Title: Pretty.
Fandom: Shimotsuma Monogatari/Kamikaze Girls.
Pairing: Momoko/Ichigo.
Disclaimer: Don't own any of the characters though Ichigo is so adorbs, I wish I did.

[Pretty]

She could be so much prettier, I think. As pretty as the Baby photoshoot. I mean, on the day a part of me asked: why not me? Me who was dressed in Baby, The Stars Shine Bright from tip to toe but even then, when she was hidden under those ugly Yanki clothes, I knew she was pretty. Prettier.

She's wearing one of the Loser's knockoff Versace t-shirts, extra large so it falls just above her knee and the neck keeps slipping down a shoulder. Nothing I'd ever wear would do that; flash a line of flesh along the collarbone just so, showing the perfect little angles of skin and bone. Unless I started dressing erololi, urgh! Never! I'd rather die.

"You think I'm stupid" she says, very simply, as she does. Her hair is bleached dry and stringy up close, like it's never seen a brush, I want to get my hairbrush - silver-plated with engraved roses, naturally - and tug it through that mess, a hundred, two hundred times.

"No" I reply, rendered verbally useless by my attention to detail. Lolita is all in the details; a edging of sweetheart lace, the way you open your parasol on a rainy morning. Never have I turned my eye for detail on Ichigo so closely. One Yanki is like another in these parts at least.

"I don't know what I'm going to do after high school for sure, I guess I thought I'd have a kid on the way by now or something" she says, suddenly, ruining my innocent picture of her. As always.

I wipe my eyes and feel my mouth pulling up into a ugly curve of a smirk which I stop with some effort; I do not want to be a wrinkled twenty-five year old.

"You could model for me" I say, my throat horribly dry. I wish I had a pitcher of barley water, this kind of thing would never happen in Rococo France. "When I start my Lolita brand..."

"I might start working at the motorcycle shop, full-time, y'know?" she answers, putting her hands on her hips as if she had expected pockets to be there to hide them, moving up and down. A graceful bearing and she's so unaware...

"You aren't stupid at all, Ichigo, you're..." I can't say it. My own self simply refuses it. A lady cannot hold herself together if she starts bestowing attributes of the highest order on other people. If Ichigo is the prettier, the more graceful...where does that leave me, Momoko?

"Terrible at taking care of your hair" I say, the tension draining out of me, through my pinstriped bloomer shorts and cut-sew nightwear and away to I don't know where, where all of Momoko's feelings go perhaps. To the dumpyard, probably. Or maybe in a landfill marked 'Highly Personal and Destructive Feelings of Momoko Ryugasaki. Don't Touch!'.

She blushes and says something like: "Aw, shit, it don't matter when you're on a bike. Ends up the looking the same then as it does now"

Nevertheless, she lets me brush it one hundred, two hundred times.