Warning: This story involves two women together. Don't like? Don't read.

Commentary: Another flicker! This one's a little longer than the others, scribbled away in airports in snippets of five minutes or less. Thank you, Fuseki, for the word that made this one possible. =)

Have you ever wondered what drove Haruka and Michiru to that creepy puppet-infested hotel by the sea? I have. Here's my take on that.

FYI: Cooking hashi are chef's chopsticks. =)

As always, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Disclaimer: I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

Word One: SOAP

Haruka cast an evaluative eye over the apartment. Shoes by the door: check. Floors swept: check. Kitchen counter neatened, ridiculous miniature palm tree watered, blinds drawn for the night: check, check, check.

"Just one thing left," she muttered. Smirking, she tapped the thermostat dial down until its little bar shone blue. The heat vents across the apartment cut out with a low sputter. Outside the February wind wound its chill fingers through the clothesline and rattled it insistently—Haruka's neck prickled in instinctive sympathy. "Perfect," she gloated, and padded back down the hall.

Michiru's key sounded in the lock almost an hour later. She blustered into the apartment with a muffled, breathless oath. Her white-button nose blazed burgundy above the fringe of her scarf; her hands fussed at the folds of her coat. "It's frigid out," she seethed. She kicked her shoes off and stomped the small feet formerly covered, trying to warm them. "And it looks like snow!"

Haruka leaned around the edge of the kitchen. She arched a brow, grinned. "Haven't you been saying you wanted it to snow?" She snapped her cooking hashi thoughtfully midair. "Mm—something about breaking in those new boots? Welcome home, by the way."

Michiru peeled her scarf away from her face. She gifted her partner a surprised smile. "You were listening? Thank y—Haruka." Her lips parted—Haruka saw they were faintly chapped. "Are—are you cooking?"

"I," Haruka agreed, bobbing the hashi in a flourish, "am cooking."

"Dear God." Michiru threw shocked eyes ceilingward. "No smoke!" She sniffed too. "No rank odor of singed flank steak and failure!"

"No food for someone called Michiru if she doesn't shut it," Haruka snipped back, her tone nevertheless soft. "I'm not completely inept at the stove, you know."

"Just mostly," Michiru put in, unable to resist. She draped her coat on the hook nearby the door. A few seconds more found her peering curiously over Haruka's shoulder, hands braced on the taller woman's hips. "What are you cooking?"

"Vegetables. They're almost done—there's rice in the cooker too." Michiru's arms fell about Haruka's waist and the taller woman smiled, reaching down between them to furl her fingers over her partner's wrist. With her other hand she gave the mentioned vegetables a sizzling stir. "Is it all right?"

"More than all right," Michiru confirmed. She studiously examined the back of Haruka's neck—tasted it next, a slow snowflake's shivery kiss. Haruka's smile widened into a smirk. Michiru's arms tightened.

The violinist nevertheless eased her mouth away to sigh, "What brought on such domesticity, I wonder? Did you break something? Or maybe you forgot an appointment and you're hoping this will make me forget it too, so I don't get angry—"

"Such small faith," groused Haruka. She stirred the vegetables again, more slowly this time. A few stuck to the wok. "I can't make dinner for my girlfriend on a whim? Said dinner is, for your information, finished." Lifting her fingers from Michiru's skin, Haruka flicked off the burner.

Michiru withdrew her touch too. She took a step back—then one more. Her socks rasped on the kitchen tile. "What?" she ventured.

"What?" Haruka echoed. She looked over her shoulder, arched a brow. Michiru stood with an arm's length between them now, jaw slack, lips pursed. Her eyes glittered like stolen gems in the room's fluorescents. "Hm?" Haruka dared.

Michiru recovered—almost. "I guess you can," she allowed. She turned and made for the cooker. With careful fingers she opened it, eyed the fresh puffy kernels of rice inside. "This looks good."

"Thanks. Do you want a bit now?"

"Let it cool a little?" Michiru declined.

"Sure." Haruka tucked the cover over the wok, the hashi wedged in its seam like a strange elbow. "Not too long, though. The zucchini will cook into nothing and—"

"You've never called me that before," Michiru interjected.

Haruka grinned. "I've never called you what?" she teased. She stepped to the sink and washed her hands at it, the froth of the soap crawling in whitecapped waves over her knuckles.

Michiru scowled at her, the expression softened still by a wonder her widened eyes could not cloister. "Your girlfriend, Haruka. You've never called me your girlfriend before now."

"Aren't you?"

"Aren't I what?"

"My girlfriend," Haruka reminded the smaller woman. She turned to face Michiru and braced her palms against the kitchen counter. She delved her thumbs into her back pockets—she smiled. Wiggled her brows. "Mm?"

Michiru's mouth opened. She gaped at her partner and a flush crept to settle its carmine cape over her cheeks. "Well," she managed. She struggled—fell quiet. She lowered her gaze to watch Haruka through her lashes. "I'll take it now," she finished.

Haruka cocked her head. "Aa?"

"Dinner. I'll take it now, if that's all right." The violinist spun on a heel and slipped down the hall toward the bedroom they shared. "Make me a bowl? No cabbage," she called back. She disappeared around the doorjamb in a flicker of sea-shaded locks.

Chuckling, Haruka ferreted a bowl out of the shallow cabinet overhead and spooned steaming rice from the cooker's courtesy. She selected vegetables next, taking care to snip out shreds of Michiru's detested cabbage. When she was finished, she swirled the bowl in a precise palm and padded into the living room, pausing only to take a magazine from the rack behind the barstools.

She settled on the couch. She could hear Michiru fiddling with things in the bathroom—she listened to the woman drop something, mutter in frustration. Arranging herself beneath their only loose blanket on the couch's farmost cushion, Haruka balanced the bowl on her knee, snapped open her magazine, and waited.

"Haruka," Michiru scolded a few minutes later, "it's freezing in here! Did you forget to turn the thermostat on when you got home?"

"Maybe I did," Haruka lied. "Check for me?"

Footsteps in the hall, Michiru's own elegant stride. "You did," she responded. She came to the fore of the living room, wearing an annoyed frown and a set of pale pink pajamas. She accused, "I can almost see my breath."

"I'm sorry, Michiru," Haruka murmured. She put on her best apologetic face and offered up the bowlful of steaming rice. "At least dinner's hot, huh? And I have the blanket right here."

"Hmph," Michiru opined, a smile tugging the corner of her mouth aright.

"Come share," the taller woman invited her partner charitably. "You can stick your feet against my legs."

"Sure about that?" Michiru wondered. "They're pretty cold, Haruka."

"I'll take my chances," affirmed the blonde. She lifted the bowl and blanket and jiggled her elbow. "Get under here."

Michiru provided Haruka a suspicious stare. Curling her toes over the chilly floor, though, she crossed the room and ladled herself against the other woman, opening her palms in request of the promised meal. "No cabbage?" she murmured.

"No cabbage," Haruka verified. She settled the bowl gently in Michiru's expectant palms.

Michiru took up the spoon and asked, bracing her feet against Haruka's warm calves, "You planned this, didn't you?"

"Absolutely," Haruka confessed. She flipped the blanket over Michiru's legs.

"Why?"

"I wanted to sit with you on the couch like this. You know, close. Besides, when it's cold in here and you wear those pajamas, I can see your—"

Michiru swatted the other woman's thigh. "That's not what I meant and you know i—wait. How did you know I'd wear these pajamas?"

"All your others are in the laundry," Haruka relayed victoriously. "I noticed yesterday when I was looking for that receipt you wanted."

"Your powers of observation," noted Michiru around a bite of rice and broccoli, "are astounding when you use them."

"I use them all the time!" Haruka protested.

"The businessman you clipped this morning might beg to differ. Mm! Haruka, this is good!"

"He was crossing illegally. I noticed that and thought I'd teach him a lesson. I bet he'll use the crosswalk next time, won't he?" Haruka looked in half-exasperated fondness down at her fellow soldier. "Are you really that surprised I can cook?"

"Asks the woman who once microwaved tinfoil and a fork in the same night."

"Oi oi, cut me a break. I was tired."

"Mmmhm." Michiru gave the taller woman a knowing look. She said no more about Haruka's culinary prowess, however, preferring instead to work through her dinner in contented quiet.

Similarly satisfied, Haruka opened her magazine again. She found an article on fuel injection systems and fell into it with a will. Michiru tucked her cheek to the available shoulder as she nursed her meal; beneath the blanket, Haruka curled an arm about Michiru's hips.

"Want to tell me why you planned this?" Michiru asked again when only a few lone grains of rice were left in her bowl.

Haruka shuffled pages away from the article, eyeing Michiru sidelong over a column on carbines. "I already told you. Nightshirt. Nip—"

"If that's the only reason you did all this," threatened the aquamarine-haired soldier, "you're going to be spending a long time on this couch. By yourself."

Closing the magazine and tucking it aside, Haruka muttered, "All this? It's not so much, Michiru."

"It's—it's… it is," Michiru disagreed. She leaned forward far enough to deposit the bowl on the coffee table. That done, she secured both her arms about one of Haruka's and tugged it insistently. The blanket bobbed. "It's different. It's…"

"Normal?" Haruka provided.

Michiru shivered, startled. Haruka hooked her closer. "Normal," the former permitted. "And we don't do normal, Haruka."

The blonde shook her head. "You mean we haven't done it before. We couldn't do it before. We—we didn't deserve it, I guess." She flicked her eyes over Michiru's profile: lingering lashes, cherry-tone cheeks, stonewall chin. She saw agreement there, a guilty jaw-clench. She lowered her voice and said conspiratorially, lest fate was listening and felt like throwing a curve ball, "I think that's changed now. Don't you?"

"Changed?" Michiru projected. She said it quietly too, a secret whisper.

"Yeah. We're not… we don't have to…" Haruka stopped. She thought about it. She offered carefully, "No more nightmares. No more sacrifices. There's responsibility—the one we were born with, sure. But that's just another thing to tie us together, isn't it? There's nothing else between us. We're—we're free."

Michiru considered. Finally she flexed her fingers and instructed, "Say more about that."

Haruka bit the inside of her cheek. She drummed her free fingers on the arm of the couch. She said, "We were going to kill three people, first. For the talismans—for the world. We were willing." Michiru nodded. Haruka continued, "When that wasn't necessary anymore, we—we were going to kill that Tomoe girl."

"Our duty," Michiru reminded her partner.

Haruka shrugged. She smiled, a hard thing—sincere too, if not sequestered into the shadows at the corner of her mouth. "Our duty," she acquiesced, "made us almost-murderers. And almost-murderers don't deserve this."

Haruka slid her hand down Michiru's thigh beneath the blanket. The pajama fabric bunched under her fingertips.

Michiru allowed this. Slanting her eyes as she arched into Haruka's touch, she maintained, "But you said that's changed. How? I'm waiting for you to tell me that, Haruka. I want an explanation as to how we went from not deserving this to deserving it, and I want it now." The blanket stretched taut. Michiru bit her lip, squirmed. "I also want—"

"Patience," Haruka scolded. Michiru made a mewling noise of protest. Unable to deny her, Haruka moved her fingers again, peeling the pajamas lower. "I had to watch you die," she admitted. "And you… you had to go first. You had to because you came for me and I wasn't good enough to save you—"

"Haruka—!"

"Ssh. It's true and—" Haruka's mouth worked. She closed it. She took a deep breath, went on, "We had to learn humility, Michiru, didn't we? We had to learn we couldn't do this alone. We had to learn to trust that girl."

Michiru studied her partner. She asked, "Do you trust her, Haruka?"

For the second time in so many minutes, Haruka shrugged. "I trust her to be naïve enough to think she can save the world," she murmured. "She did it once. Saved the world, I mean. And I think a part of me believes she has a fair shot at doing it again."

Michiru smiled. "She's special," she opined, and Haruka chuckled her agreement.

The taller of the pair put forward after a thoughtful pause, "We ate our humble pie. We're not almost-murderers anymore. Maybe later we will be again. But not now. Not… not right now." She shifted her hand, palmed a hip. She kneaded. Michiru stretched appreciatively into the motion and Haruka contended, "We really are free, Michiru. And I think we've done enough that we've earned… no, we deserve the chance to be normal. Even if it's just for a little while."

Turning her gaze to the empty bowl on the coffee table, Michiru said, "Hm." It was a sound of neither promise nor peril.

Nervous, Haruka drove to the point. "So there's no reason," she summarized, "I shouldn't be able to make you dinner. And scheme to see you in scanty nightwear. And call you my girlfriend." She hesitated. She persisted, "I wanted to do it all before. I wanted to—to give you what I felt like you deserved. But every time I tried, there was a battle or—or I burned the rice beyond repair and—let's get away from here. Okay?"

Startled, Michiru jerked her eyes from the bowl back to her partner. "What?"

"Let's get away from here," Haruka insisted. "The mission's over. There's nothing else here for us. Let's… let's make up for lost time. Drive along the coast as far as we can. Or—I don't know, Michiru, I don't care as long as it's with y—mmph!"

Michiru cut off Haruka's desperate splutter in a kind, kindling kiss. She kept the taller woman a long time. When she did deign to draw back, she cupped Haruka's crimson cheeks and said, "Yes. To both questions."

"Uh?" Haruka voiced.

"Yes—let's get away." Michiru laughed. Leaning in for another kiss, she agreed, "And yes, Haruka, because I could care less whether either of us deserves it now, or if we ever have or will—yes. Of course I'm your girlfriend."