Love’s Dawn
A couple days ago, I went to talk with Yukino-san, to try to patch things up with her. I wanted to do something nice for her and help her out to make things up to her, so I started up a conversation with her about her feelings for Suzushiro-san. It turns out Yukino feels much the same way for her as I do for you, so I felt that I might be able to offer her some advice, since I’d gone through the same thing. I told her that she should go ahead and tell Suzushiro-san about her feelings, and she, being a good friend to Yukino, would be accepting of them.
I know that you reacted with disgust when you first learned about how I felt about you, but I think that was more because of the fact that I’d taken advantage of you and you felt betrayed by me. After that had faded, you were very accepting of how I felt. Maybe I projected a bit of that onto Suzushiro-san, as I thought she would be just as accepting, and if she found out in a controlled manner, she wouldn’t even have the initial burst of disgust.
But I was wrong. It wasn’t anywhere near that easy. When Yukino-san told her, Suzushiro-san ran off in fear without saying a word. She then figured out that I’d talked to Yukino-san and gave me an angry phone call. I was able to trick her into going back to see Yukino-san, but things still aren’t going to be easy for them. I think that Suzushiro-san really does feel something for Yukino-san, and it’s these feelings that are scaring her. I hope that, for the sake of her friend, she’ll be able to overcome her fear and prejudice.
Thinking about all of this makes me realize how lucky I am to have you. You were able to accept my feelings, and then you went on to face your own. I know that right now you’re likely wrestling with them, trying to figure out somehow if what you feel is love or just friendship, and I’m so grateful that you’re willing to do that for me. I almost feel like I should be doing more to help you out.
I know you’ll probably bring up that I spent a couple years slowly working to bring you out of your shell before all this, but that hardly felt like work to me. I enjoyed every minute of it, and every time you opened up a bit more and were able to show a bit more emotion to me, my glee was immeasurable.
You know, that really makes it hard for me to do favors for you now. Everything I do for you ends up making me happy as well. Even with those coupons I gave you, I know that whatever you could possibly ask me to do for you will make me happy just to please you. Maybe though, if you ever start to feel the same way, we could find a sort of balance, with each of us constantly trying to please the other. That’s certainly a life worth working towards.
Your devoted servant,
Shizuru
The pillow she was hugging now had actually been a gift from Shizuru. She’d given it to Natsuki with little explanation after the Carnival. It was too bulky to be able to rest her head on it as she slept, and was probably intended to prop her up when sitting or something. She’d thrown it onto her bed when she’d gotten it, but it wasn’t until she’d woken up hugging it to her chest in the morning that she’d realized what Shizuru had intended it for. How Shizuru had figured out that Natsuki would like something like that baffled her, so she just chalked it up to Shizuru being her usual frighteningly perceptive self.
A soft noise interrupted Natsuki’s reverie. She couldn’t quite identify it, but it brought back memories of waking up under Shizuru’s gaze a couple days ago. So maybe that was it, then. Shizuru was already here watching over her as she slept. Natsuki couldn’t help letting her smile grow a bit wider at the thought. She thought about opening her eyes to greet her friend, but decided to put it off for a bit and just relax under the sensation of letting Shizuru watch her over her.
As she let her thoughts drift about her relationship with Shizuru, they eventually came upon the realization that at this moment she actually had a bit of an advantage over Shizuru, who still thought she was asleep. Shizuru usually managed to keep her off-balance through most of their encounters with her incessant teasing, and it was a rare occasion that Natsuki got to return the favor. She wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity now.
Natsuki let out a soft moan in her “sleep,” and followed this up by muttering, “Shizuru…” A soft gasp from above her bed told Natsuki that she’d hit her mark. Now it was time to go for the gold. “Shizuru… I love…” – a much louder gasp now – “mayonnaise…”
Natsuki cracked an eye open to catch Shizuru’s face turning beet red as she bit down on her bottom lip, possibly to avoid screaming out and waking Natsuki. She must have caught either Natsuki’s eye or the smirk on her face, though, as she suddenly brought an arm down to slap Natsuki’s shoulder. “Ikezu!”
The charade up, Natsuki rolled over onto her back to face up to Shizuru and let her laughter break free. “I’m sorry,” she said between chuckles. “It was just too good an opportunity!”
Shizuru’s face had locked up into her fake pout as she fumed about Natsuki getting the better of her. Normally that pout would have torn at Natsuki’s heart, but she was too caught up in her laughter to care about it. Shizuru apparently sensed it wasn’t enough, so she spoke out in a pathetic voice, “Natsuki shouldn’t play with my feelings like that, especially when she’s making me wait to hear an answer to just that question…”
“Not going to work, Shizuru,” Natsuki said. She’d suppressed her chuckles, but she could still feel a huge grin splitting her face. “I got you good this time and I’m not going to let you ruin my victory!”
Shizuru sighed and relaxed her face out of her pout. She dropped down to sit on the edge of the bed and softly glared at Natsuki. Natsuki in turn couldn’t help one last gesture to run in her victory and she stuck her tongue out at Shizuru. The next thing she knew, Shizuru had dived on her and taken Natsuki’s tongue into her mouth.
Natsuki barely had the consciousness to let out a muffled gasp as she was forced into the kiss. A thought of pushing Shizuru off passed through her mind, but it was pushed away in favor of pure sensation as Shizuru’s lips closed around her tongue and it met up with Shizuru’s own, which flicked it playfully back and forth. As she relaxed into the feelings, she felt Shizuru’s tongue slide up her own and sneak its way into her mouth.
Natsuki was lost in the sensations of the delicate dance between their two tongues. She gasped for breath as their lips temporarily parted, before bringing her hands to the back of Shizuru’s head to pull her back for more. Natsuki’s instincts took over control of her lips and tongue as her conscious mind occupied itself with simply cataloguing every sensation that passed through her body, hoping to identify it later.
Her heart was racing a mile a minute as she struggled to get in whatever air she could through her nose. Heat had spread across her chest, bringing with it the need to keep Shizuru close to her and in their embrace. Wave after wave of some other sensation she still didn’t know how to describe coursed through her stomach, almost like an ache but feeling quite good instead of painful.
And then it was all gone. As quickly as the kiss had started, Shizuru had broken away. Natsuki gasped in abandonment, her chest still burning with a need to have Shizuru close to her. Shizuru, however, had somehow relaxed her face into her standard small smile as she looked back at Natsuki, one eyebrow raised in amusement at her frustration. “And now we’re even,” Shizuru said.
Natsuki felt her face heat up in a blush as she regained her senses and realized what had just happened. Shizuru had forced her into a kiss and she’d not only let her, but been mad when it was over. Has she figured out my feelings before me? She felt her blush deepen further and figured her face was probably purple by this point.
“B-baka!” she said in an attempt to cover her embarrassment. Shizuru looked at her inquiringly. Need an excuse… oh, right, of course. “Are you actually trying to get infected with my flu?”
A flash of surprise went through Shizuru’s eyes, but it was quickly covered up. “Ara, if it’s a gift from my Natsuki, how could I say no?” she said with a glint in her eye.
“So, I’m ‘your Natsuki’ now, am I?” Natsuki said. She put a joking expression on her face, trying to hide her suspicion that Shizuru really had figured out her feelings. No… no, she’s probably just reading too much into that kiss. I guess I really should have considered how it would affect her, getting kissed like that by the girl she’s loved for so long. No surprise she’s like this.
“You can call me ‘your Shizuru’ if you want.” The look in Shizuru’s eyes was now almost frightening in its mischievousness. She rotated her body to face Natsuki full-on, bringing a leg up on the bed, which pressed up against Natsuki’s body. Knowing Shizuru, that was probably quite intentional.
“And I’ll be ‘your Shizuru’ if you want,” Shizuru continued in a sultry voice, which caused heat to rise in Natsuki’s chest despite her best efforts to simply be embarrassed. Shizuru dramatically threw herself back across the bed and Natsuki’s lap. “Take me! Ravish me! My body is yours for the taking… for the price of one little coupon.” Shizuru turned her head to Natsuki and gave her a quick wink, before reverting to her normal stoic expression and sitting up as if nothing had happened.
Natsuki growled at Shizuru as she tried to figure out why she wasn’t blushing uncontrollably at this. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? What makes you think I’d use one of those coupons for something like that anyways?”
“Ara, no reason,” Shizuru said with a distinct lilt to her voice. She pushed herself up from the bed and started walking to the door. She said over her shoulder, “Now, I’m going to go make you a nice, hearty breakfast. You’ll need your strength to fight the flu, even if you show no signs of it aside from using it to get out of kissing me. You can take this chance to take a nice, cold shower.”
Natsuki’s eyes widened as a blush spread to her face. “Don’t you go implying that! You’re the one who needs a cold shower here!”
“Ara?” Shizuru said, stopping at the doorway with that mischievous glint back in her eye. “But Natsuki’s the one with the fever. What could she think I might need the cold shower for?”
Shizuru slipped out of the room just in time to avoid hearing Natsuki’s exasperated sigh of “Shizuru...”
She wanted to be mad at her friend for repeatedly forcing that on her before she’d fully come to terms with her feelings, but she just didn’t have the heart. She knew she’d brought it on herself when she’d initiated their kiss a couple days before, inadvertently letting Shizuru know that the bar for acceptable conduct in their relationship had been raised. Besides that, Shizuru seemed to be happier than Natsuki had ever seen her, and she couldn’t bear to take that away.
But beyond all that, the kisses just felt nice, and with every one she felt like she was closer to pinning down her feelings. However, she never quite seemed to get there, and there was one last thing she had to try. It was time to get Shizuru to be serious for a moment, and ask her about what she felt.
“Alright, Natsuki. What’s on your mind?” Shizuru had dropped her mischievous smirk as she said this and adopted a smile that Natsuki was beginning to recognize. It was similar to her default smile, but just a bit wider, and it brought with it an expression of fondness in her eyes. Natsuki caught Shizuru’s gaze at this and tried to return the smile as best as she could to thank her friend, which just resulted in Shizuru’s smile widening further.
“You can sit down, Shizuru, this might take some time,” Natsuki said, motioning to the spot on the side of her bed that she already thought of as Shizuru’s. The girl nodded at her and took a seat. She rested her hand on Natsuki’s knee and gave her an expectant but patient gaze. Natsuki took a deep breath as she searched for the right words to delve into the conversation. “Shizuru… when did you figure out that you loved me?”
The question didn’t seem to surprise Shizuru as much as Natsuki had thought it would. She gave a knowing nod and smile at it, as if she’d been expecting it. “Hmm, now let me see,” she said, bringing her finger up to her chin in a “thinking” pose. “I always knew there was something special about Natsuki. You stood out to me for some reason. That was why I approached you and befriended you.”
“I’ve always wondered why you did that,” Natsuki said. “So you’re saying it was just an instinct sort of thing?”
“I’ve always had good instincts,” Shizuru said, with a little extra smile. “And in this case they were right on. Natsuki is very special.” Natsuki had seen that one coming, but she still couldn’t help a slight blush rising to her cheeks. “As I slowly got to know you, I figured out that something terrible had happened to you, and you were trying to do something to set things right. Eventually I figured out what you were up to, but not for a while.
“Even when I didn’t know what you were doing, I wanted to help you, but there wasn’t much I could do. I just did what I could to try to heal your emotional wounds and get you to open up. One day, though, you came asking me for help and I realized what I could do for you. I’m sure you remember it, when you mentioned to me that you’d heard student representatives had privileged access on the school intranet, and wanted to know if I could use mine to help you. As you know, my access wasn’t good enough to help you out, but after you left, I made a decision. I headed to the Student Council office and signed myself up as a nominee for President.”
“You did that for me?” Natsuki said. There was that weird feeling in her stomach again. Did it mean that she felt touched that Shizuru would do something like that for her?
“I didn’t think too much about it at the time,” Shizuru said. Her eyes were still focused on Natsuki, but they seemed a bit hazy. She was a bit lost in thought, Natsuki figured. “It wasn’t until after I won the election that I really started to think about what I’d gotten myself into and why I’d done it. It wasn’t until Natsuki came to see me that I remembered why I’d entered the race. You were so shy and awkward then, and had fought down your nervousness and unease to come and congratulate me.
“I remembered then that I’d done it for you. But you’d approached me, and you were happy for my victory. You didn’t even seem to have a thought on your mind at the time of taking advantage of the computer access I’d get. You were just happy for me.” Shizuru broke eye contact with Natsuki and turned her head away. Her voice had nearly cracked at the end of her last sentence, and Natsuki wondered what Shizuru was feeling at that moment. Did she feel the same type of sensations Natsuki did?
“That was the first time I considered that I might love you,” Shizuru said. Her voice was almost painfully stable, as if struggling not to show a hint of emotion. “Why else would I do something like that, just to see the smile on your face? I knew you wouldn’t welcome that kind of love though. It was hard enough getting you to accept me simply as a friend, I knew I couldn’t push you too far. So I held myself back from admitting it, even to myself, for the longest time.”
Shizuru paused in her speech. She was trying to hold something back, to keep control of herself. Natsuki couldn’t know for sure what it was, but she could tell that her friend was struggling with her emotions now. She needed to help her now, and the solution was simple. She propped herself up on her elbows and pulled her legs back to bring her to a sitting position behind Shizuru, and then wrapped her arms around Shizuru’s shoulders to pull her against her body.
“It’s alright Shizuru, I’m glad you finally admitted it,” Natsuki said as she brought her head to rest on Shizuru’s shoulder. “I’m happy that you love me.”
Shizuru gasped, jerking slightly in Natsuki’s arms. “Natsuki…” she whispered. The word was barely audible, but Natsuki could hear that Shizuru had poured out as much emotion as she could into it. Her heart throbbed in her chest upon hearing it. It certainly was nice to be loved. Natsuki then found herself wishing that Shizuru could feel that way as well.
Well, I guess it’s time to find out if I can let her. Just one last thing I need to know; it’s now or never. “Shizuru,” Natsuki said softly into her friend’s ear. “There’s just one more thing I need to ask you.” Shizuru gave a small nod at this. “Please, could you tell me how it feels – what you feel – when I do this?”
Shizuru’s neck immediately stiffened and a blush spread across the cheek Natsuki could see from her position. Her instincts certainly were good, and she knew what was coming. Natsuki brought her hand back to rest on Shizuru’s shoulder and push her head forward. She made sure to do it as slowly and tenderly as possible, hoping to make sure Shizuru felt everything she might possibly feel.
Natsuki turned her head in and planted her lips softly on Shizuru’s cheek, just as Shizuru had done to her a few days ago. She held them there for a while, feeling the heat rising in Shizuru’s cheek as her blush deepened. When she was afraid that Shizuru was about to pass out from the blood rushing to her head, she released the suction from her kiss and pulled her lips back. She then turned her head back and rested it in the crook of Shizuru’s neck.
Shizuru was silent after this, but Natsuki could feel her breathing deeply. When it seemed that Shizuru wasn’t planning to say anything, Natsuki reminded her of her question. “Shizuru. Please, this is important. Tell me what you feel now.”
It took another moment for Shizuru to reply. Her voice was weak, and she was having trouble keeping all her emotions from flooding out, judging by the constantly varying tone. “I feel… like this is a dream. It’s more than I ever expected to get from you… especially this soon. It’s too much.”
“I know, Shizuru. I know,” Natsuki said. She brought her hand back and used it to start rubbing what she could reach of Shizuru’s back. Shizuru started to shiver lightly under her touch. A wave of warmth coursed through Natsuki’s chest, and she started to feel a bit bad for how her friend was struggling. I don’t want you to have to hold yourself back like this, Shizuru. But I need to know, I need to be sure. “But… I mean, physically. What sensations do you feel? Like, a wave of warmth going through your chest?”
Shizuru gave a quick nod. “…Yeah, and sometimes, like an ache. It doesn’t hurt, it just tells me… I need you, Natsuki.” The blush had started to fade from Shizuru’s cheeks, but it returned in full force as she said this.
The other girl couldn’t see it, but Natsuki’s face had gone into just as much of a blush at the comment as well. It wasn’t because of the “I need you” part; she knew that. It was because she was finally sure. Everything fits. I love you, Shizuru. I’m in love with you. A smile split across Natsuki’s face as she thought this. It was right. She was sure now.
She wanted to tell Shizuru now, to take her worry away. But, it just didn’t feel right. She’d barely felt the effects of her flu all day, but she knew she had it, and was still contagious. Shizuru had already been pressing her luck too much with all her kisses. If they started making out now, as she knew they would if she admitted her feelings, Shizuru would get sick for sure. Natsuki didn’t like keeping her friend worrying, but she just couldn’t risk letting her get sick like that.
She had to say something, though. She couldn’t let this moment pass in silence. “Shizuru, I… I don’t want you to get sick from me. You’ve pressed your luck enough already. But, once I’m better, I promise, I’ll give you my answer then.” There. If she can’t figure out my answer from that, she’s not the Shizuru I’ve grown to love. But I still have time to prepare to actually give it to her, to make it perfect.
Another shiver coursed through Shizuru. “Alright,” she said. Her voice was steady, but it wasn’t controlled. She was speaking openly, her love for Natsuki lacing every word. “I’d wait a lifetime for Natsuki to be ready. I can wait a few more days.”
“Thank you, Shizuru,” Natsuki said. She wrapped her arms back around Shizuru and cuddled up to her. I’ll make it worth the wait, I promise. I’ll make it the best night of your life; I owe that to you.
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