ENTITLED: I'd Rather Pretend
FANDOM: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun
DISCLAIMER: If the manga seriously ends without any sort of resolution for Natsume/Sasayan, I'm going to pretend this is canon.
NOTE: As always, thank you so much for all the reviews! I'm actually pretty new to this kind of story so I love getting feedback! Help me be well-rounded! I'm actually working on my first novel right now, so any tips you guys wanna drop on me is seriously appreciated. I love criticism. I thrive on criticism. Praise and virtual cookies are good too. Also, is everyone impressed with how quickly I updated this time? Because I sure am. Good job, self.
LENGTH: 5/9
CHAPTER FIVE; Improve Upon the Silence
The most important thing to remember is this: to be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.
—W.E.B. Du Bois
The next morning, Natsume is not prepared.
She steps out the front door and immediately gets stuck on her doorstep, eyes narrowed and fists balled, and her nose stings a little from the cool morning air but most of all from the smell of an ambush.
"What are you doing here?" she hisses, accusingly. Sasayan, arms braced against the low wall running around the front of her yard, just grins at her.
"Walking my girlfriend to school," he says, with just a trace of gloating in his voice. Natsume almost runs back inside. After he'd left last night, she'd spent a good hour running around the house with absolutely no destination, turning the word "girlfriend" over in her mind.
"I've made a terrible mistake," she announces, and is horrified when Sasayan does not so much as blink.
"We're going to be late," he calls.
"I appreciate everything you have done for me over the years." Natsume thinks this is a pretty good lead-up to the bad news with will undoubtedly emotionally cripple him for the rest of his life.
"I'm ignoring you," Sasayan explains politely. She stares at him.
"You can't ignore me."
Sasayan tilts his head to the side, and smiles. "Hey, why don't you come over here?"
Natsume backs into the door. "Why, what are you going to do?"
She finally leaves her house once he points out to her how absurd she's being, and what does she expect, huh? Natsume does not dignify this with an answer. She also does not even begin to consider the multitude of activities Sasayan could "threaten" to do to her. That would be wrong. So wrong. What is the matter with her?
A potential hiccup occurs to her while they are en route. She clears her throat. "I am extremely cute and it is inevitable that other boys will like me but if you get all weird and jealous I will be troubled."
"You have such a great personality," Sasayan says, his tone mild. Natsume bristles.
"W-Well it's true! It'll probably happen and I don't want you getting upset!"
Sasayan grabs her hand, and reassures, "I won't get upset."
Natsume does not believe him at all. He'd better get upset. She suddenly recalls her abandoned need to put some distance between them. For a moment she flusters over how to go about it—how she's supposed to worm her way around Sasayan's newest tactic of flagrantly ignoring everything he doesn't want to hear—but then she swallows, and tells herself to calm down. She thinks very carefully about what to say, and in her head, none of it sounds right.
Her head nods to the side. Sasayan had tugged on her hair. "Why're you scowling?" he asks, and she realizes that her hand is being held very tightly.
She tries to identify the exact source of the problem, and after a moment confesses, "I don't really…like the word "girlfriend." Or, it just, it makes me feel—I don't know."
Natsume tenses, brings her shoulders up, and fully expects him to be hurt, to wonder if she was trying to pull away, but all he does is shrug, and say, "Okay, I won't use it."
Natsume's chest tightens. She waits for the fall-out that doesn't come. Tentatively, she asks, "It's okay?"
Sasayan stops walking two blocks away from their school and just before they turn the corner onto the route that the other students take. She wonders why they're stopping, just out of view like this. He looks her straight in the eye, which always makes her nervous, but she does her best to look back. "I just want to be sure," he says, "Nothing else changes, right? Just don't use that word?"
This is when she kills it, Natsume vows. This is when she drags them back to square one. It was funny, for someone so guarded; Sasayan sure left himself open to her and all her defensive cruelties. Natsume grits her teeth. Mentally, she slaps herself.
"Nothing else," she says, and gets up on her toes because she wants to kiss him, to make sure he knew and she knew and everything would be okay but then she remembers that this is a public area and there are people and so she freezes, maybe an inch away from his face, then stumbles back with her hands clapped over her cheeks. "S-sorry!" she squeaks.
Sasayan tucks his hands in his pockets, and huffs out a little laugh. He looks very shy, she thinks, but doesn't understand why. He bites his lower lip as he watches her, and she suddenly thinks he's handsome. Not that she had thought he was ugly or anything, she just—hadn't thought about it. Handsome was a word that she used for men, who were powerful and sophisticated and smart and wore suits to work.
The first bell rings, and some distant part of Natsume notes that it is an extremely odd and inconvenient time for her to be having these sorts of revelations.
Sasayan takes a step backwards, and it takes her a long time to realize he's prompting her to follow him. As they walk up to the gates, Sasayan mumbles, "I'm sorry that I skipped ahead on things."
"You didn't, I'm just weird," Natsume admits. She still feels unsettled though, and she wonders why he isn't holding her hand anymore. She almost reaches out to grab his sleeve, then realizes how sweetly his ears curve, feels shy, and so does nothing.
At school, Natsume is determined to drop the bomb. She tells everything to Ooshima before first period, and then realizes halfway through her history quiz that she had first revealed important romance-related information to a female other than her best friend!
After authoring her test paper with her fitting new title, "swine", Natsume remembers that Shizuku would probably not be amused as to the reason for Natsume's retake and senseless grade-destruction. Natsume writes her name properly, and continues mentally self-abuse.
As soon as lunch break has begun, she begins to right her terrible wrong.
"Sasayan and I are dating but in the serious way and I accidentally told Ooshima first I'm sorry!"
"Why did you have to take me to the roof to tell me this?" Shizuku frowns, and goes back down into the school building. Natsume, tears in her eyes, accepts this as her fitting punishment.
Back in the classroom, she commands Ooshima, "Forget everything I told you this morning."
Ooshima looks alarmed, and sneaks a glance over her shoulder to where Sasayan and his friends are chatting. "Did something happen?" she asks quietly, her voice full of tender concern.
"Just forget it!"
"O-Okay!" Ooshima squeaks, and Natsume joins her in blushing when she realizes that she's been too loud, and Sasayan's looking at her with his eyebrows up.
She slinks back in her seat. "You really forgot?"
"Erm." It could not be possible for Ooshima to look more confused. "Yes?"
Natsume nods slowly, and then proceeds to retell Ooshima her news from the morning. Behind her spectacles, Ooshima looks slightly dizzy.
The more public declaration, however, doesn't happen for several more days, when Natsume rejects a suitor by saying, with great satisfaction, "I'm sorry, but I'm already seeing someone."
The suitor doesn't believe her. "Who?"
"Sasahara," Natsume says, and thinks that Sasayan's last name is something of a false advertisement. It makes him sound like a cool senpai, who was just the right level of aloof and could afford to buy her obscenely expensive presents for no particular reason, and with great frequency.
Following her declaration, there is a sort of domino-effect of "WHAT?"s around the school. By the time she has left her suitor and made her way to the bike racks to where Sasayan was waiting, he already has cause to greet her with a slightly accusatory, "Five people just asked me if we were dating."
Natsume smiles her best smile, and a week later, she takes him home to meet her family.
"He's short," her father observes. Sasayan looks pained.
"Papa," Natsume growls, and then says (very loyally), "He's the shortstop on our school's baseball team."
Natsume's father, whose appreciation of baseball bordered on the maniacal, merely grunts. His wife pokes her head around the doorway to the kitchen and observes, "Oh, so you're the one Natsume always gets a ride with? Sorry about that. You can just tell her to walk. She must be awfully heavy."
Natsume cannot recall the last time she felt so betrayed. "Mom."
"I guess you can't do anything about your height," Natsume's father concedes at last, and then bends over the kitchen table, one arm extended, his elbow braced against the edge. "Get over here and we'll see how strong you are."
The thought of Sasayan arm-wrestling with her father actually horrifies Natsume to the point of tears. "Papa, stop it!"
Sasayan, who had initially laughed at her father's antics, abruptly stops, and starts rolling up his sleeves, his expression grim. Natsume gapes at him, and then grapples for his arm, squealing, "Are you crazy?"
"Oh, whatever," her mother mutters, apparently deciding to have no part in the ensuing spectacle. She vanishes back into the kitchen, but calls over her shoulder, "Let him have his fun, Asako, your father's been planning this for years."
"You have got to be kidding me," Natsume says, at no one more specific than the universe at large. She watches as Sasayan and her father clasp hands, and immediately suffers from acute second-hand embarrassment. She frets over the ensuing struggle for a few minutes, and then helps set out the plates. She and her mother sit down. They watch the men strain for a moment.
"Oh my god," Natsume's mother says disdainfully, "He's half your size!"
"He keeps cheating!"
"I am not," Sasayan says through his teeth. Several seconds too late, he adds, "Sir."
Natsume covers her face with her hands. The whole thing is so stupidly chauvinistic she has to consider impaling herself with her chopsticks. Everything is ruined. She should probably break up with Sasayan and disown herself from her family based solely on the principal of the matter. She tries to imagine what Shizuku would do in this situation and remembers that Shizuku would never tolerate being placed in the vicinity of such a scenario.
"The soup is getting cold," Natsume's mother says. "I'm eating your food," she threatens.
"Please knock it off," Natsume orders, in her strictest voice, "I'm staying with him no matter who wins." She tries very hard not to blush as she makes this announcement, and fails spectacularly. Only her mother notices. An eyebrow is duly raised.
"I'm not losing," Sasayan hisses.
Her father abruptly slackens his grip, and jerks away before his hand can hit the table. "Well, good! You pass. You'll need that sort of an attitude, hanging around my daughter!"
He laughs proudly. Natsume glares at everyone. Sasayan smiles a little. Natsume's mother takes a haughty sip from her soup bowl and notes, "Good job getting out of that one."
She ends up walking Sasayan halfway home just because she feels so bad about her parents and their ongoing crusade to ruin her life, and also because she hadn't actually told him what they were doing at her house.
"I would have worn a better shirt," he says, for maybe the fifth time. Natsume puffs out her cheeks.
"You looked fine."
"I'm getting you back for this."
"For what! I was more embarrassed than you were!"
Muffin is still a huge bitch.
Sasayan's cat prowls the doorway to his apartment, mixing her way around Natsume's ankles and otherwise doing her best to trip and kill her owner's new significant other. In some small way, Natsume is comforted. She feels vaguely certain that Sasayan's mother cannot be as bad as his stupid cat.
In some ways, she is right. Sasayan's mother is tiny, several inches shorter than Natsume and with all of her son's pointed, alert features. She wears her hair very short, and while it lies a little flatter than Sasayan's, the chocolate-y brown color is the same.
"You must be lucky, if the cat likes you so much," Sasayan's mother says brightly, extending her hand across the kitchen table for Natsume to shake. Natsume does not feel especially lucky, but does not yet feel that Sasayan's mother knows her well enough to forgive the crime of pet slander, and so holds her tongue. The moment Natsume clasps Sasayan's mother's hand in her own, the little woman drags both of them down to the countertop to arm-wrestle.
Natsume stares.
"Well, it seemed only fair," his mother says with a familiar little grin, and lets go. She looks over Natsume's shoulder, and addresses her son, "Hey, Souhei, she's too pretty for you. What're you thinking, you little punk?"
Natsume turns in time to catch Sasayan's expression. He looks incredibly grumpy.
Dinner takes a while to get through, as Sasayan's mother keeps pausing to whip out her phone and text pictures of Natsume to her absent family members. Every single one of Sasayan's brothers congratulate him on "sticking out the war", which makes Natsume a bit testy, but the peaceful atmosphere is largely upheld until a reply comes from Sasayan's father, just as they are nearly done eating. Seeing the incoming message from her husband, Sasayan's mother's whole face lights up, and she snatches her cellphone with obvious glee. "Oh, your father agrees with me," she says cheerfully to Sasayan, who grunts in reply. In the next second, Sasayan's mother turns to Natsume and adds, brightly, "He says welcome to the family."
Sasayan chokes, and ends up coughing water all over his lap. Natsume spends several pleasant seconds imagining herself in a very pretty wedding dress (which she had, of course, picked out twelve years ago) before accidentally expanding her fantasy to include a groom. Her face turns very red.
The first week of October, he has her over for watermelon.
"What is wrong with the produce in your house?" Natsume asks, while he carves off a large slice. Sasayan just grins, and starts cutting the watermelon into little red hearts for her. Natsume is absolutely not touched. Especially because he ruins the watermelon by nicking his thumb and bleeding all over the place.
"I'm injured!"
"You idiot! Look at your fingers when you're holding a knife!" Natsume wails, and rushes to the bathroom to find a bandage for him. Sasayan trails after her.
"Do you think the blood makes the heart thing more authentic?"
"That's disgusting. Get your finger out of your mouth."
Sasayan, who had been sucking on his cut, merely narrows his eyes at her. Natsume rips off the bandage's wrapper and looks at him expectantly, until he surrenders his hand to her for packaging.
"I feel faint."
"I hope so," Natsume mutters, and glares up at him. "Honestly, be careful."
"Sorry," Sasayan said, but looks so happy that her stomach scrunches up a little, and she means to just peck him on the cheek but then things don't really…go according to plan. The hard, iron taste of blood still lingers on his mouth.
"You ambushed me," Sasayan accuses, but his eyes curve up when he grins, and it hits her with a pang that he isn't going to look like a boy for much longer, that they would never be this young ever again, and that maybe, in the coming future, they wouldn't be able to stay together.
Her lips part and her eyebrows furrow, and she wants to tell him this but doesn't know how, and when she sees him frown too, she realizes that she's gone and ruined the moment, again.
Instinctively, Natsume puts her hand against his chest, and kicks the bathroom door closed even though his mother won't be home for hours. Sasayan's heart was somewhere under her hand, and this is all Natsume can think about, as she tries to decide.
She'd always sort of felt that Sasayan had been the one with more control, when it came to whatever it was they had. Never mind that he was always the one who had to be asking, who had to be caught out wanting. Never mind that she had shut him down, rushed forward and then changed her mind, led the pair of them in circles and doubled back on her decisions. A little part of her had always felt that they were headed to the same destination, and that he knew how to get there. Everything he said, everything he did, worked towards that goal. Sometimes if she pushed hard enough he might give away too much, confess something he might not have otherwise, but it was never the wrong thing. He didn't mess up like she did.
But.
She can feel his heart against her hand. It hits hard and fast against his ribs and his eyes are very dark, when she looks, and she does look. She looks at the way his shoulders arc towards her when he knots his hands behind his back, and how hard it makes the lines of his arms. She looks at his eyes, and they say, I want you. She thinks that it's not the kind of wanting that a boy does. She thinks he's very handsome. She thinks, I want you, too, and knows it's true even if she doesn't quite know what that means.
But she does know why he's got his hands behind his back. She does know that he will never, ever touch her unless she tells him to, unless she starts it. She does know that he's afraid of messing up, of being hurt, of hurting her. She knows that he's in love with her.
And now, she knows what that means. If there's one thing Natsume's got on Sasayan, it's the passion that sparks decisive action, because she has never learned how to feel with anything less than her entire heart.
Natsume reaches for the top button of her shirt. She wants to look him in the eye but it's hard, and it isn't until she's halfway down her sternum that she works up the nerve to do so. She peeks up, and the expression on his face makes her feel powerful. Her pulse doesn't slow but it steadies. She stands silent for a full ten seconds with her open shirt draped loosely over her and then she says, "Why don't you take this off for me?"
Maybe she'd sounded too goading, because Sasayan gets squinty, and then visibly decides this is a fight he'd rather not have. He moves forward a little and his hands come up, and slip along her collarbones to her shoulders. His fingertips trail down her bare arms while she gazes at him, wordless, and he looks just slightly down. He eases her sleeves over her hands and then stops, as her shirt collapses to the floor.
"Have you done this before?" Natsume whispers, though she doesn't know why. Sasayan grins an embarrassed little grin.
"No. You?"
"Obviously not!" Natsume snips. He pulls a face at her. She thinks she would like a little more reverence, okay?, even if she does still have her bra on and he has seen her in bikini so none of this is exactly new territory, still. Still.
She folds her arms and jerks her chin at him. "You, too."
She plots as he obeys, eyeing his chest. She decides that she likes his torso. It's very streamlined. She tests her hypothesis by getting closer while his shirt is up covering his face, wrapping her arms around his neck, and sliding upwards. Her theory is supported. His skin is very smooth.
When his face reappears, looking nothing less then dazed, she kisses him very, very hard, and then jerks back because he isn't touching her and that is a problem and would he please get on the same page as her?
Natsume starts to growl this sentiment at him, but then he pushes the hair back from her face, and something in her stomach goes melty. It gets even worse when he puts his mouth against her brow, not so much kissing it as he was tracing it with his lips, over to her hairline, and ear, and jaw, and throat. He does all of this in utter silence. She cannot even hear him breath. His hands rest very carefully on her hipbones, and she clutches at his wrists, because he has always been her anchor, and she doesn't understand why she's shaking.
The hard, mean thing goes trailing out of her, and with it, the residue of a fear she hadn't even noticed. Suddenly, she feels ashamed. Not of her body, but of how she'd used it. For power? What kind of game did she think he was playing, anyway?
"Why do you even like me?" she whispers, because she knows now that no amount of pretty could never completely hide all of her flaws.
"I like a lot of things about you," he mutters, sounding abashed. She lets go of his wrists so she can hide in his neck, her hands fists against his back. His shoulder blades flatten under her hands when he returns the embrace. She wants to blow apart and she wants for him to say the one thing that will keep her together. He does. He turns his head into her hair, and tells her.
"I love you, because you're brave."
CLOSING NOTE: Self! I said not until chapter seven! WAIT UNTIL CHAPTER SEVEN! I feel like I am, at once, the horny teenager and the well-intentioned advocate of abstinence.