"I always knew Hinagiku like-likes Takorou!" Momoko chattered happily, as the girls climbed the stairs together. She seemed, Scarlet thought with growing irritation, ludicrously triumphant over it. Momoko had already spent half the night analysing every word or look that had passed between the childhood friends, and Scarlet wasn't sure how much more of her adolescent gushings she could take. Especially when every word cut through her like a knife. "She absolutely hated that demon-girl hitting on him, Scarlet, I wish you'd seen!" Scarlet tossed back her red hair and snapped, "Maybe she was just sick of being the odd one out. That's usually my job, isn't it?" Momoko paused with her hand on the door to her bedroom, shocked out of her train of thought for once in her chatterbox life. "Oh, Scarlet, I'm so sorry. I didn't think you cared, I mean, you could have any boy you like, you know that, and you never bring a date..." Rosy lips trembled penitently, and Scarlet was afraid Momoko was going to hug her. And she couldn't bear the other girl's arms around her, not right now... Not now she was suddenly unable to trust herself around any of her friends and, most particularly, this one. "I'm sorry," she sighed, warding Momoko's embrace off. "I don't know what's come over me..." //No idea at all,// she echoed bitterly in the privacy of her own mind //I don't even recall dreaming of you every night, or being able to get the image of Yuri and Hinagiku together out of my mind. I certainly don't care at all that I kissed you under the mistletoe tonight and it meant, nothing, nothing at all. Because it's all a game, and I am your friend, and you're involved in the Romeo and Juliet romance of the century. And just to rub it in, you've spent the last ten minutes relentlessly heterosexualising the only fucking lesbian you know. Damnit, I really did drink too much champagne tonight...// Scarlet was half-blinded by futile, girlish, half-drunk tears as she followed Momoko into her room. She felt sick to her stomach, and wanted nothing more than to curl up on her stretcher bed, close her eyes, block out her thoughts - and shut Momoko's bloody chatter off for a moment, she realised, as the younger girl, reassured, started off again on her Hinagiku-Takorou fantasies again, sharing them with Jamapi this time. She managed to block out the words as she sat on the bed, but that didn't help, because now she was watching Momoko's lips move, and remembering how silken they had felt against hers. / ** / ** / ** / **/ The rest of the evening with her friend's family had been both more difficult and easier to endure than Scarlet had feared. It was entrancingly effortless, after all, to watch Momoko, her vivid face lit up with pleasure at Christmas and her family, to try to analyse her appeal. It was more than just beauty. All angels were flawless, by definition. And it was more than just charm of expression. Yuri's manner was enough to cause serious tooth decay, after all, and despite that brief moment of weakness on the road earlier that day, Scarlet never dreamed of Yuri. There was strength and animation in Momoko's face, tempering both the perfect features and the gentle face, somehow escaping both cold purity and insipidity. Scarlet had stared at firelight reflected in clear blue eyes, and tried to find the word. Pretty. Momoko was pretty. Such an incongruously human word for the legendary Angel Wedding Peach. But then, Momoko was so incongruously human. And 'pretty' suited her, somehow evoked exactly the sweet ache her face caused in Scarlet's... She bit the thought off. //Watch yourself, Salvia. Love may be angelic, but romance and passion are human inventions. For weak humans. Not Fighter Angels// Of course there was Sakura, wrapped around and in her human husband. No, the difficulty did not lie in Momoko's presence or her laughter, which was becoming more addictive and necessary by the moment. It lay in trying to control her own reactions. Especially when her innocent – and heterosexual, Scarlet, try to remember that - friend took her hand and pulled her, giggling, under the mistletoe. At least, Momoko was giggling. Scarlet was trying very hard not to run away. She could feel burning blood flood her cheeks, creep down to spread hot blood across her breasts. Momoko's parents were watching her, smiling indulgently. And it wasn't as if Scarlet didn't know the human script off by heart. A teasing smile, a gentle peck on the lips... Yousuke could do it. Yousuke would make some joke about ugly girls needing to use mistletoe, and kiss her, not too much, not too little, just a casual, fond kiss. Yousuke was Momoko's boyfriend, her true love... Yousuke was the devil Viento, and had absolutely no right to kiss an angel. Scarlet, as Salvia, was Peach's equal – her better – and had every right in the world. And she could no more call Peach 'Momopi' and tease and kiss her than she could fly. Perhaps not such a wonderful thing, being a Love Angel, after all. Maybe that was what Hinagiku felt when she looked at Yuri... Momoko was twinkling at her, no angelic detachment in her at all. "Am I so very dreadful you can't bear to touch me, Scarlet? One kiss!" And her father had shouted approval, and Scarlet had looked at her closest friend's smile and realised, quite simply, that the confusion of the last few days had all been a matter of recognising that she was in love. Madly, passionately, agonisingly in love. And now she was going to have a chance to kiss her beloved. Lucky, lucky girl... She had bent her head, and left a soft, chaste kiss on Momoko's waiting mouth, and lifted her head to see, through burning eyes, Momoko still merry-eyed, and her parents beaming laughing approval on the. So cute and innocent, two little girls kissing under the mistletoe. Good for a laugh and a misty eye or two. Scarlet had done exactly what was expected, and done it beautifully, as always. Nothing to reproach herself with. She hadn't, for example, devoured Momoko's sweet lips, plied them with adoring kisses, pulled her close enough to feel the soft warmth of her breasts against her own, parted Momoko's mouth with her tongue and taken the warm depths, kissed her breathless and made love to her on the lounge room floor... Merely pressed their mouths briefly together, smiled unconcernedly, and stepped away. Ice princess demeanor intact. If Scarlet's lips burned and ached now, it surely wasn't her fault. She had done the right thing. As always. / ** / ** / ** / ** / She dropped her head on the pillows so that she would not have to watch Momoko, still rattling on, unconcernedly strip in front of her. Or, come to that, she feared being too obviously not looking. After all, girls often undressed in front of each other. It was perfectly acceptable, because everyone knew girls could have no sexual interest in each other whatsoever. Anyway, the Angels all saw each other naked during the transformations. Well, not even Momoko usually changed her clothes in front of Hinagiku. But that was a little different. //Face it, Scarlet, you're different too. A lesbian angel in human form in love with a heterosexual bimbo half-angel. Different is hardly the word.../// Scarlet rolled over and heaved a sigh. "Are you okay?" Momoko, mercifully still with her virginal cotton bra and panties intact, sat beside her. Oh, goddess, she was stroking the hair back from Scarlet's forehead... Her hand was as soft as Scarlet had imagined, with tiny roughnesses on the pads of her fingertips from all the hours spent typing for her school newspaper. The older girl felt hot blood rise in her face. "Lady Salvia is tired, pii?" Jamapi half-suggested half-asked in its piping voice, bobbing around the ceiling like an obese cupid. Momoko's eyes were filling with sentimental tears of her own. Scarlet realised she wasn't the only one in the room slightly drunk. "Of course she's worn out!" the pink-haired girl cried repentantly. "No wonder, after today. I'm such an inconsiderate bitch... I never thanked you properly for saving us all today... You really pulled our arses out of the fire, Angel Salvia. As usual. I don't know what we did before we found you." She stooped and kissed Scarlet's blush-heated forehead. Scarlet closed her eyes against the almost overwhelming desire to reach up, grab her friend and pull her down against her to be kissed properly. Holy Aphrodite, why did Momoko have to be so sweet at such bad moments? She sought for something to say, anything but the "I love you" which was rising to her lips without her accord. "Momoko, why do you want so much for Hinagiku to fall in love with Takourou? Can't you tell she likes Yuri?" There was a silence, then a worried, "What's wrong, Lady Peach pii?" Scarlet opened her eyes to see Momoko blushing as furiously as she was. There was palpable distress in those huge eyes. The older girl sat up in concern. "Momoko, what's wrong, dear?" The endearment slipped out without her knowledge. She just wanted so desperately to cancel out that pain... But there was a sudden paranoid fear in her heart, too. Momoko wasn't in love with Yuri herself, surely not... "Nothing's wrong." She tossed her head, and candy-coloured locks floated into the air before settling again, feather-light, on bare shoulders. Scarlet spared some of her attention to melt. "I'm a Love Angel, isn't it natural to want my friends to find love?" She wouldn't meet Scarlet's gaze.
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