a lie, not really.
Only a few moments later and his breathing was deep and calm with the slow rise and fall of his chest and Usagi pressed her lips against his collarbone and kind of wanted to scream in frustration and also kind of wanted to wake up, because all of this had to be some sort of joke or at least a ridiculous dream.
But it wasn't. And the next morning, when she'd been woken by Mamo-chan moving around to get ready for class, and by his kisses on her shoulder and the junction of her neck (and her brow and her eyelids and cheekbones) as he left… when the door clicked shut behind him, and she'd moved to pull the comforter back over her head, Luna was sitting in the still open balcony door.
The comforter dropped to her lap and her heart jumped against her ribs as if it shoved her. Immediately, her eyes flew back to the door Mamo-chan had just left through.
Because it was all real and he'd just walked out into a world where monsters existed and she somehow had to keep him safe.
Somehow, she vowed, she'd manage. She'd keep him safe. And she'd keep this a secret. Mamo-chan wouldn't figure it out. Somehow. Promise.
It had taken Mamoru exactly three days to figure it out.
The first time it happened was a bit like a fever dream, a lucid hallucination he afterwards wasn't quite sure had actually happened. Like a curtain that had dropped over his memories, made them fuzzy and hid them away.
He'd been out drinking after his study lab with a handful of co-eds - some of them went every Thursday almost as a tradition and once in a blue moon Mamoru tended to join them, because if he'd learned one thing from Tsukino Usagi in six years of relationship then it was to be a bit more social and to say yes to things once in a while.
He went home early, wasn't even all that tipsy, but afterwards not sure if he'd not overdone it and simply not noticed. It seemed the only explanation for the snippets of recollection that remained, a drunk dream.
And so, it happened that in the moment itself, it all flowed over him as if he wasn't in charge. When he keeled over all of a sudden on his way home, aching pain exploding in his chest, and he found himself tingling all over until he was wrapped in snug evening wear. Like a marionette, almost magnetically, it pulled him to a scene that could have been plucked straight from one of Usagi's shojo fantasy mangas that cluttered their every surface.
Yeah, honestly? He thought he'd dreamt it. There'd been no other explanation.
He didn't even really remember how he'd gotten home. The whole thing wrapped around his mind like a balmy film too ridiculous to be processed and was thus rejected as false.
He'd been convinced it was an alcohol induced dream. It felt like one. It escaped his memory like one, fuzzy around the edges. Weird.
Next morning, a bit groggy, a bit hungover in a way he hadn't felt before, he'd hit snooze on his alarm, snuggled into Usagi's sleep-warm neck and got up late. On his way to class, he'd bought a double pack of vitamins instead of his usual coffee, and tried to glare his mind into some sort of recollection.
How had he gotten home? When had he gotten home? He really didn't remember drinking that much. Nothing nearly close to warrant a memory gap. He wouldn't. He knew his limits. Very well. He hated nothing more than black-outs for quite obvious reasons, they freaked him out, triggered old trauma, and thus he avoided over-drinking not only for that reason, but in part.
He'd spent his first class quite distracted and was mulling over what he might have eaten that might have interacted strangely with the alcohol, when the mystery was lifted in a way that felt kind of like he imagined a stroke to feel like.
The second time it happened to him, it snapped his memory into place. Like a rubber band snapping across his brain, the edges weren't fuzzy anymore, and he suddenly remembered last night almost clearly. Osa-P. That pull. Sailor Moon. Monster.
The shock was so deep it knocked him over - or maybe it was the pull in his chest that threatened to consume him right there in front of the lecture hall on his way to his oncology class.
He made it barely outside the building, into the darkest corner between buildings in the setting sun, when he let go of his resistance with a gasp and became Tuxedo Mask again.
(And, besides, that settled it. Even if he felt the edges of his perception wobble again, he must have been drunk. No way would he come up with a name as stupid as Tuxedo Mask, had he been sober.)
This time, though - this time he felt it clearly. Felt the raw, flayed edges of his mind trying to consume him, trying to forget this all even as it was happening. Like a filter across his mind, but this time, he fought it. Committed every single sensation to memory, as absurdly averse as it was. The sudden power in his muscles, the hum of energy he felt calling to him as if from the very Earth itself, the intensity of life around him almost like a siren song that pulled him in, made his every sensation heighten, overwhelming him and his very mind.
He could feel things this way. The ground, the trees, the people. It beat onto his mind so sharp it stung like the biggest headache he'd ever felt, but he forced his mind to remain open.
And beneath it all, that thrum. That pull. Like a knot around his heart that had lasso-ed him captive and now drew him across town.
He remembered it from last night just barely. But he'd also felt it once before.
Never this powerful, never this visceral, this terrifyingly urgent, but yes, a lighter version of this feeling he'd known intimately.
He'd felt it when he'd first met Usagi.
All those years ago, in front of Osa-P, too. Like something yanked at him. An invisible chord to bring him home. Had felt it again, months afterwards, when she'd first kissed him on that dare. Again, years after that, when he'd first felt her tremble and shake and come apart around him. He knew that feeling. He'd joked over it for years, called it destiny, called it his red string of fate, and here it was again, out of nowhere.
Pulling him to Osa-P. Pulling him to Sailor Moon.
To the wrong person.
He stumbled after it gasping, running.
But, turns out, it hadn't been wrong. Not at all. She managed to fool him for exactly that one night.
He'd stumbled home frazzled, clawing against the urge in his mind to lose again what he had witnessed with bared teeth and desperate vehemence and he managed, managed to remember. It had gotten easier, and then effortless, over time, but that night it was as strong as the first night, and like a dream he tried to cling on to before it fled him, his breath was choking as he hurried home to tell her, hoping to trap it in the words.
He wanted to tell her everything. He didn't know how, didn't know if he even had the ability to recall and then retell it in any way that made any sort of sense, but he knew he had to.
Another thing that six years with the love of his life had taught him: he kinda sucked at communication, overall. But he was working on it, and steadily getting better at it, and this seemed, well… important.
But this time, when he broached the subject with his heartbeat frantic and confused, it was her who was freaking out even more. It hadn't made sense at the time, of course, it would only make sense later. Why she was evading the conversation as if she bit into it to keep the lid closed, as if its content was a bulging suitcase she was jumping up and down on with all her might to make it shut.
He didn't know that night that this time the tables had turned and for once in all the time they'd been together, it had been her who was hiding, and not him.
She'd been terribly jumpy when he entered their apartment, armed with choux cream from the conbini downstairs because Usagi had long drilled into him that one did not have Important Conversations without snacks.
"I… can we talk about last night?" he'd opened.
She'd blanched.
"Last night… was a bit strange and… I really…" he'd tried anyway.
She'd scurried right to him like a spooked little rabbit, eyes wide and panicked and flitting about.
"Something happened yesterday and today again and I really need to—"
Her eyes were blown up and her breath erratic and her hands were quick, ripping at him, yanking, pulling, mauling—
He hadn't known the force she could do that with.
"Usako!" he'd cried out, startled, scandalized, and dropped the bag with the choux cream, as her gorgeous, nimble little hands had undone his belt buckle and pushed into his pants in record speed, and she'd pressed him down onto their bed before he'd even finished uttering her name. Hopping on his thighs and pinning him flat, any word he would have spoken after that got swallowed by her tongue and it was altogether quite effective in distracting him.
It wasn't unwelcome, of course. Her touch was never unwelcome to him, and she had that uncanny ability to only take and give exactly as much as he ever needed. And that was exactly why this was, turns out, a tactic of distraction they would use often, henceforth. In one way or another.
It worked. It worked very well. After all, they were both people who sought comfort in touch in times of need, and these times were a bit needy. Confusing. Unsettling.
So really, he blamed his dick that he hadn't gotten it right there. That the spark of doubt might have bubbled up in his mind, but momentarily didn't fester. This weird coincidence, the way she'd not been where she would be at this time of day, wasn't wearing her pajamas, hadn't texted him in hours, the way the balcony door was wide open and her breath came too short. Yes, it had been weird, her behaviour. But he hadn't understood what was happening here. Had only gotten it the night afterwards, when the next spark suddenly rattled it all into place, like a veil lifting from his eyes.
It wasn't even something she said. It was the way Sailor Moon - this woman he was so very peculiarly drawn to as intensely as the woman he loved - mid-fight and unconsciously, so very absentmindedly, flicked her hand through one golden streamer of hair in a motion he'd stared at a million times even long before he shared her bed.
He'd been so shocked that he'd stumbled and fallen and suddenly he saw.
Suddenly, every shriek and every crinkled nose and every sudden shift from terrified to determined was unmistakable and he felt like an idiot. No, he was never pulled towards anyone else. It was and always had to be her.
If he'd still had any doubt, when he unlocked the door later, and the balcony door was open again and Usagi was winded and her hair windswept and…
… and there was a tiny bruise around her bicep where the youma had grabbed her and flung her around.
He choked and found himself with careful fingertips brushing her arm without even remembering having said 'Hi,' or, 'I'm home'.
It threw him. Bombarded him.
Of course, it was her. She looked the fucking same. How had he not recognized his own girlfriend? How was she not recognizing him?
Who was doing this to her?
"Ah," she jumped, startled, his eyes and hands too intense on her arm. "That er… I was, um…" And suddenly her eyes were wider than his, fumbling for an excuse. Again.
Usagi had never held anything back from him. Ever. She was the open book, the heart on the sleeve, the I'll-tell-you-all-my-secrets-for-a-smile.
Why was she hiding this from him?
He'd decided then and there to wait it out. See if she would figure it out, too. If she would tell him. What else she would do to hide this.
And well, some of her excuses were bizarre.
There were a thousand-and-one-hundred things he adored about this woman. Like that endearingly irritated and so utterly self-annoyed little snarl she made whenever she dropped something in movements so avoidable and so comical he tried so hard not to laugh at (because, well, he liked to live.) Or that crinkle in her nose when she concentrated really hard, or the way she rolled her eyes at him when she found him 'prissy' and told him to get the stick out from his ass, or the way she licked the lids of her joghurt cups and never managed to not get something on her nose.
And then there were a thousand more things about her which he loved that she was so very good at, so much better at than him - like her uncanny ability to know exactly what to say to someone to comfort them, or exactly how to make someone feel at ease, and how she always remembered little details about anyone she ever gifted her attention to so very generously, so very bottomlessly. Things she excelled at and that he admired her for more than she was strictly aware of.
Lying wasn't one of them.
Damn, did she suck at lying.
Like the time they'd both very obviously heard the giant crash outside, and Usagi had jumped up (from her comfortable perch with her head in his lap and her Nintendo Switch right in her face), yelped that Naru was sick, completely out of nowhere, not even thinking of pretending to have received a text, and almost fell over her own feet trying to get up.
"What does she have?" he'd helpfully offered, almost cringing as he played along.
Her eyes had widened and she'd flushed beet-red and her eyes had flicked around in panic before settling on the paper he was reading of all things.
"Eh, eh—" she'd stuttered, eyes reading on his lap. And then she was cringing before she ever finished mumbling the word, almost defeated. "...Ebola."
He'd raised an eyebrow, perhaps a bit too slowly, then pointedly looked back down at the medical journal in his lap. Spread open, title upfront.
Human Antibody Repertoire Following Ebola Virus Infection and rVSVΔG-ZEBOV-GP Vaccine: Assessing the Efficacy of Treatment and Establishing Immunity.
"Ah," he'd said, simply.
(Really, sometimes it was hard to keep a straight face.)
"Better get to her, then," he'd managed.
He'd given her the minutes of a head start and then jumped from their balcony to follow at a leisurely pace. (A youma in a clock dimension. Some of this shit was weird.)
Her excuses only got worse.
Like that one night they were sitting at the Hanamaru Udon branch closest to his campus because Usagi had picked him up and lamented her rather cute and serious condition of Overdramatic Starving, and one moment she was heartily slurping thickest noodles hung over Hanamaru Udon's signature black ceramic bowls on a plastic tray, the next she grew uneasy as if someone had stabbed her.
His chopsticks frozen in the air, he studied her intensely, watched her head whip around as she grew frantic, scrambling for an excuse.
"I, uh, I…" she stuttered, wide-eyed, starting to sweat, "uh my, my…"
Following her gaze he saw the black cat in the window of the restaurant her eyes had landed on and widened. He rolled his eyes before the excuse ever left her tongue.
"My cat!" she yelped. And immediately cringed.
He whipped his eyes back to hers and glared, chopsticks still raised. That was the worst one yet.
"Your cat," he deadpanned, as if he was saying 'really, now?!'.
She shrunk on the sterile bench of the scarcely decorated chain restaurant, but scrambled for her bag. Eyes as if she was trapped. "It… it ran away."
"Usako," he sighed. "We don't have a cat."
Her eyes widened as if she hadn't thought of that and he sighed even harder.
"Uh, I mean, uh…" she scrambled, and her knuckles were clawed around the side of the little square table "Naru's cat!"
He let his hand drop into his hands and groaned under his breath before he caught himself and schooled his features. "Naru has a cat now?" he said nonchalantly as he lifted his head back up and his chopsticks back into his bowl.
Usagi, of course, was already in her jacket. She was leaving her food behind. Half-eaten. Usagi. Double noodles and extra egg.
He went back to the restaurant after the absolutely weird pet shop youma was defeated, got her another serving of her order to go, flew home, walked through the door like a normal person, and warmed it up for her and her melted, grateful 'I love you so much right now' eyes when she spotted the styrofoam bowl with the tell-tale flower logo.
Of course, when he'd entered, she'd sat on the couch and pretended to read a manga that was upside down with the balcony door once again open. He pretended not to notice.
Really, he was getting peculiarly used to the lamest of excuses. Like when, middle of the evening, lips moving underneath his and arching her back, a noise on the balcony once again seemed to alert her and she turned petrified under his fingertips.
He frowned, lifted himself up, dark grey jeans straddling her and open dress shirt flowing down to her, and threw her a look.
She wriggled out from underneath him, cotton panties and pink T-shirt and wearing nothing else with previous hope of soon wearing even less, and once again mumbled something about Naru.
He collapsed on the bed, his back bouncing off the mattress as he landed with a thud, and ran his hands through his hair before calmly finding her eyes.
She was eyeing his chest mournfully even as she crawled from their bed.
"What does she need?" His voice was a little defeated by now, playing along.
It jumpstarted her gaze to flit back around the room, both feet hitting the hardwood floor with the dullest little thuds, and she reached out.
"She uh," Usagi started, grabbed a random object, looked down at it and frowned. It was their alarm. "...needs an alarm."
Oh, for the love of god.
He raised his eyebrows. "She needs our alarm clock," he sighed. It wasn't even a question at this point.
Usagi almost comically hopped from leg to leg and stared holes into the little machine, as if she was telepathically willing it to become anything else. "Uh, yeah, uh, she accidently smashed hers."
He lifted himself back up and followed her out into the hallway.
"She smashed it."
Her squeak was high-pitched. "Uhuh?"
Really, he couldn't help the half-smile. Why was she so bad at this? "And she can't use her phone?"
She froze in the genkan and her eyes widened comically. "...dropped it in the toilet," she tried to save herself.
"And Umino's phone?"
Really, that intense frown looked cute. "...both in the toilet," she declared with a nod.
"Ah," he said, leaning against the wall in the hallway, shirt still open, and she threw it another longing look when she opened the door.
"Anyway," she said to his chest, and he watched her step out of their apartment in just her panties and a T-shirt and their alarm clock in her hand, and he shook his head slowly as she closed the door without taking her eyes off his abs until the last possible moment.
Two days later, after browsing through Daiso on a Friday afternoon in search for new kitchen towels - because he was someone who insisted on replacing hygienic articles regularly at a budget and she agreed as long as they were cute - and they were leisurely strolling home hand in hand, armed with a set of baby blue towels with pink and black bunny faces not unlike the doodle she liked to draw next to her signature, he could pinpoint the second something had alerted her by just the way her hand twitched in his.
"What now?" he asked at the same time as she squeaked, "Uh, uh, Naru…"
Her flinch was so sheepish, her shoulders flew right to her ears.
"What of her?" he sighed, when Usagi was already stemming backwards, her hand slipping from his.
"Her uh…" her eyes flitted somewhere behind him, but this time he didn't look "... her cat is dying."
He forced himself not to raise his eyebrow. "Didn't she just get it?"
Usagi eeked her 'Uh, yeah…' in way she did so often now, walked backwards and he followed her a few paces, hands shoving into his pants and towels tucked underneath his arm in a little Daiso bag.
"And it's dying," he repeated.
Her hand flew to her head and she would have run into a pedestrian behind her, walking backwards like so, wouldn't Mamoru have quickened his step in one broad movement, grabbed her arm, and pushed her a little to the right.
"It's, uh, an old cat!" Usagi pressed out, high and interspersed with nervous laughter, "She uh, bought it in a retirement home." Wide-eyes growing wider, and then, "Uh, a retirement home for cats, of course. Old cats. You know?"
His lip quirked up, he couldn't help it. "Ah."
"Yeah, um." She quickened her step again, wiggled away from him.
But Mamoru was a dick, really, he was, and pressed a little more.
"What's it dying of?" he asked when she'd already turned to run off to secretly save the city.
She turned back around with her shoulders so tense he almost felt sorry.
"Huh?" came her meekest noise so far.
"Her cat," he prompted.
"Oh," she squeaked. Growing even tenser, eyes wide and trapped and really, he should just let her go.
But he waited. Watched her eyes turn wider and more nervous and gosh, he had to teach his girl how to lie. She was starting to sweat.
"Uh, uh…" she stuttered, frantic now, and like she sometimes did when she got incredibly nervous (like when she'd introduced him to her father, all those years ago, or the entire week before her high school graduation exams, or now,) she started to hiccup.
"Uh, uh…" A little hic, blown up eyes, and then a stab of inspiration, so clearly visible. (He was standing too closely again, really. This made her nervous, he knew that.)
"Hiccups!" Usagi practically yelled at his face, and a passerby gave her a look.
He couldn't. He lifted his hand and only so barely kept from outright facepalming. "Hiccups," he repeated, incredulous.
She hicced again. "Y-yeah," she said, and started walking back again, almost into a pole." "It's, uh," another hic, "really bad. Naru's worried."
"Yeah," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Better go help her cat, then," he said, and as if he'd dismissed her, she was dashing off, still hiccing, waving at him over her shoulder.
Sometimes, it was ridiculous. Sometimes it was enough. Sometimes, he was exasperated.
Of course, he wondered if he shouldn't tell her already. He wondered that all the time. There were moments where he was ready to throw it all overboard and fuck it - when she was injured, when she slipped out in the middle of the night and he woke up to the pain in his chest in an empty bed and panicked he might arrive wherever she'd snuck out to too late.
But then he'd find her where she'd left him and she would behave weird with terrible excuse after terrible excuse, and he felt he needed to see why and not force it out of her.
And so his mind was playing a constant ping pong. Tell her, don't tell her. Amusement, panic, exasperation, they all lay so close together at this point. And it was going on so long by now, almost four weeks! It was kind of getting weirder and weirder he hadn't told her.
But sometimes? When it was all going smoothly, not a hair on her head in danger because she was so surprisingly spectacular at this, at being Sailor Moon, with her too sexy legs in that dizzyingly short skirt and that badass attitude and yes, sometimes he was so proud of her he could burst? Damn, was it also so very secretly thrilling. A bit. A tiny, tiny bit.
Whenever it didn't give him a heart attack, that is.
Really, it was a sordid kind of game. And he was getting impatient.
It was probably wrong, his next tactic. But, nobody could fault him for flirting with his own girl, could they? So, what if she didn't know it was him. Maybe she'd get it somewhere along the road. He was laying the clues out thick, either way, in and out of the mask.
All she had to do was see them.
See you very soon with Chapter 2! Hope you liked! Reviews are love and also BALM TO MY ROUGHLY-HANDLED SOUL PLEASE FEED ME ;)