- Chapter 14: Living from Day to Day -

Once we got to Asakura's apartment, we just walked right in.

Well, we were ghosts, so it wasn't like we could knock. But the moment we were inside, I wished that I had taken a quick peek inside to see if anything was up before we just waltzed in. Although yes, the chances of my being able to convince Haruhi to turn and leave without looking inside were about on par with the chances of an ant stopping an advancing tank. At least I would have had a chance to prepare myself.

Because inside that apartment, sitting on the couch, were Other-me and Asakura. Making out.

Somebody is going to be real smart and tell me that I'm lucky, because we might have walked in on Asakura down to her bra, the way I did the day before. But they don't know the horror of seeing yourself with your lips mashed up against Ryoko Asakura's.

With the bonus horror of having a girl that you rather hope would eventually be willing to make out with you standing right there. After we both stared in shocked silence for a couple seconds, Haruhi folded her arms and looked away. "Disgusting..."

I couldn't agree with her more. I was trying hard not to see if anyone's tongue was going into anyone's mouth.

It took far too long, but it did ultimately occur to me that I didn't have to just stand there and take this. "Yo, Asakura," I announced. "You've got company."

No reaction. She didn't even flinch. Apparently privacy was of no concern to her.

"Lips off, Asakura," I snapped. "Nagato went over this with you already. If you don't stop and send him home right now, we can just go over to her apartment and tell her what you're doing."

Still no reaction. Maybe she figured that I wouldn't go through with it if she thought I couldn't hear her? Or was she betting that the data organism majority would back her up on this?

"Ugh, this is just sickening!" Haruhi leaned over the couch, resting her wrists on the back, and directed her wrath at Other-me. "How stupid are you? How can you not tell that she doesn't love you? I can tell just by the way she kisses you that she doesn't feel anything for you like... She tried to kill you, you idiot!"

At that, Other-me broke the kiss and pushed Asakura away from him. He didn't say anything, just put her at a distance.

She looked at him, with a phony hurt in her eyes. "What is it? I thought you were okay with me being... an alien."

"It's not that." Other-me sighed and looked at the floor. "I just feel like I'm doing something wrong. When we're kissing, it's like I can still hear Haruhi yelling at me."

"Hah! You hear that?" Haruhi said. I'm not sure if she was talking to me or Asakura. "Even when I'm a ghost, he still listens to me!"

"You can't let her run your life," Asakura said gently, still ignoring me and Haruhi.

"I'm not," he said. "It's just... I left things in a mess with her. She still thinks she's completely right. If anything, I just made things worse." He shook his head. "I don't feel like I can be involved with anyone until I've fixed things with Haruhi."

"You might not be able to fix it. Just let it go."

"I..." Other-me lowered his head further, and trembled. "...I can't."

"But if -"

"I hate her."

Haruhi's mouth clamped shut, like she'd been switched into standby mode.

"I hate the way she treats Miss Asahina. I hate the way she treats everyone. I hate that after all I went through for her, all the time I stuck by her side, she wouldn't even once listen to me as a friend. She just expects me to shut up and follow orders." He clenched his fist. "I can't let it go. I can't just... I can't just leave her even worse than she was when I met her. She means something to me, even if it's for all the wrong reasons."

For once, I could say I knew how Other-me felt. Even if I didn't feel that way anymore. Even if that wasn't the way Haruhi was anymore.

Other-me cupped his hands over his eyes. "I probably sound like a complete idiot. Did any of that make sense at all? Whatever, I just... I can't do anything like that with you. I think we should be just friends for now."

Asakura nodded. "Alright."

Other-me got his coat and left. He and Asakura were more or less silent through it all. They didn't even make eye contact for the most part.

As soon as she had closed the door behind him, though, Asakura said, "Alright. I suppose you two got what you wanted. You can go now."

I cracked a smirk. "Actually, we came here because we wanted a place to crash. Getting to see myself finally show a hint of sense in this universe was just a bonus."

"How cruel. Whatever have I done to you?"

Apart from trying to kill me multiple times, the way you bullied Nagato and Haruhi earlier didn't exactly endear you to me. "Just show us the guest bedrooms and you won't hear another word from us all night."

She made what probably would have passed as a cute smile on anyone else. "Silly. What gave you the idea that a high school student would have a guest bedroom in her apartment?"

I guess I just don't think of Ryoko Asakura as a high school girl anymore. The whole trying to turn me into shish kabob while talking about how perplexing it is that I don't want to die kind of makes it hard to look at her that way.

Still stupid of me not to think of the fact that she's pretending to be one, though.

"We'll take the bedroom, then, if you don't mind," Haruhi said, like a noblewoman giving orders in her own household. "You can sleep in the living area."

"That sounds fine. I'm glad you decided to do a sleepover with me, Miss Suzumiya."

"Whoa, whoa..." I waved my hands in a very clear signal. "Haruhi and I can't stay in the same bedroom."

"Ah, of course. Then you wish to be in the gentleman and take the living area while Miss Suzumiya and I take the bedroom?"

Leaving Haruhi sleeping alone with the murderous Asakura? "No way in hell," I growled.

"...Oh, I get it," Haruhi sniffed. "You want a room alone with Asakura."

"What? That's insane."

"Well, you eliminated the other two possibilities quickly enough."

This was like a sick reprise of the pairing-off situation on our sledding adventure. "All three of those options are totally unacceptable. Is that really so hard to understand?"

"We have to take some option!"

"Why not you in the bedroom, me in the living area, and Asakura checks into a motel? I know for a fact that -"

"Kyon." She said the world so softly, so threateningly, that it shut me up much more quickly than any amount of her yelling could. Then she turned and walked towards the exit. "A word."

What was this about? She couldn't really think that I would want to be alone with Asakura, could she? Even Haruhi wasn't that crazy. Anyway, naturally I followed her through the apartment wall, out into the hall.

She was waiting for me with her arms folded. But she didn't look angry. If anything, she looked... nervous. Or embarrassed.

"Kyon, I... I want you to sleep with me."

...She didn't just say what I thought she said, did she? I'm already asleep and dreaming, aren't I?

"Ugh, not like that, you idiot! Why would I even joke about something like that? We're ghosts, so that's physically impossible!"

I scratched the back of my head. "You have to admit, 'I want you to sleep with me' does have certain connotations." And you did, not so long ago, try to make a pact with me which involved your being able to have sex with me at a moment's notice.

"Look, I just want someone else with me when I go to sleep tonight, okay? And not Asakura. She's too creepy."

Sleeping over with her was your idea. And whatever happened to "There's nothing to worry about because this is all just a dream"?

"It's a scary dream, okay? I saw you almost get killed, twice! I am not having a fun time here, so you should be a little more supportive."

Haruhi admitting that she was scared caught me off guard, so I fumbled for a moment. "Um... Look, I get it. But you're still talking about a guy and a girl sleeping in the same bedroom. I know the fact that that isn't allowed doesn't matter to you, but see, I'm a normal human."

"What does it matter? We'll only be sleeping."

That brought on a bit of deja vu. I guess, having done it with Miss Asahina, I really didn't have a good excuse for refusing to do it with Haruhi, did I? In the normal world there'd be the threat of Haruhi sneaking up on me while asleep and yanking my pants down or something just so she could laugh at me, but with both of us in ghost form, there was no possibility of mischief on either of our parts.

"...Okay," I said at last. "If it'll make you feel less scared."

To be honest, it would make me feel less scared, too.

"I'm not scared," she objected. "Just stressed out, that's all."

That would have been a good moment for a retort, but in the back of my mind I was starting to think of what Haruhi's sleeping arrangements were for the night before. Asakura had interrupted her recap before we could get to that part. I gradually approached the realization that there was only one possibility. When we found each other in this world, Haruhi still hadn't known that there was anyone who could see her. That meant that wherever she had stayed, she had been there alone.

Alone, with the thought that I had died trying to protect her, and that no one even knew she existed. I wasn't even going to try to imagine what that night must have been like for her.

I would just tell her what she wanted to hear this time. "Well, most people would be pretty scared in your shoes. I guess the fact that you aren't is just part of what makes you the leader of the SOS Brigade."

"Well, of course."

She didn't smile when she said it. That worried me a bit. I had navigated the surface problem alright, and that was most definitely important; Haruhi wouldn't have come right out and asked me to sleep with her unless she really needed my company. But now I was starting to think there was a problem beneath the surface as well.

We walked back into the apartment. Asakura was waiting for us with a smile. "It is quite charming how sensitive you are to Miss Suzumiya's wishes, Kyon. I knew from the beginning that you were the one who would get her to open up."

So, she was listening in. It didn't really surprise me that, being a humanoid interface like Nagato, she could do that. It still pissed me off, though. Nagato would have respected our privacy.

"Still you both look so angry with me. How strange, when I'm so fond of both of you. I enjoy watching your reactions towards each other. And now that I've learned that Miss Suzumiya can create new information even in this world, observing her is more interesting than observing the Miss Suzumiya of this world. A shame that both of you will both be leaving us so soon, one way or another." She stepped up to a door and held out a hand in invitation. "Here is the bedroom. If you like, we can stay up for a while and talk. But I'm guessing from your expressions that you would much rather go straight to bed."

Haruhi stepped up to the doorway, then gave Asakura a death glare. "I heard you threaten Yuki earlier because of what I did to you."

Asakura still smiled. "Miss Suzumiya, I don't hold that against you. You acted out of a lack of understanding of what it is to be a humanoid interface. Miss Nagato knew better."

"Yeah?" I threw in. "Well, Nagato also understands what it is to be a human. That's why she wouldn't help you kill me."

"I admit, your extreme aversion to death is a mystery to me. But Miss Nagato's duty is to her own kind, to those who are close to her."

"Yuki did what she thought was right," Haruhi said. "And if you try to hurt her for that, I swear, I'll reach all the way over from my universe into yours and make you regret it."

She didn't bother waiting to see if Asakura might have a rebuttal. She just walked through the bedroom door, disappearing from my sight for a moment. I followed her.

The bedroom looked just like Nagato's, except that instead of bare walls and a couple sleeping mats, it had a big fluffy bed, a surplus of pillows, tons of stuffed animals, posters of boy bands and famous women from history, a constellation chart on the ceiling, and a nightstand with a reading light.

It was a room that could only be described as disturbingly normal.

Haruhi, for a change, wasn't saying anything, so I remarked, "It was pretty satisfying to see the other me break up with her, wasn't it?"

No comment. She was just staring at the bed. If it were any other girl, I'd think she were contemplating how to cope with having to sleep on the same bed as a boy. Since this was Haruhi, though, I knew she had already decided that I would be sleeping on the floor so that she could have the bed to herself.

"I mean, I'm relieved that even in this world, I have better taste in women than that." While I did have some hope that I might get Haruhi to see the bright side of things here, mostly I was just talking because I figured that sooner or later I would get some sort of reaction out of her. Even some angry yelling would be better than this ominous and strangely sad silence.

"...You were kissing her," she said at last.

There we go. "Yeah, but you got the last laugh. He broke up with her because of you."

"You said you hate me."

I had forgotten about that. "He was just venting. Anyway, he's an idiot."

"Stop saying 'he'!" she burst out. "Stop talking like you're two different people! We both know that this is the way things would be if she had asked you to be her boyfriend! What he said was how you felt when we had that fight. It's what you'd still be feeling if things had happened just a little differently!"

"Haruhi," I sighed wearily.

"It's just by chance that you're still in the SOS Brigade! It's just by chance that you still care about me at all!"

I snapped my fingers right in front of her face to get her attention. "Haruhi, don't you get it?" I smiled right at her furious glare. "It's all going to work out the same in the end. The things Other-me just said to Asakura prove that. Yeah, Asakura managed to interfere with us for a lot longer in this reality, but no matter which way things go, in the end I'm going to realize I want to be in the SOS Brigade, you and Nagato are going to be good friends, Koizumi is going to learn to trust Nagato, and you're going to put Miss Asahina in a whole bunch of new outfits. A lot of things can change, but so long as you have the same group of people, a few things are going to remain the same.

"It's not by chance that I'm still in the SOS Brigade. I'm in the SOS Brigade because you invited me, and I chose to join. That's all there is to it."

Haruhi blinked at me. The angry glare had faded from her face. "You don't know that. Maybe you'll never rejoin the SOS Brigade in this world."

"I think I will." I stretched. "Now, can we get some rest? It's kind of a big day tomorrow."

She stared at me a second.

"Fine," she said, and climbed into the bed.

I saw now there were a couple sleeping mats rolled up in a cupboard, maybe for sleepovers. I had no way of pulling them out, though, so I just lay down on the floor.

Haruhi peered over the edge of the bed at me. "What are you doing down there?"

"Studying the ceiling. What do you think?"

"Wouldn't you rather sleep in the bed?"

"Naturally, but you got to it before me, so I'll concede it to you."

Then Haruhi apparently decided it was time to shock me again. "There's room here for two people."

It took a moment for me to get my jaw working again. "...I'll pretend I didn't hear that."

"What's the problem? We're just sleeping. Even if we weren't ghosts right now, we'd still just be sleeping."

Let me say that if we weren't ghosts right now, there is no way I would even consider crawling into bed with Haruhi. I'm not sure I could be trusted to behave myself in that situation, and I definitely couldn't trust Haruhi to behave herself. I don't mean loss of virginity. It's just that Haruhi was too unpredictable for me to lay down and sleep next to her. There were no boundaries with her.

But since we were ghosts right now, most of those dangers were gone. Simply stating that it was inappropriate for us to share a bed would never work on Haruhi, and it took me a second to come up with a practical objection. "Asakura could walk in on us at any moment. And she could relay it instantly to all the other aliens, including Nagato. What would you -"

"Look, I can't keep an eye on you while you're down there! What if something grabs you or something?"

"You couldn't keep an eye on me while I'm up there, either. You'll be sleeping."

"I mean before I fall asleep. That's when I want to keep an eye on you."

That was some messed up thinking. So she was okay with it if something bad happened to me while she was sleeping?

"Get up here. Now."

Haruhi could order me to do a lot of things, but getting into bed with her was not one of them. Especially not when she couldn't even use physical force against me. "Go to sleep, Haruhi."

"There's going to be a big penalty for you if you don't get up here!"

I yawned. "Add it to the pile." And while you're at it, learn to take "no" for an answer.

I didn't hear anything more from Haruhi after that, except some grumbling noises. Which were kind of soothing, in a way. I closed my eyes and breathed. I brought to mind the soothing image of Miss Asahina in her maid outfit, and let my breathing continue to go steady, even, in and out. In and out.

...Nope. Not really feeling tired.

I'd been in a hurry to get to bed, because being in Asakura's place was unnerving enough without hanging out, but my internal clock wasn't quite at bedtime yet. There was a time when I could knock off at this hour, but too many nights spent up playing video games had taken its toll, I guess. And yes, okay, I guess I was a little worried about the possibility of a rogue humanoid interface coming to kill Haruhi while I was asleep. As if I could do anything about it while I was awake.

With a sigh, I got up. Maybe pacing around for a while would get me knocked out.

The floor felt cold. And at this point I was getting really tired of my school uniform. Maybe I should try suggesting to Haruhi that ghosts can change their clothes despite their lack of physical substance.

I glanced over at her, and saw that she was sleeping right at the edge of the bed, facing my resting place. It was definitely an odd perch, and, okay, it is a bit egotistical to think this, but I couldn't see any reasonable explanation for it except that Haruhi had decided that if I wasn't going to sleep beside her, she'd just have to position herself where she could keep an eye on me.

I guess it was that display of protective instinct, as much as the soft peacefulness of her face in slumber, which made her look so cute sleeping there. The fact that she wasn't constantly yelling at me also made it easier to look somewhere other than her face, and notice the feminine contours that were very pleasing to look at even when (like now) they were largely obscured by her loose-fitting school uniform and illuminated only by Asakura's "duckie" nightlight. I wished I could...

...Well, why the hell not? We were still ghosts, so she wouldn't be woken by it, or even feel it. She'd never know.

I tried to fight the urge, really. I told myself it was a pervy thing to do to someone while they were asleep. I reminded myself that our inability to make physical contact not only meant that she wouldn't feel it, but that I wouldn't feel it, either.

But I couldn't help myself. I lowered my head and softly planted my lips on her brow.

"What are you doing?" a distinctly unamused voice demanded.

I almost jumped through the ceiling. I guess, being a ghost, it really would have been through the ceiling. Until a second ago Haruhi's eyes had definitely been closed, and her breathing had been slow and even, so I had carelessly assumed that she was asleep instead of just powering herself down. But really, what the hell had prompted her to open her eyes at the exact second when she could catch me kissing her? Damn mind reader.

"I, uh..." I stammered. Haruhi's glare wasn't angry yet, but it was making it very clear that things like whether or not I would ever be allowed to share a bedroom with her again were hinging upon my answer.

Such was my terror that it took me a second to realize that she hadn't actually caught me doing anything. From her position, all she would have seen was where my neck and my left shoulder were.

"...I was just checking to see how you were doing," I said, concluding a pause that was probably already too long, unless Haruhi's trust in me was even more unshakable than previous incidents had shown.

"And you can't do that without sticking your nose right in my hair?" she shot back, with no pause at all.

"I guess I can," I admitted. Maybe my weak lie could be supplemented with some brutal honesty. She thought this all was a dream, so it wouldn't matter once we got back to the regular world, right? "It's just that... I wanted to hear you breathe again."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I thought I saw you die yesterday," I reminded her. "That got me upset enough to give you that 10-minute apology earlier. I know it's probably no big deal to you – I mean, the word 'careful' isn't even in your vocabulary – but I don't know if I can go through that again. And I'm trying not to think about it..." My voice was getting hoarse. Inside I was screaming at myself to stop, but I couldn't. "...but just having you here alive again, it -"

"Shut up," Haruhi snapped, and rolled over to face away from me.

"...What?"

"I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to hear this." Her voice was a bit hoarse too. "I just want to go to sleep."

"You're the one who asked about it. I was just -"

"How did you know Kuyou Suoh?"

"Huh?" Talk about an abrupt change of subject.

"When she first showed up, in the mansion, you recognized her. And then later you mentioned her name, even though she never introduced herself. How did you know her?"

I think I actually forgot for a minute that Haruhi doesn't know everything there is to know about the aliens and everything. "Well, ah... She used to be a friend of Sasaki's. Until she tried to kill you the first time."

"She tried to kill me before the mansion? How come I don't remember that?"

"You, uh, kind of slept through the whole thing."

"Why the hell didn't you wake me?"

I guess it was only natural that she would ask that rather than how she could have slept through something like that in the first place. "I tried. I think they had a sleep spell on you, or something. Also, we were trying to keep you from getting mixed up in all of this supernatural stuff."

"Why? With my powers, and my leadership, we could totally wipe out the bad guys! Besides, you did tell me all about it, that day in the cafe. Did something change?"

"Do you really want to go over all that right now?" At this point I was finally starting to feel that I really could go to sleep.

Her gaze shifted. She was still looking in my direction, but she was no longer looking at me. She was thinking over some Haruhi thing that no one else could see. "Mmm. Maybe not. I'm tired."

I nodded, and lay myself back down.

"But," she said through a big yawn. "You'll tell me all about it someday, right?"

"Yeah." I let my eyelids drift closed. "I promise."

"Kyyyoooon."

That's roughly the sound that woke me up in the middle of the night.

It was Haruhi's voice, but something was different about it. She'd never spoken to me in that anxious tone before. And her voice was slurred, like she was drunk, or... asleep.

I wanted to just drift back to sleep and ignore the interruption. But I had to be sure it was just Haruhi talking in her sleep and not Haruhi being murdered, or a Haruhi doppelganger coming to murder me. So I opened my eyes.

It's a good thing I was prepared for the worst, because otherwise I might have cried out or something. As it was, my eyes just widened with astonishment. Because Haruhi was right above me, inches from my face, floating in midair.

"Kyyyooon," she moaned again. Her voice sounded pretty anguished, but her eyes were resting shut; she was definitely still asleep.

I guess it only makes sense that Haruhi wouldn't be satisfied with just sleepwalking. But was she using her powers to do this, or was this something we both could do as a consequence of our lack of physical substance, and we just never realized it before? Maybe that was why we could still walk on the ground and sit in chairs. We were unconsciously setting limits for ourselves, making our ghostly forms follow the rules of gravity and such. When we were asleep, we were unaware of what our bodies were doing, so those limits no longer applied.

Gah, I'm thinking like Koizumi again. I should be considering more important things, like how if Haruhi were to wake up and find herself like this, I would somehow be the one to catch hell for it. With a sigh, I got up to move to a different sleeping place.

"Nooooo." Haruhi reached out for me, her hand passing through me, as per our new normal. "Kyyyoooooon."

Alright, you don't have to draw me a map. Haruhi was obviously having a nightmare reliving my apparent death at the hands of Kuyou Suoh, or maybe my near death at the hands of Ryoko Asakura. I'm not such an egomaniac that I would like that, but there it was. But that only meant that I had to do my damnedest to pretend that this whole sleepfloating thing never happened and wipe it from my memory banks. That's what Haruhi would want.

I walked towards the corner of the room with the stuffed giraffe.

"Kyyyoooon." I glanced over my shoulder, and saw Haruhi kick through the air like she was swimming, sending her floating after me.

It had to be a coincidence. I took a silent step sideways, at a right angle.

She pivoted, and again kicked her way directly towards me. "Kyooon," she mumbled again. "Nooo... c... can't..."

This was absolutely painful. You couldn't call Haruhi a dignified person, by any stretch, but even so, for her to be expressing her emotions like this felt horribly long. And for me to be witnessing it was even worse. I was tempted to just wake her up at this point. That would piss her off, to be sure, but it would be nothing compared to the affront of watching her squirm and moan like this. Not that she looked any more pathetic than anyone else having a nightmare, but I knew she wouldn't see it that way.

But I had a somewhat better idea than waking her. Less sane, in its way, but more hopeful. As she got close, I muttered, "Haruhi. I'm fine."

She turned slightly. If there was a mercy in all of this, it was that Haruhi's face showed no hint of whatever emotion she might be feeling. "K...yon?" she murmured.

I felt pretty stupid, trying to affect someone else's dream just by talking to them. But I had already started, so... I tried to think of something exciting but harmless that could keep her subconscious occupied. "Nothing happened to me, okay? You were just imagining things. Now, come on. That time traveler is hiding somewhere on this train, and everyone is counting on us to find her."

"Mmmm..." She turned again. "Uhl 'ind her..."

Her breathing was slowing. I tried slipping away from her, going back to my original sleeping spot.

She didn't follow. She just floated idly in the air, like she had nodded off while on the moon. With a breath of relief, I closed my eyes, and willed unconsciousness to come and give me a long overdue break. Tomorrow, come what may, would be the end of this whole mess. Either Haruhi and I would be back in our world, safe and sound, or we'd find that Goro Mishima really had pulled one over on us, and be executed by humanoid interfaces for our trespassing on their universe. A good night's sleep couldn't hurt either way.

And that, I guess you could say, is the story of how Haruhi and I slept together for the first time.