She doesn't take it well. The table clatters, the tea sloshes, Mai's chair makes a low scraping noise as she jolts up, palms slammed flat on the table surface. "What are you doing?" she snaps, angry-blushing-red. On impulse, she covers her mouth with her hand as if he might try again, when obviously he would not after such an adverse reaction.
Here he'd thought he was giving her what she wanted. And so he's forced to the brusque recognition that all these petty things might become more complex than he calculated.
She regards his pinched, pained expression with hesitation.
"Should I not have done that?" he asks tiredly. She resettles the table, busying her hands as she tries to construct a proper response. Being around Naru for so long has made her regret too much raving on impulse. She wants to be eloquent. She wants to demand respect.
No— that's already a lost cause. She figures she might as well do what she's always done and hope that it gets through Naru's thick skull. By some miracle, she realizes she has a higher success rate than most, perhaps because she strikes nothing and surges on anyway. A hopeless case.
"No, you should not have done that," she confirms, pitching a testy glare at him. She holds it to full effect, then crosses her arms and juts her jaw. "But I know this isn't your area of expertise."
The nigh-imperceptible shift on his face says he does not like that tone.
A clenching, tight silence rises between them, suspended in the midst of a two-way staredown, before Mai swallows thickly and lowers her gaze. Naru's eyes do a number on her as usual; and still he's seated with that easy sensuality to him, it's the color or the eyelashes, or the way they're so even and steady and brimming with gentle intensity—it's regrettable, but it makes for an unfair advantage on Naru's end. Mai has had no such thing.
Seeing this switch in posturing, Naru speaks up again. "Isn't this what they call 'mixed signals?'"
"Yeah, actually," is Mai's disgruntled reply, as she drops back into her chair and looks reservedly at Naru's chest.
He reflects on this. Then, calmly: "You're giving me mixed signals."
"No way!" Mai exclaims, vaulting forward with a severe look. "Don't pin everything on me. I meant you."
"How so?"
"You're just—you're doing, I mean, you—"
"I thought you wanted to kiss me."
"Don't say it like that!"
"I thought you laid awake at night thinking about it. Am I wrong?"
"You choose the worst times to try to be funny. You really do."
"It's because I don't have the audacity to screw off during work."
"Please, you've got more audacity than anyone I've ever met. And no, that's not a good thing."
She hears a deep breath that isn't precisely a sigh.
"Aren't we getting off topic?"
That's something of a surprise, coming from him. Mai feels able to look him in the face then, searching for that thread of sincerity that always lost her within the multitudes of caustic weirdness that constituted the body of Naru's identity. Really, it is that caustic weirdness that she wanted to love and kiss and hold, too, but that would be impossible if Naru kept skirting around their relations like a spastic ballerina. She needed to coax out his sincere side. Which is in there somewhere, she's sure, being just as stubborn as either of them on their best days.
"You want to talk about this?" she asks, and he frowns at the surprise in her bearing.
"I want to know why you jolted like a starving cat when I kissed you just now." The tone's a little sharp. Perhaps it's an unfair assessment, but Mai feels like he only speaks kindly to her when he's consoling her—scarce—and when he hypnotized her. But she took care not to let him do that ever again. (Even though it was nice, hearing Naru's soothing voice. She hates herself for weirdo thoughts like that. This infatuation sticks in her gut like burnt chocolate. )
"Well? What is it?" Naru says, trying his best to be apathetic—still, that impatience clears the indifference out, and Mai reacts by rubbing at her face worriedly, hurried regardless. What is it, what is it?
It's so strange to have quiet-loving Naru jump to fill the silence with his grumbling assertions.
He leans back in his chair, trying to remove himself from it all when he's at the center. "You don't need to be embarrassed about last time. I already told you to forget about it."
As if it was so simple! The nerve of this guy!
"If you're talking about it, you haven't forgotten," Mai accuses him. "Besides, it's not that I'm embarrassed!" Well, she is, but it isn't the requisite embarrassment to refuse a make-up kiss from Naru.
"Do you not find me physically appealing anymore after you realized it wouldn't go anywhere?" She hates that distaste on his question more than anything at the moment.
But she also notices he had looked aside, averted his cool-hot stare. She couldn't answer for a moment because she was so captivated by it, a sight as abnormal as a puppy on two legs: Naru looking uncomfortable during a conversation. Usually he was so well-held and competent during any situation, or he walked away before his discomfort could bear fruit. The twist of his mouth, the crouch of his brow, the cloud in his clear eyes…
Mai thinks back to his question, cursing her distractability, and then she feels incensed for the discreet implication that she was shallow. No way! She scowls at him. "I'm always going to find you physically appealing, you idiot. Don't tell me you're insecure."
He slides his gaze back to focus as if he'd never wavered to begin with, speaking evenly if not archly. "Farthest thing from it. Then, why?"
"Why? I'll tell you why." She squeezes her eyes shut, and in a swift, imperious movement, levels an accusatory finger at him. "You're supposed to man up enough to communicate before you man up enough to kiss me."
Man up? No one had ever told him to 'man up' before. He didn't hang around that kind of crowd if he could help it. He isn't sure how Mai can embody so many of the things he traditionally hated, and come out of it as someone this close. Not any more bearable, just not quite insufferable.
She doesn't look at him, turning her head up and tossing her hair, like her body's been possessed by the spirit of Masako Hara. Naru can't help but hold that sort of frank haughtiness with disdain—but then again, it's more than possible that it is his warped influence at work here.
His foremost thought process is ugh.
And so the next moments pass devoid of words. He really is slow to come to it, as if all his aptitude's long left him. But he's firm enough.
"There was sufficient communication. I told you to listen to what I tell you."
And then there is balking. It's harsh. Mai's leaning over, slowly, squinting at him as if he's gone mad. It makes him distinctly uncomfortable.
"Do you hear yourself? Is your fantastic, special brain just rattling around in there?"
Naru edges out a half-smile, one without the slightest well-meaning. "That doesn't meet your standards for romance?"
She leans back in a huff, throwing her hands up. "Let me guess!" she cries out in frustration, "'If that's not sufficient for you, Mai, you're welcome to go—' Well, maybe I will—"
Her frustration gives way to a sort of melancholy. Naru watches her as if she might bite him. She is, after all, having a conversation with herself.
So this is a lover's quarrel, or the closest thing to it that Naru hopes he'll ever have to suffer through. It's made them both a little edgy, a bit insane. A tad stupid. If he's ever been a stupid scholar, now's the zenith of that stupidity.
"Look, Naru," Mai continues, exhaling calmly now. Conflict makes her fickle. "I never meant to…. to… force you into anything."
He stands up. "You couldn't if you tried."
She rolls her eyes and shuts them as she tries, with difficulty, to pluck out the right and honest things she wants to say. "I never meant to nab your pity, then, oh great and infallible one. I love ghost hunting and I love— working with you. You're my best friend! If you don't want anything to do with me this way, then just say so, you idiot."
"You've said your piece?"
It's like she can't look at him. She can't concentrate on getting out of this unscathed if she looks—if she catches one glimpse of his face and knows it's over, it'll be over for her best brave face, too.
She nods. Her chest hurts. Her throat feels like a desert.
"Your insecurity is appalling," Naru says bluntly, and at that, Mai opens her eyes and swings her head left, because he's standing right next to her now, looking mildly pensive and, naturally, frowning. "How many times do I have to say, 'that's not it?' Are you really so unhappy?"
Mai grits her teeth and looks down, because Naru is simply not getting it. His elegant fingers come to rest on her tense jaw, and Mai whips her head around just to stare at him in total confusion—his expression, perplexed and troubled, is not too different at all.
"It seems the burden of proof is on me," he says awkwardly.
Oh, she's still balking. She doesn't get it, either. Her first boyfriend—her most important person—and he just had to end up being incomprehensible from a base level. Since this is a strange and dangerous frontier for both of them, she has to build her understanding of him up again from scratch. Not to manipulate him and not to deal with him, but to get herself in a vantage point to push him from behind towards the principal goal that she and Gene have shared for five years.
"Just do what makes you happy, Naru. That's all I really want." She hates the way her sadness slips into her voice, making the words seem a lie when really, really, that's her heart-held truth—if he's unhappy with their set-up, she doesn't want it at all, regardless of how sweet, how strong, how intoxicating—
He dips his head and kisses her again. It's more a clumsy graze of the lips, as if it were an accident, but taking no note of this, he tries a second time. "A physical relationship," he says, drawing back a few inches, "is not something I can't handle."
"I don't know about that," Mai says wryly, though it is difficult to be duly skeptical with her breath marginally off-kilter. It's the surprise. "It's been a year and you still haven't learned how to really kiss a girl, I mean."
"I just haven't applied myself. It was a choice."
"And now you've made a different choice?"
"Yes. Isn't this also what you want?"
She isn't sure if 'also' meant 'in addition to me and what I want' or 'in addition to the other things you want from me,' but despite herself, her mouth curves: the beginnings of a smile. Naru doesn't wait for an answer other than that; he presses his lips against hers, his fingers twining into her hair, his thumb soft on her cheek.
Her happy blush was a lot better than her shameful blush, he decides, in a rash moment of sentimentality.
He meant what he'd said—he had been holding back, hindered by his reluctance to become invested. So much for that. Now that he's letting himself, he moves like a person who loves her. Mai's heart thuds like a hummingbird's. She lifts her arms and locks her fingers behind his neck, tousling the ends of his hair, and Naru makes a face as he picks her up by the hips. He wobbles, furrows his eyebrows.
"Okay, okay, one thing at a time," Mai laughs breathlessly, landing her feet on the ground with the poise of a princess. Naru is kind of making her feel like that. With their heights better-aligned, Mai stretches up and kisses him again. His arms come to circle around her slender waist, and she realizes he really does have the inclination to be tender.
It feels a bit silly to have thought otherwise—as if Naru was somehow incapable, when it was only that he'd trained himself not to do what his instincts told him, not to touch and not to look. Because he wanted to focus on other things, or, because he didn't want to involve himself, or because this was only a sickness that masqueraded as feeling.
She misses the mark the second time, touching her lips to the corner of his mouth. He stops her there, and lowers his head, and she's very much confused until he kisses the junction of her jaw and neck. She practically jolts, not from the sensation—which is pleasant—but from the shock. "It's easier here," Naru says quietly, trailing his mouth down her skin, down the side of her neck, and Mai manages to bite out, "Are you going to give me a hickie?" to which Naru just glances up at her, annoyed.
"Just joking."
"Hn."
"I'm glad to see you're still uptight." He stops just before her collar bone, thinking more than you know, and straightens out again, cupping her face and tilting his head to kiss her again. It's almost like he wants her to shut up. That's too cliché, Mai thinks, and almost laughs, but this is a hard-going kiss. His hand settles on her bare shoulder, and she leans into it, into him.
"Do I still not know how to really kiss a girl?" he asks when they part for breath and space. She stares at him a few moments, and then laughs.
She's really no good for him. It's unhealthy that she riles him up.
"Best I've ever had," she replies sincerely.
"Don't talk like you're experienced." He flicks her forehead, and formidably ignores the small swell of pride in his chest. How trivial. But he's pleased and can't help that. "I'll improve."
"Try improving your personality first," Mai mutters, and while she's rubbing her forehead he closes his fingers around her wrist and kisses her again. It's almost as though he does this to prove a point, to get it over with, but at the same time, he's sensual about it. Sensual in his determination, or determined in his sensuality—that's Naru for you. She places a hand over the back of his head, curling her fingertips against his hair, and Naru takes his hands down, tentatively, to her waist. Mai shuts her eyes and lets herself drown pleasantly; her intuition says not to miss this for a second.
Before she knows it, and before he even has a clue, her back is rocked against the wall, his hands are on her hips, and their chests are touching with a pressure that comforts and alarms them at same time. Mai makes something of an oh sound, and Naru steps back to allow them room, catching his breath. That was something. He's not sure what it was, but it was something, and his concern with it outweighs the unfurling twinges of pleasure in themselves.
Mai looks bashful with him hanging over her, and he straightens out. If they keep going on like this, he'll start doing things without thinking, antithetical to every fiber of his being. He's no coward, and no robot, so this is acceptable to a degree— he admits to himself, again, that there's something about Mai in this context that is enticing. Well, he supposes, it's a feeling that was already there. For who knows how long.
Some things don't change. He almost shudders. Experience and realization come, no matter what, his fundamental opposition—his disgust—stood, and at this proximity and at this point, it sounded a ringing, resounding alarm.
"There's only one thing," he says, shuffling forward. Not to embrace her, but for emphasis. "Are you listening?"
She tilts her head up. "Yeah, sure thing, Naru. What's up? Problem?" She has the gall to slip her palm over his chest, pleased with the contact. It is almost about all of this has dimmed his finer communication skills considerably, and instead of leading up to it, even as he speaks elegantly, he blurts out—
"I won't have sex with you," and leaves it at that. Not I don't want to. I won't.
Mai doesn't pretend to misunderstand. He doesn't mean tonight, he means never. He avoids eye contact, but sees her purse her lips and stare sideward for a moment. Her sigh sounds, and nothing more. It's not a particularly heavy sigh, either, more like an 'oh? That's interesting,' and Naru folds his arms across his chest, his chest that had very recently been pressed firmly against Mai's… chest.
"I think I sort of understand," she says, her index finger stilled thoughtfully at her chin. "You're okay with—this?" Vague gesturing. "But you don't want to have sex with anybody."
"Precisely."
"Why?" She's very careful not to say anything embarrassing. It's tricky not to, she need only stick to the barest minimum of responses for the time being, but it's hard not to insist and prod. She doesn't want to be eager for an answer, doesn't want to push. And she doesn't want to be eager for the act itself, even though she has a maddening curiosity. Why not, Naru? It could be fun. Why not, Naru? I'm safe. Why not, Naru? I love you!
Yes, anything she could say would end terribly. It is trial enough to not get bright red in the face. She is trying to be mature.
"It's nothing important," Naru responds dispassionately, and Mai frowns to see him edge back into callousness so quick. He looks about as cold as it gets—more so than usual, as if they've fallen back to square one. It takes so much work to yank him out of it when he takes on his indifferent iceberg modus, and even though her heart stills and her head stirs with wonder and worry, Mai decides to let this one go. Maturity.
She makes a halfhearted noise of acceptance, somewhere between an OK and a mhm, and Naru directs a pointed frown at her.
"No, really," she says, waving a hand. "I understand."
He hesitates—does she really? It almost seems like it. Like she could have put thought into this and seen right through him.
But she doesn't seem to like doing that. She always takes him as he is, at face value, and that's just as well because Naru puts all he is on the front. Blunt and visible. If there are things he hides, it's always for a reason, and much more hateful than those who stupidly order him to man up are those who try to sneak and pry at his secrets. Crafty as he is, he hates it in others.
He doesn't think she understands. But it's not as if she needs to. His relief lowers his defenses, melts him down again. Mai finds his hand and holds it between hers, and he lets her, and it's odd for both of them.
"Don't look so grouchy," she says. "We're not going that fast."
His mouth twists. If she thinks it's a matter of "moving too fast," then she definitely misunderstands. But to explain invites trouble. "I don't particularly like moving slowly."
"We'll go as fast as you want."
"You so rarely end up doing what I want."
That's just the human condition. Mai's the factor of the world he can't control.
She laughs, sheepish, and in a moment of rash sentimentality, he moves to kiss her goodnight. Again. And again. And again.
(( I haaad to get this third chapter out before I started on anything else. Next part is my favorite part! So I'm excited to write it. Thanks for all the support, guys, hope this is okay! I really like mechanically awkward Naru but for the time being we'll have to say goodbye to him. I like that he acts uncharacteristically when it comes to sex- blurts things out and gets harrowed.
wow i hope they were both in character -keels over- i won't hesitate to rewrite and fix it if they're not!
because I'm a loser I also have a second Mai/Naru story in the works and I think it will end up better than this one because reasons uwu stay tuned?))