Author's Note: Thank you so so so much everyone who has showered me with love, both about this story and about my UsaMamo week entries (if you missed those, they're on my profile under "All I Ever Think About Is You").

I'm not exactly shy about the fact that I tend to use my writing to process my own experiences, and I actually also recently graduated, have been job hunting, and well, let's just say my last couple of weeks have been good inspiration for this story LOL (particularly this chapter).

Your sweet reviews and PMs have been a highlight for me in a difficult time, and I really can't thank y'all enough.

Also, and as always, I want to take a special moment to thank FloraOne. She is a treasure, wonderfully supportive, and loaned me her expertise from her own work experiences to help flesh out some of Usagi's new workplace and colleagues. Plus, she took time out of her own hectic week to read over this like three times for me. So please share some of the love with her, too!

Hope y'all enjoy

Chapter 7 – And that's what's killing me

She was still shaken – unsteady on her feet – five days later when she reported for her first day of work. She'd managed to stay awake on the train that morning, no Mamoru required to drop her off in the nick of time, but she felt just as out-of-sorts as she had the day of the interview.

The girls had written off her jitteriness over the last week as new-job nerves – and it wasn't not that. But even so, she knew damn well it also wasn't only that – try as hard as she might, she couldn't convince herself that the pressure in her chest wasn't at least half panic about the fact that sooner or later, she was going to come face-to-face with Mamoru again.

Mamoru, who was in love with someone else. Mamoru, who didn't want her any more than International Social Services Japan did.

She really wasn't sure how many more people she could stand to disappoint.

But the universe seemed to be on her side right now – the only youma they'd seen this week had turned out to be an easy kill, defeated by a lucky tiara throw before Tuxedo Mask could even make his way across Azabujuban. She hadn't had to see him at that weekend's Senshi meeting, either – the girls had been entirely understanding when she'd begged off. Unusually so, even. Naturally, she fully intended to milk their sympathy about the stress of her new job for as long as she possibly could – but with it starting today, she was likely bumping up against that limit.

With a sharp inhale, she jerked back into the moment, fought the urge to shrink in on herself when she remembered that she currently stood on a folding stage in the building's small courtyard with two hundred eyes trained on her.

It turned out that International Social Services Japan's local chapter was only a little over a hundred people – with Usagi as the lone new hire on the team.

The Chairman stood at the podium next to her, the only other person on the stage, droning on and on about their organization's proud history of fostering international exchange and promoting social welfare. Usagi raised her chin slightly, once again commanding herself not to fidget and embarrass herself further.

"...With Suzuki-san's recent retirement, we did have one new spot open up on our team this year. I hope you all will join me in warmly welcoming our newest caseworker, Tsukino-san, to International Social Services Japan." There was a smattering of polite applause and Usagi flushed and bowed. "Tsukino-san, we have high hopes that you will live up to Suzuki-san's proud example as a member of our team. Please work very hard!"

"Yes, please take good care of me!" Usagi replied, directing her next bow specifically at the Chairman.

As the Chairman moved to the side, Uchida-san stepped onto the little stage with a big smile, immaculate in a pencil skirt and three-inch heels. "Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new year at ISSJ. Thank you again for all that you do to make our organization successful and to improve the lives of those in need. We truly could not do it without you!"

The sleepy crowd of employees visibly perked up when their director of operations took the stage, giving Usagi the distinct impression that the somewhat-severe woman was well-liked.

Or maybe the Chairman was just that boring.

She didn't have long to ponder this, however, because in what felt like a blink, Uchida-san was dismissing them all into the building

Usagi hopped down from the stage and trailed after her throng of coworkers, for once in her life too intimidated to break into the ongoing conversations and introduce herself.

Everyone else was so much older, she realized with an uncomfortable jolt. She felt completely like a fish out of water, a fraud who had somehow elbowed her way into this room full of grown-ups and they hadn't yet realized she was out past her bedtime.

Slowly, clusters of her new coworkers – colleagues, she reminded herself – disappeared into offices that branched from the main hallway. Usagi hadn't been told which room her cubicle was in, nor did she know yet who her direct team members were. In an effort to not embarrass herself, she just kept following behind Uchida-san and hoped that was what she was expected to do.

The crowd thinned more and more, and almost without warning Usagi was outside Uchida-san's office.

As the flawlessly put-together woman unlocked the door, she looked up and blinked hard. "Tsukino-san. Is everything all right?"

Usagi's face burned hot under her carefully applied foundation. "Um. Yes, ma'am. I just… where is my cubicle?" The last word came out in a pained squeak, and she watched Uchida-san's eyes flash momentarily with irritation before they filled with unmistakable pity.

"Here, I'll take you."

Usagi's fingers dug into the sharply pressed fabric of her suit skirt as she stood next to Uchida-san in the elevator. She tried not to hunch her shoulders but still felt so much like the useless preteen who'd so often been forced to stand in the hall after yet again disappointing Haruna-sensei.

Uchida-san guided her into a large office room, dotted with about fifteen desks, and pointed out an empty table in one corner of the space.

Usagi made her way across the room and pretended not to notice as Uchida-san crooked a finger at one of the other workers, summoning the sandy-haired man out into the hallway with her.

Instead, Usagi sat down at the assigned desk with trembling hands and a strong desire to open her eyes and sit up in her bed, far far away from any of this.

What the hell am I supposed to be doing?

She blinked hard, refusing to let out the tears that were welling in her throat as she looked around the room, watching the other social workers as they filled out papers, stapled and collated things, and generally… did their jobs.

"Hi, Tsukino-san."

She inhaled sharply and whirled her head up to find that the sandy-haired man was now standing next to her desk.

"Sorry for the confusion," he said, and she wracked her brain for what stupid thing she'd already done to let him know she was confused. "I'm Ishikawa Daichi and I'm going to be training you, okay?"

She nodded, and Ishikawa-san grabbed a big cardboard box from a nearby stack and dropped it on her desk.

"These are some of Suzuki-san's old case files. You won't be taking over all of these right away, since you do have to go through your training, but we're going to start by reviewing these and discussing what your average week here will look like. Does that sound okay?"

Usagi nodded – what else could she do? – and Ishikawa-san rolled the chair over from his adjacent desk, sitting down next to her.

"Great," he said, pulling out the first of the dozens of manila hanging file folders in the box. "Let's start here."

Ishikawa-san sat with her for the rest of the work day, patiently explaining details of the files and how to properly and quickly read the cover sheets in each report. But the names swam before her eyes as she flipped through the piles of paperwork, blurring together in an unintelligible mess of kanji and kana.

The unending echo of self-doubt reverberated painfully in her brain as she attempted to sort through this mass of indistinguishable file folders that held details about the people she had been hired to help – details she'd just read, but couldn't even begin to remember.

This was all a mistake. The thought appeared unbidden in her mind, spidering out to the edges of her consciousness like a crack in a half-frozen lake. This is too much. I can't do it.

The fracture had grown, swollen into a massive break by the time the sun went down and she stepped off the train in Azabujuban instead of continuing on to Mita.

He lived only a block from the station, but she would never remember that walk, instead feeling like she'd blinked and found herself standing in front of his unwelcoming apartment door – forever locked to her, no matter what she might do.

Sucking in what Rei would have called a 'fortifying breath,' she raised her fist and rapped her knuckles against the green of Mamoru's door, a new thought finally rising from the depths of her subconscious.

Just go in there and call things off. In and out. Easy-peasy. And then you can go get ice cream.

She would definitely be eating a whole carton of Double-Fudge Death by Chocolate tonight.

The door opened much faster than she'd expected, and she barely had time to see Mamoru's blue eyes widen before he'd pulled her into his apartment, covering her mouth with his.

For a moment it swept over her, her arms unconsciously wrapping around his neck. Maybe one last time wouldn't be the worst thing... she reasoned, before the memory of the smile that wasn't for her flashed in her mind and doused her veins in ice.

This time, it was her hands pressing on his shoulders. Pushing him away from her, creating space for a conversation she didn't want to have.

His eyes snapped open when she forced their mouths apart, a furrow appearing between his dark eyebrows. "Usa…" He studied her, face impassive, but she could still see the calculations running behind his eyes. "...Is everything okay?"

"Yes. No. I just… When we started this, I didn't know you had…" Her mouth was stuffed with cotton, and she licked her lips in an effort to get the words out. "Feelings. Romantic ones, I mean. When I agreed to this, I didn't realize that you actually... liked someone."

There was a momentary flash, a split second in which his face twitched almost imperceptibly. Only the last several weeks of obsessing over his every tiny facial expression allowed her to pick up on it at all.

"Did Motoki say something to you?"

"No."

"Then how-"

"It's not important. But you… you should be with the girl you like."

"Okay." His hands didn't move from her hips. He just stared at her, his face an unmoving sheet of glass.

"So we should… we should stop doing this."

"Do you want to stop?"

"No, but-"

"Okay, then." He cut her off, dropping a gentle kiss on her mouth. "Let me worry about the girl I like. You're fine."

Frustrated, she pressed her lips together, turned her head away. She didn't know how to explain without revealing her hand, admitting that at some point this had become more for her than just mind-meltingly good hate-sex.

She pulled away, slipping out of his arms. "What happens to me when you win her over? Do I just get a 'never mind' text? Or... I show up here and..."

Her heart stuttered as she pictured it: Mamoru opening the door with his shirt half-unbuttoned, the hard planes of his chest on display. A feminine laugh from the other side of the genkan and a call of 'Who is it, Mamo-chan?'

The way his eyes would widen slightly at the sight of her on his doorstep, and he'd run his fingers through already-tousled hair. "Odango. Shit, I meant to call you."

She'd rather die.

"Usagi." His voice was somehow exasperated but also achingly patient in that way that only Mamoru could pull off. "You have nothing to worry about, okay? Trust me."

Her smile was weak – how was she supposed to do that when he hadn't even told her that he wanted to replace her? When she'd spent the last three weeks trying and failing to find this girl?

And the worst part was, she couldn't even be mad at him. They weren't friends, never had been. This was, in her own words, just sex. He didn't owe her a warning, he didn't owe her the truth… he didn't owe her anything.

She hated it.

"I have to go," she managed to choke out, stepping away before he could catch her in his arms again.

"Is everything okay?"

"Fine, just I… I forgot I made plans with the girls. Celebrate the first week at the new job, y'know."

His eyes were dark, unreadable. "Can I give you a ride?"

Her stomach twisted at the unfairness of it, that now that things had to end, NOW he suddenly wanted to offer her rides when before he might have wished her luck getting to the station – at most.

"The station isn't far," she said, though her only plans were to go straight home and hide under her ratty old comforter until she had to leave for work.

Mamoru's hands disappeared into his pockets, his shoulders hunching up ever-so-slightly towards his ears. "Where are you going?" he asked, and she wanted to scream.

"Oh, you know Minako-chan. We'll probably start at a bar and wind up at some after-hours private club no one has ever heard of before."

"Yeah, that… that sounds like Minako-san."

There was a pause, and she stepped towards the door, planning to make her escape, before Mamoru spoke again.

"Is it just… you and the girls?"

"It's not like I have any work friends yet, so unless you want to come…"

"Do you want me to?"

She blinked. She'd been making a joke. Obviously it had been a joke. What the hell was he doing?

Shoving the question as low as she could, she swallowed, hard. "I'm sure you have better things to do. Case studies and medical journals and stuff to read, people you'd rather spend your evening with."

He shrugged. "I don't mind celebrating you."

"You wouldn't have fun."

His eyes darkened in a way that turned her insides to jelly. "I bet we could find a way."

He wasn't playing fair, but her dignity was saved by the fact that she couldn't actually invite him along on fake plans.

"Nah," she said, fingers blindly fumbling for the door handle. "Call the girl you like. Maybe invite her to dinner. You'll have a better time, I promise."

Her palm finally, mercifully, closed around the knob, and, with a surge of relief, she pushed out of Mamoru's genkan, fleeing down the hall and into the elevator before he had a chance to say anything else.

Her second week at ISSJ left her dizzy.

She had already been struggling to keep up, and then on Thursday afternoon Ishikawa-san took her on her first site visit. They went to Ikejiri to check in on a hikikomori named Inoue Yoshinori. That might have been fine, but on the train ride down to Shibuya, Ishikawa-san started cracking jokes about shut-ins – jokes that made Usagi feel entirely uncomfortable and frankly a little horrified.

Worst of all, when she openly gaped at him after the third or fourth one, not even feigning polite laughter anymore, he just shrugged.

"Oh, right, you're new," he said dismissively, as though this meant that his cruel quips actually were funny and she just didn't have the sense of humor to properly appreciate them.

Meanwhile, her stomach squirmed painfully at the idea of ever actually laughing at 'the average hikikomori suffers from Stuck-Home Syndrome.'

But she wasn't even out of her recruit suit yet, and so she didn't dare correct her senpai. Not even after they made it to Inoue-san's apartment and Ishikawa-san spent the entire visit shoving forms at the homebound young man without once meeting his eyes, or when Ishikawa-san repeatedly spoke to Usagi about the case as though their client wasn't even in the room with them.

Meanwhile, Usagi's eyes darted around the cluttered and cramped little apartment. She knew many hikikomori were prone to hoarding, but she hadn't really seen it in person before. Inoue-san had filled his home with towering stacks of papers, dusty columns of worn old books, and dozens and dozens of model airplanes – so many that there was little space to walk around them.

Taking a closer look at one of the newspapers, she realized it was a vintage paper from the 1940s, the front page proclaiming that the first nonstop flight around the world had been achieved.

"Inoue-san, you like airplanes?" she asked, and Ishikawa-san shot her a what are you doing? expression.

But the homebound man's eyes lit up. "I love planes. I'm completing my online degree in aeronautics. Did you know that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is actually certified safe to maintain cruising altitudes for up to five hours after experiencing single engine failure?"

"I had no idea. That's really interesting!"

"Isn't it? And in 2016 a Ukrainian engineer developed a plane with a detachable cabin to protect passengers in the event of engine failure."

"Wow!"

"Yeah! It was a good idea in theory, but since so many planes can still fly after experiencing an engine failure, it didn't end up being a terribly useful intervention."

"What would you invent instead, if you could?"

Inoue-san's eyes practically glowed as he opened his mouth to answer, but then Ishikawa-san thrust another stack of papers between him and Usagi, effectively severing the conversation.

"If you'll just sign the last of these, we'll be on our way," he said, shooting Usagi a stern look.

Cowed, Inoue-san quickly signed the forms and handed them back, and then Ishikawa-san was herding Usagi out of the untidy apartment and back into the hallway, shutting the door sharply behind them.

"Look, I know you think you're helping," he said when he and Usagi were again standing on the crowded afternoon metro. "But you can't change these people. Trust me, a lot of people with a lot more experience than you have tried. They're sick, and they don't care to get better. It's nice that you want to make them feel better, but you can't fix them. If you start trying, you're only going to burn yourself out."

She raised her chin slightly, feeling her mouth pull into a moue. "They're still people," she said, hotly. "And they aren't broken." The sardonic look on Ishikawa-san's face made her immediately wish to take her sass back.

"They're people, yes," Ishikawa-san said with a little sigh. "But we're their caseworkers, not their friends. It's our job to make sure they have a roof over their head next month, not to validate their hobbies."

"We're the only people that they see," she countered, still irritated but doing her best to be polite. "It doesn't cost us anything to be kind."

But Ishikawa-san just shook his head at her, his eyes sad and knowing. "It's a nice thought, Tsukino-san, but you'll find you have too many clients to get invested in the status of each one. Best to just check in on them, have them sign the appropriate forms, and keep moving. That way, you have enough time to take care of all your clients, and nobody ends up disappointed. Believe me, I'm trying to look out for you. We all start out wanting to be the fairy godmother, wave our wand and make everything better, but that isn't how it works. Once you've been here for a few weeks, you'll see."

Her fingers tightened hard on the cold metal support pole of the train car, and she tried to remember that triangle-breathing thing that Rei had shown her once.

She didn't care what Ishikawa-san said, she would quit ISSJ and move back home with her parents before she became as cynical as he was.

Better to not be cut out for anything at all than to just stop caring.

Back at the office, she sorted through the forty-five individual forms that Inoue-san had signed, trying to figure out which ones were important enough to submit for processing, which ones she needed to keep on file, and which ones were just busywork intended to punish hikikomori for being mentally ill and needing to rely on public assistance.

Ishikawa-san was back working at his own desk and, after their conversation on the train, she didn't particularly feel like asking him for help right now.

On the tabletop to her left, her phone screen lit up and her heart squeezed at the notification that flashed across the device – (14) unanswered text messages from Mamoru-baka.

She knew that she owed him a proper conversation, but even Minako said it was rude to dump someone over text. And even if it wasn't, all of his messages (the ones she'd scrolled through, anyway) had been some variant on Can I see you? or I guess your new job is keeping you busy, but let me know if you need a break. – not exactly the right opening for 'actually I think I love you, so we should probably never see each other again.'

Not that he was hurting for female company. She'd had to walk past the Crown the other day – jumpy and hypervigilant and so so paranoid that she was about to accidentally run into Mamoru – when she'd seen him through the window, sitting at the counter and talking to that dark-haired girl from the day of her interview.

In her arcade.

Needless to say, she had no intention of ever answering any of Mamoru's texts. Surely he would soon get the message that she was not worth the trouble and get his shit together and marry Miss Perfect. She would be conveniently sick on the day of the wedding.

Sucking in a harsh inhale, she shook herself out of her disturbing daydreams and added another form to the 'pointless busywork' stack.

Her phone lit up again, and she reached out to turn it face-down before she realized this new notification read Mako-chan, not Mamoru-baka.

She eagerly picked up the phone and unlocked it, revealing Hey girl! This week has been sooo long, wanna grab a drink tonight?

Her lips quirked up and she couldn't contain her involuntary nod, relieved at the idea of blowing off some steam with her wonderful friend. Her thumbs flew across the keyboard, and she sent back: Yes pls, would love that. Can u bring cookies?

Taking a double batch of chocolate chip out of the oven now. Gotta have enough for everyone!

Usagi's stomach somehow shrank. Everyone? she texted back, her previously flying fingers now trembling so bad it took her three tries to get the word out without a typo.

The little bubbles in the corner of the screen began to pulse as Mako typed a response, and Usagi tapped her fingers against her desk in time with them, all of Inoue-san's papers lying forgotten next to her.

Obvs! Me and Shinozaki, you, Minako, Ami, Rei, Mamoru, and Motoki. Do you want to invite Naru and Umino too?

Her shrunken stomach disappeared entirely. With how bad her hands were shaking, it probably took her a full five minutes to type out the next message, although it felt even longer.

Actually I cant make it tonight. I think Im coming down with poliomyelitis and need 2 rest

It was the only disease she could think of – something she'd read over Mamoru's shoulder on one of those occasions where she'd tried to figure out why on earth he was so invested in those stupid thick books. She had no idea what it was, but it sounded serious.

Oh Usagi-chan, that sucks. Rain check? I'll send some cookies home with Mina.

She sent back a kissy face, then dropped her forehead against her desk.

It was going to be a lot harder to never see Mamoru again if the girls were going to insist on inviting him places.

The upside of the girls going out with Mamoru was that, since Luna and Artemis were off doing research on the missing Moon Princess, she had the apartment all to herself for a good long mope when she got home from work.

Well, a mope that lasted for the twenty minutes or so before her communicator started beeping.

Despite her ineptitude as a leader, Rei still had the wherewithal to page her because they needed Sailor Moon's firepower, forcing Usagi to leave behind the warmth of her bunnies-and-moons cocoon on the couch so she could leap from rooftop to rooftop in red-heeled boots.

Dashing across the moonlit Tokyo skyline and towards Tuxedo Mask.

The moment that thought occurred to her, she very seriously considered turning back, but decided it would be harder to live down Rei's mocking than to simply conveniently avoid talking to Mamoru. After all, she'd been doing THAT for weeks now.

She landed in a crouch up in a tree overlooking Arisugawa-no-miya park, where Tuxedo Mask and the four other Senshi were facing off against a set of red and blue youma-twins.

One of the youma sisters shot a blast of icy energy at the group in unison with the other monster, who sent a handful of fireballs into the fray.

Usagi heard the shrieks of her friends and momentarily wished that she could conjure roses like Tuxedo Mask did, perfect for a conveniently timed distraction that would allow her friends to regroup. But she didn't even have that, had nothing but a stupid tiara that missed half the time and a pen that gave her the ability to turn herself into other people that she used to stalk a boy who didn't even like her.

Some superhero she was.

In a burst of frustration, she rose to her full height, her head popping out of the cherry blossom canopy as she pointed her fingers at the two monsters. "Hey! How dare you gang up on my friends, who are just trying to stop you from harming innocent people? I, Sailor Moon, will not forgive you!"

In unison, the twin youmas let out cackling laughs and turned their powers on Usagi.

Windmilling her arms with a shriek, she lost her balance and her butt hit the ground with a violent, painful thump. She got her head up again barely in time to see the tree she'd just been standing in explode in a blaze of icy flame.

"Crescent Beam!" She heard Minako's cry and ducked her head again.

Ami's voice came next: "Mars, Jupiter, take the ice youma! Venus, with me!"

Her stomach quavered slightly, feeling more useless than ever as her Senshi split up to fight the enemies without her.

But then, it only got worse.

"Usagi!"

She looked up with big eyes to find Tuxedo Mask on his knees next to her.

"Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?"

He reached out a gloved hand as if to touch her arm, and she flinched away.

"I'm okay," she said, rising to her feet and ignoring the throbbing bruise already forming on her butt.

"You shouldn't… Makoto-san said you were sick," he said, voice trailing off.

But she ignored this, focusing her attention on the battle instead of on him.

Though Sailor Mars and Sailor Jupiter were fighting the ice-witch and Sailor Venus and Sailor Mercury were fighting the fire-witch, it seemed like the girls were taking much more of a beating than the monsters were. The Senshis' attacks simply weren't doing enough damage to overwhelm either youma, and instead they were only tiring themselves out.

Sucking in a deep inhale, she left Mamoru on the ground, leaping up onto a bench, then to the top of the fountain, seeking a high vantage point somewhere in between the twin monsters.

"Hey!" she cried as soon as she was confident that she'd found a good position. "You know what? Your aim is as bad as mine."

Both the red- and the blue-skinned demons paused mid-strike and whirled to glare at her.

In reply, she waved a hand in the air, making sure she was holding both their undivided attention.

"Hit me if you can!" she taunted, and then took a running leap off the building she'd landed on, folding into what she hoped would turn out to be a front tuck.

Please, please work, she prayed internally, but she felt a blast of heat and a wave of cold closing in on her from either side, much faster than she'd accounted for.

Fuck, she'd gotten it wrong.

All the air left her lungs as she was suddenly plucked from the air, warm arms wrapping around her body and changing her trajectory, yanking her free from the crossfire.

Mamoru's familiar scent assailed her lungs in a shuddering inhale as they landed safely on the grass.

Above them, just as she'd hoped, the two youma fell prey to each other's attacks. A squall of ice and inferno of heat simultaneously melted the twins, leaving behind nothing but a piercing scream of agony and two spots of ice that fell to the ground as they rapidly vaporized.

She let out a pained exhale and then shoved her way to her feet, breaking Mamoru's hold on her and taking as large a step away from him as she could, rubbing her arms where his fingertips had somehow left little dents in her skin even through his gloves.

"Usa-" he began, but the clatter of heeled footfalls interrupted his words, and the four Senshi surrounded the two of them.

Usagi, for a moment, wondered if she'd ever been so glad to see them – or, she did until Sailor Jupiter opened her mouth.

"Oh, Usagi-chan, thank god you're here! And- you look totally fine! Did you recover from your bout of poliomy-whatsit?"

Her heart sinking, Usagi glanced up to find Sailor Mercury pressing her lips together like she was trying very hard not to laugh. "Mako-chan, you must have heard wrong. Poliomyelitis is the scientific name for polio, which is a paralyzing virus that has been largely eradicated on a global scale due to successful vaccination campaigns. I'm quite sure that Usagi didn't tell you that she couldn't come out tonight because she had come down with…"

Usagi shifted uncomfortably on her feet, connecting the dots of her own stupidity as Ami trailed off.

Her gaze dropped to the toes of her red boots, watching her own disjointed movements rather than meet Ami's judgemental stare. And if Ami had figured out that she'd lied… she needed to get far, far away from here before she had to face the disapproving expression that she was sure Mamoru was wearing.

"Oh." Ami said, the awkward pause hanging oppressively over them despite the triumph of their victory. "Usagi-chan, did you maybe hear the doctor wrong?" Ami pressed ahead kindly, and Usagi shook her head.

"I'm sorry," she blurted, seized with the sudden, unmistakable certainty that if she stayed in front of them any longer, she wouldn't be able to hold in her tears. "I have to go."

Though her grades had drastically improved since middle school, her time management skills had not, and so none of the Senshi had a prayer of matching her speed when she hit a full-on I'm-going-to-be-late sprint. As she took to the rooftops on her mad dash back to Mita, she thanked all the gods she could think of for that fact.

By the time she slid in through her infrequently used bedroom window, wincing at the shrill squeal of protest it made when she forced it open for the first time in months, the flood of embarrassed tears had mostly abated.

Even so, she slammed the glass pane shut and threw herself down on her mattress like a soap opera star at the end of a big monologue.

She wanted to bury herself under her comforter and just never, ever come out, but she'd left it on the couch in their living room, and she was pretty sure that Minako would arrive home at any second.

Knowing Minako, she wouldn't announce her presence. Instead, she would lie in wait in the kitchen, ready to ask all kinds of deeply invasive, prying questions about why Usagi would lie about being sick (and did this have anything to do with that fuck-buddy of her 'friend's' who totally totally wasn't made up).

With a groan, she mashed her pillow into her face because it almost achieved a similar sense of seclusion to hiding under the covers, but with the added benefit that if she accidentally suffocated herself she wouldn't have to explain her miraculous recovery from polio to any of the girls. Or worse…

She pressed the pillow down tighter in the hopes that she could drive away the image of Mamoru's sour expression that swam behind her eyelids. Despite the tight press of plush against her face and ears, she still could make out some kind of muffled scraping sound in the bedroom, something like the squeal of metal against glass. Probably Minako trying to pick the lock.

She sat up, hurling her pillow at her bedroom door. "Go away, Minako! I'm not in the mood!"

But she didn't hear Minako's protest. Instead, her name came from behind her in a rich, oh-too-familiar baritone.

Heart in her throat, she whirled on the bed to face her dingy window, forced open once again to admit the very last person she wanted to see.

One shiny shoe hit the ground, then the other, and her feeble heart positively palpitated.

Tuxedo Mask had never climbed in through her window before.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed, rolling off the mattress and onto her feet.

There was a momentary flash and the glamour melted away, leaving Chiba Mamoru standing in her tiny, cluttered bedroom.

She raised her chin as he surveyed the space, refusing to feel ashamed of the state of her room – though she did wish she'd bothered to throw her dirty underwear in the hamper that she rarely used except to lug her clothes to the laundromat, or that she'd had enough warning to hide her embarrassingly large collection of Tuxedo Mask plushies.

She especially wished for the second thing when, a moment later, Mamoru paused by her desk, staring at them.

"I bought those before I knew who you were," she piped up defensively.

"Oh," he said, peeling his eyes away and looking up at her.

"And by then we'd already bonded, so I kept them."

"Right."

"Anyway, you didn't answer my question," she said, crossing her arms. "What are you doing here?"

"You…" He blew out a long breath, turning his head towards her desk before jerking around to face her again. "Look, if you hit it off with Minako's model friend, you can just tell me. We aren't teenagers anymore, there's no need to ghost me."

"If I-?" She snorted, knowing it had already been too late for her to 'hit it off' with Takara-chan before they'd even met. "Mamoru-baka, don't be stupid."

"When a precipitating event occurred nearly concurrent to the start of your strange behavior, it's not stupid to assume that the two might be related. In fact, Occam's Razor would dictate that as the most reasonable deductive conclusion."

She stared at him blankly, and he blew out a puff of air that ruffled his bangs.

"You're avoiding me," he said slowly, drawing out the words slightly. "You have been since that day at the arcade. I haven't seen you in almost a month, except barely in passing as Sailor Moon. Last week, when you came by my apartment, you obviously didn't want to be there. You haven't answered any of my texts, and tonight you claimed that you'd caught polio so you didn't have to see me and your friends. I have to assume that either you started seriously dating someone or something's wrong."

"I'm not dating anyone."

Another unfamiliar expression passed over his face and, not for the first time, she wished for some kind of guidebook to Chiba Mamoru.

But it was gone as quickly as it had come, and his voice and face were even as ever when he said "Then what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."

"Odango…" His voice was a growl, the kind that would have made her toes curl under different circumstances.

"No, it's just… I can't do this anymore."

"Can't do what?"

"This!" She gestured between them, ignoring the alarm bells sounding in her head in favor of appeasing the splitting feeling in her chest. "I can't… I don't want to be the girl you're wasting your time with until somebody else realizes what they're missing. I thought I could, but I can't."

"Wasting… Usagi, where is this coming from?"

She raised her chin again, feeling like she was back on that opening ceremonies stage and refusing to let Mamoru see her flinch. "You hate me."

There was a long pause. "...I didn't think how I felt about you mattered."

Neither had she. At least, not until he liked someone.

"Look, can we not make this a bigger deal than it is? It's not like I'm asking you to change how you feel about me or anything. I'm just tired of being the runner-up, the one people didn't want but got stuck with."

His eyes took on a hard glint. One she hadn't seen since the day he'd helped them take out Jadeite (really, Mamoru was the one who had done most of the work).

"'Stuck with'?! Who the hell said that to you?"

She shrugged one shoulder as her mind's eye scrolled the list… a list much too long to even see the bottom of. "It doesn't matter."

"It does." His voice was low, dangerous.

She snorted. "No, it really doesn't. It's not like it would change anything."

A deep furrow appeared between his eyebrows as he looked at her, his face oddly like it had been on that day she'd asked about Saori. As if he'd always thought about her in one way, and this was the first time it had ever occurred to him that there might be anything else to her.

To him, she was just pathetic little Odango Atama, good for nothing but a laugh and a roll in the sack. That was all she would ever be.

She shoved the painful thought to the back of her mind and crossed her arms over her chest, preparing to tell him to get the hell out.

She was startled when she looked up again and found Mamoru in what appeared to be deep thought. He was staring at the floor between them, his lips pressed in a tight line and his hands buried in his pockets.

After a long moment of her watching him – unable to stop herself – he glanced up at her again, his face as still as a statue's. "...For what it's worth, I don't hate you, Usagi."

Her lips quirked, covering for the way her heart twisted in her chest – maybe that could have been enough for her once, but it wasn't now. Not anymore.

"Thanks. But it's not worth much."

AN: Thank you for reading! I would love to hear what you thought. Also, if you enjoy this story, please at the very least check out my day 5 entry from All I Ever Think About Is You, "Dr. Chiba Will See You Now."