“Sea you later”
You smile, thinking you have witnessed a rare Kaioh pun
Michiru smiles back, because she has announced her intent to drown you in the surf once night falls
The life The blog The Sam
“Sea you later”
You smile, thinking you have witnessed a rare Kaioh pun
Michiru smiles back, because she has announced her intent to drown you in the surf once night falls
KEET YOURE A GENIUS I LOVE THIS
I love that it keeps to the dream theme, and it’s so absolutely true for them. Everyone else has obstacles to their dreams, but for the two of them THEY are the obstacle. Mako has a ton of baggage around the way she presents and wanting softer things from life vs what she feels is expected of someone her size and strength, and Michiru I think more than anything wants to be free, and while that ostensibly means from expectations from parents/society/senshi life, SHE’S what really holds herself back.
Little ficlet to the tune of “What if Haruka was afraid of storms?” ~575 words
—-
A shock-white flash and a roar of thunder yanked Haruka out of sleep. Her heart raced ahead of her groggy brain and banged against the walls of her chest to get her moving. Quiet, quiet, up! Up! Who’s home? Who will hear you cry? Closet! Muffle! Go!
Haruka had her hand on the doorknob before she woke up enough to remember. She was safe. She was older now, out of that house, and too old to be afraid of storms.
Another sharp crack of thunder made her jump. Maybe that last bit wasn’t quite true.
She turned back to the empty bed. Where was Michiru?
Her stomach churned as she crept out to the living room. Would she be mad, if she knew? Would she think Haruka too childish? Maybe she just wouldn’t tell her. She’d just… claim hunger? Grab a snack and a kiss and hope it calmed the panic bubbling inside her? Maybe she should just go back to bed.
Thunder shook the house. Haruka yelped. Damn it.
“Haruka? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Haruka stuck her head around the corner. Michiru sat by the rain-splashed window, a cup of steaming tea on the table at her side. She rose, brow knotted.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I just… I… I just wanted to see you.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to have left you alone. I like to watch the storms.” She glanced back to her vacated perch. “Would you like to join me?”
“Um…” Haruka jumped at another rumble.
“Haruka, are you—“
“I just got a chill, I’m fine. It’s fine.” She fought to stay still as a flash lit the room with a boom.
“Oh, love.” Michiru reached up to stroke her cheek. “It’s okay to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid!”
She let out a small chuckled. “Haruka, dearest, you have far more transparency than you’d like to believe. There is little you could ever hide from me.”
“Well…” Her body betrayed her again with a wobbling lip. “It’s just very loud. And storms always meant everyone stayed inside.”
“Come here.”
Michiru led her gently to the couch and pulled her head into her lap. “I’m going to keep you safe, Haruka.” Her hand stroked back and forth through Haruka’s hair. “I love you, and I’m here when things get scary.”
“But you shouldn’t have to not watch the storm if you want to because I’m being a baby.”
“You’re not being a baby.” Michiru kneaded Haruka’s scalp with her fingertips. “We’re all afraid of things.”
“Not you.”
“Mmm.” Michiru looked out into the storm. “I have many fears, perhaps the biggest of which is letting you see I am afraid.” She bent over kiss Haruka’s forehead. “”You are the bravest person I know, Haruka.”
“Yeah sure,” Haruka scoffed. “So brave that I’m laid low by a little rain.”
“You were afraid and still came to me. I want to be that brave someday.”
The thunder crashed again. Haruka pressed herself deeper into the comfort of Michiru’s lap. “You’re really not mad I’m like this?”
“Not at all, love.” She rubbed her hand slowly along Haruka’s back. “I’d like you to stay here until the storm passes. I want to protect you.”
“I want you to protect me,” Haruka whispered. Michiru did not pull away. Her hands and body were warm and calming against Haruka’s skin. She drifted back to sleep slowly, the storm fading away under the strength of Michiru’s quiet.
AHHH I LOVE THIS YOURE A GENIUS
I have this image of Haruka dying as the world’s about to end and Michiru just grabbing a time key off Pluto and running. And she’ll sacrifice Haruka knowing her to save her. (And if it saves the world too well, that’s fine but it’s hardly her goal)
THIS ISN’T LAME THIS IS WONDERFUL TERRITORY AND I WENT
TOTALLY OFF THE RAILS, THE ENDING IS DISAPPOINTING BUT CHRIST I WROTE WAY TOO
MUCH.
When Michiru announces her engagement to her family, she absolutely ends it with “And I’m going to take her name!” just to see their angry and panicked faces
Michiru is the head of a high crime empire. Her personal interest is art theft, both for the thrill and because the masses do no deserve what only a true artist can appreciate.
Usagi is her secretary who is utterly clueless the business she works for is a front. Michiru has stopped expecting her to figure it out and counts it as a brilliant stroke of luck.
Ami was recruited after she was expelled from the medical community for extensive insurance fraud. While she can sometimes tend towards righteous, her hacking skills are invaluable to Michiru’s operation.
Michiru’s current recruitment target is Minako— a brilliant con artist it’s taken months to track.
What Michiru doesn’t know is Mina has no interest in crime that benefits the wealthy. She’s running a small Robin-Hood style operation (sometimes, she is the poor they are helping, but a girl’s gotta eat) with two bleeding hearts, ex-Yakuza Makoto and petty thief/street racer Haruka (the latter of whom she may have met while they were both running from the cops, Haruka had luckily been willing to take a passenger and had modified her car well enough that the police couldn’t catch them)
Meanwhile Rei is a fresh investigative journalist determined to make her name by blowing open Michiru’s operation, and she’s willing to cut a deal with the likes of Mina to do it
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.
Quick light HaruMichi fluff piece, 700 words
———————————-
Michiru’s mother had always been a hard woman, and over the years Michiru had watched that stiffness become literal. The slow progression of stony maintenance, chiseling away each flaw as it manifested so that she might become a statue of the woman Michiru saw in her parent’s wedding photos. When she had last seen her mother, she could not raise her eyebrows again yet, and she asked if Michiru had considered starting ‘getting work.’
She’d been appalled at the suggestion, she’d always promised herself she would be different from her parents in so many ways, bult as she leaned into the mirror now…
Michiru had thought it would happen so much later. But the lines around her eyes extended like a dozen little liner wings, and creases on her forehead would not dissipate no matter how she relaxed the muscles beneath them. The bones of her shoulders, elbows, knees, the lines of her neck, they had all grown more pronounced, seemingly overnight.
She opened her phone to look through pictures. When had it began? Wasn’t she still so young? Her mother hadn’t… but how was she to know when things began for her mother? She was nearing sixty, and Michiru had never seen as much as a gray hair appear unchecked. Perhaps she had the right of it. It was the only way, surely, turn to stone to bear the weight of age. Michiru would have to make some calls, and then—
“Michi?”
She straightened, smoothed her dress, fixed her hair. “Yes?”
“You’re taking awhile, the show…”
“Oh, yes.” Michiru looked in the mirror again. She had not even begun her makeup, and she needed it now more than ever. “Perhaps you could go ahead of me, I’m going a bit slow today.”
“I’m not going without you.” Haruka cracked the bathroom door. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, love.” She grabbed her foundation and unscrewed the cap in a hurry. “I merely got distracted.”
“Michiru.” She opened the door further and stepped inside. “I know you. You can talk to me.”
It wasn’t fair—Haruka was every bit as handsome as the day they’d met, while she… while she…
Michiru faced her reflection. “I’m old.”
Haruka’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“I’m old.”
Haruka laughed, though not unkindly. “If we’re old now, we’re gonna be ancient in a few years.”
“I will. You’ll be fine.”
“What?” Another laugh, this time with the slightest edge. “I look older than you.”
Michiru could not find the words respond. Haruka stuck her face in the mirror beside her.
“Soon I won’t even be able to call myself blonde.” She gave her hair a good-natured shake. “And Mina likes to say I’ve begun the slow morph from butch noodle to ravioli.”
Michiru met her eyes in the mirror. It was all true, in a strict sense, and yet…
“But it’s handsome on you. You look just as good, better even, than before. And I…”
“You’re beautiful, Michu.” Haruka took her gently by the shoulders and turned her so they faced each other. “You’re the most beautiful woman to ever live.” She smiled sheepishly. “I kinda like see you get older. For a long time I thought I wouldn’t get to.”
“Oh, Haruka.”
“I know, I know, but really.” She stroked her face with her thumb. “I wouldn’t want you looking younger. This is where we are now, and I like it.”
“You don’t think…” Michiru glanced back to the mirror. “You wouldn’t have me get anything?”
“God no.” Haruka kissed her on the forehead. “You’re perfect, Michu. And you won’t ever not be.”
“You’re very sweet,” she said, but she felt her spirits lift. “I’m sorry I’ve made us so late.”
“It’s okay, I was gonna sleep through most the show anyway. I’m so old, you know, I can’t stay awake anymore.”
Michiru laughed. “You’ve been old a very long time then.”
“I suppose I have.” Haruka grinned. “Though you know, if you’re worried about being late, we could go now. You’re more than beautiful enough already…”
“I’m going to put on my makeup, Haruka.”
“I figured as much, but it was worth a try. Someday you’ll believe me on that front, too.”
She kissed Michiru’s cheek and let her be. Michiru selected a lipstick with a lightness in her heart, a feeling that could never turn to stone.