. . . 𝐦𝐢𝐦𝐢

She starts with her usual. Fingers lingering too long as she passes you a bottle of beer, hands unnecessarily touching your waist as she passes behind you, and her favorite: leaning over your shoulder as Nami’s explaining the route through the next chain of islands, making sure her breath ghosts your cheek, and revelling in the shiver she gets from you in response.

It’s mundane. It’s routine. She’s done this a million times, with hundreds of other people in the month-long honeymoon phase between a stranger telling her she’s the most beautiful woman they’ve ever seen, and the inevitable crash and burn as they realize she’s not who they think she is, that she’s more than just a warm body. She’s almost counting down the days until you pull away.

But then, she forgets she’s on a crew. Forgets that you’re going to be with her for the long haul. Forgets, most importantly, that she can be seen.

Sanji is not blind, nor stupid. He knows that sickly sweet sugar high of being adored, even venerated, that you take and take and take, then quit while you’re ahead. He’s played the game, he knows the patterns, and he hates that he can see it happening right in front of his eyes. But that’s not what makes his stomach churn.

What makes his stomach churn is that he knows this is different. This is not some month long fling. It stopped being a month long fling ages ago, and yet Robin is still treating it that way.

She’s still performing, still waiting for you to crack, for you to say that you’re done with the act, that all you wanted was to sleep with her, because the self satisfaction of knowing she was right all along would confirm all those beliefs within her. That she’s more palatable in doses, because love was a concept so distant from her that she’s already deemed herself unworthy of it despite never knowing it.

She thinks she’s throwing you off. But you preen for the touches that she rarely gives, do errands on her behalf even when it nearly doubles your workload, and sit with her as she rambles on and on about her Poneglyph theories even when all she’s trying to do is get you to sleep or to leave. But you’re still there.

Sanji doesn’t know why it’s taking her so long to see it, and at a certain point he’s no longer able to contain himself, his eyes trained on the perfume gift set you’d just gotten her that same day.

“You’re being cruel.” he says, crossing his arms in the dim light of the kitchen just after sunset. The rest of the crew are outside, enjoying their dinner on the beach, oblivious to the conversation happening on the Sunny.

Robin taps her fingers against the dinner table, trying to keep her calm façade as her eyes try to burn holes into each of the perfume bottles. Her gaze flicks up to Sanji’s as she clears her throat, “No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.” Robin scoffs, pushing off of the table to stand up herself. “You are, and you know it.”

Sanji continues, gesturing towards the kitchen door. “She’s not just infatuated with you anymore and I don’t think you seem to understand that.”

“She’ll get over it, just wait and see.” Robin says, and even Sanji catches how much of a half hearted response it is.

He huffs, annoyed.

“Come on, we both know you don’t even believe what you’re saying.”

Before Robin can get another word in, he cuts in again, brow furrowing. “What the hell are you even waiting around for anyway? Until where are you willing to take this?”

Robin squints, and Sanji immediately knows he’s hit a nerve. She leans forward into his space. “They’re all the same.” Sanji almost rolls his eyes.

“Robin, you can’t be serious.” As soon as he sees her eyes flare, he knows he’s fucked it up.

“You want serious?” She says, and leans in even closer, making him back up against the wall, and he’s regretting this conversation already.

“Then fine.” She spits. “Watch what happens when she finally gets a taste of me.” At this, Robin turns around and immediately walks out. “She’ll toss me aside like a ragdoll, and then you’ll see that I’m right.”

Sanji doesn’t even bother following her, and just watches helplessly as the kitchen door swings wildly and slams shut on her way out, while Robin tried to fight the nausea rising at the back of her throat.

That night, you’re in the library, unwinding peacefully after dinner until she slams the door open. You grin at the welcome intrusion, sitting up properly from your relaxed slump to greet her.

“Hey, Robin,” You said excitedly. “I was just reading that book you recommended to me-” You can barely get the sentence out before she cuts you off, impatient.

“You can stop pretending now.” She huffs.

You blink.

“What?” You blurt, and for a second she looks hesitant, but suddenly her face contorts into a grimace.

She grabs your face and kisses you, and for a second your heart flutters, but you frown as soon as you realize it’s nothing like anything you ever imagined a kiss with her to be. You're taken aback by how mean it feels. She pushes into your mouth cruelly, claiming without even caring to let you respond. You gasp into the kiss but she just keeps going, and you furrow your brows, letting go of the book to claw at her shoulders.

“Robin-” You say, breathless.

“Robin, what-” You finally manage to push her away, about to question her until you see tears forming in her eyes.

She huffs. “You can stop whatever this simpering bullshit is now, okay?” She says, distraught. “I don’t need to be impressed like a fucking bird if all you want is to have sex with me.”

Before you can even reply, she starts shucking her clothes off, almost disgusted with herself.

Your brows furrow again. “When did I ever-” You can’t even respond properly. It hurts.

You grab her arm. “Why would you think that I just wanted your body?”

“Come on,” She spits, thrashing against your grip. “Stop pretending. I know that look on your face, I’ve seen it all before. You aren’t the first, I was just wondering how long it would take for you to say it.” The bluntness of her words makes your gut twist.

You want to be mad.

But you force down the bitterness gathering at the back of your throat, and your hands grasp hers again to stop her actions. What would be the use of yelling now?

“Do you think I'd spend hours with you every night in this library because I wanted sex?” Your voice breaks halfway through the sentence. Robin opens her mouth, but you don’t even let her reply, your hands hastily tugging her clothes back on as tears form in your own eyes.

“Do you think I’d buy you four different perfumes to match each of the fucking seasons on the stupid Grand Line just because I wanted to get in your pants?” You wipe the tears from your eyes as they threaten to spill. Robin watches wordlessly as you fix her clothes back into place with shaking hands.

“Fuck,” You let out a dry laugh at the absurdity of it all, “Even Sanji only uses one all year round, the four I got you were expensive as hell- but I got them because each of them remind me of you.”

The sight of you on the verge of tears makes Robin’s knees go weak, and she crumples to the floor with her head in her hands. You slide down with her, rubbing soothing circles into her shoulders as she cries.

Seeing her like this makes your heart break. The words bubble up inside you, and you decide to take a deep breath and just let them spill over.

“I,” You gulp. “I take my night watch with you because I love when you tell me about the stars.”

Robin ducks her head even lower. You can see the tears streaming down her face, and your throat starts to constrict as you fight through your own tears, because you have to tell her this now. It was stupid of you to wait this long.

“I always partner up with you on shopping trips,” You say between sniffles, the soothing circles you’re drawing into her arms growing erratic as you try to contain yourself. “Even when I know it’s just to visit the library- because I love how focused you get on your research.” Robin shakes her head at this, brows furrowing, and your hand itches with the urge to lift her chin just to try to get her to look at you.

She doesn’t meet your gaze, and you consider calling her name again, but you decide not to force it, letting the tension ease out of her first.

You stay like that for a while, just breathing into the space between you, your breaths the only sound filling the room for what seems to be ages.

After an agonizing, impossibly long minute, you hear her heave a sigh. You decide to go for broke.

“Robin,” You say softly, “I do the things that I do because I want to.”

Her body locks up, and for a second you’re afraid she’ll lash out at you, but you see her lips tremble as she opens her mouth slowly to speak.

She seems to contemplate what she was about to say, and her mouth closes again.

She sighs.

“How can I be sure of that.” Robin says at last, defeated, and you smile down at her even when you know she can’t see it.

“I’ll show you, if you’ll let me.”

It’s only then that she angles her face up, and you hold your breath as she searches your gaze hesitantly, before giving the slightest nod, her eyes finally locking onto yours.

It’s still hard for Robin to believe you. She’s mulled over all the possibilities, and keeps setting herself up for failure every single time. In her mind, she gives you a week.

She doesn’t expect much. But then you start filling the empty spaces in her life as soon as you’re given permission to, in all the ways she doesn’t expect.

You're immediately by her side at breakfast, lunch and dinner, thighs close enough to touch under the table. As you’re side by side, it’s almost like you have a sixth sense for her. You refill her glass just as she thinks about getting the pitcher. You place a second serving of food on her plate exactly as she’s about to ask Usopp to pass the dish her way.

The next week, as you and Nami are getting ready in your quarters to head out onto a new island, Robin enters the room, clearly looking for something. But before she can even open her mouth to ask either of you anything, you hand a hefty book to her mid-sentence, not even glancing in her direction as Nami replies to whatever you’d just said. Robin stands awkwardly in the middle of the room before swiftly turning on her heel and heading out, the door closing before Nami’s snicker could exit the privacy of your quarters.

A few days after that, as you touch down on another port town, her eyes gleam as she spots a robust coffee machine that looks way too expensive to be taken out to sea, and the next night she catches Franky grumbling about having to babyproof (aka Luffyproof) a glass Royal Belgian Siphon Coffee Maker to be safe on the waves. Sanji, on the other hand, is ecstatic.

The months keep passing, and you don’t change at all. You don’t push, you don’t pry, and instead of growing colder, you seem to only get warmer, so much so that sometimes Robin doesn’t know what to do with herself.

Until one day, in the sweltering heat of the sun, both of you are out on the deck reading on the grass, taking advantage of the natural light.

Hours pass, and at some point Robin doesn’t even register the fact that she’s fallen asleep, but when she wakes up, she notices that she’s lying on something soft. Something hums above her, and fingers card slowly through her hair.

Her breath hitches as she realizes you’d moved her head into your lap, your body protecting her face from the bright glare of the sun as you leaned forward to look closer at your book.

Something hot prickles behind her eyes, and she curses to herself as she realizes she’s about to cry.

You haven’t even realized that she’s awake yet, too focused as you whisper the lines of the book to yourself, your finger moving across each of the words on the page, running your hands through her hair mindlessly.

The softness of your touch undoes her, and after a few seconds you start to hear sniffles coming from underneath you, making you jerk your chin down to check on her.

You panic seeing the tears in her eyes, but before you can even do anything, she reaches a trembling hand out to cradle the back of your neck, and your eyes widen when she brings you down abruptly for a kiss.

The angle is a little awkward, but you don’t even care.

Your hands lift off of the book and you completely lose the page you were just at, but nothing else matters. The soft press of her lips against yours makes you forget about everything else.

You smile into the kiss, laughing against her tear-stained cheeks, and for a second Robin is afraid you’ll probe, seek more, try to deepen it, but it never comes. Something inside of her relaxes. How foolish of her to doubt you, when you’d spent so long proving her wrong.

After a few seconds, she lets go of your neck, and you let out a surprised huff when you see that she’s blushing.

You can’t suppress the smile on your face, and she tries to turn away, embarrassed.

You purse your lips. “Can you do that again?” You ask, timid.

Robin flicks her gaze up shyly, and the newness of it all is overwhelming, her mouth opening and closing without saying a word, unsure.

It's the first time you’ve ever seen her so speechless.

You chuckle into the silence, already straightening up to get back to your reading, happy with what you can get.

“That's okay, thank you Robin,” You start to say, but right as you’re about to return your gaze to the book, a hand shoots out again to press you down into another kiss, a short peck this time, before releasing you just as quickly.

A pause.

You blink.

Robin blinks back up at you, looking worried about your reaction, and the genuine frown on her face makes you stifle a laugh, making her swat your thigh lightly.

“What!” She huffs, pretending to be annoyed, and you know it.

You come down from your giggling, and move a hand down to her face to sweep her hair behind her ear.

“Nothing. You’re sweet.” You say, and you’re close enough that you feel her breath hitch.

You swallow dryly. If there was ever a moment to do it, this would probably be the time.

You take a deep breath in and Robin isn’t sure what you’re about to do for a second, until she sees the sincerity in your gaze, and her eyes widen.

She breathes a sharp inhale as she watches you make the shape of the words before she hears it, and even though she knows what you’re going to say, it doesn’t stop the tears from spilling over as soon as you do.

“I love you.”

📜 Robin knows talents when she sees it. So as soon as you showed up on the ship, she knew your potential. It was obvious you were shy, but it was hard to determine if it was from nerves of joining a new crew or from self doubt. She quickly found out it was the latter.

📜 She would catch you around the library a lot, so she would offer to read with you. She learned what you’re interested in and what fields your knowledge lies. It was interesting and Robin was really happy to learn about it, but she noticed how you never acted the same in front of the rest of the crew.

📜 She’s always there when the crew is planning an adventure or attack, and she makes sure that your opinion is heard. Even if you think it’s stupid, which most of the time, it’s better than the majority of the crew’s. She won’t force anything, but she’ll encourage growth.

📜 Robin hates when you talk yourself down. She knows how amazing you are and wishes you could see it. On the really bad days, she’ll take yours hands in hers. She’ll tell you that Luffy would choose you, or anyone on the crew, if he didn’t believe in them. And that every crew member is crucial for the dynamics and survival of the ship.

📜 Most importantly, Robin would tell you how much she loves you. How great she thinks you are. Being the thorough and observant person she is, she’ll point out all your features and quirks that she knows are good and she loves you for.

You still remember her hands all over you. 

Things ended, that’s just a fact. What marveled you beyond belief was the remembering afterwards. 

It was a normal day when you saw her on the street. You nearly had a breakdown. She didn’t see you, or maybe she did and just carried on. A part of you even wondered if you had imagined it all, the memories a product of your imagination — but no. You had the scars, metaphorical and physical, to prove otherwise. 

The day was hectic and sunny on Water 7, as so many days were. You were out buying groceries when you saw her, black hair and black dress, across the street. 

Simple, yet beautiful. Familiar, but distant. Untouchable. 

She hid in the shadows more often than not, but there she was, in broad daylight, accompanied by a… reindeer?

The fruits fell from your hands. You heard the salesman yell something, but you didn’t care, because there she was.

Nico Robin was tall, smart and dangerous. Just your type. 

In the time you spent together, she made it clear she was never in the same place for long. She couldn’t be, the government would never allow it. Running was her only option. 

Organization from organization, group from group. The years — decades — she spent hiding made her good at the run. 

You didn’t accept back then that eventually she would run from you too. After all, every rule had to have an exception. 

All your life, you were used to being the one who left. Being left yourself caused a whole new kind of resentment, not only towards her but at your own actions. It helped, somehow, because you found a home and a family in the capital of the waters after deciding to get your shit together. 

A city that, now, Robin seemed to haunt. 

What brought you two together in the first place was her ability to haunt a place after only two seconds there. 

All those years ago, you were at a bar when she walked in. She only stayed for a few minutes, but it was enough to cause an impression. After all, who else would wear a cowboy hat in purple? 

The second time you saw Robin, you picked up a conversation randomly. You had said something dumb about the music, to which she answered, “Dancing is a dangerous game”. 

The sly smirk should’ve been your first clue you were screwed. 

“I have some tricks up my sleeve”, you replied, drink in hand, an offer. 

Now, the sight of her was the first real confirmation in years that you didn’t imagine all the interactions, all the heartache. That she was real and that, for a second, you were too. 

Now, she hung from your lips like the Gardens of Babylon. Her name a whisper, a curse, a promise. She was all you ever wanted and, just like the wind, she blew over and was gone in a moment.

As much as you hoped she would turn back and see you, lock her blue eyes with yours just one more time, you hoped she wouldn’t. You hoped that the past would remain there. 

Even though the past belonged far away, out of reach, the memories stayed with you and always will. 

From the smell of her hair to the feel of her soft skin beneath your fingers, it all remained with you, as much as it would if it was fiction. Someone like her was a concrete marvel of the New World just as much as it was a myth. 

If, in the end, it was all in your head — so be it. But it wasn’t. Seeing her made you realize that once more. You could be haunted, but it was from a real memory, and not fantasy.

She walked in the same way, still. Perhaps it was insanity to remember how someone walked, but you did. You kept all of her in your mind. 

She had been the first person you loved. Perhaps it was sad to admit it took you so long to fall in love, but it did, and she was the very first. Everything about her, from that first interaction to the day you woke up and felt the bed empty and cold by your side, was a first for you. 

You turned back to the salesman, who picked up the fruits and cursed at you. Still, you could feel her presence there. 

Apologizing profusely, you paid for the fruits and left. 

The walk home was longer than you remembered. However, everything seemed just a little different now. It was the Robin effect. 

Of course you were aware that she was wanted, supposedly dangerous. It never mattered, though. How she made you feel mattered, the blue in her eyes mattered, her voice when she told you stories in the middle of night mattered. 

Out of all the stories you had lived with and without her, there was one you still recollected tenderly — the one that would always be your very favourite. 

The night you met. 

You remembered taking her hat out of her head and putting it on yours. The bar light glimmered on her eyes, making the blue even bluer. Her perfectly brushed straight raven hair was slightly disheveled from the absence of the hat. She looked human. 

You smiled at the sight, seeing the person behind the facade. You could prove it, but you knew that was what lured her into you. 

She’s been acting strange all week. Not distant, just… attentive. As always. In that quiet, calculating way of hers. Like she’s observing something she doesn’t fully understand yet. Like you’re a problem she wants to solve before it explodes in her hands.

You catch her watching you when she thinks you’re not looking. Not the usual look—it's one she gives you before a kiss, or after one, or when you’re halfway in her lap backstage with her hands under your shirt.

No one tells Alphas what it’s really like, being with an Omega in heat. They just talk about the bond—how it kicks harder. How the connection pulls tight enough to choke. How your instincts sharpen, double down. Demand.

Mira doesn’t like losing control. Not in the field, not on stage, and definitely not with you.

And you—you don’t know what version of yourself you’ll become when it hits. You’ve read the guides. Talked to a medic. You’ve even tried to warn her, clumsily, curled against her chest a few nights ago when the tension first started humming under your skin.

“I might not be... very coherent,” you’d said, voice small.

She just brushed her fingers through your hair and said, “Then I’ll listen harder.”

Like it was that simple.

You wanted more time.

Just a few more days. One more rehearsal. One more evening on the roof sharing orange soda and silence. One more night tangled in sheets with the soft hum of her heartbeat against your back. But it doesn’t wait, it never does.

It begins not with fire, but with absence. You wake up warmer than usual, feeling worse with Mira's body wrapped around yours. The kind of heat that lives under the skin, the kind that pulls a tremble from your muscles before you’re even fully conscious.

Mira stirs behind you. Instinctively.

“You okay?” Her voice is sleep-rough, but sharp.

You try to say yes. You do. But your throat won’t open for the word. It sticks there, heavy and dry and wrong. Instead, you turn your face into her chest and exhale something like a shudder.

She’s alert in seconds.

You feel it in the shift of her limbs, the sudden tension under her skin. Her hand moves to your cheek—cool fingers brushing across your heated face, then pausing.

"your scent...”

Two words, spoken low, a realization.

You nod, just once. It’s all you can manage. It’s happening. Already.

No dramatic onset. No hours of warning. Just heat curling its fingers through your bloodstream like smoke, warm and relentless. Pooling in your lungs, making it crowded, hard to breath.

Mira moves carefully, as if any sudden motion might tip you over the edge. She shifts you onto your back and settles beside you, hand cupping your jaw with something between reverence and restraint.

“You’re burning up,” she murmurs.

“I know.” Your voice is a cracked whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Her brows knit. “Don’t say that.”

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Mira leans forward, presses her forehead to yours.

“Just tell me what you need,” she says, voice rough, tender.

You breathe in. Try to speak. Fail.

What you need is her. More than anything. And maybe that’s the scariest part—how natural it feels to want her like this. How right. How normal it is to feel so hot for someone you've only known a few months, so aroused. So you cup her cheek and just nod. One word.

“You.”

She's on you in seconds. Lips capturing yours, kissing you into the mattress while she reaches up under your shirt to cup your tit. You keen, whining against her mouth and it's like something snaps inside her at the sound. At how desperate you are after something so simple. Its so much that she wonders how you'll be later, how you'll be when she's eating away at you.

She rolls your nipple under her thumb, pressing it to hear you whine more against her lips. Breath hot, scent alluring and becoming stronger the second. It feels sinful to give into it, to be affected by it.

She shuts her eyes, dazed as she kisses down your jaw. You squirm beneath her, hands clutching at her.

"off... clothes... please," you beg her, voice whiny.

She slides her clothes off, her lips still sliding down the column of your throat as she does so. She slides your shirt up, just enough to free your breasts. Next are your bottoms, slid down your legs and she has to take a second after the scent that overfills the room.

"Alpha," you call, breaking her out of her trance. She kisses you yet again, dizzily as she wraps your legs around her waist. She presses pecks from your lips, to your neck, to your chest, abdomen, inner thigh...

You keen, back pressing off the bed with a choked moan. Hands in her hair, fingers shaking as they hold on tight. "Please... please alpha. Need you so bad. It hurts..."

She shushes you as she makes her way to your cunt, licking a stripe from your opening to your clit. Your bottom lip falls open, a silent scream escaping you. And oh how you go crazy, coming embarrassingly quick from her tongue alone.

"Taste so good," she husks, bringing her right hand closer to your entrance as she murmurs against your clit. She licks there again, watching your expression as she beings her finger against your entrance. You're soaked, a mix of her saliva and your slick gathered there.

You cry out as she pushes a finger in, clenching around the digit as she begins to ram it in and our of you. Her tongue continually pressing and stimulating your clit, bringing you to another high right as she presses another finger into you. Her eyes on you, watching how you gaped when she scissored you open with her two fingers.

Having you stretched out now, she crawls over you. Your lidded eyes, full of tears, opening to find her dark ones set on yours. With a weak hand, you reach up to cup her jaw, pulling her down into a sensual kiss. A gasp escapes you, falling hotly against her lips as you feel her start to push in.

Neither of your attention is pulled away as she bottoms out, her hips flush with yours. Lips brushing each others, bodies flush with one another. Bed shaking beneath you, didn't take long for the head board to start hitting the wall. A

hand grips her hair, another gripping the headboard behind you. Your head tilted back, moaning with each thrust, each time her tip pushes against the spot. No words are spoken besides the way your bodies meet, how she kisses you, and the gasps and whines that fill the room.

It ends the way all storms do.

Not with a crash, but a slow unraveling. A quiet softening of breath. A loosening of muscles that had locked tight with want, need, desperation.

You don’t remember the last few hours clearly. Only flashes.

Mira’s voice—low and steady, even when yours wasn’t. Her hands—strong, but never rough. Her body—there, always there, even when you tried to push her away, ashamed of how much you needed.

Now you’re draped across her chest like seaweed clinging to a rock. Boneless. Hollow. Sore in places you hadn’t known could ache. Mira’s fingers are combing through your damp hair, slow and aimless.

She hasn’t spoken in a while, just holding you. Breathing you in. You tilt your head slightly, enough to see the edge of her jaw, the tension there. Like she hasn’t come down from it yet.

“You okay?”

She snorts once—quiet. “I wasn’t the one being dragged under by biology and pain and half-lucid begging.”

You flinch. Just a little. She catches it instantly. Her hand shifts to your cheek, thumb tracing a line under your eye. Noticing everything.

“Hey,” she says, gently. “You were… incredible. Brave. Even when it was awful. You let me in. You trusted me.”

You close your eyes. Let out a shaky breath.

“Wasn’t exactly sexy.”

Mira huffs out a laugh. The first real one in hours.

“Shut the hell up. That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever "survived,"” she says, and she means it.

You feel it in the way she tugs you closer, presses a kiss into your hair, and breathes in deep like she’s claiming this moment just as fiercely as she claimed your body, your trust, your bond.

You never thought she was the type to care much about clothes to begin with, especially not on her person (but she did pay attention to others'), but in the past few years you'd managed to notice she discarded them as soon as she came in. Something to be said about not carrying the stench of death too far into your home, or maybe she just didn't like them.

Her cargo pants are abandoned with a thud on the floor, and then goes her tanktop, and her sports bra, and as soon as you squirm she's naked and crawling under the mattress you share.

It isn't hard to exist with her.

Quanxi has a way to make things seem effortless, and so you often get the opposite of caught up or too in your mind; you feel free of your responsibilities because she's there and makes you feel competent by association.

There was a time when you felt self-conscious of your naked body. She's chiding now (as she did the first time)

"This is why..." and tugging at your fluffy flannel pants, under the pile of covers and duvets, and then at your little top, until you're left in white cotton panties with a lightblue frill (she picked those).

Her rough thumbs hook underneath the frill to tease you, and she finds herself right at your neck too, mouthing lightly and breathing in your scent.

"Perv" you huff when she tugs at the waistband of your panties and lets them snap back against your skin.

"I love you too," she almost smiles, not before fully tugging the garment down and sliding it down your legs with a single lazy movement.

You want to tease her back, 'kiss me first, before undressing me, but you are quite naked already if not counting the socks and the leg warmers that miraculously stayed on. Feels pointless.

But like on command, or like she could effectively read your mind, her mouth is at your jaw, and then at the slope of your neck and upwards, then at your ear, where she tugs on the earlobe. Cheek and temple get kissed too, then nose, corner of your mouth and lips,

"...actually you're a brat", she corrects her prior statement, and drags you into a tender kiss that gets devouring fast.

Going up (her hands), the slow movement and grope to your breasts makes you think it's simpler to say it: I'm gonna leave before she does.

Knowing she will eventually doesn't make it any easier, nor do her calloused hands, hot when they squeeze you there, or her thumbs toying with your nipples under they pebble under the attentive touch.

You're clumsy compared, and draw the covers over you so that you're hidden and your own want seems smaller. It works poorly; there's so little space between you that this need spills, rich to think she wouldn't notice.

She's beautiful, too (about this you'd mused enough through the years already) when she gazes at you and crawls down your body.

Your fingers twitch and move to thread themselves with her silklike hair, silvery threads, and you give her a gentle downstrokes like one would a beloved pet before she makes her way down.

The kisses down your bare belly are but a path of heat, and if temperature had color, your skin would be red-hot where she touched — just there.

It's half a ritual, something to do so that neither of you fully veers into rot. She's told you before she needs something to love on, "keeps the hands busy" and busy hands mean her head gets quieter (as much as it can).

You have to agree, and if she feels strongly about you, you can't tell, but you know you do.

The conditions to your relationship have always been unfair and the very same since the beginning. She doesn't age a day, and you're awfully perishable. Still, this is the thing that makes you all the more conscious for the fact that perhaps you do over her.

Everything is quite fleeting, yet the moment she nuzzles just underneath your navel, you tend to forget so and want more out of her and out of life.

Quanxi strokes your hips before spreading your thighs some more,

"Still cold?"

It's not the word you'd use anymore. You feel more than anything else exposed, though you don't care a whole lot. Your body thrums for her with need, and this embarrasses you only enough to make her enjoy it all the more.

"...just a little" you reply in a mumble, because you're cheeky and coy and she loves it when you play dumb a bit.

And then she's kissing down the inside of your thigh, to reach the crease of your cunt and lick,

"Gonna warm you up alright."

Afternoons get sucked into a void of a sort and therefore forgotten or faded into the rest of them; you tell yourself you'll remember this one in particular, and you will because you've made your mind too. You make associations while she suckles bruises in your thighs to keep yourself from getting too excited out of a sudden — you're drenched.

Think of dogs, collars, sweets, the heart-shaped ashtray you got at an open market together, of a black sea almost touching the highway at Wakkanai, while she drove to an inn. Your hand on her head again, or thumb and forefinger stroking the delicate shell of her ear (a piece of living-time. you think, like an abalone shell), until she nuzzles your cunt and bites hard at the flashiest but of your inner thigh.

Has you yelping for her, disconnecting from the mental list and focusing on her mouth, how she finds your clit with muscle memory and moans for you the moment she suckles (and you do too).

"Mmn—" you hum, "like that."

She laps broad and makes your labia part under her tongue, until you cannot keep up and break a sweat; think of "life is what you make of it" so life currently is some kind of temporary arrangement, or at this very moment, lovemaking with someone ancient than this province, probably.