So, I had the honor of writing for a friend this festive fic exchange. So, this fic is written for my lovely Daikon! It was a privilege to write for her! (AND I HOPE I DID YOU JUSTICE, LOVE!) Either way, she listed all the following on her personal fanfic wishlist: Mutual pining, Pre-reveal, Evil!Endymion, Happy ending, Banter, and Dramatic Tux moments (like under the street light in the tennis episode). Because I'm a sucker for these things, I tried to incorporate all of these, and managed all but one. You be the one to find out which one I didn't check off, lol. Anyway, adding to the Season 1 AU trend of this exchange lol, HERE'S YOURS, LOVE. I HOPE YOU LIKE IT. I DID MY BEST I PROMISE. (Also please prepare to be frustrated lol).
Thank you (SO SO SO FUCKING MUCH) to Antigone2 for beta-ing this and saving my sanity. My lonely pandemic ass is a mess and my creativity is suffering and she held my hand through various freak-outs. I'm so fucking grateful.
Also, there's kind of a soundtrack for this fic: I wrote it to two songs from Chilly Gonzales' new Christmas album "A very chilly christmas": God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman and All I Want For Christmas Is You, the most haunting piano versions you will ever listen to of these songs, and I advice putting them on repeat for this lol.
(There's also tons of easter eggs in this. Cookie points for anyone who finds some!)
The Chances We Don't Take
A Short Story Written for Daikon in the Tumblr 2020 Holiday Gift Exchange
There were a lot of chances Mamoru hadn't taken in life. Things he'd been too reserved to do, things he'd been too afraid to try. Things that he regretted. Things he could have had.
He could have accepted the chance to go to Harvard. He could have told the middle school teacher who had looked down at him because he was an orphan to go to fucking hell, instead of greeting him politely when he ran into him a few years afterwards. He could have taken a leap of faith and talked to Sailor Moon about the crystal and the princess. He could have gone to the senshi and explained Zoisite's offer with the rainbow crystals instead of walking straight into that obvious trap.
He could have confessed to Usagi. A million times, he could have confessed to Sailor Moon.
He'd go back and do them all if only he could.
But at the time, he'd done none of these. He never had. All his life, he'd played it safe.
He never regretted anything as much as all the things he didn't do.
"I would totally bang Tuxedo Mask," Usagi had said that time, tipsy and red-faced at Unazuki's 21st birthday party, aggressively staring him in the face all the while.
Mamoru sputtered, nearly choking on his Gin and Tonic. What?!
He should have gone up to her and taken her up on the offer. He should have gotten into her space, should have leaned down to whisper with his lips against her ear.
"He's right here," he could have purred.
He could have.
Instead, he'd flushed redder than the worst alcohol-flush of his life, too overwhelmed, too inexperienced, too worked up, and froze as her words did unspeakable things to his poor, overwhelmed, whirring brain.
"In a hot second, I would totally do him. Like, rip off that tux and lick my way from navel to clavicle and then the other way from navel to—"
Mamoru interrupted her in a frenzy. "Uh, could we change the subject?"
Unazuki had sent him that withering look that both meant 'don't be a fucking baby,' as well as 'don't make her stop when it's getting good'.
Months later, he would recall that drunken conversation over and over in his mind and want to slap himself in the face, because he would never know what else she would have said if he'd let her talk. What else she might have been braver than him to try and do one day if he'd not been the one to interrupt her then.
What else would have happened if he'd answered.
It was these moments and so many others so much, much more important than this one— that he would wish to get a second chance at doing over.
So many times, he'd been stupid as a brick. The times when Tsukino Usagi had shown up in weird places she wasn't supposed to be, and then looked at him in that knowing way that she shouldn't, and he'd been too dense to put two and two together, until it was too late.
Those times he wanted to change most of all.
It should have been so obvious. Wherever a youma was around, Usagi hadn't been far. But running into Tsukino Usagi on the regular was a secretly reassuring constant in his life, back when they were both in school just as much as now that she lived in Setagaya. It was an Usagi thing, not a weird thing, he'd later reasoned in his head to defend his utter stupidity. He'd never taken note of it, or perhaps willfully missed it
Like that one time almost exactly a year before everything went to shit. When he'd been so particularly stupid, he couldn't breathe in hindsight.
(Had he acted then, they could have had a year.)
That one particularly dark December night, when after a battle he'd clambered down the side of a building completely covered in festive illuminations (because climbing on top of things somehow had become his thing and having to get down was the unfortunate side-effect) and she'd scared the living shit out of him.
In stark contrast to the rather merry atmosphere the whole thing was intended to incite, Mamoru had just shocked himself on an exposed wire that connected rhythmically blinking lights all across the neighborhood to the thick, black power lines that linked together Tokyo's buildings like a massively-scaled game of connect-the-dots. With the pain shooting through him, he'd been cursing in a sharp hiss of very un-christmassy expletives, shaking out his hand as he dangled off the installation with only one arm attached, a story and a half off the ground.
When her voice broke the eerily colorful silence of a Tokyo winter night so way past last train, he jolted so hard he lost all footing.
"You're not supposed to swear in front of Santa," her candy-voice had piped up so amusedly from directly below, and it had caused him to lose his grip. Falling, he swore even harder.
"Fuck!" he'd yelped, and latched back onto the ice-cold, makeshift metal trellis half a story down as he just so prevented tumbling butt-first to the dark the asphalt below. The whole thing rattled, a row of LEDs came off and clattered to the ground, but Usagi hadn't blinked an eye.
Instead, she gave him another pointed look, halogen color reflecting like starlight off her glimmering hair as she gesticulated towards the plastic red-and-white-clad figure advertising fast food next to her, and …. he blinked hard, first at the statue, then at her, raising both eyebrows.
Obviously, he hadn't expected any company in the dead of night in a sea of closed shops and restaurants. And yet, he found himself responding to her as if he'd run into her any normal afternoon.
"That's not Santa," he deadpanned with an edge, and jumped down the rest of the way - in a way he swore wasn't meant to preen at all, he was just reinforcing a formerly uninjured appearance of grace, that's all. He landed as gracefully as he was able to, with stretched thighs and his knees bent in order to catch his fall from rows and rows of fairy lights snaking up the side of the building, woven through metal and wire, and continued speaking almost without a break. "That's Colonel Sanders in a Santa hat."
She looked like she always looked. Disarmingly gorgeous and absolutely irritated with him.
Usagi opened her mouth in the most appalled, most accusing silent gasp, and yes, it was pretty adorable, so he rubbed his mouth to keep from grinning.
"What? Same thing!"
His eyebrows flew back high, and he looked from the plastic KFC statue chained to the front of the closed building and back to her, trying to gauge if she was kidding. She was kidding, right?!
"Um, no?"
Her eyebrows played the mimicry game and she looked at him as if he was being stupid, then gesticulated wildly at plastic. The Santa hat, the festive red costume, all shrouded in the shadow of night, and her voice was a little shrill in the dead of it. Above them, someone somewhere slid a window shut noisily and pointedly.
"Colonel Santa's!" she said in a tone that conveyed 'Obviously!' and shook her mittens wildly at Kentucky Fried Chicken's Plastic Wrangler of 11 Spices, and his eyes bugged out even harder. "Why do you think we eat fried chicken on Christmas?! Because of Santa!"
"Odango!" It came out somewhere between an incredulous, way too amused laugh and abject horror. "Are you kidding me?!"
But she looked back at him with that 'are you daft?!' look, so sure she was right, that momentarily made him question whether he'd gotten it wrong all his life and she was actually right. After all, he didn't quite remember ever having been told the Santa-san thing as a child.
She didn't ask what the hell he was doing out here at 3 am on a weekday, and he didn't ask what she was doing here half the city away from her home either. None of the questions that made sense. Just gesticulating at a tacky life-size plastic statue informing them to reserve their Christmas orders by Monday, December 7th written on a black-fake chalkboard as he fell off a wall of fairy lights blinking away through the night.
"Are you serious?!" she yelped right back, and this time he snorted right out.
Her mouth popped open in incredulity. "Tuxedo Mask! You can't be serious! C'mon!"
That had been the moment it had all turned brittle in his mouth.
With that, he almost choked on his laugh. Rattled, his eyes flew to look down at himself in terror.
Oh no.
Oh no.
She was right. He'd never transformed back. He'd called her Odango—
"Uh…."
Eyes back on her in frenzied urgency, but her head was simply tilted. Questioning. A slight flush to her cheeks he hadn't noticed before, one he fully attributed to the biting December night.
In hindsight, he should have embraced it. After all, if anyone found out… why not this adorable person he found himself so inexplicably drawn to?
Instead, that night, he'd panicked. He'd kept it together just barely, waited to freak out fully only after she assured him she'd get home just fine with an exasperated roll of her eyes but a soft smile around her lips. But by then, the panic had seeped into his bones thick and sticky, and he ran home so fast he felt his muscles stretch and pull, cape cracking like a whip behind him in an attempt to somehow calm his nerves.
It hadn't worked. All night he'd lain awake and overanalyzed why the hell she hadn't reacted to the moniker he'd so gracefully bestowed upon her. Had bristled at his ceiling, pondering the thought that maybe others called her Odango, too, not just him. Or rationalized that he'd maybe used it so often that it hadn't registered to her.
It had taken him several nights and several days to assure himself she didn't actually know. That if he'd blown his cover she'd have reacted differently.
Still, he decided to show up at her workplace the following Thursday - to see her in person, see if she babbled about knowing anything.
Of course, in hindsight, that was an excuse - he really just couldn't help himself. Deep down, he was too thrilled at the idea of being seen, of being known. It was too overwhelming, too unsettling, so Mamoru couldn't even allow the thought of it and pushed it far away. He did that a lot with the things he wanted most.
He should have walked in there, dropped on his knees, and begged for a date.
Of course, he didn't do that.
He walked up the narrow steps painted in pastel colors barely visible in the golden hues of the early setting sun and placed his shoes in the colorful little shoe shelf. Turning the corner on green socks, he was immediately greeted by a prettily raised eyebrow.
"I got time to kill," he said with a shrug and slapped a half an hour fee into the little orange plastic tray on the till.
Her lips twitched, her hair shining in the glow of the light from the window behind her, and she raised beautiful, white-tipped fingers that barely peeked from the too large sleeves of an enormous woolen sweater. The antique till opened with a loud, rattling ping.
It was fitting, he thought, that the pink sweater - really, it was gigantic; easily could've housed two of her - was adorned by a giant rabbit head, heart nose and embroidered white snout and all. It was frightfully adorable, and he kind of didn't expect less.
A little beige-yellow rabbit hopped onto his sock and sniffed underneath his pant leg distastefully, and he tried very hard not to move his foot.
Reaching down, she slid a bag of herbs towards him, then pulled a big colorful, hand-painted ceramic mug from a hook in the wall behind her filled with rows of hand-painted ceramic mugs not quite like it.
"You spent 50 minutes to come out here because you're killing time?" Her eyes glided over him slowly, a glint to it that was familiar and amused, and he rolled his eyes.
"No, I spent 50 minutes travelling across Tokyo for a chance to see you smile," he should have said. "Please move back to Juuban," he could have added. "You can live in my bed," could have been a clever addendum.
She might have snorted and taken it for a joke and told him some more about wanting to do Tuxedo Mask, until he begged for so long that she realized he was serious.
Obviously, Mamoru didn't do any of that this day, too occupied with things he was afraid of that hadn't yet happened to even allow himself the thought.
He'd sighed in relief, because no, nothing between them had changed. As if that was a good thing, his lips twitched into a smile.
"I came for your fantastic coffee, of course." He'd grinned.
She'd thrown him another eyeroll, but the smile that followed it was fond. Warm. Bright. It tickled in his chest and made pudding of his knees and a desert of his mouth, striking him down easily. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no.
He didn't know. Was this normal? Did she usually smile at him like that?
He swallowed thickly, grabbed the clear bag she'd given him and found a seat not far from her. The little yellow bunny hopped behind him, floofy tail wagging softly with every butt-wriggle of it. It had the slimmest of red collars with the tiniest red bow on it.
The café wasn't crowded at this time of day. A few loud tourists coo-ed loudly at the acrylic wall divider that showed but kept the baby bunnies safe from becoming overwhelmed. Several couples dotted the low coffee tables. A father sat cross-legged on the ground with his daughter in his lap who held a leaf of basil out to a chestnut-colored fur-child in awestruck silence, and promptly squeaked when the bunny started nibbling on the leaf in that happy gurgle of laughter only children could make.
All around hopped little bunnies. Grey ones, brown ones, auburn ones, spotted ones, white ones. Huddling together and racing across the place. Wriggling little noses and chirruping noises in contentment.
He smiled, reached out a hand towards the bunny that had now settled right beside him at a distance, watching him almost critically, and glanced at the wall to his side, searching.
The wall was filled with Usagi's handwriting.
She'd been working here for a while now and her boss adored her ideas, and so they decorated one entire wall. The cards were lovingly handmade, lacking all difficult Kanji, with little doodles and Fuji Instax photos of each rabbit as well as frequently updated news next to their names. Brightly colored cards for Miffy, Duracell, Cupcake, Daifuku, Carrot, Mrs. Fluff, and Shingo just at his line of sight.
Apparently, Mocha has been the most photogenic this month, Chocolate Chip has discovered her love for Cashew Nuts and will eat nothing else now, Nikuman got his shots this week and was very brave about it, and Marshmallow liked to nibble notebooks so please keep them safe from her. This was all the kind of cute that made his heart ache, really.
Usagi named her bunnies overwhelmingly in three categories. Food, Bunny-related nonsense, and people she loved.
It all showered him in a sensation altogether foreign, but filled with chest-bursting affection. Usagi wrote friggin update notes for her bunnies. He was pretty damn sure nobody had ever loved him in the way Usagi loved even these animals alone.
He'd given her hell when she decided to start working in a bunny cafe after school. It was as delightful as it was a fountain of opportunity for their kind of interaction. But god, did it fit her.
He found the photo of his little beige-yellow friend in between that of Skittle and Bun-Bun after a short glance and snorted. She lifted her front paws as if called.
"Minako," he greeted her, and touched her little red bow with the tip of his index finger. "I should have guessed."
She scrunched up her little nose and hoppled away just as Usagi placed his steaming mug of filter coffee in front of him accompanied by a little bunny-head shaped macaron with an 'x' for its mouth.
He looked up too slowly. Trying so hard and failing spectacularly at not letting his eyes trace her form too much before they landed on her face. By the time he returned her gaze, his cheeks were warm, and she pushed that stray lock that always escaped her buns behind her ear.
"So," her tone was all demand, tray folded underneath the fist against her hip. "Why are you here?"
He bit back a smile and took a sip of his mediocre coffee. "Do I have to have a reason?"
"You usually do. "
His eyes flew to her with a smile he couldn't help. "You don't think I wouldn't just show up for your charming company?"
She pursed her lips even over her heating cheeks. "I'd like that." Her hair swirled around her with the tilt of her head. "But you wouldn't."
His shoulders fell back limply, and he frowned at her. "Why wouldn't I?"
Usagi rolled her eyes in that adorably annoyed way that he was so talented to incite in her just as a couple seated themselves at the table next to his under the instruction of Usagi's colleague, a guy in a signature hipster outfit Mamoru never cared to be introduced to.
Usagi shifted from one leg to the other, moved the tray to her front and clasped both hands around it, a pose too much of a shield, and so he'd been frowning even before she'd uttered the absurdity that would come out of her mouth next.
"I'm not in your league, Mamoru," she told him matter-of-factly, and for a second, he was struck senseless.
He stared. And stared. With a rippling sound, he snorted coffee almost out his nose "Excuse me?" he sputtered with a cough and hand raised in front of his mouth.
She shrugged in a way that looked shy. But Usagi didn't do shy.
He jolted a bit when a fluffy butt settled in his lap with one distinct hop.
Eyes falling to his crotch, he found someone he knew.
Bunny was the oldest rabbit they had. Soft fur so light it shone, something between silver and beige. It was the bunny that had made Usagi fall in love with the place so much she did everything in her power to work here. She was also the bunny that always came to snuggle with him whenever he came here for silly, inconsequential reasons, because he always had an excuse at the ready to come over.
When he looked back up, Usagi sat cross-legged across from him, fingers spread on the tray still in her lap. "So what's really on your mind?" she asked. Her smile that patient, lovely warmth that settled in his lungs.
He licked his lips, his forehead tight as he thought of a good excuse, and dragged his fingers through Bunny's fur. When he looked up briefly, Usagi's eyes were watching his hands intently, following every movement.
It stirred in him.
"What's on your mind?" he could have asked, then.
Or,
"Because I want to know if you know all of me, but I kind of hope you do even though it scares the hell out of me," he could have admitted, trying for honesty for once.
"Because you might be the only one I can talk about everything in my life," he could have said, too, "but I'm not allowing myself the option."
"Because I'm kind of endlessly attracted to you even though I'm not admitting it but also to Sailor Moon and it's all a little confusing," could have been his choice.
"You're an absolute idiot what the fuck do you mean I'm not in your league?!" he should have said.
He didn't.
"Why do you think no one recognizes the Senshi?" he had asked instead, trying so hard to warp his voice into something inconspicuous.
Her eyes blew wide, and his own narrowed.
"And, er…" he averted his gaze, scratched Bunny behind her fluffy ears who turned her head in obedient bliss. "Tuxedo Mask."
When he glanced back at her, her gaze was perfectly neutral.
Silence stretched. By the time she spoke, he was unsettled.
"I don't know," she said after a while, slowly. "What do you think?" She moved one elbow up onto the table. Behind her, a pitch-black rabbit sniffed at her sleeve and nuzzled against her.
He licked his lips again, shrugged in a noncommittal act.
"The Senshi don't even wear masks," she said eventually, and he blew out a breath through his nose but didn't look up, kept his gaze focused on the rhythmic motions of his hand gliding through Bunny's fur, granting him an air of nonchalance, hopefully. "You'd think someone should have recognized them. Like, their family and friends? I could buy if they kept quiet. But like… a store clerk… or someone who, like… calls them names and uh… makes fun of their hair?"
He jerked his head up, frowned at her probing look. After a beat, her shoulders fell back almost in defeat, because yes, he'd been a dense fucking idiot, but back than he had been oblivious to why.
"Probably some crazy strong magic that keeps people from seeing what's standing right in front of them and serving them awful coffee," she said with a defeated sigh that left him even more puzzled.
He frowned harder.
She groaned loudly and shook her head.
"So…" Mamoru brushed his tongue across his lips, carefully curating his words. "You wouldn't want to know who Tuxedo Mask is?"
She sighed theatrically, but then she smiled. "I didn't say that."
He pressed his lips together and released them with a pop. On his lap, Bunny wriggled her little floofy butt on him. "Do you, then?"
Her smirk bloomed slowly, stretched across her face attractively. By the time Usagi had started to lean forward, his heart was already stuttering in his chest, and he held his breath.
She reached across the table, scratched Bunny across her fur, and brushed his hand in the process. He jolted almost embarrassingly hard at the slight skin on-skin contact.
It got worse when he lifted his head. Found her bent all the way down towards him, her face awfully close to his, and his eyes couldn't help but stray to her lips. He caught himself immediately, though, flicked them back up to her eyes and hoped she hadn't noticed.
"Why don't you ask him yourself, hm?" she said with an amused tilt of her mouth way too close to his that left him blinking in utter confusion even as she rapped her knuckles on his table, got up and greeted new customers. Two girls in their school uniforms with giddy smiles.
Heart hammering in his chest in a way he hadn't quite allowed it to, he kept watching her carefully as he fed basil to Bunny absentmindedly. He didn't even tone it down. He watched her embarrassingly, obviously up front.
Embarrassing to the point that, apparently, people noticed. While the woman at the next table was busy trying to lure Bunny away from his lap with offerings of wriggling parsley, her boyfriend leaned over to him with a grin.
"You should ask her out," he commented out of nowhere.
He should have. He fucking should have.
But instead, back then, Mamoru had recoiled at this voice of reason with the steady glare of Mind Your Own Business, refraining the urge to look around to see if he could have meant someone else.
"Excuse me?"
Brown hair shook across his brow as the guy nodded at Usagi's back. She was bending down to pick an errant Shingo up and scold him with a wagging finger as if the grey little thing could understand her.
But when Mamoru looked back at his intruder with the deepest frown, the guy hushed an apology and went back to minding his own business after all.
Tracing the little hand-drawn bunny on his mug with a fingernail, Mamoru got up with a start and paid at the till with Usagi's co-worker and left the café before Usagi had the chance to react.
Apparently, he'd given off the wrong impression. This wasn't what he'd set out to do.
And yes, he should have gone home. He almost had.
Almost.
Instead, he'd waited around, loitering around Shimokitazawa until the sun was down and her shift was over and dropped in as Tuxedo Mask, catching her on her way home from work, to gauge her reaction this way too.
Nothing. She acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary, and it had calmed him down.
He forgot to ponder the fact what 'out of the ordinary' even meant. To ruminate on the fact Tsukino Usagi had never acted surprised to see him. That the girl who squealed over any 3-week-hype idol type did not squeal and fangirl when meeting Tuxedo Mask. That she treated him exactly like she treated Mamoru.
He'd never considered the fact she didn't react because she already knew. Or that she didn't react because she had something similar to hide too. Or why it mattered to him that much.
He could have had a year.
The regrets Mamoru had about Sailor Moon were less visceral, less carnivorous, and yet they cut just as deep.
At least with Sailor Moon he hadn't been too stupid to understand that feeling your pulse hammer in your gums at the simplest of touches might not just be adrenaline, even when he'd never pushed the issue. He'd been, after all, as useless at making the first step with Sailor Moon as he had with Usagi.
Yet at least with Sailor Moon, he'd known that lying awake yearning to know her name meant something, even though he never realized his heartbeat hammered the same way when Usagi was up in his face, that her name on his lips tasted like something he wanted to keep.
But Mamoru had always had more experience with yearning for things he couldn't have than for allowing himself the things he could.
Sailor Moon's golden hair glittered with the starlight, too.
"Do you think you would recognize me when we ran into each other? Like, without the mask and fuku?" she'd asked him one night, shifting her face to him on the roof of the building they lay on to watch the moon.
He'd turned on his side and traced the outline of her hair with a gloved finger. Only touching the dirt of the roof and not her golden tresses, and it came back black with soot and dust a dark spot on the pristine white.
"Would you tell me your name if I recognized you?" he asked in return, the words thick in his throat.
Because yes. He did want to know her name. He wanted to write it in neat calligraphy script as he attempted to put in words what he failed even to think. He wanted to hear it called and spoken jovially as he met the people she usually shared her life with, being invited in. He wanted to roll it around on his tongue until he found the perfect way to mangle it just a little, make it his own, a nickname that only belonged to him. Something that would make her nose wrinkle like that when he delivered it with his cockiest smirk.
He wanted to know her name. He wanted to know her.
(And he did know her. He might not know the word her parents had chosen for her upon her arrival in this world, but he knew the important things.
Brave but scared. Open and trusting and pure to the point of charming naivety. Emphatic in a way he'd never borne witness to before, in a way that made him believe in the good of the world.)
Her answering smile was tragically sad and left him puzzled.
Sitting up, Sailor Moon wrapped her arms around her knees in a ways that made him want to drape himself around her so the worry would have no chance to get to her.
"Does it scare you sometimes?" she asked, eyes on the moon.
His heart bounced in his chest. "What does?"
She sighed, long and deep, then found his eyes. Something profound, something genuine making them glassy, and he swallowed hard.
"This," she said. "Everything."
He frowned harder.
"Risking our lives for something we don't even fully understand." Her eyes shifted back to the moon, her arms slung tight around knobbly knees. "The life we're missing out on because it's not quite our own."
He fell quiet for a while, his body growing limp, his head shifting on the cement.
"It's not quite the same for me," he admitted into the darkness.
Her face appeared over his like a vision, and he closed his eyes.
"I've always felt like I've been missing out on everything. Now at least I have a reason to."
He hadn't expected that particular truth to prick at him as much as it had even as his mouth had formed the words.
He kept his eyes closed, listened to the way her breath fanned over his face as she leaned closer.
It took a beat before she spoke, and her voice was a broken whisper.
"If you'd recognize me, I wouldn't need to tell you my name."
He frowned, not understanding. When he opened his eyes back up eventually, she was long gone, and black wispy clouds had blown across the moon.
Because hindsight was 20/20, looking back he could pinpoint the exact day that she must have found out.
Of course he'd be oblivious for the longest while, fall off buildings and argue about a Fast Food Mogul's relations with Father Christmas and let almost one and a half years pass before he opened his eyes, but in hindsight? In hindsight she couldn't have been more obvious.
So, yes. Usagi had a history of turning up where he thought she wasn't supposed to be. But only once she's acted outright bizarrely about it.
The youma that day had laid waste to Jindai Botanical Garden's annual rose show that August. A fight he remembered quite well because, well. It was a rose show. The youma was rose themed. Its weapons were thorns.
'Puns'n'Roses' was the most fun he'd ever had at a battle, and whisking Sailor Moon up atop the glass domed conservatory, he was all wide grins.
"Would you say we rose above it?" he trilled at her, ducking low and brushing his gloved hand between her shoulder blades to push her down with him to avoid being hit by a thorn shower.
Her laugh was twinkling, and by the time Jupiter's thunder had struck a plant-light being to the sound of angry shrieking, he'd carefully lowered her down again.
These battles weren't usually what he'd call fun, no. But that day? Tuxedo Mask had always been Mamoru's dramatic outlet, and that day he'd been able to make the sky rain rose petals when he swooped in to distract the youma long enough for Sailor Moon to blast it to oblivion. With this superhero gig, there weren't often moments he felt truly badass outside of standing on tall things and making an entrance.
When the dust cleared and the petals still slowly flattered to the ground, he'd been grinning from ear to ear. And he took a moment to admire her.
The way she stood there, twirling with her hands up and her smile directed at the sky, laughing in delight in the shower of rose petals in between bushes and bushes of lushly colored blooms of all colors and varieties sparked déjà vu in him so deep it settled warm and almost throbbing in his stomach.
"That was fucking awesome!" she jumped clutching her wand with a whoop and directed a smile at him so brilliant and fond and proud it made his knees a little weak and his mouth a little dry.
He smirked, one side of his mouth quirking up so hard it stretched his lips almost painfully thin.
"You rose to the occasion, yes," he said with a cheesy wink, and tipped his hat at her.
And he was in the process of dramatically flapping his cape to make an exit, but her laugh was so delighted, so beautiful, it struck him helplessly immobile for a little longer.
She bent still grinning, snatched a thick, perfectly bulbous pink flower off the ground where it had not survived the battle, and held it out to him. Thick bloom, mossy stem, three little buds growing off it.
"I was under the impression you had a thing for roses," she said with the purest, sweetest smile that made his breath die in his throat.
He licked his lips, smiled, and did make his dramatic exit just as Jupiter approached.
He'd lingered, though. What was that weird magic of his capable of if not fixing the mess he'd made. Out of sight, he touched the ground, made sure what had been destroyed would grow back plentiful.
And so when he, at last, wandered back through the setting sun and de-transformed lost in thought, he was twirling Sailor Moon's rose between his fingers when he stepped out of the bushes and ran straight into an Usagi who had never looked at him as shocked as she had then.
The Botanical Gardens should have been closed by then. The youma had attacked near closing hours, speakers had instructed evacuation once the screaming had started.
He found his words first, his lips quirking up even easier than usual that day. "Wouldn't have thought you had a thing for gardening, Odango Atama," he quipped, walking up to her. "You're a bit late for the show though."
She gaped. He frowned.
She looked pretty, she always did. He was very sure that pink overall she was wearing was one of her friends', but it suited her better.
And she was oddly fixated on the pink flower in his hand.
"Exit is that way," he said with a nod of his head, trying to read her expression. But she only started out of her weird shock when he crouched down a bit lower, stooping to align his height with hers, allowing his eyes to jump between both of hers.
She jumped back as if electrocuted.
His eyebrow twitched. "What are you even doing here?"
"Er, Mako-chan was here on a date," she squeaked, so oddly wide-eyed.
He tilted his head. Up ahead someone was jogging down the path in a green overall, waving, calling. The gardens were closed, they were being shoo-ed out.
But when Mamoru went to touch her elbow to steer her out, Usagi jumped a mile high, staring at his hand as if it were alien.
He held up his hands, took a respectful step back, suddenly worried, but indicated for her to walk. She finally did, stumbling wide-eyed, and he frowned harder.
He was pretty sure she'd also missed the last regularly scheduled bus out of here, and he didn't like the thought.
And she didn't stop staring at him.
Clearing his throat, he studiously looked up ahead, trying to ignore it.
"And where is Makoto-san, then?" he asked conversationally.
"What?" she asked.
He threw her a look. The setting sun painted her hair the most mesmerizing gold, if one were to look.
"Oh!" she squeaked. "Yes, her date. She's with her date."
Walking through the little white-and-turquoise entrance hut and past the ticket booths, he stared right back at her, raising an eyebrow again.
She finally caught on. "Er, I mean, he didn't know I'm here, so..."
"Why are you here, then?" he asked, and stopped right at his very haphazardly parked car. He'd managed to block three parking spaces in his haste to get where Sailor Moon's bond had pulled him.
He flinched in slight embarrassment.
But Usagi didn't even seem to take note.
"... for the same reason you were here, I think," she mumbled, and his eyes flew back to her face.
She was flushed pink, and still staring at him.
He quirked a smile. "I doubt that," he said with an easy shrug.
"I wouldn't be so sure," she threw back immediately.
He held her gaze - unusually heavy. Even back then, he'd been sure he was missing something.
"Do you need a ride?" he asked after a while of their staring fest, and she jolted.
Her eyes found his car as if it was the first time she'd registered it standing there.
"Uh…" She licked her lips. "S-Sure."
He frowned, but opened the passenger door blindly, his eyes not leaving her.
She'd been timid, getting in. Definitely not the Usagi he knew. Not an Usagi he'd ever met before that day or after that day.
In hindsight, of course, he now knew that was the day the magic had crumbled in front of her eyes and she now saw Tuxedo Mask standing where Mamoru had been before, and had struggled to compute the shock with him right there. Something he'd be privy to so many, many, many months later.
If she'd said something then, they could have had a year and a half.
As it was, she'd sat in his car plastered to the passenger side window, staring at him so hard it made his skin prickle uncomfortably as he flicked his blinker up, turned bodily to check behind him and then swerved out onto the road to the sound of rubber wheels on gravel road then asphalt.
So, when her gaze finally found something else than him - Sailor Moon's rose he'd placed carefully on his dashboard - he ran with it.
"Rosa Centifolia Muscosa," he informed her, and her confused answering smile felt a little more like Usagi.
"Its botanical name," he said, flicking a smile at her and back at the road.
She snorted, and it kinda brought it all back to normal. "You dork," she said in the most wondrous, fond tone.
It fluttered weirdly in his lungs, and he shoved it forcefully down by clearing his throat.
"So, you're into roses?" he asked when the roads became denser, more like the Tokyo they were used to, to the backdrop of a dramatically purple sky. Behind the windows of his car, streetlights flickered to life as they waited at a red light.
But her eyes were back to being spooked. "I mean, I…" she started, stumbled over her words. "I like roses! I like them very much, yes! I do! Absolutely! Totally. My favorite! I mean."
He flicked a look at her, and she shut up.
"You meant because of the rose show," she explained for herself, calmer, then oddly smacked a hand to her own forehead.
"I mean, or you were just there to spy on your friend's budding romance like the little stalker you are," he told the rearview mirror with a grin.
But she didn't answer. Didn't take the bait. Didn't scoff and banter back and refused to dance with him like she would have. Instead, she grew awfully thoughtful, watching him,
When he looked back at her at the next light, her lips were downturned, her head resting against the windowpane as she watched the purple sky with the most forlorn look. A look he truly detested to see on her.
"Usagi, are you—"
"You can let me out at the station over there," she interrupted him, nodding at the JR sign.
"Uh…"
He really didn't. He was worried. But he wasn't going to force a woman to remain in his car if she was uncomfortable being in it, and so he set his blinker and pulled off the road.
When she looked back at him, her eyes were set in deep regret in a way he would never forget. In a way that would haunt his dreams, a year and a half later when he finally caught up to what she'd known that day.
Mamoru hadn't known what to say when she looked like that when she exited his car.
And so, he did the only thing he felt he could.
"Usagi!" he called after her and flew from his car, the metal of his door creaking loudly with the force of it.
But when she'd turned around, he was relieved to find the color in her cheeks returned as she stared wide-eyed at Sailor Moon's pink moss rose that he held out to her.
"Since roses are your favorite," he said in the fondest voice he could muster up.
She'd reached out and taken it with trembling, uncharacteristically nervous fingers, and he'd never felt so awkward as he had turning back around and getting back into his car.
He'd known, back then, that something was amiss. Had dismissed it. Had ignored the flutter in his heart.
What if he hadn't? What if he'd asked her outright why she was being weird?
What if he'd insisted to drive her home all the way? What if he'd left his car standing there and followed her into the station? What would she have said if they'd had more time that day? What if he'd told her he hated it when she looked that sad?
What if he'd told her that the image of her in that pink overall with her hair golden from the setting sun was locked into his heart so thoroughly that he would see it as he died?
The next winter, the next illuminations underneath his fingertips, the next youma defeated, nothing whatsoever had changed. The stagnancy both a burden and a band-aid on his soul. Avoidance was a comforting cave, but never taking risks meant nothing ever changed.
He didn't want things to stay the same, but if you play with fire, you get burned.
He found Usagi lingering between the fairy lights after Sailor Moon had vanished.
Tokyo Midtown was a giant snow globe of a light installation, their winter illuminations usually crowded beyond any sort of comfort. After tonight's youma attack, it was nearly deserted.
And for a second, for a breath of a moment, he'd mistaken Usagi for someone else. More than one someone else. Or so he'd thought.
It had suited her well, Usagi and these fairy lights, shining like stars. Usagi in the blueish white glow of waves of twinkling starlight had looked to his eye like Sailor Moon in disguise. Someone anyone should have recognized.
And when she'd turned to him -that mesmerizing hair tossing as if in slow motion- light silhouetted her face into shadow in a way that whispered déjà vu. She looked like a goddess from the sky, meant to fit among stars. She had looked like she'd stepped straight into the image of his dreams, his princess calling voiceless in his soul.
He exhaled so shakily that everything in him fluttered as he stepped up next to her, oddly feeling like he should have come to kneel in front of her instead.
Around them, couples only scarcely seemed to return, huddling together against the cold. A woman snuggled against a man's coat. A red-cheeked boy in his father's arms, pointing up towards the twinkling magic. Two men swaying softly in the cold, the taller boy's arms slung around the shoulders of his boyfriend from behind, both pairs of eyes twinkling with the blue-white reflections. Thick scarfs hiding mouths, breath puffing out as white clouds into the air.
Usagi's smile as she acknowledged him shot straight down his spine.
That smile could melt ice, cure depression, make you believe in the good of the world, and he couldn't endure it too long before averting his gaze, shoving his leather gloves into his pockets and allowing the magical lights to capture his attention once more.
More and more people found their way back onto the grounds, and off to the side, in the corner of his eye, a woman sat down at an elevated white Steinway, pulling red gloves off her hands by the fingertips before filling the air with a haunting rendition of a Christmas song that was just at the tip of his tongue.
"Isn't this beautiful?" Usagi breathed almost reverently.
He flicked his eyes back to her. Her cheeks pink from the cold air, the almost melancholy adoration on her face, the fuzzy, chunky pom-pom on top of her pastel crayon explosion of a colorful winter hat bobbing on her head with every excited wriggle of her, the way the icy wind pushed the silky strands of her long hair away from her face… he bit his mouth to say it right back at her, because he didn't want to sound like a sappy rom-com and it wasn't the mood.
If he slipped his gloves from his fingers like the pianist had… how would it feel to slide them into her hair? To lift that adorable hat off her and pick out her bobby pins one by one until the buns unraveled from under his touch? Until the silky weight of it spilled over his fingers and he could bury his hand into the tresses in search for her warmth?
He dug his fingers into his pockets a little deeper.
He should have known. He should have seen.
But his mouth filled with words that pushed it all away, because that was his most destructive, most instinctive reaction to the things he wanted most, even those his heart locked away so deep because they scared him most.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. That was the song. In the most heartbreaking version he had ever heard it.
"What do people do this for anyway?" he sighed, bone-weary.
She lifted her chin at him, her gaze too genuine, waiting.
He pinched his shoulders together, his coat moving up to hide his chin.
"Go to see the illumination in a crowd so dense you can't even see anything, then go to a hyper expensive dinner not worth it's money all to pay tribute to a tradition that isn't even Japanese."
His rant was hot, his tongue heavy. Her head tilted, but he pointedly avoided her gaze. "And for what? To show off on Instagram."
He jolted when her fingers curled around his arm, froze when her soft head settled warm against his shoulder, everything in him quivering.
"I'm alone this year, too," she whispered calmly, eyes on the lights, the soft piano notes underlining her words in the most awful way,
Her hand curled around his arm sharper, and he refused his bones to melt against her with everything he could.
"Maybe you should try these things sometime," she hushed, her cheek pressing, shifting against his arm,
"Which things?"
"Fancy dates. Instagram moments. Spending Christmas with someone. All the things you make yourself miss out on," she told him.
Her voice held no accusation. No reprimand. Just someone who deeply cared, and it bit even harder at him.
His tongue was useless in his mouth.
"Watching the illuminations with someone you like," she sighed.
He huffed, blinked his eyes closed but still saw the twinkling against his eyelids. He was. He was right now. No crowds. A haunting piano in the night. Someone he liked so much it scared him wrapping herself against his terrified side.
"I mean, only ever if you want. It's ok if you really don't," she amended with a decisive nod, almost shifting away - and he didn't want that at all.
"Do…" he started, licked his chapped lips. "Do you have a date…?"
Her face jerked up. Shocked surprise. Red cheeks.
"For um," he croaked. "For Christmas?"
Her mouth a shocked 'oh', the music at a crescendo.
"No," she said, carefully.
Would you like one?
You have one now.
Could it be me?
All viable options, but Mamoru's trainwreck heart froze in open terror.
He averted his gaze, his captured arm hanging useless at his side, his fingers petrified into a tight fist.
"Why not?" he asked the illuminations, voice too hard, too conversational.
When she let go of his arm, he felt it like the loss of something too dear, cold seeping up his spine.
"I just don't." She wrapped her arms around herself.
With a deep sigh, her hair shook around her, slapping him as she turned to him. "I'd love one though!"
And how was it that even her forced smiles were so brilliant that they electrified him in the worst way.
She shrugged, turned back to the lights. "I'm apparently not the girlfriend type, though."
He frowned, dark and deep and worried. "What's the girlfriend type?" he asked her, his fist disappearing back into his pocket.
"Hm," she hummed, hair flowing in the icy wind, her breath visible in the air. "I'd really like to know that too."
And with that, she turned, started to walk, blue lights lining her every step.
He followed as if attached to her invisibly.
"Who said that?" he growled after her.
Her answering smile as she whirled around, facing him as she walked backwards for his benefit, was awfully amused for something that struck him down so hard.
"I mean… you?"
Horror made him stumble over his own feet.
She shook her head, smiling at him. "It's really ok."
It's really not, no.
"No…" he croaked out, shaking his head so hard his hair flew, the cold strands brushing his face. "No, that's not ok."
She lifted her shoulders, holding, then dropped them hard, her lips a pressed, sad smile.
"You're the most genuinely loving person I know," he glared. "You're…"
She rolled her eyes. One hasty step and she pulled his sleeve.
"It's ok," she repeated.
His breath shook, his lungs burned, he didn't know why his eyes turned glassy right then, and her eyes widened when she looked up and saw.
"If anything, I'M not…" he choked out.
Both hands at his chest, and this time, he couldn't help refraining from pushing into her touch.
"Hey!" she scolded. Pink cheeks, soft lips, soul-breakingly beautiful eyes he drowned in. "I said it's fine!"
She shook her head a little more for emphasis. Got up on her tiptoes.
He'd only have had to lean down…
"Don't look at me like that," she said fondly. Her gaze too pure. "I'm newly on Bumble you know?"
A person brushed against his shoulder, the crowds were returning. He didn't look. Instead, he leaned down.
"What's bumble?" he asked, confused.
One shift of her shoulder shook her hair against him. "Something like tinder."
At his horrified look that she completely misinterpreted, she amended. "I mean I TRIED tinder but, uh. Well. Minako forced me to stop sulking and get over, uh…"
His chest burned, his hand involuntarily flew up to her waist to keep her close. "Get over who?" His voice was too sharp. Too demanding. Too feral and confused.
The anger that filled him was irrational. Suddenly so angry at whoever had made Usagi feel this way. What fucking idiot wouldn`t… And at the same time, something heavy, something jealous, possessive, something ugly. Something he pushed down.
Something he should have let loose.
She stepped away from him too easily. Walked on, and he could do nothing but follow.
"Is that why you detest Christmas?" she asked with a tilt of her eyebrow.
His brow puckered. "I don't 'detest' Christmas."
He would have snorted at the look she threw him if it didn't irritate him so much.
The pianist started a new song, first one hand, then the other, carried across the wintery light installation like a dance. And this time, he recognized it at the first few notes, even in its melancholy hue. That song was meant to be that sad.
All I Want For Christmas Is You.
He sighed, lifted his chin to the sky for a sigh. "It reminds me of what I don't have," he admitted.
"And what is that?"
When he looked back down, she stood incredibly close, studying his face like the greatest puzzle in the world.
His lips quirked up in the most self-deprecating smile he could manage. It felt a little pitiful.
"Love," he admitted, shoulders bopping.
He hadn't expected her reaction. The fierceness of her voice, the desperation in her eyes.
She grabbed his lapels, pulled him down, and he nearly fell. Only stopped when his mouth was directly over hers, the puffy white mist of her exhale hitting his skin.
For a second there, he thought she would kiss him. For a second there, he wanted her to. Badly. Consumingly. So badly it scared him. His eyes attached to her mouth, his body straining to lean in.
But she didn't. She slanted her mouth over his, but she didn't go up on her toes to close the last breath between them, and he didn't press down.
Her bare, ice-cold hand at his cheek, stroking. "Of course, you are loved," she whispered so low he could barely hear, but felt every word against his trembling, struck-dumb mouth.
Her ice-hand grew even colder beneath his face, and he suspected it was due to his face growing impossibly, embarrassingly warm. But her thumb moved across his jaw, brushing against chin and stubble and helplessly flushed warmth.
And then her mouth opened, strung together words that fell out almost desperate, almost pained. "You do have love. I promise. You have it. If you wanted, then… God, so, so much, you do, I…"
He huffed out against her lips, straightened up and out of her hold, and she snapped her mouth shut, wide and terrified and so gorgeous he might cry.
To the soft piano notes filling the sparkling air, he held out one gloved hand, his mouth helplessly dry.
"Dance with me?" he asked, uncurling his fingers towards her, leaning down into her space this time.
A beat, wide eyes, and then her frozen hands curled into his gloves, around his shoulder, and she giggled - honest to god giggled, the sound captured in his heart to keep - as he pulled her against him by the waist and started swaying her amidst the thickening crowd.
For a second there, he didn't feel like missing out.
He should have realized the song they were dancing to spoke the absolute truth. His hammering heart, for once, felt like a trophy.
He leaned down, helplessly, catching her wide open, wondrous gaze and not wanting to miss a second, but he'd asked so late, the song almost ending, their swaying clumsy in the crowd even when people made room, swerving around them.
He clutched her hand to his chest, her body against his, her warmth melting against him, the way she curled into him, the way she fit so right.
He wanted to kiss her so badly his lips were tingling, was leaning down so very far, stooped so low, lips first, popped open helplessly, puffing out against her.
And found her eyes, wide, wide, wide, in open, shocked surprise, and it doused him in reality.
He let go of her just as the song ended, gloved hand moving off her hip
She huffed out one thick swoop of breath, lips snapping shut, tilted her head, but didn't step away.
Her gaze pure adoration that he did not deserve at all.
And when she spoke, her voice was strong and melted sugar all at once. "You're humble," she told him. "You're kind, you're someone willing to give everything they have for others."
He jolted.
"You're so giving it's unhealthy and unfair to you. So terrified to take."
She reached up a hand and stroked his cheek again. "I want you to be brave enough to take what you want. One day? Whatever that may turn out to be."
Everything in him revolted. His lips tight. Fighting to push away, to make a joke of it.
"I need you to know that you deserve all the love you want," she said with a shrug, and retreated back to a respectful distance.
He didn't know what to say.
How could something that made him want to cry in gratitude feel like it was going so horribly wrong?
"C'mon," she said, pulled at his sleeve.
He stumbled after her. Not even asking where to, just following.
"Hey can I ask you something?" she asked much later, mouth full with fried chicken at the counter. "Kentucky is at the North Pole, right?"
He snorted, flabbergasted.
The day his world toppled over sideways, Minako threw open the door with somewhat of a show.
"Well, well, well," she said, leaning against the doorframe in the tackiest Christmas sweater he had ever seen and tapping perfectly polished fingernails against the side of her elbow. (Kiss Me Under The Mistletoe, said the sweater, an embroidered arrow pointing down to where the mistletoe was located. He threw her a deadpan look.)
"Really?"
But Minako looked him over top to bottom, and he found himself oddly stiff beneath her judgement.
"Can you do me a favor today, Mamoru-san?"
He grabbed the straps of his shopping bag a little tighter.
"Please try not to be an insensitive dick today, ok? I asked you here for a reason."
What was one supposed to say to that? His eyebrows flew up. "And what reason is that?"
She sighed and shook her head in a way that was entirely pitying. She did hold the door open, though, and chatter and soft music from a stereo permeated the hallway.
"What am I missing?!" he asked helplessly, bending down to remove his shoes.
Minako's arms were up in the air. "Everything!"
Mamoru swallowed thickly, but followed after her. Minako's and Usagi's apartment was on the Odakyu Odawara line, that much he'd long known, but he'd never been in it before. Padding after Minako into the surprisingly spacious living room/kitchen combi felt surprisingly blasphemous, even after he'd tried so swallow his pulse as he'd stalled to ring the bell for fifteen minutes pacing the length of their street.
Turns out, he'd had a Christmas date after all. Of a sort. Some weird mix of a gokon group blind date and a nabe-party, arranged by none other than Minako Aino.
And based on the look on Usagi's shocked face when he stepped into the room and awkwardly greeted a few men and women hustling around the kitchen, Usagi had no idea he'd been invited.
She dropped a pot of Shiitake and then hissed at Minako.
She looked stunning, though. A velvet, midnight blue dress that was… well, kind of the color of his eyes, shimmering and falling around her as if it had been draped on her person, black sheer tights making her endless legs look even longer than they already were.
He flushed, felt even more awkward (and underdressed), and busied himself by emptying his offerings for the nabe pot. Konjaku, enokitake, a firm block of tofu from a specialty store he'd stopped at in Meguro for on the way. An awkward chat with one of the men later (Atsushi, seemed nice, shared two classes with Minako at Hitotsubashi; Political Science and Government Policy, was a little nervous with these pretty women around), he was chopping vegetables and helping set up the kotatsu and as far away from Usagi as possible, and by the time he had nothing else to do to keep busy, apparently everyone had arrived.
Four women and four men total, none of whom Mamoru had ever seen except Minako and Usagi, he found himself stiffly seated next to the latter and so uncomfortably nervous his palms were sweating.
Sitting underneath a heated blanket with his legs squished tight against her didn't quite help.
Neither did the fact that Minako's friend from acting class (Hina, also nice, spoke a lot about London), who sat across from him, kept drawing him into a conversation no matter how often Minako tried to steer it back somewhere else, and when Usagi at one point offered to switch seats with her under Minako's exasperated gesticulating, he'd dejectedly excepted this night to be a total disaster.
Not that it wasn't… nice.
Except that whenever he lifted his head, and someone passed around a new round of chemically flavoured cans of cheap Chu-His, Usagi's cheeks were pinker and her laughs a little louder as she ate bowl after bowl with abandon and spoke with her mouth full to someone who kept joking with her and who was not him (Kunihiko, went to art school to become an animator, wore a green jacket he swore was worse than the one he owned, and the only person present that Mamoru spontaneously detested.)
But because he didn't know his own heart, idiot that Mamoru was, instead of getting up, grabbing Usagi's hand to pull her out of there, find that version of All I Want For Christmas Is You on Spotify and dance with her again to the tinny sound of his phone speakers, he accepted his fate and talked to Hina about London and her father's business.
He sat there with his fists digging into his knees, too hot beneath the kotatsu, suffered through silly drinking games and Minako's pointed, aggressive nods and head-tilts at him towards Usagi.
He did jump up afterwards. When Usagi, laughing at something Kunihiko had said, dropped food back from her chopsticks into her nabe, and because she ate hunched over like she was starving, the noodles sploshed and splashed back into her bowl in a way that some of the seriously spicy soup stock hit her directly in the eye.
She whined, her eye started tearing, and the tipsy people around her all started to howl in laughter.
It visibly hurt her, and when she got up and walked out, he left Hina mid-sentence and followed her into the bathroom.
A pink bathroom mat, the hand towels all Ghibli themed, Usagi bent over the wash basin trying to rinse out her eye.
"Wait," he hushed, and she jolted. "Don't rub. Here." Mamoru detached the spray head from the sink, decreased the intensity of the spray, held his breath, and pushed his hand into her hair to tilt her head carefully.
Her hair was as soft and warm as he'd thought.
She squeaked a little, he brushed his thumb against her skin to soothe her and helped her rinse her eye.
"Thanks," she mumbled when he stopped, and reached for a towel.
"Wait," he said again, grabbed a clean towel, and a second for her, and while she cleaned the rest of her face, he took a look at her eye.
It was just a little red.
"Look up," he hushed, and she twinkled at him, no doubt something cheeky on her tongue, all 'Dr. Chiba,' but she held her mouth.
He dabbed carefully, unnecessarily at the tender skin below her eye and above her lids.
The intimacy of the situation only caught up with him later. The way she sat between his legs against the rim of their washing machine. He hadn't noticed before, the way her sheer tights shifted against his pants, but now he did, and it shot down his skin electrically.
He set his jaw.
"Didn't you like the nabe?" Usagi squeaked, and he knew she was just trying to make conversation, to lighten the thick, weird mood.
"I did," he said, not helping along quite so much.
She bit the pillow of her lip. He forced his eyes to look away, focus on her eye.
It was weird. Trying to look at her eye clinically while she was staring right back at him, cheeks flushed and lips glistening.
There were little droplets of water in her eyelashes, her eyebrows and he wondered if they'd taste of her skin or just like water if someone were to lean in and...
"You barely ate anything," Usagi continued. "The pork was all like, melt-on-your-tongue."
He smiled, dabbed the cloth to the inside of her eye, next to her nose, cleaning off runny mascara like he was restoring artwork. "I'm actually a vegetarian," he confessed.
Horrified. The only way to describe the expression her face morphed into. "Why didn't you say anything?!" she screeched.
A smile built on his lips. "It's totally fine," he assured her softly. "I just picked out the pork."
"Are you sure?"
He nodded. "I'm very sure."
He moved off her, bent to rinse the cloth.
Usagi shifted. "Well…" She swallowed. "Atsushi and Rina seem to be hitting it off…"
He smiled. Wrung out the cloth. "Mhmm," he said. Then he turned back, back into her space, back against those endless legs, and traced clean skin again with a clean washcloth.
Just to make absolutely sure, and all.
She closed her eyes, tilted her face into his touch, and it thumbed hard into his lungs. "They'd make a sweet couple," she breathed, eyes closed.
"They would…" he croaked back.
But then Usagi went into a direction his begging heart couldn't handle.
She flicked open her eyes, looked straight at him. "And you?" she whispered.
He stalled. Stilled. "What about me?"
He shifted away for good, cleaned the clean washcloth again, turning the faucet a bit too harshly.
"Do you like Hina?" she asked beside him.
He frowned at both their reflections in the mirror. Obviously he didn't. He would die for Sailor Moon though, and he couldn't afford this, he couldn't afford to…
This conversation was dangerous, irresponsible territory.
Her averted his gaze, let it jump to the innocent washcloth he rubbed and mangled underneath the flowing, lukewarm water.
He did what he thought best, but the words barely came out.
"I already, uh…"
He stopped, cleared his throat.
But Usagi seemed to get his meaning anyway.
"Oh… "
She stiffened immediately, eyes to the floor.
He slapped the washcloth against the basin, whirled around. "I mean I…"
She nodded at the floor. "You already like someone."
He swallowed. Unsure. Heart in his feet. Was this wrong?
Usagi wouldn't look at him.
"… I bet she's really cool."
He wanted to pluck the words back from the air, stuff them back into his mouth and grind them to dust between his teeth.
"Well," she started. Turned awkwardly and fled the room.
He took a moment longer. Turned the faucet again, turned it to ice cold, and splashed his own face.
Dripping, he glared at his reflection.
When he went back out, eventually, Minako was standing there. Furious.
"Uh…"
But before he got to say anything, she slapped a stack of paper against his chest, so hard his lungs protested with an 'oof,' but he caught them reflexively even as Minako stormed back into the main room.
He frowned. Bunny cards. New ones.
Gel pens and adorable doodles, colorful cardstock and hand-lettering. He recognized the rabbits in the photos. The babies had grown. They had names now.
Kinako, Daikon, Basil. Milk (a white one) and Cookies (a spotted one) who apparently never liked to be apart. Muffin, Playboy (he liked to hump people), and, amusingly, Marlon Bundo.
The last one made his chin start to wobble.
A little black and white Dutch breed, almost looking like a penguin in the way its fur looked a little like a tuxedo.
'Mamo-chan.'
In the photo, much like Minako the rabbit, Mamo-chan wore a tiny little bow around a tiny little collar. A white one.
A little Tuxedo Mask themed rabbit that she had named after him.
Usagi named her bunnies after people she loved.
'He looks like he's frightened, but he really just wants to cuddle. He loves blueberries most.'
His heart thundered in his chest.
She knew.
She knew.
Usagi named her bunnies after people she loved. And he'd just told her he liked someone, and god, the way his heart folded in on himself right now, he knew that had been wrong.
Thundering across the floor, he burst into Usagi's room.
She sat on her bed, bunnies-and-moons and red-rimmed eyes brimming and that was his fault and—
"Mamoru—"
...and he froze.
The wall opposite of her door was decorated in vases and vases of dried roses. Roses he recognized.
One of them different from all the others. A perfectly bulbous moss rose, three shrivels little buds surrounding it.
"Oh," she said uncomfortably.
"What…"
But the words died on his tongue.
Every other rose? Every other rose was Tuxedo Mask's.
He froze.
She rubbed her eyes, calmly got up, moved around him to close the door.
And then she looked him straight in the eyes when she explained.
She'd always been braver than him.
"I keep them," she said, slowly, watching his reaction. "Every time Tuxedo Mask saves me, or distracts the youmas for me, I take them, and I keep them."
He… he didn't understand.
It didn't… It didn't make sense. Usagi had kept and dried almost every rose Tuxedo Mask had ever used to keep her safe? She'd told him with her voice steady, and his stupid brain had not been able to compute.
Because Tuxedo Mask had never saved Usagi. He didn't remember saving Usagi ever.
He looked around wildly. There were so many roses. Enough roses to be almost every single fight he'd ever fought. Every single time he'd thrown a rose to distract the enemy from Sailor Moon and—
And—
And his eyes flew to Usagi's hair buns. To the blue of her eyes. The soft curve of her lips. And suddenly he couldn't unsee. His heart threatened to push out his chest. Every time he'd called Usagi 'Odango Atama' he'd said that to Sailor Moon. He'd—
His shock had been harder than Usagi's had that day in the botanical garden, and he reacted worse.
It was a strange sensation, feeling the magic breaking. Suddenly it was so clear, so stupid, and he'd— he'd just—
"Do you remember," she stood to the side, patiently, hands clasped, eyes red. "Last year? When you asked me why people don't recognize the Senshi?"
Uh..
She tilted her head and aimed to shoot his heart in two, because this was all his fault.
"I think maybe you don't recognize me because you don't want it to be me," she told him, and she meant it.
No. He should have said no. Should have yelled No.
She picked out the dried moss rose. It was wrinkly and crunchy and discolored. And then she offered it to him like Sailor Moon had. Like she had. "Missing out is a choice sometimes, Mamo-chan. It's a safety net. If we keep away, what we yearn for can't disappoint us."
That's not…
He didn't take it. He only stared.
"As long as you don't look, maybe Sailor Moon can still be what you want."
He didn't take the rose. And then he ran.
No, Mamoru had never had the chance to confess, to make it right.
Only a few days after he found out Usagi was Sailor Moon, they'd found the last of the Rainbow Crystals. Walking straight into a trap with Usagi following on his heels, his truth had died on his lips the second he'd remembered the third person he should have seen in this woman he adored whatever her name currently was.
He hadn't gotten to confess. He hadn't gotten to beg on his knees. He'd only gotten to die for her - her raw screams (Mamo-chan, Mamo-chan, Mamo-chan) the last thing he had heard.
And while Mamoru no longer was, all his memories, all his regrets, weren't washed away.
They were all here, to be sifted through and sorted, leaving Endymion to clean up Mamoru's mess; find the weak spots, find the faults in all of Mamoru's memories. Perusing everything he could have done differently, should have said instead.
Endymion wasn't someone willing to ever regret anything again. He wasn't someone too afraid to go for what he wanted. To tell her how stupid Mamoru had been, all the words stuck in Mamoru's throat too terrified to come out. Every single time he hesitated and chose wrong.
No.
He would never allow Mamoru's fear to stop him again from having the things he craved soul-deep.
He was here to take what he wanted.
With a snap of his fingers, dark, cackling magic coursed through his veins like thick molasses, first, starlight painted her room, reflecting of all her roses prettier, more wistful than any flimsy installation ever could.
Endymion, in the shadow, licked his lips at the way she startled.
At the way her eyes widened when with another snap of his fingers, all the speakers in her room turned on with the dull thrum of static. Her phone, her laptop, the ancient red boombox on her shelf she had since she was a child. Holding his breath before they all played at once what he wanted her to hear.
A soft staccato g, a b, a d, a quick f sharp, g, f sharp again, e and d. The sound of a lone piano, one hand and then the other, everywhere she turned.
I don't want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need.
His cape snapped behind the tuxedo as he stepped out from the shadows, her breathing hard.
Drew it out as he removed his mask right in front of her, then the hat, tossed it on her bed. Then his gloves, pulling them gracefully off at the fingertips like the pianist had done, and Usagi's breath was labored.
"Mamoru regrets a lot of things," Endymion said eventually, lifting her chin with his thumb.
Fingers at her jaw, the back of her neck, his breath hitting her lips a hair's width away from touching.
When he flicked his eyes back up from her lips, he couldn't contain his smirk. Her eyes fluttered closed, her lips opening with a pop, and he leaned in even more, speaking right against her mouth.
"I'm not going to regret a single thing ever again," he hushed against her waiting, willing lips, and left her waiting.
Leaving her with his promise, he vanished.
The song remained. So did a sea of new, fresh roses, covering every surface.
She'd just have to fall in love with this version of him, too.
Easy.
Thank you to the Bunny Naming Committee, you know who you are lol (and yes, Daikon, you named some of your own Gift bunnies, SORRY lol, surprise?)
ALSO thank you to the hosts for this year, purplesupersiren and by-any-other-pen, I'm super grateful that you came forward to arrange this for us! Thank you!
If you want to see Minako's amazing Christmas sweater, I shamefully stole it from Nari's art that she drew for this very same exchange. If you want to check it out (AND YOU FUCKING SHOULD lol it's FANTASTIC) then go check the sailormoonholiday tumblr, where the mods of this wonderful event posted every work. Which is, obviously, the place to find all the other amazing works that were posted for this! I'm haaaaalfway sure I'm the last regular scheduled person in this event, but definitely one of the last, so I'll take up the mantle to wish you all happy holidays, a healthy new year, and that 2021 will be less apocalyps-y than 2020 was. This fandom has carried me through this year, and I am absolutely grateful to all of you!
If you liked any of the works in the exchange, please consider leaving them a review - you're giving a lonely isolated author/fan creator interaction with the world. In 2020, and especially during Christmas, this means more than it ever even has before (and reviews ALWAYS mean the world to fan creators!)
Anyway. I WISH YOU WELL. MWAH!