[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Souvenirs

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 2246 words

B/D: This was an idea I had a while ago, but couldn't quite make click. Then I tried another idea, couldn't make that click, and came back to this one only to find that it had become clickable. Sometimes the idea is good, and the timing is just wrong.

Suguri’s footsteps are quiet as she trudges up the path to the house. A house in the middle of nowhere, perched atop a hill. She often wonders why it is that she chose to live there, of all places, but she has simply lived there for so long that the reason no longer matters. It is close to the earth, and close to the sky, and perhaps that was all she ever needed for so long a time.

She draws the collar of her coat up to her nose. The air is cold, but still; the countryside from the air is a patchwork of witch hazel and camellia. They are standing on the edge of spring. In the country she has just left, winter has not yet seen fit to releases its grasp, and the frigid winds were like claws raking across her body. Here, the air is more gentle, even in the pale moonlight of the evening.

When she reaches the door, she wonders briefly whether she should knock. On one hand, it is her house, but she’s given no advance warning of her return, and she feels that being mistaken for an intruder by Hime (or worse, Sora) could be a painful experience. On the other hand, it is late at night, and she doesn’t want to disturb their sleep, and perhaps they’ll be pleasantly surprised to find her there in the morning.

In the end, she decides on quiet, and turns her key soundlessly in the door. As soon as she steps into the house, a great weariness falls upon her, like snow on the face of a mountain. She is home now. She can rest. She quietly sinks to the floor and begins the laborious process of disentangling her feet from her winter boots, carelessly shrugging off her rucksack full of souvenirs as she does. It hits the ground with a soft thump, and for a moment she listens intently for a response. After a few seconds punctuated only by Sora’s quiet breathing from the living room, she resumes fiddling with her laces. 

She has just managed to remove her first boot when a voice drifts, like smoke across a waning moon, from the living room.

“Suguri?”

Her heart beats painfully, a little heavily, in her chest. So this is what it feels like, she thinks. To come home to somebody. Her fingers forget what they are doing; she stands almost without meaning to, balancing on uneven feet. Her mouth forms the word without her input, so naturally. As if she were born with it on her lips. “Hime.”

As if conjured by her name she appears, floating soundlessly from the gloom of the living room. In her nightgown, she seems more like an elf or a fairy than a human being. Her eyes seem a little tired, and perhaps that is all that convinces Suguri that she is not an illusion or a dream. Now that she is in the light, her movements are a little stiff, as if she is trying with all her might not to break into a run.

The seconds blur together, like somebody is skipping through the frames. One moment Suguri is standing still, and the next she is walking towards Hime, falling towards her, as if being led by the hand, as if being caught by gravity. She blinks and Hime’s cheek is against hers, Hime’s hands on her waist, Hime’s breath falling in ragged gasps as she searches for words and finds none sufficient. Their bodies press together, moulding against each other, until they sit cleanly against each other like pieces of a jigsaw.

In the future, Suguri will come to realise that they were not hugging, but embracing as lovers do.

“I missed you,” Hime says, her hands brushing through Suguri’s long, silver hair. She winds a lock of it around her forefinger, and fiddles with the curl.

“I missed you too.”

“Not enough,” she says with a contented sigh, the mischief returning to her voice. “Otherwise you would march straight up to the bedroom and announce yourself, rather than sneaking in like a thief in the night. Very disappointing. You must try to miss me more, next time.”

“I’ll do my best. I though you’d be asleep,” Suguri says, hiding her grin by burying her face in Hime’s shoulder.

“The bed is too large to sleep in alone. I was just dozing off in the loveseat when you came in. Is it cold out there? Your cheeks are cold.”

“They’re warmer now.”

“Because you’re blushing.”

“Because I’m blushing,” Suguri nods, and – with more reluctance than she thought she’d have – disentangles herself from her friend. “How have things been while I was away?”

Hime’s eyes flicker to the side as she arranges her thoughts. “Hmm… Sora has been keeping me entertained, I suppose. Thunderstorms and boxing matches, that kind of thing. She got carried away and broke Nath’s arm.”

Suguri tilts her head. “Nath doesn’t have arms.”

“Well, she doesn’t anymore. Now she just has arm, singular.”

“That’s still more than she started with.”

Hime touches her fingertips to her mouth as she changes the subject. “It was nice to have time to myself for the first few days, but… I really wished you were here. How was your trip?”

The silver haired girl frowns. It was a bust, she explains. Her existing contacts just don’t have any information on the group she’s keeping an eye on, and she wasn’t able to dig up anything herself. “It’s frustrating. I don’t know where to look from here. There’s a ‘peacekeeping’ organisation over in Port City that might know. But they’re pretty insular. Surveillance, wetworks. I hear they sometimes oversee hostage negotiations. They won’t talk to me.”

“Port City…? Hm. You might try Iru. She wrote to me a while ago saying she’d been offered a job near there, but didn’t say what it was. Given her skill set…” Hime trails off, but the implication is clear. There aren’t too many niches available for a sniping specialist, but surveillance and policing hostage situations would definitely be two of them.

“Hah,” Suguri sighs. “I took such a long trip, but it turns out I should have just asked you instead.”

Hime flashes her a mischievous smile. “Well, of course. I am, after all, quite intelligent.”

“Yes.”

“And quite beautiful.”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to keep saying yes, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Ohohoho. In that case, could you please undress for me? Slowly, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Pass.”

“Oh, boo. Let’s wake Sora up, then. She’ll be glad to see you.”

Once again she feels she’s being led by the hand, pulled in by Hime’s gravity. In truth, she almost doesn’t want to wake Sora up. There was something enjoyable about the hushed whispers, the private back and forth. But she follows anyway in Hime’s wake, and watches her gently nudging Sora’s sleeping shoulder.

“Sora. Sora. Suguri’s home.”

After half a minute of determined prodding, Sora excavates her face from her beanbag pillow and looks up into the half-light. Her mouth falls open in a tiny ‘o’, her eyes still half shut, her expression blank. Then, she pronounces, with utmost seriousness: “Suguri. Somebody stole your boot.”

“…Not quite,” Suguri says, having momentarily forgotten that she’s only wearing one. “But that reminds me. I have souvenirs.”

At the mention of souvenirs, all traces of sleepiness vanish from Sora’s face – and from Hime’s, for that matter. Suddenly, their attention is quite undivided. She smiles indulgently. In the end, this is a household of ancient children, after all. She disappears into the entryway and returns with her rucksack full of treasures and trinkets.

“Now, Sora. I got you one big thing. Before I give it to you, what do you think it is?” Suguri asks. It isn’t often that she teases people, but it’s fine to have some fun from time to time.

Sora closes her eyes, and when they open again after a moment or two of deep thought, they are full of excitement. Her face lights up in a beatific smile, her hands curl into balls, and her voice her voice has the same tone as a child who’s been told she’s getting a puppy. “A grenade!”

“Ah… This one really was born in a bad time, wasn’t she? Ahaha… ha…” Hime says, poking a hole through the resulting awkward silence.

“Muuuu… What could be as good as a grenade…? Ah! It’s an ice cream maker!”

“It’s an ice cream maker?!” Hime gasps.

“It’s not an ice cream maker.”

“It’s not an ice cream maker?!”

“No,” Suguri says, pressing a hand to her forehead. She withdraws from her bag a rounded package of some shiny, pale blue fabric. “It’s a sleeping bag. I thought it might be getting a little cold at night, so it’ll help keep you warm.”

A rush of excited questions begin to tumble out of the blonde girl’s mouth. How many seasons is it rated for? What’s the comfort temperature? Is it a square type, or a mummy bag? Mummy bags, she informs them gravely, are by the far the best. Soon enough she is wriggling across the floor in her sleeping bag like a big, sky-blue worm, which Suguri rather suspects will be her default mode of locomotion for a while.

“Suguri, you’re the best,” she says, looking up from ankle-height with a satisfied smile. “It’s very snuggly.”

“You’re… uh, welcome,” Suguri replies, having not expected such a rapturous response to a piece of camping gear.

“I still don’t quite understand that girl, but the outcome was very good,” Hime whispers. “I don’t suppose you have an ice-cream maker in there for me, by any chance?”

“...You do know you can make ice cream without a machine, right?”

Hime’s assumes the controlled, level expression of somebody who is screaming internally and wants to keep it that way. “I see. This requires my attention. Perhaps my immediate attention.”

“We can look some recipes up on the computer later.”

“But then we can’t watch cat videos! What kind of cruel world forces a woman to choose between ice cream and cats?” she pouts.

“Nath has a cat. She’s pretending she doesn’t, though. He’s very cute and I want to call him Major if she doesn’t think of a good name,” Sora’s voice says from somewhere very close to the floorboards.

Hime sighs. “I’m sorry, Suguri. You leave for only a week or two and you come back to a world of secret cats and sleeping bag floor snakes.”

“Hissss.”

Suguri smiles and waits for the commotion to die down before withdrawing a heavy leather pouch from her rucksack. From it, she extracts a camera and places it into Hime’s open palm. “I got you two things. This is the first.”

The dancer looks at the camera in her hand, then deep into Suguri’s eyes, and then back to the camera. “You do realise what you are doing?”

“I’m making me and Sora the most photographed people on the planet?”

Hime’s eyes begin to glitter, and her tone is as indulgent as rich chocolate. “Oh yes. You two are going to feel like idols. My first order of business shall be to take some photographs of your cute sleeping face, Suguri.”

She scratches the back of her head, and finds a blush creeping to her cheeks. “I don’t understand why. You see it every morning.”

“I’ve missed it lately,” Hime replies, and there is a faint tremble to her lip.

“Ah… Maybe I should start getting up earlier…”

“Please do – then we can spend the morning together. I love it when every possible outcome is a positive one. It’s so very neat and tidy,” the blonde says, turning the camera over and over in her hands, testing the weight of it. “By the way, you said you had something else?”

“Mm. It’s not something I can hand to you, though,” Suguri replies, feeling uncharacteristically sheepish. “I booked a reservation for us in a restaurant in the next town over. It’s… a little fancy, so it’ll be a nice excuse to wear good clothes.”

A contented smile graces Hime’s lips. “A rare opportunity to see you wearing clothes other than your jacket? My heart is pounding already.”

Sora yawns, in the wholehearted, unapologetic way that dogs and cats do, and receives the same sentiments back from her friends. The night is long, and the moon is high; even souvenirs cannot cure them of their need for sleep. As Hime and Suguri make their way upstairs, to warmth and to bed, Suguri ponders an important question.

“Hime? How many pillows are left in the pillow wall?”

“Oh… Well, about that. We were, I’m afraid, struck by a number of ferocious pillow bandits. It was dreadful. They simply overpowered me and Sora, and vanished into the night with all of our excess pillows. The world is such a chaotic place nowadays.”

“I… see,” Suguri frowns. “And I suppose Sora will agree with you on this?”

Hime’s eyes twinkle in the half-light. “For the privilege of eating her favourite breakfast four days in a row, I find there’s not much that Sora won’t agree with.”

Suguri sighs. She expected spmething like this. But the night, she reminds herself, is cold, and Hime is very warm. Besides, they trust each other with so many things. Surely her back can be one of them.

Perhaps it won’t be such a big deal after all.

A/N: I wanted to do something cute and snuggly and shippy, but also try out more of using nature in my descriptions, which I started experimenting with in the recent ReiMari drabble collection. I'm relatively pleased with the results, and I'm going to keep trying to refine it.