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It was less busy at night, but Nerv HQ was never empty. The Geofront was practically a city unto itself. A facility of its size and import required dozens of overnight staff for maintenance alone, not to mention emergency response, security, technicians, and, often, Ritsuko Akagi, who slept in her office more and more these days.
Not quite a true secret, but neither was it an open one. Everyone knew Ritsuko kept late nights. Hopefully they did not know she also kept a sleeping bag stuffed with a toothbrush and two spare pairs of stockings (useful anyway; she never knew when she’d have to crawl into the guts of the Magi for troubleshooting, which inevitably led to runs) in the maintenance closet nearest her office, as well as a change of uniform in her locker.
It was a practical consideration, mostly. If she was going to be the last daytime staff to leave the Geofront anyway, she might as well just sleep there.
Four months ago she’d taken her elderly cat to live with her grandmother in Kyoto, to keep her safe from the angel attacks. Ritsuko’s apartment had taken on a sepulchral air in the cat’s absence. No fur to vacuum up. It was as though it had become something other than Ritsuko’s space—or perhaps it never was. And the lack of a dependent dragging her back enabled her tether to the apartment to grow thinner every day. In the last few weeks she’d seen the streets of Tokyo-3 more often through Central Dogma’s monitors than her own eyes. And now she never would again.
Tonight the thought of unrolling her secret sleeping bag in the meager floorspace between her desk and her wall made Ritsuko feel—strange.
She slumped at her desk, elbow on the surface, chin in hand. This afternoon’s grisly business with Ayanami percolated in the back of her head. Her coffee pot sat half-full and long-cold. Strange was the word. Strange, that they could have such an unmitigated catastrophe, an engagement with an angel resulting in the death of a pilot and the destruction of the vast majority of Tokyo-3 not twelve hours ago, and here she was, at her desk, like it was any other day.
And the cat had died. Her grandmother had called last night. She’d even known to call Ritsuko at Nerv instead of at home, despite the late hour. Ritsuko felt restless and listless; unfocused rather than numb.
She could have a cigarette. Along with a framed photo of Ryoji, Misato, and herself, and two small cartoon-cat knickknacks, one black and one white, her ashtray was the most distinctive piece of decoration on an otherwise-practical desk. A shallow grey dish, cornucopian with crooked, red-stained stubs and butts. She hadn’t emptied it in a few days.
Two left, in this pack. One more, and then the lucky one, upside down, a stupid superstition. She would need to return to her apartment to pick up more anyway.
Ritsuko fingered the unlucky smoke. No. She closed the pack.
Instead she turned on her laptop, grey Nerv standard-issue, heavy-duty. A laptop you could drop a brick on. Arguably a better expenditure of taxpayer dollars than all the United Nations’ tanks and guns.
The photo Ritsuko double-clicked was very poorly framed, cropped from a larger one of Gehirn staff, the summer she did her internship there before attending university. 2003, per the metadata helpfully displayed in the corner. Twelve years. Nerv had been only a twinkle in Ikari’s eye.
It was eerie, actually, the way those eyes were not looking at the camera. Gendo Ikari loomed behind and above the late Naoko Akagi. Ritsuko herself stood to her mother’s left, a ways off, so that Gendo and Naoko were on one side of the frame and Ritsuko the other, a gulf of blue between them. Both Akagis looked directly at the camera, smiling thinly and identically. Gendo’s eyes were directed slightly above and left, at the photographer, rather than the lens.
Ritsuko looked so young, in the photo, in her little black intern outfit. They hadn’t even given her a lab coat. Odd to think she’d ever worn her hair in that girlish brown bob, but there it was. She’d started dyeing it right after this internship ended. She’d hated that everyone could tell whose daughter she was, hated the miasmic implications of nepotism (or worse, hereditary genius) that dogged her work. That part was still familiar, the hatred.
She did not look at her mother. Naoko Akagi had plucked her eyebrows and worn this garish purple lipstick all the time. Ritsuko had always been told she had Naoko’s nose. She couldn’t bear confirming that she still did.
She closed the photo. The screen went dark, leaving her with only her reflection in its obsidian surface. Ritsuko’s eyebrows gave away the game, even though she didn’t pluck them. They were bushy and dark, not the eyebrows of a natural blonde. She slammed the laptop shut.
In Terminal Dogma, right now, kilometers beneath her, they were building a new Rei Ayanami, salvaging what she’d brought them with sciences of which even Chief of Project E Dr. Ritsuko Akagi did not know the fine details. Nerv’s best-kept secret. The soul still clung to the body, even after death. If you could call what she’d found a “body.”
Ritsuko couldn’t bear to be here any longer, all of a sudden. Not with her filthy ashtray and her lifeless feline statuettes and her photograph of the only friends she’d ever had, one who could barely stand her now and one whose body she knew they would never find. And Rei Ayanami the Third being welded together under her feet.
It was disgusting, the ashtray; the acrid remnants of Ritsuko’s slow method for killing herself. Her mother had just jumped.
She’d seen the destruction that afternoon, first on the Geofront screens and then on her salvage mission, but it wasn’t until she got to her apartment, on the penultimate floor of a now-mostly-empty mid-rise, that Ritsuko turned to look past the balcony at Tokyo-3 and realized it really was just fucking gone. The ruins of the former skyline jutted out of the new lake like uninhabitable islands. Only the apartments on the outskirts, company blocks for Nerv, had survived. High-density housing turned to lakefront property.
It was almost beautiful, in a way, with the moon hanging over it like that, in faint light. The cicadas were singing. You couldn’t normally see the stars from here, with all the light pollution from the city. But now she could. She’d almost forgotten what they looked like.
Ritsuko reached for her cigarette pack on muscle memory, flicked it open, looked at the sad contents, fingered, again, the unlucky one. She wrinkled her nose. She slipped it back into the pocket of her lab coat.
Her apartment was unchanged from how she’d left it—how many days ago? Four, five? A week? A year? But it was the same apartment, which is to say it felt empty and alien in the same way it had since she’d taken her cat and driven up to Kyoto. The cat had been silent the whole drive. She was old and fat and white, and Ritsuko had gotten her in high school, and she was well past the point of caring about being put in a carrier and ferried off to her long-forgotten hometown.
Ritsuko shed first her shoes and then her lab coat. The latter she threw atop the kitchen table. She should have made time to drive up to Kyoto and seen her cat again, before she’d died. She’d been young when Ritsuko had found her, but not a kitten, just a young cat. And that was sixteen years ago now.
Ritsuko’s circular kitchen table seated four. Misato had eaten here on a handful of occasions. Nobody else. Two pointless chairs. She sat in one of them, leaving her usual chair unoccupied and tucked in. Rei Ayanami was officially fourteen years old. Ritsuko’s cat had been—seventeen? eighteen?—an old woman, in cat years, who shed all over her apartment and was in Kyoto now, silently. Were the endgame not fast approaching, she would still have been the closest thing Ritsuko would ever have to a child.
The closest Ritsuko would ever be to motherhood, driving her unbothered cat up to Kyoto to die somewhere less lonely than Tokyo-3. And Rei Ayanami would live forever.
Coming back here had been a mistake. But where else could she have gone? She was surely no longer welcome at Misato’s apartment. Even more surely Ayanami’s pall was hanging over the place, between Misato and Shinji.
Her office, her apartment, Misato’s apartment. There was nowhere else. Not with Gendo sleeping God-only-knew where, if at all.
Ritsuko rested her cheek in her hand and looked around. She’d left an ashtray on the counter, this one empty. The place really was funereal. It only had a single window, in the bedroom, small and northerly, so there was barely any light even during the day. And the absence of the city left a sonic void. Ritsuko could practically hear her own heartbeat.
The doorbell buzzed.
Ritsuko’s eyes darted to the door. Who would be here? Ibuki? Not Gendo; he would send someone else to fetch her, a Nerv agent. But it could be Ibuki, on that very errand, or on a personal visit. Ritsuko was not blind to the way Maya Ibuki looked at her, where her eyes fell when she thought nobody could see. Or it could be Seele.
She stood up as quietly as possible, sliding out from under the table without pushing her chair. The doorbell buzzed again. A Seele agent. Whoever tracked down Ryoji, here to send Gendo another message. Yes, that made sense. They must have tailed her here. Ritsuko reached, slowly, for—her gun was still in her locker at Nerv. Shit.
She took a step, then another, slowly, slowly, shuffling across the wooden floor rather than lifting her foot, holding her breath. The door wouldn’t hold if they tried to force their way in. There was a block of kitchen knives on the counter. She would keep her dignity, at least. She kept her eyes on the door, extended her hand, slowly.
The sound of a fist pounding against the door, thrice. “Ritsuko?”
Ritsuko’s shoulders slumped. She let her breath out. Then she walked to the door.
Misato was still in her work clothes, Nerv-issue red jacket over her all-black uniform dress. She folded her arms as though cold, hand tucked beneath her forearms, though the night was quite warm. Every night had been warm for fifteen years. Her eyes met Ritsuko’s. They were puffy, Ritsuko noticed, and bagged, but very clear.
“Major Katsuragi,” Ritsuko said, matter-of-fact.
Misato blinked. “I saw your car. I—sorry.”
She turned, abruptly, on her heel. She got three steps before Ritsuko said, “Care for a drink?”
Misato paused. “I quit,” she said, without turning around.
Since when? “Old times’ sake,” said Ritsuko. “Or I can make coffee.”
Misato looked back, over her shoulder. “Alright.”
Ritsuko’s coffee machine came with the apartment and bore the Nerv logo in white on the side of the pot, though seven years of use had worn much of it away. The fig leaf was mostly-intact, but the letters had lost their serifs and the motto was reduced to merely “GOD’S I” and much later “RLD,” only illegible remnants between them. She filled it halfway with water while Misato closed the door. Ritsuko heard the zip of Misato’s boots, her uncharacteristically careful, measured footsteps, the scrape of chair legs across the kitchen floor.
The pantry was mostly empty, but Ritsuko had a bag of pre-ground coffee beans that smelled only a little stale, and a supply of disposable filters that would probably last the rest of her life.
Misato, she found, upon turning away from the bubbling coffee machine, had taken up residence in the same seat Ritsuko had used earlier. She’d also moved Ritsuko’s discarded lab coat, throwing it over Ritsuko’s usual chair. Misato herself stared at the table, hands folded in her lap.
She looked, Ritsuko thought, oddly small. Misato Katsuragi had always been a person who took up space through sheer vivacity. Confident and authoritative in public, of course—but even in private, when her guard was down, her casual messiness demanded attention.
Ritsuko walked over to her coat. She picked it up, rifled through the pockets for her cigarettes and lighter, then tossed it back over the chair. She sat down across from Misato, deflowering her kitchen’s final virgin seat.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Ritsuko said, slipping the penultimate cigarette between her lips.
Misato glanced up, eyes following Ritsuko’s hands, the flick of her thumb against her lighter’s spark wheel. “It’s been known to happen,” she said.
Ritsuko took a long drag. Misato watched the light flare when Ritsuko inhaled, then looked away, suddenly, with a slight frown, as though repulsed with herself.
“Did you find Rei?” she asked, quietly.
Ah. The million-dollar question. Tomorrow Rei would be miraculously alive, apparently amnesiac but not much worse for wear, a cause for celebration across Nerv. The truth was not for Misato to know. Ritsuko had found what remained of Rei Ayanami, blackened and twisted in the wreckage of Unit-00’s plug. She was grateful the haz suit had prevented her from smelling it: burnt flesh and evaporated LCL. Rei’s plugsuit had partially melted, fused to her charred epidermis.
Ritsuko took the cigarette out of her mouth, twisted in her chair to grab the ashtray on the counter, and stubbed it out.
The coffee machine beeped, once, a small mercy. Ritsuko got up to busy herself with pouring. Misato took her coffee black, to Ritsuko’s memory, the same as she did.
“No,” she said, taking down two identical mugs—white, a set that matched the pot, exactly like the ones around the office—“we didn’t. There are still teams searching.”
In a small voice, more to herself than to Ritsuko, Misato said, “I see.”
Misato wrapped both hands around the mug when Ritsuko set it down in front of her. She didn’t actually take a sip. She just stared into the coffee, like she could divine in its black, wavering surface what Ritsuko would not—could not—tell her.
Ritsuko leaned forward, her forearm on the table, and took a sip of her own. It burnt her tongue. She couldn’t even taste it. The coffee was hot and amaroidal in her throat, yes, but this was only intellectual knowledge, not sensation, not feeling, not taste.
She set the mug back down, a fresh red stain on the rim. There were rings of water damage on the surface of the table. Had her apartment not come with Nerv-branded coasters?
“Hey, Ritsuko.” Misato looked up at her, abruptly, making eye contact for the first time since she’d stepped through Ritsuko’s door. “Where’s your lighter?”
Misato had gifted her a Zippo years ago, a heavy reusable metal thing, American-style, back when she was still in Germany at the Third Branch. This will be cheaper in the long run, the accompanying postcard had read, so use it! Happy birthday. And it was; she’d used it for years. Ritsuko glanced down. The lighter on the table was disposable plastic, four familiar letters printed top-to-bottom. Just like her coffee pot, just like her mugs. It was not an accusation, in Misato’s voice, which was bright and white-toothed, as though she had not been so quiet only seconds ago.
“The office,” Ritsuko said. She didn’t know if it was true.
Misato nodded. Then she looked away again.
This was not how things went, between the two of them. Misato talked at length about anything that occurred to her; Ritsuko chimed in when she had something to add, but mostly listened. That had been the shape of their friendship for a decade. Ritsuko was not good at filling conversational space. She had never been. It was not a skill one developed, with the surname Akagi.
Ritsuko wanted to do anything but talk about Rei. Her mother had killed the first, all those years ago. But she could think of nothing else. When she opened her mouth to break the silence, the words that came out were: “How is Shinji holding up?”
Misato winced. She put her coffee cup down, elbows on the table, pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes.
“Bad,” she said. “I don’t know how to help him. He cuts himself off.” She shifted her position, laying one arm down and resting her forehead in the hand of the other. “Everything I say hurts him,” she mumbled. “The more I say, the more he hurts.”
Ritsuko was not good at this either. Comfort. She’d known since junior high that she would be a terrible mother. She had no advice to give. She reached her hand out, curling her fingers over Misato’s.
“He probably needs space,” Ritsuko said, feeling hollow. “I did when I was his age.”
Misato’s shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes. “Maybe you’re right.” She brought her other hand away from her face, resting it atop Ritsuko’s, her coffee abandoned. She squeezed Ritsuko’s fingers.
“Ritsuko,” she said, “don’t you feel lonely, living here?”
A foolish question. Misato had decided years ago that Ritsuko was lonely despite Ritsuko’s insistence to the contrary. She mentioned it in every letter from Germany. The truth—that Ritsuko preferred living in solitude, she had even pulled strings to avoid having a roommate in college—never stuck. There was apparently no other reason to have a cat, in Misato’s mind, except for Ritsuko to disguise her alleged loneliness; not even to assuage it.
“You know I don’t,” Ritsuko said. “I’ve always lived alone.” She simply knew no other way to live.
“You had your mom.” Misato tightened her grip. “And your cats.”
One of those things was true. Naoko Akagi had never been around, not when Ritsuko was. It was Ritsuko and her cats, and then she went to school and it was just her, until she met Misato and Ryoji. Two friends were more than enough.
“But now you don’t have anyone but me,” Misato continued. She opened her eyes, furrowing her brows slightly, the way she did when she’d made a hard decision. “Ritsuko. You must get lonely, at least sometimes.”
Ritsuko’s turn to look away. She had Gendo. She was not lonely. She could fill any loneliness with want.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said, “what it feels like.”
Misato leaned across the table, conspiratorially. Ritsuko leaned forward too, drawn in by the movement, muscle memory forged over years of dining-hall lunches together. “I think you do,” Misato said.
Then Misato pressed her lips to Ritsuko’s, eyes closed. She dragged Ritsuko’s unresisting hand off the table and held it to her breast.
Ritsuko’s eyes widened. She leaned back, slightly, forcing Misato to move forward to keep their mouths together. She did not return the kiss, nor open her mouth to Misato’s insistent, prying tongue.
It was Misato who pulled away, frowning, eyebrows turned. “Are you mad about this morning?” she said. “I’m sorry, okay? I wanted to hope she was still alive.”
Ritsuko could hardly say that she had hoped Rei’s corpse had been completely obliterated by the explosion, nothing left but atoms. She just stared at Misato, feeling, for the first time in recent memory, stupid.
“Ugh!” Misato released Ritsuko’s hand, finally, and Ritsuko in turn pulled her hand from Misato’s chest, as if she’d been gripping a live wire. “What is it, then?” She narrowed her eyes. “Is it because I slapped you? It’s been two months, Ritsuko.”
Ritsuko had actually forgotten that the ruins of their friendship had ever sunk that low. But before she could open her mouth to say—something, anything—Misato said: “Hit me. I’ll make it up to you.”
Ritsuko blinked. “What?”
“Hit me,” she said, leaning in as if to kiss Ritsuko again, “if it will help. I want to fix it.”
“Misato,” Ritsuko said, “why did you come here?”
“Why,” Misato snapped, slapping her hands on the table, “are you like this? You never ask for help, you refuse it when it’s offered. You never let anyone shoulder any of your stupid burdens.”
“I’ve never needed help.” The words were false, and came automatically. She was talking to the only person she had ever leaned on for anything, though they were small things—going out for a drink after work to make her feel a little more human, passing her screwdrivers while she tinkered with Casper’s hardware.
Misato stood up, pushing her chair back. “Fine. If that’s how you’re going to be about it.” She turned toward the door. “Thank you for the coffee, Dr. Akagi.”
When Misato walked past, Ritsuko stood. She lunged for Misato’s arm, wrapping her fingers around her slender wrist. Misato balled her hands into fists, hunched her shoulders. She didn’t even look Ritsuko’s way.
“Misato,” she said, with gravity. When Misato didn’t speak, didn’t turn, didn’t raise her bowed head, Ritsuko stepped closer. Their shoulders were nearly touching. “We would have called you if we’d found Rei.”
“I know that,” Misato said, eyes on the floor.
“Then what”—Ritsuko leaned in close, her voice low—“did you want?”
Silence. Then, a whisper: “I don’t know. I just didn’t want to be alone.”
Ritsuko brought her other hand up to Misato’s chest, cupping her breast through her dress and bra. With intent—with her own intent. Misato gasped, a minute sound, less an intake of air than a confession. Ritsuko kept her gaze on Misato’s eyes, even as Misato refused to meet it, as she turned her face from Ritsuko’s. “You wanted this, instead,” Ritsuko said, a cold observation of fact.
Misato breathed the word “Yes” more than she said it, twisting the arm in Ritsuko’s grip. Ritsuko squeezed. Misato made another little sound, arched her chest forward, slightly, and brought her free hand up to Ritsuko’s cheek, thumb stroking the corner of her eye, over her mole.
Then she gripped the back of Ritsuko’s head and pulled her in. She kissed with more force than Ritsuko had ever been kissed with, driven by something Ritsuko knew could never have been love but did not recognize as lust, either, that might not have even been affection. Her mother had always said that Ritsuko was useless at understanding other people’s emotions. It was her fault, she’d written, in one of her letters all those years ago, as a parent; it was a consequence of her absence from Ritsuko’s life.
Ritsuko shut her own eyes, her tongue trailing Misato’s lower lip. She squeezed Misato’s breast again, harder this time. Misato whined into her mouth, and Ritsuko seized the opportunity to slip her tongue past Misato’s lips. All the tension drained out of Misato’s body. Her shoulders fell.
It was odd, Ritsuko thought, kissing without the scratch of stubble against her lips and chin. She couldn’t come up for air, with Misato’s grip on the back of her head, before Misato’s mouth was on her again. Their teeth clacked together awkwardly. Misato didn’t seem to mind. She buried her hand in Ritsuko’s hair, bit Ritsuko’s lip when Ritsuko withdrew her tongue. The breath in her mouth tasted like coffee, although Misato had not taken a single sip. Not a trace of beer on it.
She tightened her grip on Misato’s wrist. So hard her own hand hurt. She felt Misato grimace against her mouth, felt her twisting arm trying to escape. “Ritsuko,” she tried to say, but Ritsuko cut her off with another vicious kiss, wet and angry, teeth scraping the soft flesh and fine down hairs of Misato’s philtrum. Misato whined again, a high sound, the same tone she adopted when drunk.
With a fatal upward yank, she finally wrenched her arm free, and settled her hand on Ritsuko’s waist, hooking her thumb beneath her belt.
Ritsuko refused to give her this inch. Misato would take and take, if Ritsuko gave her the chance. She brought her own hand, no longer occupied with keeping Misato in place, to Misato’s hip, slid it down her thigh to the hem of her skirt. She noted the way Misato squirmed against her. Her hand slid up between Misato’s legs, skirt pooling over her wrist. Misato gasped at the contact. Her thighs parted to let Ritsuko in, hips involuntarily bucking forward to meet her palm.
Her body gave her up so easily. It was almost pitiable.
When Ritsuko pulled her mouth away, Misato let her go. But she kept her eyes closed. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth faintly and messily stained red, and there was a little incisor-shaped indent in her upper lip, just above her cupid’s bow, where Ritsuko had sunk her teeth.
“I’m sorry,” Misato said, in a low voice, before Ritsuko could speak, “I know I’m filth.”
Ritsuko didn’t quite know what to do with that. Misato spared her the need for a response. “Please?”
“You want to take this to the bedroom?” said Ritsuko. She pressed her hand up into Misato’s warm core. She was wet through her panties. Ritsuko knew the answer to the question before she asked it.
But Misato flinched and shook her head. “The table.”
“Fine,” said Ritsuko. This, she knew, kind of. Her first tryst with Gendo, her bare back against the cool surface of his desk in the Geofront. “Open your eyes, Major.”
“Don’t call me that.” She complied, though, irises dark and hungry.
Ritsuko took a step back, releasing Misato’s breast and removing her hand—now vaguely damp—from the warmth of Misato’s thighs. She looked her nominal superior up and down. Misato folded her arms across her stomach, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
“Strip,” said Ritsuko. “Then sit down.”
Ritsuko crossed her arms, in an analytical gesture, elbow in palm and fist on chin. Misato contorted her arm behind her for her zipper. It would have been much easier for her to turn around and ask Ritsuko to do it, but Misato was practiced at this, clearly—Ritsuko was not the only one who had lived alone, though Misato had always done so poorly, unhappily, off of TV dinners and Yebisu twelve-packs. She shifted her torso, curving her spine sideways, did something with the zipper that Ritsuko could not see, but that undid her dress, the high collar parting around her neck, the absent sleeves slipping down her shoulders. She shed it like skin, like stepping out of herself. She clicked her bra clasp apart, stooped to remove her panties, and she stood, baring all her raw and vulnerable parts, leaving Major Katsuragi a crumpled heap on Ritsuko’s kitchen floor.
This was not the first time Ritsuko had seen her naked. They’d briefly lived together in college, after she and Ryoji called it quits for good. And they had worked side-by-side at Nerv, shared a locker room in the Geofront, been on business trips in two-bed hotel rooms, bathed in the Hakone springs together. Nudity had been brief and mundane. Ritsuko was already familiar with the pale and jagged arc that ran up Misato’s torso, asymptotic with her left breast and diaphragm.
She kept the necklace on. It sat against her sternum, between her breasts, next to the tip of the scar.
Misato took three steps, enough for Ritsuko to notice she was still wearing socks, and hopped up onto Ritsuko’s kitchen table, next to her untouched coffee, long legs dangling off the side.
She accepted Ritsuko’s mouth eagerly this time, spread her legs for her, gripped her bare shoulders with her calloused hands. Ritsuko’s own fell to Misato’s waist. Ritsuko was still fully clothed, her nipples digging uncomfortably into the cup of her bra, but she felt as naked as Misato; every fumbling movement betrayed her inexperience. She licked down Misato’s jaw to her neck—she’d been kissed there, borne bruises to prove it: this is what men do, when they have a woman beneath them the way Ritsuko had Misato, on a table, in their hands.
When she bit, Misato gasped, dug her fingers into Ritsuko’s shoulders. A satisfying pain. She sucked at the flesh, the muscle, tendon, and vein below Misato’s skin, flicked her tongue over the nascent bruise. She’d never been on the giving end of this before. Misato’s hips twitched upward.
Ritsuko pulled away to admire her handiwork, a thin web of saliva yoking her mouth to the wet, lipstick-stained welt.
Misato rubbed at it with her palm, mild annoyance in her face. “That felt like a pretty bad mark.”
“Your uniform will cover it.” She traced her eyes further down Misato’s body, the jut of her collarbone, the rose-brown circles of her areolae. She had been beautiful the entire time Ritsuko had known her. This is what men saw when they looked at Misato Katsuragi. Tits and long legs. They did not see the scar.
The legs in question wrapped around Ritsuko, knees settling at her hips. Her strength belied her slim figure. “You can touch, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to just look.”
She did not. She slid her hands down to Misato’s pelvis, thumbs resting on her iliac crests. “Lie down,” she said, “and tell me what you want.”
Misato lolled back onto her elbows, which had the side effect of baring her breasts to Ritsuko. She took a deep breath. “I want you to make me dirty.”
Ritsuko dragged her right hand up to Misato’s stomach, palm over her navel, spreading her fingers. “I thought you already were, Major. You said you were filth.” She trailed her hand down, down, slow, methodical, noting Misato’s thighs tensing around her, Misato’s hips trying to rise. But Ritsuko held her down. “Is that not true? Or is it that you need me to prove it?”
“Yes,” Misato gasped.
To which? Not worth asking. Ritsuko’s thumb brushed dark curls. For all her obsessive dedication to armpit and leg waxing, Misato had always left her pubic hair untouched.
Ritsuko watched Misato’s eyes. They were half-closed, and when Ritsuko’s thumb found her clit—brushing it with a delicate and precise touch, like a filament to a microprocessor pin—she screwed them shut all the way, bucked her hips upward. “Ritsuko,” she said, “hurry up.”
“Hm.” Ritsuko pulled her hand away entirely. Before Misato could whine, she slipped it between their bodies, palm cupping Misato’s mound. She curved her middle finger upward, tracing her entrance, the tip just barely between her lips. “You are wet, Major. I hadn’t even touched you. You’ve left a stain on my skirt.”
Misato opened her eyes, scowling, brows hard-set. “Call me my fucking name, Akagi.”
Ritsuko slid the finger inside.
Misato’s breath hitched. Her body reacted before her brain did, hips bucking forward. Ritsuko pulled her finger most of the way out, pushed it back in immediately, up to the knuckle. She raised her other hand, slamming it on the table next to Misato’s head. She leaned forward, over Misato, face-to-face again.
“This is what you wanted so badly, Misato?” she said, lips curling into a snarl. “A fuck on my kitchen table?”
Misato squeaked, wretchedly, and nodded.
Ritsuko might have been the only person alive who had ever touched Misato Katsuragi this way. Was this how Ryoji had felt? All those years ago, two weeks ago? Did he see Misato like this, have her like this? Warm around his finger, on the verge of tears? Did they fuck on their kitchen table, in their apartment, back in Tokyo-2? Did she let him take control? Did she make him?
She almost asked. But for all her lack of warmth, Ritsuko had never been cruel.
She curled the finger when she sunk it inside, and savored the noise from Misato’s open mouth. That she could make someone unravel like this seemed miraculous and terrible. She curved her palm against Misato, pressing the heel into her clit. Misato arched her back, raised her hips to grind against Ritsuko’s hand.
When Misato surged upward for another kiss, Ritsuko let her take it, let her slip her tongue inside Ritsuko’s mouth, let her have the dignity of muffling the sounds she couldn’t hold back. Let it never be said that she was entirely pitiless.
She pulled her finger all the way out. Misato tightened her legs around her, viselike, unyielding. Ritsuko cut off Misato’s whine by sliding the tip of her ring finger into her as well, and stopped her from objecting by nipping at her lower lip.
It was Ritsuko who broke the kiss, tips of her fingers stroking Misato’s folds, slowly, up and down, in millimeters.
“You are dirty,” she said. “But I think everyone knows that, given how you dress.”
Misato hiccuped her name, a single sob.
“Am I wrong?” Ritsuko hissed into her ear. She slid her fingers inside Misato, up to the first knuckle, pulled them back out. She was soaked. “It’s obvious. It’s pathetic.”
“No, you—” Misato shuddered. “You’re right, I’m filth. I’m a bad girl. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry.” Ritsuko’s tongue flicked out, tracing Misato’s ear, up the silver stud in her lobe to her helix. “What is it that you want, Misato? Why are you here?”
Misato exhaled, long and ragged. “Ruin me.”
If this was Misato’s ruin, Ritsuko had been beaten to it. She shoved both fingers inside, implacable, burying them to the metacarpal with a single motion. Misato gasped in her ear. Ritsuko bit hers. Her teeth clacked against Misato’s earring. Not her finest moment, but Misato didn’t seem to notice. She whined Ritsuko’s name, squirmed beneath her. She tried to move her hips, to force Ritsuko to move her fingers, but there wasn’t enough space for her to accomplish much with Ritsuko on top of her.
Ritsuko laughed at her attempt. Misato groaned. “What do you want me to say, Ritsuko?”
Ritsuko rose up a little, to look Misato in the face. She was flushed with arousal and chagrin.
“Nothing in particular,” Ritsuko said. “But you could try to be a little less petulant.”
She withdrew, pulling her fingers back out until only the tips were still inside. But before Misato could do anything more than mewl, she thrust them back in again, palm brushing her lips. She found a harsh but steady rhythm, picked up a fast pace, wrenched noises from Misato that Ritsuko had only been dimly aware the human mouth could make.
Ritsuko leaned down again, lips parted. Her teeth grazed Misato’s nipple. Misato’s breasts were bouncing slightly, with the motions of Ritsuko’s pistoning fingers and Misato’s bucking hips. Ritsuko snapped, caught the nipple between her teeth, flicked the tip with her tongue. Misato hissed.
“Hey,” she said, but without any real venom, “that hurt.”
Ritsuko released her prize. “You’re the one who wanted to be ruined.” She pressed her mouth to the soft flesh of Misato’s breast, just above her areola, and sucked, hard, teeth abrading Misato’s skin. She tasted sweat.
Misato clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a high, woeful sound. Ritsuko fumbled for Misato’s clit with her thumb, fucking her in hard, shallow pumps of her fingers. She moved her own hips in time with her hand, forward and back, grinding against the back of her wrist through all her layers of clothing. When she found Misato’s clit, she pressed the pad of her thumb down with an unrelenting pressure. Misato squirmed, hips twitching with no rhythm at all, only desperation. Ritsuko curled her fingers again.
“Ritsuko,” Misato gasped through her own fingers, “Ritsuko, fuck, I—I—”
She came with a smothered noise, clenched airtight around Ritsuko’s fingers, drove her hips up into Ritsuko’s hand. Ritsuko slowed down only slightly, still sucking at the flesh of Misato’s breast, and rolled her thumb against Misato’s clit, fucking her through each wave. She curled her fingers again and again, on every inward motion. Misato sobbed into her own palm.
When Misato’s hips stilled, Ritsuko released her breast. The bruise was red and angry. Misato’s face was flushed, glowing with sweat, her breathing heavy and uneven.
The thankfully-room temperature coffee had spilled, and was dripping off the edge of the table to pool on the floor. Some had soaked into the foot of Ritsuko’s tights. She hadn’t even noticed. Ritsuko pulled her fingers from Misato, which sent a shiver up Misato’s torso. She spread her glistening fingers, flexed them experimentally, looked down at her palm. She felt—sticky. Her hand ached.
Misato finally unwrapped her legs from around Ritsuko’s pelvis, letting them hang limp off the side of the table. But she put her thigh down in the lake of spilled coffee on the tabletop. She made a face. “Ew.”
“It’s just coffee,” Ritsuko said. She leaned over to grab her lab coat from the chair it had been thrown over, and wiped her fingers on it. Not the worst substance it had borne. “It wouldn’t have been a problem if you’d actually drunk it.”
Misato folded her arm over her eyes.
Ritsuko picked up the cup of coffee, and her own—which had spilled too, though not quite so much—and dumped them in the sink. Then she turned back to the table and grabbed the lab coat again. She crumpled it up in her hands, and mopped the spill up. Darkness soaked into the white cotton.
Misato sat up. “You don’t own any towels?”
“This was right here.”
Misato raised her eyebrows in a skeptical gesture. Her hair was mussed, her face still post-coitally rosy. Ritsuko passed her the coat.
“Ritsuko,” she said, wiping her thigh clean, “don’t you want me to touch you?”
Ritsuko took a second to answer, leaning against the counter. Her underwear was soaked. All the synapses in her brain felt burnt out; broken circuits. “Do you want to?” she said, feeling mildly ridiculous.
Misato discarded the lab coat on the floor and hopped off the table. She took a step toward Ritsuko. “It’s about what you want.”
Ah. “I don’t think it is,” said Ritsuko, in the same objective, neutral tone she used when reading out synchronization reports. She tilted her head and smirked. “I think you want me to use you, Major.”
Misato bit her lower lip for a second, then sank to her knees. She leaned forward, wrapping a hand around each of Ritsuko’s nylon-clad calves. “Ritsuko,” she said, sotto voce, “I want you to use my name.”
Ritsuko swallowed. “Misato,” she said.
Misato’s hands crept up the back of Ritsuko’s legs. Ritsuko was suddenly too aware of how much clothing she was wearing, of the way her turtleneck clung to her back, damp with sweat. Misato’s fingers grazed the hem of her skirt. Ritsuko’s patience was wearing thin. She reached down, bracing herself on the counter with her other hand, and hiked the skirt up. Misato leaned in, eyes closed, and pressed her mouth to the inside of Ritsuko’s leg, just above the knee, through her tights.
Her hands slid up Ritsuko’s ass, stopping briefly to squeeze before she found the waistband beneath Ritsuko’s skirt. She hooked her fingers in and tugged down both Ritsuko’s tights and panties in one movement. Ritsuko thought she heard the nylon tear.
When Misato’s lips touched her clit, Ritsuko Akagi was only a burning body.
Her gasp was not sharp and loud the way Misato’s had been. It was barely a sound at all. Misato’s hands returned to her now-bare ass, gripping, pulling her hips forward. She sucked at Ritsuko’s clit with a gentleness Ritsuko did not deserve. She had been nowhere near gentle with Misato. She still wasn’t. She bit her lower lip.
Misato released her clit, only to flick the tip of her tongue against it. Ritsuko’s legs quivered. She gripped the edge of the counter, leaned back against it. The lip dug into her tailbone.
“Misato,” she said again, voice shaking. Misato redoubled her efforts, lapping at Ritsuko’s clit. When she grazed it with the tips of her incisors, barely threatening to nip at it the way Ritsuko had with her nipple, it sent arc flashes up Ritsuko’s entire body. She thrust her hips feverishly forward.
Ritsuko could not see, with the hem of her miniskirt crumpled in her fist, what Misato was doing, but she felt her tongue run up her slit, a long, slow tease. Ritsuko throbbed. That was the final straw. She unclenched her grip, letting the skirt fall of top of Misato’s head, and tangled her hand in Misato’s hair, the same way Misato had done to her. She bucked her hips again, pressing Misato’s face into her core.
This seemed to be the signal Misato had been waiting for. She sank her wet and restless tongue into Ritsuko’s folds, probing as far as she could. The sensation was—Ritsuko had never felt this before. She closed her eyes, which were threatening to roll into the back of her head. She had always pictured, when she imagined being on the receiving end of oral sex, the burn of stubble against her thighs. The smooth, soft skin of Misato’s cheeks betrayed her. This was reality.
She held Misato’s head close, barely letting her up for air, and Misato in turn gripped her ass, refusing to let Ritsuko pull back. She jerked her hips, fucking Misato’s face in an arrhythmic, appetent fit. Misato licked as though she were dying of dehydration, twisting her tongue. Ritsuko’s clit brushed against Misato’s nose, and she shifted her angle downward, slightly, chasing friction, grinding against the tip. Misato made some sort of muffled sound—whether in protest or pleasure, Ritsuko could not tell. Only harsh breaths, fraying at the seams, escaped her own throat.
Her orgasm came on her all at once. A spark in the pit of her stomach, and then all her fuses blew. She was reduced, for a beautiful instant, to smoke and atoms. Nothing more.
And then she came together again.
She released Misato’s hair and pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead, panting. She hadn’t been so out of breath in a long time. Misato shuffled back from between her legs and stood up. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Then the bridge of her nose, too.
Ritsuko took a couple of awkward, faltering steps, just enough to reach a chair. She sat down, elbows on the table, head in hands, taking great heaving breaths. She heard the scrape of wood on linoleum, Misato pulling away another chair to sit down herself. Ritsuko’s tights and panties were around her knees, her right foot was still wet with cold coffee, and she felt a slight damp spot in her skirt, beneath her thigh.
After a minute, Misato spoke, quietly. “How do you feel?”
Ritsuko did not know how to answer. She looked over at Misato for a long moment.
Then she sat up and twisted in her seat to grab the ashtray off the counter. The cigarette she'd stubbed out earlier had been mostly unsmoked. She slipped the lipstick-stained end back into her mouth. Where was her lighter? Ritsuko leaned back. There, on the floor by Misato’s chair, next to the pack of cigarettes. They must have fallen off while Misato was on the table.
She closed her eyes when she took the first drag. The smoke felt, somehow, more real in her lungs than air did, hot and biting.
“I don’t know,” she said, at last.
When she opened her eyes, Misato was holding her hand out, first two fingers parted, the same way she had always done back in their college days. Ritsuko picked up the pack. Only the lucky one was left. Just as well. Misato probably needed more luck than she did. She stuck it between Misato’s extended fingers.
Ritsuko flicked the lighter to life, and Misato leaned forward, cigarette between her lips. The flame cast her face in sharp chiaroscuro.
Then she leaned back and sucked in smoke, eyes elsewhere. The hickey Ritsuko had left on her breast was settling into a violent purple. She could see the outline of her teeth in it.
“This is why I came here, actually,” Misato said, voice soft. “I wanted a cigarette.”
Ritsuko folded her arm across her chest, resting her hand in the crook of her elbow. She inhaled. “I thought you quit,” she said, in a cloud of smoke. “I remember you quit when you were at Gehirn Three. You said they were too expensive in Germany.”
“Yeah,” Misato said. She stared at the cigarette between her fingers, the flame creeping down toward her skin, micrometer by micrometer. She hadn’t inhaled again. She just watched the smoke spiral up from her hand, and away, into nothing. “But sometimes you get a craving.”