Puchi Chara blahdy blah

keyofjetwolf:

docholligay:

IT’S LATE AND I HATE IT BUT WHATEVER

~~~

What Haruka knew and what was the truth were categories that, in Michiru’s opinion, overlapped with little frequency. She nearly laughed. There were moments for contemplating such things, and this was not one of them.

Michiru’s leg swung through the air and back again. It was a conductor’s baton, sharp and certain and effortlessly leading time.  Her rhythm always had been impeccable. Again, a laugh bubbled within her. It never tasted freedom.

For example, Haruka knew herself to be good at that racing game she and Minako insisted on playing.  This despite empirical evidence to the contrary, which Minako kept updated with a religious fervor typically reserved for her social media accounts. Michiru had thought to question the extreme disparity, but she’d heard enough of Haruka’s pained groaning (the accompanying obnoxious celebration was best ignored), to, for once, give Minako the benefit of the doubt. Still, without fail, Haruka would spend the hour following these playdates strategizing for the next.

“I think if I can keep just behind her instead of rushing out in front, she’ll get overconfident. The game punishes you the more you win, you know.”

“How appropriate,” Michiru didn’t say.  Instead, she watched. Haruka sat sideways on their couch, her long legs folded under her and knees jutting out at angles. She leaned forward as she preached the relative merits of the banana peel over the red shell. Michiru didn’t follow any of it. Instead, she followed the line of Haruka’s collarbone disappearing under the slightly frayed collar of her favourite t-shirt. She watched as Haruka’s hands clenched around the non-existent controller. She listened as Haruka’s voice took on the coarse tone that signified the depth of her emotions.

Haruka knew she would win. Michiru knew it would, at best, be fleeting.

A stray lock of hair tickled Michiru’s ear. She let it, of course; her attentions were better spent elsewhere. Instead, she imagined Haruka’s breath on the back of her neck.  She could almost feel each slow exhale as it caressed her cheek. The tightness in her chest wasn’t so unlike Haruka’s arms. It was a pity her neck was so cold.

Another thing Haruka knew was that she was a person of restraint. Had she been asked, Haruka would have been unable to name a single instance where she had acted with anything but the appropriate level of intensity. Not when standing in the foyer, raindrops rolling down her nose before joining the puddle spreading across the hardwood floor, because she had spotted Seiya Kou down the street and was still glaring five minutes later. Not when approached at the park by a curious little girl with a question about their clasped hands, who had no idea the proclamation awaiting her.

Certainly not when she had spent the afternoon standing before the antique mirror over their dresser, perfecting her expressions to achieve the right amount of sternness for dealing with Usagi and the others over this latest enemy.  Michiru had watched her from the high-backed chair that sat in the sunniest corner of their bedroom, pencil flowing across the sketchbook in her lap. Every fleeting nuance Haruka tried, Michiru’s eye captured.

Haruka knew she was responding as anyone would. Michiru knew it would only be Haruka.

The light was beginning to fade. Michiru blinked and tried again to focus. Haruka was difficult to make out now, as the shadows melted and bled into Michiru’s vision. She was still talking, though, and while her voice was rough and cracking, it was the sweetest music.

Haruka also knew she was a poet. It was a gift she treasured, a way of committing her emotions to the world. She would pour over her journals with their beautiful hand-stitched leather covers in rich colours and delicate etching, wrapped around the smooth unlined pages thirsty for every drop of ink.

Her favourites, she would share with Michiru. Sometimes it would be an event, preceded by a candlelit dinner. Sometimes it would an impulse, Haruka near breathless with excitement to share. Sometimes, Michiru would have to coax them from her, assuring and soothing by inches.

Haruka’s poetry was melodramatic, filled with unwieldy imagery, and uncomfortably earnest. They were also unerringly Haruka, and Michiru adored them. They were the discordant notes that made a symphony unique and cherished. They were the squeaky gate that let you know you were home.

They were a final comfort Michiru was only now beginning to realize. Whatever their situation, however their end, Haruka would meet it with the love and beauty of her words.

As she dangled in the air, impaled by the claws of the beast that had ambushed them, a final, violent shudder raced through Michiru. Her eyes refused to obey her commands. She could no longer hear her heartbeat in her ears. That was something to be concerned about, surely, but as it meant she could finally listen to Haruka, that was all that mattered. To receive those beautiful words that would embrace her to her end, even if Haruka herself could not.

What she heard was Haruka crying. Haruka begging for Michiru’s life. Her last words weren’t poetic at all. Just desperate.

Haruka knew there was poetry in death. Michiru knew better.

OKAY BUT WHY THIS. God, this is so well-paced, it rolls from light and airy to deeper and richer and THEN POPS YOU IN THE NOSE, and I love things like that, that have an effortless flow. I love in the whole racing thing, how it’s not really about Mina and Haruka playing together (though I love that as well) but Michiru watching every tiny detail of Haruka, laid out neatly. I LOVE that Haruka thinks of herself as a person of restraint, and all of the situations which might lead you to believe Haruka is mistaken. I love her soppy little self, and practicing in the mirror, and Michiru sketching her as she does so. And Haruka’s poetry, oh of course it is earnest and terrible and perfect in all of that, and the idea of her little journals and Michiru coaxing them out of Haruka is almost too much for me to bear. As I was reading this, i kept trying to figure out what was going on, focusing on those tiny points of hint like light through a treetop, I mean I didn’t even know what prompt this was and couldn’t figure it out, and then BOOM. I LOVE THE BOOM.And of course Haruka has nothing to give, only tears and a plea that will go unanswered. And this was one of the less popular prompts, so I’m happy to see it get some play. I LOVED IT THANK YOU. 

I wrote this and I still don’t really like it, but clearly what I dislike more is AN INCOMPLETE CENTRALIZED ARCHIVE, so watch me reblog it anyway.