Note from the Author: This was terribly difficult. Hard to write. A request for Amaterasu-chan. I'm sorry, Furuido.
Mature
Freckles. They decorated her shoulders, her back, her stomach. They danced down her legs like the footprints of bleeding men. They pierced her earlobes, smothered her nose, kissed her mouth. They were soft, nearly unnoticeable.
But he knew better. He had seen her fight, seen her fall, seen her mouth in its joy as she laughed, her eyes soft with despair. He had been drunk on her beauty, on the grace she refused to recognize in herself – because femininity was a weakness.
Her giggles were uselessly demeaning, she declared once. There was no reason she couldn't fight more easily than flirt her way out of danger. She hated men, she told him, even as she smiled teasingly. Chauvinism equaled degradation.
Her hand was always light on his knee, and when it settled there, he knew she would be ignoring him for a moment. The freckle placed secretly on the bend of her thumb called to him as she looked away.
A moment like this was the first time he kissed her. Gently, his lips, through his mask, touched that freckle, and something in him jumped. His heart off a cliff, maybe. Because the condescension in her knowing gaze was a suicide he gladly committed.
She was so much older when she looked at him like that. He felt less guilty, ore maybe more justified. With her hair falling around her shoulders, her lashes catching the light, her maturity exploded in his sight.
He wished he could avert his gaze. But instead, he was tugging down his mask, pressing his lips to the prominent freckle on her jaw, watching her childhood fade away beneath his love. Her laughter seemed to hop into the trees as it ran away forever.