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Tama had no idea how they’d gotten into this situation, but she could hazard a guess.
Shifting her weight, hair mussed up and most definitely tangled, she placed her free hand behind the head of her roommate - the very same one currently using Tamamo as a pillow.
The curtains hadn’t been fully drawn before they’d slept last night, allowing a subtle wash of sunlight to drizzle through. It spilled out over Oguri, nuzzled into Tama’s side, and draped over the cloud of ashen hair to warm her features into something ethereal - sleep-addled, sappy mind speaking.
Despite the very dead arm she was going to have when she finally freed herself, she didn’t really want to move. Instead, she sifted her fingers through each strand, adoration numbing the weight of the leg strewn over her stomach.
Of course. Sure, there were two beds in each dorm so that two people could sleep comfortably in their own space.. but it seemed like sharing one bed was just how it had ended up.
“Ya big loaf,” Tama murmured, squeezing her eyes shut again to soothe the tingling in her cheeks. “Look where yer’ve got us.”
The day before had been a pretty unassuming one.
Aside from Oguri discovering a plate of food she only called ‘decent’ (a sign that only now seemed to hint at a peculiar mood), the two had done their usual. Tamamo lifted weights, hands buckling below the somewhat unfamiliar sensation of burden after her retirement, and Oguri spotted with a quiet concentration. After that, the ‘ashen beast’ ran a treadmill essentially into the ground, and since that didn’t satiate her, they moved to the tracks instead.
All in all, a pretty normal routine, right?
Yeah. It really was.
Until it wasn't.
Lights off, body thoroughly showered, hair dried enough not to dampen her pillows, Tama finished by throwing her towel over the back of her desk chair. The lamps on Oguri’s side were already off, leaving only the slim crack in the curtains to offer what little light it could.
She flopped onto her bed unceremoniously. breathing in the scent of her quilt, she all but buried herself into its layers in a bid to sleep a full eight hours. “Goodnight, Ogurin!”
This kind of exchange was normal, too.
But unlike usual, stagnant like dead water, the room stayed silent. None of the sleepy, Oguri-styled “goodnight, Tama”s that she was used to.
Straightening up, Tama pushed herself out from below her covers, wiping away the sleep with a disgruntled groan. Once she could see again, her eyes made out a lump of bedding on the opposite side of the room, taking up the space that her roommate usually draped herself across the length of.
The quiet was uncharacteristic, an unnerving coldness that had burrowed its way into their warm routine. Concern pulled her almost to her feet, even though, really, it wasn’t that she needed a goodnight or anything.
She just thought tha-
A sniffle.
Missable, at first, but growing steadily louder now that Tama focused on it.
“Ogurin..?” She asked, ears folding back at the shuddering breath she received in response. “Are ya cryin’?”
What a dumb question to ask. Cringing at herself, she tried to ignore the way her heart tugged at her chest; the bundle ahead of her seemed to shift again, a hole opening up to allow sound to leave less muffled. “Yeah.”
“Yer’ll get yer bedding all snotty like that,” Tama said, an instinctive response - she was a big sibling, after all.
The blanket moved, rustling shortly before, sheepish and hesitant, Oguri pushed herself out. First, a pair of fluffy, grey ears, and then the full head with a crown of ruffled hair. She shook it out, but Tama watched as the efforts only seemed to make it all worse.
“I’ve been crying for a while,” she mumbled, looking up. Full, heavy tears had flushed the girl’s face pink, nose tinted and eyes welled with fatigue. “I don’t know how to deal with it..”
Despite the situation, Tama couldn’t help but try at a smile. “What, have ya never cried before?”
Oguri shook her head in a gentle ‘no’, her hair somehow tousling even more around her puffed cheeks in the process. It made sense, though. Recounting their history together, from loud battles on the turf to quiet reunions, there was a thorough thread that sifted through every bittersweet memory: Oguri only ever cried tears of happiness around her, anger and negativity poured into her boots on the turf instead.
To see her crying like this was to see a side of Oguri she never had before, and it tugged at a strange, festering side of Tama that she couldn’t name nor really understand. Right now, though, there were more pressing matters. She rose to her feet and crossed the room.
“‘Must be something real hurtful to get the Ashen Beast all down in the dumps,” Tama said, careful not to be too light - but also not too heavy - with her tone. “Which means it’s not the kinda thing ya should deal with on yer own.”
Confused, Oguri tilted her head, ears flopping to the side as if she didn’t have the energy to keep them up. Tama swallowed down the sudden urge to squeeze them, the cuteness of the whole thing not enough to distract her from the fact Oguri was sad.
With steeled resolve, she tugged gently at the blanket wrapped around her rival’s shoulders. “Up ya get. My bed can fit one more.”
A pair of big, weepy eyes met hers in a shiny mix of bewilderment and gratitude. Before Tama could even explain what the offer was for, Oguri had sprung to her feet, practically cornering the shorter girl in between her giant of a roommate and the even larger quilt she’d dragged with her.
“Thank you!” She whisper-shouted, stooping just a little. Tama took it as her chance to hurdle them both back towards her bed, pulling Oguri by the fistful of blankets she’d stolen.
“Yeah, yeah, yer welcome,” she muttered, face a little hot and skin a little tingly. “But ya’ve gotta promise to tell me what’s got you upset, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
As complacent and gentle as ever, Oguri waited for Tama to get comfortable in her own bed again, which really just consisted of shuffling right up to the wall. This was a necessary precaution, and one that made itself clear to be perfectly valid. As soon as Oguri joined her, the whole other side of her bed was engulfed in grey and white. The mattress dipped and then sprung, adjusting to the new weight, and settled with them both meeting eyes - side to side.
This close, Tama could practically feel the warmth of Oguri’s breath; see the way her eyelashes fluttered as if weighed down by sloping tears; smell her shampoo, sticking to her skin and the soft pooling of her hair. She looked serene, but she was sad.
Her heart snagged once again.
“Talk when ya want to, Ogurin,” she whispered, hand settling between their heads on the pillows. “I got a knack for listeni-“
She felt something nuzzle against her palm with a breathy whimper, sliding into her hold and keeping itself there. Oguri had pressed her cheek (nose first) into Tama’s hands, eyes squeezing shut in a vulnerability that sought out her warmth as comfort. Her fingers flexed, awkward at first, and then settled to stroke up and down the pink of her flushed cheek.
“I just felt.. lonely,” she said, words falling from her lips with a fragility that echoed her tears. “I love Tracen, but sometimes I miss-“
“Home?” She wondered, catching the flicker of recognition in Oguri’s eyes as they opened. “I understand.”
Of course she did. After all, homesickness had been the very thing that blew out the last of Tama’s energy. That day, when the sight of Oguri’s back was burned into her eyes, she had swallowed down her defeat.. and it tasted like nostalgia. The crowd cheered, roared, pelted her ears with celebration and, in it all.. Oguri had turned to look at her, beaming with a pure kind of happiness, and pulled her into a hug that smelled like home.
Home, she had thought. Maybe it was time to go home.
“We umas like to run, right?” She continued, tapping Oguri’s thigh with her tail. “The issue is, sometimes we only turn around at the finish line.”
That Arima Kinen, when the blue of Oguri’s eyes were as vivid as Osaka’s skies, she was forced to look back.
“That’s when we realise just how far we’ve gone from where we started. For us, it’s a longer way than most,” she mused, her heart thumping in her chest as a tail joined hers, intertwining smoothly and without a word. “And.. maybe the people who cheered for us at the start can’t be where we ended up.”
She heard a breath hitch. “You were lonely too, Tama?”
“For a little while, yeah. We’re alike, ya know,” she said, pressing in to touch her forehead against hers. “As happy as we are, sometimes we wish they were right here with us to see it.”
The point of contact bore a warmth - something close, intimate, skin on skin that felt so much like shared understanding. “Then I’ll run with you,” Oguri promised. “Together.”
“Till it’s time to go home?”
“.. For as long as you’d like to.” She pulled back a little, and Tama swiftly intervened to keep her close.
“That sounds like a confession, ya goof,” she mumbled, unable to hold back her smile. “But, I guess it doesn’t sound so bad.”
It was this that seemed to encourage Oguri rather than reassure her.
Sinking into Tama’s palm, she turned her head until the brush of her lips startled the shorter girl from her reverie. Each finger earned a soft kiss, tender as the hand that had slid up to cusp her wrist, and curled against Oguri’s nose instinctively. “My ma used to kiss my fingers like this,” she recollected, a fondness seeping into her voice. “One kiss each before bed.”
Tamamo practically lit on fire.
Cheeks burning, ears twitching, she gulped down her nerves and choked out a hoarse laugh. “Rememberin’ things like that helps ya feel a bit more connected, don’t it?” She asked, glancing away. “Though, ya gotta be a bit careful with who yer kissin’. People might get the wrong idea.”
“That’s okay,” Oguri mumbled, brows upturning as she gazed cluelessly up at her. “This is only for you.”
“Hah?” Her jaw dropped, before she nudged it back up with her free hand. Was she bold or just really oblivious? It really could be either or with this girl. “Yer really a handful, y’know that?”
Oguri’s gaze flickered down to the hand she was occupying. “I guess.”
“Not like that!”
A trickle of warmth brushed her skin, giggles slipping between her fingers as Oguri finally gave Tama her hand back. Only, now she was curling into her entire body, a big, needy dog with a wagging tail to boot. “Thank you, Tama.”
“Mn.” Content herself, she twisted to settle into her rival’s arms. “Yer more than welcome, Ogurin.”
“Tama?”
A quiet, kind of dopey voice roused her from her sleep.
Groaning, she pried open her eyes, soul practically leaping from her body when she came face to face with Oguri. The tip of her nose brushed against Tama’s, hair falling down to frame them both and spill like silver over the pillows.
“It’s morning.”
“I could see that if ya weren’t on top of me!” She grumbled, reeling to the side before suddenly stopping in her tracks. Her dead arm felt like a boulder.. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow—“
All the while, the culprit of her sorrows was watching on from beside her. She leaned in close, and just as Tama turned back to say something, inclined her head. “Can I kiss you?”
She paused, loaded, registered and then, finally, nodded?
The breath in her lungs was stolen away by the meeting of their lips. Whatever complaint had formed on her tongue melted away in the warmth of it, sudden and unexpected but somehow still gentle and tentative - everything that Oguri was, wrapped up into a clumsy act of love.
It lasted for only a moment, so brief that Tamamo had half the mind to recapture it. However, the look in Oguri’s eyes was bright and clear, the kind of look she’d had on that day when they raced for the first time.
She opened her mouth, expression confident.
“Morning breath is as bad as they say..”
“Eh?”