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"So, um, what do you- what do you think?"
Anthy sweeps her gaze over her love, recently nude and giving off intense waves of nervousness as she presents her body. Utena avoids looking her in the eye, opening and closing her fists restlessly at her sides. It's a naked body, Anthy notes. Utena has breasts, and hair, and a vagina, and all the expected things one would have after unveiling their birthday suit. Her mind can't help but describe it in a clinical sense, and she feels a slight longing for some spark or romance or poetry that would more befit the situation to fill her mind.
It doesn't, of course. The way Anthy thinks about the body, either her own or other people's, has settled into the pattern of melancholic indifference due to... a variety of circumstances. Utena's broad shoulders, leading down to her firmly muscled arms, simply exist with no particular effect.
"You look lovely, Utena," she says point-blank. Utena swings her head up to look Anthy in the eye, trying to take apart her neutral smile, and she keeps fidgeting, switching her weight between each foot.
"Thanks," Utena says with a bit of a question mark hanging off the end. A minute of silence passes where Anthy looks at Utena and Utena looks at a random speck on the ceiling. The quiet is bothering Utena, but Anthy doesn't want to say a word right now, else she reveal her true feelings on the matter at hand. That is, her lack of feelings.
It's selfish of her to keep this flaw to herself, and pretend she's feeling things that she isn't. Feelings she can't reach anymore, buried under many layers of previous association that have scorched the earth of her heart. It's selfish.
Anthy wills in her heart for Utena to look her in the eye and see the truth of the hollowness inside her. She's too selfish to end this doomed relationship herself, yet again falling into patterns, but with Utena, if she plays her cards right, she'll barely have to lift a finger to enact self-sabotage.
She begins by stepping forward, an action Utena catches out of the corner of her eye and makes her go even more stock still where she stands. Her fists continue to clench and unclench at her sides, weighing heavy like shackles.
Anthy raises one hand to Utena's face, caressing the skin of her cheek with a feather light touch. Utena isn't the sort of girl who bothers to do anything besides splash her face with water, but her skin is very smooth and unblemished. It's pleasant enough to touch.
Not a second passes before Anthy leans in and takes Utena's lips with her own, and the disparity in experience is immediately apparent. Anthy knows, objectively, what makes people feel good, and she softly brushes her lips against Utena's before widening them for a better angle. Utena almost bites Anthy's lip off in the mayhem of figuring out her tongue from her teeth, but manages to settle on a somewhat stiff open mouth position while Anthy does the work.
Utena lets out a small noise, something between a whimper and a moan, and Anthy stops.
Anthy stops.
Anthy stops.
Anthy stops.
"Himemiya? Is something wrong?"
Anthy stops.
Anthy stops.
Anthy stops.
"Himemiya? Did I— did I mess up?"
Her brain clicks back into reality and she stares at Utena's face, mere centimeters from her own, eyelashes blinking under her furrowed brows.
"No and no, Utena. My apologies."
"Are you sure? We don't gotta do this..."
"But you want to, do you not? You need this."
Utena still avoids looking her in the eye and it's beginning to drive Anthy mad, actually. Look at me, she thinks. Look at who I am and what I'm doing to you.
Anthy leans in to kiss Utena again, wrapping both of her arms around Utena's waist, then sliding down to feel up where her legs meet her pelvis, teasing the area around where she's very clearly aroused already. Anthy feels a slight satisfaction in getting the proper response, but it's still... This isn't how this is meant to be, in the kind of relationship Utena actually wants. The one she still dreams and fantasizes of, despite taking her ideals of princehood out back and shooting them with a flintstock hunting rifle.
Old habits die hard.
Utena tries to sputter out some words from under Anthy's lips, but Anthy doesn't pull away and let her speak. Instead, she kisses her deeper, sliding her tongue across Utena's bottom lip, which sends a shiver down her spine in response. With one arm still cradled around her, Anthy begins to pull the two of them to the bed beside them.
It's always a different perspective, looking over someone from above as they tremble under your arms. Utena's pink hair splays about the pillow around her head, spiraling, spiraling, making her vision dizzy. Anthy leans back and sits herself down so that she's straddling Utena now, then reaches out to her hand and interlocks their fingers, slow and methodical.
And then she waits.
The lack of action after that point confuses Utena, as she darts back and forth between looking at Anthy and looking at the wall from the corner of her eye. Anthy does not move a muscle, and keeps her palm flush against Utena's, holding it in that position.
"Himemiya? Are you going to...?" Utena whispers, clearly self-conscious. Anthy hasn't even gotten undressed yet, but then again, Utena hasn't asked her to remove anything yet.
"Let's make sandwiches tomorrow," Anthy says.
Utena is stricken with a confused look, staring up at Anthy's abrupt change in conversation, given the context of the situation. But she is not stricken with anything else, which... Anthy does not know how to feel about.
Selfish. Awful. Manipulative. A witch.
"Why do you stay with me," is what slips out of Anthy's mouth, mumbled from her innermost depths, and it is not said with tender confusion but with anger and malice. There's a bite to her words that Utena didn't used to be able to notice, but seems so obvious to her now.
"Himemiya?"
Utena tries to push herself up to sitting by leaning onto the crook of her elbow, but Anthy keeps her hand locked and pushes it back down with an intimidating amount of force.
"Himemiya, if something's wrong—"
"You don't even realize who I am. You still don't, after all this time. Nothing, and I genuinely mean nothing, will ever sink into your mind about me because we're simply mutually exclusive existences."
Anthy stabs her again and again and again and Utena won't stop forgiving her. Every wound Anthy sees in Utena reflects back at her, reminding her of a history too heavy and a personhood too empty for her to leave behind for good. Neither of them can live like this, and in the end, it's up to Anthy to walk out once again.
She tightens her grip one last time in Utena's fingers, feeling the warmth and life of her body, then lets it go. The cold air washes over her skin again, and all the solid existence that had been poured into her from that trusting touch evaporates into nothing. She's nothing.
"Himemiya, I know."
Anthy shuts her eyes, realizing her glasses still rest on her face, slipping down the bridge of her nose from the cold sweat clogging up her pores.
"Look, I know, okay? This wasn't your most subtle of machinations, or however you think of it. But why do you want me to point it out? I just... I just wanted to be with you," Utena says. "I wanted us to have a good time, but if you aren't, which don't even say anything because I know you aren't, then let's just stop."
Utena reaches her free hand up to Anthy, sliding her fingers gently around the silhouette of her ear, then tucking a few strands behind it to clear her face. Anthy's eyelashes flutter open at the touch, and her expression remains as unreadable as ever. Looking at that neutrality makes Utena's stomach turn, and it doesn't stop turning, and she feels dizzy looking at her love.
"Why did you try to make me remember that night, Himemiya?"
It's not the accusation that Anthy wanted it to be, not at all. Utena sounds resigned, and quiet, and the look in her eyes sees Anthy not as an irredeemable monster but as a pitiful woman, which strikes her more than the alternative would have.
She doesn't want to answer. In this moment, her brain stalls again, looping the same thought in succession, unable to transfer to her vocal chords.
"This isn't what you want," is what she settles for. It's the truth, obviously, because you would have to be an incredibly horribly-adjusted creature to crave a relationship dynamic so weighted with baggage, and unpredictability, and pain. You would have to be someone like Anthy Himemiya.
And there is nothing that Anthy understands more than the fact that she and Utena Tenjou are not alike in the least.
"You don't know what I want!" Utena yells without a pause. "You don't know shit about what I want, okay? I want you. I don't care about anything else, I just want you." She tries to reach for Anthy's hand again, but it slips out of her grasp as Anthy withdraws to slide off of the bed, releasing Utena's body completely.
"That's exactly what I cannot stand by and let happen," Anthy says, smiling a bit. She pulls back further, about ready to jump ship and never come back for Utena's sake.
Until Utena not only jumps from her position laying on the bed, but she lunges for Anthy's midsection, bowling them both to the ground and nearly clocking their heads against the wall. Which is so, so like Utena, to do something so stupid that even Anthy can't predict it and prepare ahead of time.
They land with Utena on top this time, limbs tangled, and Utena can feel Anthy's knee jutting into her gut, but she needs to speak right the fuck now or forever hold her peace.
"I hate this!! If you really want to go, I won't stop you, but I don't want you to leave if you think it's because I secretly want you to leave! Please don't go," she says, whimpering out her last sentence.
Oh. It isn't that Utena sees Anthy as pitiful or monstrous, a thought that stalls in its processing. That can't be true, because it goes against all the wiring in her brain. The switchboard inside of her lights up and reveals how many unneeded wires she didn't notice before, and thus, didn't cut.
It doesn't end with just a single life-changing incident. It won't end with just a single night.
She looks at Utena's face, the one she'd been examining so neutrally earlier, and she feels a spark of energy rush through her bloodstream. The staccato shadow of the ceiling fan above them blinks lights on and off of Utena, and it distantly makes her recall the stairway to the arena.
That's simply how it is, isn't it. No matter how mundane or nice her life is compared to Ohtori, her mind will never forget how to take a picture of something from her current life and filter it through the lens of her memories.
"Anthy," Utena says. Her voice and expression are raw and open with that sparkling pure heart that's always been locked away in her chest, no matter who tried to mark it with spots of darkness. It's a little chipped now, and not as shiny, but that light inside of her is fueled by her own will to stay true to herself.
And it's Utena, so she knows that light will continue to blind her until death do they part.
"Utena, please stay with me," Anthy whispers. A wetness rises to her eyes, and tears spill down her cheeks. "I do not deserve your forgiveness."
Utena leans her head down onto Anthy's shoulder, sliding one hand around her to grip the back of her neck as she presses Anthy's body to hers. Oh, she's still naked. In the midst of their emotional breakdown, she forgot, and it feels a bit odd to feel hyperaware now of all times that her boobs are squished against Anthy's chest.
She loves hugs, and kisses, and physical contact, sure, but she loves Anthy so much more! The only eternal thing about them is the fact that they'll always be a work in progress.
"We don't have to have everything figured out right this minute, you know. Some of us dumb folks are already pretty used to taking things slow like that, so you can just follow my lead." She laughs a little into the crook of Anthy's neck, basking in the warmth of their closeness.
"I love you," Anthy says. The terror in her declaration spins in the air like a wheel of fortune, but her next sentence makes clear what prize it landed on. "And, you love me."
Utena laughs again and smiles against Anthy's skin, then lifts herself up a bit to see Anthy's tear-stained face.
"I love you, and you love me! We're gonna shine, someday, remember? And I distinctly remember a key part of that phrase being 'together,' so don't you dare back out on me. I believe in our someday."