"Mmmm." Ranko leaned back in the pale blue chair, feeling the whole of her body relax. She closed her eyes, letting her head loll back onto the chair. The soft plush of her white hotel bathrobe, the only thing she wore, enveloped her in a warm embrace. "If you keep doing that, some lucky girl is gonna scoop you right up if you're not careful."
"You think?" Akane laughed, pressing both of her lotion-slick thumbs firmly into the arch of Ranko's left foot as it rested on the vinyl hotel ottoman between them. "I can't imagine what that would even be like. Wow!"
Ranko mewled in appreciation as Akane continued massaging her foot, interrupting a sip of lukewarm tea from a white ceramic mug to do so. "I'll show you. Every day, forever."
"I'll hold you to that, Mrs. Tendo," Akane said, beaming at her bride. "So, princess… what do you wanna do for the last day of our honeymoon? Anything you want. It's your choice."
The simpering redhead shook her head, swallowing a mouthful of her tea. "Nah, I picked yesterday. Besides, you don't wanna do what I'd pick, and I would feel bad asking."
"Ranko, I said anything. I meant it." Akane sighed quietly, gently resting Ranko's foot on the ottoman and capping the little tube of cucumber-scented lotion the hotel had provided. "I want you to pick. You're in the public eye a lot more than I am, and I know that makes it a lot harder for you to have to hide things than it is for me. Yeah, I can't tell people about you like I wanna, but I also don't have two hundred people a day asking me questions that I have to lie to answer. So, it's important to me to make sure you get every minute you can to enjoy doing anything you wanna do and not hiding, before we have to go back to pretending again."
With a heavy sigh, Ranko pulled her legs up to her chest under her terry cloth bathrobe, hugging her knees. "You promise you'll say no if you don't wanna do it?"
Akane scoffed, shaking her head. "I won't need to. But if it makes you feel better, sure. I promise."
Ranko sat up in her chair, looking out the fifth-floor window to the bustling activity of a Saturday morning in the Harajuku district. "Could we maybe go home early?"
Frowning, Akane stood and briskly walked over to Ranko's side. She sat on the armrest of the chair, stroking her wife's wildly bed-matted crimson mane with her fingers. "Why, what's wrong? Aren't you having a good time?"
Ranko whipped her head around to face Akane, an urgency in her eyes. "Oh, gods, please don't think that! I'm having a wonderful time. The best. Every day I spend with you is the best, Akane." She reached up, resting a gentle hand on Akane's bare chest between the halves of her unbuttoned periwinkle pajama shirt.
"The thing is… it's great that I've been able to be seen with you out here, with all these strangers. But home… the Phoenix… that's where I learned how to be me. It's where they know me, and where my family is. And, just for one night, before Aki goes away again, I want them to see us. I want to be who I am, in the place I belong, with the person I love. Just once."
Akane sighed, her shoulders slumping. "It's not that I don't want to do that, baby. It's that I don't think we can. As much as they know you at the Phoenix, they know me there too. Izzi's magic is good, but I'm not sure I can fool three hundred people who know what I look like for very long."
The redhead grinned, her eyes lighting up. "What if you could? Did you forget what day it is?"
Akane shrugged as she glanced over her wife's shoulder to the window. "It's Saturday. The bar will be packed. But I don't think that actually helps our case."
Ranko swiveled in her chair. "Yeah, dummy. It's Saturday. What about the date?"
"The thirty-first. Oh! I get it. You wanna go back because it's Yui's birthday! We can just call her, if that's what you're worried about." Akane hopped up from the armrest, pulling her pajama shirt off and tossing it to the bed.
Ranko giggled, her forehead falling into her palm. "And what else happens on October thirty-first, Akane?"
Akane gasped, turning to face Ranko with her jaw agape. "You're a freaking genius! We'll need costumes, but we're staying in the shopping district, so that shouldn't be too hard to fix! Are you wanting to just go hang out, or…"
The young songstress shook her head emphatically. She practically glowed with excitement. "I'm gonna crash our own party. All the way."
Akane giggled, walking back over and kissing the top of Ranko's head. "Of course you are, silly girl. You just can't resist a stage. I'm gonna go take a shower. I'll be ready in twenty minutes. You wanna hop on the horn and round up the boys?"
* * *
"So hey, Yui? In case you were wondering, you suck."
Reaching under the bar that was her personal sanctuary, Yui hauled a heaping metal scoop full of ice cubes up from her well and dumped it into her mixing glass. "Look, Iz. Two years in a row now, I've had to get all gussied up in your stupid outfits on my birthday 'cause we were doing a special event. I'm sure next year, you're gonna make me do it again. Could I please, just this one time, wear a comfortable pair of jeans and a sweater on my birthday in peace?"
Her younger sister flitted past her, bending at the knees to look under the counter for a bin of lemons. Izumi dared not bend at the waist in the short white nurse outfit she wore. "I guess. You're just no fun. Live a little, sis!"
"I live plenty," Yui shot back as she shook a Tequila Sunrise over her shoulder. "I just don't do it dressed like a tart. Or like… whatever the hell that is Mei's almost wearing."
Scoffing through her grin, Mei passed a flickering Dragonfire across the service bar to her boyfriend. "Excuse me, peasant. I will have you know, I'm a princess, and I don't have to take that kind of shit from you." She adjusted her dark brown wig on her scalp as she spoke.
"Princess of what?! You look like the shortest concubine in a harem of paper clips." Yui smirked, handing the cocktail she'd been building across the bar to a college-aged guy in a shiny silver shirt printed to look like chainmail armor and taking his credit card.
Mei sneered as she wiped a ring of condensation from the service counter with a blue bar towel. "Look, just 'cause the Empire destroyed my home planet, doesn't mean I'm not a… oh, shit!" She abruptly turned her back to the packed bar room, crossing her arms over her chest and heading for the saloon door and the back room beyond.
"You okay?" Yui asked through her chuckling.
Shaking her head, Izumi pushed past her sister. "I think the Death Star just took out her bra. I'm coming, Mei!" She slipped into Sakura's office, setting about assisting Mei with reassembling the metallic gold bikini top that had come loose from around her chest. She was careful not to step on the strip of burgundy fabric that hung from the matching bikini bottom, which dragged on the floor owing to Mei's diminutive stature.
"Hey, Yui? Can I get a light beer when you get a second?" A short young man with a black bowl cut waved to the bartender from the stool he'd just occupied, a thousand-yen note between his fingers. He wore a tan trenchcoat and a matching floppy hat over a white dress shirt and slacks. He looked like a private investigator from the 1930s.
"Sure, just a… oh! Hey, Ariel! Surprised to see you here on your night off!" Yui quickly filled a pilsner glass from the tap over her well, holding it at forty-five degree angle and slowly tilting it to vertical as it filled. "Here. And put your money away. It's no good here."
Ariel shrugged, sipping from his beer once it was handed to him. "Oh, ya know," he said with a nervous chuckle. "Just, uh… used to hangin' out here, I guess?"
Yui gave her sister's audio technician a skeptical smirk as she zoomed off to build another cocktail. "Is there some trend or something I'm missing? There's like, three or four other dudes over there dressed just like that." She motioned with a tilt of her head in the direction of table six.
"It was on sale," Ariel shot back, tinges of an almost urgency in his voice to end the line of questioning.
The barkeep whipped around to face him again, setting her shaker down. "Alright, buddy. You're busted. What are you up t… oh, hey!" She waved at two girls - a tall blonde and a short brunette - walking past the bar. Both were wearing bright blue bunny suits, complete with ears and cottontails.
"Yui! Happy birthday, girl!" Hitomi bounced over to the counter, putting a knee on one of the stools to climb high enough to reach over it to hug her friend. "What's your costume?"
Yui smirked, looking down at her goldenrod sweater. "I'm dressed as someone who's gonna murder the next person who asks me what my costume is." She gestured with her finger, waving it between Hitomi and Emi. "You two are cute as fuck, though."
Emi gave a little curtsey at the knees, beaming. Her eyes darted to the front door of the bar. "We aim to please! What you got going off in here tonight?" As she spoke, she stepped away from Hitomi, drawing the barkeeper's attention.
Once Yui was distracted, Hitomi gave Ariel a nudge with her elbow. He flashed her a subtle nod, which Hitomi returned. The tech finished his beer in one gulp, slipping off of his stool and making for the small table that - for the next two months, until the nightclub next door was completed - would serve as the control booth for the lighting and audio equipment in the smallish bar room.
The blue saloon door swung open and Izumi and Mei - the latter wearing a hastily-repaired golden bikini top with a pair of safety pins protruding from the back - emerged back into the bar room, taking their positions behind the service bar.
"Honestly," Yui replied as she handed a draft beer over the counter to a woman dressed as a flight attendant, "not much for a change. It's refreshing to not have a huge to-do going on just because it's my b…"
Her voice cut off as the lights in the bar suddenly went black. "What the… aw, hell! She didn't…"
"What's up, Firebiiiiiiiirds?! You didn't think we'd leave you without a party on Halloween night, did you!?" Ariel's excited voice rang out in the dark from the stand microphone on his table. The bar, which had fallen into shocked silence, erupted in cheers.
"I'm gonna kill her," Yui grumbled.
The lights at the front of the bar came up, and in the doorway stood a slender redhead. Her hair was down, past her shoulders with only the most gentle wave in it. Her makeup was immaculate, as if it had been done for some sort of high-society event, with heavy eyeshadow and cherry red lipstick. She wore a scintillating strapless cocktail dress in a bright red, with a slit almost all the way up to her waist on the left side, and a pair of matching stiletto heels that had to be at least ten centimeters tall. A pair of deep purple opera gloves snaked up her arms to just past her elbows.
On her arm was another person, wearing a white turtleneck shirt and a pair of red overalls. A pair of yellow gloves covered their hands, exposing no skin between them and the sleeves of the white shirt. They wore a rubber mask covered with white fur and a bright red nose, and a pair of white bunny ears with a red tuft of fluff between them waved over their head from a headband. Their feet were not in shoes, but instead, white slippers that looked like fuzzy rabbit's feet. Around their neck, an oversized blue bow tie with yellow polka dots bobbed almost over their shoulders.
What had been a cheer erupted into a full-throated roar of excitement as the starlet of the Phoenix strode into her domain, her husband at her side. Ranko walked slowly, beaming and looking around as if basking in every individual pair of eyes that touched her as she clutched Akane's arm. That, or the towering stiletto heels that served to make her appear a few centimeters taller than Akane were hard for the songstress to walk in, but Yui bet the former as her sister made her way to the bar counter.
The house lights came back up, and the four individuals at table six dressed in similar outfits to Ariel's made their way up to the stage, beginning to hook up their instruments.
"Really, girls?!" Ranko looked over Hitomi with a smirk. "That's what you wore?!"
Akane shrugged, looking over Emi's bunny suit. "Well, I think it's pretty cute. Ran-chan, we should definitely get yours the next time we're over at Dad's. I think it's still in your old closet."
Ranko's cheeks instantly turned the color of her dress, sparkles and all.
"You said dress like bunnies!" Hitomi threw her hands up in exasperation. "What did you expect?!"
Ranko groaned, her forehead falling into her hand. "No, blockhead! I said rabbit. Roger freakin' Rabbit. Didn't you see the movie?" Smirking, she slipped around the bar counter, wrapping her arms around Yui's waist from behind. "Happy birthday, sis."
"It was," Yui shot back with a snicker, turning in Ranko's arms, "until you showed up to crash the party, ya little shit. What the hell are you doing here? Do you not understand how honeymoons work?! You're s'posedta be in Harajuku, getting railed! You had one job!" She wagged her extended index finger in her sister's face as she spoke.
Akane snickered, resting her hand on Ranko's bare back. She felt the redhead shiver under her touch. "Oh, don't worry, Yui. I promise, she got that memo. Repeatedly. But she wanted to be here tonight, to see you, and…" She gestured to the anticipatory crowd building around the stage. "... to be seen."
"Well…" Yui sighed, brushing Ranko's hair out of her face with a gentle sweep of her fingers. "Then I guess you'd best go show 'em, baby sister." She smiled softly. It makes sense now, she reasoned as her sister walked away. Of all the places she most wants to be able to feel comfortable…
Ranko reached out for Akane's hand, pulling her toward the VIP table. Akane took her seat, and Ranko leaned down to hug her. She blushed when Akane's hand lingered on her backside for a moment.
"Enjoy the show, lover boy," Ranko mewled sultrily as she straightened and made for the stage, where her bandmates and backup singers awaited her.
"What's up, Firebirds?!" Ranko waved as she strode across the stage to vociferous whooping. "Is all that noise for me, or the dress?" She giggled brightly into the headset microphone Hitomi was still working on helping her don without causing too much disruption to her hairdo.
"I missed you guys," Ranko continued as Hitomi finished adjusting her headset for her and began working on putting on her own. "I've been on vacation for a few days, with my amazing husband, Aki." She gestured with her open palm down at the VIP table. "He's so good to me, you guys."
Her gaze softened, her stage exuberance replaced with a soft sincerity. "He's my everything, you know. My sun, moon and stars. My whole life."
I love you too, Akane thought, hiding her blush behind her gloved hand.
"Some of you know, or at least suspect, I've been going through some stuff lately," Ranko continued, turning her attention back to the crowd. "But the thing is, I'll be okay, because the person I love more than anything else in the world has my back, all the time."
As she spoke, a bouncy pop rhythm - like something out of a television commercial for Barbie dolls - began flowing from Jacob's Yamaha synthesizer.
"Alarm song, I'm really starting to hate," Ranko began, swaying in her glittery red dress. "Slept too long! Supposed to be there at eight! Throw clothes on… I'm almost two hours late!"
Two hours? You're doing better than usual, Akane thought with a snicker. As she did, Mei slipped into the seat next to her.
Ranko leaned forward as far as she dared on her precariously towering heels, reaching for the crowd with her outstretched fingers. "It's all wrong, but babe, I'm still feeling great! Today'll be alright, 'cause I'll be with you tonight…"
"So… how'd it go?" Mei bounced in her seat, clapping her hands excitedly. "Tell me everything!"
"I get there. Everyone's laughin' at me, 'cause my hair looks like I slept in a tree!" Ranko picked up a length of her hair in her fingers, looking at it with a mocked expression of shock. "They might stare, totally judgmentally. I don't care - not in the slightest degree! Nothin' on my mind but our bodies intertwined!"
Akane sighed quietly, watching her scintillating bride hold court on her stage with her bunny-suited backup dancers. "Mei, it was… I've known her longer than any of you, and I've never seen her like that. It was… joy. Joy like I didn't know she was capable of."
"Nothing seemed to go my way. I'm walking on clouds anyway!" Hitomi and Emi joined their friend in the one-couplet transition, hugging her from behind as the trio sang.
"Some days aren't so perfect. Some days aren't much fun. But even when I come in last, it feels like I won!" The Dapper Dragons' lead vocalist grinned down at Akane as she spoke with Mei.
Akane smiled brightly up at her, giving Ranko a wave. The grin vanished as soon as she turned back to Mei, however. "And it breaks my heart that after tonight, she has to put it all away again. I don't wanna lose the girl I spent this week with, Mei."
"Everything might suck, but I just say, whatever! Ain't nothin' I won't love to do, if we do it together!"
Akane looked down at her hands. "I can't bear to watch her go back to suffering like that."
"And even when it's really hard, I hope it lasts forever, 'cause my worst day with you is, like, the best! Day! Ever!" Ranko affected an almost valley girl twang in her voice as she'd seen on one of Nabiki's favorite American TV shows.
Mei reached across the table, gripping Akane's hand tightly. "Yes, you can." She looked balefully up at her sister as she danced through the bridge of her song. "Because you have to. Because she needs you to."
"Saturday, I wanna go to the mall, but can't pay. Ain't got no money at all," Ranko sang. Normally, she would have turned her pockets out during that line of the song, but her cocktail dress had none. Crash skipped a note on his guitar and did so instead.
"Besides," Mei said, trying to affect soft reassurance she didn't entirely buy info herself in her voice. "Nabiki hasn't given up trying to get her out of the mess she's in. Just have faith and be strong for her. And in the meantime, nothing says you can't go boy mode for a date night now and again when she needs it, or if you do. Somehow, I don't think she's pulling it off in reverse, though."
Not anymore, at least, Akane mused with a dark chuckle.
"There's no play; the stack o' bills is too tall. So I'll stay right here and wait for your call. That's completely fine, long as you say you're mine," Ranko sang, shimmying up against Emi's back.
Izumi pulled a silver can out of her ice well, popping the top and handing it across the bar. "So… did they behave?"
"Not even a little bit," Lance Riker said with a booming laugh as he took the energy drink from his charge's elder sister.
"My friends go hit all the trendiest stores. I say no, still gotta finish these chores," Ranko continued.
"Good," replied Izumi as she smiled up at the stage.
"On my toes, sweeping and mopping the floors. That's cool though, because I get to be yours. Way too much to do, but I'm doing it for you…" Ranko made a show of pushing an empty microphone stand across the floor of the stage as if it were a push broom.
Akane sipped at her Regular Girl cocktail through a straw jammed through the mouth hole of her mask, turning her eyes back to Mei. "What about here? Everything good?" She leaned in closer to the bikini-clad girl, her voice dropping to as close to a whisper as had a prayer to be heard over the pop performance going on three meters away. "Did you get a test?"
"Nothing seems to go my way. I'm walking on clouds anywa-a-a-ay!" Ranko thrashed her head into her vocalization, clenching her hand in a fist at shoulder level.
Mei nodded, rolling her eyes. "Yep. False alarm. I started on Tuesday, thank all the gods."
"Everything might suck, but I just say, whatever! Ain't nothin' I won't love to do, if we do it together! And even when it's really hard, I hope it lasts forever!"
"Yep," Yui said, having walked up behind Mei as she spoke. She leaned over Mei's shoulder, placing her hand on it carefully to not risk disrupting her sister's wig or her hastily-repaired top. "Crisis averted. Good thing, too. It means we can all keep our attention focused on taking care of the real handful around here," she said, smirking up at the ebullient redhead at center stage.
Ranko pointed down at her costumed lover at the VIP table, her long purple glove sparkling in the spotlight. Her smile seemed to grow three sizes at the thought.
"'Cause every day with YOU is, like, the BEST! DAY! EVER!"