scubatankfilledwithfarts. everybody's doomed (Reply)

Some [useless, blabbermouth] individuals say relaxation should be a luxury, only done when work has completely strained you, pulled you apart at the seams and nooks and crannies. When you’ve filed that last report, or finished up that big project that’s taken you six months and countless bottles of scotch, till your tears soak up your chair cozy.

Well that’s crap according to the philosophy of Fujiko Mine. Relaxation is necessary: good for mind, body, and spirit. Not to mention working hard until you drop and never seeing the profit of it, a single drop of a spa day or a night on the town, is for chumps. Not for mighty fine ladies.

So that’s why at least four times a week the lady looter puts a record on [lately it’s been latin jazz, lots of Carlos Santana and the like, and enough incense to throw a veil over her own need for nostalgia and what ifs and dancing all night long until dawn creeps around the corner as it always does], lights drowsy-waxed candles with scents that aren’t too overwhelming and starts a bubble bath. She’s currently shoulder-deep beneath the depths of her tub, hands at her sides to swish and swirl within the warm scented waters. Music rises to a crescendo until it falls, washes over her, soothes her bones. She’s absolutely earned this.

Nothing can ruin this until it does. Fujiko sighs, though it's halfhearted. When honeyed brown eyes slide open she peers into Lupin the Third’s gray ones and says,

“Polite guests at least call.”

He has the audacity to help himself to her glass of wine, lips pulled into a smirk around the rim. He’s rumpled; suit torn and covered in soot, there’s a burn mark on the elbow of his jacket like someone’s tried to torch him.

“We just got done with a job, thought I’d surprise you.”

She arches a brow a him. Her mind turns. “You didn’t bother to tell me about it? That’s awful strange.”

That smirk of his twists into something of all lupine of his form, “What, you jealous?”

Not one bit. More curious, damnably so; he hadn’t come to her, prostrated himself at her feet. That speaks to her more than his running mouth and libido.

“Hardly,” said with a chuckle, her fingers idly run along the surface of the water again; her eyes pick up the way his follow a bead of water trickling down her arm, follows into the curve of her shoulder.

“I had thought there was a lack of buzzing around here which usually means you strutting and bragging.”

“I can be discreet,” Lupin assures her, his voice lowering at least two decibels. His fingertips slide across the edge of the tub, knock the soap into the water below. “Whoops.”

Discreet when it comes to work, yes, but when people are involved? It shows within the depths of sparkling eyes, in the lines of bodies he rushes to meet.

[they are a two-sided coin in that]

“Speaking of, where’s Jigen? I haven’t heard his grumbles once.” As much as Jigen is Lupin’s shadow these days, there’s a certain safety of predictable in their duoship.

Lupin bites back a hiss when her fingers find his around her thigh, her nails dig into his skin.

“Ouch-ouch-ouch, gentle, gentle-- Last I heard? Looking for your mayo.”

Fujiko blinks. It isn’t as though the image is anything domestic, the gunman with a 3 second reaction time rooting around in her fridge. But she laughs anyway, privy to the way Lupin’s gaze flickers to her mouth.

“And I suppose he’s in worse shape than you. You’re both so classless.”

Neither confirming nor denying this Lupin rests his elbows on the edge of the tub and huffs, affronted.

“Why that’s rude. We came all this way to see you—Well, I did. And the first thing you do is ask where he is? I can’t believe you fell for his itsy bitsy.” He hits her with the puppy dog eyes and, while appropriately pathetic, are aimed at her chest and she is immune.

She begins to slowly lather a washrag. Glides the soapy suds languidly over her shoulders, her neck, her vulnerable little neck, Lupin knows he could just come over here and take a little nibble if he wanted. But he can’t.

“To mooch off me, that’s what you mean. That’s why you’re here.” She knows men quite well—they take and take and when there’s nothing left, well. There’s nothing. No, not unless she gets there first. And she always does. “And my medical supplies no doubt. You’re like a little boy, running around.”

Jovial though his face may be, something a little more solemn settles in his eyes, the corners of that never-ending grin. It sharpens. And she knows there have been razors less sharp than when that grin is flashed to his enemies.

“Oh yeah? How do you figure?” A slow question for a slow answer.

“Because I know you. You run around because you’re bored, because maybe this next job will be the one that catches your attention for more than five minutes and reminds you you’re alive.” Is this lecture for herself or for the thief who’s got a full frown pulling at his mouth? Is it for the acid bubbling beneath her teeth?

Maybe she doesn’t care if it spills, here in her bath water and burns her to the bone, sears his flesh.

[because in all the ways she knows him this, too, is a challenge, baring her white throat to say: don’t take your eyes off me when you take a bite]

Finally, finally: “That’s an awful big assumption, Fujiko Mine. But I’ve got one better.”

Before she can give a coy oh? before she can settle an expression on her face like elastic, before she can blame it on the wine, Lupin plops into the tub, clothes and all, long legs pushing her against the edge of the porcelain, his arms a cage around her [heart]. Water sloshes around them, spilling onto the Egyptian thread-count rug beneath.

“What now? What am I going to do now? Am I going to take you right here? Am I going to scrub your back?” His voice rasps to the thin sliver of a purr, of an engine between his ribs. “Will you know me then?” His words burn like magma down to her bones, washes everything away that water cannot.

“You won't. You’ll kiss me like a gentleman.” Chin up, she gazes into those dark eyes. The confidence of a crown high on her head.

“Oh?” Lupin’s tone is neither coy nor a rumble where his chest is pressed to hers. An airy sigh. “Why?”

Fujiko’s voice seals his coffin.

“Because you love me.”

Supernovas explode in those gray eyes. Lupin’s mouth parts--

Fin.