xiii.

Three nights later, they lingered over that promised glass of plum wine. Not saying much, and doing very little in the way of meeting each other's eyes. Sir was gone – not gone-gone but out, perhaps in the hotel gardens or on an especially late-night walk, having agreed to make himself scarce should Eri show up. And she had. Eleven p.m. on the dot, stepping cautiously in while Sir stepped quietly out with his coat thrown over his shoulders like a cape and his wallet tucked in his pocket. He'd offered Eri a tight smile. She'd dropped her eyes in something close to shame.

Now she took tiny sips from her glass, and Mirio agonized over the motion of it. He delighted himself in the shape of her lips, and the memory of how it had felt to kiss her. It would have been too easy to ignore the obvious questions. Of all times, now Mirio would have been happiest to continue pretending that this – hiding in his hotel room together under the most secretive of darknesses – was perfectly normal. Because didn't all couples sit with bloody history between them? Didn't all couples skirt around the chasms in their chests and let the riddles mount to dangerous heights? No. There'd be none of that tonight. Sir had only left after Mirio had promised to get the truth.

Eri seemed to be expecting it. She never wore a wedding ring (Ever? Or only when she came to see Mirio?) but now the absence of it seemed more significant than ever. The wine went down slowly in her glass; it was fully on purpose. The flowers Mirio had bought – lilies and roses in shades of tangerine and saffron – remained unremarked.

Mirio clutched at the nothing in his lap, sighing loudly and saying her name. He didn't mean for it to come out so heavy-hearted. "We can't keep doing this," he said.

Eri nodded slowly, absently, and gave a quiet hum.

"But I do want to."

"That's very…" she pursed her lips, tapped the lip of the wine glass with her fingertip, "…straightforward."

"Yeah," Mirio murmured. "We haven't been very straightforward with each other until now, have we?"

"I'm sorry."

"Why do you apologise so much?"

It wasn't a fair question, of course. It was probably as much a part of her as any blood cell or scar. She could likely answer it just as well as Mirio could explain why he got so attached to things (her) so damningly hard and so unnecessarily fast. Indeed, Eri shrugged and took a small drink, looking unsure and about ready to still apologise more.

Reaching over the table to take her hand, Mirio offered his best excuse of a smile. Eri didn't pull away – she smiled back, though her lips peaked and curved in all the wrong places – and for a little while, they stayed like that. His thumb stroking little circles against hers, the air full and swelling ever more with an inevitable crash-landing into reality. Chest bruised purple with feeling, Mirio could scarcely decide whether or not this was the cruelest trick fate could ever have played on him.

"There's something I have to ask you," he said at last. "It's… not an easy question… for either of us, I don't think. But could you be honest with me? Eri?"

"Do– I–" She chewed her words. "Ask me what? What's it about?"

"Will you tell me the truth?"

"I don't know."

She had to.

Mirio squeezed her hand tighter, and spoke through gritted teeth. "Please. Tell me what happened to you." No, that was too easy. "Tell me… if– I mean…" What was he supposed to be asking her exactly? "Who is your husband? And that man from the market. Who was he?"

There was no surprise in her expression. Really, there was nothing: just two red eyes and a hard line for a mouth, pale and empty and swallowing down on shapeless words. She pulled her hand out from Mirio's carefully, and clung to her wine glass. "I can't–"

"Did Overhaul make you marry somebody you didn't want to?" Mirio tried to be gentle. "Is he behind this? All this time, I've been trying to convince myself that you escaped. That you were rescued. But you weren't, were you? Is– is Overhaul–?"

"No," Eri said. "He isn't. Kai isn't… I swear…"

"Kai?"

She stopped. She stared.

Something was around the corner, waiting to sink its claws into Mirio. Everything drained from him, and by some force of autopilot, he asked again, "Who is your husband, Eri?"

And she repeated it. His name. Some preyful instinct of her own. "Kai."

Oh. "Oh." Oh god.

"I'm so sorry, Mirio."

"No. No, it's not your fault. You have nothing to be sorry for right now."

If ever there was a time to be sick, now was not it. Numbly, Mirio sank his face into his hands and tried to focus on something – his breathing, Eri's breathing, the taste of the wine as it faded from his tongue. Somehow, it was a very dull feeling. Like the moment after being hit through the ribs with a mallet. Surreal. Spinning. And in the unsteadiness, Mirio found a little voice in the back of his head trying to convince him that it wasn't that bad.

"It's not your fault," he repeated.

It wasn't that bad – Eri was real, and whole, and healthy. It was more than a younger Mirio had ever thought he'd get. But then again, was she really so whole? She shrunk away at the slightest touches and jumped at the faintest noises. And from her lips, there was always those sorries. Nobody whole would have been so sorry for nothing all the time.

Dragging his palms down his cheeks, Mirio considered Eri again. "Is he still hurting you? Still making those bullets?"

Eri shook her head.

"Really?"

"He stopped a long time ago," she murmured. "He doesn't hurt me." A pause. She balanced her lips on the wine glass for a long time without seeming to drink anything. "I promise."

Mirio sipped deeply from his own wine. "What about the bullets?"

"In Russia."

"In Russia?"

"He left them all there."

"Eri." In a queasy, confused stride, Mirio had risen from his own cushion and crouched now at her side. His hands went to her cheeks so that she wouldn't be able to look away, wouldn't be able to hide the watery glimmers through her eyes. "You're scared. I can see you're scared – but we can help you. Sir and me. Even Deku. You remember Deku? We'll be able to get you away from Overhaul this time. Is he here with you? In Kagoshima? We'll arrest him. He won't be able–"

"Arrest?" Eri choked. "But he left everything in Russia. I said he doesn't hurt me anymore. You can't arrest him. You can't!"

"Yes, we can."

"But everything is okay now!" She squirmed out from Mirio's hold to throw her arms around his neck. Breathing hard like a stunned doe, grasping at his hair as though it were the only thing left of him for her to have. "Please don't do it. Not again. Not again. He hasn't done anything wrong." She said it like she believed it. "I deserve everything." She said it like she believed it. "I deserve it!"

There were tears down Mirio's cheeks. Not hers. His. Mysterious and unexpected, and they left wet scrapes along Eri's skin as Mirio twisted himself away and back again to kiss her. One hand in her nape, the other arm encircling her waist to hold her as close to him as either of them could possibly manage or bear. His lips were wet too, and heavy, and shaking against hers, and though Mirio was not in any way religious, he imagined some invisible entity in the room with them. Watching. A silent witness to a guilt neither of them could quite confess with words.

Because they were both guilty and not in their own ways. Eri didn't deserve what had happened to her – she didn't, she didn't! – and her guilt was by no guilt of her own. But Mirio… he knew he had only himself to blame for the way he felt.

Eri pulled away, her fingertips tracing lines alongside Mirio's tears. "Why… Why are you crying?"

"You already know."

She was quiet for a moment. "Yes."

"You feel it too."

"I do."

He put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her on the mouth once more. Gently, he took away the scarf – the one with the pink and blue, his favourite – and pulled the neckline of her shirt from her collar bone. A jutting balcony, a deep ivory groove: he placed his lips there next, and let Eri's hair fall in steep dips between his fingers as he brushed them along the back of her head. So close now, she swallowed against nothing, the column of her throat rising and falling sharply.

Not moving from the nook of her shoulder but pausing in his kiss, Mirio spoke lowly into her skin, "Is this okay?"

She nodded.

"And this?" His hand travelled down her arm. Back again, easing the loose sleeve up along her forearm.

She held her breath, but nodded again, and made a sort of falling whimper when Mirio brought her wrist to his lips. There were scars he wouldn't ask about because he already knew the answer. There were more of them in this little sliver of her than he could have stomached to count. But in no rush, he kissed each of them from her fingers to her elbow. Committing the rubbery, raised texture to memory, as well as the rising heat of rage and something else – something much warmer, more full-bodied – as it quivered into his stomach.

Eri's free hand balanced itself precariously against his chest, flattening into a white star before retreating onto her fingertips. She grazed them down the front of his t-shirt. There was a hitch in her breathing which made Mirio greedier than he should have been, and he sighed when she slipped her touch out of sight and onto his stomach's bare skin. Like a child exploring a sandpit, she hesitated, touched a little further, moved her fingers between the fine trail of hair beneath his navel.

Then, gasping as though shocked, Eri withdrew her hand in a quick, light gust; she looked at Mirio apologetically.

"Do you want this, Eri?" There was a certain hopelessness to the words. But still, Mirio leaned in, pressed his forehead to hers. "Nothing needs to happen if you don't want it to."

"Really?"

"I promise."

They were motionless. Eri's hands lingered in an uncertain drift about her lap and Mirio's, and she stared at them as though they did not belong to her. There should have been something absurd about being so close and so still, not quite strangers, almost friends, disembodied from any history or purpose. But there was nothing absurd about it. When at last Eri looked at Mirio, not speaking but saying enough for the moment, it was with a strange and familiar knowing.

Her hands, trembling and slow, took his and guided them. First across her cheeks like he'd done so many times before. Then down to her chest, where the skin was delicately stretched over bone, to her breasts, which were small and finer than china under Mirio's palms. She blushed a dewy, shallow pink, but didn't make Mirio stop as he stroked her softly through her shirt's material.

Across the expanse of her ribcage into the dips of her waist. From her waist to the dents of her hipbones; deeper, lower, slower still until Eri bit her lip and shut her eyes, Mirio's fingers beginning to wander cautiously. Slipping into her thighs. Cupping her through her skirt – white and airy. He watched carefully the twitches and tenses of her fingers as she smoothed them over the back of his hand, and he began to work her between her legs. More softly, more anxiously than he'd ever done before, until she murmured his name in a soft, pained sigh.

"I want to touch you properly," he said, lips now tracing across her ear.

She hummed. He drew her skirt up along her legs – oh, were they beautiful, and marred as her arm – and running his eyes over their whiteness, pressed his fingertips back to where they'd been. Massaging. Circling. Thumbing and making Eri's spine go stiff, making her gasp against a confused, pained moan. She leaned onto one hand, and dug the other back into Mirio's hair.

He did it again. And again. Groaning himself against the dampness which spread across his fingers.

"M-Mirio…"

Everything inside of him felt too tight, too hot and anxious to escape. Sweat was across his forehead. Eri had slung both her arms around him now and was quivering. Swallowing delicate noises Mirio was close to begging for. He wanted his name on her lips. He wanted her clothing across the floor and her body in his arms. His fingers were beneath her underwear now, and desperately caressing the wet, silky feeling of her. Oh god, her.

He wanted her–

"Wait. Wait, stop."

He froze.

And retreated, suddenly shuddering under Eri's hazy, bemused stare.

"What's wrong?" he questioned, his hands sliding slowly away along her thighs. "Are you okay?"

She kissed him, quick and light as a feather. Once. Twice again on his lips, then each of his cheeks where his tears were only just beginning to dry. Like a bud in reverse, her legs closed and disappeared back beneath her skirt's thin fabric. "It's a lot," she said, sad-happy. "It's just a little too much."

"But a good too much?"

She nodded, and sniffed. "I have to go now."

"No, Eri." He hugged her, and willed away the shuddering weakness throughout his limbs. "Please stay with me."

"I can't."

"You can."

"I'll come back."

"When?"

Another kiss, longer this time, and with promise. "Please wait for me. I'll stay. But not yet."