Chapter Text
"-I just don't get it!" Minako was saying, ranting passionately from Rei's bed while Rei listened, sat on the floor organizing loose papers into piles to be put into binders for her classes.
"I'm young, I'm hot, I'm smart and funny and interesting."
'and humble' Rei added sarcastically in her head.
"AND, my ruling planet represents love! What's not working? What am I doing wrong?"
Minako was having one of her monthly crises over the state of her love life. It had been easier to gloss over when she was still in school and busy with all the senshi-saving-the-world business and then the subsequent processing-trauma-from-saving-the-world business. And university was a whirlwind too, with casual hookups and navigating her rise to fame while she toured around the world and fought tooth and nail to get her music degree. But that was over now. They were 25. Over a decade had gone by since they had first met and neither Rei nor Minako had any real relationship experience to speak of.
"I don't think you're doing anything wrong, Mina," Rei told her patiently. "I think you just need to be patient and lower your expectations."
Minako huffed. She had heard this from Rei before and didn't know why she kept coming back to her very judgmental and very virginal shrine maiden friend for advice.
"It's a little hard to do that when your friends serve as proof that soulmates literally exist." She countered sourly.
Rei tapped the edges of the paper together against the floor to even them. "Are you referring to Usagi and Mamoru or Haruka and Michiru?"
Minako groaned dramatically in response. "See! I'm surrounded!"
"I'm not sure that they are soulmates," Rei argued. "I think they just like each other...a lot." A flimsy description of two pairs of individuals who had fallen in love multiple times over multiple lifetimes, but this was about making Minako feel better. Not worse.
She went on.
"Come on, Mamoru and Usagi had a rocky start, and I'm sure Haruka and Michiru bicker from time to time. Relationships take work, Minako. Your perfect person isn't just going to fall out of the sky one day."
Minako didn't answer. Rei looked up to see what she was doing. She was lying on her back, one of her inexhaustible dating apps on the screen.
"Minako," Rei snapped, growing annoyed watching her finger swipe through various faces.
The blonde woman turned around and held her phone out. The screen announced that she had matched with 'Ayumi, 28'. The woman in question had a short brown bob and a nice smile.
Rei felt an inexplicable rage towards 'Ayumi, 28'
"Look," Minako said, going to the chat section and scrolling down through a bunch of incomplete conversations. "The men who aren't disgusting creeps are fucking boring and the women I match with either end up ghosting me or we go on a date and it's just-" She looked around the room as if searching for inspiration. "Not what I'm looking for."
"Well, it probably doesn't help that you're an international pop star who's in a different continent every two weeks," Rei replied and returned to her sorting. "In fact, I'm surprised your account hasn't been banned by people reporting it for catfishing."
"Oh, it has been. Multiple times." Minako said flopping on her back again. "I had to send them a photo of my ID as proof that it's really me."
"Yeah, dating a celebrity doesn't sound particularly fun or easy." Minako made a sound of indignance which Rei ignored. "What happened to Hana?" Rei distinctly remembered that night a few weeks ago they were all hanging out like when they were school girls. Minako was showing them pictures of the latest girl she was dating. They never lasted long, but what made Hana stand out was the comment Usagi made upon seeing her photo.
'-She looks a bit like Rei!'
Instantly Makoto and Rei clamored around to get a closer look.
Ami simply stared meaningfully between Minako and Rei, but whatever telepathic message she was trying to transmit was not received because now Minako was shaking her head and saying how different this other long, black-haired girl was from Rei. And how really, it wasn't that hard to find long, black-haired Japanese women in Japan, and if it weren't for the fact that Usagi herself was Japanese, the comment would have been in very poor taste. Ami sighed in exasperation but made no comment.
Rei had had enough by the time Minako was lifting the phone up to Rei's face to compare; 'Rei has much prettier eyebrows for one-" and excused herself with a lethal side-eye at Usagi who blinked back at her innocently.
Present Minako sighed and set her phone down. "Hana told me she still wasn't over her ex and needed some space."
"And Robert?" Rei asked trying to remember what other names Minako had mentioned recently.
"He just wanted a casual thing; he was going back to Oxford to finish his Master's."
"Ah. Long distance is no good anyway. You dodged a bullet."
"I don't know, I'm starting to think maybe messy is better than nothing."
Rei looked up again from her sorting, an unconcealed frown plastered across her lower face. "Don't be ridiculous. Pull yourself together."
Minako rolled over on her stomach and looked at Rei, head cradled in her palms. "I know, it's just hard. Meet-cutes don't happen in real life. At least not to me. And I'm clearly wasting my time on the apps, and you know what the worst part is?"
Rei waited to hear what the 'worst part' was.
"Is that even if I did meet someone really special and wonderful I wouldn't be able to fully be myself with them. I'd always be hiding a huge part of who I am. "
Rei softened. 7 years ago, before heading their separate ways for uni, their friend group had decided to always keep their secret identities secret, even from future partners. It was easy enough for Usagi to agree to, and Ami who was pragmatic even in matters of the heart. But Rei had caught the way Makoto and Minako had hesitated. If it was a matter of 2v2, Rei would be the tiebreaker, and she already knew what she wanted.
Selfish. She swallowed down the guilt.
"I think, that whoever you love will be so loved by all of you there won't be any piece of you missing that would make the relationship feel incomplete or deceptive. Venus didn't have to share her life with Minako," Rei reasoned. "So why should you have to share yours with Venus?" Never mind that they were practically one and the same and honestly neither Rei nor Minako could remember who they really were before they had awoken as senshi. It was about seizing control without the help of a burning bow and arrow or a chain of golden hearts.
Rei wanted it to feel empowering taking back her civilian life in her mid-twenties. Instead, it just felt lonely. And even more so that she didn't get to see her girls as often as she would have liked (not that she’d ever admit it). Thank Goddess for the Internet. She loved having breakfast while Minako video called her from 8 hours behind, to ask which outfit she preferred for some photoshoot. Or listen to Usagi's 14-minute-long voice messages like a personal podcast while she swept the courtyard. Getting pictures and postcards from Makoto and Ami's travels was also a treat and sometimes Rei found herself wondering when the two of them had gotten so close and had to end that train of thought lest she start speculating and zooming in on the suspicious fading mark on Ami's pale neck. Or the hand resting comfortably and confidently around Makoto's waist. Friendship huh.
Minako slouched off the bed like legless blonde and red jelly and gave Rei a hug, careful not to disrupt any of the carefully arranged stacks of paper. The paper was the last thing on Rei's mind the second her toned arms came around her and she was enveloped in a fresh, floral scent.
"Thank you. I know I've been annoying about this. I appreciate you listening to me. I haven't even asked you about your love life yet."
Rei cringed at the idea of having to consider and divulge her desires and wants to the woman who had now let go of her but who was looking at her with wide attentive eyes. Maybe if she didn't say anything, Minako would change the subject and move on.
"Whoever you choose will be lucky to have you, Rei," Minako told her kindly and Rei had to break eye contact because blue always made it hard for her to think clearly.
Rei famously didn't do anything she didn't want to do. As Mina once aptly put it, "You can't lead a horse to water, but you can make it drink." Ironically the messed-up idiom worked in that context as instead of going to a loud, obnoxious bar to celebrate having finished their university entrance exams, something Rei refused to do while it stormed outside, they got tipsy in the privacy of her own home. A much better option especially considering how Mako in her drunken state decided at 2am that making cookies was a good idea. If they had gone to a bar, they wouldn't have experienced the joy and pleasure of having warm, oven-baked cookies in the early hours of the morning.
On the other hand, Minako famously got whatever she wanted. Not always, of course, but most of the time. If she wanted something, she would pursue it till the end of the Earth. Rei admired her determination and tenacity, but they also served as a sobering reminder for Rei that if Mina wanted her, she would have made a move by now.