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There’s a soft melody playing on the radio. The drums go off underneath it, kicking in rhythm and echoing around inside the car. Natsuki’s not singing out loud, like how Sayori would if she was here; instead she’s humming, and it means Yuri has to juggle her attention between the road, the song and Natsuki’s soft, joyful vibrations, which she’s now more than ever allowing herself to categorize as cute.
The sun has risen far up into the sky, beaming brightly, another reason for the windows to be down and for the air conditioning to be blowing at them at the highest capacity. Yuri was never a huge fan of summer. The way she functioned best was indoors with raindrops knocking on her windows and with a warm cup of tea to account for the cold.
This, however, is a fine compromise. College hasn’t been hard, but it has been taxing, leaving her and Natsuki to fend off for themselves against piling work and studies and lectures and everything that comes with the start of adult life. There was scant time for themselves and, in extension, scant time for each other, and it felt like for the last few months the only purpose of texting each other was for making sure they were both alive, had enough sleep, had thought of each other during the day.
Yuri blinks, and suddenly Natsuki is the one thing that makes up her world again, peripherals catching frayed locks of pink swirling in the wind. She can only catch a glimpse of her face and all of its shapes and colors and beauties before her eyes have to watch the road again. It’s been empty for the past couple hours of travel, but the occasional car has been showing up more and more frequently. It worries Yuri about the state of crowding at the beach, but the way Natsuki’s eyes glisten when a particularly sporty vehicle whizzes by them is dumbly endearing.
Soon, they can hear and see traces of the sea, and Natsuki stops humming to nearly jump from her seat like an ejector launching her through the windshield, stopped only by the seat belt trapping her small frame. “Let’s fuckin’ go.” She smiles widely - or at least Yuri imagines so, by the sound of her voice.
“How… mesmerizing,” Yuri murmurs.
“So– so like, are we gonna swim first thing, or…”
“No, sweetheart. We have to get to our room first, leave our things, and… get something to eat,” Yuri breathes. She’s self conscious about a few things – debatably a few too many things – and her weight is at least partially up there. It’s not something that keeps her up at night, but there’s a little voice that tells her it wouldn’t be bad to lose just a few pounds, just so she can call herself lanky at the very least. That being said, it was still a bad idea to settle for two tuna sandwiches given it’s been four hours and the only food they brought for the trip was a bag of salted peanuts.
Yuri scoffs internally. Again, she should have listened to dear Natsu.
Natsuki hums (not to any melody this time); “Yeah, ‘kay. I can work with some food.” She chuckles. “Swimming can wait.”
Yuri smiles, looks at the road again, and while the muscles in her face hold up her lips, on the inside, that smile has died.
She does not want to swim. At all. This was something she did not come to realize until the vacation was booked. Her mentality at the time was shockingly carefree for her standards, where pairs of eyes meant nothing, where the girl in the mirror was just a girl and nothing else, where the idea of going out in a swimsuit next to dozens (hundreds, even) of strangers seemed like something she could handle without a hitch.
There’s a reason why she’s wearing a sweatshirt in this weather.
“Somethin’ bothering you?”
“Huh? No.” Yuri lends her girlfriend an eye, then keeps driving, and notices the presence of other cars in the lane and, most notably, of a considerable amount of palm trees in rows. They’ve made it, at least.
Maybe Natsuki took that… sensibility from her, that’s what Yuri wants to believe. She rarely felt or cried for strangers, but Yuri could always just tell. The ways the light fades from people’s eyes or the way their smiles look like they take more effort. It wasn’t something she learned by choice. Natsuki, however, seemed to osmosify this trait from Yuri. It was harder to hide pain near Natsuki - for better or for worse.
Anyway – Yuri has to say the word in her head to make herself stop thinking – the car slows down to a halt. They’ve taken a turn towards the more residential area of the town near the shore, where their hotel is, and Yuri’s already more relaxed at the thought of the view. Though, she grimaces when she remembers how much that view ended up being worth.
She sighs as she turns off the engine and pulls out the key, unlocking the door as she steps towards the sidewalk with Natsuki jogging around the front bumper to catch up. Yuri can look at her now, watch the way she smiles up at her with bright eyes half-lidded to endure the sunbeams, the way her waist looks so petite with the pink sweatshirt tied up around it, the way it adds flare to her black skirt and and grey tank top.
Yuri smiles back, taking a moment to greedily steal Natsuki’s hands in her grasp, brushing thumbs over her fingers. She bends down, then kisses her forehead, rewarded with a satisfied chuckle. Contently, they move to the trunk to gather their possessions.
They can make three days count.
The rays of the sun are quite weak, so early in the morning. The two of them had plummeted while the night was a mere child, if only because they’d had to wake before the sun was properly rising to make it to the busy road in time. Compound this with all the walking, the early evening dinner back downtown near the beach - its moody orange lighting and absence of loud music - the way Natsuki was so viciously tender-handed with Yuri when they got back to their room, and the result is a clean eight hours of sleep with plenty of day time left to go.
Natsuki’s so warm, still, radiating that comfortable heat like a fireplace on Yuri’s skin – maybe even her very soul – as she rests a head on her sternum, the feeling of her hair on Yuri’s body very much contributing to all of it, this perfect, seemingly unending and all-encompassing bliss.
So of course, Yuri’s surprised when, suddenly, Natsuki is scampering off the bed and landing on cold feet on the floor of their hotel room, immediately heading for the drawer she’d put their swimsuits on.
Before Yuri has a chance to prod a question from her far side of the bed, concealed under a blanket, Natsuki’s already confirming her worries. “Gonna go for it real early on, ‘cus there’s gonna be less people and the sun isn’t gonna be too feisty on me.”
Yuri’s face shifts microscopically. “I see.”
“What, you’re not going?”
“I’ll think about it.” Yuri side-eyes the window. There are a few silhouettes of different shades of skin far, far ahead, some obscured by palm trees.
When she looks back at Natsuki, she’s already wearing her pink frilly swimsuit, the smile of an axolotl on the center, adjusting the straps bound to her collars. Her lanky (lanky for her height, at least) but firm-looking legs are cleanly exposed all the way to the tips of her toes; her arms much the same, but with what Yuri would describe as… little mini-skirts on her shoulders. All of it matches her hair.
She sticks out like a sore thumb, but she looks beautiful, that much is certain. Yuri clears her throat. “I won’t be going now, at least.”
Natsuki’s walking over to the bathroom, probably to check herself on the mirror. “Riiight.” Yuri mentally pictures her re-doing her hair, maybe scavenging for her hairclips inside the cabinet. “But you will be getting in the water, yeah?” She half-shouts from behind the set of walls.
Yuri’s lips squeeze into a line. “Darling, I… don’t want to. I apologize.”
“But you… brought your swimsuit.”
“I changed my mind.” It comes out with a breath, because it takes exertion to lie to her girlfriend.
“I mean, that’s… fine.” The disappointment in Natsuki’s voice is palpable and handsy, sending scratches down Yuri’s skin.
“It’s just… I don’t get why. You literally booked a vacation to a beach.”
“Yes, Natsuki, I know. I’ve come to realize that myself–”
Natsuki’s emerging from the bathroom, gesticulating with her hands. “Like, why not just book for, like, Tokyo or something…”
“I know,” Yuri hisses. “I’m aware of my awful judgment.” There’s a mix of guilt and annoyance swimming inside her.
There’s barely any time for her to try and suck in a breath. “I’m not saying you have poor judgment, Yuri, I’m saying you shouldn’t waste so much money on a beach trip and not even get in the water.”
“Shouldn’t, why?” She’s sitting up now, holding the blanket over herself – over her heart.
Natsuki shakes her head. “”Cus… that’s the whole appeal? You’re going to be sunbathing, at least, right?”
Finally, some respite. Yuri breathes out. “I… will think about it. Carefully.”
Except, of course not. “Come on, dude!” Natsuki’s hands sprawl as they hover near her chest, frustrated.
“What do you want from me, Natsuki?” Yuri frowns.
“I just… I don’t know. I wanna spend some time with you.” There’s a hint of sorrow in Natsuki’s tone. Yuri does not pay it notice.
“You will. Just not there.”
“At least tell me why!”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why, though?” Natsuki steps closer, Yuri instinctively scoots back and closer to the wall the bed touches. “I won’t judge you for anything, you know that.”
Yuri looks down at herself. The marks in her skin look like they glow in the dark. Each is a unique, carefully formed demonstration of Yuri’s worst aspects – her impulse, dark thoughts, her self hatred and lack of self preservation. Though, if she couldn’t preserve herself then, she will now. The blanket is thrown over her shoulders, and now Yuri is a head sticking out of a swirl of silk.
“I don’t want others to look at…” Yuri swallows. “At my arm.”
Natsuki’s stare burns through her temple, brings heat to her very mind, even as Yuri stares off at the window and watches the sky, the occasional avian flying past in a grey or black shape. The waves topple over each other, the tackling of bright blue water, glistening white under the sunlight. It’s almost hypnotizing, and Yuri’s heart starts to tingle with desire.
And Natsuki’s voice replaces it with a chill, speaking lowly and deadly. “I thought you were over it.”
Turning around slowly, not once all the way, Yuri looks at Natsuki. She’s almost slumped, arms crossed, an unreadable look on her face.
Yuri’s lips part slowly, and then a whole desert separates that from her speech. “Over… over what?” It comes out a breath of… disbelief, almost.
“I don’t know, over worrying what other people think.”
Yuri’s eyes dart between each of Natsuki’s, each dither a knock on the window of her soul. “This… this is different.”
“Is it?” Natsuki almost sounds mad. Yuri can’t bring herself to speak. “It’s just, like… I thought at some point you realized it’s better to stop giving a fuck.”
It wouldn’t matter what she has in response, her throat is wrapping around itself, her chest burns hot and cold, feels heavy, stomach acids burble in her gut.
The silence that hangs over them feels like death row, like Yuri is facing eye to eye with her slaughterer, a hare defenseless and at the mercy of someone whose finger is on the trigger. Maybe that’s what the chill is in the core of her ventricles; a cold barrel pushing against it.
“It’s just…” Natsuki bites her lip, looking down, and Yuri is split between begging no and patiently, obediently waiting for the words to come.
“I just wish you weren’t so obsessed with… blaming yourself.”
And so Yuri watches Natsuki, watches the way her lips part, the way her feet don’t know where to stand. There’s some vile satisfaction to savor in the way she sits frozen and almost uncertain. Along the brewing sorrow, there’s now vengeful spite inside Yuri.
With trembling lips, she aims; “How…”
And fires, “How fucking ironic of you, Natsuki.”
Then she takes it, the horrible, boiling feeling in her eyes and the way her cheekbones ache as her lips wriggle together… and lies down, facing the wall. In her mind, Yuri can almost hear the gunshot echo through the room, or maybe that’s just Natsuki’s heavy breathing that just barely sneaks into her eardrums, unwelcome.
“I’m… God, fuck, I’m–”
“Just go.” Yuri says, immobile. “Have fun.”
As the door comes to a meek, pathetic close, hinges whimpering, Yuri pretends not to hear the pained shudder come out of the girl who’s left her bedroom. Now it’s just her, the occasional chatter of people outside, and the quiet waves. They almost seem louder, as if they have something to say, and it makes Yuri shoot up from her side and slide the glass window shut.
Now it’s just her and the ringing in her ears. That, and the feeling of bareness in her limbs. She needs to get up, still, to go brush her teeth and wash her eyes and face the cruel, abhorrent monster that is today, but the very thought of getting up makes Yuri feel like her legs are broken, and the idea of eating food closes the gap between the walls of her throat even more.
Yuri wishes she had listened to the part of her that preferred the bed and blanket. With an internal one, two, three, she steps coldly onto the floor, gets dressed, and walks towards the bathroom, each step feeling ghostly, like her bones are made of glass. When she’s inside, when she looks in the mirror, waiting for her is a broken face and, a few inches underneath, horrible swirling loathliness under her clothes.
The waves still crash outside, faint thanks to the distance, but now that the night has ushered the crowds back home it’s audible enough that Yuri can still hear it as she reads. It’s calming, the window is open so she can look at the stars, sparkly and bright in the clear sky free of smoke and greed. Her arms and legs are softly caressed by the fresh summer breeze, her hair is sprawled on the bed and the loose t-shirt and shorts she’s wearing are loosely fitted over her, letting her skin breathe through the creases and gaps. She closes her book, silently ruminates over the final words hidden between the thin teal cover.
Even though her second book is finished, now, despite having not much else to cling onto, everything is so normal and so fine.
Her arm is itchy.
She sighs, the completed, arguably useless book falls to the bedside, still hooked by her thumb. It’s not just her body anymore, not just herself anymore. It’s everything else, and the everything else happens to be, among many things, Natsuki specifically. Yuri could say she saw remorse in her eyes when she came back a few hours ago. She could reasonably infer Natsuki feels bad, but she hasn’t said anything yet, just scant words when necessary. One part of her wants to continue being spiteful and enraged, to indulge in self-righteousness (because she is right); another part of her aches, deeper than any wound, to just feel Natsuki again, to feel closeness again.
She’s looking at the ceiling, book slipping out of her grasp and lying on the far side, and again she has to ask why this happened today of all days, in this occasion out of any other.
Fuck, her arm is so itchy.
The thought of relapsing again finds her. The familiar temptation of letting go of the rail and letting herself fall back down, but to some relief she’s shut down by a multitude of thoughts she’d consider rational, shutting down the urge until it’s nothing more than a small shard of glass stuck between the gaps of her mind. The mess she’d make, the time it’d take to recover, the shame, but most importantly, Natsuki will believe she caused this. If that happens, if Natsuki feels blamed, she’ll tear herself on the inside, Yuri will cease to even resemble anything human, and she’ll never forgive herself.
So she lies, and starts her routine breathing exercises. Crashing waves, calm, stars, breeze, everything is okay and Natsuki will surely find it within herself to talk to Yuri again, and all of today’s morning will just seem like a bad dream.
The discomfort is eventually minimal, amounting to an irritating dot of heat in her gut, and it’s enough for her to bring her book up to eye height again, right back on the start, to indulge in the escape of a world unlike this one and to try not to think about it until she’s forced to. She’s trapped in the first blank page, unable to even bring herself to reach the title.
The crashing waves remind Yuri of what she deliberately missed out on.
The stars are a thousand eyes judging her every move, past and present and future.
The breeze washes over the hundreds of individual lines on her arms, so contently reminding Yuri of her shame.
And Natsuki…
Natsuki gently opens the door.
At the very least, Yuri reasonably suspects that it’s her. The pitter-patter on the floor matches the one she hears every once in a while back at home, though the way every sense has seemed to wash over Yuri - eerie and hardly present like a wandering ghost - this entire day and night, it may have changed without her noticing.
But either way, it’s Natsuki; “Hey,” she whispers. No one else could sound that soft, no one else could make Yuri’s tear ducts tingle from inside with a single word, the discomforting pang radiating through to her throat. The itchiness almost feels like throbbing, now.
“Can I lie down?”
Silently gritting her teeth, Yuri lets air meekly escape from within the gaps between them. “You may.” There’s momentary relief in the way she believes her voice didn’t come off broken; as broken as Yuri truly feels.
The sheets shuffle as Yuri scoots forward, closer to the wall and window, and Natsuki timidly follows, her small frame taking so little space it’s like she’s not there at all. Or it would feel that way, rather, if it weren’t for the hairs standing on end on Yuri’s body, shivers that gesture towards the girl right behind her, if it weren’t for the urge to plunge onto Natsuki, to cry on her chest, to apologize for what Natsuki did wrong in a plea for things to just get back to fucking normal again.
Yuri does not do that. She shudders quietly, tucks the book under the pillow, and that’s that.
Natsuki, however, doesn’t end it at that. She drags herself closer, the bed gently grunting underneath them, and the heat emanating from another human body now almost feels radioactive. It stops abruptly, stays rigid.
It’s up to her, now, Yuri thinks, and her compulsion has almost never been for the good. What better time to start but now; sucking in a breath that ironically makes her feel suffocated, Yuri asks, “How was the water?”
Natsuki hesitates. “Uh, fine. Bit cold.” I wish you were there, Yuri completes the sentence in her mind.
“That’s good, darling.”
The word now is incompleteness. It hangs in the air, swirls around them, fogs up their chests from inside, shackles their bodies to the bed like any movement requires either strength or adrenaline. It is, for lack of a richer term, awful. Time moves too quickly, time moves too slow, time doesn’t move at all. Any time Yuri hears a lip part, or a short breath come out, her heart jumps a little. In a sense, it might be hope, but it’s probably more accurately just desperation.
Finally; “I’m sorry,” says the weaker of the two. There’s a part of Yuri that hates herself for apologizing first. She suspects it’s the same part of her that reminds her of everything that went poorly about today, suspects it could even be the part of her that drew so many scratches on her arm, the part that told her to stay here.
As usual, she’s rewarded for doing the wrong thing. Natsuki shuffles closer and before Yuri’s heart can leap out from her throat, there’s a pair of gentle, thin, guilty arms snaking around her abdomen.
“I fucked up. Badly. No one in this room owes anyone an apology except me.” A breath comes out of Natsuki, and Yuri can easily describe it as ragged.
“I hope you think otherwise, but I feel like such a piece of shit. Just… God, I don’t even know if I deserve to be next to you.”
The words take a second to fully reach Yuri, but when they do it’s like she’s been electrocuted from the base of her spine. “N-No. Please stay. Please.”
Natsuki breathes softly against Yuri’s back, about two thirds of the way up her neck. “I will.”
For a while, it’s just that, just her breathing. Just her touch, just gentle reminders of her aliveness, just Natsuki. It’s like the soft caress of warmth after a bout of hypothermia, or some other similar feeling analogous to being saved. That’s what this feels like.
But then, with a more notable sigh, Natsuki shuffles, slowly scoots away, and Yuri nearly pleads, yet as she turns around Natsuki’s still there, just sitting, waiting, something expectant in her glinting pink irises.
Yuri doesn’t move. She’s taken enough risks today, already used up her intuition for the worst, so she remains static, eyes darting around Natsuki’s features, the messiness of her undone hair, the lazy shirt and shorts combo akin to Yuri’s.
Natsuki speaks, her words transitioning from a sigh; “I wanna make it up to you.”
Instinctively, Yuri shoots back, stammering through a throat strained by repressed tears, “There’s no need.”
“T-There is,” Natsuki nods frantically. The rest of her movement is anything but frantic. She approaches with knees and knuckles, digging into the mattress, and a palm touches Yuri’s shoulder in silent request. She obeys, admittedly with slight qualm, and lets her back touch the bed and her neck slump against the pillow.
Natsuki gently sits over her, crosses a leg over Yuri’s opposite side, her heart rate starting to kick up again as a pair of hands rest dangerously near her hips.
With a shudder, Yuri murmurs with regret swimming through her; “I’m… I’m not in the mood.”
Natsuki raises an eyebrow, and soon her eyes widen to match. “Huh– oh, no. That’s… That’s not what this is. I promise.”
Yet her nonchalantness almost makes Yuri more worried. The worry is partially squashed when soft lips meet hers, guiding her eyes to close, and then completely replaced by a warm haze swirling in her stomach when she hears the soft sound of them disconnecting, opening her eyes.
Natsuki finishes crossing the road that is Yuri’s body, both knees resting on her side, Natsuki’s body covering up the view of the black midnight sky, and the sight nearly makes Yuri faint.
Simply, she’s in love again.
“Yuri,” Natsuki starts. “I love you. I love all of you. Every… damn inch of you is perfect and beautiful and…” She swallows.
“I’ll never understand what you went through – for-- for better or for worse – but I think I’m right for thinking that… that your scars are beautiful too. Because they’re part of you.”
Yuri, on any other day of her life, would smile softly, compliment Natsuki’s words of passion, and kiss her. Tonight, her heart pounds at her ribcage and her vision blurs, her breaths escaping her in shivery bursts, and she nearly starts to sob when a pair of fingertips brush softly down the length of her inner forearm.
“Natsuki…” Yuri sniffles. She wants to ask what’s happening, but nothing follows, even after Natsuki stops abruptly to hear a plea to stop or to continue.
“So…”
Tentatively, the fingers keep trailing, then get replaced by one thumb, and Yuri feels the bed shift in weight as Natsuki leans in, a soft mist of heat pooling against her arm, and it’s like every single line of discolored skin is breathing back.
Natsuki relents, and then places upon the first from the top, a soft kiss.
Like the air of a sweet summer breeze.
Yuri shivers throughout, a cold feeling that washes over head to toe, and then gets blanketed over with warmth going through her in the same way, direction and speed.
Natsuki’s eyes gleam through the blur in her vision, Yuri’s hand twitches and her fingers seek for something as her arm is held down by nothing but Natsuki’s looming presence. A breath hitches against one of the many scars, and when it does, it’s like something vile and unwanted retracts back into Yuri’s skin, then dissipates completely from within.
Her girlfriend, loving and passionate, steely and curative, brings herself down another inch. She repeats the process from earlier; she lowers herself, rubs her nose on the gaps between the scratches, and then kisses one. Sometimes Yuri will feel the length of Natsuki’s front teeth brush delicately against her, sometimes the smooch will reverberate louder in the room – it will feel more personal, as if she’s simultaneously whispering in her ear – and it feels as if Natsuki is slowly, carefully wrapping a bandage around each cut; some a year old, some a decade older. As if Natsuki is gently putting her worries, her shame, to bed.
She stops at the hinge of her wrist, places a final, longer, resonating peck next to the base of Yuri’s thumb, and rolls over to rest her cheek there, a warm hand tracing thin, incongruent shapes on her thigh.
Meanwhile, Yuri is sniffling, shuddering. Feeling rivulets of tears descend down her cheeks, coalescing at the pillow, on her ears, dribbling past both and leaving tiny stains on the bedclothes. At the very least, she finds it within herself to stroke Natsuki’s face with her thumb, and as the clouds in her eyes fade away, the smile that’s looking back at her, genuine and human, needs no words. When the sniffling stops, Yuri receives them anyway.
Natsuki crawls to slot herself between Yuri’s revered, blessed arm and her chest, whispering against her neck; “I love you,” “I’ll always love you,” “You’re everything to me,” and their many variations. Sometimes a thumb will find itself swiping away at the wet streaks staining Yuri’s face. Between sniffles, she manages an “I love you too.”
Something is truly unique about this warmth. It feels permanent, lodged into every organ and bone, like a soft fever.
The stars and moon gleam above them, uncaring of their passion.
The air is warm enough that, combined with the tangled limbs around them both, there’s no need for a blanket.
The ocean waves patiently crash quietly and far away outside; a whisper, a lullaby, and it lingers forever, trickling softly into Yuri’s ear, into her mind, and following her and her lover as she swims and bathes in the warmth of a happy dream.