#aoromi

Ring! Ring!

Damn it. She just sat down. Aoi gets up, grabs the candy bowl, and pulls the door open again.

“Trick or treat!” 

Aoi sighs. Of course Shir would do something like this. It’s sweet of her, even if Aoi hasn’t told her how miserable she is.

“Do you actually want candy or do you want to come in?” 

Shiromi slides past her and walks through the door in place of a response. “I figured I’d help you pass out treats,” she says, plopping herself down on her couch. “My parents never do, and I don’t go out anymore so… not much else to do.”

“My parents aren’t home either, I’m stuck doing it this year.” She sets the bowl back on the table. “Is that why you didn’t dress up?” Shir looks even cuter outside of school in just a t-shirt and leggings, scarf and pretentious council uniform nowhere to be found.

“Nope -” she smirks “- you have a very nice pirate costume though.”

“You say that like I don’t hear the same joke every year,” she says, sitting down beside her. She snaps the elastic of her eyepatch against her forehead.

“Hey!” Shir pulls back the fabric like she’s going to do it again, but she lifts it out of the way and plants a kiss on her forehead. “There. I kissed it better.” Aoi scoffs. It’s cute, but it’s childish, and she really pretends she doesn’t enjoy Shir’s sweet gestures but it’s getting hard to deny.

Shiromi snags a piece of candy from the bowl and pops it into her mouth. “I thought you didn’t want candy, Shir.”

“Never said that,” she quips, already unwrapping another. Aoi takes one too, and she cringes as soon as it hits her mouth. “Shit that’s sweet.” She takes another - dark chocolate this time, to cleanse her palette of the too-high sugar content. 

Ring! Ring!

Shiromi stands up and grabs the bowl. “I’ve got this one.”

“Thanks.” Shir opens the door and gives out the candy, complimenting the kids' costumes as they head back to the sidewalk. She’s nice to them, much nicer than Aoi has been all night. Maybe that’s what she needs - someone to balance out her intolerance of things she doesn’t like with a kind sentiment 

Shir comes back over and puts her head on her shoulder, curling into her side. They stay like that for a while, tucked into each other, periodically moving to open the door or to get another piece of candy. Aoi runs her hand through Shir’s silver-white hair, and Shir buries her face further into Aoi’s neck. The moment feels sweeter than the candy could ever be. They stay quiet, only sometimes asking each other questions.

“You said you used to dress up right?”

“Yup. Only when I was little, though.”

Aoi smirks at her. “What did you go as?”

“I don’t remember most of them. When I was ten I did a white tiger, I think. That’s when I got my scarf.”

“Fitting.” She’d be surprised if Shir hadn’t been a white tiger at some point in her life, given her insistence that her scarf was definitely not zebra-striped.

“Did you?” She used to. 

“A few times, mostly as movie characters. And…”

“And?”

She brought this on herself, but there was no avoiding it now. “Well… I did actually dress up as a pirate one year.”

“What! Why didn’t you lead with that!” Shiromi says, already shaking with held-back laughter. Watching her let go of her tightly held ‘calm, cool, and collected’ facade always made her smile - even if it was for a reason she didn’t exactly like. They relied on each other for that, an escape from the strict rules of the world.

Aoi crosses her arms. “Look, I was like nine, I had just gotten the eyepatch, I-”

“Oh don’t even try, just show me the picture.”

Aoi points to the opposite side of the living room. “There’s a picture book somewhere on that shelf. There might be a few pictures in there. If you want it so bad, find it.”