Quick piece for Michiru’s birthday, ~700 words. Enjoy!
Perhaps I should have listened to Setsuna when she talked about
time. Yesterday, I reached for your hand for the first time, alight with fear
and desire and the dark craggy beast of youth. And the day before that, you
took my hand in marriage. That can’t be right, but that’s how it happened. All
the rest telescopes in between breaths, we bought a house, we had our first
date, the children went to school. It’s been two days, it’s been twenty
years— no, the latter isn’t any more true than the former, now. It’s harder
for me to remember the numbers, these days, and while it pleases you when I
tell waitresses you’ve just turned thirty, you’d be heart broken to know I’ve
forgotten this one. So… by the calendar, it’s been fifty seven years, going
from when our lives first collided. It can’t be right, surely, it’s far too
long and far two short, I met you last week and I’ve loved you forever. We’ve
barely stopped being children and yet our children have children grown. Setsuna
told me, once, many times, I can’t be sure, that time is not a line but a
fabric, it folds over on itself, and days many stitches apart may come
together.
You’re wrapped in a blanket now, tangled up as I am in all
the moments of our life. You stole all the covers the first night we stayed in
bed together, and perhaps that night was last night as I wake to nothing but a
corner of the sheet left to warm me. But it cannot have been last night, for
when you wake you will not be ashamed, and I do not leave myself to shiver on
the edge of the bed. I wrap around you as I have every night, every morning for
a thousand years.
You stir. The sunlight hits your hair and makes you blonde
again, time squeezes together all the more and I feel the urge to touch you for
the first time, to let lose all my adolescent desire upon you, your eyes open
slowly in their wrinkled beds and I feel tender, familiar, home, I want to make
love to my wife of half a century.
You look at me in the morning light, you see me for the very
first time. There’s wonder in your eyes.
“Well aren’t you a pretty little thing,” you say, too confident
and self-aware to be your teenage self any longer. “Come here often?”
I laugh at the joke you’ve never made before, the joke I’ve
heard from you a hundred times. “I’ve been here once or twice.”
You smile the smile I fell in love with a dozen lifetimes
ago, you prop yourself up as best you can and give me the sweetest kiss I’ve
ever had. “Today is something special, you know,” you say, staying close.
“Oh?” I don’t know the date, I’m not sure I even have the
month right, if I’ve missed our anniversary…
But you laugh. “Michi, it’s your birthday!”
I told you, I can’t remember numbers anymore. “I thought we
agreed I didn’t have birthdays anymore.”
“You said that, and I’ve thrown you at least five birthday
parties since then.” They all bleed together in my mind, a blur of cake and
family and the girls in party hats.
You reach down into your bedside drawer and pull out a
little box. You will not hear that you shouldn’t have, you never do. I open the
paper and peel off the lid to see a simple folding frame set bearing three
photos—on the left, a snapshot from a festival booth just after we started
dating, all nervous smiles. On the right is a family portrait we sat for, or
that we and the baby sat for, our older girl is barely still enough for the
camera to capture, and you’re trying not to laugh at her dancing. In the middle
we are as we are now, though I can’t remember when the photo might have been
taken. The three times fold together with everything in between them. I can’t
begin to tell you my thoughts, how perfect a gift it is, so I merely say it’s
beautiful.
“Happy birthday, Michi,” you say, and I curl into your arms
as time washes over us.
I FORGOT ABOUT MICHIRU’S BIRTHDAY. Since the first I’ve been like, I feel like there’s something in the beginning of March?? What is it?? And then I woke up today and remembered.
SO. I decided to be cheap and write fluff paralleling last year’s fic, set 18 years later.
Quick piece for Michiru’s birthday, ~700 words. Enjoy!
Perhaps I should have listened to Setsuna when she talked about
time. Yesterday, I reached for your hand for the first time, alight with fear
and desire and the dark craggy beast of youth. And the day before that, you
took my hand in marriage. That can’t be right, but that’s how it happened. All
the rest telescopes in between breaths, we bought a house, we had our first
date, the children went to school. It’s been two days, it’s been twenty
years— no, the latter isn’t any more true than the former, now. It’s harder
for me to remember the numbers, these days, and while it pleases you when I
tell waitresses you’ve just turned thirty, you’d be heart broken to know I’ve
forgotten this one. So… by the calendar, it’s been fifty seven years, going
from when our lives first collided. It can’t be right, surely, it’s far too
long and far two short, I met you last week and I’ve loved you forever. We’ve
barely stopped being children and yet our children have children grown. Setsuna
told me, once, many times, I can’t be sure, that time is not a line but a
fabric, it folds over on itself, and days many stitches apart may come
together.
You’re wrapped in a blanket now, tangled up as I am in all
the moments of our life. You stole all the covers the first night we stayed in
bed together, and perhaps that night was last night as I wake to nothing but a
corner of the sheet left to warm me. But it cannot have been last night, for
when you wake you will not be ashamed, and I do not leave myself to shiver on
the edge of the bed. I wrap around you as I have every night, every morning for
a thousand years.
You stir. The sunlight hits your hair and makes you blonde
again, time squeezes together all the more and I feel the urge to touch you for
the first time, to let lose all my adolescent desire upon you, your eyes open
slowly in their wrinkled beds and I feel tender, familiar, home, I want to make
love to my wife of half a century.
You look at me in the morning light, you see me for the very
first time. There’s wonder in your eyes.
“Well aren’t you a pretty little thing,” you say, too confident
and self-aware to be your teenage self any longer. “Come here often?”
I laugh at the joke you’ve never made before, the joke I’ve
heard from you a hundred times. “I’ve been here once or twice.”
You smile the smile I fell in love with a dozen lifetimes
ago, you prop yourself up as best you can and give me the sweetest kiss I’ve
ever had. “Today is something special, you know,” you say, staying close.
“Oh?” I don’t know the date, I’m not sure I even have the
month right, if I’ve missed our anniversary…
But you laugh. “Michi, it’s your birthday!”
I told you, I can’t remember numbers anymore. “I thought we
agreed I didn’t have birthdays anymore.”
“You said that, and I’ve thrown you at least five birthday
parties since then.” They all bleed together in my mind, a blur of cake and
family and the girls in party hats.
You reach down into your bedside drawer and pull out a
little box. You will not hear that you shouldn’t have, you never do. I open the
paper and peel off the lid to see a simple folding frame set bearing three
photos—on the left, a snapshot from a festival booth just after we started
dating, all nervous smiles. On the right is a family portrait we sat for, or
that we and the baby sat for, our older girl is barely still enough for the
camera to capture, and you’re trying not to laugh at her dancing. In the middle
we are as we are now, though I can’t remember when the photo might have been
taken. The three times fold together with everything in between them. I can’t
begin to tell you my thoughts, how perfect a gift it is, so I merely say it’s
beautiful.
“Happy birthday, Michi,” you say, and I curl into your arms
as time washes over us.
I know, I know, a day late for her birthday. Michiru would no doubt find this highly questionable. But nevertheless, as an avid Michiru appreciator, I felt it was my duty (or should I say my MISSION) to make a list of some of Michiru’s most fantastic moments in honor of the approximate day of her birth.
#10: The time when Sailor Neptune punched Tuxedo Kamen in the face (Episode 94)
Never forget.
#9: The time Michiru ever so casually juggled a LEMON with her violin (Episode 93)
Picture this: at that fateful moment when Usagi stumbled across Michiru and Haruka in the park, we had known them for only one episode. In that one episode these are the main takeaways: Haruka is really hot, Haruka and Michiru are really cool, oh hey look it’s Sailors Uranus and Neptune. THEN, the very next time we see them after their introduction episode, WE GET THIS. And if you didn’t know from Episode 92 that we were in for something special with the Outers, YOU SURE KNOW NOW.
Everyone with at least a bit of knowledge of violins gasps, “FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING, PLEASE TELL ME THAT’S NOT THE STRADIVARIUS.”
But you know what? I bet it probably IS the Stradivarius. Michiru is just so adept, so skilled at everything she touches—you know, painting, playing the violin, batting citrus fruit about while playing jaunty fiddle melodies—that she can pull this off AND keep the Stradivarius intact. If that’s not a Michiru coup, I don’t know what is.
#8: Every time Michiru monologued at length about completely random stuff that nobody except an effortlessly flawless human would ever need to know (Episode 94, Episode 104)
To be fair, the first kiss she’s talking about up there is Adam and Eve, which is a fairly well known story, to say the least. Episode 105 may be a better strict example, in which she spouts off the history and approximate price of this tea kettle. But either way, please note Michiru’s attempts to make polite conversation…by telling the people around her about all of the random trivia that she knows.
One day, following a similar situation to the two above, Haruka, at some point well after said situation, tries to break it to Michiru as gently as she can: people just don’t really care about stuff like that. People like talking about themselves, or they like being complimented. But maybe you could save the random facts for trivia night or something?
And then Michiru: brilliant, not super great at people Michiru: “What do you mean people don’t care? Are you saying that YOU don’t care, Haruka? It certainly seemed like you were listening at the time.”
And then Haruka BACKTRACKS SO QUICKLY she leaves behind a little cloud of dust, reassuring Michiru that NO, you’re right, all the stuff you know is COMPLETELY FASCINATING, the world is LUCKY that you exist in it so you can know all this stuff about it, and so on and so forth. She probably winds up doing Michiru a few favors to make up for it too.
And sometime later, in private, Michiru cracks open whatever encyclopedia she peruses in her spare time to LEARN all of this stuff, and, with her book, she allows herself to smile.
(warning for Stars spoilers in the Honourable Mentions)
This post is amazing, I loved revisiting it so much, and it definitely belongs on this blog. I am extra happy that one of my silly little personal favourites from an unapologetically silly filler episode made the list:
“The time when Sailor Neptune, in the middle of getting her ass kind of handed to her by the Monster of the Week, decided her best
recourse was to insult the monster’s artistic integrity (Episode 107)”
IT’S AVANT-GARDE, OK.
And then she proceeds to be smug as hell once it turns out the monster’s weakness is water. Truly, Michiru is a gift to us all.
No complaints on number one, of course – how could you pick anything else indeed.
SittingOverHereDreaming 