Guys thank you so much for the overwhelmingly nice response and well-wishes? There were even some of you that have never reviewed for me before and it MADE ME SO HAPPY, so thank you guys for reaching out, and I hope you like the end as much as you liked the beginning!

Thanks go to my wonderful beta, Uglygreenjacket. I'm a pain sometimes and you always got my back. Thank you, love! And also thank you to Antigone2: thanks you for being so willing to cheer for me, too!

So yeah, here's the second and last part (with lots of backstory, promise, lol!)! I hope you enjoy it!

There were memories that weighed like ghosts on her mind. They whispered, 'what if...', and of things she could have done differently, of things she should have said but didn't, and they never really let her go. Most times she could file them away to the deepest corner of her heart and let them rest. But sometimes - always out of the blue, always suddenly - they came back to haunt her in the night, flashing bright and insistent and hurtful, whispering to her of lost opportunities and regret and hope that turned to dust in her mouth. And then they scolded her, cold and harsh in quiet hushes, that she ought to not open her heart enough to care.

What if she'd acted like a normal person when they'd met? Someone with normal grades and no abusing-people-as-trashcans and normal hair and normal speaking volume and not so many insults. Would he have looked at her twice, then?

What if she'd been reflected enough to admit to herself that it was jealousy she'd felt when she'd first heard Rei talk about him like that, approach him like that. What if she'd talked to him before that, or maybe with Rei? What if she'd started dating him that time, not Rei? Back when it was still easy, when there were no masks and magical suits complicating them yet?

What if she'd said 'I love you', or maybe 'don't leave me' when she'd woken up that night in the hospital and found him in the chair beside her bed with concerned, red-rimmed eyes - that time after everything and nothing had happened at Starlight Tower and Mamoru-Baka was suddenly Tuxedo Mask and he'd been willing to die for her had she not been willing to do the same and pushed him out of the trajectory at the last second?

What if she'd confessed her love - understood her love - instead of kissing him, months after that? When it was all complicated and they were suddenly teammates and there was still Rei who was so hurt when he'd broken up with her, and he'd felt so bad about the stitches on Usagi's belly with his eyes so torn, and her heart was screaming at her every time she saw him?

What if she'd not cried afterwards, but instead laughed and sighed in relief when he'd kissed her that time, just months ago, when Kunzite had captured her and it had taken forever to free herself and she'd collapsed in his trembling, shivering arms afterwards? Would he have wanted to keep her, then?

What if, that same night when his hands had wandered and she'd whimpered into his mouth and wanted him to go on, she'd said so? What if, the next day, when he sat with his legs folded at the Senshi meeting at Hikawa, not even pretending to listen to Minako's analysis of all their mistakes with the Kunzite incident, and he'd acted so harsh and hard and as if nothing had happened, yet his steady eyes on her shining at her as if she was his biggest regret of his life - what if she'd let him see her tears afterwards, what if she'd screamed her confusion and her heartbreak at him, told him he was everything she'd ever wanted, and why the hell could he not want her back?

All her ghosts were wide awake and screaming at her across a lake and right into her mind as she held her breath and tried not to cry and hid in her futon with her back turned to him under the glare of the moon. It hurt so much she felt like splitting apart.

In all her life, Usagi had never felt so awkward and utterly rejected as she had that night; on his futon in this room, with Mamoru's eyes so apologetic and terrified and wide.

When she woke up, Mamoru sat in his yukata and his glasses at the farthest end of the couches, hair damp from what looked like a morning dip in the onsen and she immediately got brought back to last night.

He looked up helplessly and startled when she crawled from the depths of her futon stark naked, pulled on her crumbled Sailor V nightshirt flung to her side of the floor with an embarrassed flush to her cheeks, and sneaked off to the bathroom. She breathed with her head in her hands on the toilet seat, and pulling herself together enough to emerge, she decided to do the same as he did, and without looking him in the eye, stalked past him and out towards the onsen.

The lake looked incredibly peaceful in the morning and it didn't fit her mood at all, and she was painfully aware that Mamoru was sitting right next to the floor to ceiling windows behind her when she stepped back into the steaming water, but she didn't turn to look and see if he was looking.

When she went back inside, he wasn't there. It finally gave her the time for a quick, painful cry as she sat on the wicker stool and pulled her hair back into her signature buns.

She took her time, brushed her teeth until her gums hurt, sniffling all the way, and glared very hard at the little film strip as she took her pill, because what the fuck did she need that for anyway.

When he still wasn't back after she'd donned her own yukata, she shrugged on her brown haori jacket and slipped her feet into the sturdy outdoor slippers and ventured outside.

She'd missed dinner at this fancy thing, she wasn't missing breakfast, too.

The maître d' asked for her room number with a friendly bow and then lead her to a table already decked with food and that Mamoru already sat at with his book.

She froze, and his eyes looked like he didn't fare much better.

"Good morning…" he croaked.

That shook her from her stupor, and she sat, holding her yukata closed with her hand at her knees as she bent to slip into the wooden bench opposite of him. "Good morning," she mumbled at the table.

He smacked his lips, his hands were restless, then he spoke, clipped and tortured and strained. "Listen, Usako–"

She shook her head sharply and felt his hard frown at her.

"How did you sleep?" she asked in a voice that sounded as fake as a voice could sound, but she desperately needed to change the subject.

She just couldn't face rejection in a place where she was entirely surrounded by happy couples and families.

He pursed his lips. "I didn't."

She blinked down at her food. A perfectly grilled and honeyed salmon on a banana leaf, small dishes of sauces and rice and egg and miso surrounding it. It looked completely unappetizing all of a sudden.

"Oh," she murmured.

"Usagi, maybe we should..." he tried again, voice tense.

The hurt was familiar, almost an old friend. But it had never felt so strong, so heightened, so ugly in her veins. That was wholly new, and it screamed at her from ever pore in her veins, as if the hurt had become its own, angry entity in her very blood.

It caused her to snap at him. "I don't want to hear," she snapped with a glare, and he closed his mouth shut into a tense line.

It had always confused her, all of them, really, the whole thing with that night and the rainbow crystals. So very, very confusing, all of it, and on top of that this overwhelming and emotional clusterfuck of all the intensity of a teenage-girl's pining heart writing in her diary late at night and throwing each other into harm's way in order to protect… It remained confusing to this day, every part of it, even when her heart had aged.

Altogether, the night most of her ghosts swarmed so wildly around had been an absolute disaster - even if in a way and for reasons no one had anticipated it.

The night their enemy had gotten hold of all the rainbow crystals, it had changed her life.

It was a weird memory. Uncomfortable always. Particularly because she didn't remember everything of it, what with falling unconscious and bleeding from a giant stab wound. They'd transformed in front of each other in the biggest shock of her life and then everything had happened so fast. Zoisite and Kunzite had gotten the crystals, Mamoru had jumped in front of her when that spike was aimed for her, and with an anguished cry she'd managed to push him out of the way at the last second, but got hit herself in the process.

Tuxedo Mask had carried her out of there as Usagi, his pristine white dress shirt soaked red with her blood. She remembered his panicked, babbling voice coaxing her to stay awake, coarse, ripped strips of the fabric of his cape tied too tight around her to keep her from losing ALL her blood, to keep her alive just long enough. The bright neon lights as someone transferred her somewhere and someone in scrubs leaning over her to promise her everything would be OK.

When she woke up it was the middle of the night and apparently about a week later and Mamoru was sitting in the chair beside her bed with wide eyes and awkward words.

She'd later found out from Luna he'd been there every day, and every night, too. When visitor hours were over and even her parents had to leave, he'd snuck back in. Every single night. But after she'd woken up, his visits had stopped.

She'd asked him about it a year later, when the anniversary of her date with near-death came up and her parents had made a fuss about it. Why had he watched over her like that?

"I know what it's like to wake up in a hospital alone. I didn't want you to go through that," he'd admitted in a quiet voice with averted eyes and an uncomfortable shrug.

It had been the day she had finally, finally realised that this was not a flimsy crush. That this was nothing she could ignore. She would love this kind, amazing man until she could no longer love.

But it was a realisation that had come too late. It came only after she'd already fucked up.

It had happened during those tentative first few months, when Mamoru was gradually integrated into the group and it had all been so fresh and so stressful and so panicked. When not only they, but the enemy as well, knew his civilian identity and they still thought Queen Beryl had gotten her hands on the silver crystal - she'd had all the rainbow crystals after all! - when they'd been panicked and wary and they didn't know yet that, for some reason, absolutely nothing had come of those stupid prism rocks that had given them all so much grief. Everyone back to square one. No crystal, no princess, no leads. Both for them and the enemy.

It was the days when the Dark Kingdom, in their confusion and loss, had lashed out every day and run them raw. Not like today, when Kunzite and Zoisite still popped up from time to time, doing shit that gave them work, but so far and few between, as tired of the search as they were.

She'd only just found out that Rei and Mamoru hadn't dated anymore practically since the incident, and Mamoru had finally, after months of Rei trying to get him to react, sat her down and broken her heart.

They were teammates now, he'd said. That it wouldn't be right. That they had a responsibility that went beyond, he'd said, and from what Rei told the girls afterwards, had never looked her in the eye.

Usagi had felt hurt and broken and she didn't know why, didn't understand. Attributed it towards anger for her friend whose heart he'd twisted apart.

She'd been an angry, irrational, confused and terrified teenager, and she'd almost knocked down this other hurt and confused teenager's door and screamed and screamed at him. He'd only taken it. Mute, his eyes shining at her as if he wanted anything but her to react like that, and as if he couldn't look away.

But his eyes had broken her and made her stupid and weak and she'd crawled on top of him and pressed him into his couch and stolen his kiss right from his lips.

His hands had clutched and clawed into her back, pressing her closer even as she invaded his mouth with her tongue and her confusion and her anger and her feelings, and soon his lips had become as frantic as hers.

She'd stopped, yanking back in shock and humiliation and shame, when she'd finally tasted the tears that soaked his face and salted his lips.

She'd run.

She'd been so confused. So ashamed - what would Rei think? And yet, he'd hovered close. Sought her out, hung around with questioning, vulnerable eyes, always there, even when she didn't always directly see him. Waiting.

Until he stopped.

"Isn't he with Rei?" Naru had asked in that concerned, but slightly judging tone, when Usagi had confessed to kissing him, because she couldn't tell the girls, because she couldn't face having betrayed her friend.

"I thought you didn't like him," Naru went on, walking beside her down towards the Crown. "You've never said a single nice word about him…"

She'd kneaded her knuckles and tried not to scream how wrong she'd been, how stupid she'd been.

"And… he's not exactly been nice to you, either, Usagi-chan…"

Naru's voice had been all comfort, all friendly concern, all logic and making sense.

"I don't know if I feel comfortable with the thought of you being with someone who has only ever insulted you, Usagi…"

She'd swallowed the lump in her throat. She couldn't explain. How could she explain that no, actually, he'd saved her life a lot. That she'd given as bad as she'd got. That it had all been… what had it been?

That no, actually, she thought she might just be so in love it ripped her in half and hurt her to breathe. Something she needed to ignore because what right did she have, when Rei...

"Maybe you're right," she'd whispered instead, eyes on her feet.

But that same day was the day that Mamoru had stopped giving her that look, and stopped talking to her in that budding, friendly way he'd only just started to, and when she'd finally confessed to Rei she'd faced the fact she'd almost ruined things with her, too, and had started the slow, careful road of rebuilding trust.

Rei and her had been perfectly alright, after just a little while. Yet, Mamoru and her? She had seemingly doomed them to always be a little awkward.

She'd never eaten so slow and tasteless in her life, and she'd never cursed a waiter for bringing more and more food to their table in her life before this day.

They'd politely sat through every course, and she felt so tense and stupid and humuliated and utterly, completely unwanted afterwards, she was hard pressed not to walk off the premises in just this blue ryokan-owned yukata all the way to the train station, and all the way home and into her bed and then cry for a century.

"We should head back to the site," Mamoru mumbled beside her when they walked out into the courtyard.

She frowned down at their matching yukatas. "Like this?"

He gave an emotionless, blank shrug. "Why not get this over with sooner than later."

She swallowed hard. Damn that hurt.

The stupid lake was still stupid calm, but walking back towards the statue filled her with a weird sense of dread the closer they got to it.

She'd be sitting next to Mamoru for god knows how many hours now.

She hovered a little, everything inside of her screaming to run, and yet Usagi crossed back into a circle with a slow step.

Pang.

She clutched her chest, her heart aching, and she suddenly felt dizzy for just a second - it was over just as quickly. Weird. Had that happened before?

Mamoru, oblivious to anything going on in her heart like apparently always, stepped into the circle too and knelt on the stone base of the statue, touching his hand to the ground and closing his eyes and doing his thing.

His psychometry always looked absolutely, inconspicuously unassuming. Not like her sparkly brand of candy magic.

He frowned, opened his eyes and gazed thoughtfully across the lake, his glasses perched a little lower on his nose. "It feels different from yesterday…" he mumbled.

Usagi knelt down, too, moving absolutely stiffly. "Different how?" she asked, voice tense.

His frown deepened as he settled with his back against his part of the statue. "I'm not entirely sure," he said, voice distant as if lost in thought.

Leaning against the statue with her back to the ofudas once more, as well, she again settled in to channel whatever spirit might answer if this whole thing should work.

She frowned. The ofuda itched weirdly at her back.

She leaned her head back against the statue and closed her eyes, trying as hard as she could to calm her raging, hurt emotions, but it was somewhat of a lost cause.

He didn't speak.

When, a little later, he flipped his book open and began to read, she was ready to rip it from his hands and throw it in the bloody lake.

How the hell was he so calm. Why the hell did this not affect him–

She took a few deep, calming breaths, and did not end up vandalizing his property. She felt like she'd earned a pat on the shoulder or something. She closed her eyes again, tried her hardest to doze off.

About half the pages of his book had wandered from one side to the other, the sun now coming from the other side of the statue, when Usagi finally burst in nervous, agitated energy, hours later.

"This isn't working," she hissed, opening her eyes.

He closed his book with a dull little thud, set it aside, took his glasses off, and looked up ahead into the trees when he finally spoke - not in that flirty way over his shoulder as he'd done the day before.

"What is supposed to happen anyway?" he murmured.

She balled her hands into fists. "Not sure," she ground out. "Rei said something about this channeling the spirits into us or something. Until they speak to us."

His brow furrowed. "Well, I don't feel anything. Do you?"

She glared onto her hands, then shivered. It was kind of cold in the breeze and the yukata…

"You ok?" he asked in concern.

"Fine," she bit out between her teeth.

The look on his face didn't ease, and it was her turn to stubbornly stare straight ahead as he assessed her.

"Do you want a take a break and grab a bite to eat?" he finally said.

She ground her teeth. "I'm not hungry."

His frown turned absolutely bewildered.

He was about to speak when she interrupted him with pressed out, tense words – she didn't even really know where they were coming from. She didn't want to hear this. She couldn't hear this.

But here they were. Spoken. Out loud. Honest and vulnerable and bleeding.

"Why didn't anything happen after we kissed back then, after Starlight Tower?" Her voice sounded like an angry hiss. Accusing.

Why don't you want me?

The bewilderment on his face grew impossibly larger. But he did answer eventually.

"Because you didn't want it to," he said matter of factly, his voice almost as accusing as hers.

She whirled around to face him, shook the itching, burning ofuda off her back in the process. "Excuse me?!" she snarled.

His glare was furious. "You told your friend. I was walking behind you."

She almost physically recoiled. "What?" she said, voice angry and confused and so, so angry. "What the hell are you talking about?!"

But all the fight seemed to leave his shoulders even when the tension did not, and he shook his head sharply. "It's old news, Usagi. It doesn't matter. Let's just focus."

It was dismissive. He was all tense muscle and clenched jaw and perfect man, and it was all so infuriating she could barely breathe.

"No," she demanded. "You're going to talk to me."

He inhaled sharply, jaw clenched and set, and he got up.

She was ready to run shouting after him when he stopped abruptly, looking at the ground.

"The salt circle isn't full. There's a gap," he said towards the ground, his voice abruptly changing.

She was so angry it felt like fire in her veins. Was he changing the subject again?

"Mamoru, I swear–"

He interrupted her and it caused her to bristle in anger.

"Usagi why is the circle not complete?" He sounded freaked out.

"I don't know!" she shouted "Maybe it blew away overnight or something! It's just salt!"

He shook his head. "It's not just salt. It's a spiritual ritual performed by a Senshi. It can't be blown away. You must have done something wrong."

The accusation made her boil. "What the fucking hell, baka."

She turned to stalk off in a cloud of anger. Always the fucking same, never trusting her, never wanting her.

She was stopped by Mamoru's hand around her arm.

"Usako–"

She glared at him. Then she shook his arm off of her violently with the deadliest look she'd ever thrown anyone, and walked off.

The moment she stepped over the salt, that same pang again – it hurt, but no more dizziness. Just blind, sharp, painful hurt and on top of it, so much stabbing anger.

How dare he. How dare he not want her?

"Usagi!" he shouted after her. She barely got to the first line of trees, and somehow, she hadn't noticed until now that all the ropes they'd hung were shaking, the tassles flying wildly in the wind like her anger.

"STOP!" she yelled, and his eyes widened. Her voice sounded strange, almost doubled. An energy in her veins she didn't know, that seemed to glow out of her, red like her rage, and it seemed to frighten the bejesus out of him. He froze.

Good. He could go to hell.

His voice was suddenly so, so small. He approached her like he would a wild animal. "Usako… Look at me."

She hissed at him.

He blanched.

"Usako, I think it did work," he said carefully, inching closer towards her, hands held out. "But the wrong spirit answered… The monster…"

His words yanked through her blood, flared up all the energy surrounding her in a wild flash that made him jump back.

"She's NOT a monster," Usagi screamed at him in her strange double-voice, which then turned into something that was half a scream and half a sob. "It doesn't make her a monster just because he didn't want her!"

He exhaled harshly, and with a flick of his finger, he willed a rose into existence and transformed.

She stepped back, looking at him incredulously, betrayal on her heart and in her eyes.

The next words he spoke to her came from behind a mask, and it made her skin tingle and itch and made her want to howl and scream.

"Usako…" he said, voice still so careful, hands still held out towards her. "I think something's wrong with you…"

"What the fuck is supposed to be wrong with me?" she screeched.

And with that, she flew at him, raised her fists around the red aura that surrounded her, and he caught her by the biceps firmly, fingers digging into her arms almost painfully, but he allowed her to hit her fists against the pristine white fabric that now covered his chest.

She screamed, her voice only broken by her ugly sobs. "There's nothing wrong with me, you just don't WANT me!"

She heard him swallow, and it made the tears come harder, angry and hot and wet, streaming down her face, turning her voice into an ugly wail.

"You don't want me…"

"Usako…" he croaked, voice torn and breaking.

"You want HER!" she cried hysterically, fists pounding but it barely moved him.

"… what are you saying?" he whispered, shaking her. "Who do I want?"

She was getting weird. Her voice was weird. She was glowing weird. She knew all this. Something was wrong. But the tears were so hot and so angry, and all these emotions were so real, were everything she'd always felt, just so impossibly condensed and intense.

"Why didn't you visit me anymore after I woke up in the hospital?" she sobbed, clutching at him, yanking at him, desperate. "Why did you stop coming?"

His hands left her arms and grabbed her cheeks, tried to hold her up to face him but she tried to struggle away, averted her eyes and tried to free herself. "I didn't," he implored, almost wild himself. "I was there every night. I sat outside your door until the day they released you. I just didn't come in because I didn't know if you'd want me there."

She broke free, pushing him off of her. "LIES!" she screamed.

He stumbled back a step but didn't fall, and immediately came back towards her.

She couldn't see through her tears, she couldn't breathe through the sobs. "You don't want me," she wailed. "You didn't want me then, and you didn't want me last night. WHY, Mamo-chan? Why can't I be someone you'd WANT?"

He grabbed at her, shook her, shouted at her. Shouted words that rung in her ears but made no sense. I DO WANT YOU – He shouted them over and over, but she couldn't listen and she couldn't hear, like she was drowning in her own blood, rushing in her ears and flickering in the air around you.

"I'M SORRY," she cried instead, babbling and screaming and clutching. "I'm sorry I'm not some perfect princess or sophisticated like Rei, I'm sorry I don't–"

He was as panicked as her, she could feel it even when the red glow emanating from her steadily grew stronger, blinding.

With a yank Tuxedo Mask pulled her with him, his hand reaching out to rip something off the nearest tree. Only when he wrapped it tight and painful around her did she register what it was, and it hurt, it burned, and she yowled in pain and clawed her hands into the ritual ropes, the Oshide burning in cold blue flames where they touched her.

"TAKE IT OFF!" she shrieked, thrashing in pain, kicking and flailing into the air and against him but he had her in a stronghold, holding the ropes in place around her.

His lips and his tears were at her ear and they broke when he spoke. "Usako. I can't heal you. Only you can do that. You need to snap out of it. You need to transform and purify this thing in you. Please–"

With a violent explosion of red blasts, the ropes sprung off her and evaporated into fog, and Tuxedo Mask was flung away from her, tears and pleas and begs and all.

She clutched her chest, breathing hard, and he crawled back towards her, panic and determination and cold, naked, fear in his eyes.

But all behind that mask.

Wrong.

"Give him back," she whispered pitifully.

He frowned. He didn't understand, and so she snarled and shouted it instead. "Give him BACK," she screamed. Then flew at him, fists raised and ripping at the mask and the cape and the man.

"GIVE HIM BACK–"

He de-transformed. In a shimmer of vibrating air, the tuxedo disappeared and Mamoru was back, frightened eyes and blue yukata, and the red glowed a little dimmer and she collapsed into his arms, glowing and sobbing and afraid.

His arms flew around her, his lips in her hair even when her snot and tears and screams were sobbed into his collarbone, and his embrace was tighter and warmer than any she had ever known.

She clutched back even harder and cried, deep and pitiful and broken. "I o-only want to be w-wanted by y-you," she howled and hiccuped into his skin, clawing her fingernails into the soft cotton fabric. "It's all I e-ever wanted."

His arms grew tighter around her, shaking her, lifting her, willing her to hear. "Usako, I do want you!"

She heard. And she snarled. Lies. Lies!

She dug her fingernails into him and screamed.

"I DO!" he screamed back into her ear, holding her tight and even tighter. He was shaking himself.

"PROVE IT!" she screamed, face contorted with tears and he did the only thing he could.

He kissed her.

His lips were panicked, frantic, mauling her mouth as he grabbed her cheeks and whimpered against her and kissed her harder – until her hands stopped shaking and her lips started to respond, and her voice broke against his.

His touch only grew stronger and more insistent the more she started to respond, and his tongue stroked deep into her mouth along with a low, muffled groan from his throat even as he lifted her up, arms tight around her waist.

It was only when they passed that invisible threshold that she realized he'd carried her stumbling and tripping back into the salt circle. She shrieked briefly, ripping her lips from his and gasping in pain, flimmering up, but his mouth was back on hers immediately, silencing her, and with a satisfied, blissful groan she felt herself get pushed up against the statue with his lips against her throat, and something in her was screaming in blissful yearning that nothing felt ever as gratifying as knowing the statue was watching as she finally got what she'd always wanted.

She felt it receding, felt the veil of peace that overfell her, replaced with desire pooling deep and insistent in her core and her heart and between her legs, and when she lifted her hands to clutch at his hair and gasp against his temple, she could see her hand only barely glimmering anymore, no more than a red shimmer.

He saw it too, and it made him whimper in relief and kiss her harder, and he reached into her blue yukata and grasped her naked thighs. With a yank, he drew her legs out from under her and she wrapped them, jumping up, around him. Her yukata fell open, but she didn't care, because his tongue was back in her mouth and his hand had slipped into her cotton panties to grab her ass and his erection pushed against her sodden crotch.

"I want you, Usako," he whispered into her mouth, and she whimpered and ground herself against him, rubbing against his cock, arms locked around his shoulder. "I've never wanted anything but you, Usako."

She blinked against the tears that flooded her eyes, and as his lips slid to her cheeks, her temple, behind her ear, sucking and licking and biting and gasping, she gasped and blinked them up at the slowly purpling sky, and like fog lifting from her and out of her, she knew the ghost was leaving her.

"Again," Usagi ordered, and Mamoru pressed his swollen cock against her with a harsh thrust, pressing her against the jutting contours of the stone figures behind her, eliciting a tortured, labored gasp.

His hand at her cheek, her chin – yanking her face to his so she could see his eyes, his face so close his nose and lips were touching hers at the tips.

"I want you," he implored, eyes wet and insistent and hips jerking against her in emphasis. "I want only you. Only ever you."

She shook with want, with need, she needed more, she needed him to say these words and never stop, and she needed all of him.

Never breaking eye contact, she slipped her hands beneath his own yukata, into his briefs, and found his weeping cock to draw him out.

"I want you, too," she whispered back.

Breathlessly, he nodded. Slipped his own hand into her panties and whimpered when he found her soaked, and shifting her against the statue, he finally put the damn thing in.

He burst into tears when he did, his forehead dropping against her temple, and she clutched his hair and shuddered from her toes to the tips of her fingers.

With a glow of her skin, a flare up lifting from her body and dissolving into fog, her ghost was gone, Usagi could feel it clear as day. She was wanted now. She was free. She was at peace.

But Mamoru didn't even register it. Instead, he rolled his hips into her, slow and tender and oh so careful, crying into her shoulder. "I want you," he babbled. "I want you, I want you, I want you."

She hugged him, one hand in his hair the other around his shoulder, her head dropping into the crook of his neck and she kissed his shoulder and started crying, too, whimpering with every soft rock of his cock inside of her.

"I want you," he rasped. "I love you."

She whimpered, clawed into him even harder as he pushed her again and again into the statue of the lovers of Lake Yokai.

"I love you," he cried. "I love you so much."

Her own face was wet as she bent back to grasp his cheeks and kiss his forehead as he filled her oh so deep. "I love you, too," she whispered back, a smile finally back on her lips, and his answering sob spoke of purest relief.

They stayed for three more days. Mamoru extended their booking and skipped his classes and Usagi called the girls. They had a lot to talk about, a private onsen to thoroughly enjoy, and a few more ghosts to leave behind at that lake.

They didn't find Serenity and Endymion on this mission, either. But they finally found peace.

Soooo, to put this in smutember tropes, I think I hit all the following lol: Sex on a mission, unresolved sexual tension, Mistakingly Overheard Conversation, Only One Bed-ish?, Magical Healing Cock, Secret Mutual Pining, Youmas Made Them Do It (kinda)? Lol it was a lot, I guess?

Anyway wear condoms when having sex with new sexual partners ok lol? We can't all be healthy, fictional characters, yeah? (sex researcher mode off lol) Or wait, it's still on: Thank you guys so much for being interested in sex-positive written content that I and everyone else put out during smutember. And if you want to support more such content in the future, please consider letting the author of the stories you loved know (AND ME TOO LOL I STRIVE ON FEEDBACK AND WRITE LOTS OF FIC FOR IT xD.) So yeah, thank you for everyone who was along for the ride!

I thought this ghost story of mine was a nice bridge between smutember and spooky season, and I absolutely loved writing it, and I hope you loved reading it even half as much!

Reviews are love! Feed me more reviews lol!