I'm back to some of the prompts I got on Tumblr a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to FloraOne for this one; hope you like it! And also, appropriately enough, the rating for this collection just shot up a bit :).
It was familiar, the dread that crept up on Mamoru when the morning light filtered in through his curtains and warmed his face.
In their past, it had been a cruel reminder of just how forbidden their love was, a directive to hurry and feign normalcy, lest they be discovered. Help her sneak away. Be seen by no one. Ignore the pang in his heart when she slipped from his embrace and disappeared. Go about his day pretending he didn't spend the night inside of her, her small hands gripping his ass to guide his movements where she wanted them, her breathless mewls in his ear and echoing into his very being as he tried to muffle his own cries of pleasure against her neck.
Now, the morning made him dread facing his own cruel mind, battling the thoughts that had tortured him since Galaxia. He opened his eyes and looked over Usagi, still fast asleep on his chest, to the glowing blue alarm clock on his nightstand. 5:07 am.
Most of his mornings had been like this lately, his fear and guilt urging him awake to face another day of exhaustion before he'd even gotten out of bed.
This time, when Galaxia had ripped his star seed from him, Usagi's name on his lips as he drew his last breath, he didn't want to tell her to live her life without him. To find a cool boyfriend, be a normal girl.
He'd wanted to beg her to wait for him. To believe that he could somehow claw himself through the depths of hell and back to life just to be with her. To hope that fate would give them yet another chance.
And it did.
But he could never forgive himself for making her think he'd given up on her.
They hadn't talked about it. The same way they'd never talked about that horrific night in the clammy caverns of the Dark Kingdom; they were again too relieved to be back in each other's arms to dwell on their recent nightmare.
The first time, he'd just lightly brushed the pad of his finger against the pink, heart-shaped diamond of her ring while reaching for her hand, and he flung his hand back as if he'd been scalded, pretending to swat at an imaginary mosquito on his jacket at Usagi's quizzical look.
When he touched her ring, he felt a pain that seared his soul. He felt loneliness. Despair.
All hers.
Usagi didn't take the ring off much. But each time she did around him, he tried to take the opportunity to hold it, even if just for a minute, before she put it back on.
He needed to know.
She washed her hands, and he felt the hot metal of an empty mailbox in the sun, felt her insecurities pile on as she bit her lip and wondered about his day.
She scrubbed a dish, and he heard the tinny sound of his answering machine, over and over, felt the brief relief at hearing his voice immediately followed by a longing ache in her heart.
She put lotion on her hands, and he saw his name traced in sad condensation on a window, felt her growing hopelessness as the days rushed by.
Just last night, Usagi was taking a bath at his place, and she'd left her jewelry on a small dish on his dresser. Mamoru had never had more than a moment to hold the ring since he'd been back. Once he held it in his palm and closed his fist around it, he almost wished he hadn't.
He stumbled and fell backwards onto his bed, overwhelmed and engulfed by Usagi's feelings from when he'd been gone.
A steady ache that wished to see him, to touch him, to taste him, to have him by her side both in the day-to-day and in battle.
A loneliness that constantly cried out for him, but that she hid from everyone else until she couldn't any longer, her throat raw from screaming his name in anguish on a rooftop in the pouring rain.
And worst of all, a despairing belief that he was better off without her. That he had chosen to give her up and it killed her, but that she understood and wished him well and would never stop loving him.
Mamoru choked on his own tears, ones that had seamlessly blurred from Usagi's feelings into his own and dripped down his cheeks and onto his bedspread.
"Mamo…-chan," Usagi emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her body, and trailed off when she saw the ring in Mamoru's hand and her eyes met his.
She looked almost…nervous.
How could she not know? How could she not know, after everything they'd been through, that he could never leave her, that the world could burn around them and he'd be happy as long as she was in his arms?
Mamoru stood and, in two long strides, crossed the room and crushed Usagi to him in a hug. The ring fell to the carpet below them with a dull thud.
"I thought you knew," his voice cracked with emotion. "I thought you knew how much I need you."