queen of hearts
Characters: Shizuka Nanami, Toujou Hidetora
Summary: He is far out of her league but she fails to accept this.
Shizuka Nanami is beauty, grace and perfection – all wrapped into once. She has always been like this, truth be told, and she would always be because this is an eternal fact of her – along with her graceful skill on the battlefield. They have known each other for a very long time and in a way, she has been his best friends for as long as he has cared about friends or understood the concept of making them. She is also his only friend. The ones who follow him are followers but Shizuka has been there long before he has gained even a first follower and she is none of them.
He does not greet her as they pass each other on the hallway for the first time in what feels like an eternity and neither does she even though they instantly recognise each other. But the line is already drawn and they are on opposing sides with vastly different loyalties.
It takes a miraculously won volley ball match and an unexpected truce for him to approach her again after avoiding her for months. His loyalty lies with his school and to get involved in business that is not his has something he has never liked.
He has to ask her for help and so they start talking again because some things between them have always gone without saying and she knows about this childhood (and the rest probably as well). He is no gentleman but for her he tries to act as civil as possible without even noticing it. Giving her the jacket when she says that she is cold or helping her with her grocery bags, sure, these are things he has done since they have been kids. And yet, he still feels like things are different now somehow.
And it is.
He nearly panics when he finally figures out that he has fallen – quite hard – for Shizuka Nanami but this has been nearly to be expected because he knows her too damn well. He knows that she still keeps an old teddy bear in her room and he knows the way she drinks her tea. If there would be a contest about who knows Shizuka Nanami best, he would win hands down, easily beating that fool Izuma.
She is out of his league nonetheless.
He knows this but it seems like a lie to him when he realises that she is – quite subtly – replying to his unconscious advances. He knows that she is not always freezing when they hang out in an abandoned storehouse or when he walks her home. Hell, he has seen her on colder days walking in lighter clothes next to Izuma and she has never shuddered. She tells him that she is cold because she knows that he would give her his jacket without asking many questions.
In a way, Shizuka is just weird as all the other girls as well and this is strange because he used to think that she was the only one he had a good chance at understanding.
Given that he is not good with words and that he does not want to endanger the relationship he has formed with her so many years ago because it actually maters, he stays back, confused and torn apart. She is the vice president of the elite school that generally treats him and those like him like scum and he is a thug to the bone, feared by many.
There is no way that they fit together.
Fate (and Shizuka too) has other plans and this is how he finds himself kissing her in a storehouse. It is strange because most of the physical contact he makes is to hurt and to bruise but not her. Never her. She is the exception – always has been and always would be.
But still.
They do not belong and so he tells her, albeit regretful because he wishes that they would.
He expects her to nod, to come to the same realisation but she only laughs, says that she is not half as innocent and fragile as some might believe and this is true because she has not become part of the six horsemen for no reason. She is tough and fearless – and he admits that this is what he has always liked about her in one way or another.
Yes, he is out of Shizuka Nanami's league and everyone but one would agree with him but because it is Shizuka Nanami who boldly disagrees, he sets out to play out of his league – because he has played Santa for her brothers before and so he cannot deny her anything else.