a/n: i'm...very disappointed by the sudden birth of the asukumi side of the fandom for personal reasons mostly and so i decided to write the fic where i indulged myself in everything i like to write about, everything i'd been too nervous to write about in much depth. this is a kumirei fic, plain and simple. happy early new year's, i'm glad 2016 is almost over.

"Urgh- Reina, d-do you think we could switch for a little while?" Kumiko staggered behind the girl in the white trenchcoat, the heavy euphonium twisting her back in ways she didn't think possible.

"This isn't exactly light, you know," Reina replied, shifting the comically large backpack that rested on her shoulders. "Your mother told me that we could only do this if we were prepared, so we came prepared."

"It kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?"

"Hmm?" Reina looked back at her, eyes as brilliant as the stars beginning to pop up in the sky.

"Asking my mom. I mean, this is something just for us two, after everything . . . after everything that's happened, y'know? Nobody's really supposed to know."

"Nobody from school has any idea where we are, if that helps."

"It does."

"I'm glad to hear it." Reina let out a tiny squeak as she straightened her back, the bag's contents clanging with it. Kumiko smiled at how adorable it was. "In any case, we're almost there." The two girls walked across the gravel turned shades of blue by the moonlight, passing by trees and landmarks that felt as familiar to Kumiko as her own home. She wondered if Reina felt the same way about the mountain, the significance it held.

"Hey, there's the summit!"

"I'm surprised you didn't notice it before," Reina teased, surging forward. "You seem to know this place better than I do, somehow."

"Call it sentimentality, I guess." Kumiko sat down on the stone steps raised above the earth, cold and familiar. "Anyway, we should probably set up camp before we do anything else."

"I'd second that." Reina set down the bag with a heavy clank. "Are you sure that this tent will hold?"

"Nope." Kumiko rested her euphonium case on its side before heading over to Reina, who was currently emptying the bag of its contents. "Did you keep the manual with you?" Reina held up the flimsy sheet of paper in lieu of an answer.

"I've never set up a tent before, I should warn you."

"Neither have I." Kumiko dragged the yellow mass of slippery fabric from the bag, taking care not to accidentally stab herself with one of the pegs. "H-hey, do you think this is legal? Sleeping on top of a mountain like this?"

"I don't see why not." Reina peered at the manual, looking to be at an utter loss. "I don't understand this." Kumiko looked up from grappling a part of the sheet.

"Don't understand what?"

"This entire . . . thing. I don't get it. I never went camping when I was younger, I don't have any frame of reference to draw from."

"Mamiko always wanted to do a camping trip right by the apartment, where we could still see the building, but we don't live in a place with much . . . well, much of anything, really. There wasn't any room." Kumiko smiled at the memory. "We ended up sleeping in the living room to at least try. We burned, like, five marshmallows that night."

"Do you miss her?" Reina banged down on one of the pegs with her shoe.

"Eh?"

"Your sister. Do you miss her?"

"I guess, yeah." Kumiko looked down at the manual kept on the ground with Reina's trumpet case. "I don't get this either, if that helps."

"It does." Reina smiled, and Kumiko could feel her cheeks flushing. She almost tripped on the wire holding the tent in place.

"It looks survivable, right?" Kumiko stepped back to admire her handiwork, and a mess of yellow plastic stared back at her.

"It'll do. I'll drag you out if we start suffocating in the middle of the night." It was said matter-of-factly, so bluntly and with such clearness, that Kumiko wondered how often Reina thought of these things.

"What now?" Reina walked to the edge, running her hand along the railing.

"I was thinking we could talk. About things that've bothered us. This place is sort of meant for that, isn't it? It's private, at least. We can say anything here."

"I don't-"

"Come to the edge with me."

"What?" Reina patted the spot on the railing next to her hand.

"Do you remember the second time we went up here?"

"How could I forget?" Kumiko bitterly laughed. Reina looked down guiltily.

"Do you remember what I did when we reached the summit?"

"Yeah."

"I want you to do that. If you want to, obviously."

"T-to just . . . scream?" Kumiko looked down at the glimmering city lights below, her expression the very definition of quizzical.

"Exactly."

"About what?"

"Whatever you've been bottling up." Reina clenched the railing, and Kumiko rested her hand on top of Reina's.

"Okay. Uh, h-here goes." Kumiko took a deep breath before releasing what could only be described as a bloodcurdling screech. "That's for dragging me into all of this crap I didn't even know about!" Reina smiled knowingly, but Kumiko kept her eyes on the buildings below. She hardly even noticed when the girl beside her let out a scream of her own.

"We never even got gold!" she yelled, her voice ringing clear across the mountain. Kumiko dug through her sweater pockets until she found the tiny plastic flower that had given her so much grief the past few months.

"That's for everyone trying to set me up with Shuichi!" she screamed, flinging the hairpin out into the distant moonlight, out far beyond her sight. "That's for thinking I'd ever 'find it in me' to fall in love with him!"

"I'm never going to be good enough for Taki-sensei!"

"That's for Asuka leaving before I could tell her everything!" Kumiko could feel warm tears pooling in her eyes, and she didn't make any effort to stop them.

"I've been working my ass off for nothing!"

"I'm in love with someone who doesn't even notice!"

"I'm in love with someone who drags herself into other people's problems!" Reina's voice had gone hoarse, and she turned to Kumiko, but she was already shaking, nothing but the vast blues and greens ahead of her.

"I d-don't know . . . I don't know what I'm supposed to do." Kumiko crumpled to the stony ground, grateful for the pressure beneath her knees, her voice weakened and unsteady. Reina crouched down beside her.

"You're . . . in love with . . ."

"It's s-supposed to be free of judgement, right? I can say anything I want?" Kumiko was starting to regret throwing the hairpin off the side of the mountain, it would've done her good to have something to fiddle with right about now.

"That's the point, yes, but you're-"

"You've been so wrapped up in your goals and all the stuff with Taki-sensei, I c-couldn't talk to you, Reina, I couldn't talk to you, and do you know how that feels? I was so scared that you didn't want to see me anymore, that week when you weren't talking, I thought you hated me and-" Reina pulled her into a hug.

"You're terrible," she murmured, holding Kumiko ever closer. "You're so, so terrible." Kumiko let a fresh set of tears tumble down her face, and she cursed every pretentious novel writer and every movie that had ever made tears seem beautiful, because she was sobbing and red-faced and the complete opposite of elegant in every way. Reina clung to the fabric of her sweater, holding her like she was the last lifeline on a sinking ship, and Kumiko never wanted to let go. After what must've been at least five minutes but felt like hardly a second, Reina pulled away, and Kumiko could only stare at her, looking like some kind of ice queen in the light of the moon but feeling like the very warmth of the sun, a familiar feeling that Kumiko loved so dearly. She looked at Reina again, and she saw months of what had become so undeniably important.

(and there they were, standing in a field of yellow flowers, red thread tied around their fingers)

Reina freed her hair from its ponytail.

(and there they were, special and ambitious, mountaintop confessions cutting through thick summer air)

Kumiko looked to the haphazardly built tent for a moment before turning back to the girl in front of her.

(and there they were, the universe aligned just for two girls, just nothings in the grandest scheme of it all but everythings to each other)

She leaned in just a bit closer, searching Reina's face for any signs of discomfort or apprehension, but there was none.

(and there they were, nothing less than soulmates)

"I love you," Kumiko breathed, with none of the coyness that had preceded her other confessions, just those three words that could do nothing and everything. She pulled Reina close and kissed her, wanting to forget everything that came before and everything that would come after. "I love you, I love you, I love you." Kumiko said the words as if she'd never say them again, a great weight lifted from her shoulders. She wanted no past, no future, all she wanted was Reina - an unhealthy way to live, she knew, so hopelessly dedicated to a single person, but she figured the world had room for one more universe to be held inside of it. Reina was not Kumiko's entire life, nor did she need to be, but by god from the way the mountain had started to spin Kumiko could've sworn that Reina had gained control of gravity itself.

"I love you too," Reina said, forehead touching Kumiko's. "I've confessed so many times, it's a surprise you didn't know earlier."

"W-well, call me terrible, then," Kumiko joked.

"I'd like to think we've moved past that." The stars were glowing. "I'd like to think that we've grown up, just a little." Reina stood up, offering Kumiko her hand. "Dance with me," she said. Kumiko nodded, not knowing in the slightest how to dance. Reina delicately pressed herself against Kumiko so that they were face-to-face, chest-to-chest.

"I don't know how to waltz," Kumiko mumbled. Reina smiled.

"Neither do I," she said, and the two were touching foreheads once again, and neither of them had a single idea what they were doing, but the world seemed to fall away like paints washed off with water until it was just the two of them - not even really dancing, but standing close with the stars dancing overhead.

It wasn't until hours later that the two girls finally decided to clamber into the haphazardly built tent, still holding hands as they crawled into their own sleeping bags.

"We'll have to go home in the morning," Kumiko murmured, arms wrapped around Reina's sleeping bag as if she was holding the girl inside of it.

"I know." Reina looked up at the roof of the tent, which was bent at a painfully awkward angle. "We still have one more thing to do tomorrow, though, so you'd best go to sleep." Kumiko nestled deeper into the sleeping bag. "I'll still be here in the morning."

Kumiko and Reina fell asleep wrapped in each others embrace, only separated by their sleeping bags.

Kumiko was awoken by the sound of a trumpet ringing clear and powerful outside of her tent, and one look at the empty sleeping bag beside her confirmed what she already knew.

"Mmf . . . Reina, couldn't you have waited until after dawn to do this?"

"Nope," Reina replied, and Kumiko could practically envision the sly grin she'd be wearing. Kumiko forced her way out of the tent, still groggy and exhausted, her hair sticking up in every possible way as she took her euphonium from its case.

"What're we going to play?" she asked, shivering at the cold morning air.

"I was thinking we could play the Crescent Moon Dance. It might not be much with just the two of us, but we can try."

"Alright." Kumiko shrugged off her coat, which had served as another blanket during the night. A battered book fell from the pocket.

"What's that?" Kumiko scrambled to pick up the book while Reina curiously looked down at it, managing to take it before Kumiko had a chance to.

"Oh, uh, it's j-just something I got from Asuka-senpai, nothing really." Reina flipped to a page labelled Hibike! Euphonium, and Kumiko could feel that cold swelling in her chest she'd felt that day of graduation return.

"She wrote a trumpet part?"

"Yuuko's actually been helping me with that. Asuka-senpai left a bunch of it blank, so I, uh, thought that maybe . . ." Kumiko trailed off without finishing her thought. "It's not finished yet."

"I think I'll be able to follow along."

"If you say so, Reina." Kumiko closed her eyes, now knowing the piece by heart, while Reina lifted the trumpet to her lips and the music began to float from the instruments, melodic and calming. I wonder if there's anyone who can hear us. The euphonium stole the breath from her lungs in the best ways possible, leaving her feeling as if she were floating with Reina by her side. There was nobody there between them, now, and Kumiko knew she couldn't imagine wanting anything else.

a/n: credit to taki-sensei on tumblr for the idea of a kumirei duet with the song, the arrangement can be found if you look up "asuka's solo as duet" on youtube