Terazuma never thought he'd be standing in the ladies' lingerie section of a Hiroshima department store, living or dead. He had been wrong and he is so far out of his depth that he should be drowning.

Terazuma had thought buying bras couldn't be that hard, but there seems to be more choices than he'd thought possible, more colours, more-- well, arrangements is the word coming to mind.

It's Monday morning just after opening (they should be at work, but everything's still a bit chaotic there). She told him it would be less crowded than a boutique. It probably is.

They've got the floor to themselves and a few, scowling sales harridans who tried to help Terazuma earlier on. Women ought to know that 'no' always meant 'no', as far as he's concerned, so his response had been their own fault. He's not sure where they've retreated to, but he's glad he and Kannuki haven't run into any others.

Kannuki is walking ahead of him, as purposeful as if she were on a case and with four plastic clothes hangers hooked up her left arm. Number five to make the cut is dark blue satin with wide shoulder straps and a single ribbon rose right in the middle. The rose bothers him a little, but there are plenty worse around. Number one, black and somehow patterned satin, came with a matching garter belt and panties, after all. Terazuma had been too willing to agree. He'd thought it might mean they'd leave quicker.

It hadn't.

Kannuki tells him over her shoulder that it's only one more to go-- the change rooms will only let them take in three each. Terazuma thinks about asking if he really has to try them on, but Kannuki is already walking off again. She's happy, at least, and her smile always makes something inside him go thump.

Terazuma has always known that she's more adventurous than he is. Kannuki hangs out with the Hokkaido twins regularly enough that they must have *something* in common. He doesn't like to wonder about what that might be.

He's not paying enough attention and almost misses Kannuki's brown hair ducking behind the next rack. He's used to walking slower around her, in case someone stops and they have to dodge, but he has forgotten that his strides aren't quite as long anymore. He speeds up just a little to catch up.

Somehow, Kannuki convinced him this was a good idea. Terazuma doesn't remember the details, just some vague hints about 'bouncing' and being 'visibly pointed'. He hates that this body blushes so much more easily.

Terazuma cusses Doc a blue streak, under his breath, in case Kannuki turns and glares at him again. With all the practice he's been getting in lately, he's getting real good at it.

Sure, Doc himself is weird. The sorts of things he wants to turn people into are more weird, but apart from ragging on Terazuma about Kannuki, they usually get along ok. (He doesn't know why Doc's girly hair doesn't set the cat off, but, you know, small mercies.)

All that changed after half a cup of coffee a week ago and Terazuma finding out that he had more up top than he wanted and a little too much space down below.

Terazuma had spat the kind of nails he reserved for that idiot, Tsuzuki, because Doc had been so *damn* pleased the-- whatever potion had worked that he was crowing instead of turning them all back.

Oh, yeah.

Doc turned half the office into women.

Doc hit all the guys in the office *except* that idiot, who was, of course, out buying himself some sweet pastry crap. And now, Doc looks even more girly, the kid looks more like a tomboy than he, damn it, she has any right, the Chief is everyone's mother-in-law and Tatsumi-- well, Terazuma isn't thinking about Tatsumi-san's assets, though he hopes to heck that Doc takes their secretary shopping for some clothes that actually fit before one of Tatsumi's suit jacket buttons takes out someone's eye. Frankly, Terazuma is surprised that the cat didn't just run him the hell out of there when it happened. The office, him and that many women is an accident waiting to happen.

Terazuma has been avoiding the office, as much as possible. Doc still hasn't turned them back. He doesn't know how. To be fair, Doc had thought taking the potion twice would cure them all. It was supposed to change your sex, no matter what, not just turn guys into chicks. (And Terazuma is kind of thankful for that, too, because going anywhere near the idea of sweet, pretty Kannuki as a guy hurts his head.) So, they're all waiting and dealing as best they can.

It-- well, it's kind of weird how easily he's adjusted, he thinks, even if adjusting has been ignoring the changes, as much as he can. Sitting down when he would have stayed standing is weird (and damn if he was going to let Tsuzuki have exclusive use of the men's office washroom). His chick body isn't that different to his normal one, even if people who don't recognise his voice on the phone are starting to piss him off. His shirts are a bit looser across the shoulders, but that hides that they aren't looser across his-- chest. He's also had to shove cotton wool down the toes of his shoes and wear two pairs of socks, but it works. He's not buying a new wardrobe for this disaster.

Or he hadn't been going to, until Kannuki insisted. She knows she can make him do anything once she makes him blush.

Blessed, final, number six is white, plain as they come and a 'sports' bra, whatever that means. It is something, Kannuki says with authority, to wear when chasing down suspects. Terazuma nods like he's supposed to and agrees that it's suitable, fine, whatever.

Kannuki eyes the sections (brands) they haven't reached yet, but turns decisively for a direction that somehow leads them to the change rooms. Terazuma thinks about asking if she's been here before, but doesn't. He'd prefer to see any of this lacy crap on her, of course, but that's hardly appropriate to mention. Anyway, maybe women just have a sixth sense about these things.

Unfortunately, he then learns where the harridans have retreated to, because they're barricading hallway to the change rooms two abreast. They glare at him, so he stands back and Kannuki sweet talks them past with her very best kawaii impersonation of a fifteen year old girl. It's got to help that her body never graduated from high school.

Once inside, Kannuki sighs and takes them to the very back of the stalls. Her smile is a little brittle, so he just nods and takes the other side of the plastic clothes hangers carefully when she holds them out and lets her herd him into a cubicle.

Kannuki looks behind him, and at the floor. He waits, wishing he could tip her chin up with an impulse so natural that a lifetime of not-touching hasn't quite killed it.

Then, Kannuki tells him she'll be outside if he needs anything and slams the door shut. It swings open just enough for him to see that her back's facing him and she's got her arms crossed somehow in front of her.

Right. Women.

Terazuma locks the door, because that's the only way to keep it completely closed. He's never been into a ladies' changing room, but it’s not that different from a guys' (not that he bothers to try things on anymore). It's four walls, even if they go all the way down to the floor. It also smells nicer, he decides, and drops the hangers in a pile in the corner.

The mirror in front of him receives a glare as Terazuma unbuttons his dress shirt, exposing those--

Well, obviously, he has actual, curvy breasts now. This body is female. He knows that. The sooner he gets this over with, the sooner they can leave.

The black bra is the first off the pile. Unhooking it from the plastic hanger's catches takes him a few moments of pulling it this way and that. The matching panties (and accessories) flutter to the ground. Terazuma decides to assume they fit if the bra does. He drops the hanger.

It's obvious enough where his arms are supposed to go. The satin does fit (cup) his chest, even if the wires running along the bottom take some messing with before they don't cut in.

On the other hand, making the back do up is something else. After what must be five minutes of trying to make the hooks catch, he lets go too quickly and the straps snap back at him. Terazuma curses, loudly. Kannuki asks through the door if he's all right.

When Terazuma feels like living dangerously, he asks Kannuki to do his tie for him. It's not always a game she's willing to play, but it's something they can do. It's a feeling like that that makes him call her in to fix the damn straps. She's the real woman, so she'd know what to do, right?

She doesn't answer right away. When she does her voice is unsteady, which is weird. She has seen him without a shirt before (and he's never seen the point in being grateful that transforming into the cat doesn't shred his clothes, because he'd rather the cat wasn't there at all). If she hasn't seen him without a shirt *like this* yet, so what? It couldn't be anything she doesn't see when she looks down.

Kannuki tells him to face away and unlock the door when he's ready. So, Terazuma straightens the shoulder straps, glares at everything (including daring the cups not to stay up) and obediently faces the back wall. He can open a door latch behind his back.

The door clicks shut as Kannuki locks it again. It hits Terazuma then that he's standing there holding women's underwear to his chest, to his rounded, womanly *breasts*, and that *Kannuki* is seeing him like this. It's just so wrong, so-- kinky that he can't help shifting to catch the mirror in the corner of his eye.

Kannuki's eyes are wide, but her expression is serious. He understands. There's a lot more bare skin than he usually asks her to avoid, enough to ignore why he's half-naked. Then, he feels tension in the back of the bra as Kannuki pulls it together--

Suddenly, they both stop breathing.

It's such a small thing, but it's a stray fingertip next to his spine, her fingertip on his skin. Terazuma can feel the cat just underneath the surface, but it's neither resting nor waiting to spring up and out of him. The cat's-- prowling, maybe, but it's not like anything Terazuma has felt before. Kannuki lays her hand flat against his back, and then presses her cheek against him. The brush of soft, female hair is something he can only just remember.

At exactly the same moment, they realise what this means and more importantly, what they can do. Things become confusing after that.

Terazuma isn't sure who made the first move and he doesn't care. She's saying his name, he's pulling her round to face him and somewhere in between the bra falls to his wrists and then off onto the floor. Terazuma forgets to ask if he can kiss her because he's too busy doing just that. They sink to the floor because he can't stay bent for as long as he needs to be touching her. He thinks his hands are in her hair and he can feel Kannuki's nails in his back. Forty years of sexual tension asks questions later.

They break apart for air, gasping and staring at each other. He's kneeling and she's perched on his knees and the points of her collar brush his bare chest. The first question is how; but then it makes perfect sense. The opposite sex sets off the cat and Kannuki isn't now.

They can touch now.

He wants to tell her that she's perfect, that she's every wet dream he's had since he met her, that he's felt vaguely dirty because she's so tiny, she only comes up to his breasts, even now-- and something else he thinks should wait for when they aren't trying to swallow each other whole.

Kannuki pouts out loud that Terazuma's breasts are bigger than hers, but before he can protest, her head is down against him. Her tongue is warm, wet and pointed.

Terazuma's never been that sensitive in his chest, but that would be different now, too, wouldn't it? Kannuki alternates kisses and licks, nice enough in their own way, but then she suddenly takes his left breast in both hands and the nipple in her mouth and she's stretching him, sucking him. It's, it's-- the closest thing he can compare it to are the rare blowjobs of his living life, but it's (good) really nothing like that-- even if the instinct to hold her head where she is is disturbingly familiar. Kannuki's not some dame on the make. She's Kannuki.

He's got Kannuki in his lap, unbelievably, and she's not disgusted by this body, if the happy sounds she makes tell him anything. She's breathing just as quickly as he is and has moved slightly to the left to straddle one of his knees. She's hot and-- oh-- moist through his slacks where she rubs against him.

The ache that accompanies the observation isn't what he expects it to be. Terazuma shifts, slightly, and realises that he's already soaked his briefs, which shouldn't be possible, except women do that quicker, don't they?

Terazuma likes the size of Kannuki's breasts. They fill his hands, so soft and warm, even through her uniform blouse. He alternates arms the way she alternates applied suction, one arm holding her against him, the other cupping her from the side. He tries to be gentle, until she bites his nipple for the first time and it becomes not quite revenge trying to pinch the same noises out of her.

He likes the way she sounds.

He wants her more naked, more precious skin that he can actually touch, but he needs to ask for that, even as his hands skirt the warm softness just underneath her hems. He can distract her away from his breasts, but it takes a while for talking to seem more important than kissing. She seems to have no words now but his name and even that's being broken up by sweet, pleased sounds.

He really likes the way he's making her sound.

Terazuma finds it hard to concentrate, too, but instead, he talks too much. He starts with compliments (women like that, right?), except somewhere what he wants about her becomes the list of everything he's ever wanted to do with her, ever thought of doing with her.

He says something that stops her enough to pull back, confused or amused or one of those many, many other indecipherable female expressions that he's just praying isn't disgust. He can't remember if whatever had been phrased as politely as he hopes. Anything about kisses somewhere else would be better than demanding to 'eat her out'. He blames these sorts of things on the cat, which is still prowling under his skin, waiting--

Terazuma tells the cat to shut up.

Kannuki doesn't believe that he wants to until Terazuma mumbles that he's not equipped to do anything else he wants. He expects her to giggle, or be outraged, but Kannuki leans close and whispers against his ear that she's thought about having him inside her, too. She stays that close, arms around his neck, rocking just enough to make him focus on her bent knee in his lap and her wet heat spreading across his left thigh.

Terazuma really, really misses having a dick--

--but instead of mentioning that, he asks again, nicely, and even says please this time. He wonders aloud if maybe she would be nervous, instead of mentioning that he is.

Kannuki tells him she's not as inexperienced as he thinks, at least not with women and Terazuma swallows hard. It's too easy to remember the rumours he's heard about Kannuki's shopping trips to Hokkaido. He's pushed away that jealousy by telling himself it wasn't real sex if it was with other women-- except that what they're doing right now feels more real than anything he's felt in a long time and he's-- she's -- they're--

The spreading heaviness in his chest evaporates the moment Kannuki stands up off him and (he'll call it 'shyly' because that's how it looks to him) shyly reaches beneath her skirt. Her panties are burgundy silk, darker and muskier in the centre. Even if her skirt covers everything still, it's kind of humbling to watch her step out of her panties. And it's just damn arousing to watch her fold them neatly and put them into her skirt pocket.

The stall is narrow, but there's a bench along the back wide enough for Kannuki to sit on and spread her legs a little, more if she holds her legs up and angles upward as she does. Terazuma doesn't bother getting up. He crawls after her and puts his head between her raised thighs.

Kannuki smells good.

Kannuki tastes good.

He's nervous; she should be nervous, but he can't see past Kannuki's skirt, so he can't tell. Terazuma doesn't remember much about how you're supposed to do this, so he goes with gentle. His technique before didn't have to account for fangs.

But then, he knows exactly how to please Kannuki like this and his perennial headache is suspiciously gone. Terazuma has always known that the cat likes Kannuki. It just never occurred to him that the cat might like her like this. Terazuma pushes the thought aside roughly, but lets the instincts stay with him. Maybe it's easier not to fight because his body is a woman right now, or because whatever Kannuki is murmuring has too few syllables to be the cat's name, and just enough to be his.

Kannuki bends her knees over his shoulders and tangles a freed hand in his hair. She's trembling on his tongue. He finds that he can curl his tongue and reach in where she tastes strongest, spicy and slightly sour, but not for long, or his tongue isn't quite long enough-- and something (the cat) is telling him he'll tire too quickly if he doesn't concentrate on the outside.

Licking the outside bits works better, fast but light, from the top right down to where she opens and then up again. He's not particularly directed because Kannuki's hips keep shifting away from him, but he figures he's doing something right if she's that uncoordinated. Terazuma works his arms under her thighs, pulling her close, but still trying to keep his touch soft. The occasional wince amongst her whisperings lets him know when he's become too enthusiastic, but the hand in his hair doesn't let him break away.

The lower half of his face is completely coated now, too slick for purchase. Kannuki is grinding down against his nose, but that seems to work for her. Terazuma concentrates on swallowing and breathing. And if some of the sounds coming from his throat sound suspiciously close to purring, he's ignoring them.

Kannuki shakes harder, then stops, and then shakes again. Her hand in his hair tightens painfully, and she is--

--pulling him off.

Terazuma lifts his head quickly, catching it on Kannuki's skirt, but then he scrabbles backwards on carpet that almost burns the palms of his hands. He watches the rise and fall of her chest and for any movement in her limbs. His face is cold (and slick, and still dripping, just a little, down his neck); instinct makes him lick outward, while one hand brushed the wetness from his cheeks closer to his tongue.

Kannuki doesn't open her eyes, but she's smiling. Terazuma would hope that that's a good sign, but she-- how's he supposed to know if she-- he shouldn't have trusted the cat, what would it know about licking--

Suddenly, Kannuki pitches forward, landing between his spread legs. Her smile makes him nervous and shivers run like pins-and-needles along his thighs.

Kannuki crawls forward over and across his body, swaying just enough for him to steady her with his hands. He's licked up enough of his face that he can smell her sweat as well as her sex. Terazuma refuses to give in to the urge to burrow his face into her arm-pits-- stupid cat should be grateful for what it's already gotten.

Kannuki finishes up on her knees beside him, leaning over him, kissing him unexpectedly hard enough to force him from hands to his elbows. One of Kannuki's hands begins at his shoulder and travels to each of his breasts, pinching and rubbing the nipples, traveling lower still to circle his belly-button, and then--

Terazuma breaks away, not quite suppressing a squeak.

Kannuki's hand has stilled clutching his belt buckle. She's blushing, but she manages to ask if it would be all right in perfect, polite, *feminine* phrasings.

Terazuma starts to say that she doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want, especially since, if she didn't--

His belt buckle falls to the carpet with a faint jingle; Kannuki is unzipping his pants.

In the moments between losing common sense and losing language, Terazuma stutters that this isn't some perverted lolicon thing, it's not her age, he really likes her--

Kannuki laughs in her throat and kisses him again. Her hand on his open fly gets pressed between their bodies, and it's so *hard* not bucking to meet her. Kannuki whispers against his lips, calling him cute, dear and silly-- she's older than he is, anyway.

It's something exactly like shock as her small fingers slip under his briefs and--

Oh.

God.

--not around, but *into* him.

Terazuma's head falls backward. Seeing light scatter across his vision makes this feel better, and somehow he manages not to cry out. The carpet is rough against his naked back and the elastic in his briefs bites into his legs. When his eyes are open, he sees Kannuki smiling down at him. When his eyes are closed, he feels her breath coming fast on his chest. Kannuki whispers that he's wet enough to start with two fingers, and she thrusts them to prove her point.

*This* is not like anything he's ever done before. It's like nothing he knows. Terazuma balls a fist and bites down onto it. He braces his legs bent with his feet on the floor. He's not going to kick her, not stop her from--

Kannuki pulls her fingers out and Terazuma hears himself whimper, despite his fist. She drags her fingertips over him, wetting her fingers before they all line up and she presses further in. She whispers 'three' with awe. Even though the stretch burns, he can't stop his hips from thrusting to meet her hand. She's also doing something farther up as well, maybe with her thumb, that sends sharper spikes of sensation that rush through the burn like ocean waves. Soon, the stretch fades and he's-- he's so fucking *wet* that she can speed up her thrusts. She does.

Kannuki calls him a good boy, calls him Hajime and asks him to come-- He does.

He thinks.

Coming isn't what he expects either, cresting waves of sensation, the warmth in his pelvis, the friction from Kannuki's fingers, the stretch, the motion, her fingers twisting inside him, her thumb slipping across-- somewhere good-- his hips and his back arching--

And, at the last moment, he hears a roaring inside his ears, drowning out Kannuki's whispers and his vision washes with white even though his eyes have to be closed.

Damn cat.

Kannuki's fingers had stilled inside him, but now they seem to move again, much slower than before. She sits back and closer to upright and begins to lick her fingers. Her other hand rests on his chest. Terazuma watches her carefully and thinks.

He blurts that she took her fingers out! Kannuki blushes and nods, but she doesn't turn away or stop attending to her fingers. He can't help wondering what her tongue would feel like.

Suddenly, there is a sharp rap on the change room door.

The lock jangles loudly as someone tries to push the door open, but it holds. From outside, an elderly female voice asks if they need any assistance, quite pointedly.

Terazuma shifts to spirit form, closes his eyes and attempts to sink through the floor. It's never worked before, but thirty minutes ago, he hadn't gotten laid since two years before he died. He's optimistic.

Kannuki cheerfully retorts that they're still deciding, thank you so very much. She also leans back over Terazuma to whisper that they aren't finished yet. Kannuki wraps her arms around him, taking in his neck and one shoulder and pressing her face into his other shoulder. She holds him tighter enough to hurt, but he doesn't mind. Her hair smells incredible.

He doesn't know how she does it, how she can stand to-- any of this.

On the other hand, Terazuma thinks, he can't believe half of what they've done this morning, and though they've been threatened, they aren't actually being turned out. He's almost certain the damn cat has passed out cold. So, for the moment, life is good.

He feels her lips pressed against his skin, one cooler than the other, but he can't distinguish which, and then Kannuki sits up. Her hands trail away, over his chest, but they do not linger. Kannuki repeats that they aren't finished, but she offers it as a question this time.

Beds were invented for good reasons, Terazuma grouses, shifting his naked shoulders on the rough department store carpet. He wants her on a bed that he can sleep on after. (Though, perhaps, at this moment, wanting a bed under him point blank is foremost on his mind.)

Kannuki stands and reaches for her purse hanging on a hook on the back of the door. Terazuma gives up on joining her just yet when he finds that he can barely push back up to his elbows.

She's back down beside him the next time his eyes are open and a handful of tissues are disappearing under her skirt. The time after that, the tissues are travelling under the waistband of his trousers. They're a little rough and he's a little tender; Kannuki whispers an apology and accidentally brushes him with a pad of a finger instead of tissue.

Terazuma hears himself growl softly. Kannuki giggles. He thinks he might be grinning stupidly at her, but her eyes are soft enough on him that it just seems right.

Who'd have thought they'd ever be able to take the time to just look at each other?

From there, things get practical. Kannuki puts away all her tissues and shimmies back into her panties, half-perched on the bench. Terazuma finds that if he does it slowly, standing is actually easier than it feels like it should be. He refastens his fly and his belt, smoothing the line of his trousers as much as possible. When he moves his legs, between them feels-- he'd call it 'uncomfortable' except that remembering the feeling seems to make everything down there spasm in ways his body shouldn't find normal.

Terazuma holds a hand out and asks Kannuki to pass him his shirt. What she actually hands him is smaller, silkier and black.

Well, sh--

Terazuma stares at the black bra that started it all, holding it far enough away from his body that he doesn't have to look down through his *breasts* to see it. He isn't sure why it looks sinister now, no longer just kinky and definitely not ignorable. Maybe it fits, maybe it doesn't, but if he actually buys the thing-- what then?

Telling himself that the change doesn't matter has almost become habit. It won't be permanent. It can't be permanent. He's been able to survive living as a woman because he didn't have to think or act like one.

All that went out the window when he decided to throw in for lesbian sex on the floor of a women's lingerie department changing room; nothing like this would have ever happened while he was a man.

But, Kannuki is beautiful. After so many years of partnership, Terazuma knows the songs she sings while she cooks and the type of feminine things to buy her if she accidentally runs out while they're in the field. He knows why cases with college girls make her need his company, and why the ones with high school girls make her need him to stay away. They could have just been really close friends before, well, yeah, maybe, if he'd been gay and didn't l-- but he even knows what she tastes like now-- they can be lovers now, as long as he stays in this body.

Kannuki tells him that some women do up the clasps first, before putting the bra on. It might be easier.

Terazuma turns the bra over a few times in his hands before he finds the clasp. Even looking at it closely, it's hard getting all the hooks into their slots. He wonders who thought it was a good idea to make the fastenings damn near invisible. As long as he's trying to put something like this on, he'll need Kannuki's help. Maybe being a woman wouldn't be so bad if he had her to show him what to do.

When he finally finishes, he looks up.

She's staring at his breasts. Again. Or the bra. Or maybe the bra and the breasts, he isn't sure. But, when the tip of her tongue comes out to brush across her top lip, it's more than he can stand.

Terazuma DOES NOT want to be a woman.

He tells Kannuki bluntly and tells her louder than he meant to. She literally stumbles away from him. Maybe, they could have been lovers, before. Terazuma wants to kick himself.

But, Kannuki calls him 'Hajime-chan' and keeps going. Just because she likes the way he looks now, she says, hesitantly, doesn't mean she didn't like the way he looked before.

Terazuma counters sourly by asking why she wants him to buy new underwear if she didn't expect him to stay like this forever.

Kannuki rushes forward, her hands out and up. She is sure Watari-san will turn him back. But until then, Terazuma needs bras because he bounces without one and no one else should get to see him like that. Terazuma's breasts, she tells him, cupping them, are *hers*.

Terazuma repeats this last statement back to her.

Kannuki's face becomes a red deeper than her panties and her hands pinch his nipples, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not. Terazuma arches into her and that 'uncomfortable' feeling between his legs becomes recognisable again.

She speaks softly, but urgently into his neck and her pinch becomes a rub. She prefers the man, she insists, but as long as he's a woman Terazuma will need bras that fit.

Kannuki quickly releases her grip on his breasts; her hands slip down to her sides.

As for everything else, if Terazuma didn't enjoy what they've done, they could always change her into a boy. He can't see Kannuki's face when she makes this suggestion, but she tenses in his arms.

Terazuma tells her very fervently, that he's never going to ask her to be a boy. Ever.

Kannuki relaxes, a little, and shifts her eyes upward. They're as brittle as they were earlier, and he thinks that it's wrong that Kannuki can look so old. She says she's sorry she couldn't make it good for him. She says she'd waited so long to touch him, to kiss him, that it didn't matter to her that it wasn't a perfect solution, but she understands it might be different for him.

He squirms in that gaze, mumbling that it's hard.

Kannuki says she knows, but they get lucky breaks so rarely. The 'please' that follows this undoes him. He's never been able to deny her a direct request, especially something so close to a piece of advice his mother gave him so many times.

Terazuma crushes Kannuki to him, hard enough that the fabric of her uniform feels like penance on his bare, sweat-drying skin. With his arms around her shoulders, it's nothing to bend a little to catch her waist and pick her up.

He carries her the few steps to the bench. Like this, their height difference is on her side, but it's a smaller strain on either of their necks. Between fierce kisses, Terazuma tells her she was incredible, how dare she doubt that, he couldn't move afterwards--

Terazuma hears himself grumble that he's not getting more than two. Maybe, he says, she could sweet-talk Doc into making them more potions once there was a way back as well as forward, but only once in a while. And no more 'shopping trips' to Hokkaido unless she's buying fancy underwear that only he gets to see. Two bras today only, he repeats, and that's final.

For a moment, Kannuki just grins at him, her smile welling up from somewhere inside. Not just in her teeth and lips, but her eyes, and possibly her hair. Kannuki sparkles.

Thank heaven for small mercies.

And then Kannuki pounces him, bouncing off the bench, her arms around his neck and her legs quickly following around his waist. Terazuma has to steady himself by knocking against a wall and staying there. She feels good. They're kissing again, but Terazuma thinks he could probably do that all day.

He can do it all day now. And the damn cat can't say a thing about it.

Kannuki breaks contact to start giggling almost madly in his ear. Besides, she says, they have to buy something or the sales assistants listening in outside their door would get really suspicious.