#i did this very sleepily im so sory if it's not good

[misaki-ffxiv]

.|different

When he comes near, I don’t shrink away with a growl in my throat and my hands balled into fists. 

When he reaches to touch me, I don’t flinch from his skin meeting mine. His touch is not demanding or rough or cold. He doesn’t grab me to pin me and quiet me. When his arms wrap around me, I know that I am safe. I sink into him. My hands grip onto the lapels of his jacket and I let his warmth surround me when he presses his lips so tenderly to the top of my head. 

He sees the way that I hurt. When he tucks his finger beneath my chin and tilts my head up, he sees the ghosts that dance in my eyes. He sees the fear and the anger and the scars that are not visible unless you peer into them. And with him, I am not afraid to let him see them. My walls crash down around him. He sees my tears and hears my terror, holds me as I weep and scream against the world, quiets the demons that threaten to devour me and pull me under with them. 

Etsuji sees the summer child that I was. He knew her and he loved her. When I’m with him, I feel like her again. I feel like those rich sunset nights with sake and laughter until the sun came back again. I feel like that girl who laughed as she snuck out through paper doors to meet him and dart through the streets while we tried not to giggle too loudly. I remember him dancing to make me laugh, and how it worked, and the way he spun me around and around when I got up to join him until we collapsed in a pile of panting mirth. He was an expert in making the depression that could cloud my mind so easily drift away. Only he had that kind of power, and I cherished him for being that sunshine.

We were just kids when we first met, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. 

He was new to Kugane, but he didn’t seem even remotely shy about his new surroundings. He absolutely glowed, the life of the party with his friends as they sat and talked and joked at the table across from ours. All night long, he had been sneaking glances my way, and at the time I was too proud to admit that I was doing the same to him. As the night started to wind down, he approached me, all confidence as he adjusted his tie and bowed. My friends were already getting ready to go home and making eyes at the men he’d been sitting with, but I remember so clearly that Etsuji and I couldn’t take our eyes off each other. 

“My name is Etsuji,” he’d said with a smile that could knock even the coldest of women off of her feet. “Etsuji Goto.” 

“Misaki Ito,” I’d offered in return, and he’d cocked a brow, sliding his hands into his suit pockets as he looked me over.

“You know, there’s an old legend in the village I come from about the Ito clan.”

“Then I think we might be from the same village,” I’d replied. “Don’t worry. I don’t actually have any scales and I don’t usually breathe fire.” 

He’d grinned and I’d blushed at my stupid reply, but there was no turning back at that point. Even if we hardly ever saw each other casually until later, when his focus had shifted less from working with the law and more towards working beneath the law, I was hooked on him. All he had to do was get me with that damn smile and the way he smoothed his hair away from his face with one hand, almost coy in the way he did it. There was no other way to put it - he was cool. He had always been cool, and I was a sucker for Etsuji Goto since the first time his dark eyes met mine. 

There was a time when we got sloppy, irresponsibly drunk together. It was the first time we’d kissed despite years of raging teenage sexual tension. We were both nineteen by then, and I already had a handful of places that would never be same because of the men who had dared touch me or scream at me there, like the corner of my favorite ramen shop or the staircase beneath an apartment of a man who claimed he knew my birth father. It was around this time that I was getting wary of touches. They were unwelcome. I didn’t want any man to touch me, but as always, it was different with Etsuji. 

He cradled me in his arms and he kissed me so tenderly, so honestly, so earnestly, and I melted into him as I kissed him back. And, when my yukata started to slide off of my shoulder that summer night by the sea, he gently pushed it back up and kissed my cheek. With his calloused hands, he’d cradled my face and stared into my eyes for a long time, brushing my cheek with his thumb so gently. I liked to think that I was a towering and intimidating figure when I needed to be, but I felt so very normal with him. Not some creature held upon a pedestal by her nation because of her profession, not a woman who stole the breath of men simply by existing, not a legend – no. I was simply a girl, in the gentle care of a boy who knew she was imperfect and still looked at her like she was the one who hung the stars. 

“You’re very drunk,” I told him with a smile, the gin on his breath washing over my lips. He smiled back. 

“I’m stone cold sober, and you are the most stunning woman in this world,” he replied, and he said it with such conviction that I believed him. His thumb ran over my cheek again, and he exhaled, kissing my forehead before looking me very seriously in the eyes again.

“One day, Misaki, I’m going to marry you,” he told me. “But until that day I’m going to be by your side and protect you. Even if you don’t need me to. Even if you could absolutely kick my ass.” 

I don’t know if he remembers saying that to me. Even if he insisted he was sober, I knew that he was as drunk as I was. It had flushed my cheeks with color and made my stomach feel like it was host to a hundred butterflies. What was he talking about? I made a little sound of disbelief and muttered something dismissive as I looked away, but he knew I was smiling like he was. Etsuji pulled me closer to his chest and kissed the top of my head and we fell asleep like that, awoken by the house mother herself personally coming, hunting us down, and giving us an earful before ushering me back to the geisha house in a change of clothes she’d brought to spare ‘what little honor I had left.’ 

She was livid, understandably, to find me asleep on the beach with a young man who was, for all intents and purposes, not exactly squeaky clean on the law abiding citizen front, bodyguard or not. 

And when Etsuji and I were separated by Garleans, I thought of him every day. I worried for him. I prayed for him. I longed for him.We were not able to communicate directly but I was able to get messages out to him and his men with the promise they would get me out of where I was. I hoped he would never know what the Overseer was doing to me. I hoped he would only ever know me as that wild summer child, with her sense of conviction and stubbornness and easy smiles. When he found me as I was - damaged, afraid, and hurting - he still looks at me the same. I am still Misaki Ito, his best friend, his companion, his charge, not the broken toy or science experiment or terrifying creature I had to become while imprisoned. 

Different. Etsuji, with his charm and tender heart and cocky grins and ridiculous clothing, was always different. It is no wonder, then, that things have been and always will be different for me with him. He is my safe haven. I am clay in his hands where I have long been only stone in the hands of others. He makes me happy. He makes me feel alive, like myself again. 

I love him. I think that I’ve always loved him. I hope he knows. And if he doesn’t - I hope someday there will come a time where I can make sure he knows.