So, remember how in La Douleur Exquise Usagi mentioned Mamoru dating somewhere during all their extended break-up torture? This is that story. It's a gift for my friend Antigone2, who wished for it! (You know the drill, extended break-up arc and so on!)
Anyway, this is a prequel, set before La Douleur Exquise AND Purgatory Story 1: Bleeding but AFTER Purgatory Story 2: Crying.
Big giant amazing thanks to Daikon, who beta-ed this at incredibly short notice! Thank you so much. And ALSO: It being the ides of november, it's Antigone's birthday (at least it already is in MY parts of the world, some of you still gotta wait a few hours), so please send her some virtual fandom hugs or birthday reviews, most of you know where to find her! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOVE. HERE'S SOME PAIN FOR YOU!
(Also, we wrote each other gift fics - so look out for some more and absolutely AMAZING break up arc pain coming your way on her side, because we have ABSOLUTELY the same taste in cakes lol!)
Anyway, you're firmly on the angstbus express here, quite obviously. Consider yourself warned!
Purgatory
A Short Story Series set in the La Douleur Exquise Universe
Story 3: Pretending
The day he met Yuko, it had been raining for three weeks without pause.
A Tuesday.
A particularly painful Tuesday.
The stone steps of Hikawa shrine had been slippery when Mamoru descended them, the rain drumming hard and relentless onto the nylon taffeta canopy of his black umbrella, and even though it was a summer afternoon, the thick grey clouds painted the sky in the same glowing thicket that usually passed as night in the city.
Usagi had walked down a good few steps in front of him, Ami's big umbrella sheltering her when he was not allowed to.
Senshi meetings were rare these days with Galaxia such a blip in their past by now, but Luna and Artemis insisted they meet at least once a month. To keep in shape.
As much as he agreed with them - his restless heart granted a little peace with the knowledge that should his constant, worrisome fears come to fruition, they would at least not be rusty - they were also excruciating. Cruel on Usagi, a test of endurance on him, every time.
One-on-one combat training today. Crammed into the little building that had once served as Grandpa Hino's dojo for phony self-defence classes for women, then dance classes no one ever took, it now served the heroes of Tokyo in secret. Minako gave him that calculating look whenever she made him train with Usagi.
He'd breathed in deeply. In through the nose, hold, out through the nose, slow, slow, in an effort to calm his heart and feign nonchalance even under bodily stress. He'd twisted Usagi's arm behind her back, pulling her close - too close, way too close, inhaling too harshly at the assault of her scent, her hair - before she knocked the feet from under him and pinned him to the floor with apologetic gestures, blushing cheeks and trembling fingers.
At 18 years old, Sailor Moon was no one Mamoru could overpower easily in combat. Not at all.
It didn't help that she was sweating, she was flushing, her breath was labored, and she was looking at him with those haunting eyes that were just too expressive.
She was so beautiful, so perfect, and he was touching her. And he couldn't allow himself to seem as if it was affecting him at all when her hair stuck to his sticky skin.
And it was.
Not just because he was a 20-year-old horny mess, no. That too. But most overwhelmingly, it was because he was so touch-starved and lonely it was pitiful. The sheer endorphins rushing through him at the simple brush of her hand at his throat and shoulder when she turned to swipe at him fooling his brain into thinking it was finally being caressed. The phantom pain of being held that kind of ripped at the seams of his soul.
It was all so beautifully awful. Such devastating torture. When her slightly cold hands dug tight into his wrist, his bicep, his ankle, his shin, lighting him on fire. When her fingers slid down the nape of her neck to brush away the sweat so accidently gracefully. When her eyes were that open, unguarded mix of yearning and anger and pain for him, at him. Pain he was putting there, over and over.
His jaw hurt from the way he'd tensed it all throughout.
Afterwards, when Minako and Makoto stuck around at Rei's, wiping small bright hand towels at brows and faces and talking about a movie night, he opted, as always, to shower at home and not take turns with the girls.
The feeling of the rain hitting his flushed, sweaty skin once he exited the dojo was both comforting and relaxing, but it was not to last long.
Usagi stepped out right beside him. Frowning up at the sky hard, her golden hair darkening fast where the rain pummeled down at her, and his breath shortened and his throat constricted.
Why could she never fucking bring an umbrella? Even in the middle of rainy season? Why could she not once make it easier for him to—
"See you," she mumbled, tense and uncomfortable, and he breathed out a little slower, a little more deliberate, and wordlessly nodded at her.
Usagi shivered, sending him a tight smile with a nod in farewell, and stepped out into the rain. Her black leggings turned blacker, her dark orange work-out sweatshirt spattering the thin cotton fabric in red blotches. She didn't hover, didn't wait, didn't look at him or his umbrella meaningfully as he spanned it over his head with fingers that suddenly felt thick and heavy and immobile as he clicked the little nub and it unfolded with a sharp whoosh.
She didn't even expect him to share his umbrella. And why would she?
Irrationally, it made him angry. At her. At himself. At all of this. It flushed across his skin like goosebumps in the wet, noisy air, like a thrumming in his ears.
Involuntarily, his mind flashed back to that time, in the beginning, when he'd just broken up with her and Usagi had run through a storm not unlike this one. That had been the first time he'd stepped away from her in the beating rain, left her shivering and drenched when his umbrella would easily shelter two.
It didn't only hurt because it was Usagi. It also hurt because this wasn't who he was. He shared his umbrella with strangers. He was nice, at least he tried to be. He would share it with her if he didn't love her. He would share it with her if he didn't know her. He wasn't an asshole.
But he did love her, and she could not see, and so he had to be. And so she would never know this wasn't who he was. That this wasn't who he wanted to be, least of all to her.
Involuntarily, again, his arm twitched, and his control faltered. For just a second. Just a smidgen. Legs moving without his consent, his tongue flicking out across his too-salty lower lip, he moved towards her in long strides, hand pushing out to hold his umbrella over her and—
And Ami appeared next to them, next to Usagi, spanning a big, clear umbrella over the woman who owned his soul, with a kind smile at her friend and a whoosh of unadorned, translucent plastic unfolding, the likes you'd get at any conbini for the price of a cheap bento.
It puckered in his heart and caused his hand to flex over the handle of his own umbrella, the irrational need to pluck the offending thing out of Ami's hands and throw it into the bushes with a snarl tensing his jaw into his usual stoic grimace.
Of course he really ought to be grateful to Ami, who'd never know what she prevented.
Really, he didn't understand why Usagi didn't hate the man he acted like. He would hate himself. He did hate himself like that. What he had to be.
His control was paper-thin these days. Thinner. Soft wrapping tissue of the kind you could break with a slip of thumb. Nothing more needed but the chance to share an umbrella and the rain dyeing orange cotton red.
It didn't help to have been allowed to touch her skin for about two hours, breathe in the scent of her hair. Trying to keep his mind from imagining with every move on that mat how she might react if he'd break in front of her right there, fall apart with a groan and his lips falling against hers as she fell against him. Fell against his sweaty, flushed body, his hands cradling into her hair and never letting go as he begged for forgiveness. Right then and there. Makoto's words would falter in her instructions to correct Ami's pose, Minako would keep Rei from shouting at him, he'd decided.
"Where'd you leave yours?" Ami asked Usagi with the kindest smile, the kind he'd willingly give anything to be allowed to direct at Usagi, if only it weren't so dangerous, so slippery to walk down this particular path.
"I'm not sure," Usagi murmured under her breath, uncomfortable. The way she talked when he was near. The way she talked about something she thought was one of her shortcomings in his proximity.
His fingers flexed around the plastic handle tighter.
As if Usagi had any fucking shortcomings. As if it mattered if Sailor fucking Moon could not remember where she left her stuff sometimes because her pretty mind was busy marveling at more exciting things than the whereabouts of assorted pieces of plastic and metal, or something like that.
Yeah, his control had never been more perforated. And it had been for a while, now, and it terrified the living shit out of him.
How could it not, when the consequence could be her demise? When he was poison to her but addicted to her?
He was so fucking weak. He was so fucking horrible.
Because he knew all this, and yet, when he reached the bottom of the steps, his eyes travelled down the curve of her spine and clung to yet another image - reaching out, taking her small hand to slide against his, pulling her beneath his umbrella instead.
Pulling her all the way to his home, into his bed, whispering broken, pitiful, forbidden devotion into her skin and wrapping himself around her like a cocoon and hoping for the best. Hoping for the futile thought he might be enough to protect her from anything he might be causing.
He stood too close to her without thinking, only over-corrected when he noticed the way her chest lifted faster, the way her eyes flitted across his form.
There'd been that moment, during training, where Usagi had managed to kick him straight to the mat, her brow in wrinkles and her eyes fiery, and honestly, he got why. He shared the sentiment. He wanted to kick himself, too, sometimes. He couldn't blame her if she felt the same. But she'd ended up straddling him, breathing as hard as him, and he'd frozen right along with her.
Her eyes had been so wide, her weight on top of him something he wanted more than anything else, her eyes holding too much meaning and too much shock and too much want, as, for a second, they started to roam across his form again. Her hips had shifted ever so slightly, and he'd panicked when he felt himself harden beneath her.
He'd practically thrown her off him. Mumbled something harsh and excused himself to get something to drink. He'd locked himself in Rei's bathroom for a solid three minutes to calm himself down.
When he'd returned, Usagi was flushed and embarrassed and her movements more precise, more careful, and painfully, obviously hyper-controlled. For the remaining forty minutes of their training session, she had looked him in the eye less than she already usually did these days, even.
"Do you want to walk with us, Mamoru-san?" Ami asked from beneath that wretched umbrella, the sound drowned out and distorted by the drum of heavy rain.
Usagi's eyes jumped to his, and away again even quicker.
Ami was trying to sound neutral. He knew. Mostly she succeeded. When they talked about his studies, or her first classes as a freshly baked Todai med student that would start so very soon, and he offered anything from his old textbooks as assistance, she was just as pleasant to him as she was to anyone.
It was situations like these, with Usagi and her broken smile when he was near - his fault his fault his fault - that all the Senshi were so loyally on their princess' side first, always, and it shook in the air.
"I'm not heading home," he shot out his uncomfortable lie.
"Oh?"
"I forgot to pick up a book for class."
It was of course fucking bullshit and when Usagi's eyes flashed with hurt, he cursed himself. He was unshowered. It was raining. He did not forget to pick up things. She knew him that well. And now she thought it was because of her. Again.
It was. But not in the way she thought.
Ami kept her poker face. Nodded and smiled as if he was making sense.
"See you next week?" Ami said, voice absolutely neutral - but he saw the way her hand reached around Usagi underneath that stupid umbrella.
He sighed, nodded. He'd offered to take a look over Ami's assignments.
Inhaling through his nose, he turned sharply.
"Get home safe…" he mumbled to the wet asphalt, but didn't wait to see if he was heard. Instead, he walked straight ahead, and wandered around in the rain.
The road Hikawa Shrine was tucked into was dark and remote even without the sky playing mimicry with his mood, and he walked aimlessly until it got more lively. Until the sound of cars driving through the rain was once again a loud backdrop to his thoughts, and the elevated road ahead of him created rivulets of rain water running down the rills at the edges of the sidewalk to the steady thrum against his umbrella.
He didn't pay attention to where he was walking, really. He was pretty sure he'd never been in this particular part of Motoazabu.
And so the bus station that appeared on the crest of this road wasn't one he recognized, either.
At first, he didn't look up. Only saw her out of the corner of his eye. Long blond flowing hair the color of his dreams, and he frowned for the duration of a heartbeat. For that second, he didn't even question how she'd be able to have gotten there ahead of him, just assumed automatically. How did Usagi get here when—
But it wasn't Usagi, and he did a double take.
She was pretty. Usagi's exact height. Usagi's exact hair color. A bright pink fuzzy cardigan absolutely drenched as she shivered, wet to the bone.
Mamoru absolutely froze. And only when her eyes flicked up at him (brown. wrong.) did he react without question.
He shared his umbrella. Once again moving without thought, without saying a word, and when the girl blinked up at him and smiled a curious smile, bewildered, his heart made somersaults.
Because he could.
The words came from a place in his mind that had stored them away for safekeeping. "Who doesn't have an umbrella with them during rainy season?" he asked, his lips curling into the sly smile that went with the thought, couldn't be kept separate.
She wrinkled her nose in a way that was so Usagi it punched him in the face.
"Honestly, I don't even know where I left it. It's the third one I lost this month," she said with a sheepish grin.
He chuckled. A little incredulous, a little wild.
But she just continued. As if it was absolutely normal to start a conversation at a dark bus station with a random stranger who stood a breath away in the narrow space of the shadow of an umbrella. "In my defense," she said, with challenge in her eyes that threw him, "I have a theory that umbrellas are the number one most stolen object in all of Japan."
He smiled. "Oh?"
"Mhmm." Her nod was sharp and moved her hair - she kept it long and open. Kind of like Rei, except it was completely wet. "Those umbrella stands. People just take them out. I lost a cute one this month. Little golden dots and flowers."
He tilted his head, his lips pulling up on one side. "And how long have you had that one?"
Her grin was wide. Infectious. "One whole week!" she boasted.
And he threw his head back and laughed and was charmed.
He wasn't stupid, of course. He knew exactly why that was.
But he just stood there. When a car drove by, he shifted his umbrella so that it wouldn't sway with the rush of wind. Stood there in what Minako often referred to as one of the hot contenders of Most Hideous among all his outfits, mint green sweatpants and a layer of T-shirts coiled up from his armpits to his shoulders, and yet this girl beamed at him in exactly that open way his heart so absolutely yearned for.
With a rush of rain and wheels, the big grey-and-green bus drove carefully up the winding road in its approach, and it shook him out of it. He frowned at it.
"You taking that too?" she asked with a tilt of her head that shook her long blonde hair. Hair the absolute perfect color.
He wasn't taking this bus. It wasn't his line.
And yet—
"Yeah, sure," he said, folded his umbrella only when she was safely inside, and got on the wrong bus for three whole stops.
Yuko was her name. Studied ecology at Waseda because she wanted to save the environment, because she wanted to save lives. She read shojo manga with a passion and she quoted Schopenhauer but did it adorably wrong, preferred ice cream over lunch and gesticulated wildly while she talked.
It was despicable. He was despicable. Cataloguing every similarity and every difference with every word she spoke. Comparing her every step of the way. He knew it wasn't her he wanted. But with her… for once… he could be the man he wanted to be for Usagi with the fierceness that ate him up so regularly. He could pretend.
His wrecked, covetous heart was too weak not to.
He could feel it in his bones, even days later. The relief. The sheer weight that dropped from him at being allowed to share his umbrella with someone blonde and shivering in the rain. To not have to be an asshole. To be the man he wanted to be.
In the end, he'd given the whole damn thing away. Had pressed the umbrella into her hands, lying through his teeth about living nearby anyway. Pressing the umbrella into her hold when he got off the bus god-knows-where. Because he could. Because he was allowed to. Because this was the kind of guy he actually wanted to be.
Someone nice. Someone who wouldn't ever leave Usagi standing in the rain.
She asked for his number almost in a panic as the doors of the bus were already closing behind him.
It took him 37 minutes to eventually find his way home, soaked to the very soles in his running shoes, probably ruined now. And when he eventually stepped out from his scalding hot shower, his skin pink and scrubbed and steaming, rubbing white terrycloth through his hair, his answering machine was already blinking red.
He met Yuko for a date three days afterwards.
The person maddest at him after he'd brought Yuko to the Fruit Parlor for the first time was Minako.
In the past, he'd met with girls in plain sight when his control was slipping hardest. A shield of sorts when temptation was too strong and he needed Usagi to want to stay away from him, too. Ever since Seiya, he'd been a weak wreck. He'd slipped too often, Icarus too close to the sun, and every time he found himself in a position where Usagi and her lips were right there, the confessions sitting too sweet on his tongue, ready to be released in complete, overthought sentences that ran on repeat in his mind almost every minute of his waking hours, he forced himself away and asked a study date for coffee.
He was despicable, then, too, of course. For some of them, he didn't even remember their names, or what they'd talked about. And yet a few of them he'd kissed when Usagi was near and he needed her to hate him.
He'd closed his eyes tight every time in his childish mourning, because he didn't want the memory of Usagi's kiss to be overwritten, as if that were even possible.
With Yuko, pretending had never been so easy. He only needed to close his eyes and all the rest would… almost feel right. The way she got on her tiptoes for it. The perfect ache in his lower back when he bent down. The breathless, soundless huff that came from someone ending their kisses with a smile. He'd close his eyes harder than ever before, closed his eyes almost before ever leaning in, and drowned in make-believe.
And then there was the undeniable fact how simply good it felt to be touched. How grounding, how desperate.
But while he'd paraded other women in front of Usagi on purpose - that had been the whole point - when he knew Minako knew and thus knew that Usagi must know, it gripped his heart in fierce terror. For once, he didn't want Usagi to know. He didn't want her to see. Terrified she would take it the wrong way. That she could ever believe he legitimately chose someone else over her, even someone quite like her. And diametrically, terrified she could see right through him (he knew Minako could.) That this was finally what gave him away, that he loved her all along.
And part of him whispered in the back of his mind that he couldn't have Usagi there because that meant he couldn't pretend Usagi was the person currently smiling up at him so openly.
And so, his heart did painful things to him when he saw Usagi look at Yuko for the first time. He felt a shame and guilt so deep he could barely put it into words.
And it lingered.
It overcame him in a hot shower of sensation one morning when he ran into Usagi being painfully, wonderfully, heart-wrenchingly Usagi, as was to be expected.
He didn't even have to see her to KNOW that the person attempting to wrangle a vintage cabinet cupboard up the escalator of Exit 4 must be Usagi.
The thing was huge, tilted, at least three times Usagi's width and definitely taller than her, and it appeared over the edge of the railing as the escalator ascended as if it was riding the thing on its own.
Usagi's voice cursed loudly from behind it when she reached the top of the escalator, tilted it back to the ground with a loud rattle but it wouldn't budge. Pushing at it, it squeaked, she squeaked, one of the intricate, milky, leaded glass doors at the top popping open with a swing over her head, and three salarymen behind her started shouting and falling and pushing into her as Usagi jammed an escalator with oversized antiques.
Had she ridden in a train with this thing? How many escalators had she jammed already just to get it here?
By the time she'd managed to wrench it out, to the relieved cries of many a person behind her, Mamoru had yet to cross the street (stupid fucking traffic, stupid fucking red lights, stupid fucking honking cars when he'd attempted to leap across anyway.) When he did get there, Usagi was tilting her whole body backwards, hefting the massive thing against her with arms as wide as she could spread them to reach around it. She started walking in a way that looked entirely unhealthy for her back, tiny steps accentuated by grunts, with no way in hell to look where she was going unless she had recently acquired the ability to see through wood.
It was ridiculous. How long had this taken her to even get so far?
But when one of her escalator casualties - young, objectively good looking - stopped to obviously try and offer his help, Mamoru was there in a flash, and glared the boy down so hard he closed his mouth and scurried away before a single sound had ever left his mouth.
"You couldn't find anything bigger to take on the metro?" he huffed out in his forever pressed, irritated voice, lifted his hands to the top of the cupboard, and pulled. The wood was soft and smooth like old wood tended to be. So soft he was concerned even his fingernails might leave little dents and marks, and he frowned.
Usagi squeaked, jumped, and the whole thing rattled - glass and old wood and inside shelving and drawers - when she almost dropped it in surprise.
She didn't. Instead, she allowed him to navigate it so that he lowered the top to his stomach, and she hefted the bottom of her side up, so they might carry it comfortably between them.
Her face was bright and flushed when it finally appeared in his line of sight as the cupboard moved from vertical to horizontal between them.
"I can carry a cupboard," she said with a very Sailor Moon-like glint to her eye. "I'm strong enough, it's not that heavy."
Petulance laced every word even when she didn't protest when he started walking with her - him backwards, her forwards.
"I know you're strong enough," he said and felt his face layer in wrinkles at his brow. "You're still short, though, Usagi."
Her bottom lip jutted out ever so slightly as she glared at the faded wood. "I managed."
He sighed.
The cabinets creaked a little between them with the bobbing of their walk. A passerby frowned at them as he had to navigate around them with heavy shopping bags hanging from his shoulders and hands.
Usagi was still studiously looking at the furniture between them.
It was a beautiful piece. Clearly vintage. A little like a farmhouse hutch but narrower, more delicate. Rounded, decorative edging in the woodwork, slightly distressed recessed panels in the wood on the bottom doors and drawers. The color of the wood, especially in its middle shelf, was quite faded and greyed, the glass doors on the upper cabinet portion so delicately carved they looked like crystal. It had seen better days, but it was beautiful.
"Why didn't you ask—" he started after a little while, and immediately broke off. Ask me? he was going to ask, but of course it was ludicrous and the thought alone hurt like a punch.
He wasn't someone Usagi asked for help. Even though there was nothing in the world he wanted to be more for her. To have at least that. It was in his fucking NAME goddammit and she—
He scowled. Couldn't keep the irritation from his face, but hefted the cupboard a little higher on his hips before they rounded the corner to Kimi-chan square.
"It's a nice piece," he eventually said. Awkwardly.
She nodded. "I thought maybe I could upcycle it a bit," she said. "Some new paint, maybe a matching patterned wallpaper at the back there," she nodded towards the shelf part in the middle.
He nodded.
"Are you redecorating?" he asked.
She flushed. "No," she mumbled. And at his confused look, continued. "Minako and I are looking to get a place together…"
He blinked. Faltered in his step. Usagi hadn't graduated yet. "Wait…" he started. "Are you moving out from your parents?"
Usagi's face turned positively pink. "Um, no. Someday, I will."
Um—
He settled on a simple, "Ah." This was… very much like her. Buying furniture on a whim she could barely reach around in the last throes of Rainy Season for a place that didn't exist. It was so endearing the yearning panged around in him like pong on infinite loop.
But Usagi was bright red.
He cleared his throat "How do you know it's going to fit?"
"I don't."
He turned his head to hide his smile. Navigated them around a corner.
"How do you know you'll still like it once you move?" he went on.
"I never stop liking things I like," she shot out immediately, eyes lowering and frowning, and it shot through him.
It was a total lie, of course. Even though there were things she attached hard to that endured, she changed preferences all the time. Maybe not extremely, not in all accounts at all, not regarding her very all-time favorites, but she loved a different manga almost every week, talked about a new band every month. Not to him, exactly. But, well.
He knew of course she didn't mean the cupboard anymore, and the accusation ran deep.
Not even only the fact that she was wrong. Because he really was someone who truly never stopped liking the things - and the people - he liked, and she didn't know that about him. Would never know that about him. Because this was the man he had to show her.
His voice was a little thicker when he forced the conversation ahead. They'd started walking down the more residential roads. Less pedestrians, less noise, and his words sounded too loud.
"Where are you going to put this?"
He knew her room was already quite crammed.
She shrugged. "Preferably in a living room. Maybe a kitchen."
He smiled. She watched the cupboard. "I mean for now," he elaborated.
"Oh." She flicked her eyes up, and back down. "I was hoping in the hallway, if Mama allows it. Otherwise maybe behind my bookshelf for now… until I do move."
She flushed. Anticipating judgement where he had none whatsoever, but she couldn't know that, either.
"It's…" she bit her lip. "I liked it. It was one of a kind. If I didn't get it now then I—"
Would have lost it forever, yes.
He nodded. Smiled in a way that was possibly tragic.
"I know it's…" she started to defend herself, and the way she braced herself for his judgement twisted the knife even deeper.
"It's a very 'you' thing to do," he interrupted her brashly.
But her lips pressed into a thin line and it was his own fault that his words would forever be taken the wrong way by her.
The silence was brutal the rest of the way.
And yet, even though she looked at him this way, even though this hurt, he didn't want to leave. Slowed down the closer they came to the yellow Tsukino residence.
But eventually, he helped her lower the cupboard right in front of her door.
"Thank you," she mumbled.
"I can still help you carry it up—" he tried awkwardly.
Usagi shook her head, perfect hair flying about her. "Shingo can help," she said.
"Right," he croaked, and stepped back off the step that led to her door.
He'd walked three steps back to the little fence in their entry when Usagi's voice stopped him.
"Your girlfriend—"
Mamoru's heart clenched. She wasn't. She was someone he dated. He never wanted to hear Usagi say this word to him and not mean herself.
"She's um— She's—"
By the time he'd slowly turned back around, schooling his features in the most neutral way he could, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, Usagi was flushed red again.
"How… is she?" she settled with a cringe, and of course that's not what she'd actually wanted to ask.
He didn't answer. Just waited.
And to his horror, Usagi's eyes became glassy. She fought it, visibly, but they did.
"I know I'm not who you want," she told his feet. "Disaster queen. The person who does…" her eyes flicked up, her hands flicked to her irrational cupboard. "Who does things like this."
It twisted him up that she'd think that. That she'd been thinking that. Because of him. A hundred different renditions from the most precious, most perfect being in the whole universe, the person he'd die for to protect in a heartbeat, telling him in how many ways she suspected him thinking her beneath him.
She bit her lip. "I can try, you know? To be a little less… disastrous. Better for you."
His lungs constricted. Breathing started to hurt.
"I am," she said. "Trying."
He whirled around.
"It wouldn't make a difference," he said upon leaving, heart bleeding.
However, after that day with Usagi and the cupboard, the similarities slowly started to irritate him more and more, ever so very slowly. At first, he didn't notice. Not really. Not especially out of the norm.
Dating had always irritated him, just as a fact of the matter. How could it not? However much he pretended, they weren't Usagi. It was like letting Unazuki ride on his bike the very first time he'd orchestrated this farce. That tingling feeling of wrongness on his skin.
But sometimes he hoped pretending would become real, sometimes he hoped pretending would become a place where he could care for someone else and stop feeling so fucking broken and empty and alone without her.
Yuko had only touched him once before she'd kissed him. She'd brushed his hand, and he'd jumped so hard in shock and surprise it had frankly been embarrassing. His skin had tingled, and he hated that this was how his body reacted to the simple exposure of someone else's skin.
It was to be expected, of course. Bar the few days worth of memories he'd had with Usagi that would have to last him a lifetime, Tuxedo Mask's gloves, and the little human contact that came with combat training, he could still easily count all the people who had ever touched him skin to skin at least for the past 15 of his 21 years on this planet fairly accurately and quickly.
Not that it made it any easier.
And so of course he'd latched on. While he studiously avoided the term girlfriend, he was very much aware of the fact that with the second month mark having passed, he'd now dated Yuko three times as long as he'd been allowed to keep Usagi in this life before he'd eventually ripped out both their hearts and sprinkled them with rose petals.
In the beginning of these two months, he was loathe to admit that it had been the best he'd felt in a long, long time. In a way he barely remembered. A welcome distraction. A veil concealing the mangled state of his heart.
He could do all the things for Yuko that he was never allowed to do for Usagi.
He picked her up, he dropped her off places, he brought her lunch. Tokyo was sprinkled with sweet shops and cafes that sold their food in the form of cute characters as well as Michelin starred masterpieces, and his Usagi-obsessed brain tended to take note of every single one of those he passed. They liked to torture him by vividly imagining taking her to every single of these places. And so it was horrid that he found himself seeking out these stores one by one - scowling at empty storefronts when a few of those had apparently disappeared over the years included - and finally bought all the fucking sweets but for the wrong person.
She did react delightedly though, even when the delight was not nearly noisy enough, her smile not nearly wide enough, her eating not nearly ecstatic enough.
When Yuko was sick that one weekend in their second month, he made her soup and meant to drop it off at her doorstep, and when she opened her door to him after all, he took her temperature and sat in her living room and read while she slept.
How often had he gone absolutely crazy when Usagi was sick? He dreamt of her death every time he only so much as thought of her kiss, of course his skin was on fire every time she so much as had a cough. What if that was it, what if he'd slipped too much, not stayed away enough? What if simply (ha. Simple. Yeah, right.) not being her boyfriend was not enough, what if he was supposed to not be in her proximity at all?
How often had he ground his teeth and not allowed himself to let Tuxedo Mask swoop into her window and press Mamoru's hand against her forehead until he'd forced it to cool down by sheer willpower alone? Every time he'd endured his worst fears like that in silence now fueled a lot of relief that finally, at least for someone, he could do all this. Could let this all out.
His heart was full of missing moments, and this was a woman who also liked second dessert, who also blushed when he handed her a pink helmet to ride on his bike, who also went out of her way to be so kind to others it was moving.
Sometimes she would do or say something that was this eerie level of almost Usagi, it made him freeze. In him, a war would then rage. One side that wanted more, that was mad at Yuko. Because Yuko was kind, but not Usagi's level of utterly consumed by others, every fibre extended outward. Yuko was lively, but not Usagi's level of over-the-top contagious enthusiasm that she spread like it was inevitable. Yuko was open, but not how Usagi could be glued to someone's words, wanting to know all their thoughts and sharing every last one of hers so disarmingly unfiltered. The other side that was mad at himself for comparing her in the first place.
And sometimes, he would imagine what Usagi might say or do and freeze again when Yuko said exactly that, and it irritated him even harder, because how dare she?
It was atrocious. It was despicable. But the fact remained that despite all this, his heart was a little lighter even when it was all wrong.
He thought this game of pretending could go on forever.
"You know… I could stay at yours tonight…" Yuko said that day, rattling him with a shock to his system, because… because the thought had never occurred to him that he couldn't keep it in this state forever.
He flushed. Started.
Imagined golden hair spread out against his sheets, legs locked around his hips, fingers pulling at his shirt…
…but when his shirt came off and over his head, in his mind, it's Usagi. Only ever Usagi.
He shook his head vehemently. "Um…"
But she apparently misunderstood his blush completely. "We don't have to, of course, if that's too soon."
He licked his lips. Frowned. This was wrong. He couldn't.
This was the natural ending point, he couldn't let this go on any further.
"I like you, Yuko," he started carefully.
But she once again didn't understand. Interrupted him with somewhat of a laugh.
"Oh my. I promise I didn't want this to become a thing. I made this a thing, right?"
His chuckle was nervous, flighty. He shrugged. But slowly, he calmed.
"I like you too," she said. "A lot."
His throat ran dry.
"I'm…"
But this time, she could read him eerily well.
"Not over an ex?" she asked in the most careful, considerate tone, and he started hard. "I'm sorry, if it's too direct. I'm just… I'm getting that vibe. A lot, actually. You don't have to answer, of course."
He exhaled harshly. If hearing Usagi use the word 'girlfriend' for someone else but her had been bad, someone else using the word 'ex' for Usagi was even worse.
Ex was… the most horrible, unfitting word ever invented. And yet... "Kind of," he croaked out.
She nodded, warm and empathetic and put her hand on his.
It tingled, not unpleasantly, because he was a needy, lonely mess.
He turned his hand despite himself, let her thread her fingers through his.
"I understand," she said with a smile. "No rush."
And then she'd gotten up, bought him a coffee in just the way he liked, and he'd calmed down. She didn't pressure him. He wasn't done pretending after all.
When Yuko kissed him goodbye that afternoon, he ran his hands through golden hair, sighed, and closed his eyes. She tasted of the chocolate cake they'd just eaten, and Mamoru squeezed his eyes shut tighter, because he could no longer remember what Usagi's kisses tasted like.
"I think we fit well, you and I," she said when they were about to part, his back cracking when he lifted himself back up, but it was the perfect fucking crack, she was the perfect fucking height.
"Someone like you and someone like me?" she went on with a sweet little tilt of her head, her hair flowing around them in the breeze.
He blinked. "What.. do you mean?"
She shrugged with a bright smile. Gesticulated at the air between them. "You know. Smiles to brooding. Chaotic mess to ordered structure. Blonde and black. I think people like me are meant to be with people like you."
He had to swallow hard. Because of course he agreed. People like her… people like her were the only kind of people he would ever see himself being with.
The loneliness, the yearning crushed him like bricks to cotton wool.
Maybe… maybe this was ok.
He liked her. Maybe for the wrong reasons. But he liked her. And she liked him.
Maybe she'd been sent to him as a consolation prize, as horrible as that sounded. Maybe he could start to live with pretending.
"I think we make a good couple."
He didn't correct her, and she beamed.
And so, walking back down Azabujuban-dori, he was lost in thought. Lost in possibility.
Yet, when he looked up, he saw two streamers of blonde hair walking up ahead. Usagi in her high school uniform clutching her book bag and nearly drooling at an ice cream parlor, slowing down with her head turning and latching on to it even as she walked past it..
He exhaled slowly, walked behind her. Slowed down.
He didn't want to overtake her.
With the next izakaya, she did the same, sniffing the air. Then her stomach growled so loud he could hear it three steps behind her.
One shop more, and she stopped. Basically pressed herself against the glass of Mont Thabor, and by this point, he was concerned. That was a bit much even for her.
She didn't even react when he stopped right beside her, even though she should have seen his reflection in the glass next to hers even in the dark, shadowed, overcast light. That is, if she weren't so focused on undressing a wriggly cheesecake with her eyes.
"Hey," he murmured.
She made that squeak-jump combination that she did a lot with him and he hated with a passion.
"Oh!" she yelped, wide-eyed. She was absolutely startled. Absolutely unused to him addressing her, and he hated that even more. "Hi!"
And his voice couldn't hide that fierce irritation, even though he knew she was bound to misinterpret it again. "What are you doing?"
She shrunk momentarily. "Nothing," she mumbled, turned away from the window, and walked ahead.
He pointedly lengthened his stride to walk ahead of her, and just as pointedly looked back at Mont Thabor, then nodded his head at the rest of the road.
She pursed her lips, licked them, glared, walked on. Then her shoulders fell. "...I forgot my lunch this morning."
He smiled even when she didn't see it. "Ah."
But at least the smile made her open up, and when she spoke next, her tone wasn't so damn defensive.
"And my keys," she went on. "And my wallet. And I overslept and didn't… And it's a shitty day." To emphasize her point, her stomach growled again. It sounded as if her stomach had begun munching on her insides. He'd never heard intestines so loud, and really, it fit.
But then it hit him. What that meant, and he blanched.
"Wait, you haven't eaten today at all?" he barked.
Her eyes flicked to the side, up at him, and widened, her hand already rising. "No, no I'll be fine—"
He glared too hard. Grabbed her arm too hard, his hand wrapping around the cotton fabric of her long-sleeved school shirt, and pulled her up ahead.
There was a restaurant he'd gone to with the student committee once, it would have to do.
"Wait," she protested.
"You've got to eat," he glared.
And yes, he was furious. Probably too furious. But if he wasn't allowed to take care of her, she better fucking take care of herself. Not to mention that the most fucking powerful object in the universe fed off of her energy, too.
His eyes must have been fucking fire when he stopped at the door of the restaurant.
But her eyes widened into a big, metaphoric, 'No'. "It's too fancy!" she protested.
"What's wrong?" he barked.
"I... can't quite afford that." She swallowed.
"I'm paying," he said, irritated again that she wouldn't ever assume he would.
She shook her head. "No, it's so much I wouldn't even be able to pay you back later."
His face twitched; it was so tight. "I'm not asking you to."
She took a step back. "Listen, really. I'll be fine."
He followed the step exactly. He was well aware of the fact that if he wasn't talking to Sailor Moon, he might have been intimidating. "Usagi," he hissed. "I'm buying you food."
But her eyes remained wide, and flicked wearily back to the restaurant.
It didn't fucking help that he knew that if he'd been anyone else, she would have hugged the living shit out of him and let him buy her the whole fucking expensive menu.
He sighed. "Would you like somewhere else?"
She nodded. With a sharp turn, she walked back down the street. He exhaled harshly, and followed after a second, jogged up after her brisk pace until he caught up.
She stopped at fucking Family Mart.
He glared so hard it hurt his face, but she'd already walked inside to the chime of a bell as she passed the automatic doors, and he followed into bright fluorescent light and sedate music through tinny speakers.
When he stopped next to her, dread in his gut because he knew, he knew, she shyly held out an onigiri. One. The plain one. The 100 yen one.
It was so fucking out of character. This wasn't Usagi. And it spread in his blood, because it was that second that he realised another reason why Yuko felt like such a relief.
Because he never got to see Usagi. The real Usagi. The real Usagi was not for him.
He frowned. Glared at the rice ball as if it was a personal offence. And it was.
"Are you kidding me?" he glowered straight into her eyes, ignoring her outstretched hand.
Her cheeks hollowed out and her eyes pinched together before she once again looked down at the plastic-wrapped insult. Looked at it so fucking sadly that it killed him.
He glared. He glared so fucking hard. He glared so hard he was half sure his face must have snapped into some sort of locked position and he would never get his jaw to untense again. He grabbed the onigiri from her hand and smacked it back onto the shelf, then dragged her back out by the arm.
The cashier wished them a good day to the fucking chimes of the automatic doors.
"Mamoru," she protested.
"I'm buying you something real, Usagi."
Eventually, he sat her down at Crown.
"Her usual," he growled at Unazuki, slapped down money on the counter, and left without another word.
Walking home, he was so angry his eyes were wet and brimming, and he rubbed at them with irritation. The emotion was so fierce, so painful, so stark and pressing he couldn't place it, couldn't locate it. It was everywhere and nowhere and it was so overwhelming he didn't know where to go with it.
He ended up staring at his ceiling until his vision became blurry. He only registered time next when the rain started to hit his window again.
And so when Usagi showed up at his door hours later, it could only ever have gone worse.
Whatever his face showed that evening when he opened the door in the absolute dark, he didn't know. But it once again made her jumpy.
"Oh, uh. I'm sorry," she squeaked, clutching a wet umbrella. Red with bunnies on it. The one she never lost. "I didn't think you might have... you might be busy."
"I'm not," he said, and then flinched at the incriminating hoarseness of his voice.
"Oh. Um."
He held the door open, but she didn't go past the genkan. She rarely did. And it hurt.
Her standing in exactly that spot was burned forever into his nightmares. The second to worst ones, anyway.
The awkward silence was even more pressing in the dark.
"Please come in," he rasped. He was begging.
But she didn't. Instead, she held out a few folded bills with two hands and a bowed head.
His eyebrows rose into his hairline.
She shook it a little. "Thank you for earlier," she said, eyes on the bills. "I'm returning the money."
His eyes fucking burned. "You don't have to pay me back, Usagi."
She shook her head. "But I..."
"But you what?" he growled, and it vibrated in the empty space.
She finally met his eyes, and they were once again that glassy, tormenting hue.
"I don't want to be even further in your debt," she whispered.
He inhaled sharply around his frown.
"...in what debt do you think you are, Usagi?"
She shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable. "I mean. You know."
His hair shook around him when he shook it no ever so slowly. "I really don't."
She rolled her shoulder. Hollowed cheeks, eyes wide for a second but not longer than that. "You know. You had to do a lot of shit for me. In two lifetimes. Even when you didn't…"
He yanked a hand through his hair.
"I mean like… Even before. Not only, like, now. You lost a lot for me, in any life, and for what? When you didn't—- You said you didn't—"
He rolled his shoulders back, frowning. What the hell was she talking about?
"I mean. Like. Not only you lost a lot. I mean of course you also lost a lot for me. But like. I mean. History, like, had to start again just because I read into— and you didn't actually—"
It came to him so suddenly, he felt like vomiting. She couldn't possibly think that—
"...you think Endymion's feelings weren't real?" he asked in absolute horror.
It threw him. It punched him. A hole in his gut he thought might never close up.
"I mean, you said that just there was something going on between us in past life, it didn't mean something here, and that you felt trapped and— It was different for you, I get that now, and so—"
Everything. His lie changed everything. He didn't even have her past anymore.
He felt so fucking sick.
"I died for you," he hissed. It was all hurt. It was all accusation. Why didn't this mean anything anymore, just because he was an asshole?
"Exactly!" she cried, eyes flying up at him, watery and beautiful and out for accidental murder. "You sacrificed yourself for me. Four times! You did. And I… Here I am. Taking your money. Taking your time. Taking and taking and taking from you and I—"
"You were hungry," he cried. But of course it was more than that. He knew it. He knew that that was what his anger was about in the first place. It was desperation.
He didn't even get to fucking feed her. What kind of monster did she think he was? What... what did he do? How did he make her doubt him even when…?
She held out the money. "Please?"
He absolutely froze. Didn't move.
She eventually left it on the little shoe cabinet in the genkan with a sad smile full of apology before she left.
He walked out onto his balcony barefoot after that. Let the rain wash against his aching eyesockets and heaved one singular, painful sob that hurt in his throat. Drop, drop, drop, the rain hit his face as he stared at the bleak, thick, grey sky.
He wasn't even allowed to see the fucking moon.
He'd spent the night staring at his phone, Ami's contact info up.
What if he told Ami? About the dreams, about why he'd done this. What if he confessed to her. What if she could help him? Surely, Ami and her loyalty he could trust. Surely he could get her not to tell Usagi unless he could help her find out what it was that would kill her. If she could help him prevent it.
He lost so much, soon there would be nothing left.
When he woke up the next morning he didn't know that he could feel even shittier than he had the night before, but he was about to learn.
He should have cancelled. He should have picked up his phone and said he had a fucking headache.
The worst part was that it wasn't even Yuko he regretted that day. He didn't even regret having broken up with her so harshly. He didn't.
He only regretted that Usagi had heard, and what had happened afterwards.
Maybe he truly was that despicable person he did not want to be. Maybe that was the real him.
When he left to meet Yuko at the Fruit Parlor, the money still sat on the cabinet exactly where she'd left it. In fact, it would stay there for years, he decided. Forever. There was no way he could pick it up. He couldn't.
He hoped someone stole it. Or maybe he could kick the damn thing until the money fell behind it, burned a hole into the wall for all he fucking cared.
He missed her. He missed her so badly. The word missing wasn't enough for what he felt.
And so, really, it wasn't even Yuko's fault. But she walked in with her hair in pigtails, when he missed Usagi so much. When Usagi thought even Endymion had never loved her, and this woman just dared to fucking look like her.
You'd think pretending would be easier the closer to perfection this girl mastered, but all it did that day was show him in no unmistaken colors both how wrong she was and how wrong this was of him. That day he could only see the wrong. Later, when he rationalized it all, he knew it was the only right decision: She deserved to be with someone who didn't look at her and try so hard to see someone else.
He couldn't be the man he wanted to be. And she could never be Usagi. This was a fucking farce, and he ended it.
He probably shouldn't have done it quite so brutally, though.
Yuko's eyes were wide and shocked and watery. Just yesterday she had announced how well they fit together. Just yesterday he'd told himself that maybe second best was good enough.
But he couldn't. He fucking couldn't.
She ran out with tears flowing down her face in a reserved manner, but run out, she did. And yet it wasn't her eyes that day that would burn themselves into his mind.
It was Usagi's. He hadn't even seen she was there. But there she sat in the booth next to his and she was paler and more shaken than she'd even been that fucking day in his genkan, four years ago now.
He hadn't understood that day what he'd seen in her eyes, what it meant. But it made him so uneasy. She'd just seen him break up with another woman in the most appalling way, and she looked more heartbroken than ever, and he simply did not understand, because that wasn't… that wasn't the reaction he'd expected.
He only learned what it meant one week later.
Summer having bled into fall, typhoon season came once again with rain, hiding the moon behind thick clouds and it was poetic fate, really.
Exactly when he was done pretending, when he'd been so worn down he was ready to seek penance and help, it was Usagi who stopped him.
"It is unfair, isn't it?" she said the moment he opened his door. Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, as if she'd been crying for days, but for once, her eyes on him were steady and didn't flit away from him. She was calm.
She'd stopped fighting.
He frowned, feeling like he'd stepped into an ongoing conversation, or one he'd never stopped having.
She stepped into his genkan uninvited.
"You're right," she said, settling in exactly the spot she'd stood when he told her he didn't love her and he didn't want to be tied down because of a dead Prince's obligations. "With what you said all the way back... then."
He swallowed, not following. Unlike back then, he stood close. Too close. Right in front of her looking down, hands in his pockets so he wouldn't be tempted to touch her when he didn't, couldn't know if his touch were welcome.
"You were reborn for ME," she forcefully continued her one-side conversation. "My mother asked the silver crystal to have you be reborn so I could have you again. Your very existence here in this time is because of me. For me. That HAS to be depressing. Crushing. Right?"
His breath cut off. God, she had it so wrong. How could he have made her get it so wrong?
"To be so dictated on. To belong to someone else from the moment you take your first breath. It's…" she faltered, frowned. "You weren't free. Of course you must have hated it. I was your prison. And I'm sorry for that…"
So fucking fundamentally wrong.
Not a prison. Only belonging. Only home.
Something he'd never had, never known, and now would never have again.
It had been a promise from his very first dream of a princess and her begging for his help. Someone out there who wanted him around, Someone waiting if only he found her. Someone promised. And god, he hadn't even known how lucky he had been, for such a brief time.
He exhaled harshly. "...You thought that through a lot."
She nodded.
And then she spoke the worst words she'd ever said to him.
She nodded once more, with conviction. Met his eyes straight on. "I'm... I'm setting you free."
His whole body shook.
"I'm giving up. I get it now, what I've been doing to you. And it was unfair. I'm gonna do better. You deserve better," she said, nodding slowly and like a fucking vow.
Every word was needles in his eyeballs, explosives in his heart, clamps to his dick.
"I won't try to get you back again," she promised vehemently. "You're free of me. I'm sorry I can't…"
His very breath was shaking. It felt wrong the way it flowed out of him and wouldn't go back in.
"I'm sorry you have to keep seeing me, with all the Sailor Moon stuff. I would leave you alone if I could."
She'd said something similar back then. This time, he was numb. A rushing in his ears.
When he didn't speak, she tilted her head in deep apology. "Maybe one day there'll be peace. Like, for real. For very, very long. No random spirits, not lost Black Mooners, no nothing."
He licked his lips, not following.
She tilted her head a little more. "Tuxedo Mask won't have to see Sailor Moon when there's peace."
...oh.
Oh god.
No.
"Then I can really get out of your hair."
His hands flew out of his pockets. His skin felt wrong and waxy when he pressed his hands down his face. Like it wasn't even attached to him.
She filled the silence with firing more shots.
"I'm... I'll try to move on too. You don't have to worry anymore. Anyway. That's what I wanted to tell you," she babbled. "What you deserved to hear. And I'm sorry it took me so long to ... to…"
He'd been on the verge of breaking. He was breaking.
"...to move on."
But begging Ami was no longer a solution when Usagi no longer broke. When he was already too late. With confessing, he would only be saving himself now.
Ok, so this is the point where I am once again reminding you that this story DOES have a happy ending - in La Douleur Exquise.
ANYWAY YES THIS IS MEAN AND I'M SORRY. SOME OF YOU WANTED THIS. MOSTLY ANTIGONE.
Also, Yuko, I was assured, is the most infuriatingly goodie-two-shoes name around, the character for Yu can spell "superiority, excellence, and gentleness" if you spell it right, and, well, Mamoru's girlfriend's name ending in -ko is just a poetic punch to the gut I'd say lol.
I hope you liked it, and as always, I would fucking love to hear from you!