ENTITLED: I'd Rather Pretend
FANDOM: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun
SETTING: post-chapter one (I am the promised light of illumination).
DISCLAIMER: Nothing has changed.
NOTE: I really need to make an outline for this thing. Otherwise it will stretch into an obsession the likes of which you have never seen. I know myself. I will not be able to stop. I promise, in real life, I am much worse.
NOTE2: Also, I was really touched and surprised by all the thoughtful feedback I received for the last chapter. Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment! You are all so wonderful and classy. It was a real treat.
LENGTH: 2/9
UPDATED: 12/23/12


CHAPTER TWO; Destroyed But Not Defeated

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up."

— "The Sandman", Neil Gaiman


The next morning, Natsume wakes up, and feels warm down to her toes. A sweet, drifty feeling, her thoughts float through her drowsiness, until she remembers. For a second, the feeling persists.

And then she remembers that everything comes with baggage.

"Crap!" Natsume yelps, and jolts upright.

He'll probably not want to talk about it either, she reasons, as she brushes her teeth.

It was just a kiss! He'll just tease me a little and then everything will be normal again, she assures herself, as she gets dressed.

What if he shows up with flowers and chocolate or something! she suddenly thinks, her mouth full of toast. She rushes to the window and peers out suspiciously. There are no flowers or chocolates.

What if he's angry that I don't want to be his girlfriend? What if he thinks I'm a tease! she frets, returning to the kitchen.

I can't let that happen. I have to make sure he doesn't get any ideas, she decides, iron in hand and her hair steaming slightly.

I should probably tell him that we both need a little space to cool down and figure things out, she decides, applying the final touches to her make-up. Natsume studies her eyelashes for clumps, and then pulls back, satisfied. She pulls out her phone, braces herself, and has just entered his number when her phone buzzes. She squawks and flounders and checks caller I.D. Of course it's from him.

Hey, I'm bored. You want to go to the batting cages? I hear Haru's back. I can give you a lift.

She stares at the cheerful little message, and suspiciously considers all the ways he's cornered her.

"Crap!" Natsume shrieks, as it is quickly becoming her word of the morning. She hurls her phone at the couch cushions and stomps a full circuit around the house.


Twenty minutes later, Sasayan is outside her house, and waving cheerfully through the window. Natsume crouches over her shoes, lacing them up, and imagines a million horrible hypothetical scenarios. She opens the door, and Sasayan kisses her. She gets on the bike, and Sasayan kisses her. She trips and falls on him, and Sasayan kisses her. There is a definite theme here.

Natsume edges outside with her hands pressed over her mouth.

"What're you doing?" Sasayan asks, his eyebrows all the way up, "Are you sick? Is something wrong with your mouth?" he thinks about this for a second and then adds, "I didn't…bruise you or anything, did I?"

Natsume's hands shoot down to clench at her sides, "Obviously not!" she shouts, "And I told you! We're not talking about it ever again."

"Okay, okay," Sasayan concedes as he rolls his eyes. "No talking about it."

Somewhat appeased, Natsume hops on the back of his bike. Her attention never wavers. She is certain he is poised to strike. She isn't wrong.

"Natsume?"

"What."

"You know your shoes don't match, right?" Sasayan asks cheerfully, as he pushes them off and starts down the street. Natsume considers her feet. It's true. One of her shoes is a lace-up converse. The other is a three-inch wedge.

"I-It's all the rage!"

"Oh, my bad."

She abandons pride, and clutches at his shirt, "Take me back!"

He laughs at her. It's a very fond, indulgent sort of laugh. She isn't sure that she likes it.


Visiting Haru is a mistake. But it's worth it to see him tied up like a criminal, bound hand and feet to the bike rack outside the batting cages.

"Shizuku!" he wails.

"Stop it," Micchan says blankly from inside. His voice doesn't carry, but Natsume didn't think he seemed likely to go to the trouble of raising it.

"Shizuku's out of town," Sasayan says calmingly. Haru looks at the other boy through a veil of sullen tears.

"I know that, I just want to lie in her bed until she comes back, obviously!"

"No," Micchan's faint voice objects. Sasayan looks towards Haru pityingly.

"She's gonna be back in a few days, you know?"

"I don't see what the problem is!" Haru snaps, apparently oblivious to the attempted comfort extended to him, "It's not like her dad has the stones to call the police!"

Natsume is inspired by this flaming display of young male passion.

"Good for you," she decides, and crouches down by Haru's side, "Don't give up!"

"As if I would!" Haru snorts. Natsume pats his shoulder. Sasayan rolls his eyes, and abandons them for a couple rounds with the robot. It nags at her, how easily he seemed to be able to leave them. She forgets, sometimes, that Sasayan wasn't like her. He acted too naturally for her to always remember that he was popular enough to fill up the empty spaces failures had left behind.

"What's up?" Haru barks, and Natsume squeaks.

"N-Nothing!"

He squints at her. Natsume hums.

"Did you guys do it?"

"WHAT?"

"Good for you," Haru mutters, looking a bit envious even as his dark eyes gleamed, "Shizuku still won't—"

"STOP TALKING."

"—and I don't what the big deal is, everyone has them—"

Natsume screams wordlessly, and smashes her hands tightly over her ears. Haru examines the hot blush spread across her face.

"Oh," he concludes with stunningly obvious disappointment, "You're still a virgin."

Natsume punches him as hard as she can, and then walks inside before Haru has time to realize how much it had hurt her hand.

Inside, Sasayan swings, hits. The distance between them seems impossible, insurmountable. She hangs behind the desk with Mi-chan, choosing past awkwardness over the present. She slides down the wall, and sits with her arms wrapped protectively around her knees.

"What's up?"

"Nothing," Natsume mumbles into her thighs. Mi-chan drags down his cigarette. It's a wonder that he can smoke so much, she thinks. It must have cost him a fortune.

"Don't worry about it too much," Mi-chan says cryptically. Natsume sputters.

"I'm not!"

But she is.

And as the day goes on, she realizes, he hangs around her more than before. Or maybe she'd never noticed. But that seems impossible. He's always the one who looks over his shoulder to make sure she's not lagging behind.

It's suffocating and to make it worse, it's a disgusting kind of hot outside, the kind where even the air sweats, and by noon she refuses to raise her arms above her head and Sasayan has to walk his bike along the side of the road, wiping his face on the bottom of his shirt. She notices, as he does this, that his waist is sharp and narrow, and that the skin of his back is the lightest shade of brown.

Natsume looks down.

"I think I'm dying," he says, "Sorry for making you walk. Good thing you changed your shoes, I guess."

Natsume hums uncomfortably. Her stomach aches more sharply as he speaks, as it has been all day.

They stop to rest at a nearby river. Sasayan takes off his shoes and socks, and wades out into the water, wriggling his shoulders and yelping, "Oh my god, that's cold!"

Natsume plops down on the bank, and lowers her face behind her knees. She feels miserable. Her eyes haze out and she slumps to rest on her back, looking up through the tangle of her eyelashes into the savagely blue summer sky.

She would give anything for a breeze, right now. A truck rumbles past on the bridge above them, and she can hear Sasayan sloshing back to land. She closes her eyes quickly, and hopes for something she cannot explain or define or in anyway put words to.

He puts his hands against her neck. They're wet, and so cold that she screams. Natsume's eyes snap open, and she catches the beginning of his grin.

"Gotcha."

"You're HORRIBLE!"

Sasayan reels backwards, hunching over his stomach and laughing, Natsume scrambles to her feet and quivers, shivers of cold still shaking their way out of her spine. She goes after him, her troubles forgotten, focused only on her blind, furious need for revenge.

She slaps his chest and arms several times, and this makes him laugh harder. She kicks and shoves and yells at him until he wraps his arms around her and buries his face into the juncture of neck and shoulder, and goes on laughing breathlessly. Her arms are pinned to her sides and his breath is very hot against her skin, and she can smell nothing but his hair.

There is a moment where he stops laughing, and raises his head to look at her.

He's going to kiss her.

Oh no.

She goes still, staring back at him, her heart racing and anxious and she does not know how to deal with this, at all, and she doesn't even want to try, but there is absolutely nowhere left to run. She hadn't realized that he thought he could just kiss her when he wanted to, like it was supposed to be something easy and natural. The thought makes her sick. She wonders if everything that has happened this morning has lead up to this point. She wonders if everything that has ever happened between them was just so that he could kiss her when he wanted to. The thought makes her sick.

His eyes close, and Natsume does the only thing she can think of. She lurches to the side, and topples them both into the river.

He half lets go of her as they fall, and her elbow bangs pretty hard against on of the rocks on the bottom, but the main thing she's aware of is the face full of bone-numbing river water in her face, and then Sasayan jerks her back upright.

They both stare at one another, sprawled out and sopping wet. A small waterfall drips from Sasayan's left ear, and this might be the first time she's seen him with flat hair.

"Well, that was a fabulous idea," he notes. Natsume jerks to her feet and kicks a wave into his face. He only just has time to close his eyes.

Hissing, she sloshes back to the bank, dragging up the straps of one of her tank tops. Her whole outfit is now one step away from see-through. Her bra is hot pink and undeniably viewable. She seizes the hem of her shirt and does her best to wring it out.

They spend the next several hours drying by the riverside. He teaches her how to whistle on a blade of grass, and she beats him at skipping rocks. When the sun starts going down, he invites her to his home for more oranges, and she doesn't think to decline.


Sasayan's cat is a little bitch.

"I hate you," Natsume whispers. The cat looks at her. It's a look that speaks murder.

"Wow, Muffin likes you!" Sasayan chirps when he comes back into the sitting room. Natsume and the cat do not break eye contact.

Natsume speaks for both of them, "No." After a minute, she tells the cat, "Your name is stupid."

Muffin narrows her eyes. She's a tough, mean old thing, with chewed up ears and one dead-white eye. Sasayan picks her up, and she butts her head forcefully against the underside of his chin. He coos. "I've had her since I was a kid! She used to live on the street, you know? She's almost twenty-three now. They said she'd die seven years ago, but she didn't."

"Hm," Natsume says, disappointed. The cat looks at her proudly.

"She always hides when we have company," Sasayan continues, circling the couch. He deposits Muffin between Natsume and himself, and then happily flops down. "I guess you made her curious."

Natsume and the cat resume staring evilly at each other.

"You wanna meet my mom?" Sasayan asks suddenly, and Natsume jerks back, flies to the far arm of the couch and stares at him with huge, horrified eyes.

"What?!"

"Well," Sasayan shrugs, "I mean. I thought. I don't really know, honestly, I just figured, maybe you'd want to?"

Natsume lips, knees, and hands press together.

"You don't have to freak out," Sasayan says, now with an edge of exasperation, "I mean, you come over to my house all the time. It's kind of weird that you don't know her."

She has no idea what to say. Her thoughts tumble over one another, each one more hostile than the last. She can only look away from him, silent in her bristling reluctance.

After a very long silence, she knows he looks away too. "You know," he begins carefully, "I don't like this. I didn't want this to happen. It makes me feel like a creep when you're like this, like you think I'd actually make you do something you don't want to. You know I wouldn't, right?"

"I don't know if I wanted to kiss you but that still happened," Natsume says, before she can stop herself.

It detonates between them, this silent bomb. She can't decide if she's relieved for having said it, or miserable. Regret is a tricky thing, especially when Sasayan goes still all over. She ducks her head and peers through the curtain of her hair, watching. She wonders why she always has to bring out the very worst in him.

The cat jumps off of Sasayan's lap, and trots briskly out of the room.

"Then why did you?" he says at last, his voice flat, "Did you feel sorry for me? Did you think you had to give me something or I'd wander off? Did you just get swept up in the moment or did you—did you actually think you wanted me for a second, but then when you kissed me, decided that you didn't?"

It's too horrible. Natsume lurches to her feet with the full intention of bolting, and he follows her, gripping her wrist and snapping, "You cannot just run away from me."

"Let go!"

He does. She can't move, anyway. "You aren't being fair," he says finally.

"I can't do this," she says. It's panic, she finally realizes. Panic, which has been building steadily in her ugliness of her chest ever since the moment that she had kissed him. Panic, because of course she had known on some basic level that she would ruin everything. Panic; because there was no going back from what she had done, and no going forward either. There was nothing left to do. She looks at the floor. She has to do this. It's better, in the long run. It's the right thing.

"We don't have to—"

"I don't want to see you anymore!" Natsume cries, and wrings the handles of her purse yet more tightly, eyes glued to the ground. She can't stand to look up at his face, she can't bear to even imagine what his expression must be right now, how thoroughly she must have disappointed him. Her insides curl up into knots and her mouth goes dry and without warning she begins to sob. "Never again!" she forces out, and drops her purse. The cosmetics she'd been keeping in her bag clatter as they smash to the ground, but she doesn't care, she can't care about anything right now, she can only hide her face with her hands and hope that he walks away soon, and that he doesn't feel even half as bad as she does now.

She can hear him step closer, but before she can shrink away, he's already tugging at her hands. She refuses to move, every muscle pulling in, forcing herself down into the smallest point she can manage. Then she feels his mouth on her knuckles, kissing them one by one, with exquisite gentleness. He pulls her down to the floor and wraps himself around her, hugging her with his legs and his arms. She trembles. Her hands come down, and she hides herself in his collar. Before she can stop herself, her hands clutch at the front of his shirt. He strokes her hair.

"What's wrong?"

She can't bring herself to answer. She's entirely too angry that this has happened, that she cried and leaned on him for support—even in the moment when she had meant to push him away. Pathetic.

After a while he asks, "How could you say that to me?"

She swallows.

"Do you even realize what you're doing? Do you really think I could stand to have you walk out of my life? If you're unhappy with how things are right now—if you're uncomfortable or, or scared, or—just tell me, Natsume! Don't just dump it all and act like I'm nothing!"

She doesn't move, because breathing through his shirt is calming her down and she needs that right now, but she does manage to snap back, "Of course you aren't! I only said it because ever since—ever since we kissed, I just, I started to feel so worthless!"

Sasayan doesn't say anything back to that for a moment, but she can feel him getting tensed up and brittle. He repeats, "Kissing me made you feel worthless?"

"No!" Natsume throws herself away from him, holding him at arm's length. She rubs ineffectively at her face, her leaking nose, "No, not that! After that! After you started treating me like—like I was your property, or something!"

He looks bewildered. Frustrated. She wonders how long it will take until he snaps at her. "My property? What are you talking about?"

"I'm not your girlfriend!" Natsume cries, a new heat spreading across her face as she says it. But, so what? So what?

"I know that!" Sasayan says defensively. He doesn't blush like she had. "I know! I don't understand why you're getting so angry!"

She isn't sure how to tell him, to list off the things that had made her so uneasy when she'd thought they'd made her happy. How to tell him—you let me push you in a river and taught me to whistle on grass and I never asked for any of it.

"Just—the way you've been acting. It's like, it's like we're a couple and I told you, I don't want that yet! I know that you like me but I don't know how I feel about you at all! I thought we were friends. I thought nothing would change, but now I feel like—I feel like I have to like you back, and I don't know! I don't know if I want to because lately, I feel like I don't know you at all! I feel like I went from your best friend to just—just some girl. Like I'm not Natsume, anymore, I'm just The Girlfriend!" Natsume breaks off her babbling to suck down an angry lungful of air, and has every intention of continuing with her rant, but her gasp turns into a sob and then it's all she can do to not dissolve in front of him. And then she's mad. He did this to her, he was the one who pushed her into the corner and expected things and she just didn't—

"You have no idea what it feels like!" Natsume hiccups, and drags her shirt collar up over her face to wipe away the wetness, and to hide from him, "You have no idea how it feels to—to just be a body. That's how I feel. That's how boys have always made me feel, and it's how you made me feel and I can't stand it."

"Are you kidding me?!" Sasayan snaps, and wrenches her shirt down to grip her by the sides of her face, and he looks her dead in the eye. It's the first time she's ever seen him look so angry, or so hurt. "Just a body?" he repeats, "Are you serious? When have I ever treated you that way? Never! I have never treated you that way because I have never thought of you that way! Do you know how I feel when I realize that you think I'm some sort of—do you know how much of a failure I feel like when I realize that you don't believe I really love you?"

Natsume's heart stops.

They stare at each other for several breathless, long seconds. She feels dizzy. It doesn't feel like a romantic moment, but nor does it bite at her like so many other confessions she has received. This one hangs between them, imperfect and earnest and sad. Neither of them looks away. Natsume realizes, she doesn't think she's ever heard anything so true.

"I'm sorry," she says, in a small voice. Her ears are still ringing, and her heart is beating so fast she actually feels a little queasy. Sasayan looks at her, his face blank, and she realizes suddenly, horribly, that he's already locking himself away.

"No, I'm sorry," he says, and even manages an apologetic little smile, "I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean to—look, just forget about it, please? I don't want you to worry about it. Friends?"

They're so close together, but Natsume barely recognizes him. She can find the familiar pattern of his summer-freckles, and the sharp angle of his eyes remains the same. But something important has slipped away while she wasn't looking, and now all she is left with is a familiar looking boy who was too nice to do anything but make her feel better.

"I'm sorry," she says again, helplessly, and scrambles to her feet. She scoops up her purse and runs out of his apartment and into the street, all the while asking herself, how could I be so stupid?

For once, he doesn't follow her. Without him, it takes a very long time to get home, even though she's running.

How could I be so stupid?

She stops. She's gasping more than she should be, her heart drumming too fast, and abruptly she swings around and kicks at a light pole. Her foot flares up with pain, and she almost screams. How good it must feel, to just scream.

Natsume's hands choke the straps of her bag, and she walks home alone. Her family has already fallen asleep by the time she arrives, and she heads straight for her room. Her throat feels swollen. She stuffs her face into a pillow and bends over it, and she screams for as long as she can.

"You are so stupid!" she shrieks at herself, "You are the biggest, stupidest, most awful girl ever! All this time it was never their fault! It was yours! You are the one who ruins everything, and you are the one who makes everyone miserable, and how could you do that to him, how could you how could you how could you?!"

She pulls her face away. The pillow is wet and hot. She turns it over, and climbs into bed with all her make-up left on, and all the clothes she'd worn that day. She lies awake trembling, staring across the dark room, and wishing more than anything that Sasayan was there with her, so that no one but him would have to know how ugly she was when she cried.


CLOSING NOTE: Don't be mad. We'll get up to an M rating eventually.