Author's Note: Thank you thank you thank you to all of you wonderful people leaving me reviews, favorites, follows, reblogs, etc. They are so appreciated and so motivating, you don't even know.

Thank you also and always to FloraOne, who I made beta this chapter three separate times. Any mistakes you might find are definitely my own LOL.

Now, let's get this show on the road:

Chapter 4 – And you're cool with just being friends

Ami gave her the exact same advice.

Even after Usagi explained, in excruciating detail, just how horribly she'd mangled the interview and how not one of her answers had been correct, Ami insisted that she shouldn't rush to conclusions before she had all the information. That if she accepted another job, she wouldn't then be able to get back out of it without ruining her prospects just as badly as she would if she didn't get hired at all.

"Wait and see what they say first, Usagi-chan," Ami said patiently, returning her focus to her own pile of medical journals. "You have time."

Usagi sucked on her bottom lip. It was good advice, but since Mamoru had said it too, she wasn't going to admit it. Instead, she sat with crossed arms and legs, watching Ami take her tiny, meticulous notes.

Ami, her eternally rational, reasonable friend. Who also happened to think a lot like Mamoru did. Who might… be able to provide some insight into him.

Not that she needed any insight, she was just… a little curious. That was all.

She tipped her head back so she could stare at the ecru ceiling of Ami's little studio apartment. Took a beat to try to talk herself out of this.

After a moment, she let out a long exhale and flopped onto her back, grabbing a throw pillow and mushing it to her chest.

"Hey Ami-chan?" she asked, rolling her neck so she could peek around the low table and watch her friend study.

"Hmm?" Ami looked up, blinking behind her glasses.

"So I have this friend, right? And she started sleeping with this guy she knows. Not like, planned or dating or anything, but I guess you could maybe call them like, friends with benefits?"

Ami's eyebrow arched up, and she slowly set down her pen, closing the thick tome she'd been poring over. "Uh-huh?"

"And I guess I was just wondering, like, what might motivate a person to do something like that?"

Both Ami's eyebrows rose up over the rim of her glasses. "Are you, Tsukino Usagi, asking me of all people why exactly someone might decide to have casual sex?"

She felt her whole body flush from her toes up to the roots of her hair. "Well, I mean. Obviously I know that. I guess I was wondering more like…" She swallowed, trying to think how to phrase this.

Flashing back to that first time she'd ended up in his bed – his indifferent face after, how he'd stared blankly at her when she'd tried to start up a conversation and then gone right back to reading his medical journal. Like she hadn't even been there.

Ignoring the uncomfortable twinge in her gut, she licked her lips, choosing her words carefully. "My friend is kind of… trying to figure out what he gets out of it, I guess. You know, he's pretty hot and could probably get any girl he wanted into the sack, so like… why her?"

Ami pulled her glasses from her face, idly tapping the earpiece against her fingers.

"Mmm, I see. You're wondering why someone would choose to be monogamous without commitment?"

Her ears were probably the color of Rei's favorite lipstick. "Um. Well, no. They're… they're not exclusive."

"Ahhh. Now I understand." Ami pursed her lips slightly in thought, and then said "Usagi-chan, I think your friend needs to sit down and have a serious conversation with the guy. It sounds like maybe her feelings have developed beyond something casual, and if she continues pretending she doesn't want more than that, someone is going to wind up getting hurt."

"Whoa, whoa!" She windmilled to a seat, the pillow falling from her chest and into her lap. "Ami-chan, I really think you're reading way too much into this."

Ami's expression was considering, almost searching, and Usagi managed not to shrink away from it – but it was a narrow thing. "So it doesn't bother your friend to think about him with another woman?"

His laugh flashed in her mind, the way he'd looked at that girl, and she stuffed it down as low in her belly as it would go, piling the assorted memories of him ignoring her on top, and throwing the lid shut for good measure. "No, not at all!" Her voice was too high through the spastic shake of her head.

Ami's nod was slow, her eyes thoughtful. "Alright. In that case, you're probably right." She picked up a pale blue highlighter, turning her gaze back to her papers. "I must be reading too much into things."

Even so, Ami's words followed her all the way home. Her feelings have developed beyond something casual… Beyond something casual… it echoed over and over, threatening to drive her mad.

What did Ami really know about boys, though? She was always studying. Sure, she'd gone on a couple dates with that guy Ryo back in high school, and they still kept in touch, but she hadn't, like, had a real relationship.

Clearly, Usagi just needed a second opinion.

And who better to ask than Mako-chan? Her friend was basically a relationship expert, considering that she now not only sold specialty homemade wedding cakes but was also deliriously happily (and newly!) engaged to her childhood best friend.

Admittedly, the next time she saw Mako, Usagi wasn't exactly in any position to take advantage of her pâtissière friend's baking talents.

"Did you get those lumps from a head injury or were you just born stupid?!" Sailor Mars' scream echoed across the field as Sailor Moon just so narrowly dodged a flaming blast of energy – and with it, certain incineration. "If you're not invulnerable to fire, why the hell are you charging a fire youma!?"

"Not helping!" she hollered back, ducking behind a bush. Another blast, and her hiding place went up in flames.

She shrieked and dove out of the way, cowering behind a nearby wrought iron bench.

Sailor Mars landed neatly on said bench, somehow managing not to catch her red stilettos in any of the grates. She brandished an ofuda and tossed it with the precision of a baseball pitcher.

The slip of paper stuck between the youma's eyes, freezing it in place, and Sailor Jupiter's voice sounded from the opposite side of the park: "Now, Sailor Moon!"

With a sharp inhale, Sailor Moon shot up from behind the bench, somehow stumbling over a pebble (or maybe it was a root?) before she pried her tiara off her forehead.

"Moon Tiara Action!" she cried, letting the discus fly.

Of course, the damn thing missed.

It ricocheted back to her hands without even brushing the youma, and she prepared her attack again – but not fast enough.

"Supreme Thunder!" Sailor Jupiter's electrified attack blasted into the fiery monster, causing it to shriek and crumble to dust.

Usagi slapped the tiara back onto the crown of her head as Sailor Mars planted her hands on her hips, glaring down at her from the bench.

"And what the hell was that?! I swear, Odango-brains, you're about as useful as a screen door in a submarine. You somehow injured yourself more than the damn youma, you moron! It doesn't make any sense that you're the one who's supposed to be our leader!"

"Hey Rei-chan, calm down! We beat the thing and nobody got hurt, right?"

Rei's words twisted painfully in Usagi's stomach but she waved them away and smiled sheepishly at Makoto, grateful at least one of her friends didn't think she was useless.

"Nobody got hurt this time," grumbled Sailor Mars, crossing her arms. "But if you keep coddling her, it's only a matter of time before she cuts one of us in half with a wayward tiara by accident."

"Aw c'mon, we're all on a learning curve here. There wasn't a 'monster fighting 101' course in high school or anything."

Rei sniffed. "'Learning curve' implies improvement at some point."

"She'll get there! Won't you, Usagi-chan?"

The momentary swell of relief popped like a soap bubble. "Y-yeah," she mumbled, and Rei's eyes rolled again.

"Whatever. I'm leading the sunrise oharae tomorrow, so if there's nothing else…?"

Usagi shook her head, feeling lower than the soles of her shoes. If she was a better fighter, her friends wouldn't have to come back her up late at night when they had to be awake at 6am the next day.

Sailor Mars disappeared with a swish of her tiny skirt, and Usagi tried to swallow down her own incompetence.

Warmth landed on her shoulders and she looked up to find Makoto had wrapped an arm around her. "I have some extra macarons back at my apartment, wanna come help eat them?"

The horrible feeling dissipated with an excited nod of her head and the promise of cookies.

Mako and Shinozaki lived only a few blocks from the park, so she barely had time to figure out how to broach the subject before Makoto was already unlocking their front door.

"I'm home now!" Makoto's voice rang through the cozy, plant-filled apartment, and Shinozaki's answering call of "Welcome home!" reverberated back as they stepped into the genkan.

"Hey Mako-chan…" she hedged as they swapped their shoes for house slippers. "Before things worked out with Shinozaki-kun, you had a lot of relationship problems, right?"

"Um, yeah, I guess I did. Why do you ask, Usagi-chan?"

Usagi ran her tongue over her teeth. "Well, see, I have this friend, and she's sorta-kinda seeing this boy…"

"Oh… Are Naru-chan and Umino-kun having problems?"

"No, it's, um," she swallowed hard. "A different friend."

Makoto nodded easily as she guided Usagi into the dining area and gestured for her to take a seat. "Well, what's going on?"

A plate of rainbow cookies appeared on the table in front of Usagi as it spilled out of her – how her 'friend' was sleeping with this guy who she didn't even like because the sex was really great but there were no feelings. On either end. At all. And that now her friend was starting to wonder about the other girls the guy was sleeping with – but just because she was curious, not because she cared!

As she rambled, Mako listened patiently and refilled Usagi's cup of honey lemon tea three times. Once Usagi trailed off lamely with "so… that's what's going on," Makoto carefully slid the last cookie across the plate and over to her.

"Hmm. Didn't Motoki-kun say that Unazuki-chan recently got serious with some guy at her college? I didn't peg her for someone who would be looking for something casual, but did she break things off with him for this new guy?"

"Um. No. It's not… You don't, um, you don't know them."

"Ohhh. Okay." A furrow appeared between Makoto's eyebrows. "Why ask me, then?"

"I mean. Just, you know relationships and stuff. And I figured you'd know if… it's normal to think about stuff like that, right? Other girls? It doesn't mean my friend likes the guy."

Mako snorted. "Usagi-chan, if your friend has told you this much about what's going on and is this worried about it, she definitely likes the guy."

"But she doesn't!" Usagi's thumbs dug into the last remaining cookie, unconsciously splitting the little sandwich in half down the middle. So busy gaping at Makoto, she did even notice the untimely death of her final cookie. "She told me so!"

"Maybe she's in denial, then. It would make sense that she might be, if the guy doesn't like her back. But nobody gets that worried about the other women in somebody's life unless they're jealous and don't want to share. Trust me."

Usagi's face went hot. She wasn't jealous. She didn't like Mamoru, and she was not in denial.

But still, the question of the redhead lingered in the back of her mind, and she couldn't seem to force her back into the box.

That night, Usagi tossed and turned in her bed, her sheets first too hot and then not warm enough for her to get to sleep.

Mako saw love everywhere. She was a hopeless romantic, a commitment-a-holic, and frankly it had only gotten worse since she'd gotten engaged.

Rei, on the other hand, wouldn't sugarcoat or read into anything. She was head miko now and she didn't have time for bullshit – as evidenced by her perpetual frustration with Usagi.

Body still restless even once the sun was well and truly up, Usagi finally admitted to herself that she wouldn't be getting even a decent nap that night.

Resenting the hell out of Mako for ruining her beauty sleep, she rolled out of the bed and got dressed, stopping on her way across town at a Starbucks for a matcha Frappuccino – something had to be done to make her morning suck less.

She didn't really want to talk to Rei – she was still feeling a little tender from the previous night's tongue-lashing – but Makoto's unwitting words were itching her worse.

So, she made the kajillion-stair trek up to the Hikawa torii, sucking down her Frappuccino and hoping she wasn't about to catch Rei in the middle of some kind of important shrine-business.

Fortunately, it was a Tuesday morning and the shrine wasn't too crowded. Though Usagi would have expected Rei to be in the back consulting the sacred fire when the shrine wasn't busy, she was actually out front manning the souvenir talisman booth.

"Hi, Rei-chan!" Usagi called, waving her hand over her head.

Rei jerked her head up with a startled blink. "Usagi, don't you ever actually go to your classes?" she exclaimed. "No wonder your grades suck."

Her pride smarting all over again, she poked her toe into the grass growing next to the path. "They've gotten a lot better," she grumbled.

Rei hadn't even known her in middle school, back when her grades had been really poor, but the legacy of 'refusing to apply herself' (as Mama liked to call it) was apparently one she would never be able to shake off.

Pouting, she finished her walk over to Rei as her friend emerged from the little wooden stall.

Rei brushed her dark hair over her shoulder and looked over Usagi, her eyes lingering on the plastic coffee cup Usagi still carried in one hand. "What exactly is so pressing that it brought you to the shrine at 9:30am on a Tuesday?"

Usagi shrugged, suddenly regretting not coming up with a half-decent cover story. If she opened with 'I have this friend,' Rei would probably kick her butt all the way down the unreasonably tall shrine stairs.

"I… felt bad about last night."

Rei rolled her eyes with a loud huff, grabbing a broom from behind the souvenir stand and beginning to sweep the path. "Don't tell me you skipped your classes just to come apologize. That could have waited for tomorrow night's Senshi meeting."

Usagi felt her cheeks burn. "I-I'm in shuukatsu! Maybe I have a recruiting meeting after this."

"That you're going to in jean shorts and a 'Fight like a Girl' t-shirt? Okay."

For a moment, Usagi seriously considered hurling her empty coffee cup at Rei's head. She managed to suppress the urge, though her tightening grip made the plastic crinkle. "If you must know," she said, doing her best to infuse every word with dignity and indifference as she found her opening, "I'm not only here to apologize. See, there's a girl in my class who's in the middle of some drama and I just… needed a break."

Rei's eyebrow went up and Usagi watched her friend's rigid posture soften, unconsciously leaning closer. "Really? Drama so intense that even you need a break from it?"

Usagi shrugged, wishing she had some Frappuccino left so she could draw this out with a long, slow sip. Since she didn't, she fiddled with her straw instead. "Oh, just some stuff with this guy she's been sleeping with. Like," she dropped her voice conspiratorially and managed not to smirk at Rei's attentive expression. "She's pretty sure he's sleeping with other girls, right? But they have like, a don't-ask-don't-tell thing going on, so she has no way of finding out."

A crinkle appeared on Rei's forehead. "Don't-ask… wait, if they're not exclusive, why is she even worried about who else he's sleeping with? The whole point of don't-ask-don't-tell is that you don't care, right?"

"W-well, yeah, I guess…"

"But she's talking about it enough that even you, Usagi-the-gossip, needed a break? That is not somebody who doesn't care."

"She really doesn't talk about him that much!"

Rei's eyebrow arched high, and Usagi found herself regretting even coming to talk to her. "So that's the whole story? Your classmate is in love with some guy who's involved with other women and you're sick of hearing her whine about it?"

Usagi's stomach dropped out. "She's not in love."

"Right," Rei drawled. "And she doesn't care who he's sleeping with either, right? She's just a little curious. And driving everyone around her crazy speculating. Trust me, that's a girl who has it bad."

Usagi could only vaguely hear Rei's casual dismissal over the roar of the ocean in her ears. She kept a smile pasted on her face and nodded politely at a few other things Rei said and she didn't hear before claiming she really did have another class that she really should get to.

She was about to pass under the torii when Rei called after her. "Hey, Usagi."

Looking back, she forced another indifferent smile, afraid Rei had worked out what was really going on.

Rei turned her face away, tapping her broom against the stone path. "Sorry, for being harsh last night. But if you don't get your act together, you're gonna get hurt, you know?"

"Yeah…" Usagi mumbled. She was already fighting down a full-blown panic, and if Rei started picking apart her flaws now, she was going to seriously lose it.

"But thanks for apologizing. Even if you were only doing it to get out of hearing your classmate whine, it's appreciated."

Her smile was as weak as her wave. The moment that Rei turned her attention back to sweeping, Usagi practically fled down the shrine steps.

She didn't stop running until her feet hit the candy aisle of the 7/11 down the block.

If she hadn't wanted to talk to Rei, she really didn't want to ask Minako. Minako, with her uncanny sixth sense about all things romance and a tendency to matchmake everyone she knew.

This was going to be a very delicate conversation. Too much information, and Minako was bound to figure out just exactly who 'the guy' was, and the fallout that would come along with that revelation was way more than she had the capacity to deal with right now.

But if anyone's opinions about these things carried enough weight to overrule the other three girls', it was Minako's. And if someone didn't reassure her that she obviously didn't like Mamoru like that soon, she might full-on lose her mind and start to actually believe that the girls were on to something.

It was worth the risk.

That said, with Minako, she would need to pick her moment carefully. Ideally, a time when her roommate was a little distracted, just enough that she would be able to listen to the situation but not dig deep into the details.

Fortunately, she didn't have to wait long. When she got home a little before dinnertime (she did end up going to a few of her afternoon classes – guilt turned out to be a hell of a motivator), Minako was curled up on their squashy red couch, idly leafing through a stack of old magazines.

Usagi had lived with Minako long enough to know what that meant – Minako had gone on an audition, and now she was ruminating on her career prospects.

Perfect.

With a long yawn that was only a little bit contrived – she hadn't slept last night, after all – Usagi settled in on the couch next to her roommate and picked up the copy of Non-no that Minako had just discarded.

"How was the audition?" she asked after flipping the magazine open and landing directly on the well-creased perfume ad Minako had done two years ago.

"Sucked," Minako muttered, tossing down another magazine. "They told me I need to lose five pounds if I want to be taken seriously in this industry. Like, did they even look at me? I'm perfect, excuse them."

"You are!" Usagi exclaimed, appalled. Even when Minako had bad auditions, it had never been because a director had somehow found fault with her before!

"Bunch of vultures," Minako sighed, flipping to a different spread. "The thing is, I know I look great, but if nobody's going to hire me… I can't cook, I'm not about to get some fancy degree, and nobody's paying for crime-fighting here in Tokyo. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life if I don't make it as an idol."

Usagi deflated. "Not like the fancy degree makes much of a difference," she mumbled, rolling off the couch and sauntering into their tiny, cluttered kitchenette. "Nobody wants to hire me, either," she told the contents of their barren fridge as she raided their secret emergency stash of freezer candy.

When she returned to the couch, she passed Minako half a Black Thunder Choco Bar, which Minako took with a sigh. "You're gonna find a job, Usa. I swear. You've worked really hard and you're going to be an amazing social worker. Don't give up on your chickens before they lay eggs."

"And you're gonna be an idol! I mean, look at those legs!"

Minako viciously chomped into the candy bar. "You know, the casting director actually compared my thighs to tree trunks?!"

"Whaaa?"

"I know! Beauty standards have obviously gotten completely ridiculous and unattainable." She shoved the rest of the chocolate-covered cookie bar into her mouth and accidentally sprayed some crumbs with her next words. "What a wang."

"Total wang," Usagi agreed with a giggle as she crunched down on her own half of the candy bar. "So aside from asshat directors, how was your day?

Minako shrugged, tilting her head slightly as she studied one of her old fashion shoots for Popteen. "Okay, I guess. One of the PAs from the set is taking me to Seizan on Friday."

"What happened to Ryusei?"

"He turned out to be terrible in bed. Like, hello, touch a clit occasionally."

Her chest constricted slightly, her teeth dragging over her bottom lip. "Speaking of disappointing sexual partners," Though really, no term could be less applicable to Chiba Mamoru, "I was kind of hoping you could settle a debate for me."

Minako momentarily glanced down the couch, then went back to critically examining the magazine that she held out at arm's length (so as to better consider the angles of her body). "Yeah? Who's the guy?"

Usagi's nails suddenly became very interesting. "I don't even know, somebody my friend from Advanced Human Rights is casually sleeping with. Anyway, she said some of her friends think she's like, in love with him or something just because she wondered out loud about who else he might be sleeping with. I thought they were overreacting, but like, you're the relationship expert."

"Mmm. Well, if he's bad in bed but she's still stressing out over him sleeping with other people, yeah, she probably likes him."

"Oh, no, he's not… I mean, she said that he's not…" She gulped, heat flooding her body as she remembered Mamoru's weight over her, pressing her down into his sheets as his fingers did delicious things to her body. "She, um, she said he's the best she's had."

"Reaaaaally?" Popteen dropped into Minako's lap as she gave Usagi the full force of her attention for the first time since the conversation had started. "Is it that Mitsuo guy you told me about from that goukon?"

Her cheeks got even hotter. In the week or so since the goukon, Mitsuo's face had become a blur – what she remembered from that night was Mamoru's unexpected presence at the izakaya. She still didn't know if Minako had known that Mamoru would be there, but mention of the group date made her worry that her friend was poking a little too close to home. "Um, I don't know who the guy is, because it's not me, Mina-P. It's my friend."

"Well, Usa," Minako idly closed the magazine, a smirk spreading across her face. "It sounds like your 'friend' is totally, totally in love with their fuck-buddy, but is in denial about it." Minako looked up, golden eyebrows so high they nearly disappeared into her hair. "Is that what you were hoping to hear?"

She forced a laugh. "It's hypothetical, Minako-chan. I don't care either way."

"Mhm," Minako hummed, ending her fashion magazine perusal and instead picking up last summer's issue of Anan. "Sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself, Usa."

As Minako settled in with her new magazine, her career crisis apparently resolved, Usagi sucked in an inhale, as quietly as she could.

Ami said it sounded like love. Makoto said it sounded like love. Rei said it sounded like love. She didn't even know why she'd hoped Minako might say something different, except, well… Makoto's words came back to her, painfully similar to what Minako had just said: Maybe she's in denial.

But she wasn't.

She couldn't be.

It didn't matter that her friends had all said the same thing, she knew that she wasn't actually in love with Mamoru-baka. She wasn't.

Right?

Fuck.

AN: Welp. See you next time ;)