50 Kisses
Coffee Break Ficlets

So, the people who follow me on tumblr already know half of these, and can guess what's coming lol. A while back I did an ask game on tumblr, writing kisses to a prompt list of 50 different kisses, everything from kisses because the world is ending to kisses out of envy or jealousy. I started that game as tumblr ficlets only, challenging myself to do them quickly and not overtly question myself or my writing. And I've built up a few, and now I want to finish them. Although a few people kept asking wether or not I'll post them outside of tumblr, and I always just said maybe. So, the reason I'm doing it after all mostly is because I decided to write all of them, and it'll be quite a bit lol. But, as I said, more than half is already done. (Which also means for some of you only half of this is new – sorry!)

Anyway, I'll post on weekdays. They're all short ficlets, the majority below a 1000 words - tiny coffee break reads meant to brighten your day a little! (Or give it a tiny jab of painful ANGST sometimes lol.)

Because they're so short and sometimes you just want to read something small set in your favorite season, I've decided to categorize every kiss with a setting. They're added to the BOTTOM ANs, and if you want to specifically scroll for the content you want, you can find it down there after every post.

Some are fluffy, some are atrocious, and they're all supposed to fit into canon more or less. (Less on Silmil, I confess, most of those easily CAN fit into canon, but they're often a tad closer to my Catalyst universe.) Anyway, in general, you can read them as kisses scattered and jumping through time. You'll encounter anything from Season 1 kisses to post-stars kisses.

Also: these are unbeta-ed. I wanted to challenge myself to just write and post and not over-edit and overthink. To create content without stressing over it, and to do it quickly. This includes not throwing daily content at my beta. So, this means, you will find mistakes. It's not gonna be perfect. And keep in mind I'm German – English isn't my first language. If a few mistakes bother you, you have been warned, and can back-button now.

I hope you enjoy them, however, and would love to hear your thoughts around these small lip-locked moments!

His Good Morning Kiss

Some days it was almost ok. Some days he didn't see her at all and could almost forget his loss. And really, it wasn't so bad, was it? They'd barely started. They'd barely had a chance to be - so it shouldn't hurt so much that they would never be anything now. He'd barely gotten to know her yet, even.

Sometimes, he could make himself believe that. A little. That numb feeling was better than the searing pain he felt when he saw her eyes… Her eyes were always sad, these days. Even when he felt he'd given everything just to ensure they wouldn't be.

Other days were open torture. Days where time dragged like thick syrup sticking in his lungs. Days in which he had to swallow the adoration that seemed to mount with every day apart and had to scowl at her instead. When he was the cause that her sad eyes had turned into the default.

She'd worn barrettes in her odangos. Little bows attached at the end of each. Later, staring sleepless at his ceiling with pebbles in his throat and her image in the shadows, he'd determined they'd been the color of the morning sky - not quite baby blue, not quite light grey. She'd looked like cotton candy. Like dew drops on a flower, like steaming cocoa and wool blankets when it rained outside, like a soft smile that shone through the eyes, real and private. Like all the things happiness must taste like, but he was not invited.

No matter how his days were, his nights were always worse.

The nightmares were painful. They woke him up gasping and screaming and with stuttering heartbeats and they always showed the same. Their wedding day, her lifeless eyes right after, that dreaded voice making all the sense in the world even if it ripped his spine out through his mouth. Of course he wasn't good for her. How could he have ever fooled himself that he would be worthy of that soft smile, of cotton candy and the color of the morning sky?

And yet it wasn't the nightmares that haunted him most, but the times he didn't sleep at all. The times he lay awake and his self-sabotaging asshole of a mind lacked the self-control to not imagine what it might be like if he were allowed to be happy, his begging heart enslaved.

If he'd been allowed to get to know her. If he'd been allowed to keep her. If he'd been allowed to learn from his mistakes.

He imagined what it might have been like if he hadn't been such a jerk to her from the start. Or if maybe, he'd been born just about 3 measly years later, and perhaps ended up in her class, and they'd gotten to know each other in a way where he might not have been so awful to her. He imagined what it might have been like if (during the few months the universe had cheated him on, in which he was alive and she was too, and yet she'd fought without him against two aliens), just if, maybe, he could have been allowed to remember. If through Snow White plays and VR arcades and babysitting ventures, he'd known how important it was to open his eyes and see. Or if, earlier than that, he'd been a little quicker at Starlight Tower and not gotten himself killed. What it might have been like if he'd looked at Usagi and seen Sailor Moon and if he'd had the chance to really fight by her side, grow to know her that way.

Or if he'd never gotten these awful premonitions of her death by his fault, and could walk into Crown, take her hand and lead her away from judgemental eyes, lead her out to his motorcycle and have her hug her small, perfect hands around him as he whisked her away and just kept her anyway. Even if he was a jerk and cotton candy was too good for him.

When she tilted her head that little bit and wrinkled her nose in that cute smile and rested her chin on her fist and looked at him in the way that flayed him raw and bared his soul and made him burst into tears even just thinking about it, because he wanted it so much. He wanted that smile so, so much.

And wasn't it all so eerily familiar? He remembered a different life where he'd done the very same. Years spent staring at a ceiling and imagining what might be - even when it had never been allowed to be. He'd dreamt and dreamt of days where he could see the sun reflect in her hair without guilt and worry and fear, where he could keep this smile that shone when she was allowed to stand barefoot in the soil and drag her hands through the dirt; had hoped his heart raw, and had hoped until the very last moment in the flames of the Moon Palace, clutching her hand, that he might still get what he so desperately, foolishly wanted after all.

Barrettes in her hair with bows the color of the morning sky. Scraped knees and that beaming, angel smile, until she'd turn and smirk and do something viciously, idiotically stupid, and he'd love her even more.

He'd lie in his bed and stare at his ceiling through the tears, and he'd imagine how it would be to take her hand, be stupid together, and never let go. What it would be like to not step away when she hugged him in the rain, in her grass green raincoat and her bleeding heart. What it would be like to chauffeur her through Tokyo on his bike and not anyone else. To cook curry with her and hold her hand instead of shoving her away. What it would be like to feel that perfect, happy smile on him just once more, and then maybe again, and maybe, just maybe, again after that.

And then his trainwreck heart whispered that maybe it was all a lie. Maybe the nightmares weren't real. Maybe the world wasn't so cruel after all, and it had all been some big, cosmic misunderstanding. Maybe he could walk out of here and wait in front of the steps of her school and tell her it was all over. Maybe he could repent, start trying to be worthy. Maybe he could give her a good morning kiss and later a kiss goodnight, and do it again the next day, and the day after that, and she'd stand on the tips of her toes and press that soft smile right against his lips until the day he died. Maybe tomorrow, someone would come and tell him it had all just been to test him. That he did good; that he could stop now.

Those nights were the worst. Where he couldn't stop hoping, like Endymion before him, and he'd blink red, raw, cried-out eyes into the rising sun behind his window, and then turn and lie awake staring at her photo with the broken frame on his bedside until he needed to slip his mask back into place.

It was another night like that, and the sun was long awake, and he sighed deeply and sat up, the photo in his hand.

He was careful this time - he'd cut himself on the broken glass too often - and pressed his lips against the frame with closed eyes.

"Good morning, Usako," he whispered against her photo.

Then he got up and pretended to function.

So here's the first one! Reviews are love and feed me ;)

Here's the selfexplanatory setting for those scrolling for it:
Setting: R