"How was your patrol, my noble warrior of the night?"
Misaki Shokuhou's teasing question was glazed with sugary affection, and she approached her partner with open arms. Kuroko practically fell into the cuddle that was offered by the blonde woman.
"Mm, I think I'm too exhausted to say." Kuroko replied into the taller girl's chest. They stood in the space between the kitchen counter and the comfy, auburn sofa in the living room. "It might be best to have a look inside." She offered with a tired voice, implication dancing across her tone.
"Hmm, only if you're sure, dearest." Misaki spoke from above her girlfriend, placing a kiss atop her head. "Though from the soot you are leaving on my gown…" Kuroko recoiled.
"Ah! I'm sorry!" She said with an energy that could only be produced by a guilty shock, temporarily leaving the loving woman's grasp. Misaki smiled and brought the teleporter back into her hold, patting her head once more.
"No no, it's okay sweetie." She said adoringly, untying the girl's red ribbon, allowing her tea-coloured hair to reign free. "Ah, even when fatigued, your affection ability never wanes!" Misaki continued, her quirk of boiling down people's mental attributes as 'abilities' popping up for the first time tonight. Kuroko pouted a little, though it held no actual frustration or embarrassment. After a few moments, the Level 4 Esper spoke up through the gown that pressed against her face.
"Mm, it was a rough night." Kuroko returned to the prior topic quickly. Misaki hummed, fiddling with the green and white striped Judgement armband attached to her partner's blazer. The colours clashed with the dark blue of her university blazer, and it bothered Misaki just a little.
"Indeed…" She partly removed her embrace of Kuroko to reach for the remote that rested on the kitchen counter behind her. She just about reached it. Kuroko shuffled a little in her grasp.
"I've said it before but, I know you use it to reassure me more than anything, it's okay."
Over the past few years, Misaki's accuracy and control of her Level 5 power had increased, meaning she could far more often go without her varied collection of remotes and pointers.
"Ah, but I would rather not prod into the wrong places, silly." Regardless, the mind reader still preferred to use her remotes in regards to Kuroko, and even just on a general basis. 'Mental Out' was a powerful ability, very intrusive and prone to accidental brute force use. For the moment she would use the remote most closely aligned to memory and social interaction, and she tended to make a show of what remote she was using at the moment towards Kuroko.
'Category, 44.' Aligning the signal end of the remote towards Kuroko's head, her internal voice focused on the very specific action of reading through the teleporter's memory of the day. Misaki blinked, and time seemed to stop as the memories flowed into her mind.
Seemingly upon her eye-lids a set of scenes played, all from the point-of-view of Kuroko Shirai.
First was her waking up from her fitful slumber, full of aches and pains from a rather troublesome headache that refused to go away. Then came a reflection of Misaki herself, lying alongside her partner, with her starry eyes returning Kuroko's sleepy, yet warm gaze.
Misaki could not help but reminisce on that morning too, and the tender touches and holds that slowly turned passionate and heated. Even with her pains and the weight of so much on her shoulders, Misaki could feel the love that oozed from Kuroko's psyche, overpowering those burdens and strife.
'Ah, she forgot her pills…' Misaki noted as the pair departed the dark and cosy bedroom for the bright and spacey living room and kitchen.
Then came a sweet breakfast, cooked between the pair. The odd bump or two of hips, the feeling of Kuroko smiling just a little at it, then the tapping and kissing of feet and toes beneath the dining table. Then her departure and promises of a safe return. Misaki could feel the determination within Kuroko to fulfill that.
The rest of Kuroko's day had gone as usual. A quick lecture on quantum physics, the start of her Judgement patrols, so on and so forth. Continued frustrations at the sudden arrival of the new girl in her branch, and the never ending, bubbling adoration for Misaki to temper her frayed nerves and sore temples.
Misaki felt the whirlwind of emotions within the memories were like a boiling soup with too many ingredients. Extremes upon extremes, compounding with Kuroko's physical exertions.
The Level 5 wondered how much that contributed to these headaches…
Then night came, and the disturbances and actions of the night flooded through her own mind in a detail akin to the highest definitions a television set could output in these ever advancing times.
The teleporting, the screams of the victim and the charred, broken remains of his body following a dazzling, awesome explosion. Misaki was as used to these sights as Kuroko, given her past with the darker side of the city, but even she found herself a little perturbed by it all.
'Hmm, interesting…'
The cameras were down, apparently. And the smell in the air… maybe Kuroko did not process it properly, owing to her tired and fatigued state at that moment, it reminded Misaki of something. She couldn't put her gloved fingers on it, but there was a familiarity to it.
The whole situation was odd, she and Kuroko could agree with that, and it fed into the string of other unusual activities that Kuroko had told her about in the past few weeks.
"So you think it might be related to the other attacks?" Misaki asked, opening her eyes and finding that only a few seconds had passed. Kuroko was still there and nestled within her chest, her own eyes closed but lacking the strain that Misaki had feared they may have held after her mental probing. The teleporter nodded slowly and softly.
"I happen to agree." Misaki said. "You have not told me about the details of those ones, besides the initial encounters; any similarities?" She asked curiously, delicately prying Kuroko away from the comfort of her hold.
"Ah, yes, I had forgotten." Kuroko stated, allowing herself to be unlocked from her partner. Misaki was quick to reassure.
"Don't worry about that." She said with a smile. "Why don't you jump yourself into bed and I'll bring you some tea and nice little pastry?" Misaki winked mid-sentence, making a cheeky reference to the Level 4's power. Kuroko rolled her eyes at the little pun, but smiled a little in return.
As well as that, the teleporter hummed and nodded in agreement. Kuroko desperately needed to lie down and coxed to a blissful sleep. She turned around slowly, hunching just a tad as she walked towards the bedroom.
"Ah, and I will get your pills out, do not worry my brave angel~" Misaki beamed out from behind Kuroko, and she could sense the relief in the fact that the girl could simply collapse onto the bed. The blonde figured she'd have to be undressing the exhausted student too, but those words did not need to be spoken given the obviousness of them.
Misaki could hear a contented and thankful coming from her partner, and the teleporter slowly drifted toward and into the bedroom. She did not bother to turn on the light, and Misaki watched as the girl faded into the darkness.
Turning on her heels Misaki returned to the kitchen counter, but paused before pouring tea from the fresh teapot.
Her hands landed on the counter, shifting to the edges before her. She gripped onto it, and began to think to herself, a strained frown appearing on her brow. A feeling washed over her as her thoughts returned to what she had just seen through Kuroko's memories, as well as the patterns that seemed to be emerging through the weeks.
Something was off.
She lacked the details from the follow ups, but seeing, feeling, smelling the memories that Kuroko had within her from these incidents… it unnerved her.
Then the headaches. The headaches came out of nowhere, throwing a wrench into everything. It endangered Kuroko, and the source of it? Misaki just did not know. The reason escaped the starry-eyed Queen, and she did not want to dig around just in case she made things worse. They had been persisting for a couple of months now, and flared with intensities that unsettled her. She had her theories, and each one troubled her, but nothing seemed solid… nothing seemed fixable without exacerbating the issue. The correlations between one theory and the other, intertwining yet splintering apart, only to reconnect...
Misaki did not like the feeling of being out of control.
Things had been going so well with the teleporters fast tracked enrolment into university and her rise up the Judgement ranks, and their personal relationship had reached new and new heights. Now this 'illness' of sorts arrived, and two strong possibilities lay at her feet...
But for the moment, Misaki would simply focus on the now. She was her girlfriend! Kuroko needed some tender loving care after such a long and tough day out on the streets, and the next step would be to bring her some of that fresh herbal tea she had been brewing, as well as a few French pastries to dine on. With the fine china and teapot already on the dining tray, she rounded the counter to take some of those fresh pastries from the cupboard, removing them from their packaging. Placing them down next to the tea cups, she picked up the tray and headed for the bedroom.
As she entered the dark room she used the light from the living room to navigate herself towards the drawer by the bedside, placing the tray on top of it on the space beside the fancy lamp. Once done, Misaki turned on the lamp, and an orange hue erupted into the room. It unveiled an exhausted Kuroko laying flat on her stomach, with only her head turned to the side in order to breathe, her feet hanging off the end of the bed. Misaki figured that Kuroko was not asleep just yet, but with her eyes closed she would have to prod her a little to make sure she did not suddenly lose consciousness completely.
"Kuroko dear~" Misaki whispered, bringing a knee up and partially landing onto the side of the bed. "Tea, pills, snacks~" She said in a cutesy voice, rubbing her partners back slowly and lightly. Kuroko hummed, opening her bleary eyes, slowly bringing about the energy she needed to raise herself up to a more reasonable position to refill on her liquids and put a little something in her stomach.
Kuroko twisted around, using her position in the middle of the bed to her advantage. When she found herself staring up at the roof above her, she was now directly adjacent to the drawer, and the side of her hip rode a little on Misaki's knee. Misaki shifted with a smile and helped the teleporter bring herself up to the pillows, allowing herself to be perched into a far more convenient sitting position.
From here the smell of the tea and fresh pastries grew a little stronger, mingling in with the honeysweet scent of Misaki. Her weary, half-closed eyes brightened a little at Misaki's ever reassuring gaze, and Kuroko smiled as the girl reached over to peck her on her forehead.
"There, not even my powers can match the potency of my kisses✨." Misaki winked, pulling away and making a peace sign with her fingers. Kuroko giggled lightly at the absurdity of the near-nineteen year old woman being so goofy, a woman with the ability to bend, control or destroy the minds of a dozen people in the blink of a starry eye and the push of a button.
"Ah, yes, I would know all about that." Kuroko said teasingly. Misaki scoffed, shaking her head at the slightly lewd implication of it. The blonde turned her attention to the drawer, and the teleporter's eyes naturally followed the little actions that Misaki conducted. Picking up the teapot she poured the hot tea into the cup, being careful not to let the lid fall off and ruin what was a very comfy and romantic moment between the two.
"Mm, jasmine?"
"Mhm, your favourite." Misaki replied to the almost rhetorical question. They both enjoyed the small talk between each other, so any little reason to talk, even for the briefest moment, would be taken. She took hold of one of the small croissants and offered it to Kuroko, who kindly took it from her hands.
"Now, before I get some wipes for your face…" Misaki trailed off as she reached down for the top drawer, taking out two sets of pills, one set of which being for her headache. Despite their seeming inefficiency, the targeted painkiller did seem to do a little in tempering the pains that plagued Kuroko's skull.
After unscrewing the tops of the prescription bottles and setting the correct dosage onto the tray, she placed the bottles back into the drawer, pushing the shelf back into place slowly so as to not create any unnecessary noise. In the meantime, Kuroko had been chewing on the small snack, eating it up quickly to fight back against her protesting, empty stomach. She had not eaten much today with all that was going on, so she found it nice to get something down her throat.
"I'll be back in a moment, take the pills if the tea is cool enough to drink, okay?" Misaki asked, though it had the undertone of a loving demand. Kuroko smiled in response, lightly brushing her own hands and fingertips to rid herself of any crumbs, letting them fall onto the fall beside the bed. Misaki headed off towards the bathroom where the wet wipes were hiding.
In the meantime, Kuroko sat there, reaching for the teacup and holder, but not before taking hold of the two sets of pills. She placed them beside the teacup and brought the saucer towards her chest. Staring down into the cup, past the steam that rose from the hot liquid, she saw an ever so slight reflection of herself, and she almost gasped as she examined her features.
Her mouth ajar, she could see just how much soot was staining her cheeks and the rest of her face. She looked over the rest of herself, seeing just how much dirt was on her uniform, and she worried that she was staining the bed. Turning back to the tea though, she could see more than just the ashes of the wreckage she came across not too long ago.
The bags under her eyes seemed far more pronounced than this morning. Perhaps they were being amplified by the soot that had made a home in her pours, but even from the imperfect reflection that the light, bright tea provided, she could see her eyes were seriously bloodshot. Again, maybe it was from the aftermath of the explosion, but a part of her doubted it.
She looked so ill .
It almost shocked her to the core, and more surprisingly still was the lack of reaction from Misaki over it. Maybe she was just being courteous, not wanting to rub in any salt onto her relatively fragile psyche as of late.
But still…
"Kuroko?"
The teleporter nearly jumped, and the tea in the cup made circles around the fine china, almost spilling over the edges. Kuroko noticed the deeper look of concern on Misaki's face, and her starry, golden eyes had a far more serious look to them. Kuroko rushed to try and allay any worries she may be having.
"Sorry, sorry." Kuroko said suddenly, taking the pills from the saucer and placing them in her mouth. Had she noticed the light gasp that came from her girlfriend, she would not have drank the entirety of the still burning hot tea to wash away the medication. Her eyelids crunched together as the burning and stinging in her mouth struck her like a knife slicing through delicate skin, and she could hear the rushed footsteps of Misaki closing the distance between them.
"Silly! I said to take them if the tea is cool enough!" Misaki admonished, reaching the bedside and placing her freehand upon the temple of Kuroko. Closing her eyes, she focused her attention on ridding the teleporter of the stinging in her mouth, temporarily subsiding them until the morning at least. Misaki sighed and so did Kuroko, both in relief but for different reasons.
"I know you forgot them this morning, and I know you don't look too well right now, but please try not to worry about that." Misaki said, trying to reassure her partner from the thoughts she had inadvertently picked up while disconnecting pain sensors in her brain. "I'm not going to love you any less for being ill."
"I know… really I do." Kuroko replied as Misaki tenderly massaged her head, trying to calm her nerves and elevated heart rate. "I'm just sick of these headaches interfering with everything in my life." The teleporter opened her eyes, looking to the side to see the caring gaze of her girlfriend.
"You need to take some time off from your Judgement duties." Misaki suggested, even if she knew what the response was going to be.
"I can't do that, there's too much going on right now."
"Then your studies?"
"I can't risk it since this was a fast tracked enrolment, they will kick me out." Kuroko could not budge, she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Taking time off of Judgement while deep into the investigations of the past few weeks could endanger the branch, her friends, even the city itself. Even with other branches and Anti-Skill on the case, Kuroko did not feel comfortable in abandoning the case.
Then there was the schooling. It was still too early in her education to ask for a break, for special dispensations of the like. With the Judgement matters currently optional - but not to be abandoned - and herself not injured enough either…
"You are seriously hurting yourself Kuroko." Misaki continued, though her comment felt vague. "Pushing through this…" She trailed off, wincing and unsure of what to say. Kuroko picked up on it, and her head tilted slightly as curiosity rushed into her emotional state.
"Pushing through..?"
"Gah, just…" Misaki grimaced. "I don't want you to make a mistake, an error in your calculations." Misaki argued, the volume in her voice diminishing into a nervous mumble. "What if you get your leg broken or stuck in the ground?"
"Ah, even if that happened, it's just about not panicking." Kuroko countered, shaking her head. However, Misaki continued.
"What if you teleport your spikes into an innocent bystander?" It was a decent argument, but:
"Even at my level, I can't teleport an object into someone's A.I.M. field-"
"And what if it was someone outside the city, without it activated?" Misaki interrupted, frowning and seemingly upset. Kuroko looked away and sighed a tiny sigh.
"Misaki…"
Suddenly the atmosphere in the room changed. What was once loving and welcoming, suddenly the bedroom became a place of discontent. Misaki knew exactly what Kuroko was thinking now, and she did not need to read her mind to know that. It was a topic they had discussed long ago, several years in fact, and which reared its ugly head every now and then.
And Misaki knew that she was the cause of it.
Suddenly she remembered the wet wipes she was holding in her other hand, and crunching of the plastic prompted her to place the packaging down onto the bed. After doing so she reached for the cup and saucer that Kuroko was holding strongly, said hold collapsing into nothing once Misaki placed her gloved hand upon Kuroko's bare one.
"...I'm sorry." She spoke timidly, gently taking hold of the empty tea cup and the tiny plate that held it. She placed it back onto the dining tray before continuing. "I know how much this means to you." She turned her full attention to her girlfriend, but not before taking off her slightly stained gloves. It was a rare thing for her to have them off, so the meaning was not lost on Kuroko.
"Mm… and I understand your worry, I really do." Kuroko replied, turning her own gaze back to Misaki's. The two smiled at each other with understanding, even if they disagreed on how to tackle the issues as of late. Kuroko wanted to push though, Misaki wanted her to rest. Each had conflicting reasons that put them in a deadlock, but that was just how it had to be.
Misaki shook away the nagging thoughts and spiking urge to do something about it, instead opting to reach for the wet wipes once more, taking one out of the packaging. Bringing it to her partner's face, she began to wipe away the dirt that had accumulated. She sought to return the beauty of her girlfriend, even if those bloodshot eyes and heavy bags beneath them betrayed it. A few minutes passed as Misaki diligently worked on the teleporter's face, ridding it of the soot and dirt that plagued it, moving between that and her hands. Every few moments their gazes crossed and eyes locked, the genuine care between them evident to see.
"I'll be okay in the end, don't worry." Kuroko said finally as Misaki cleared up the last few splotches on her face and hands. Misaki paused ever so briefly, but resumed as if she had not. Kuroko was too tired to notice, her eyes resting and breath escaping her slightly parted lips.
"Mm, I know." There was just a hint of hesitation in her voice.
After that it was time for undressing, and Kuroko was still fully attired. She had not even taken off her blazer yet, and the green and white striped armband was still snugly wrapped around it. Misaki herself was all set and ready, but Kuroko was a different story.
Slowly but surely the process progressed. First came off the blazer, with the armband left attached to it. Kuroko had spares and she would need them, as these ones were in need of a thorough wash.
Then came her shirt. While it was mostly spared of the dirt and grime of the action Kuroko encountered, it was not spared of the daily exertion her body went through. Misaki slowly unbuttoned it, starting from the top. There was no real reason for being so slow, but the blonde would be lying if she said she did not peek at the teleporter's taut stomach during the process.
She would be rewarded further as she took the shirt off completely, leaving the girl only in a sports bra, as well as uncovering the arms that could break her like a twig if allowed.
"Hey."
"Shush you." Said Misaki, blushing a tad, and Kuroko hummed a small chuckle. The skirt came off next with little fanfare, though Misaki was keen to tease the girl back by brushing her fingers along the Level 4's thighs.
That earned a little flick to her forehead, which was returned with a pout.
With the clothes carelessly discarded, to be put into the wash basket tomorrow, Misaki tucked Kuroko and then herself into bed. Tonight was not the night for anything strenuous, and having remembered from her mind reading that Kuroko would take the morning off, Misaki was keen for her partner to get as much sleep as possible.
"Good night Misaki."
"Mm, good night my brave teleporter."
Misaki turned off the lights and went to cuddle her girlfriend, taking the position of the big spoon for the night. She rested into the back of her partner, breathing in the sweet strawberry scent of her hair. She held onto her teleporter tightly.
The absence of light hid her concerned, fretting emotions, and her starry eyes beamed into the back of Kuroko for hours into the morning darkness.
