unfortunately, like a fool, i said, "it's not like i want to let you go"

[hellbred]

( continued from here! )

[ Denji stares up Aki's way, visibly annoyed, as she brooks another crest of colorless smoke invading her senses, slender tendrils ghosting over their heads, nearly transparent in the lamplight. This nicotine-addicted slag. Always with the insults… It means kissing! She kissed them! What other meaning could make out have? Still, she roughly erases what characters she was writing (she'd forgotten midway what the stroke pattern to one kanji was), decorating her report in rubber shavings. ]

I mean, you saw Emi-chan's stuff. A bunch of her dresses and skirts looked kinda itchy, but she had some grown-up outfits in the very, very back!

[ Instead of writing what she took, her pencil draws a series of doodles across the page: some peanut snacks, a bottle of tea looted from the mini fridge, a vial that she kindly labels as pirfume, and then the garment bag. ]

So I took one, since I don't got a whole lotta those. [ Most of her closet is filled with clothes from the secondhand store… and some secondhand straight from Aki's own wardrobe. For example, the tanktop she's wearing under her blouse right now. ] It's gonna make my rack look suuuper sexy on me, and then guys will be linin' up outside our apartment to take me on dates to the zoo and all that!

[ No, Denji doesn't know what the proper attire is for a zoo date. ]

…'course I'm not gonna go, seeing as I'm already taken. But you get the idea. What'd you get?

[ If she's remembering correctly, Aki's hands didn't look as full as her own walking out of the dressing room. Did she not take anything and now she's regretting it? ]

Comments

[hellbred]

[ So what if it's needy of her to seek out a second confirmation. It's what she wants: Aki's tobacco-warmed voice telling her that, yes, this is okay. Yes, Denji is allowed to push through her misgivings. Linger longer than the stale scent in the room, the graying vapors hovering overhead, the dying embers shriveling in the ashtray. Yes, she can stay. She wants to hear it again and again until it's burned into her eardrums, or etched into the sky — a contract that can't be undone.

…Maybe that's too dramatic of an ask, after just having sex for the first time, though. For now, she'll settle for settling in. Planting her flag. Her eyes are getting heavy, anyway. ]

Fine. If you're that wiped out, [ she mumbles in the midst of vanishing inside the open blankets, possibly to smuggle her pouting face in without Aki's notice. Disregarding the cool spots from where they carried out their mess, the sheets are still toasty underneath, warmer than even when she shares a bed with Power. Usually, it'd have her wanting to kick her toes outside, but… Denji scooches in until their hips are touching, their arms squished side-by-side, the back of her hand resting against Aki's. She stops herself there.

On her back, she stares at the ceiling, her eyelids drooping lower and lower with each passing second. By the morning, she'll probably have let go of the mystery behind Emi-chan and her fiend, and she'll have to consider her date with Makima more seriously. She'll have to pick out an outfit, do her own makeup. She'll have to wake up and drag herself out of Aki's bed. And, for some reason, she doesn't want any of that to arrive just yet. For some reason, she doesn't want to sleep. Doesn't want to wake up, either.

However, that's a battle she's been fighting all night, and it's one she won't win, unfortunately. But before she surrenders to that bittersweet lull…

Denji can't tell if Aki's still awake or not when she turns over, chin spilling out onto her shoulder, but it doesn't really matter. Her hand curls loosely at Aki's fingers. A few seconds pass by of Denji matching her breaths to the gentle up-and-down of her chest. Just watching.

Then, slowly, quietly, she plants a kiss on her cheek — the second one it's received that evening. ]

Night, Aki.