#night blogging level badwrite

[smokingbomber]

rakish

okay so this one’s for someone who didn’t have a tumblr but who requested it anyway. Prompt is CT Zoisite, Mamoru, ‘rakish’, smut OK. I tried. I tried to smut. Mamoru did not cooperate. Zoisite is patient.

"Goodnight, Usako," mumbled Mamoru sleepily into his phone with an endless ocean of affection. He waited, then laughed a little. "I know you're not going to bed. I love you too. I have to sleep..."

Waiting again -- she'd be hurt if he hung up first -- he finally heard the call disconnect on her end, then let his phone drop to the mattress beside his pillow. The tiny single he'd scored in Kirkland House didn't feel so empty when she called, even if he had to make himself stay up until one in the morning so she could catch him when she got out of school.

He'd managed to transfer rather than having to do his entire freshman year all over again; there was an absurd -- almost suspicious -- level of accommodation they'd given him, for all that he'd disappeared off the face of the earth for six months and then jammed a year's worth of classes into a semester and three short summer sessions back in Tokyo. He wasn't entirely sure how the entire mess had even worked, but suspected Setsuna of having friends in high places.

And somehow he even got a single.

And somehow, even if he'd been sleepy less than a minute ago, Mamoru was wide awake again-- wide awake and uneasy. He could sense magic somewhere nearby, sharp and clear to his starved senses; it wasn't dark, it wasn't a youma, but it could still be some kind of enemy. His fingers curled into his sheets and he stared, unseeing, at the dark ceiling.

Abruptly, Mamoru sat up in bed and swung his feet over the side, standing up and reaching out with his heightened magical sense; the feeling was growing, and if he could pinpoint it--

The door opened, and he threw up his hand to shade his eyes from the hallway's light. An open door, he couldn't help thinking, was terribly anticlimactic, even if it /had/ been locked. Even more mundanely, the person who opened it -- the silhouette was short and slim with wavy long hair -- actually closed it again after coming inside.

Mamoru's night vision was shot, and there were still stars dancing in his eyes as the person approached; he backed up and fell backwards over the end of his bed, then leapt to his feet with the window behind him, hair sticking up amazingly rakishly for what should honestly just have been unappealing bedhead. "What do you want? Who are you?" he demanded, hastily adopting a defensive stance.

"Endy--?" came a heartbreakingly familiar voice, sounding baffled. "It's me, what are you even-- why are you sleeping in a closet?"

A voice that belonged to a rock sitting on his nightstand.

Mamoru reached out with his soul, this time, looking for the connections he had -- like the strings of fate -- to the souls locked in the gems he'd taken with him, the souls which slept more and more often, only speaking with him when he called.

The connection to Zoisite was there, still. But the thread was split, and it gave him the promise of an immense headache if he tried to do anything more than glance at it.

"What-- how--?" the prince stammered uncomprehendingly. His head turned from the figure to the rocks, and then back to the figure, and he willed his sight to recover. After a half second, he could see a little better, and the figure was still approaching him. Was approaching and was definitely Zoisite, no question. Mamoru's eyes widened, and he froze in his tracks.

"--oh," said Zoisite, also stopping, and then again and more emphatically, "/oh/." And then there was an unmistakable grin in his voice, full of mischief. "Ara~!"

All of a sudden, the nineteen-year-old found himself being pressed back against the strip of wall next to the window and kissed insistently by a man half a head shorter than himself, the sharp rich scent of some kind of flower that somehow shared characteristics with caramel filling his nose. He flailed for a second, then took Zoisite's shoulders and pushed him back, blushing furiously. "Are you /kidding/ me? You feel like you're really you, but if you're really you then you /know/ I have a girlfriend, and you /know/ she's so jealous she was even jealous of Chibiusa--" he gasped, looking down and finally seeing bright green eyes in the light from the street outside.

"--and you /know/ she gets to have all /kinds/ of fun with her girls while you pine away in your little dorm on the other side of the world," said Zoisite, reaching up a delicate hand to lightly trace down the side of Mamoru's face, then land with fingertips on his prince's lips. He was smirking, but there was something behind his eyes that looked incredibly indignant -- and aching -- on Mamoru's behalf.

"I'm not interested in anyone but her!" Mamoru protested defensively, taking Zoisite's wrist and pulling the hand away from his mouth-- but he was blushing, and Zoisite was still pressed against him, back arched so he could lean back to look up, and Zoisite could tell the blood wasn't rushing /just/ to Mamoru's face.

"No," Zoisite practically purred, his other hand trailing up Mamoru's bare chest to curl around the back of his neck and slip fingers into the taller boy's short black hair. "You're not interested in anyone you've met here on campus. And you're not generally interested, in fact, in anyone you're not already connected to, here--"

Like quicksilver, Zoisite's wrist practically melted from Mamoru's grasp and his hand came up to touch at Mamoru's temple. "Or here." And the hand came down again to lay flat against Mamoru's heart-- no, not heart. The place where they both knew a brilliantly shining crystal lived, warm and golden, and full of the sense of home that everyone on Earth would instinctively know if they felt its power healing them.

Mamoru's back was getting cold against the window, and Zoisite was like fire in front of him, hypnotic and burning hot, always moving even when stationary. Blue eyes locked on green, and the next protest died unspoken as Zoisite let his hand fall from Mamoru's chest, then gently took Mamoru's own hand and delicately placed the tip of one of his fingers between his lips. It was mostly a kiss, but there was the barest flicker of Zoisite's tongue against the very tip, and then the strawberry blond guardian smiled around it and let go of Mamoru's hand.

It took a second before Mamoru remembered to move his hand away, and in that second, Zoisite pressed himself harder against Mamoru's hips, a slow and teasing motion upwards that was /almost/ a grind, /almost/.

Mamoru sucked in a breath, sharp and quick, and then released a puff of it between his teeth. Not quite a hiss. "I-- I think-- that's called demisexuality--" he managed, the words sort of falling out of his mouth. "And-- how the hell-- how the /hell/ would you know, you've been a /rock/ for three years--!"

Zoisite leaned in, and his breath against Mamoru's collarbone was the start of a brushfire, lightning against dried foliage and naked twigs. Mamoru could feel his closeness everywhere, not just where erection insistently pressed against erection, with trousers and pajama bottoms in between. When Zoisite's mouth landed against his skin, Mamoru could feel it in every nerve, and he couldn't--

No, he could make him stop. He could make himself make Zoisite stop. The fact that he hadn't already was evidence that he didn't /want/ to.

As he came to that realization, his empathy could taste something else in Zoisite's emotion surface: the strange assuaging of a very, very, very old guilt, and the rapid birth of a new one to replace it.

That was what finally made Mamoru shake himself out of it enough to put the brakes on. He roughly took Zoisite's shoulders and pushed him back, then further back, arms' length. He kept going, pushing the shorter boy toward the bed, then down to sit on it. His face was red and he was flustered and the evidence of his arousal was still quite apparent in his pajamas, but he stood far enough away from Zoisite that Zoi wouldn't take that as an invitation. Yet.

"No. Usa and I didn't discuss this. Not okay." He crossed his arms and scowled at the prettiest of his Shitennou. "Yes, you caught me, you're beautiful and I want you, in addition to loving you with everything I've got-- just like I love the other guys-- just like I love Usa. But that doesn't mean I get to cheat on her with you."

He took a deep breath. "So-- first you're going to tell me how you're sitting on my bed and on my nightstand at the same time, and then you're going to tell me why getting me hot and bothered made you stop feeling guilty and then made you feel guilty about something else, and then you're going to tell me the BIG THING you're not telling me, and then -- if what you tell me washes -- I am going to call Usa back and tell her you're here and trying to get in my pants and ask her if that's okay."

Zoisite pouted, crossing his own arms in mirror image to Mamoru's, and scowled right back. "You are literally no fun."

"I'm a /lot/ of fun," said Mamoru pointedly, "on /my terms/."

The pretty, pretty boy on Mamoru's bed sighed deeply, slouching in defeat. "I'm from Crystal Tokyo," he said in a low voice, turning his face away. "We all feel guilty you stuck it out alone this whole time at Harvard, so you even starting to-- the idea that I could maybe lessen that, just a little?" Suddenly he was looking up at Mamoru again, his eyes shining bright and sorrowful and hopeful, all at once. "That's the relief. The guilt is that the other guys aren't in on it. And I honestly have no idea how I'm here, I legitimately thought I was going into your-- I mean King Endymion's-- closet to pick out an outfit for him to wear into town, we were going to go out undercover..."

Mamoru stared. He couldn't stop staring, and he wasn't sure what was up with his heart, but it was definitely beating too fast and too hard, and he felt faint, and he felt so much hope all at once that he could taste it in his mouth and feel it singing through his blood, and his eyes stung and Zoisite looked blurry, there in the semi-dark. He opened his mouth to say something, dimly aware that he /should/, but he couldn't make the words come.

They'd be alive again. They were going to be alive again. He would have them back for real, he would have them /back/, he would be able to touch them, to hold them, to know they were there-- he would be able to let them hold him, he would be able to fall apart on someone it wouldn't /break/.

He took in a shuddering breath instead, and came over to put his hand on the side of Zoisite's face, and then bent to kiss the top of that bright-haired head.

It took him a couple of tries to pick up his phone after he went around to the other side of the bed, and deciding that precautionary measures were the things that saved phone replacement costs, sat down to call Usagi.

"...yeah," he said into the phone, hands and voice both shaky. "Yeah I'm fine. I just-- Usa. Zoisite's here--"

A pause, and he vehemently shook his head. "No, really here. I mean his gem too, but he's really really here. From Crystal Tokyo. ... yeah, I don't know if they hid or what. ... no, he doesn't know how he got here. ... no, it's-- Usa-- he knows about you and the girls, he wants to-- ... yeah. ... yes. Is that-- is that okay?"

An instant later, Zoisite could /feel/ as much as see the tension rush out of Mamoru.

"... really? I'm sorry, I-- ... okay, okay, I'm not sorry, fine! I just-- thank you... no, I /do/, I /do/ need to-- you know nothing could-- ... oh my god, Usako, she is? I'm going to die. ... /Minako you're noisy!/ Yes fine go away! Tell her I-- OKAY ALREADY!"

Mamoru did not throw the phone. He /did/ very vehemently press 'end call' and then turn the ringer off and jam it in the drawer of his nightstand.

Then he sat there with his face burning in his hands, hunched over, really not okay with the tsunami of mutually exclusive and equally emphatic emotions warring over his physiology.

He could feel the bed moving, could feel Zoisite creeping across it toward him; a second later, he felt Zoisite's arms around him, gathering him close and somewhat awkwardly letting him attempt to vanish inside the embrace. He was too tall for Zoi to envelop efficiently, but it didn't matter.

He could also feel Zoisite's forgiveness when he started just crying unsexily, years of pent-up feelings finally releasing themselves into the care of his knight--

After all, what he needed at that moment was healing and purification.

The needs of his trousers could wait a little longer.