"You know, when you said to make time for a nice spot of beach leisure" Bayonetta commented, sitting down on her towel overlooking the fine sandy shores of Fort Tilden beach "I was thinking this was going to be more of a day thing and not a, you know, midnight rendezvous"

She much preferred the sun and the early afternoon heat, even with the bustle of large families, loud teens, sleazy bros and all those things, to bathing out in the shine of the August full moon. Few things in life manage to win over the simple luxury of sand, sun and surf which, unfortunately, was something Jeanne quite disagreed with. She rarely enjoyed getting pelted with the obnoxiously bright noon light and, truth be told, she burned easier than a marshmallow over a roaring fire.

Yet there she was in a ruby red bikini so well fitting and small, saying it was sinful was a ridiculous understatement but it wasn't quite the well defined muscles on display that caught her eye and gave her a bad case of dazed breathtakingness.

Jeanne was guarded, well to say she was guarded was another ridiculous understatement. She was the kind of guarded that had come from years of being groomed for adversarial competition within the Umbra and literal centuries at Balder's command and she wasn't given to switching off. Her constant, relentless drive to never be caught in a moment of weakness left little space for the vast expanse of her softness to shine through.

But at that very moment in time, with the cold breeze of the night blowing in and the heavy, damp presence of the ocean pressing on them like an ancient deity, she was…

Relaxed

More than that, Jeanne was smiling at her in a way she rarely saw at present time but that flashes and pings of her lost memories told her she used to see it more often when the days of youth seemed endless and were filled with unlimited possibilities.

"Yeah?" She laughed, pure and light in a way that made Jeanne glow with breathtaking life and by God, Bayonetta didn't think she could fall in love with her grumpy, neurotic and infuriatingly stubborn lover any harder but there she was, doing just that. " I think maybe you should have asked instead of just blurting out a yes I get to see you in a bikini"

Cereza caught herself blushing like some shy maiden in a corny romance novel, an action that earned her a soft brush of the back of Jeanne's hand on her cheek and a lingering peck. In any other day she would have grumped at her smug look but she decided to let her have it.

"Well, can you blame me?!" She defended, waving her arm towards the deserted beach. "Who on their right mind wants to get some sand on during the night? It didn't even cross my mind as a possibility when I said yes."

"Maybe it was just a ploy to get you alone and in a cute little pink number in a hard to access deserted beach" The tone was sultry in a way that lit all corners of her brain and the teeth nibbling at her jaw nearly made her combust then there.

But she didn't like losing power games.

Ever.

"Darling, your idea of romantic involves angel guts and letting me pin you to the wall." The ensuing hard bite to her neck made her yelp in surprise and she good-naturedly shoved the other woman from her.

"Talk about ruining the mood, Cereza" She said while she slumped back on her own towel but the soft contentment was still all there in her voice " Fine, maybe I didn't bring you here to have my wicked way with you. Truth is…"

The pause was heavy and Bayonetta knew at that very second this was something more important to her lover than she was letting on. "Truth is, we used to this somewhat regularly."

"Back in Vigrid?"

A nod was followed by a bout of silence that normally signified Jeanne was accessing less than pleasant eras in search of more pleasant memories.

"I used to come out with mother to train when the moon was full, off the coast of Spain and to hang out with my proper Umbra friends in the Portuguese beaches that were about as warm as a glacier to the face and…"

She snorted and ran her hand through her long, platinum hair. "I used to meet you by the little beach near the waterfall grove in the mountains, you see, fairly regularly."

Bayonetta perked up and leaned on one arm towards her. "But one day you were, for reasons to this day I don't know, bathing a ways away from that and I was sprinting through the forest in my lynx form."

She bit her lower lip to hide a smile and Jeanne rolled her eyes at her. "At least do me the favor of bursting into laughter *after* I tell the full story."

"Anyway, there I was energetically attempting fitness when I run into you."

"Naked. Literally" She mumbled the last part but it was too late as Cereza had started laughing and even in if it had been a humiliating moment for her, in a way, it was still a funny story.

In distant hindsight of course.

"You fell with all the grace of a sack of rocks back into the stream and I right with you. When I noticed you had 0 clothes on your person, I did what any flustered teenager would and well ran like Jubileus was on my heels in what you described as a 'huff of red fur and whiskers'" She finished, raising her arms to do visible air quotes as Bayonetta wiped tears from her eyes and complained about getting sore abs.

It hadn't been her most graceful moment, she had to admit but she had noticed she had ended up splayed on the warm, tremendously naked Cereza and Jeanne had only been 16 with a crush the size of Sheba's left buttock. She ran and didn't do so with the flowing beauty of the Umbra (more like with the clumsy flapping of a cat caught with their tail on the door).

After wiping her eyes one final time and putting her glasses back on, she turned to her slightly embarrassed companion. "What a dashing gentlelady, giving me privacy at the first peak of my ankles."

"I'll have you know a lot more was on show than your ankles! What I have never known is why in Paradiso's heavenly blight were you even *there*, naked, bathing of all things."

Bayonetta frowned for a second and bit her lip as a mental worm wiggled in her brain. There was an inkling of something, of a feeling that was fleeting and diaphanous but there was something to it that felt important. If she thought hard enough to untangle the murky waters of her past, there was a ping full of emotional impressions… wanting freedom, wanting to be away from Luna and it's occupants, of having the simple pleasure of indulging in a thing just for the heck of it.

"I…" She started, closing her eyes tightly in frustration at not being able to yank a full, coherent thread of thought. "I was trying to be by myself a little bit, to get some fresh air." Locking eyes with Jeanne's own, she finished with a shrug. " I guess."

Jeanne nodded tersely and looked back onto the ocean. "After the incident, I apologized rather profusely, both for running you over and for running away after that."

At the giggle that sounded from the other towel, she knew she was never hearing the end of it till some planar Deity actually managed to finish off the world. "Laugh it up, laugh it up."

"You used to love going out to the small beach by the waterfall at night and so did I. It was a sort of neutral ground badlands, hidden away from most people, which made served our purposes quite well."

She got up and breathed in the damp ocean breeze. "I know you prefer the sun now but… I quite like it away from the bright, heavenly light. Makes me feel safer, has good memories where I'm not making an ass of myself."

Cereza stood next to her and grabbed her hand gently. The world wasn't easy, never would be for them but at least under the glittering moonlight and the cloying smell of the water, Jeanne bloomed like a lunar flower and she would never stand in the way of that.

"Payback is a bitch, though" Before she could react, the flimsy red bikini top smacked against her face and the corresponding bottom was not far behind. "Catch me if you can!"

"Jeanne!" she laughed in a not small modicum of incredulity as the other woman bolted ass naked down the dune before rippling into her cat form and diving into the surf.

Without waiting another beat, she did the same and they ended up tangled by the water line in a mess of red and black fur that quickly devolved into warm bodies and wandering hands .

Bayonetta was not going to be the one pointing out that seeing her delectable everything move about with no clothes was not exactly the bitching payback Jeanne had figured it would be.