Author's Note: Happy Monday! Is anyone else feeling overwhelmed by life lately? I hope your support system is helping take care of you if so. The good news is, writing is a form of my self-care, so BOOM: new chapter LOL.

Thank you so much FloraOne for all your wonderful and super helpful feedback (sometimes I wonder how many ways I can say 'seriously, you're the absolute best,' but I'm going to keep trying to find new ways of saying it!) and big virtual hugs to everyone who has been leaving me reviews! Your comments make me giggle and I am loving the heavy split between those of you who feel like Mamoru is an idiot and not worth the trouble and those of you who are like 'omg just talk to each other, he clearly loves you!'

Which party is correct? I guess you'll have to read on and find out…

Chapter 6 – A quick taste of air

"Kanpai!" Usagi raised her milkshake, clinking the frosty glass against four others.

"Congratulations, Usagi-chan!" Mako cried before taking a sip through her straw.

"Yes! Usagi-chan, this is truly such an achievement, and we are so proud of you."

Usagi forced a smile in Ami's direction. She hadn't told the girls just how she'd gotten the job, too embarrassed to admit she hadn't actually achieved anything – that they'd settled for her.

She kept the smile pasted on through a chorus of 'Yes, well done!'s and a round of applause that felt wholly unearned.

When the cheers didn't die down right away, she shoved a greasy handful of fries into her mouth, hoping the pause to chew would be enough to make her cheeks stop hurting from holding that fake smile.

"See, Usagi," Rei said as Motoki came over with a round of burgers for the table. "This is proof that when you actually try, you're able to accomplish things. Now if only you could apply that philosophy to everything in your life..."

"Statistically, effort does make up about 75% of achievement, but it is also important to account for factors such as luck and privilege. There's no shame in failing at something, as long as you gave it your all and you learned something from the experience."

Rei rolled her eyes. "Says the neurosurgeon."

"In training! And besides, being a neurosurgical intern makes me particularly qualified to comment on this phenomenon. Sometimes, a surgery goes poorly and it's no one's fault. That doesn't mean I should hang up my stethoscope and drop out of medical school."

"ANYway," Minako sang, swirling her straw in her shake. "Today is all about celebrating Usagi-chan, so after dinner here we'll all go back to our place to get fancy and pregame, and then I have a table reserved at Tantra Tokyo at 9pm to start the afterparty. Bottle service and burlesque, heck yes!"

As the other girls whooped, Usagi's smile turned genuine for the first time that evening. Deserved or not, a Minako bash was cause for celebration in and of itself.

"Soooo, Usa." Minako turned too-knowing eyes on her, scooting her chair about a foot closer. "Since you're single and all, you'll need a date for the afterparty, right?"

"Um." She shifted in her chair, swirling the milkshake straw in her glass. "Yeah, I guess."

"Great!" Minako tossed her sheet of golden hair over her shoulder and lowered her voice ever-so-slightly (causing Rei to roll her eyes). "My friend Takara-chan is in Tokyo this week for a shoot, I thought the two of you might hit it off. She's super fun and crazy pretty, and a pretty good cook, too. She's going to meet us at the club tonight, and maybe if you like each other you can get dinner or something later this week…?"

"Well…" A few months ago, Usagi would have immediately sprung for a date with a model who also happened to know how to cook. Now? Now, she was trying to figure out how to get out of it without inviting unwanted questions from Minako.

Stupid Mamoru.

"She, um, sounds really great, Mina-P-"

"She's so great. I think you'll really like her."

Usagi inhaled sharply. "I'm sure I will, but-"

"Ahem."

Usagi jerked her head up at the sound of a throat clearing to find that Mamoru had appeared between their table and the sliding glass doors of the Crown, his face completely impassive.

Her chest collapsed on itself. How much had Mamoru heard?

She pushed the thought from her head, calling herself fifty words for ridiculous. As far as Mamoru was concerned, she was a free agent. He wouldn't care if she dated a hundred of Minako's friends.

"Ami-san… mentioned…" he muttered, setting a sparkly pink gift bag down on the end of the table and burying his hands in his pockets.

Usagi's eyes went big. Was that… had he…?

Minako snatched up the bag and passed it down the table, and when it landed in her lap, Usagi positively melted. Mamoru had gotten her a graduation gift?!

Her greedy hands slipped into the bag, pulling out a red envelope. She ripped it open and blinked down at a pair of gift certificates for Hakuyosha Dry Cleaners.

The happy flutter in her stomach died.

Mechanically, she pulled open the gift bag. Bunching up the glittery tissue paper and dumping it on the table, she drew out a powder pink blouse with a large bow on the chest and a silky peach one dotted with tiny white hearts.

He cleared his throat. "For, uh, when you start your new job. You'll need something other than the recruit suit, right?"

It was eminently practical. It was so Mamoru. And yet, some part of her was devastated.

She hadn't been foolish enough to let herself hope that he'd maybe gotten her something romantic. That wasn't their dynamic. She wasn't that naive. But when he'd shown up uninvited with a present…

Plastering a smile across her face and consciously derailing that train of thought, she looked up at him. "Thanks, Mamoru-baka. And these are surprisingly not horrible. Did someone help you pick them out?"

The smile turned brittle the second she processed her own words. Oh, hell.

He raised his shoulders, all casual nonchalance. "Sorry, Odango. I can't reveal my source."

It twisted low in her belly, a feeling of such regret. Even with all her stalking, she'd somehow missed this. When had he gone? Where had she been at the time?

And somewhere below that, something else flared: How dare he bring some other girl with him to pick out something for her?

Her cheeks flushed hot, and she dropped the tops back into the gift bag, her mind teetering on a precipice and looking for somewhere, anywhere to steady herself. "Um. I have to run to the bathroom."

Hoping nobody noticed the way her ankles wobbled, she darted down the little side corridor and, after finding both bathrooms occupied, let herself into the supply closet instead. Pressing her back against the door and her hands to her cheeks, she prayed that a few moments of deep breathing – some imitation of that meditation thing that Rei was always on about – would be enough to recalibrate herself, to fight down this horrible, unwelcome feeling.

Her eyes snapped open to a knocking on the door.

"...Usagi? Are you in there?"

Her face scrunched and she violently shook her head. She couldn't deal with him, not right now.

But Mamoru was almost twice her size, and a superhero besides, and so when he pressed on the door her paltry weight wasn't enough to stop it from opening.

He stepped into the tiny storage space, his feet settling across from hers on the checkered linoleum where all this had started. With a shuddering inhale, he tipped his face down to the floor before looking up to meet her eyes. "Did I-? Are you upset?"

There was a moment's pause in which they both stared at each other, and then Usagi attacked.

Launching herself at him with a growl, she fisted her hands in the lapels of his stupid ugly green jacket. Using all her strength, she jerked his face down to hers and crashed their lips together.

As if by instinct, his hands came up to cup her face – but she shook them off, unwilling to settle for his faux-tenderness, the illusion that he cared.

No, instead of letting him touch her, she pushed his arms down so she could strip his jacket off of him, nuzzle her face into the soft cashmere at the dip of his shoulder. Her fingers curled in the hem of his shirt, itching to feel his skin, and tugged up.

He raised his arms, helped her pull the sweater over his head. He was leaning down again to kiss her before the fabric even hit the floor.

Her fingers clawed his skin, nails biting into the naked muscles of his arms. She nipped at his lips with a trembling inhale, pulled his tongue into her mouth with her own. She bit down, wanting to draw every last bit of him inside her, keep him there forever.

Rather than explore that urge, she broke the kiss, buried her face into the heated curve of his neck. She bit down on his collarbone, moved up so she could suck his rapidly beating pulse into her mouth.

She wanted to stamp herself into his skin, leave marks of possession all across him so the other girls would see: Mine, this is mine.

His arms reached up again as though he wanted to trap her, and she couldn't bear it. She pushed him away.

Running her tongue over parched lips, she took a step back from him, her chest heaving. Her nipples pebbled against the thin fabric of her bra as she watched the way his eyes followed the rhythmic up-and-down of her breasts. He looked dazed, almost hypnotized.

Something bubbled deep in her belly, an impulse to dominate his mind, to make him look and think only of her – to make him as crazy as he was making her.

The bubble burst in a surge of desire, sending her teetering forward on unsteady legs, dropping to her knees. She dug her fingers into the muscles of his ass as she painted a stripe down the hard lines of his abdominal muscles with her tongue.

With a strangled groan, Mamoru's hand shot out, clicked shut the lock of the closet door. "Motoki's going to kill us," he whispered, letting the possible consequences of this moment hang in the air between them.

She brushed it aside, busying her fingers with the zip of his pants. An electric shock fizzed down her spine as she nipped at the flesh of his belly button, dragged her teeth over to his hipbone. Let Motoki catch us.

His fingers threaded into her pigtails as she drew him out of his boxer briefs. Pulled tight in a way that made her catch her breath as she pressed her tongue to the underside of his cock.

He was salty as she drew him into her mouth, her fist curling tight around the base of his dick.

She traced her tongue up his length, pausing to draw a little circle at the head, before bobbing down again to meet her fist. Then, she repeated the motion a little faster.

Mamoru's answering moan went straight to her pussy, and she couldn't resist drawing the next one out as long as possible, intoxicated by the way he tried to stifle his groans.

For a few minutes she let herself play, testing different pressures and speeds, memorizing the way Mamoru's breath changed in response. Once she had found a rhythm she liked, she chanced a glance up – and felt her core quake.

Mamoru was staring down at her, pupils blown so wide that she could barely see the outline of his hazy-blue irises. His face was slack. His lips were wet.

"Fuck," he breathed, and an intense swell of power zinged through her nerve endings.

In this moment, with his dick caged between her teeth, he was helpless. He was hers.

"Usa- Usagi. I'm gonna…" He tugged on her hair, but she wasn't ready to stop.

Instead, she fluttered her tongue against the head, sucking hard enough to make him hiss.

His hand snapped to the shelf behind them, clutching it so hard he must have left imprints in the stainless steel.

He came in a gulping gasp, a warm burst of bitter salt against her tongue that she swallowed down. Her fist squeezed along his length, and his keening moan somehow mangled her name beyond any recognition.

Or maybe it wasn't her name at all.

The thought was a tiny pinprick in her satisfaction, just big enough for all the heady power to drain out of her as she tucked him back in his pants and climbed to her feet.

Wiping her mouth against the back of her hand, her brain finally began to catch up with her runaway hormones.

They hadn't used a condom.

The knowledge was a thunderstrike, a horrific and embarrassing revelation.

She'd been so preoccupied – and had such a small frame of reference – that it hadn't even occurred to her until too late that they should have.

Feeling like her entire body had just been doused in cold water, she sucked in a breath and raised her eyes to look at Mamoru, expecting a stern lecture – but he was in no position to give it.

For once he was the boneless one, leaning precariously against the metal supply shelves with his eyes tight shut. His bare chest was moving steadily, and she realized he was still trying to get his breathing under control. His teeth dug into his lower lip, as though he might be trying to hold back a smile.

It was that expression, more than anything else, that made her think he hadn't worked out just what she'd done yet – but she was pretty sure she didn't want to be around for that conversation when he did.

Feeling like a coward, but preferring that to the alternative, she checked her clothes for any evidence of their tryst before unlocking the closet door, preparing to beat a hasty retreat back to her friends.

But her hand paused on the door handle, her manners getting the better of her. "Oh, um… thanks. For the tops," she said, even though she already knew she would never ever wear them.

Then, she pushed out of the room and back into the clamor of the arcade.

Mamoru didn't come back to their table before he left – didn't even let her see him sneak out. It didn't bother her, though. Mamoru could do whatever he liked. Really, this spared her the trouble of dealing with him. She didn't care.

She didn't believe herself.

Two weeks later, and she was getting unbelievably sick of that blank look in Mamoru's eyes.

She'd tried everything she could think of. Models. Redheads. Thick girls. Thin girls. She'd been Desi, Black, Western. Elegant and brainy. Tall. Cute and athletic. Short. She'd scoured the depths of the Internet – not something she would recommend – and Mamoru had yet to give her more than a passing glance and a polite, but firm, rejection.

If she didn't know exactly how diamond-hard he got over her boobs, she might have wondered if he was gay.

But April first was looming, she had absolutely no leads, and she was lying awake more nights than not with her heart beating to know – it seemed it might be time for a drastic measure.

Getting up impossibly early on yet another Tuesday morning because she hadn't been able to sleep, she'd followed him across Azabujuban to Tokyo Metropolitan Hiiro Hospital – but today he'd stopped just outside the main doors. He was talking to a tiny brunette woman, and Usagi was trying not to chew off every one of her fingernails.

Sucking in what she hoped was a fortifying exhale, she ducked behind one of the trees and pulled the disguise pen from her shorts pocket.

"Moon Power! Turn me into a handsome boy!"

A blinding series of sparkles later, a short-haired, flat-chested, cargo-pants-clad Usagi popped out from behind the shrubbery just in time to see the girl give Mamoru a sweet smile and his arm a flirtatious squeeze.

Bingo.

Slipping the pen back into her now-roomy pocket, she put on her best dude-swagger, sauntering towards Mamoru and the brunette.

Her timing was unusually good today – as soon as she got in earshot, the brunette gave a little bow and said "It was great to see you, Mamoru-kun."

"Yeah, you too," Mamoru replied, though Usagi was pretty sure his smile didn't fully reach his eyes.

As the girl turned and made her way down the street, Usagi sidled up next to Mamoru, digging her elbow into his side.

"What a cutie, huh?"

Mamoru jumped about a foot in the air before turning to look at Usagi with an expression of utmost bewilderment. There was a long pause, and then he seemed to decide just to go with it.

"Who, Saori-san?" He blinked, his eyes sliding to the retreating back of the girl he'd just been speaking with, eyebrows furrowed slightly as though he hadn't ever looked at her like that before. Then he shrugged, returning his attention to her. "I suppose... if you're into that."

"Who wouldn't be into that?" she said, gesturing after the girl with one hand. "What, you got a girlfriend or something?"

Someone less attuned with Mamoru's emotions would have missed the way the tips of his ears turned pink. "...Or something, I guess."

She went utterly still, all the oxygen whooshing out of her lungs. When she'd first started digging, she hadn't thought this far ahead, hadn't let herself imagine Mamoru liking someone – it had almost felt like too much just to picture him with someone else physically, but to know that some other girl had managed to break through his ever-present protective shell?

Did she make him laugh? Was she one of those brainy types, a doctor or a med student? Had he slept with her yet? Did they cuddle after, instead of Mamoru ignoring her for his stupid medical journals? Or maybe she read medical journals with him.

Maybe he wanted to marry her.

Nausea roiled in her belly. She looked down to find her hands shaking worse than they had the first time she'd faced down a youma, then looked up again, her mouth fumbling and trying to formulate some excuse – but Mamoru had already disappeared into the hospital building.

He hadn't even looked back at her.

AN: So, in case you didn't know, next Sunday (7/25/2021) kicks off UsaMamo week, so I'm taking a little bit of a break from TRU to focus on that. If you're not already, please do subscribe/add me to your author alerts so you can see when I post for that, and head on over to Tumblr to see all the other awesome works by authors and artists in our fandom! Antigone2 (IdesOfNovember on Tumblr) is running the event and will be compiling all the contributions for UsaMamo week on her dash for easy access. Be sure to give her some love and thanks for making these kinds of events possible!

Also puts on public health hat, yes, you should use some kind of barrier protection method any time you're having any kind of sexual contact (oral, anal, vaginal) with a partner who you are not monogamous with and/or whose STI status you do not know! Yes, this means people with a penis should wear a condom even when they are receiving a blowjob. Not everyone knows that (and it definitely isn't modeled in porn), so just making sure to share.

Hope you're having a safe and happy July, and please get your COVID vaccine if you haven't already!