Guys! Thank you so much for the reviews! I see you and I read every single review (mostly several times) and I LOVE YOU SO HARD FOR THEM! Obviously even more especially right now, since you're literally my social interaction here right now and I am GOBBLING IT UP! Thank you so so much for your support! I'm so HAPPY you find this story funny!
Anyway. Obviously, I'm ESPECIALLY happy Beej is liking it, and I hope you'll like this chapter, too!
Thank you to my lovely, lovely beta and our exchange host, Uglygreenjacket, and to Antigone2 for encouraging me so much and helping me sort my thoughts, but also like, all my fandom friends! You're my support system right now, friends! Thank you for this fandom and your willingness to spend your time for me when I need you most!
Deception
Chapter 2
Of course, Usagi hadn't always known Mamoru was the best man in the history of ever and always and forever. No, for a while there, she'd been convinced he was the second worst person in the world.
She hadn't known that either when she kissed him, a few weeks shy of age 15, and jump-started their relationship simply because she would always rise to a dare.
No, she'd had no clue. She'd thrown test papers and shoes and crane game prizes at the man, and he'd called her unladylike in the same breath that he ate the food she'd thrown at him. He'd made fun of her crush on Motoki and she'd laughed in his face when she caught him writing pre-prepared, neat and bullet-pointed notes before placing an important phone call. They got in each other's face and they riled each other up and it was some sort of dance that very soon became practiced, automatic second nature.
It was infuriating and infuriating to everyone around them (the Fuhuratas, her classmates, Mamoru's friend Asanuma, Shingo, you name it.) And so long before either of them had stuck their heads out of denial, their exasperated surroundings had many a time groaned at them to finally fucking be a couple, and she liked to throw fits over it whenever it happened.
'Your girlfriend is upset', someone had called to him just last week, when she'd cried a river over dropped Cremia. These were things he'd barely reacted to anymore. Mamoru-baka and Odango Atama were well known in these parts of little Juuban-dori. Sometimes, he blew her kisses just to be an asshole when someone said something of the sort.
To this day, she had no clue what changed the day she finally put her tongue in his mouth. What made her do it. Maybe it was the fact that Naru and Umino had just gotten together and she felt a little left out, or maybe it was the fact she was in a competitive mood because someone had beaten her high score in the Sailor V game, or maybe because the day had sucked and her test score too and her homework load was a giant pile of untouched and waiting for her once she dragged her ass back home, and it wasn't even that late in the afternoon and she'd already screamed at him two times that day - she did run into him an eerie amount. But, all in all, really, it had been an interaction not at all out of the ordinary, just another day in the Mamoru-baka-and-Odango-Atama saga, it could have been any of them.
Maybe it had just been long overdue.
And so, when she kicked the game in frustration, shoved off to stalk to the counter for a milkshake, it was no surprise he was already sitting in her seat, his chin in his palm and one ridiculously sculpted eyebrow raised and it had driven her all wild.
"Has the mean game been mean to you, again, Odango Atama?" he purred.
"Have you not had enough for one day?" she collapsed in her seat with a glare.
"Oh, but I so love it when we go for Round 3," he said with a smirk, but turned back to his book, because the guy was weird and thought a busy arcade was just the best place to study for one's high school graduation exams. "Maybe you should take it as a sign and do something important instead. Like, your homework."
These were the days she still rolled her eyes so hard. "Oh, bite me," she'd said, and of course she knew he'd take the bait.
"If you insist," he'd said with a chuckle and a wink, eyes flicking up from his book just to mock her even as the waitress - non-Furuhata, that day! Both of which would bemoan the fact for years to come! - wordlessly placed a milkshake in front of her.
For years afterwards, she'd still thought she'd always gotten them on the house for being such a regular patron. It was only a few years ago that Motoki had let slip in conversation in a way that suggested he didn't think she wouldn't know, that even back then it was always Mamoru who had ordered and paid for them for her.
But she didn't know that back then.
"You're such a jerk," she'd mumbled as she pulled the frothy, beautiful milkshake glass to impatient lips.
"So you keep saying," he'd said with a shrug and highlighted something in his book.
"Sometimes I just want to shut you up," she said, followed by a long suction sound of thick, creamy milkshake through thin, striped paper straw.
"Contrary to what you might believe, I'm actually a rather quiet person," he answered almost absently, highlighting another line.
"Can I please be witness to this?" she begged. "Please."
His smile ghosted across his lips and his eyes and were a bit too cocky, but he didn't look up from his book, even when she was studying him so shamelessly, stool swivelled 90 degrees towards him.
"You'd miss me before the day is out," he announced to page 421.
"Oh, you wish," she scoffed.
He shrugged. "Who else would save your shoes from such careless misplacement?"
Another line highlighted.
"You know, being nice would do you good in life," she retorted dryly.
Finally, he looked up at her. "I assure you I'm plenty nice, Odango."
She wrinkled her nose in distaste, and stabbed the whipped cream that had sunken halfway down her milkshake glass with her straw. "Oh yeah? Because I have concerns about that."
He downright grinned, the ass.
She'd glared at him and leaned a little closer, because that was obviously the right move when one claimed to get rid of someone. "C'mon. There must be ways for me to shut you up."
"You could try throwing nikuman again. That worked," he grinned.
"Briefly," she shrugged. "But I'm hoping for something to get you and those hideous clothes out of my face for good."
He chuckled, tilted his chin at her with those eyes that were too… too… Ugh. "Wanna talk me out of them again, yeah?" he smirked.
Her glare was thrown so fucking hard, and he had the gall to pucker his lips to throw her one of those mock air kisses, and she kind of wanted to punch him.
But it also made her eyes widen in sudden realisation. "Kiss!"
It didn't make sense, of course, and he shouldn't have known what she was saying there, and yet he did, and he snorted. "You'd never kiss me."
"Why," she asked, her whole body swivelled toward him, her hands on her stool as if ready to propel her forward. "do you finally agree that you're revolting?"
He smiled. That sexy, small one with the eyebrow, the one she'd so much later in their life drop her panties for oh so willingly.
"Hm," he'd said in that cocky voice when he was too sure of his success. "You wouldn't be able to take it, Odango."
She rolled her eyes and threw him a look, the arrogant bastard. "You're so conceited," she threw in for good measure.
He shrugged, smirked, leaned towards her.
She froze for a second, because… because… because it felt like he was leaning in and she'd been more talk than anything, really.
But he didn't. Not really. He did it not to kiss her, only to mock her. And she hated the way it made her heart pound in fierce regret.
But what he said was kinda worse.
"Go ahead then," he smirked at her, full challenge, daring her. His face so very close, as if he held it out to her on a silver platter, his eyes twinkling with all the 'you wouldn't do it. No way you'd do this.'
He even puckered his lips again in another air kiss, the asshole. His eyes were laughing.
Her glare must have withered her face, permanently sketched some lines in it. "What, you don't think I would?" she bit out.
He snorted. Retracted his face back away from hers. "Never," he said with a laugh. "You'd sooner—"
Usagi plunged in, rigid, determined fingers clawing at his lapels and pulling him down by his ugly green jacket and almost off his stool, and with his shock barely having time to register on his face before it was on hers, she flew from her own stool and up to her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his.
It was her first kiss and he was clearly not responding until suddenly he was. Until suddenly, he shifted and warm hands pressed against her hips and pulled her closer and between his legs on that silly stool. Until suddenly, his lips moved against hers, careful and trembling and brushing oh so smoothly, and he just kept going. Going and going and going, and his face tilted to the side and his warm palm moved to press against her jaw and her cheek and her neck, and when she hummed and coaxed his lips open with her own, it didn't cause any protest at all.
Way, way later, Mamoru would say that if she hadn't done that, if she hadn't kissed him like this on that day, it would have taken them years to get together. That this kiss was what had short-circuited his brain and turned it to some sort of relative enlightened pudding (because he would always be an asshole and playfully use her words against her). He would confess only so much later how he hadn't slept that night at all and had felt her kiss on his lips like a phantom imprint on his skin as he glared at his ceiling instead and re-evaluated everything he had ever said to her.
Without that kiss, he liked to say, they still would have gotten together one day anyway, he was sure of it; he liked to say she was inevitable for him, after all. But that without that kiss, he wouldn't have understood it so soon, so shockingly, so very, very suddenly.
Before, he'd always been so derisive. So cocky and self-assured and saying things that couldn't have been flirts, they couldn't, yet turned out they kinda were.
But after that kiss, he'd behaved downright peculiar. Absolutely, completely, grotesquely weird.
He didn't insult her anymore. He didn't smirk at her. He called her Usagi. There was that one time two weeks after 'the incident', when he'd stepped into the automatic doors of Crown, froze right upon passing the threshold once he'd spotted her, blinked… and then simply turned back around and left.
Only in hindsight she'd understood that afterwards he'd simply been shy.
It would still be a little while away until she could read him like a book, and at this point in time, he'd been the most confusing mystery. A mystery that suddenly behaved politely around her and buried his hands in the pockets of his pants. New pants. Pants that were suddenly not the atrocious kind anymore that she'd called out for almost a year of knowing him and making fun of his wardrobe, among other things. Pants that had obviously been bought to look good, to flatter and impress.
He'd been flustered mess and she just hadn't known.
It was when she'd sat on one of the stone boulders at the edge of little Kimi-chan square waiting for Naru to get out from cram school, noisily slurping the last remnants of her strawberry milk from a juice box she'd bought at Seven Eleven around the corner, that she watched Mamoru across the street repeatedly turn into the road that would eventually lead to her home, turn back around and walk down the street he lived instead, only to change his mind and change directions once again.
He did that at least three times before she called out, and she was confused.
"Baka!" she finally shouted across the road.
He'd jumped at her voice. Turned around as if in slow-motion, with wide eyes as if he'd been caught at something mortifyingly embarrassing. His gaze held hers for a peculiar while, as if debating, before he eventually jogged across the road and stopped a distance away from her, his hands shoved back into his peculiarly well-chosen pants.
"What are you getting so worked up about?" she asked, completely nonchalantly, her heart wasn't beating a mile a minute, no, no, not at all.
His eyes flashed and he looked back towards her crossing.
"Nothing," he mumbled. And then he glared, shook his head, and spoke again. "Are you…" he started, swallowed. Hands out of his pockets, brushing against the sides of his pants, and back in. "...Are you gonna be at… at Crown tomorrow?"
She frowned. "Probably, yes."
He threw her a look. "No. No, I meant..." he grunted, visibly frustrated, and rubbed a hand over his face. "I meant are you… would you… Ugh—"
But he broke off again with a groan. "Why am I so bad at this?" he grunted into his hands, barely audible.
And her heart had dropped right into her shoes.
Because…"Wait," she'd shot out wide-eyed. "Wait."
Yes, what had him so worked up. She'd been so terribly shocked to find out it had been HER.
"Are you asking me out?!" she'd shrieked.
His flush had been adorable. "What if I am?" he'd mumbled.
She'd flushed, too, blinking, and he'd misread it, because of course he did.
"Right," he'd snapped, snapping back. "Forget it. I didn—"
"Ok!" she'd shouted at him.
He'd been as shocked as she was apparently.
He did take her out, then. The following weekend, he picked her up at home at 11am to the dot, when her father was at work and her mother was grinning a bit too much, and he took her to 'their' park, to Arisugawa-No-Miya Park, and rowed her in a boat. It was cheesy and adorable and embarrassing and they didn't quite know what to say to each other for the longest, awkward while until Usagi said something stupid, he made fun of her for it, she glared and punched him, and he kissed her.
She'd gone to bed that night thinking her heart might explode from all that rumbling in it, and when she saw him again she took his hand and kind of never let it go.
She'd been surprised, really, at the level of unwavering commitment this stoic, prissy, nerdy, perfect man hid under that quiet, careful exterior. The way he loved without fear and reservation, even when it made her so nervous in their first years when he just wouldn't ever use his words to tell her so.
And while he apparently and so very silently had decided she was destiny, she'd been insecure sometimes, about this. Way more insecure than him, in hindsight. Worried he'd turn around and finally understand that there were women out there better matched to him. Older, more sophisticated, less ridiculous women.
But when, one day, about one and a half years into their relationship, when they were out with her friends picnicking at the botanical garden that he just happened to know that gardener at, and she later found him in that giant, pretty greenhouse talking to this silly, lovely man with these ridiculously many children, and he… said these things… her heart was suddenly calm and for the longest while had never worried again. When that kind man with the army of children and that happy laugh had told her Mamo-chan that there was nothing more important than family, and she'd frozen where she stood with sudden panic for her love, because oh no, don't say this to my Mamo-chan, he doesn't HAVE any family… and yet instead Mamoru had smiled, small and shy-if-you-knew-what-to-look-for and nodded? And then later blushed? Blushed so hard and so red and nodded when the gardener asked whether Mamoru already had someone he wanted to be his family… Usagi had never doubted him again.
And she did get him to use those words, little by little. Later.
And so, she moved in with him the second she had graduated, by which time he was joking about red strings of fate and off-handedly saying things like 'this would look good at our wedding'.
And really, it should have all been a fairytale, their love story, if she now wasn't keeping things from him. Important things. Terrifying things. Confusing things. And suddenly, once again, she was worried if there wasn't someone out there who was better for him. Who didn't lie to him. Who didn't endanger him. Who didn't blush at the way too smooth lines and way too blue eyes of fucking Tuxedo Mask and his fucking pretty thighs like a floozy.
Godfuckingdamn.
So, turns out, superheroing was scary, terrifying, time-consuming stuff.
Right now, she should have been at a turbo fancy sushi restaurant with a group of tourists from Hokkaido, and meeting up with Mamo-chan afterwards. Instead, she was sprinting away with her heart in her bladder from a bunch of scary looking slime minions - which just grew again when they were cut in friggin half by her - on a fucking cruise ship because space restriction was just the thing she needed right now, and a youma who could control water of all things to top it all off, because this just couldn't get any better.
Why. Why her?! Why couldn't Luna just find like, anybody else to do this job? Ugh.
One of the slime monsters struck her foot and she fell, except at the last possible moment, she could grab the railing of the ship.
With a loud, shrill scream on her part, she lunged herself upwards and away—
And immediately hit a hard, warm chest.
"Eeeeek!" she screeched, and grabbed on to hard bicep and trinkety fabric.
One thing was for certain; as irritating as he was, he was also terribly useful. That guy really, really, really had her back.
"Sorryyyy," she yelped just as he let himself drop straight down to the hull of the ship and skillfully away from a bunch of slime monsters. It kinda felt like when a particularly mean rollercoaster plunged you down a 90 degree fall.
Completely out of reflex, she kind of grabbed at him like a monkey and screamed, and he flexed his gloved hands around her to hold her a little tighter.
"Oh, never hesitate to jump into my arms," the douche said with a wink at her, when he landed absolutely elegantly with spread knees and Sailor Moon in his arms as if it was friggin nothing.
It really didn't help at all that Tuxedo Mask seemed to be hellbent to flirt her right out of that fuku for some reason. Or that he was good at that, the smooth fucker.
It was infuriating.
And also, by now, absolute routine. She barely sent him a glare anymore, simply leapt from his arms and moved into a fighting stance, because the slime monsters were back.
"Ready for another round?" she shouted at him against the roar of the waves crashing in on them.
But he was standing right behind her, much closer than she'd thought, his voice that flirty, low rumble.
"Ah, you know I'd do all the rounds with you," he purred, and moved into a stance absolutely mirroring hers.
She blinked. Almost missed the next opening because that was… that was something so Mamoru-baka to say and Tuxedo Mask did this often, and when she whipped her eyes to the side to throw him an incredulous look, his eyes were full of expectation.
What a weird, weird coincidence.
Also, those coincidences kinda kept collecting.
Like two days later, when stupid Jadeite came with his bi-weekly entourage once more, and Usagi simply had enough.
"Of course, he'd pick the most gorgeous person as his target," Tuxedo Mask sing-songed in her ear in lieu of a greeting when he lifted her out of the broken remnants of a theater stage on the outskirts of Motoazabu.
With narrowed eyes, she walked up the destroyed planks with his assistance. "Are you calling yourself gorgeous?"
"No," he rolled his eyes. "He was targeting you, you adorable idiot."
She whipped her head around to throw him a glare and promptly fell into the next hole.
She squeaked and fell on her ass and Tuxedo Mask's annoyed face over the hole really didn't help her mood.
"One day I really wish you'd watch where you're going," he said with a proffered hand she absolutely ignored.
"How would you know I don't?" she glared, when she lifted herself out on her own. "You don't even know me."
Tuxedo Mask knelt on one knee beside the ruptured woodwork she was crawling out of when he said the most scandalous thing yet.
"I know everything about you, Odango Atama."
Sailor Moon stumbled a bit in her step and would have almost fallen again if this way-too-amused and way-too-gleeful utter jerk didn't catch her arm, and she gaped at him furiously because.. Because…
… Odango Atama?!
He smirked, turned to her - so close, so weirdly expectant - squeezed one of her hair buns, and winked and…
That was Mamo-chan's pet name, how dare he?
"Don't call me that!" she screeched and his face fell as if he'd expected something else.
But the back of the stage exploded out with the screeches of the youma because well, they still had a job to do, and she ran after it.
"You love it when I call you that," he mumbled and she whipped her head back around.
"Only my boyfriend gets to call me that!" she yelled behind her and charged at the youma, but not before she caught his absolutely misplaced 'Duh'-face.
Other times, Tuxedo Mask really was weirdly, intuitively astute about her. Almost uncannily so.
"I bet you're really boring in everyday life," she'd said after the FM No.10 thing, legs dangling from the rooftop of the Radio Station because it was way after Midnight and Mamo-chan would be asleep anyway, and Luna had told her to find out more about Tuxedo Mask because she thought he might be an enemy, and so she lingered.
He snorted, and scooted the littlest bit closer as he gazed down at her with that infuriatingly amused smile - and she was pretty sure he wasn't even aware he was doing it.
"What makes you think that?"
"You flirt like someone who sorts their books alphabetically," she judged, because he did. She knew his type. He was her type…
Though she'd deny that, of course. Her only type was Mamo-chan.
He chuckled. "I do do that."
"See?" she said proudly and with a little jut of her chin in the direction of the stars - and away from him. "I get your type. I bet you can't tell how I sort my books."
"By color," he shot out, directly. "Though you don't have so many."
She shot her gaze at him, shocked, and the jerk just smirked. "Mostly romances. Some cute guide books," he guessed at her, tilting himself in that way again. It was a little like gravitating, really. "And then there's the shojo manga. That's one's a vast collection."
She gaped at him, then closed her mouth with a snap.
"Nope," she lied after a while, and her face heated awfully even as she got up. "Got me totally wrong."
She blushed even harder when, looking back at him after a distance, he still sat there with that same amused smile, watching her go.
She pressed her lips together and frowned. Because nope. Nope, nope, nope. Never.
She was still pressing her lips together when she'd detransformed somewhere near their apartment building, grumbling, and Luna padded out from like, somewhere.
"Tonight went well, I think!" she exclaimed happily in her nasal little voice. "You're getting better and better, Usagi-chan!"
But Usagi kept frowning at the illuminated asphalt, deep in thought and irritated, following the shadows of the street lamps with her frowny face as she walked.
"Why do you think he keeps flirting with me?" she almost growled at the street, lost in thought.
Luna's face whipped to hers in confusion and Usagi's face to hers.
It was then that her face probably dissolved in 'Oh no'-face.
"Oh no, Luna!" Usagi yelped, horrified, and stopped in front of darkened Honululu Coffee.
It must have been alarming, because Luna jumped a little. "What?"
Her hands flew to her cheeks. "What if he's into me?"
And with that Luna kind of collapsed, and threw her the dirtiest, most annoyed, most 'duh' look she would have thought a cat capable of, and groaned.
But that was no good, because—
"Luna," Usagi said more vehemently, more direly. "I think Tuxedo Mask is into me? OH NO?!"
With a long sigh, Luna hopped onto the narrow staircase of the residential building she was passing and tilted her head at her charge through the orange metal bars.
"Usagi-chan," she announced with All The Scold in her voice, "you have more important things to worry about than Tuxedo Mask."
But Usagi really wasn't listening. Instead she started walking way too fast, way too agitated, and Luna couldn't help but hop after her.
"I'm not into Tuxedo Mask!" Usagi lamented, a bit too loudly for like, 2am. "I'm only into Mamo-chan!"
"Like finding the other Senshi," Luna continued, a little louder.
"He's not gonna get between Mamo-chan and me! Never!"
A long kitty sigh. "Or the princess and the crystal."
"Mamo-chan and I are destiny you know?!"
Luna's sigh was more of a groan as she padded behind her. "Actually, your destiny is finding and protecting the princess. And the Crystal."
Usagi glared petulantly, as if she could glare right at her culprit, didn't slow down as she smashed her key into the door of their apartment complex. "I'd never betray my Mamo-chan! Ouch!"
And then she missed, hit her knuckles against the door, and shook the pain out, before she tried again.
Luna shook her head, mumbling, and just left her behind. Usagi couldn't take her up to their apartment anyway.
"You're into me," Sailor Moon glared at him the next time she was in his arms. Which, honestly, happened a bit too often, really.
"I am," he said, smiling, but it was that mocking one, that 'gee, what ever tipped you off,' one.
She punched one of the zombie-like horde-people who was making grabby hands for her throat in the solar plexus, sidestepped, and continued her conversation. "You know I'm in a committed relationship," she grunted.
"I very much do, yes," he said from somewhere behind her with a chuckle in his voice, and GuH why was this always so amusing to him?!
She whirled around and glared.
And he threw her a fucking air kiss, the jerk.
She whirled back, and hurled her tiara up in front of the crowd. "You obviously don't know what it's like to be committed," she screeched just as the youma howled and dissolved.
Tuxedo Mask looked on with an impressed shrug and loosened his stance, and all the mind-controlled people dropped at once.
"What makes you think I don't?" Tuxedo Mask asked with that obnoxious little half smile, turning to her.
She stemmed her hands in her hips just as the first people started groaning, energy obviously returning. "Do you?" she challenged, suppressing the urge to go up on her tiptoes like she would when Mamo-chan was being this obnoxious.
"I do, yes," Tuxedo Mask said easily.
And it threw her completely off guard. Why would he… We did he… What?!
"... do you have someone?" she asked. Incredulously, shocked.
"I do," he smirked at her.
What?!
Her face must have been flabbergasted surprise. What an asshole. What a playboy. Hadn't he just said he was into her? Was this a sort of joke to him? Or was this his idea of committed? What the hell?!
"How long?" she shot out, mustering him up and down, her face reeking of shock.
"6 years," he said with a small, private smile and too eager eyes.
She recoiled, then narrowed her eyes, fingers digging into her own hips, and more people roused that they completely ignored.
"Tell me about her," she said as in a challenge, as though he must be lying.
His lip turned up into a quick grin before he schooled them again, and he turned to leave. "Are you assuming the gender of my partner now?"
"Them," she corrected with pursed, tense lips, and followed him. The House of Fortune turned out to be just an empty storehouse without dark magic, and the street upfront was already turning blue with sirens, but they went out the other way.
"She's gorgeous," he said, and she rolled her eyes, both for the gorgeous and the gender-assuming when she'd been right.
"Of course, she is," she scoffed.
For some reason, that grin just flitted back across his mouth. "She's got the most infectious smile and the most disarming pout."
Sailor Moon frowned, even as he hopped the dead-end low wall, and reached his hand out to her to assist her. She didn't take it, simply hopped after him, and he smiled even wider.
"She's unconventional," he simply continued, now under the light of a street lamp, "and passionate. Wears her emotions out for everyone to see, absolutely unapologetically."
And then he stepped up towards her a little, looking down at her, and she studiously ignored the flip in her belly. "She's got the biggest heart in the world."
And then he came too close, again, and two gloved fingers brushed along the strands of her hair that blew against his tuxedo in the wind. "She has the most peculiar hairstyle," he said to it, smiling.
She glared, but didn't step back. Instead, she raised an eyebrow. "More peculiar than mine?" she asked.
He smirked, shrugged one shoulder too attractively, grinning too much. "I'd say about the same."
Her frown almost hurt it was so tense, but she finally took a small step back, and promptly stumbled a bit over something behind her. Stupid curb, stupid heeled boots.
"Terribly clumsy," he continued with a small smile to her feet, as he reached out to steady her, almost endearingly so.
And then his hand moved to her chin, a gloved finger running along her jaw and she cursed the shiver it caused to spark along her skin.
She swatted his hand away.
His lips twitched in amusement. "Surprisingly powerful, especially lately."
Finally the penny dropped. Wait. Her jaw unhinged and she almost sputtered. "Wait, you're describing ME!" she shouted at him.
His grin turned wider, almost triumphant, and he stepped back up to her, even closer now, his chest now almost touching hers. "A bit oblivious," he said with the smirkiest smirk yet, tilting his head down at her.
She gaped. The gall of this man!
"Tuxedo Mask, I TOLD YOU I HAVE A BOYFRIEND," she hissed, and pushed at his chest.
He groaned. Face to the sky. Exasperated.
She folded her arms tightly. "This isn't very feminist of you, let me tell you! To keep hitting on a woman who says she's not interested in you!" she scolded.
He sighed, as if he witnessed a great loss, or the way Mamo-chan did when she didn't get something. "Yup," he said with a small, defeated smile. "You're very right. Proud of you for that."
Huh?
In answer, his smile turned a little softer, a little regretful. And then he tipped his hat at her and left.
"Hey!" she turned to call after him. "Does that mean you'll stop?"
But he'd vanished.
She growled after him.
But he did stop. For about a week and two days. Then they had a mind-controlling ghost bride youma to deal with and an army of her enslaved grooms.
"Hm. Nope," Tuxedo Mask said when he ducked out from under the veiled youma's grasp. "Sorry. Already gonna marry her," he joked, thumbs to Sailor Moon.
Who stomped her foot, enraged. "NO, HE'S NOT," she yelped to no one.
"Hm," he grunted at the youma, still trying to fight her off with his cane. "She'll be so deliciously mad at me once she gets I'm right."
"You're not even my type!" Usagi screeched just as he'd gotten away.
He landed exactly in front of her, smirking down at her.
"Oh, I'm exactly your type."
She felt everything in her body flush at that look, and herself falter into silence.
She was terrible. She was so, so, so terrible. She didn't deserve to even look at Mamo-chan anymore.
And that hadn't even been the worst.
There was that time when he caught her as she fell from the beams of Tokyo Tower, and that little hushed, comforting, sincere, "I got you," rushed right down into her core.
"You don't," she'd grumbled, and made it even worse. Because when he turned to her with a small smile and put her so very modestly back on her feet, and said, "Oh, believe me, I got you," and then disappeared with a wink?
That stayed with her. She dreamed about that. She dreamed about that while in Mamo-chan's arms, and when she woke up, she kind of wanted to scream, and to pay penance.
But penance never came. It only got worse. Like her mind spontaneously replaying Tuxedo Mask's words when Mamoru whispered into her ear in the same husky tone.
"Hm, you can't escape my charm," Tuxedo Mask had purred one night after one of the longest fights, when they were exhausted and his filter had seemingly like, vanished, if it ever had been there.
"You wish," she'd scoffed.
"You don't. You'll share my bed forever," he'd said with a tired, cocky grin to her appalled face.
"In your dreams," she'd defended herself and her too hot cheeks.
"Hmmm," he'd hummed in adieu, "Always."
And she remembered it. To her deepest shame, that very night, Mamoru whispering in her ear in bed, the most scandalous things he'd ever said to her in bed, and she thought of that. And flushed. Terribly. Terribly, terribly, terribly.
She was happy. She was blissfully happy with Mamo-chan. She would never. But it didn't help to know that in like… a parallel universe where she wasn't already with the most perfect man in the world? … she'd have jumped that man and his ridiculously shapely butt and his ridiculously, appallingly smooth Mamo-chan lines on some random rooftop on Day Three.
And then she choked, hard man on her and hot tongue against her throat, because in her mind, the thing she'd imagined Mamoru saying, groaning, moaning under his breath had been, "See? I told you, you're in my bed. Forever."
Even when it couldn't be.
There you go! I'll see you soon with the last chapter, and I hope you like this! Reviews are love and keep me sane!