Disclaimer: Haruka and Michiru don't belong to me, etc. Also, I apologize in advance for bashing Heifetz and Beethoven. Don't sue me.
Sketches
for Rae (Astarael00)
by FS
"So what do you want from me?"
The wind, still cool in spring but not devoid of warmth, seems to whisper something into her ear, but Haruka has already grabbed her bag and thrown it over her shoulder, has already turned away from the strange girl with the ridiculous hair colour and the unsettling gaze.
"Would you be a model for my painting?"
Although Michiru hasn't asked her to be her nude art model, she might as well have. Under her scrutinizing gaze, Haruka has been stripped bare.
And now the artist is eager to paint whatever she has glimpsed so that the whole world can see it as well.
"Pass! I don't like that kind of thing!"
The rejection has been delivered in her characteristic slow drawl and her coolest tone of voice, which is, incidentally, also her most polite tone. Her trusted mechanic has informed her that it sounds scarily formal. Don't be too polite, kid! You sound so chilling when you do that.
s.
She has always been the aloof, distant type. Her father once wondered whether she had antisocial tendencies since she seemed able to spend a century alone without even missing the presence of other people.
Whenever she is in the mood to turn up her charm, almost all the girls in the vicinity will return her smiles. They will shower her with adoration, which she briefly enjoys. And when she fails to pull away in time, they will fall in love, and she will disengage herself and run.
Most probably, she is no sociopath since she doesn't enjoy hurting people at all—she never liked the look in other people's eyes when she rejected their advances. But they invade her space and try to push her boundaries; and she needs to protect herself from attachments because humans are essentially fickle and she knows she shouldn't get attached too easily.
s.
It's impossible to push away someone who is consistently so loving (and so extremely lovely)... who adores you with such unwavering loyalty and unconditional acceptance, who cares for you when you're too exhausted to care about yourself, protects you when you're in danger, leaves you alone when you need your space, and who can keep up with you when you're running.
Nobody has ever been able to keep up with Haruka when she was running!
Hence Haruka finds herself fidgeting in Michiru's atelier now, plucking the petals off the summer bouquet which an obnoxious admirer, who is tired of living, has dared to send her new "roommate".
"Are you sure that you don't want me to strike a pose?"
Michiru only laughs as she lifts her eyes from her sketchbook.
"Absolutely sure. You're even allowed to walk around if you want to. I can sketch moving people."
"Is there anything you can't do?" Anything she says to Michiru has begun to sound like an innuendo.
"Not now!" Michiru smirks. "I don't need that kind of talk before I've finished at least one coloured sketch. And now stop peeking!"
They've entered the comfortable stage of relationship in which Michiru can (and will) indeed finish her sketch; and Haruka quietly mourns the dizzying initial stage of love in which finishing a movie with Michiru seemed impossible unless they were in public or had a chaperone. She can't deny that she feels a bit neglected whenever Michiru focuses on work. It's easy for Haruka to give Michiru space when she is on the track. It's a different matter when they're both free and Michiru is too infatuated with a new art project or a particularly tricky violin piece to pay attention to her.
She tries hard not suffocate Michiru with her love, but she feels clingy and needy and hates herself for it since this is so unlike her. The uncontrollable fits of jealousy whenever a new fan attempts to flirt with her girlfriend doesn't make life easier. To make matters worse, Michiru doesn't even try to console her with reassurances.
"Why don't you let me see it?" Staring out of the window (so that she won't look at Michiru) gets mindnumbingly tedious after a few minutes. Michiru has suggested that she read a book but Haruka is definitely not the reading type.
"I can't, not when it's still unfinished. Just sing, or dance. I thought you liked dancing."
s.
Haruka has begun to suspect that, while she has let Michiru in and shown Michiru her vulnerable side, Michiru still shuts herself off in her own world, refusing to let Haruka see beneath the surface of perfection. Haruka might be the one who delivers the occasional verbal blow whenever she is cranky but Michiru is far crueler in her utmost kindness and pleasantness. Even when Michiru was recovering from serious injuries, Michiru was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of serenity.
Haruka once admired Michiru's quiet strength. It was reassuring to know that Michiru would always be able to deal with a situation by herself until Haruka could come to the rescue. But the same determination and ruthlessness that allow Michiru to face abduction and torture with aplomb and grace also enable Michiru to focus on her pastel sketches or on a Beethoven violin romance while she and Haruka could be enjoying a date. And being ignored for a whole week after a stormy courtship (during which they were glued at the hips and only separated during the bathroom breaks) is more than Haruka's ego can handle.
"Don't!" Michiru only whispers when Haruka kisses Michiru's neck. In response, Haruka silently withdraws from the music room. She acknowledges that right now, Beethoven is more important. You have to respect deadlines if you want to be with a professional musician.
s.
Haruka loves Michiru's music more than Michiru's art (she won't ever admit it, but Michiru's dark apocalyptic visions and eerie seascapes still terrify her). They used to make music together, which was fun as long as the pieces were not too demanding or were at least short. Michiru has suggested that Haruka play a piano transcription of the orchestra part of the Beethoven Violin Romances—but here the first issues of their relationship begin to rear their ugly head because Michiru loves Beethoven while Haruka hates Beethoven.
It's not even a question of taste—it's a question of instrumentation! Beethoven might be irresistible on the violin, but on the piano, it's plain for any halfway musical person to see (and hear) that the composer was deaf. Chopin already demonstrated Beethoven's weakness on the piano in his first Ballade, which is sometimes mistaken for a homage. The register Beethoven chose was wrong, Chopin might as well have said. Listen, my version sounds much better!
"Pass! I'm not interested in transcriptions!"
Michiru only chuckles, indulgently, and continues to sketch. Beethoven's second violin romance continues to play in the background. Haruka can't help but remark that Heifetz is an unbearable narcissist but Michiru returns that Heifetz can be as narcissistic as he wants as long as he is a great musician.
Why didn't you become a professional musician although you have such an exquisite ear? a conductor once asked her. It's a gift. You should use it.
Well, why not? Too much commitment, too many notes to study. Apart from that, she is too gifted in too many fields. She has too many choices, and that makes life unbearable.
In the end, Michiru agrees to switch to Oistrach instead. Oistrach is the greater musician, anyway. Haruka realizes that she has begun to sound slightly petulant—nothing like her cool, relaxed self. Luckily, Michiru doesn't notice because she is too immersed in the act of sketching.
It has become much too late to go out for dinner as planned, but Michiru doesn't even seem to need food when she is preoccupied with drawing.
The damn portrait seems to take Michiru forever and a day. But Michiru doesn't only want to do one sketch but another one and "just one more", "just in case"... Nothing satisfies her, and every day she will add one more sketch to her daily workload. Haruka, despite being in the same room as Michiru while Michiru is working, has begun to feel ignored and abandoned.
s.
There are plenty of fish in the sea, and some of them are glittering just as brilliantly as the one you've caught. Tsukino Usagi isn't only the most adorable girl in the world (much lovelier than Michiru and displaying a wild streak that Michiru also possesses but will only seldom show). What's more, Usagi is as uncomplicated and quirky as a kid's story book; and Haruka is drawn to Usagi for the very fact that Usagi is so unambiguously attached to (and committed to) her ever-absent Mamo-chan, Usagi's workaholic idiot.
Michiru retaliates by flirting with a few men, who invariably scram after meeting Haruka's gaze. But Michiru doesn't change her obsessive habits in reaction to Haruka's incessant flirting.
Haruka becomes seriously infatuated with Usagi when she learns that Usagi, too, can keep up with her when she runs. Yet Haruka is sensible and pragmatic enough to stop before the point of no return.
"You're like the wind," Michiru observes nonchalantly, during Sketch No. 37. She is done with pastels and experimenting with oil paints instead. Watching her put aside the pastel boxes to make room for more tubes of oil paints, Haruka idly wonders when Michiru will get sick of her.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You'll always evade the ones who try to hold on to you." Michiru doesn't lift her gaze. "But I'm not trying."
Haruka wishes she would. To taunt Michiru, Haruka has been flirting with countless women (and also been dating a few) after Michiru started to neglect her for work; and sometimes fond feelings have emerged whenever a girl was too sweet for her liking. Usually, the flings aren't too intense since Haruka has a talent for getting rid of romances within one to two weeks. This particular romance, however, simply doesn't die.
s.
"You've become very attached to Usagi-chan," Michiru calmly points out, shooting Haruka a half-wondering, half-knowing glance through her mirror while forming her loose sea-green curls into perfect ringlets for another recital.
For the first time in her life, Haruka realizes that she loves the Michiru who can compete with Olympic swimmers and fight experienced secret agents but hates the Michiru who can curl her lashes and form ringlets while addressing such a painful issue. She wishes she could separate the one Michiru from the other Michiru so that she could ditch the formal, polite one for good. But since she can't, she only leaves the apartment for a drive around the block.
If Haruka loved Michiru less, she would have turned conquering Usagi into her new quest. But as things are, Haruka only steals a kiss—a deliberate act of infidelity or rather a mischievous rebellion against the trap of monogamy, which has tyrannically chained her to her workaholic self-proclaimed soulmate—and leaves things at that.
Usagi has shed many tears in the aftermath—strangely enough, not because Usagi missed her so much (so Setsuna-san claims) but because Usagi was so affected by her pent-up tension and her loneliness... Silly kitten!
Lately, Haruka has resorted to driving through the countryside at breakneck speed, without a helmet, which would only prevent her from feeling the wind in her hair. She often stops at the beach, where Michiru and she had their first date, and wonders how much of it Michiru has forgotten.
s.
"I've finished your portrait," Michiru says on the way to the art store, where Michiru intends to pick up new watercolours. "I wanted to do it in oils but then I decided to do a watercolour painting instead. It's more delicate but looser... and more intimate."
Haruka opens the map Michiru has handed her with an impatient flick of her wrist before she pauses, overwhelmed by her own quickening heartbeat. The painting shows a slightly younger version of herself with ruffled hair and half-closed eyes, lost in thought, vulnerable, barely touching the ground while striving for the sky. Bands of dust and various pieces of wreckage were swirling around her dancing figure, hurricane-like. Lovely but closed-off. Untouchable.
"Do you have time to go out with me, or do you already have plans for tonight?" Michiru asks quietly, almost politely. Over the past months, her high, girly voice seems to have changed. She has a greater range and is more expressive now, less controlled albeit heartbreakingly sorrowful.
"I'm not the easiest person to be with," Haruka can't help saying, feeling the tears sting in her eyes.
Michiru remains unfazed.
"Neither am I."
Haruka extends a hand, a habitual gesture, which feels unfamiliar although only a few months have passed. With a deep sigh, Michiru lets her head drop on Haruka's shoulder, and Haruka misuses Michiru's momentary apathy to remove Michiru's pristine silk headband. Without it, Michiru's hair almost resembles the waves in the distance...
In a few days, Haruka will be on the track again and Michiru will lose herself in her world again; and Haruka doubts that either of them will ever change. But the sky is now the perfect shade of blue, and Haruka enjoys the sound of the waves. She is happy about being on the beach with Michiru during sunset, about the fact that Michiru has begun to see why Oistrach was the greater musician than Heifetz despite Heifetz's technical mastery, about Michiru studying Kreisler and Mendelssohn now while Haruka has finally made peace with Beethoven.
The wind, colder and harsher in autumn than it was in summer, is ruffling her hair; Michiru is here; and the unknown perils of the future have suddenly ceased to exist... as if her old world had been wiped out, gone with the last summer breeze.
s.
A/N:
"I miss Haruka/Michiru. ;_; I wish the recent additions to the series had been actually good so people would come back and write fic for them. If I write some will you write some, too?"
I didn't say yes, and you haven't written anything for them yet... and your goldfish memory has deleted everything XD; but today the H/M muse suddenly hit me and got me out of my autumn blues. :D So here is my little Haruka/Michiru ficlet. Just for you! :X
Get better soon! ;)