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Love is like the tides of the sea. Which is to say, of course: really fucking dangerous. Bunny should know. In fact, she’d wager she knows this better than anyone.
Sae’s eyes are icy-cold, like the sea, too, and perhaps in the end, Bunny just has to admit she really rather likes the ocean. There’s so many dead things in there, did you know that? she’d tell anyone who’d listen. Sae always just wrinkles her lovely nose. Stop saying that, she’d say, and then not elaborate, but she, too, always glances at the sea, always lingers on it; sideways, but no less longing. With something in her eyes Bunny has never, ever been privy to. Reaching out never to touch. It’s probably things that aren’t dead that she’s looking for; there’s so many living things in there, too, after all.
Maybe that’s why Bunny likes her, in the end. Maybe that’s always been all there is to it.
The grass of the pitch tickles her cheek when she turns her head. There’s Sae: hair spilled out around her—dull pink against bright green—staring up at the sky instead of at the sea. Bunny’s jersey sticks to her front with sweat. They’re the only ones left here, now.
“Sae,” Bunny says, slowly. “We should go to the beach on the weekend. I’ll invite you, okay?”
Sae doesn’t say anything. Which is fine, she doesn’t have to: she’ll probably come, anyway. It wouldn’t be their first trip together, even just the two of them. It wouldn’t even be their second. Bunny scoots just a little closer, and that isn’t the first time, either, even when it makes Sae roll her eyes.
“You’ve decided already anyway, haven’t you,” she mutters, “so don’t pretend like it’s a question.”
And it’s easier this way, Bunny supposes. For Sae, and maybe for her, too. So it’s fine, she’ll pretend like she’s dragging Sae along, pretend like Sae doesn’t want to be there at all, pretend like she doesn’t notice the way Sae glances at the sea—and how close, those two words, sea and Sae and Sae and sea—just like Sae’s never asked Bunny about any of her scars. That’s how it works, and it works well enough. They’re good in a way Bunny’s never really had. She wonders if Sae has, but she doubts it.
“We’ll go shopping,” Bunny adds, rolling over onto her side to stare at Sae outright. “I’ll make you carry my bags.”
Neither of them really, actually cares about shopping. “I’m not carrying anything,” Sae says, anyway, because she’s deathly allergic to not arguing, to not having the last word. It’s cute. It’s really so very, very cute. That’s the first thing Bunny noticed about her: that she’s incredibly cute.
“It’s too cold to swim, though.”
“I’m not swimming, either.”
“Nobody asked you to.”
Sae, uncharacteristically, falls quiet. Maybe she’s growing up, who knows. Maybe they both are. Bunny smiles.
There’s a certain air about Sae; a certain loneliness, but one she wears well. Loneliness has always been ill-fitting on Bunny—scratching, itching, irritating—but on Sae, it’s almost luxurious, like brand clothes and sharp perfume and glittering jewelry. Like something self-inflicted, like something she chose. It’s beautiful, but it also means Bunny can’t help herself, that Bunny simply has to insert herself into that space.
Love is like the tides of the sea, after all: really fucking dangerous, and a part of Bunny has perhaps always wanted to drown. This, right here, is nice, too, however. Perhaps there is something to be said of tranquility, too.
Sae stares at the sky, and Bunny stares at Sae.
“The beach,” Sae says, then. “I want a room to myself with a big bathroom. And healthy food, not some trash. And no shopping.”
So demanding. But, ah, if there’s one thing Bunny has always, always, always liked, it’s high-maintenance women. She smiles, stares until Sae glances at her from the corner of her eye, then says, “Sure, we can do that.”
Which is, of course, exactly what she asked for—because Bunny is so kind and acquiescent and gracious and generous!—but Sae, of course, has the gall to still look sour. She’s the cutest girl in the world, Bunny is convinced of that. She has to be, there’s no way there’s anyone more delicious than this out there anywhere.
Sae huffs, rolls over onto her side, too: but the other one, so her back is turned towards Bunny. And that’s exactly what she means. Delicious, delicious, delicious. Bunny scoots closer, hooks her chin over Sae’s shoulder, and Sae doesn’t push her off, so. She wants to wrap her arm around Sae’s waist, too, but they haven’t showered yet, and she doesn’t want to push her luck too much.
Just a little. Just enough. Just a little, nudging, nudging, nudging, because one has to be careful with Itoshi Sae. Bunny should know.
But she likes to be careful. Bunny’s body has always been big—larger, stronger than the other girls—so she has always liked to be careful, to touch with her fingertips, feather-light, to stare and figure things out like a puzzle before applying pressure. Coward of a striker, Sae calls her, every once in a while, but these days, it’s really almost affectionate. Is it not?
“We can take a walk at the shore before going to bed,” says Bunny. Somewhere in the meantime, her eyes have drifted shut without her noticing. Ah, she’s getting sleepy. They should get up soon, and shower, and go home. But Sae’s hair smells nice.
“If we do it early enough, sure.”
Bunny snorts. “I forgot you have a rigorous bedtime.”
“Not everyone can be as irresponsible as you.”
“Hey now, I’m not irresponsible. I’m just nocturnal.”
Sae does turn around, then; first only her head. Her bangs are falling into her face like this—mussed with sweat and lying around in the grass—her eyes squinted, her lashes so, so very long and thick. She has an elegant face, a sort of icy beauty that Bunny doesn’t think she’s ever seen before. Perhaps she’ll never see it again, either. Perhaps she doesn’t want to.
First only her head, then Sae twists completely, wriggling a little to de-tangle herself from Bunny, but she doesn’t scoot away any. Frames Bunny’s face with her hands, gloves smooth on Bunny’s skin, and a little damp.
“You really,” Sae says, slowly and quite flat, almost like she’s bored, “annoy me so bad.”
Bunny smiles, smiles, smiles.
.
In the moonlight, Sae’s hair whipping through the air looks almost colorless. The sea next to them glitters, deep and dark, and it’s really quite cold; more uncomfortable than Bunny had imagined. It’s the nicest thing in the whole world. She tugs her jacket around herself tighter and watches.
“Try to keep up,” Sae says, not exactly over her shoulder—she’s not actually looking at Bunny, because in the end, she does trust that Bunny will keep up, Bunny knows that much—but something like that. Bunny smiles. The sea is pitch-black, like a black hole, and it drains all saturation from the both of them. It’s really so beautiful.
“You try to keep up.”
Any other girl, Bunny thinks, would have asked what the fuck she’s talking about. And perhaps Sae is thinking it, too—her sea-blue eyes have always been so impenetrable, which is another reason why Bunny likes her, she thinks—but she doesn’t say it, doesn’t say anything at all. Just keeps walking, hair flying through the air in the rapid shore winds. Bunny’s own is stuffed into her cap.
And perhaps Sae is thinking it, too, but perhaps, perhaps, she understands. Perhaps she always has.
They don’t go swimming, of course. Bunny considers it for a moment—to be swallowed up by the black, cold sea, to feel it soak heavy into all of her clothing; or maybe to shed it and go in bare, protected by the night, and that would annoy Sae, too, wouldn’t it?—but they have training again in two days, and she doesn’t know if she’d leave the water the same person she entered it as, especially if Sae, despite everything, should choose to come with her.
They don’t go swimming, even as it lingers in Bunny’s ribcage, but they sit down at the shore eventually, when they come across a small set of stairs leading up to dense, steady road. Like this, the sea is too far away to touch—too far away to slip her shoes off and dip her feet inside, which is probably for the better, because she’s really quite tempted now—but still close enough to see, to feel in her sternum, tugging, tugging, tugging. Rushing and spuming right there, right in front of her, salt in her nose and salt in her ears.
It’s as nice as it can be, really. As nice as it’s ever been, with Sae. You’re like my family, Bunny almost says, if only because she thinks it might finally startle a laugh out of Sae—them and family, that is it’s own matter entirely, isn’t it—but then again, maybe not.
The sky is as pitch dark as the sea is, and the only reason the transition is visible at all is the way the moon glitters in the water: cut into pieces, wobbling and warping and flowing back and forth.
“It’s so beautiful,” Bunny says, “the moon.”
Sae kicks at her shoe. “Shut up,” she says, a hiss to her voice that really is so very cute. “You’re such an idiot.”
There’s nothing much to say after that. It’s comfortable, to be Bunny Iglesias next to Sae Itoshi, two girls on Re Al’s subsidiary youth team, fighting and clawing their ways up. It’s comfortable, to be a striker next to a striker in front of the vast, clear sea. It’s comfortable, to be alive, right here, right now.
Sae doesn’t reach for her hand, and Bunny doesn’t, either, but she can still feel it, somehow: the brushing of skin, where it’s softer at Sae’s very fingertips, perhaps even the slightest scrape of blunt fingernails. The shifting of a human body right next to her, of hair falling over her shoulder, of her tracksuit—because of course Sae Itoshi is wearing a tracksuit to their beach date!—the tip of a head. Her weight leaned against Bunny’s shoulder, or perhaps Bunny’s weight leaned against hers. Something like that.
Instead, they’re sitting half a body going on nothing apart. Instead, this close, Bunny can hear Sae’s breathing, in and out and in and out, so very deep and steady like Bunny has never heard anyone breathe before.
There’s nothing much to say after that. The sea—and, in fact, all their lives; in secret, Bunny may or may not be dreaming of becoming twin strikers, or something of the sort—unfurls in front of them. Back at the hotel, their rooms are right next to each other, and despite her demands, Sae sleeps in Bunny’s, buried in blankets until she’s like a small cocoon. They use the same hotel body wash and shampoo and conditioner, and just for that afternoon and night and morning, they smell the very same. There is such beauty in that, Bunny thinks. Such dangerous beauty.
She dreams of the sea. Dreams of asking Sae about her dreams, too, but in the morning, Sae’s hair is mussed and her lashes tangled with sleep and it all gets stuck in Bunny’s throat. They take the bus back to the dormitories, sharing earbuds with Sae directing the music, though she’s just picking and choosing out of one of Bunny’s playlists.
It’s comfortable.
.
It’s next to the sea, too, when Sae looks at her again. Salt air and salt water and salt earth and pale, cherry-pink hair whipping through the air. Tucked behind Sae’s ear in a movement so absentminded and nostalgic it makes Bunny ache.
Sae’s eyes are icy-cold, like the sea, and so clear they cut through everything. Love is like the tides of the sea, which is to say, really fucking dangerous, and Bunny thinks Sae might know that better than anyone. Bunny thinks she should know. It’s next to the sea, too, but it’s broad daylight, and the sun makes the water sparkle much differently than the moon ever did.
“I’ve been running away,” Sae says, slowly, clearly, staring directly into Bunny’s eyes. “I won’t be running away anymore.”
She doesn’t say Sorry and Bunny doesn’t, either, but that has never been their style, now, has it. Bunny doesn’t say Welcome home and Sae doesn’t say I’m home, first, and Bunny can’t imagine them, either, but it still lingers in the air between them, anyhow.
Bunny smiles, genuinely this time. “Good,” she says.