"Did you know Minato used to be a musician?"
Minako opens her eyes slowly after she speaks to stare at the treetops dancing in the wind. There's the tiniest of smiles moving her cheek and her fingers are rubbing the inside of his palm in a tentative caress. On the horizontal bar, they're two exhausted pigeons perched side by side, aligned the same way, shoulders kissing through their shirts.
"Is that why he…"
The pad of his index gently taps on her knuckles in a slow rhythm, causing her lips to climb a little higher and she blinks, pensive.
"So, you saw it too... I wasn't dreaming."
There's a minutia to the movement of her jaw and the slackness of her hand that makes him raise his free one to her brow, delicately moving the hair marring her vision out of the way. She lowers her gaze to the sand below, but the serene expression remains.
"I… used to dance to his songs, he would play the piano in our living room for me and it was beautiful…"
And there's a slight discordance in that last word that suggests the unfinished thought, barely audible, but Akihiko knows what it means.
Before the accident.
Both their lives are tainted by grief, and the weight might sometimes get lighter with acceptance or change its shape with time, but it will forever linger like scars.
He knows the feeling intimately, it's a tattered cloak that billows in his back and hangs around his shoulders, sometimes pressing on his spine with the smell of smoke and failure when he thinks about it too hard. It shaped a lot of his decisions in life, and much of his thought process.
It's regret pulling you down until it chokes you with its fraying strings.
He's learning to sort of accept it and it's lighter now, but it doesn't mean he forgot. He never will, he can't, it's why he became a warrior; so it would never happen again to anyone he cares about. He spent years honing that skill and fighting is what he's all about now. Well, not completely, not these days, color is starting to bloom on that steel partition.
There's a clear memory in his mind of when he opened up to her about Miki and the orphanage for the first time, how she made the cloak just be, without the acrid perfume of ash and soot clinging to it. He turns his hand until their inner wrists are touching, pulse to pulse. Instead of building a bird in flight like they once did, Akihiko laces his fingers with hers like she's breakable, and she answers in kind until they're so entwined there's no space left between their skin.
We're the same.
It takes her a while to talk again, but she's smiling, and he has an inkling that perhaps the beach is also in her mind at that moment. He'd definitely like to go back there, with her, just resting in the sand with the foam lapping on them like a blanket.
"I'm really glad we got that offer to come back to Port Island. I think... For once something is finally changing for the better for Min… and me and... I'm happy."
Sheening red stars turn to silver and her lashes look heavy still, but they're glimmering with fondness, directed at him, and he can't help but feel a tinge of bashfulness at the intensity in them.
"It's my brother, it's… everything… and it's this."
Her free fingers rise to his face, grazing his cheekbone lazily with the back of her nails and she raises her chin toward him with flames in her gaze. Sometimes he hesitates too much still, that's not quite a reflex yet, because she eventually murmurs through her smile.
"Akihiko, I know you're shy, but I'd really like it if you kissed me right now."
After.
He said that, and it's hanging over his head like a flaming sword of doom. He can't quite stop thinking about it and because he is, he gets jittery. It's always different when he's in the moment. But having a set date and time somehow attached to… perhaps indulging some of the things he sometimes thinks about regarding her feels a bit wrong. Inappropriate.
I used to think this about touching her hand and kissing her too.
He likes his padlocks in place, they're there for a reason; perhaps he should just crack one open, a little at a time, and go from there. Iori had it right though; she is fun, she's sunshine and warmth and so strong too, but she's also a tempting fox that sometimes likes to scratch him in a way that makes him lose his mind.
And she bites. Can't forget that.
Akihiko just ruffles his hair roughly like it's going to solve his problems and make that vivid picture of red cinders hovering above him in darkness dissolve, except it doesn't help with anything, it just reminds him of the grazing of her nails behind his ear and how those heavy-lashed crimson orbs murmured unspoken secrets to him on her pillow.
He keeps perusing the reports Mitsuru gave him access to in the command room, looking for the numbers she wanted so he can assuage her fears, but he's not really absorbing the information. Akihiko never used to worry about stuff like this, he always just wanted to be pointed toward an enemy that needed pummeling and get challenged to his limits.
These binders are what let to all this fumbling mental journey in the first place: he promised her confirmation about the Apathy data, and the folders are adorned with red SEES stickers because they relate to their operations, so his mind made a few leaps. Also, they're standing vigil from this spot tonight, and last time she...
Stop thinking about her hands. Just jot down the numbers and don't think.
Numerical hopping tilts his thoughts to her homework. It's probably best to just focus on the tutoring first, it shouldn't take all the sessions he proposed unless he blunders his explanations spectacularly and that won't happen; he knows math like he knows how to break someone's jaw in one punch.
Minako actually inked down every single moment he proposed and he's happy about it, she's always so busy and he really wants to take advantage of vacations before school starts to spend time with her, sneaking around might get more complicated once class resumes. So, he's going to make sure she completes her assignment perfectly in a single night, just because.
Just admit to yourself you want to drown in the warmth of her at any given chance. That's why you wrote in all the free spots of her planner to begin with.
So he did, because he wants to keep figuring out his fascination with her and what it makes him feel. Also, he filled all the numbers in his notepad to draw comparisons of Apathy Syndrome victims for all previous large shadows and when they ramped up, and she was absolutely correct with her impression. The chairman is supposed to come in later this week and now he's got a few questions to ask this time.
She's much better at handling the console in the command room than he is, that's for sure. Then again, she spends a lot of time gaming on her laptop, he heard Iori and her brother mention some kind of MMO they all like to play together.
It's not quite yet midnight and all the cameras are preset to gallery mode already, as they should be, and Minako's jotting down her last trigonometry calculations under his watchful eye. But she's distracting, she's wearing the same sundress she had the morning he made her oversleep in sheer panic and then she ran out the door with a piece of his lunch.
That's not the part I remember the most though.
She's leaning over the console table, forearms pressed to it and around her paperwork while she traces values with her mechanical pencil next to a triangle, and all Akihiko can see is the strings of light fabric crisscrossing her back.
It's warm, she can wear what she wants.
"There, I think I figured that last one out."
"Let me see."
She scratches her sheet two more times with the tip of her pen and turns around with an expectant smile, handing him her homework. And right there, the curtain of time distortion crests and falls on the world, lightbulb wires buzzing out like dying flies as everything turns green and gloomy.
Minako blinks and turns away from the console, blinded momentarily and he does the same, trying to adapt to the artificial light source.
"Bleh, that computer glare is annoying in the Dark Hour. The color is all wrong."
He turns the sheet away from the screen to use it as an over-the-shoulder lamp and starts reading her mathematical process. It's a tad harder because of the murk and the lack of contrast, but he eventually goes through all of it with narrowed eyes and a critical gaze.
She's quite smart, once we went over the material she grasped it pretty quickly, just needed some drawings for context really.
By the time he's done reading everything, which takes a while, she's packed her books in her bag and moved across the room to stand by the window and peer at the sky. There's barely a sliver of new moon and very little direct lighting, but it's still tracing outlines that silhouette her against the darkness.
"You can see Tartarus from here… From afar, it's actually quite pretty. I wonder how they're doing in there tonight."
Akihiko places her homework back on the console and joins her with silent steps after checking the cameras for signs of shadow activity. He's taller, and the window's narrow, so he stands behind her back to peek where she's looking. The tower's top is indefinite in the sky, ethereal and meshing with the black of the night, but it shines upward like a beacon to the moon.
It doesn't look like a maze of madness and death from here, it's just an abstract piece of phosphoric art.
He peers downward and notices their reflections in the glass, just the front facing parts of her and the outline of his shoulders bathing in viridescence, but it's the glow of both their eyes that's shocking. Perhaps it's the Dark Hour haze making them shimmer bright, or it's just a trick of the faint moonlight, but it's all he can see.
"So… how did I do?"
Her low voice breaks the silence like a drop of water in a pond and he bites his lip, her gaze is angled toward her shoulder but her head is not, and he figures after is probably now at this point. There's a weird droning buzz in his ears at that thought, he's been thinking about this too hard and now that her neck is in full display his mind churns in a loop. The fact she can't look at him makes this easier at least and taking two steps to crowd her a bit, Akihiko lowers his face so he can whisper to her ear.
"Wouldn't you like to know…"
He can see her impish little smile in the window in reply, but she doesn't look back at his barely present reflection; she keeps glancing sideways and that's probably for the best.
"Well… yes…"
That's not what you're saying at all.
He did what he's thinking about now before and it worked back then, so he just dips his nose toward her hair, not quite touching her, and breathes on the back of her neck very slowly. She shivers and the reaction in the glass is much the same, lashes fluttering over the red flames dancing there.
Emboldened at the confirmation and drowning in static, he places the tips of his fingers over the back of her right hand with the slightest of pressure and runs them upward on her bare arm leisurely, shyly smiling when he feels the goosebumps on her, yet she's so warm. It makes him want to palm the whole of her skin with his own to burn to a crisp, but he's too hesitant to be that forward. Akihiko breathes again, mouth very close to the nape of her neck, just as his nails crest the bone of her shoulder, and her own exhale sounds a tad shaky.
I'm barely doing anything…
That dress leaves a lot of flesh exposed and he runs his trembling hand down her naked right shoulder blade like a whisper, there's a toned definition there that's too enticing. Her muscles twitch under his touch, perhaps it's ticklish but judging from her proxy reaction, that's not quite it.
Minako is distractingly moving her head, perhaps to turn his way, but he'd rather she didn't right now. He tends to lose his willpower when he's drowning in red and he's already half-deaf with droning tension despite just indulging tentatively; she can't look at him now. Raising his left palm, he runs his thumb on the edge of her chin toward the screen the other way, just to suggest she goes there instead.
They're still supposed to do a job here, so he flutters his words on the edge of her ear that's turned toward him, the same way they sometimes do to talk through kisses.
"One of us should look at… the cameras."
You do it, I'm very busy right now.
They're sideways in the window, but Akihiko can see her eyelids droop over the rubies, and she shudders when the fingers on her shoulder travel up to her neck until they hover at the edge of the copper strands. He keeps his lips near her ear but not quite touching it, his head angled so he's breathing down her back, staring at the mirror image of them and unable to look away. Bits of him are barely brushed with sickly moonlight behind her glowing lithe frame, two silver little stars above the melting red like a preying specter and it's twisting a padlock inside him like a vice.
The way the crisscrossing strings of cloth are snaking left and right across her bare back has been on his mind ever since he saw her wear this dress the first time, and today's no different. Inhaling softly, he lets the fingers on her neck travel downward shakily, dancing along the ridges of her spine and the strands like he's delicately stringing a spiderweb.
It's the humming she does when his nails graze her lower back that makes his thumb on her chin travels upward until its brushing against her mouth and she parts it, wetting the edge of it with her lower lip.
Please don't bite.
Not taking chances with that, and because he remembers she liked it, he traces it slowly down, watching the green outline he's drawing by proxy in the glass like he's painting in a foggy mirror. He's so tense he could break in pieces, and she's pushing her nails in her palms like needles, eyes rolling upward almost closed, but the rope seems to hold on just barely although it frayed badly.
Don't snap.
It's because she arches her head back when his thumb crosses the notch at the base of her throat, just where it meets her collarbone, that he drops an open-mouthed kiss on the skin behind her ear with a groan. His heartbeat is deafening in the heavy silence of the Dark Hour and she's exhaling shakily like she's in pain.
"Oh my god…"
The temporal blackout blinks out of existence between two frames and Minako doesn't finish her sentence, instead she turns around in a rush and just yanks him down forcefully to crash her lips on him roughly and he greedily obliges. It's when she eventually needs a breath back that she murmurs.
"Can we…"
Somehow, he knows exactly what she's asking.
Oh yes please. After wasn't long enough.
There are just no words coming out so he just answers with everything else, ghostly trailing his fingers up her spine as he glides his mouth on hers because nothing else will do.