Disclaimer: I own nothing in this story but the idea and the title.
"Mmmm," Michiru murmured, giving a lazy grin. "I'm all sleepy again."
"Oh, no you don't." She felt the weight on her back shift as she giggled. Haruka's hands dug deeper into her flesh, massaging between her shoulders where violinist tended to be tense. "Don't you dare fall asleep."
"Oh, but I just can't keep my eyes open." She stretched and yawned like a very content cat. "Just a little nap… Oh!"
Haruka released her earlobe from her teeth. "Wake up, sleepyhead."
"Why? What will you give me?"
Soft breath brushed against her ear, and she burst into another peal of giggles. "Haruka!"
She rolled, oversetting her lover and knocking her aside. Haruka fell, laughing, onto the bed beside her.
"You are awful!" Michiru shrieked, beginning to pummel her with a pillow.
"That's not what you said fifteen minutes ago," Haruka shot back, trying to catch her wrist. "Stop!"
"That's not what you said fifteen minutes ago," Michiru parroted, before tossing the pillow aside. She inched across the mattress on her elbows to lay her head on Haruka's chest. "This was a really good idea."
"Agreed." Long, tan fingers combed through tussled aquamarine hair. "We still have an hour before we're supposed to join the others…"
"Haruka," Michiru began in a warning tone.
"And we won't get a chance like this again in a while…"
"Don't even think it! We should probably shower before we meet up with the others." Michiru wrinkled her nose playfully. "You're all sweaty, you know."
"You, on the other hand, look amazing."
"Nice try, but I know you, Ten'ou Haruka," Michiru interrupted. "If we start something right now, you won't give a damn about the time, and then we'll be late, and the girls will send a search party, and I'd like to maintain their innocence a little while longer, so don't get any funny ideas, 'cause I'm getting in the shower."
"Wait!" Haruka caught her arm as she tried to rise. "What about naptime?"
Michiru gave her a sideways look. "Can I trust you to behave yourself?"
"Not in the least."
"Then no!"
Trying unsuccessfully to hide a grin, Michiru rolled off the bed. She slipped her robe around her shoulders, her cheeks reddening as she felt Haruka's rakish gaze following the lines of her body through the thin silk. Still, she couldn't resist swinging her hips a little as she padded away towards the bathroom.
"Can I at least watch?" Haruka called plaintively.
Michiru did not even deign to answer, rolling her eyes and laughing silently. She really is terrible.
She's also the best thing that ever happened to me, her heart whispered. What would I do without her? Could I even survive?
The whole day when Haruka had hardly spoken to her had been one of the longest, loneliest of her life. If it had been longer, Michiru felt sure her heart would have broken.
Tossing the robe aside, she looked in the mirror and winced, then smiled, at a kiss mark on her thigh. "I suppose I don't have to worry about that now."
"Michiru, you locked the door!"
"You said I couldn't trust you!" she called back, starting the water. "And apparently I was justified!"
"You're a tease!"
"You're insatiable!"
"But don't you love trying?"
Closing her eyes, Michiru shook her head. "Haruka, give me fifteen minutes and you can have the bathroom. For now, go down and make us some coffee."
She heard the other woman begin to walk away, grumbling, "Like she's ever been ready in fifteen minutes."
Seeing no reason to prove her wrong, Michiru left the bathroom in a cloud of steam forty minutes later, securing her headband. "It's all yours!"
"Now I have ten minutes, and probably no hot water!" Haruka wailed.
Michiru took the cup of coffee from her, and kissed her cheek. "Hurry, or we'll be late."
Haruka dashed past her, and Michiru watched her run by, sleek and naked, until she slammed the door. Chuckling to herself, she took the cup and headed downstairs.
She walked through the living room, flipping the music from Haruka's pop CD to her own classical. Sipping her coffee, she walked into the kitchen, scanning for a piece of fruit to eat quickly.
Haruka makes the world's greatest coffee, she mused, taking another deep drink.
A hand grabbed her from behind.
"Gah!"
Spraying coffee onto the refrigerator door, Michiru doubled over into a coughing fit. It took her several moments to clear her breathing passage of searing hot liquid, and several more before she could gulp in enough oxygen to straighten up and look behind her.
"Hotaru! What are you doing here?"
"Gomen, Mama!" the young girl cried, stricken. "I know you and Haruka-papa wanted to be alone. I didn't mean to-"
"Oh, no, sweetheart!" Michiru set her cup aside, coughed again, then bent down to Hotaru's level. "You just surprised me! I thought you were with everyone else!"
"Setsuna-mama wasn't feeling well, but Mamoru doesn't have anything for stomachs, and we do, so I said I'd come and get some." Hotaru stared at her with a trembling chin. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I know you don't get Haruka-papa to yourself often."
Michiru shrugged a little, embarrassed. "Maybe not recently, but once things calm down a bit-"
"I mean, I know she's always so busy with her car, or, well…" Hotaru shrugged guiltily. "I love Papa, I do, but sometimes it just makes me a little sad for you."
"What do you mean?"
"Just the way she's always talking to other pretty girls. Doesn't she know she has the prettiest girl of all?"
"Oh, sweetheart!" Michiru laughed. "Papa's always been a bit of a flirt. I know she loves me."
"Good!" Hotaru sighed. "You know so much more about her than I do."
"We've been together a long time," Michiru reminded her, rising and turning to the sink for a cloth.
"And in all that time, she's never once given you reason to doubt her?"
She paused, the rag hanging limply in her hand. "Everyone doubts sometimes…"
"Haruka never doubts you. Why should she? You've never given her reason to wonder, have you?"
Michiru's hand fell heavily back into the sink. Her whole body felt strange, almost like her mind was drifting just above and to the side, not quite connecting. The textured paint on the cupboard seemed to dance in the yellow light.
"I trust Haruka…"
"Of course you do. You love her. You want to trust her. But should you?"
Her breathing quickened, her heart slamming into her ribs. Something seemed to be very wrong. "Hotaru…"
"Watch her, Neptune. You have eyes only for her, but you lover can't keep her eyes to herself. So what's to stop her hands from following her eyes?"
The paint began to spin, to swirl into shapes, almost like human forms. Michiru swayed a little, watching.
"She love's me…"
"What does love mean to her? Doesn't she love to play with the others, making them blush, making them giggle? Doesn't she love to show off, to prove how many girls she could have? She could have almost anyone. What's to stop her?"
The room had gone black. She saw only the glowing figures before her eyes, twisting together, writhing in pain or passion.
"She wouldn't…"
"Why not, when you've been so obligingly blind?"
A hundred women writhing together, caressing each other, devouring each other…
"She couldn't…"
"Why not, when you've made it so very easy for her? Think, Neptune. What are you to her, really? Another pretty face? Another easy conquest?"
"I… I just…"
Haruka's face on the figure in the center, her lips red as she feasted on so much succulent flesh…
"It's not true…"
"Remember the truth I have told you, Neptune." A hand pressed hard into the small of her back. "Remember!"
"Michiru, love, have you seen my black pants?"
Her whipped around at the sound of Haruka's voice.
"Nani?" she called back in dazed confusion.
"My black pants!"
Michiru threw the rag down. "How the hell should I know?"
A long moment of silence, then, "Never mind, I found them."
"She didn't even hear me," she growled.
"Michiru-mama, is something wrong?"
Hotaru stared up at her with dark violet eyes full of innocent wonder.
"Oh… nothing, sweetheart. You said Setsuna wasn't feeling well?"
"Whose not feeling well?" Haruka walked in smiling, straightening her shirt. "Hotaru! What are you doing here?"
"Setsuna-mama needs some medicine for her stomach, and Mamoru didn't have any," she explained simply.
"Ah. Well, here we go." Haruka pulled the pink bottle out of the cupboard, and handed it over to Hotaru.
"Arigatou, Papa."
"Anything for my favorite girls."
Michiru slammed her coffee cup into the sink, making her partner jump. "I thought I was your favorite girl."
Haruka laughed, brushing her hair off her shoulder. "Can't you share me with Hotaru and Setsuna?"
Angrily brushing her aside, Michiru growled, "Whatever. Come on, Hotaru, we're going to be late."
"Michiru!" Haruka caught her arm and pulled her back. "What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing's wrong with me."
"Are you implying something is wrong with me?" Haruka asked.
"I am not your mother, I don't have to stand here and spell it out for you! If you can't understand my feelings, that's your own problem!"
Turning, she marched out of the room, leaving her lover standing there in utter confusion.