Three days had passed.
Rei waited in the hallway of Minako’s apartment.
Minako answered the door. She was hardly wearing anything at all, save a thin cotton t-shirt that didn't even hide the graceful, ample curves of her breasts. It hung precariously at her thighs, not nearly long enough for Rei's wandering eyes, which again zeroed in on her best friends legs, where they dived into the shadow of her shirt’s seam. Rei had meant to come here as a peace offering, to start the slow process of unwinding this—whatever this was—between them. Rei no longer intended to keep pretending. She wanted to define their whatever relationship rationally and cautiously, the only way Rei knew how. But she couldn’t fucking focus if Minako was dressed like that.
"What the hell are you wearing?" Rei spat out, taking a challenging step towards the blond.
And then she heard the male, gruff voice from somewhere in Minako's apartment. Only two words he said, but it was enough to make Rei's skin crawl, to make her forget everything about her original reason for being here.
"Hey, babe!" he called.
Minako winced.
"Hang on!" she hollered, twisting her neck towards the direction of his voice. Towards her bedroom.
But she barely got out her last syllable before Rei had grabbed a hold of her shoulder and slammed her into the wall next to the door. Rei's arm was pressed threateningly into Minako's neck and Rei could feel the graceful, ample curves beneath her, rising and falling to meet Rei's own ragged breathing. She hated her. She hated her for being with some guy only three days after lifting the shirt off of Rei's back, only three days after making Rei confess that there was something between them. Rei had spent the time trying to organize her feelings for her friend and Minako had spent them...
Fucking?!
Her anger was filling the space between them, making their breathing elevated, the heat between them pressing in from all angles like it might ignite the air in the doorway. Minako felt automatically defensive towards her friend, pinned under her intense gaze and heavy arm.
"Found another bastard to satisfy your longings?" Rei managed hoarsely, her voice coarse and dark, like some living animal was crouching in her throat. Rei had known about Minako's many lovers, but never like this. Not like this.
Minako's eyes narrowed coolly at Rei's rash judgments.
"It's not my goddamn fault you’re a coward," Minako bit out, baring those perfect teeth.
It was a low blow, but Minako was feeling low enough for it. As far as Minako knew, they weren’t supposed to acknowledge their nights together. When morning came, it was erased, even if the blond usually resisted it. But now Rei was here acting like a goddamn jealous girlfriend? Minako had waited too many fucking years for Rei to respond. How many times? How many times had Rei yielded a small amount and then gone running in the opposite direction? How was Minako supposed to know that this time was going to be different?
Rei felt herself closing the space between their mouths, stopping just short of allowing them to touch. Her lips were quivering with the anticipation of dipping to meet that jeering pout, that enticing dark cave that had haunted Rei's dreams. She wanted to prove Minako wrong. She wanted to show her that she wasn’t a coward. But she was. She would never take away those few centimeters between them and Minako knew it even before Rei did.
"Well, if I had known all you wanted was a meaningless, forgotten fuck—" Rei started quietly, taking the time to speak in that low, deliberate voice. Her crude choice of words sent a lightning bolt right down to Minako's skivvies. "—I would have stepped out of the way long ago."
"As if you weren't thinking about it," Minako barked, shoving against her friend so she was finally free of her oppressive arm, of that shaking, shallow breathing right up against her lips. The blackness in Rei’s voice was making Minako’s heart pound rapidly; she was having trouble thinking straight. "Stop trying to deny it. You wanted me that night. You might even want me now—"
"You don't know one goddamn thing about what I want!" Rei yelled suddenly, the change in volume startling the blond.
It took a few beats for Minako to recover. "I do know," she declared finally, closing the space between them once again, and Rei felt herself backing up, trying to get away from the overwhelming scent, the dangerous...wonderful... feeling of Minako so close to her. Minako wasn’t thinking anymore. They had moved beyond the unspoken rule between them. They were wandering into unchartered territory and Minako’s mouth was ready to backlash for all the years of rejection from the miko. "I'm pretty sure when you crawled into my bed I knew exactly what you wanted..."
"Stop!" Rei said sharply, her lips curling up into a snarl.
It was another warning. The priestess was filled with them. But this one was angrier, more disgusted, and more spiteful than Minako had ever heard before. And why… why did it hurt so much to hear that much anger in Rei’s voice?
Minako's head fell suddenly, her stomach sinking somewhere down her legs. She stood examining her bare feet along the wooden floors, refusing to submit to the suffocating feeling that indicated she wanted to cry. Her toe nail polish was chipped. It was ugly. Minako felt ugly. She knew she was going too far. She knew she was pushing at Rei in all the wrong ways. She knew broaching this topic could ruin their friendship more than any secret, sweaty night between the sheets had in the past. She knew erasing their moments together was safer, easier, better.
But she was hurt. She was lonely. She had some stupid, fucking guy lying in her bed naked. She didn't know what she wanted anymore.
And now she was broken. Rei had broken her. Rei’s warnings alone could break her.
"I think about you," the blond confessed suddenly. Her voice was quiet and small, not like anything Rei had heard coming from Minako's lips before.
Minako's lips.
Rei couldn't breathe. It was too much. Too much.
"Don't—" Rei started, warning again. Her tone was dark, implying something ominous if Minako dared to speak. But Minako had always been the one dodging the miko’s warnings in that delicate way she did, and this time was no exception.
"I—want to." That same, small voice. Was it whimpering? Was it really broken? "I want to... with you."
Rei swallowed, refusing to indulge in the idea of Minako asking her, pleading with her for something. For THAT. There was a dark desire wrestling inside of the strong priestess. It was going to come crawling out of her mouth any minute if she didn’t get out of there fast enough.
"You can't possibly," Rei offered incredulously, taking another step away from her friend. She was getting more and more distant the longer Minako's request sunk in.
There was silence. There was breathing. There was the sound of a man in Minako's apartment. There was rightness and wrongness and all the moments that had created them. There were too many things left unsaid. There was something. Something there. Something between them. Something pleading.
"You don't know what you are asking for," Rei said roughly, turning to leave. Rei knew. Rei knew the limit of her heart. She knew exactly what Minako was asking for and Rei knew that she would give it her if she merely batted an eyelash. If she ever let herself, she would love Minako, yes, really love her. But would Minako ever be able to settle down long enough to love her back?
"I do know," Minako called out, as Rei started walking swiftly away from her. “I know what I’m asking for! Stop being such a fucking coward!” And her voice was still broken, it was pleading, it was filled with hope that Rei refused to acknowledge.
But the priestess was already down the hall, outrunning her humiliation, her temptation, her anger... but mainly she was running away from the answer that was screaming to get out of her, wrestling at the base of her stomach and slowly working its way up her throat, until it would escape between her trembling lips.
Yes. Minako, yes. Let me. Let me love you. Let me have you just this once. Let me love you after dark even if you'll never love me back.
Minako was waiting.
The soft light of the cherry blossom tree was creating interesting shadows along the ground. Branches reaching for her toes, crawling up her bare legs all in the flat shapes of casted light, and she imagined a time when Rei’s shadow would hover over her, mingling with them. She imagined a time when Rei would be always inviting, when they could get tangled up together and laugh about it, when harsh words would be forgotten and blend into the comfortable nature of real love.
Real love.
Maybe they were never meant to be in love, Minako thought. They shared the hauntings of the battlefield together, the kind only true comrades in war could. They had been friends for almost ten years now, faced death and darkness and even high school exams together, and never once had they uttered the intimate words to one another. Their companionship always seemed to be a silent one, an unspoken bond that you couldn’t put into words without ruining it. Maybe Rei’s indifference and rejections were what made it all interesting, and Minako would wreck it all if she ever found out just how deeply the priestess cared. And wasn’t that the point of Minako’s strategies when it came to love anyway? She kept things on the surface because diving too deep was a sign of submission. She couldn’t think about love seriously, it was a topic she skirted around for the fun of it. She had given her heart to them all, it seemed, every last one of them—from the pop stars to the college boys—but never seriously. And Rei just wouldn’t take her heart unless it was done on purpose. It had to mean something to the priestess.
Minako checked her watch.
She tried to tell herself it was pointless of her to wait. Rei hadn’t come the first night, and she probably wouldn’t come the second or the third. And yet here she was, waiting all the same. She knew if anything would happen between the two of them, it would happen here, under their cherry blossom tree.
Where it had all started falling apart after dark.
Suddenly she heard the crunch of grass from out in the darkness and Minako’s heart was already beating in her ears. The priestess emerged from the shadows and stood just on the boundary where the light reached her feet. They remained in opposition for a moment, and the ambiguous nature of the miko’s gaze made her look like she had wandered here by mistake.
Somehow, Minako found her voice, dry and rattled as it was, to speak to the dark beauty standing in the dim light.
"You came," she said, tossing her a lighthearted smile despite the turmoil in her stomach.
Rei finally came to sit down next to Minako, like she had hundreds of times before, and stretched her legs out in front of her.
"I couldn't sleep," was her only reply.
Minako knew better than that. Rei never slept. She came because she knew Minako would be waiting for her. A weak moment, perhaps, and Minako wasn’t going to let it pass.
“You’ve been hiding from me,” Minako said quietly, landing her hand onto Rei’s knee.
The miko’s eyes darted there, narrowing in anger. It was too soon for this, none of Rei’s defenses were up yet. And the blond knew her too well. She was pinning her down to the earth so she wouldn’t run away, by the heavy, heated weight of her hand. It was enough to smother the priestess into the ground and Minako knew it.
“I don’t have to answer to you,” Rei snipped, refusing to look towards her friend. But Minako was looking at Rei quite carefully. She was studying the set in her jaw, the dark strands of hair that fell near her ear. She was studying her neck especially, that long slender line that ran down into the opening of her shirt. It moved with her breathing, perched in just the right position for Minako to dart into the space between head and shoulder…
In a sudden rush, Minako put away her objections and turned so her lips were right up against Rei’s neck. Rei instantly stiffened underneath the soft folds of her mouth, and Minako smiled against her skin, feeling braver, somehow, by the miko’s reaction. Then she sampled that same spot with her tongue, tasting the sweet skin hidden in that shallow alcove. It smelled and tasted just as Rei always did. And once she had a small section of her neck, Minako wanted more. She started a trail of light, suckled kisses down across miko’s skin. It was lovely. It was sexy. It was making Rei feel like she might scream and slam the blond into the ground in response. Rei’s pulse was quick, rapidly pounding in the vein in her neck and Minako felt herself become hungry for it, biting quite fiercely over that beating spot.
“What are you doing?” Rei hissed, angry at her for making her body react like this, for seducing her quite plainly like it was her only intention. And wasn’t it? Rei knew Minako would be there, and she knew what she wanted. Yet Rei had still left the shrine that night, following some inner impulse that she didn’t want to identify. It was dark. It was greedy. It was begging her to give in.
Rei tried again. “What the HELL are you doing?”
When Minako’s only response was to continue with her kisses, spreading fire across the miko’s skin, Rei snapped.
One arm shot up to hook angrily at the base of Minako's head, yanking on the hair that was there. Minako’s warm mouth was pulled away from Rei’s skin in a tiny, startled yelp and her gaze met the angry stare of the miko. Rei was surprised with the look in Minako’s navy eyes. They were asking her. They were hopeful.
Rei’s stomach seemed to disappear.
“I didn’t come here for that,” Rei said gruffly.
“You did.”
A moment of hesitation passed between them.
“I didn’t.”
They sat there for a while longer in silence, the miko’s hand still threaded tightly into the blond’s hair, forcing Minako’s neck at an awkward angle. But it was beautiful too, how was she always so beautiful? And the priestess thought about diving down to bite her friend like Minako had done to her. She wanted to.
Rei realized quite suddenly that her friend’s hand was still on her knee.
Disgusted with herself, she let go of Minako’s hair, and turned away from her, staring rather blankly down at her knee, which was being invaded by that heavy touch. She wanted to knock it off, she wanted to be ridded of her infuriating presence and all the dangerous, wonderful things that came from it. But tonight… Tonight the miko was weak. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was her confession while sitting in Minako’s bed. Maybe it was knowing a man had been in that same bed only days later. Maybe it was too many goddamn years of being tempted and taunted by the smell of orange groves.
Maybe it was her love for Minako.
The love she could never say out loud or show to her friend.
It made her weak.
It made her a coward.
Lucky for them both that Minako was brave. “Don’t you like my mouth?” Minako chanced, smiling wickedly at her friend.
That goddamn perfect mouth with that goddamn pucker when she’s trying not to laugh.
“It’s worthless,” Rei snapped.
Minako’s lips quirked once before coming down more harshly onto Rei’s neck and continuing down to her collarbone. The priestess closed her eyes tightly, willing her friend to stop.
“Minako—” she mumbled. Rei’s voice was blocked, like a sleeping giant was going to awaken and come roaring out of her lips at any moment. She was struggling under her best friend’s assault. “You can’t—”
Minako wasn’t listening. She never listened.
When Rei opened her eyes she saw that Minako had crawled over, so she was hovering above her on all fours, her left hand still firmly on the miko’s knee. Rei felt her head rolling back, unable to look at her friend in such a position without losing complete control. By doing so, she exposed more of her neck for Minako to run her tongue over and Rei couldn’t help but groan at the feeling of that hot, wet cave touching her sensitive throat.
Rei tried one last time to stop the vixen from taking her ability to think by saying her name once, twice, three times. But it seemed to only fuel Minako’s wandering lips, which began to travel farther down to the rim of Rei’s shirt. Minako nudged her nose along the seam of the miko’s shirt, and Rei’s breathing became wide and deep, subconsciously rising to meet Minako’s lips. And as her mouth worked its way down, now running lightly over her shirt, and the taunt, rounded nipple that showed through the fabric, Rei felt like she might pass out from the heat that was invading every inch of her body. Rei felt resentful towards the blond for turning her into this creature of impulse and desire but she couldn't help but submit to it, to worship this creature that could spark such interesting sensations in her.
Her desire was mounting, every time she chanced a glance towards the blond she felt a surge of adrenaline spike through her entire body, and now that mouth, that goddamn mouth, it wouldn’t stop, it wouldn’t slow down and a part of her was saying just go for it, it’s too late now you can’t stop this and Rei could hardly breathe as she felt those light touches across skin and shirt and nipple… And these clothes… These clothes were like cages they were suffocating her and if Minako didn’t turn and kiss Rei full on the mouth the miko was going to scream.
She felt a primal, frustrated growl start in the base of her throat.
She saw Minako’s eyes flick upward, a smile hidden on her lips.
How dare she smile with those lips, those goddamn perfect lips?
The priestess had reached her limit.
In one, swift movement, Rei grabbed a hold of both of Minako’s shoulders and swung her downwards, so her back was pressed firmly into the hard earth underneath them. Minako landed rather roughly and all the air seemed to escape out of her lungs on impact. Rei pinned her there, eyes narrowed dangerously and heated with something that made Minako’s stomach do a flip, her breathing irregular as she tried to catch her breath from the sudden movement.
"If you are going to kiss me, Mina, then kiss me," Rei snapped, brutally bringing her mouth down to Minako's lips, which instantly parted to let Rei's wet tongue curl up into her mouth. Minako was surprised, in part, that the priestess had taken such a bold move. She had always considered Rei to be inexperienced in the ways of physical intimacies, even kissing, but the miko’s lips were fierce and demanding, like Rei herself. Perhaps it was in the miko’s nature to be physical. Her instincts seemed to lead her in everything she did, and why should this be an exception? But Minako couldn’t think anymore, her reasoning and understanding of the girl on top of her vanished as things became more muddled in the exquisite unravel happening between them.
Her head was spinning.
Rei’s hand left Minako’s shoulder and instantly found the bare skin at her thigh, given the blond’s insistence on wearing short, unpractical things. She ran her fingers along the soft skin there, feeling overwhelmed with the sensation of doing something she had fantasized about only days before. Not only was Minako letting her, she was encouraging her, opening up her legs so that unreachable, exotic spot under her skirt was accessible to Rei. And Rei wanted it. She wanted to touch her there. She wanted to lick her. She wanted to take her again and again and listen to her moan Rei’s name.
Now that one arm was free of the oppressive weight of the priestess, Minako wasted no time in reaching around to slide the base of Rei’s shirt up her stomach, like she had the night before. Rei shivered under Minako’s fingers, pausing her own pursuits for a moment to indulge in Minako’s soft touches. But it seemed to only fuel her hunger more as Rei hurriedly reached up Minako’s skirt, skimming over her thighs and hips and then landing on that soft, wet spot she craved. She felt Minako sort of purr into her mouth, making Rei tremble at the idea of what she was doing.
She was touching Minako.
She was going to smother her.
She was going to eat her up.
After so many years, after so many rejections of this one thing, after never facing each other head on... Rei was going to take Minako. And she was going to make her do it on purpose.
Just as suddenly as it had started, the warmth and fire engaging her mouth and body was gone, and Minako’s eyes fluttered open. The two women were breathless, heavy puffs of air escaping from both their lips. Minako found Rei over her, her dark hair falling along the slope of her shoulders, its ends reaching the grass underneath them. More striking, however, were her eyes. It was as if her gaze was filled with black coals burning in the dark, penetrating the blond under her grasp, striping every ounce of the confidence she had displayed earlier in her pursuit of the miko. It wasn’t just the fire in her eyes making Minako uneasy, it was the anger buried there. She was angry at Minako for creating this creature of desire inside of her. Angry at herself. Angry at their secret spot under the cherry tree that housed too many intimacies—of Rei breaking—of Rei giving in. She knew what she wanted from the blond, she had wanted it all along, but she had never been brave enough to ask for it.
Until now.
“I want to hear it,” Rei said, her voice low and dangerous.
“Hear what?” Minako asked, bewildered. She started to sit upright.
The miko pushed Minako back towards the ground, keeping her pinned with one arm while the other remained under her skirt. Minako’s mind was filling with questions and desires, the ache between her legs fueling a type of desperate need she had never felt before. She felt like she would do anything the priestess asked if she just said it in that voice.
“One word, Minako.” Low and dark, like an animal. Like midnight. Like secrets hidden after dark.
“I—what do you want me to say?”
Rei dropped her head, so her mouth closed in upon the shell of Minako’s ear. Hot, heavy burst of air threaded down into Minako’s skin, plummeting right down to her stomach. She wanted to reach up and bite the miko’s cheek, the corner of her lip, her neck and mouth. Her nerves were singing, her breathing was shot.
“Say please, Mina.” That voice. That rumble. It made Minako feel like she was diving off a cliff.
“Rei?” she whispered shakily, her voice barely audible.
“Say please,” she repeated steadily. It was Rei’s only command. She couldn’t explain exactly what made her want it. She needed Minako’s submission now—a sign that it wasn’t a careless mistake, that it meant something to the blond. She wanted it to be on purpose. She wanted Minako to be pleading with her. For something. Something between them.
There was a moment of silence, with only their heavy breathing under the cherry blossom tree.
Then it was said quietly and unevenly, laced with longing.
“Please.”
It was said in that voice, that same, small and broken voice that Rei recognized from the day earlier.
Please.
It was said by Minako for Rei to hear.
Rei and only Rei.
Please.
And again the miko felt that hot spot of desire start to course through her. Minako—her Minako—pleading with her. Asking her for something. Something that only Rei could give her. All the while her fingers remained under Minako’s skirt, pressed into her intimately, damp and sticky from Minako’s own desires, from the sensations that Rei had given to her.
“Oh God,” Minako whispered, shutting her eyes, taking in a shallow breath.
She was out of control. The miko had broken her. She had asked for the one thing Minako had never given to anyone, at least never seriously. This was too serious. Too deep. Too much said after dark. And she was scared of it. Of this.
Please.
Please don’t let me.
Please don’t hurt me.
Please love me.
Please.
“Rei.”
It was a sob. It was a submission. It was so much more.
"Please."
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