week 4

[airlockedmods]

[Just like the previous week the status quo is restored with frighteningly quick efficiency. PAL still makes the morning and night time announcements through the PIP on each Champion's arm, and still the Champion unitards are freshly laundered and re-hung each morning in their closets. Even the glass roses Choromatsu and Takumi broke after the trial in their fit of anger have been replaced with fresh ones. All signs that there was anything amiss this weekend are completely gone.

There's a new floor to explore, their "reward" for a job well done.]

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday



[ooc: Don't forget to to turn in your AC for week 3, submit your memory regains and put in your threads for the Benefactors!]

Comments

[serrata]

[ Yuuri's a light sleeper. You have to be when nodding off at the wrong time could ensure that you never wake up again. So when she feels him start awake like that it's enough to make her stir as well. She comes awake slowly though, disoriented twicefold -- she's in an unfamiliar bed again with someone else and the fact that she's here and in a bed at all is so different from her dream that it takes her a second to be able to place herself back where she belongs.

And more important -- Junpei's ragged breathing, how tense he is. He's not happy. ]

... Junpei.

[ Her voice is soft and sleepy, but concerned and she lifts a hand to very gently touch his face. ]

What's wrong? What woke you up?

[misanthropicprinciple]

[He jumps again at the soft, careful touch--opens his eyes despite his better judgment and sees her so close, looking at him with such concern that it shoots straight into him before he can guard.]

No... nothing, it... I...

[Nothing? More like everything. It swirls in his brain like a whirlpool, and he's the hapless diver caught in the treacherous current. 'Together with me, we are ten.' 'You'd never have been involved in that child abduction case ten years ago... And of course, Junpei--the path you've walked during your life would've been completely different, too.' 'Do you know what happened because of you? Mira died. Eric died. Sigma lost his arms and an eye and he's in the hospital!' 'To tell the truth, history has proven me right.' 'So... to kill one person, you'll sacrifice six billion people?'

'I promised, didn't I? That I'd come back for you.'

But it didn't help anything.

'I'm going to need you to forget everything you know, Junpei-kun.'

He bites his lip, then moves his arm from where it was around Yuuri to cover his face before it can crumple completely. For three weeks, he's more or less held it together--he's been angry, sure, and made terrible decisions every time he hit a wall, threw himself recklessly against anything he could find to fight--for three weeks, he's refused to focus on anything but the here and now.

But now, all Junpei is is a man trying his damnedest not to start crying like a little kid.

Everything he'd done... the peaceful, average life he'd thrown away... she'd taken it from him with a simple 'I'm sorry,' and she didn't even flinch as he fell.

What was he doing?]

[serrata]

[ She's seen Junpei mad and she's seen him exhausted but she's never seen him quite as broken down as this and it hurts a little to look at him. She doesn't have to ask any further to know whatever he's remembered must be a knife to the heart -- not when she can see it all over his face and hear it in his voice.

She doesn't bother to ask this time when she gathers him into her arms. Carefully, tenderly, pulling him against her and slowly starting to stroke his hair. And just like last time, there's no magic words she can use to make this better.

But she speaks up anyway, her voice still soft and her words still gentle. ]

... I'm not going to say "it's alright" or anything like that. I know it's not. But I'm here, okay? I'm still not going anywhere.

[ There's things she needs to chew over for herself, a dream she needs to try and decipher. But that can wait. ]

[misanthropicprinciple]

[Oh, now that's just an arrow to the core.]

Ri... Rii-san...

[I'm still not going anywhere.

Junpei cries the way the sea seeps in at the first groaning cracks in a ship's hull, just the tiniest leaks of water and sound as the crushing pressure moves in. Crying only softly like that, he wraps both arms around her and buries his face in her shoulder so she can't see it, can't see how his whole life's just rejected him like what he was offering was nothing.

He holds her like she's something precious and beautiful. The only thing keeping him afloat; the only warmth in a frozen sea.

He's been so desperately lonely.]

Why... did it turn... turn out like this? I tried...

[serrata]

[ As Yuuri cradles him in her arms, still stroking his hair, cheek pressed against the crown of his head, she wonders if Arianna had felt this same tiny heartbreak when Yuuri herself had been the one weeping like everything was crashing down around her. She wonders if it's been as long for Junpei as it had been for her -- since either of them allowed themselves to cry. ]

Because sometimes it does. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try and no matter what you do, things go wrong and you get hurt.

[ Yuki pounding her fists raw on the announcement room door, screaming "Megu-nee, Megu-nee!" until her voice was little more than a howl. ]

Getting up after that and having to keep on trying... it's the hardest thing in the world, isn't it?

[misanthropicprinciple]

[He sniffles and breathes out, nods against her shoulder.]

Don't. Not... not yet.

[His arms tighten gently around her, and one hand travels up to rest between her shoulder blades, large and warm. He scoffed and rolled his eyes at Kip's story about rulers outlawing human touch--but what could be a worse kind of exile? Yuuri's hand in his hair is balm and cure and pushes out the poison without hurting him when, for so long, he thought himself too raw to bear touch.]

Later. We can get up later. ...Please.

[His fingers brush down her spine, the contrast between cloth's give and the firm warmth skin beneath a wonder.]

Just stay.

[serrata]

I'll stay.

[ She says it so certainly that's more a promise than it is a reassurance. She doesn't want to leave. Yuuri's never thought of herself as being particularly touch-starved, not when she had Yuki bounding around hugging and clinging at any opportunity. But all this is so very different and it's a surprise for her to realize just how badly she'd wanted it as well.

How silly it seemed now for her to have felt guilty and wanted to pull away from hugs and touches on Friday when she didn't doubt she'd needed it most. How ridiculous of her to think that wanting to be held like this would've been somehow untoward. ]

If you want, I can stay tonight as well. You don't have to stay in here alone.

[misanthropicprinciple]

[After a beat of quiet, he moves his hand up her shoulder and arm to find her hand, to lace his fingers carefully through hers and bring them down a bit, down to his neck and shoulder, so he can look at her face without anything else in the way. His eyes are red, still wet and bright with tears still unshed, but he blinks to keep her image from swimming, from splintering and breaking like light on disturbed water.]

Why...

[All the questions he wants to ask are the wrong ones. Why would she stay with--for him? Why would she go so far for a guy she's only known for three weeks? Why... does she care about him?

Why her and not Akane?

Their eyes are so different. That strange, warm olive and Akane's almost mystical purple--Junpei hasn't found the need to compare the two of them since weeks ago, hairstyles be damned. But he's never done anything but go to war for Akane, and in return...

And in return, Yuuri is here. His thumb glides lightly over her knuckles before he reaches out this time to touch her face, careful, gentle, just brushing a hair back from her cheek.]

For me... How much can I do for you, Rii-san?

[serrata]

[ Why indeed? It's not a question Yuuri's ever felt the need to ask herself but now that he poses it, it gives her pause. Despite what she'd said to Arianna she hadn't ever intended on ever doing anything to make anything about this bond more than... mostly platonic. Maybe it's silly to get attached so soon in a place like this.

But... maybe it's because it's a place like this that it's so important. Four people are dead, they're trapped here with a hostile captor and none of them know if help is ever going to come.

Doesn't that mean it's more important than ever that when there's something warm and comforting like this you hold onto it as tight as you can?

She leans in, lets her forehead bump gently against his. ]

Everything you've already been doing... that's more than I could've asked for. Just...

[ she trails off for a moment but then she smiles. ]

I want to be here. [ "with you" ] So let me stay.

[misanthropicprinciple]

[It's enough. It's more than enough. That smile and those words wash away what's left of Junpei's hesitance, battered battlements of sand, and if she draws another muted grief-noise out of him she draws him, too. Junpei moves into her like iron filings to a magnet, fingers sliding into her hair to cradle the back of her head, mouth moving, pressing--

to hers.

It's that simple. That clean. There's nothing like dares or strawberries or the goading of others to bring them together. Here and now, they are only Junpei and Yuuri, castaways on the life raft of Junpei's bed, clinging to each other like the only two people in the world because she sees him; they need the same thing.

Junpei kisses Yuuri because she wants him to, because he wants to, because closeness is a thing that human beings need and he's human. He's so human. And so is she.]

Okay. [Her lips are soft. He doesn't pull away.] Stay... stay as long as you need.

[I need, he doesn't say. She already knows.]

[serrata]

[ It's not much of a surprise when he kisses her. Maybe it should be -- it was only last week that she felt like offering a hug was too much, overstepping her bounds. But as his hand glides over her hair and his lips press against hers it doesn't feel awkward. It doesn't feel rushed and it doesn't leave her feeling more like the punchline of a joke like Thursday did. It feels perfectly natural.

She lets out a quiet breath against his mouth, her smile soft and nothing but fondness in her eyes. His hands are warm. She feels wonderfully safe. ]

As long as I need. [ she says it, again, like it's a promise. ] Okay.