ENTITLED: I'd Rather Pretend
FANDOM: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun
NOTE: Oh my god. I am honestly embarrassed that it took me so long to update this. I mean, I am super busy, but still. STILL. Uber muy gomen nasai, mon chers.
DEDICATION: This chapter was written because skinnyburrito correctly told me to get off my lazy ass and write it! Well, they phrased it much more nicely than that. Regardless: thank skinnyburrito, as I thank them. Also. You guys can yell at me to do stuff whenever you want, because honestly, I space stuff all the time. I am the embodiment of every bad stereotype about blonde girls. Or at least like eighty percent of them. Yeah. I'll own that.
RAMBLING: Can I just say that sometimes I think it's really, really funny that someone like me writes fanfiction for semi-obscure shoujo anime? Trust me, it is. One time I actually flat out confessed my addiction to a group of my friends. Their reactions were, "Your hair is so shiny. What's fanfiction?", "We're playing beer pong, why are you taking your clothes off?", and "Sometimes I think you have multiple personalities."
LENGTH: 4/9

CHAPTER FOUR; How to Keep

"Nobody belongs to us, except in memory."

—John Updike

It's a good thing Natsume is so mature and totally capable of handling herself in an extremely loosely defined relationship.

"You aren't in a relationship at all," Shizuku says, completely dead-pan, and goes back to her leisure-reading which, Natsume's sure, is probably about trajectory arcs or something. "If Sasayan starts hanging around another girl, you can't get mad at him."

"What?" Natsume's mouth drops open. She is equal parts impressed and scandalized. Who knew her Mitty could be so open-minded!

Shizuku mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like simpleton, and then elaborates, "You said you were just casually dating. That doesn't mean a relationship. It means you go on dates. It's a slightly more official form of 'hanging out'. There aren't any rules about only dating one person at a time, unless you specifically said so."

Natsume can only gape as her friend looks up from her reading and says, in her most haughty voice, "Come on Natsume, don't you read?"

Natsume reflects that it is a shame that Yamaken isn't here to see this. And then she reasons that actually, Yamaken should probably only be exposed to so much excitement at one time, and given Shizuku's unexpectedly pragmatic ideas about romance and—WHAT IS THAT BOOK, ANYWAY?

"Mitty!" Natsume gasps, her eyes glued to the spine of Shizuku's book, reading and re-reading the novel's title. "Mitty, that stuff is super hardcore! I've heard of that author on the internet!" Natsume blushes a little, recalling some of the…ideas…the author in question was famous for.

Shizuku barely blinks. "Really? I would have thought he could have come up with something a little more imaginative for the usage of nipple clamps." There is an almost undetectable note of irritation running under the current of her words, and Natsume actually thinks, for a moment, that she is going to faint.

Nipple clamps.

What were—well, of course, she could guess what they were but why—? Were those for boys or for girls or—what did they even look like?!

Shizuku, seeing Natsume's horrified expression, makes some misplaced attempts at comfort. "I don't really think Sasahara-kun is going to fool around with other girls. He's liked you for ages. I was just saying."

"What?" Natsume mumbles, still distracted by trying to picture what a nipple clamp might look like. As she processes what Shizuku has said, she briefly tries to imagine Sasayan with a girl other than herself, and then immediately dismisses the idea as ludicrous and returns her attention to sex toys/contemporary torture devices. "Mitty, have you ever—"

She is absolutely, hugely underprepared to ask this question. Natsume stares at her best friend with her lips clamped tightly over her teeth, her knees pressed together, and her whole body quivering. She wills herself to speak. Her best attempt is a strangled cheeping noise.

"What?" Shizuku has half an eye back on her book. "Oh, the nipple clamp thing? I've never tried it. It sounds painful." She thinks for a moment, and even taps one finger against her lip. "Maybe…Haru might—his birthday is pretty far away, so—"

Were Natsume still capable of producing any sort of noise, she might have screamed. And yet, a little part of her brain whispers, Shouldn't she have expected this? Haru and Shizuku had been together for almost two years, after all, and Shizuku had always been very practical, very level-headed. This sort of thing was natural. Expected, even!

And then Natsume begins to understand the nature of Sasayan's trap.

"He's cooking me like a frog!" she cries, and turns wildly to Shizuku, who is now frowning slightly.

"I think you've made up an idiom."

"Because! If you put a frog in cool water and then slowly turn up the heat, the frog won't notice! It just sits there until it's cooked and dead!"

Shizuku sighs. She turns a page.

"Stop doing your weird sex research and listen to me!" Natsume yelps, and then admits to herself she's on her own, and that Shizuku is probably the worst confidant ever.

The night before school resumes, Natsume braces herself for the worst. She isn't sure she's ready to face all her distraught ex-suitors, much less Sasayan himself. How were you supposed to act, in that sort of setting? The obvious answer, she reasoned, was to appear slightly less emotionally invested than he was, at any given time. Yeah. She could handle that. And maybe it would even make things easier with other boys! Sasayan was pretty popular, after all. It would be hard for them to approach her, knowing that she was now attached to one of their friends. They had a male code to uphold, after all.

Satisfied, Natsume goes to bed feeling that the situation was completely under control.

The next morning, three boys proposition her before she's even made it to her classroom, and Natsume realizes that Sasayan hasn't told anyone. The idea sort of offends her, though she can't really explain why. She'd thought he'd have invited the school over for a victory party.

Even more aggravating was when she actually did run into him at the shoe lockers, and he was as surrounded by his friends as ever, and so only waved hello. Natsume watches him over the shoulder of the boy who is declaring his love for her, and almost considers accepting just to watch Sasayan's reaction, except that she kind of doesn't know this guy's name and has never spoken to him before now. She rejects him a little more slowly than she would have done normally. Sasayan does not appear to notice that anything has happened.

Natsume shuffles to class, feeling moody. Ooshima, whose desk is right next to Natsume's, offers a very nervous hello when Natsume clomps into homeroom.

"Good break?" Ooshima asks, just as Sasayan and a group of boys he had probably befriended five seconds ago enter the room. Natsume glowers.

"It was fine. Nothing important happened," she growls. Ooshima looks over at Sasayan, back to Natsume, and then visibly gives up.

Roughly five minutes after school has ended, Natsume grudgingly admits to herself that Mitty had been right, dating is not a big deal, and Sasayan is an idiot. Natsume gives up on him completely and has already stomped halfway across the schoolyard when That Idiot pops out of nowhere and catches her by the elbow. "Hey," Sasayan says, with a bright grin. "Let's go somewhere."

Natsume chokes, and comes to a halt. Other students continue around them. A couple of them glance back. She wonders if they'd heard.

"What?!" she splutters. He still hasn't let go of her elbow. She can't tell if he even notices that there are other people around them, when he looks at her like that.

"Well, you know. I haven't seen you all day." He shrugs. He lets her go. She can't decide if this is a good thing or not.

Natsume remembers the nipple clamps, and also that she is supposed to be acting unconcerned with his existence. So torn between suspicion and aloofness, she ultimately settles on general defensiveness. "What kind of place are we going?" she asks, and somehow manages to say at about the same time, "I am extremely busy."

"I was thinking coffee. That's where you're supposed to go for first dates."

"We get coffee all the time!" Natsume yelps, mostly because she's embarrassed by the word "dates", and that he'd said it, and that people had heard, and also that he's a boy.

Sasayan just looks at her. "It's symbolic."

"Well." Natsume blanks out. She stares at him. "I'm not dressed right!" she remembers, and then also, "Wait. I'm extremely busy."

"You are such a liar," Sasayan snorts, and Natsume tries to remember why she had agreed to date someone who looked exasperated ninety percent of the time they were together. She resolves to end things with him quickly, but then he starts walking towards the gate and for some reason she trots after him.

"Are you going to pay for me?" she asks, not because she wants him too, but because no one has ever done that for her before.

Sasayan scrunches up his face. "I think I'm supposed to for like the first three to five times."

"You know a lot about this," Natsume notes, and wonders if everyone in the world is doing sneaky sex research except for her. She tries to imagine Sasayan acting out some of the stuff she'd seen in shoujo manga and is instantly horrified. She eyeballs him with great subtlety. He'd gotten a little taller since their freshman year, but was still lanky and small, and most likely unsuited to battling hoards of demons set on devouring her life force/virginity. The idea is extremely concerning. Natsume hopes that if it ever comes to that, he will not be an idiot and just ask Haru for help.

"Yeah, well." Sasayan shrugs, and looks over his shoulder. They've made it about three blocks away from the school now and so she turns to look too, because she can't imagine what he's seen and the street is empty. She opens her mouth to ask him what's up, but then Sasayan takes her hand like it's no big deal, and tugs her along, and she gets it. Her face burns, and she squeezes his hand without meaning too, and that just makes her all the more embarrassed. The overwhelming desire to kiss him builds and pushes against her chest. She ignores it. Sasayan pokes her still burning cheek.

"Stop it."

"You're cute." He sounds incredibly smug about something. Natsume bristles, and her free hand balls up at her side.

"Don't look at me!" she yells, and seethes happily for the rest of the walk. She wonders, abruptly, if he'd left his bike behind just so he could hold her hand like this. He was pretty sneaky, after all. Natsume considers him, and he looks over at her, with his eyebrows raised.

"Why are you glaring at me?"

"You have three older brothers?" Natsume asks, suspicion dripping from every word. Sasayan keeps his eyebrows up. He has a bandage over one of them, along the edge of his hairline at his temple. Natsume can't decide if it looks stupid or kind of dashing. She wants to ask him how he got it, but doesn't want him to think that she cares. Although she also kind of does.

"Yeah, I do. They're all in their twenties. I guess I don't talk about them much, huh?"

"Would you say that they're lady-killers?" Natsume asks, and watches him closely for some physical manifestation of guilt. Sasayan snorts. He delights himself with sniggering for a couple of seconds.

"What?"

"You heard me!"

"They're totally normal."

Natsume is not convinced. "But, they've all had girlfriends?"

"Well, sure, I mean, they've all had a few—they think I'm the weird one, honestly—"

Natsume's eyes become slits. It is clear to her now that Sasayan has a whole board of advisors backing him. She feels coldly triumphant. Cooking her like a frog.

Her thesis is derailed slightly, as their first date turns out to be more of a study session with coffee. He does not, at any point, kiss her. Their second, third, and seventh dates are similar. Sometimes he holds her hand. Natsume begins to suspect that she has been deeply mistaken about something, but is unable to identify what, exactly.

"Does he not know what dating is?" she demands during lunch break, and slams her little fist down onto her school desk, but does so quietly enough to not attract attention from That Idiot sitting on the other side of the classroom. Poor Ooshima does a valiant job of not looking incredibly sorry for herself.

"I-I'm sure he just doesn't want to pressure you…"

"It's been THREE WEEKS!" Natsume hisses. Ooshima hands her a rice ball. Natsume stuffs the whole thing into her mouth, daintiness be damned.

"Does he just not want to kiss me?" she wonders, and looks towards Ooshima, expression intent. Ooshima, Natsume had recently discovered, has a considerably higher patience threshold than Shizuku, who had recently begun confusing Natsume's name with "blithering moron".

Ooshima turns scarlet. "I-I mean…well, have you before? Maybe he's just shy—"

"WE HAVE!" Natsume screeches. Ooshima sacrifices another rice ball.

Natsume chews, and thinks.

After another week of uncertainty, Natsume goes home, throws herself into bed and stares bitterly at the ceiling. She has no idea why she feels so frustrated, only that she can't think of anything else. She pulls out her cell, opens up Sasayan's contact information, and stares furiously at his phone number. "You're supposed to be crazy about me!" she yells indignantly at the screen, and then calls Shizuku, who answers immediately after the first ring.

"I can't help you with your homework tonight, Takaya and I are playing geography trivia and cleaning out our storage." She sounds breathless with happiness. Natsume feels sorry for Takaya.

"Does Sasayan not like me anymore?" Natsume asks, and tries to imagine what will happen if Shizuku tells her that she's right. It wasn't like she and Sasayan wouldn't be friends anymore, right? That would be okay. It wasn't like he'd walk out of her life. Honestly, Shizuku was right, dating was basically the same as hanging out with someone—he'd probably still get coffee with her, and cart her around, and call her out on being selfish or panicky or whatever her flaw of the week was. It would be okay.

"Please don't ask me stupid questions. It's depressing," Shizuku says flatly, and hangs up.

Natsume stares at her phone, the dial tone filling up her head.

It would absolutely not be okay.

She feels incredibly brave, suddenly, and calling him has always been easy, so long as she doesn't think about it too much. Natsume resolves not to think. While she listens to his phone ring, she makes several very serious promises to herself not to self-sabotage, and has done a pretty good job of freaking herself out by the time Sasayan finally answers the phone.

"What's up?"

"Hi," she squeaks, and is instantly mortified. She tries again, "Hi," and sounds a little more composed but hates herself for saying it again, for acknowledging her first attempt as an error, for—she's thinking too much again. Speaking very quickly, before she can reason her way out of action, Natsume blurts, "I know you're probably busy but can I see you?"

"Right now?"

She can't stand herself. The urge to jump out of her skin bites at her, and Natsume leaps to her feet, and begins to pace. The movement helps, somehow. "Yeah, um, right now. My house is empty. I want to talk to you about something."

"Oh," he says, and sounds very casual, but she kind of—she knows him now, she knows what he sounds like, when he doesn't want to seem afraid.

"It's not that bad," she says, although she isn't sure if that's true, if she's going to panic and say all the wrong things again. "I just—"

"Yeah, I'll be there in a bit."

"Oh," Natsume stops, one foot still stretched halfway forwards, into the open space ahead of her, "Oh, yeah. Okay."

After she hangs up, she launches herself back onto her bed, and almost vibrates, and freaks out in every way imaginable, though she tries her best not to. She wonders if she and Sasayan are destined to have the same fight over, and over, and over again, and if maybe she should tell him to stop seeing her, for his own good. She wonders if she makes him as uneasy as she makes herself, if that's the reason why he doesn't ever kiss her, if maybe he'd realized that she was as exhausting as she had always warned him she was.

Natsume seizes her pillow, and squishes it over her face, and tells herself to shut up, shut up, shut up, until she feels dizzy. She sits up, and her head spins, and the doorbell rings, and when she opens the door Sasayan is panting a little.

"What's wrong?" he asks, and without meaning to, she throws her arms around his neck and almost bursts into tears, but doesn't, because she remembers now that he will never lie to her.

Sasayan shuffles her inside so he can shut the door, and pats her hair, and says, "Okay."

"I thought you liked me but you don't ever kiss me, so now I'm not sure, and also I feel like you have some master plan but maybe I just made that up and basically, I don't know," Natsume says into his neck. She distantly decides that Sasayan's neck is quickly becoming her greatest confidant. It is somehow easier to tell him things when she knows he can't see her while she says them.

"I still like you," Sasayan says quietly. He probably looks exasperated again. Natsume braces herself, and then pulls back to check. His face is very serious. Her heart skips a beat.

"Oh," she says, and just stares at him while her face heats up, and she thinks for a second that when he's focused on something, he doesn't really look like a boy anymore. It makes her nervous, in a fluttery sort of way.

He touches her face, with his thumb at the corner of her mouth, and then he leans in and kisses her, deliberately, nothing like the rushed, impulsive kisses she had given him before. He kisses her with purpose, with intention, and before she even knows what's happening Natsume realizes that he's backed her up into the wall and, when her eyes are closed, his shoulders feel hard and wide when she grips them, and one of his hands trails down her side and his fingers skim, questioning, at the edge of her shirt, and then his whole hand slides up to hold her waist. She shivers. He pulls away and she thinks that it's over, but she's scarcely opened her eyes before he ducks and puts his mouth on her neck, and she doesn't mean to but she squeaks.

Sasayan freezes.

He pulls back and looks at her with huge, sheepish eyes, and says, "Um, sorry." As an afterthought, he pulls his hand back from her stomach. Her skin feels cold. She can't remember ever seeing him look so uncomfortable.

"I liked it," she blurts out, partially because it's true and partially because she hates seeing him look so nervous. Immediately after she says it, she wants to melt into the floor and never talk to him again.

Obviously, she proceeds to say the one thing that could incriminate her even further, "I like you too."

Sasayan makes a strangled little noise, and turns away a little to hide his face behind his shoulder. "You're killing me."

"I think," Natsume says, even though she doesn't know what she's saying anymore, because her brain is finally off, and now she can only speak the truth, "I think I want us to do the other kind of dating."

"What does that even mean?"

"I mean the not casual kind." Natsume mumbles. He feels too far away. She chases after him and tells his neck, "I mean, can we maybe go out?"

"Stop," Sasayan groans, and puts his arms around her. Natsume wriggles. She senses instinctively that his grip is a restraining one, that he doesn't want her to be able to see him, and she therefore desperately wants to look at him. "Hold still," Sasayan grumbles.

"Why don't you kiss me like that more often?" Natsume demands, while she struggles towards her freedom without much success. His cheek feels very hot against her forehead. She feels resentful that he always denies her these victories.

"I don't know, I guess I thought you would freak out."

"I would not!" Natsume protests, though with very little assurance behind her words. She thinks for a second and then asks, "Was this your master plan?"

"What?"

"Cooking me like a frog!"

"What?"

"I'm on to you," she tells him triumphantly. Something in her stomach feels like it's settled into place, like the wait is finally over.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Natsume feels slightly annoyed at having to explain Sasayan's own master plan to him. "You snuck up on me by degrees so that I would get used to you and not freak out like I usually do and eventually talk myself into making the first move." She thinks that Sasayan's grip is a little looser than before. Any second now, she will burst free. Any second.

"That isn't really a master plan so much as it is an extremely obvious strategy." As he speaks, his fingertips run up and down her spine. It a lovely feeling, but she's still going to escape.

"Are we an item now or what?" Natsume demands, because she knows he must say yes, he has to. She wants him to.

He hesitates for what she thinks is far too long, then finally asks, "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Natsume says firmly.

"So, you're okay with me holding your hand in public? Introducing you to my family? Telling people 'Hey, this is my girlfriend'?"

Natsume freezes all over. She grits her teeth, and her hands clench around fistfuls of his shirt. No way is he scaring her out of this. No way is she letting him think that he's got her all figured out, that he can make her back off without even trying, that she will always be a victim of herself.

"Can I call you Souhei?" she asks, in as innocent a voice as she can manage, and isn't all that surprised when he kisses her again.

CLOSING NOTE: Wrote the ending in a coffee shop. You know I was that gross kid in the corner cackling over her laptop while the nice old ladies one table over discussed their grandchildren and their cats. Classy.