When he hears the door to the rooftop open, Shinjiro assumes it’s Arisato coming to bug him– at least until he remembers that Arisato’s out slinging burgers for free this week. Maybe Aki, then?
But the footsteps headed his way don’t belong to Aki. He’d know them anywhere, the perfect measure between each one and the click of boot heels that even sound expensive.
Well, ain’t that interesting?
"You oughta be careful, Miss President. I've heard talk about a dangerous delinquent who hangs around up here."
Mitsuru appears from around the corner, hands tucked primly behind her as she glides forward.
"Is that so? Well, even if that's true, I wouldn't say I'm too terribly concerned."
"Some people might call that cocky, y'know."
"Hm. Would they?"
She comes to stand right in front of him, leaving not even a foot of space between them. Shinjiro leans one hand against the wall beside her and clicks his tongue on the back of his teeth.
"Speakin' of rumors, what do you think people'd say if they caught wind of the student council president loitering around on the roof with a shady character like that? You should worry more about your pearly reputation."
"Oh? In that case, I suppose I should take my leave. I do appreciate your concern."
She's wearing that cool, serene Kirijo Scion face, but her eyes glitter with mischief– which until this exact second, he was unaware could be completely literal.
It's a good look on her.
Not just because it's ridiculously attractive– which, yeah, of course it is. Holy hell is it ever.
But it's also just so damn good to see Mitsuru having fun. With everything that she's expected to carry on her back, whether it was put there by someone else or she chose to shoulder it herself, she deserves every chance she can get to be a little mischievous, a little un-serious and carefree.
He's glad to be able to give that to her. And if his reasons for being glad about it aren't completely selfless, well– it’s not like he was ever going to make it as a saint, anyway.
He plants his other hand against the wall, caging her in.
"No, I don't think you’re goin’ anywhere, actually."
"Weren't you just saying you were concerned for my reputation?" Her head tilts by a degree or two, her lips twitch slightly. It is completely insane how she can barely move and it's still one of the most alluring things he's ever seen.
"You got it twisted, Miss President. I said you should be." He tilts her face up by the chin. Her eyes darken, but he's pretty sure it's not anger he can see in them. How far is she going to let him push his luck, he wonders?
"Whatever you're planning on doing to tarnish my name,” she says, voice so quiet and yet still enough to make Shinjiro’s ears ring. “You should do it soon. You have heard that it's rude to keep someone waiting, haven't you?"
Pretty damn far, apparently. He is the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the earth today.
He kind of wants to draw the moment out a bit more, though. See how high he can tune up this anticipatory charge, and also– just hold onto it for a little longer. He only gets to do this for the first time just once, after all. He ought to savor it.
So he shifts his weight onto his elbow, leans down and in– but not quite all the way. Not yet. He gets close enough that he can feel Mitsuru's breath on his lips, though, and even just that makes chills crawl up and down his back.
"Sorry, manners ain't exactly my strong suit. But I'll try to make it up to you."
"Yes," she breathes. At least he's not the only one feeling stupefied. "See to it that you do."
Well, the gentlemanly thing would be to give the lady what she asked for, wouldn't it? He's no gentleman, that's for damn certain, but he'll gladly play the part for her. So he finally– god, finally– closes the last of the distance between them.
It only takes the span of about three perfect seconds for Shinjiro to start reconsidering his stance on certain overwrought poetry words– shit like 'sublime' and 'euphoria'. Words that only someone like Mitsuru could get away with saying without sounding completely ridiculous.
Those three seconds are all he gets. Mitsuru's jaw stiffens in his hand, her mouth tightening almost imperceptibly under his.
Ah, he thinks as he pulls away. Right.
It's not like he wasn't expecting this to happen at some point. He's known from the start that sooner or later Mitsuru would realize this wasn't really what she wanted with him. She's too smart not to.
Damn it all, though– he had kind of been hoping that the moment wouldn't come this soon. It would've been nice to kiss her at least twice.
And damn him in particular– he'd known that when it happened it wouldn't exactly be pleasant, but–
He still hadn't anticipated just how bad it would hurt. It feels like someone's stomped down hard right in the center of his chest.
That's as far into self-pity as he manages to sink before Mitsuru grabs a fistful of his coat to hold him still.
There's no mischief in the look she's got in her eyes now. Instead it's all defiance and dead serious sincerity.
“Akihiko held back at first, too. I told him as well–" Her eyes narrow and her chin juts up. "I know you can do better than that.”
He thinks maybe his heart might have stopped for a second, hearing that.
He knows for a fact that his face does something embarrassing before he's able to pull his shit back together.
If that doesn't set him straight on every single thing he'd gotten wrong a second earlier, he'd have to be brain-dead. He's never been more glad to feel like an idiot.
Mitsuru's never been the type to go into something without her eyes wide open. Shame on him, honestly, for ever doubting that she knows exactly what she's getting into, and exactly what she wants.
“That an order or a challenge?” It’s kind of surprising that he even manages to get the words out.
“Take it however you like.” She’s clearly aiming for nonchalance, but instead she sounds breathless.
Both, then. Shame on him again for keeping her waiting.
So Shinjiro wraps an arm around her waist to drag her close, and this time when he kisses her he does it like he fucking means it.
Mitsuru sucks in a sharp breath through her nose and he can feel her ribcage swell with it. She must not even register the sound she makes on the exhale, because if she did it'd probably embarrass her enough to pull away again. He's sure as shit not complaining about it, though. He could definitely stand to hear her sound like that again. A few hundred more times at least.
She snakes her arms around his neck and clings hard. He tightens his hold on her in return, cushioning the back of her head with his palm.
It's not at all like kissing Aki, who’d been very enthusiastic but had also followed Shinjiro's lead– which he shouldn't get too used to anyway, because once Aki feels like he knows what he's doing, he'll be just as argumentative in his kisses as he is with everything else. Mitsuru, though, starts tugging on the lead right away.
So Shinjiro tugs back.
Rolling her bottom lip between his teeth makes her shudder and sag against him. She tries to nip at his tongue when he flicks it experimentally against her top lip, and lets out a huff so sulky when she misses that he can't help but laugh into her mouth.
She bites him for that.
He swears he can feel it all the way down to his bones.
She has one foot dangling a little off the ground, half popped behind her black-and-white movie style. It’d be real easy to nudge her leg aside enough to fit one of his in the space between, wouldn’t it? Just the idea is making his head spin.
…Really spin.
Not all of that head spinning is the pleasant kind, actually.
He breaks away with a sharp, dragging breath, suddenly very aware of what feels like every single brain cell he’s got to his name screaming for oxygen all at once. He has to plant a hand against the wall again to keep himself upright.
"Are you alright?" Mitsuru touches his forehead like she's checking for a fever. When he looks down at her, her face is open and concerned. He balks, suddenly feeling shy.
Twenty seconds ago he'd been contemplating pressing his knee between her thighs just to find out how she'd sound, and now he's getting bashful about this? It’s not even the fact that he got too winded to keep going even faster than he had with Aki, it’s just–
God, he really is beyond help.
“'M fine,” he says. “You just gotta be gentle with me, you know? I’m a delicate blossom.”
"I'm being serious," she pouts up at him, plucking at a knot in his hair.
Cute, is his first thought. Immediately following it: she would be mad as hell if I said it out loud. He files the idea away to experiment with later, because her concern really is genuine.
So he doesn't tease her. Instead he rests a hand over hers and murmurs reassurance against her skin, then presses his mouth to the delicate flicker of her pulse.
He's still too out of breath for anything more strenuous than that, but the temptation to kiss her again somewhere is just too much for him to win against. This'll have to be enough of an IOU for now– and judging by Mitsuru's full-body shiver, he's gotten his point across just fine.
Her hair is kind of a mess, although ‘kind of a mess’ on Mitsuru Kirijo is still almost too stunning to seem real. She looks like she belongs on a movie poster, but she also looks like–
Well. Like she’s been up on the school roof necking with some delinquent. What would the press say? He runs his fingers through it, tidying it back up as much as he can.
Mitsuru laughs softly. Shinjiro raises his eyebrows at her.
“Akihiko did the very same thing the other night,” she explains. Alright, so Shinjiro had clocked that energy between them, after all. He wonders which one of them had made the first move.
“Hm. Well, Aki was probably doin’ it just to be nice. Me, I’m getting rid of the evidence.”
She laughs again and pushes up on her toes to peck the corner of his mouth.
“You know, your practicality has always been something I’ve admired about you, Shinjiro.”
He has to look away, his ears burning.
“So.” He clears his throat. “You have a reason to come up here or was it just for, y’know. This?”
“I came up simply to spend time with you.” Her eyes are so goddamned soft, and there really is just no hope for him at all, is there? He’s done for.
He spends another few seconds combing her hair back into place before she turns and makes herself comfortable tucked close against his side. They watch a pair of birds squabbling in mid-air around the observation tower, and she treats Shinjiro to more of her laughter as he shares a little of the rain-swift soap opera that Aigis continues to update him on.
Eventually though, she does have to go. Shinjiro will follow later– if people see them coming down from the roof together, there really will be gossip.
Just as she makes it to the door, he calls out to her.
“Hey, Mitsu.” Maybe the pink glow over her face as she turns back to look at him is just from the afternoon light, or maybe it’s something else. Who’s to say? “See you at home, yeah?”
If you have a pairing or scenario you wanna see, comment here or on AO3!
Mitsuru couldn’t keep doing this. She was becoming worse by the day. March dragged on, and it seemed to drag her mental state with it. Entire days spent in her room, crying, throwing things, and breaking her possessions. She never felt this kind of grief for all she held dear before. This profound anger at the universe. The loathing. Was it towards herself? Was it towards God? Or maybe it was towards some other unseen force that she wanted to point to and blame for what happened. Her father, Kotone, everyone who had died because of Kirijo’s greed and hubris… When did it end? When did the guilt and grief ever stop?
“Hey, princess…” Shinjiro knocked on her door. “Everyone’s gone, so… Come on out.”
He heard some shuffling around inside, but nobody emerged.
“I’m coming in then,” he warned. “Make sure you’re… decent or something.”
Shinjiro put his hand on the doorknob and twisted, but it didn’t budge. It didn’t feel like someone locked it, though. He could feel the shaky tension and resistance of someone holding the knob back with their bare hands. Shinjiro gritted his teeth and twisted even harder, but nothing would give; he felt himself on the verge of breaking the doorknob entirely.
“Don’t play hard to get, Mitsuru,” he warned. “Hardly anyone’s seen you in almost a week! What the hell is happening in there?!”
“…”
“Alright,” he sighed, taking a deep breath and backing up. “I’m sorry in advance.”
Shinjiro threw his entire body weight into the door. Now, Shinji thought he was a pretty bulky guy and was actually worried about bringing the door down on top of Mitsuru. That’s what he thought might happen. Instead, the door gave slightly, as if breathing in, but left Shinjiro tumbling to the floor. Of course the doors could withstand his body; they were built for Shadows. Though, the recoil from that charge seemed to also throw Mitsuru backwards on the other side too.
Quickly, Shinjiro pushed himself up and forced the door open. He wasn’t prepared for what he would find inside.
Mitsuru’s room looked like someone had rifled through her belongings in an attempt to find something. Books and papers littered the floor; one of her shelves was broken and hung uselessly from one screw in the wall. A couple of shattered vases littered the floor, with water and dirt leaving stains on the wall. Mitsuru herself had the faint remnants of black makeup streaking down her cheeks. Her once beautifully maintained, crisp red locks were now disheveled and sticking to her face in some places. A few purple bruises dotted the girl’s arms, and a small cut on her forehead—no doubt caused by a result of her fit.
Shinjiro closed the door behind him and slowly stepped in. His peer was sprawled out on the floor, not making any attempt to get up. Not because she couldn’t. Mitsuru had simply lost the will to.
“C’mon, princess…” Shinjiro mumbled, kneeling down to get a better look at her. “You know better than to stay locked up here.”
“I can’t… face them…” the girl croaked, her voice hoarse and trembling. “They all… it all… it reminds me of her…”
“…” Shinjiro grunted and grabbed her arm. Mitsuru flinched, the bruising making her ache deeply, but grabbed her friend’s arm in return to get her on her feet. “There, you’re up. Now do yourself a favor and get out of this room. Go and…” He wrinkled his nose and turned away. “Go take a fucking shower.”
Instead of moving to the door, Mitsuru slinked back over to her bed and sat down. Shinjiro had never seen her look so broken to the core. She looked like a marionette whose strings were cut, leaving her to limply sit in place. A silent observer and prisoner of her body…
“Start talking,” Shinjiro said, leaning against her scratched bedframe. “What the hell is going on?”
“…I am a disgrace, Shinjiro… My friend left me with one last wish that I can’t find in myself to fulfill. God, what am I doing…?” Mitsuru looked down at her hands. “Every time I sleep, I see that fading smile… I thought despite the grief and pain, I could pick myself up and do as she did, but… How did she do it…?”
“Kotone… had a lot of problems…” Shinjiro said in a quiet, low voice. He looked at the floor, where some kind of drink had stained her carpet a deep purple. “She didn’t act like how she felt… She didn’t say what was on her mind… That girl couldn’t even be honest with herself half the time.”
“She was… a troubled girl with a troubled past…” Mitsuru agreed, her words rolling off her tongue in a slow and thought-out manner, as if afraid of misspeaking. “A history of violent behavior… In middle school, she was held for 8 hours by local police for assaulting a lowerclassman… Her only reason was because he kicked a turtle…”
“Damn, your research is thorough,” he mumbled. “But… that sounds like her. Kotone held a lotta emotions in, and it wasn’t pretty when she boiled over.”
“…”
Mitsuru looked around at her tarnished room. Then, her chipped nails and scratched hands. Kotone had once told her how regal her hands felt to hold… She rested her hand on her thigh, palm up, and looked at Shinjiro. He only let out a soft grunt as he let himself put his own palm on hers. Mitsuru clutched his hand like her life depended on it.
“You can’t keep doing this, Mitsuru… How far do you think you’re going to bend until you break?”
“I… feel trapped… As if every day is the one that she left us… When you almost left us, I felt like it was the hand of a god that kept you here… When my father died, Yukari and Kotone were the only things that kept me from sinking into the depths of despair…”
“You’re not sinkin’ this time then, princess…” Shinjiro paused for a moment, as if carefully parsing how to say his next sentence. “Because I’m a lifeguard.”
“…Huh?”
Mitsuru had to look up at him, puzzled. That’s definitely not something that Shinjiro would say.
“Did I, uh, sound like her?” he asked, sheepishly scratching the back of his head. “She’d say that kinda stupid shit to me all the time… She was full of those dumbass one-liners.”
“She… Kotone was fond of them…” Mitsuru agreed, fighting the smile that tugged at the corners of her lips. “They don’t sound quite right from your mouth though.”
“You don’t think I can be funny?”
“Well…”
“You don’t think I can be funny,” Shinji accused, a small smile rising on him. “Because Mitsuru Kirijo is the arbiter of comedy.”
“I-”
“Yeah, yeah, damn queen of funny.”
“Shut your mouth, Shinjiro,” she laughed, giving him a small shove that hardly even phased the young man. Mitsuru had finally cracked. A small, thin smile forced itself onto her face, and as if in a moment of clarity, the young woman looked around her room. “Mon Dieu… I sure made a mess of everything, didn’t I?”
“Don’t worry, princess. I stopped you before it could look as bad as Iori’s.”
Again, another laugh involuntarily escaped her lips. It was like Shinjiro had found the key to her very core. Her worries and insecurities began to escape like caged birds with him around. They fluttered off with her carefree chortles.
“C’mon, I’ll help you clean up,” getting to his feet. “I’ll sweep up and shit, but you’re scrubbing those stains and marks out of the wall.”
“That… sounds more than fair to me,” Mitsuru sighed, getting up. Before she could exit the room, though, Shinjiro grabbed her by the arm. “Hm?”
“One more thing needs cleaning up,” he said, looking her square in the eyes.
The whites of the Kirijo’s eyes were stained a strained red, and she looked at Shinjiro with a sort of confused plea. The young man licked his thumb and rubbed against the mascara smeared against her cheeks.
Contrary to what he thought would happen, though, the makeup didn’t budge. He didn’t quite know how to remove it.
“I have makeup wipes…” Mitsuru said in a small voice, her entire face turning a deep red. “That was… Um…”
“Yeah, yeah, it was stupid as hell, I know,” he grumbled, letting her go and turning away in a flustered panic. He threw open the bedroom door and looked back. “I’m gettin’ the broom. Go find your own brush to scrub that carpet and shit.”
As the young man marched away, Mitsuru couldn’t help but smile a little wider. She wasn’t quite sure how or why the presence of this old friend made it feel as though a weight had been lifted off her chest, but he just did. Maybe she didn’t need to know why. Perhaps all she needed… was him.
