ｓｎａｐ ｉｎｔｏ ｆｏｃｕｓ ｛ｍｅｌｌｏ／ｈａｒｕ｝［ｒａｔｉｎｇ： ｒ］ )
This time, when he needs to forget himself, instead of reaching for the strongest proof of vodka he can find, he shows up on Haru's doorstep in the middle of the night, asking if anyone else is home, and if there is, can he please take her away.
For all his imposing, she says yes, relenting with a sigh that tells him though his timing could be better, she'll go with him so long as he promises not to treat her like porcelain. Not during the night, and not during the morning after. Such a saint, she is, for asking so little of him when he asks the world of her. Because it's overtly apparent, from the way his hands are shaking, fingers grasping at his rosary and clawing at the crucifix, that he has no intention of being gentle with her tonight.
His mood is bad and it's making him vicious, vicious enough to make her bleed without trying. Somewhere between the drive to his apartment and the walk upstairs, he'd bitten her too hard, teeth gnashing and drawing scarlet from her lips. But he won't apologize for it, not just yet, because her hands are at his waist, fumbling with the lace-up leather that he's never seen in public without. Groaning into the skin of her neck, he helps her the rest of the way, numb to everything but graze of Haru's teeth against his chest as she repays him in kind for his earlier offense, and her slick heat once he's slid inside.
There's something in their violence together-mutual violence because Haru's digging trenches into his back by way of fingernail, and once she's finished, winds his rosary tight around her fingers and pulls him down for another fervid kiss-that bleeds months of barbed anger from his bones. And it isn't until he hears an audible snap followed by the cascade of beads falling to the floor that he realizes Haru's pulled too hard, breaking one of the only possessions that he's carried with him for the vast majority of his twenty-some years.
By all means, he should be furious, should be positively livid with the girl who's broken one of the only relics that exists to remind him of his past, of Nill. But he's here to forget, and that's what Haru's just given him.
When it's over, Haru lies beside him, breathing heavily, wondering, and finally, shamelessly asking, "Is it always like that?" The extension of the question, 'with other women', goes unsaid.
Turning to her, he gently touches the spot above her collarbone, there where the flesh sinks in toward the heart. "No, it's never like that," he muses, then kisses her hard.
Thank you.