Abby and Violet (Yuri Light Novel)

It was just a few more days until the end of the year exams to start. Just a few more days, then it’d come hard days for us followed by days where it wouldn’t be all that important to keep going to class.

A year ago, I’d stop going altogether, as long as my grades didn’t go down a certain threshold that would make the school contact my mum and tell her about it. This year, however, with miss fussy and let’s-play-by-the-rules, I could expect for my times of fun to take a while longer to come. Not that it was all bad.

We were studying at her place for the moment. Well, she was, diligent as ever, while I… admired her legs.

Her place was like an oven, even with a fan on, so she had most of her legs and arms exposed. And in a way, I was doing it with her permission. She had caught me staring two times but said nothing. She only blushed and crossed them. At the third, she gave me an awkward smile, so instead of pretending I wasn’t looking, I simply stared at them.

They were so long and slender, and I knew from sitting on them, super soft. I wished I could touch them with my hands, but never in her life would she allow such a thing.

No, but… she has been a lot more permissive lately.

Be that as it may, I still wouldn’t ask her. Not with my dirty intentions looming over.

“Your feet are so small,” she suddenly said, sounding like she was thinking out loud.

She was holding the one foot I had on her lap as I sat across her on the couch. I was so distracted with her legs that I didn’t notice her finishing studying biology. Although, I suppose she was now studying mine.

“Is there a thing in me that isn’t small?” I asked sarcastically.

“Erm… I can think of a few.”

“…Violet, my boobs aren’t that big.”

“I’m not talking about those. And don’t say “boobs”, please.”

“And what’s wrong with calling them boobs? It’s what they are, boobs. Hmm? Boobs? Boobs. Boo—”

“S-stop that!” she snickered.

Don’t tell me… is she still at that mental age?

Instead of stopping, I doubled down until she began openly laughing. For someone who looked like she was an adult, she sure was being a little kid right now.

“Who’d have thought?”

“Are you done embarrassing me?” she grumbled.

“Hehe, yeah. So, what’s there about me? That isn’t small, I mean.”

“…I’m not sure I should say after that,” she grumbled, pinching my pinkie toe.

I pestered her with my puppy eyes, whiny voice and nuzzles until she gave up. Another win for my adorableness against her resistances.

“…Your IQ is pretty big…”

“It’s not that big, just like my… chest.”

I was going to say “breasts”, but maybe that word could also trigger her immature side.

“I disagree. Anyway, erm… your smile.”

“Hmm? You think my mouth is big?”

“How can you assume that from what I said? No, I meant your smile. It’s big and bright.”

“…All thanks to you.”

“…T-thanks…”

It was so fun toying with her. Tick her off one moment and the next, make her blush. I could do that all day, but then she’d probably get fed up.

“Erm… your eyes too… they are so… sparkly and pretty… I really like the green in them.”

“Green?” I asked, feeling a bit lied to. “My eyes aren’t green!”

“N-no, I know that! Gee, could you stop doing that!?”

“No, this time I’m serious. What’s this talk about my eyes being green?”

“I didn’t say they were green, I said they have green in them! As in, they are sparkled with green here and there.”

“They are?”

“Yes!”

I had no recollection of that ever being a thing, but I believed in her. I told her so before going to the bathroom to check it in my reflexion. Sure enough, there was green in them, once you looked carefully.

“You know my body better than I do at this point,” I told her when I got back.

She wasn’t in a good mood after our failed flirting session. I could fix that, but I felt bad for having caused her anger unnecessarily.

I placed my head on her lap while contouring her jawline.

Slowly she softened up, and began playing with my hair.

“It’s gotten long,” she said, twisting a few strands between her fingers. “Are you planning on letting it grow?”

“Hmm… maybe. I don’t have mum getting up my business about things like that, so I’ve just let myself go. Do you think I should cut it?”

She rubbed my hair with a very thoughtful face.

“I think you should… maybe leave it long enough to tie it if you want, but… I liked it more when it was fluffier. I have long hair and it’s a huge bother to keep it looking good.”

I laughed, charmed at her shy sincerity.

I got what she meant. Ever since it started to grow, it flowed more pressed to my skull and face instead of puffing up. It was a bit of a bother going to the hairdresser, but if that’s how she preferred it, I’d do it with pleasure. I was fine with it being long or short either way. But that was about my hair.

“Please, don’t cut yours short. I love it being long.”

“Y-you do?”

“Yeah. It’s so silky and shiny. I love playing with it while you sleep.”

“…Yeah, I’m aware of that.”

“Hehe, and I’m aware that you’re aware. People that are fast asleep don’t blush.”

She looked away, embarrassed by discovering that I knew she was faking it all along, but that embarrassment was forgotten once I showed her the moustache I made for myself with a strand of her hair.

See, Abby? Aren’t things better this way?

I had been so stupid trying to act more mature and cool. That wasn’t me at all. And while Violet changed to something akin to her polar opposite, she did so because that made her a better person while staying true to her core. Unlike me, her change was for the better. I’d have damaged our relationship and, probably even worse, myself.

“Erm, can I see your sleep diary before I go to work?”

“Wouldn’t you rather read it once you came back?”

“I’ll probably come late again. That, and I’ll most likely feel drained from putting up with my manager.”

That was the first time I heard about her manager giving her trouble.

I asked her about it, but she didn’t elaborate. She said she’d tell me all about it on the next day since it was a day off, so I’d simply have to remind her.

While she read my diary, us sitting on opposite sides of the couch, facing each other with our legs alternated, I played with her foot the same way she played with mine. I also placed mine against it for comparison. Heel to heel, my toes ended where hers started. Kinda like my head almost ended where her began too.

“They’ve been getting better, haven’t they?”

It felt like it.

The one that had my mum come and drag me back to my old place was now the rarest instead of being one of the commonest, the one Violet told me she didn’t want to see me again also began to fade too. The only one that remained and that I hadn’t written about was the one where Violet was grossed out by my feelings for her, but even that seemed to not occur as often. At the beginning, at minimum, I could have any of those dreams eight times out of ten when sleeping alone—sometimes having one, waking up, and having another after falling asleep—but now it was fifty-fifty.

I had also began dealing better with them. Violet’s sleep cycle certainly got better too.

“Is it because you have Mr. Sealy to hug with while sleeping?” she hypothesised.

“Erm… I think it might help, but… Mostly, I think I’m just getting better. About time, if you’d ask me.”

“…You’re doing great, Abby.”

“…I don’t want you to go, but you’ll be late if you stay here any longer.”

“Ah! Yeah, I better be going.”

She got up and rushed to the bedroom. I didn’t say anything to her then, but when I saw her rushing to the door, giving me a brief farewell, I called out to her.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

She was already flustered from running around in that heat, so I couldn’t see her blush, but I’m sure she’d have if she could.

You see, we’ve gotten into a certain habit. Whenever one of us left, that person had to give a farewell kiss to the other. When that someone arrived, it was the other’s turn for the gesture.

“Do it properly!” I protested, after being given a quick peck. “It has to be at least half a second, remember.”

“Haah, ok, ok.”

“Hehe.”

She missed the spot on my cheek and kissed me under the ear for a whole second instead, me feeling a jolt through my body.

Or maybe she did it on purpose because she knew I liked it?

Nah, Violet isn’t that bold. At least not yet, she isn’t.

“Is the coast clear?” Stan asked, peeking inside the living room.

I confirmed it was indeed clear and asked him what he meant by that. According to him, we’ve been so flirty lately that he felt like a third wheel and tried to stay away.

“Come on, it’s not like that!” I told him, resting my chest on the back of the couch to face him while he was in the kitchen preparing his dinner. “We are just playing around. You know, banter between friends.”

“I didn’t know that involved her nibbling your ear.”

“S-she never did that! She just… kisses… my neck…”

My voice died down while my face lightened up. Stan’s look of someone who struck the nail on the head wasn’t helping. Poor Violet, having to deal with that level of teasing every day from me.

“Anyway, it’s not like that!” I insisted when he came to join me on the couch with a tray of food.

“Don’t you think you’ve done some progress?”

“…We’ve grown even closer, but… not in that way.”

“…Well, before becoming lovers, you need to become friends. At least that’s how it went between me and her mother.”

I stared at him, wondering if it’d be ok to ask him how the two of them got together. It was a very sensitive subject, after all.

He noticed my curiosity, and after chewing his food and cleaning his mouth with a napkin, he told me about when they first met in class. Like me and Violet, they were classmates, but we differed in the fact that they met in nineth grade and that he approached her first in the first year of high school because she was the only person he knew in class. Like us, she was super shy around him, but unlike Violet, she was the one following him around. He chuckled when telling me about the crush she had over him during nineth grade and that he never even guessed it until the day someone confessed to him as a joke and she pulled him away from the other girl.

“Aww, that’s so sweet… although, it doesn’t help me much.”

“Is my daughter a jealous person?”

“She is. She tries to keep it under wraps, but I see her fuming when I’m talking to others. Or at least she did, now that I think about it. I guess she got over that bad side of hers too.”

“Oh, really? Is that so?” he said, sounding annoyingly amused.

“What? What’s with that reaction?”

“Nothing. I just find it very, very amusing.”

“…Stan, what is it? Please, don’t leave me hanging.”

“Those puppy eyes might work with the heart of butter that is my dear daughter, but they won’t work with me.”

“Tsk. Fine.”

He was eating again while I watched and waited for him to continue, but he didn’t seem to be resuming the tale any time soon, so I asked him what happened next in their story.

He gave me a smile and told me he’d continue it another time.

“But I want to know now!” I whined.

“Get my daughter to date you, then I’ll tell you the rest,” he chuckled cruelly.

“What!? But papa Stan, that might not ever happen!”

“Hmm? Might not happen? Don’t you mean, ‘it won’t ever happen’?”

“…”

I had gone and gotten my hopes up again.

He put down one of the cutlery and held my hand.

“It’s fine to have hope.  If you were to stop trying, do you think you’d be able to look back in the future and feel satisfied?”

“…No… but papa Stan, it’s…”

“…It’s scary?”

I nodded.

“I was scared too, you know? When I confessed to Charlotte.”

“But, didn’t you know already that she liked you?”

“Come on, give me a break! It was my first love and sometimes girls act super nice to a guy—a boy, I should say, and then the boy gets the idea she likes him when she was just being friendly, or god forbids, just acting polite.” That hit home as I remembered Marcus. “I assure you, you might be fully certain that the other person likes you, but you’ll still feel a certain level of fear.”

“I guess, but… I’m also a lesbian. Most girls aren’t.”

“…I guess.”

“…Doesn’t it bother you the idea of Violet becoming like me?”

“Hmm, that’s a good question. Honestly, it doesn’t. Look… has she ever told you about… her family condition?”

“You mean, the heart problem?”

“So, she did tell you. Well, her mother had it, which means she doesn’t. Her children will, though. Any child that she gives birth to will have a ticking time bomb in their chest with no idea of when it will blow up. With that… tragedy inevitably going to happen, to me, it doesn’t make any difference whom her partner is because the one thing that could justify me being saddened by her being a certain way or other would bring a lot of pain and suffering. I guess she could maybe use somebody else’s eggs, or adopt, but in those cases, does it really matter that she’s with a man? I don’t think so. In both cases she’d be the child’s mother through a bond of love, not biology, so for me, I’m fine if her partner is another woman.”

I hadn’t thought about any of that. Did Violet? Most likely. Did she perhaps feel like she was cursed? About that I could only wonder.

It was almost one in the morning when she came back. She was coming so late that I called her and only stopped trying once she was right in front of me at the door.

“Violet, what made you come so late!?”

“Haah, please, let’s just go to bed.”

“But Violet, you—”

She grabbed my waist and face very gently, kissing my head with an exhausted tenderness, shutting me up.

“Abby, please. I don’t want to go through an argument right now. Can we just… talk about this tomorrow?”

She looked so tired and upset as she asked me that. I let her be until we got in bed.

Her room had somehow gotten even hotter. My guess was, the walls were now irradiating the heat they absorbed during the day.

I was already in bed, watching her take off her clothes. I was expecting her to put on a tank top like all other nights we slept at her place, but she got in bed bare chested like it was nothing.

“Come here,” she told me, pulling my shoulder as I pulled towards the opposite direction.

“But Violet, you’re…”

“I’m too tired to care. I just want to fall asleep cuddling you.”

With her saying stuff like that, it was impossible for me to stay away. Still, for safety reasons, I made sure we were lying in a way that it was impossible for my hands to touch her in any weird place. One arm under her head, and the other under the arm she had around my torso.

“Isn’t it too hot for you?” I asked, my voice a bit shaky.

“Hmm… but I really need to cuddle you… my manager was being a huge jerk tonight.”

“…I see…”

“…Haah, you smell so nice.”

“Pfft, hehe Violet… I’m kinda sweaty.”

“…I like it…”

I went wide eyed at her statement.

“Please, forget that I said that.”

“…No… it made me happy, so… I refuse…”

“…That so?”

“Y-yeah…”

She shifted her body while pulling me. We were now as tightly packed as we would if it was winter.

She asked me what I had done while she was away.

I mentioned talking with her dad. When she asked me what we had talked about, I told her we talked about “stuff”.

Being reminded of that conversation, a burning question was on my mind.

“Can I ask you a very personal question?”

“Of course. You don’t even need to ask me that,” she told me, nuzzling my hair.

“Do you… have you… would you like to one day… have kids?”

She didn’t answer me until she turned the table lamp on and could clearly see my face.

“…I shouldn’t have kids. I’d be sentencing them to death if I ever did.”

“…But would you like to?” I asked, my voice a bit cracking from emotion and trying to keep it quiet.

“…I guess… if it wasn’t for my family’s health condition. Although I think I’d be terrible at it.”

“I disagree. You’re so good at taking care of people. Of me. You’re a great cook, you’re very loving and when I need to be put in order, you’re the right amount of authoritarian.”

“Thanks, but… did I ever tell you that I once tried baby-sitting? I sucked at it.”

“Yeah, I can see the old Violet being like that, but this new Violet? Not so much.”

She smiled at me while stroking my face. “What about you?” she asked.

“Me? I wonder if I’m even big enough for that.”

“I don’t think it’s a problem. There are people even shorter than you that can get pregnant just fine.”

“True… but I’m guessing I’d be too immature to raise a kid.”

“…Not really… you’d raise them with lots of love, and you can also be very down to earth when you need to.”

“…Do you think I’d be a good mother, unlike the one I had?”

“I’m sure of it,” she answered in a heartbeat.

“…What about adopting? Or using some medical procedure?”

“Hmm… I’d go with adopting.”

“What if you used one of my eggs?”

“I’d hate that. We’d have to use the… seed of a man I don’t know. I’d rather adopt altogether than carry a child that doesn’t have anything to do with me, or have you carry… never mind.”

My heart was racing like crazy while I kept telling myself that what she told me wasn’t the same as saying she wanted to have babies with me.

“Erm… do you still want to become a PE teacher?”

“Y-yeah. Why do you ask?”

“…Do you have a university in mind?”

“Violet, it’s way too early for me to worry about that.”

“Hmm… yeah… you’re right…”

“…Why do you ask?”

“…I was thinking… I still don’t know what I want to do once we finish high school. If I stay like this until then… could we… could I go with you?”

“You want to go to the same university as me despite not knowing what you want to do?”

“No, that’s not it… I was thinking… maybe we could… live together?”

My heart was practically jumping out of my chest.

“I could work somewhere to help pay the bills and… you’d have help around the house. Also—”

“I’d love to!” I shouted, getting my torso supported on my elbows as I looked over her. “Let’s do that!”

“Abby, shh! Eek!”

I latched on her, hugging tightly.

“All I want is to be together with you for as long as possible! Of course I’d want to live with you!”

“…I see… fufu.”

“How big?”

“Hmm?”

“How big would you like the place to be? How many rooms? Would you prefer a flat, or a house? Although, maybe we should look for a bedroom. Ah! I mean, bedrooms. What do you—mmh!”

“Abby, calm down. You’re being too noise,” she told me, pressing a finger to my lips.

We kept talking about it until past three. In the end we settle with a tiny flat with a decent bathroom—I wanted it with a bath, but gave up once she said we’d never get in together, even with bikinis on—a nicely sized kitchen where we could cook together without butting elbows. The best part was the bedroom. She was fine with it being only one and sharing the bed! It had to have AC for that though, otherwise we’d have separate beds.

“Erm, why did you turn the light on?” I asked once we had talked about everything we wanted to and she turned the lights off.

“Erm… I guess I wanted to see your face during the serious talk we had?”

“Serious?” I wondered out loud.

“Y-yeah… It was about the future after all.”

I was feeling elated again.

“Erm, could I sleep with my head on your chest tonight? I promise I won’t do anything weird.”

She flipped the lights on again.

“Abby, you don’t have to add that kind of talk after a request. I trust you, I know you wouldn’t do anything that could upset me, so just don’t, ok?”

“…Ok. But what if I touch you accidently while sleeping?”

Her face turned red at the suggestion.

Without uttering a word, she turned the light back off. Then, I felt her grabbing one of my hands and guiding it around. When I felt it land on something soft, I couldn’t believe it.

“V-Violet? Is… Is this—”

“Ah! D-don’t pinch it!” she gasped.

“S-Sorry! It was a nervous twitch.”

It really was what I thought it was.

I felt the urge to kiss it, but that would be crossing a line that friends should never cross. Even this was straddling the line, but a girl feeling the chest of her friend was still in the ok.

“Why?” I asked, being unable to reach her reasoning.

“…This way you won’t feel bad if you touch me somewhere, right?”

“…I see…”

“…Erm… the, erm… inner leg… that is still off limits.”

“W-well, yeah… I’d have to at least take you out for dinner before any of that… sorry, bad joke.”

“…”

“…Won’t you touch me too?”

“…”

She was quiet, but I felt a trembling hand making its way to my chest. Her silence was broken by a trembling exhale once she found her mark and gave it a little squeeze.

And while it was all a very nice moment of us bonding, it took us the whole next day until we could look at each other without turning completely red.