82. Trap
Aya watched Aki put their bowls in the sink. Then leave them there. He turned and dried his hands on a towel as if this was normal behavior for him. She uncurled her hands to bring them below the table and rest them on her knees. To curl them both into fists that shook slightly. She didn't much mind now, now that they were out of his sight.
This conversation was a lot harder than she would have thought it to be. Had she actually thought about it. She should have thought about it. Aki was clearly in another class than her when it came to these sorts of intimate games.
She had no delusions about the nature of her previous triumph. Small and relatively unimportant. And...pyrrhic.
Battle metaphor didn't quite fit in her mind.
She could almost see what was happening as a dance. A...tango. A push-pull series of moves and counters, a story being told through action, reaction-retreat and aggression.
She didn't know much about dance, but she did know that the tango was ultimately about...passion.
Unfortunately, she could see how this metaphor fit so much better than the other. In behavior, and in essence.
He turned slowly back to her, leaned back against the counter on his elbows. A strangely languid pose. Had this always been a part of his character? This sensuality and confidence? Wouldn't she have noticed such things in him before?
It's amazing what we don't see when we aren't looking.
She didn't quite believe that, not fully anyway...
Then how about this one: Love changes people.
Like this though?
Well, love requited anyway. It makes you feel stronger, uncovers layers to your personality that self-consciousness would otherwise hide.
Desire makes one sensual. You are probably the first, and only person he has ever desired. Sensuality was a side of him that he had no real connection to before...
Are you saying that ...that...I am the reason he is behaving this way?
If you want to see it that way. He's like this, because this is who he is, when he is in love with you.
She flinched marginally at that last, but she couldn't help but feel flattered and admiration.
Admiration of this newly displayed confidence and determination in him. Flattered that she was the one to bring about such changes in him. Or more, bring them out in the open.
Changes that she couldn't help but think would be incredibly positive, if only he would turn their focus on something other than her.
Because, to be honest, she was...not doing so well. In the abstract, she could decide to push him away, she would even make the appropriate motions, but she would look down, and find her hands refusing to let go of him at the same time.
"We should do something," he said, and she blinked, having realized that they had been sitting in silence for awhile.
She wasn't too...keen on those words. There were many things they could do, and she knew he phrased his sentence that way on purpose. She steadfastly did not awknowledge where the suggestion in it had already taken her mind.
She gave him her best innocent look, knowing by the slight curving of his mouth that he saw the falsity behind it, and asked sweetly, "What should we do?"
You had better have an equally innocent answer, or I WILL bite.
Equally innocent, however, left too much room to play, as she was all too aware.
"Well..." he drew out, casting her a soft look through his lashes, "It's too late to go out," he lowered his voice, "Too early to go to bed..."
He was insinuating something, and she wasn't innocent enough to not hear the offer to prove him wrong at that last. It was twelve hours or more until they had to go back to work. Twelve hours did not seem long in that context, but when she thought about being in a bedroom alone with him for the next twelve hours...
Let's just say her concept of time drastically shifted.
Maybe eight hours of sleep, and four hours of...
What...?
That was the question, wasn't it? Hours of empty space, to be filled with...what?
"There's always the TV," he offered, with the same innocence that she had spoken with. The same 'feigned' innocence that seemed to skim along the surface of a deeper, darker feeling.
The TV seemed...safe enough. She quickly latched on to that idea before he could suggest something else.
"Okay, TV sounds good," she agreed. Then froze in place when she realized that sitting and watching TV meant sitting 'together' on the futon. In the semi-dark.
"Great," he said before she could even think to take it back, then he was pushing away from the counter, and in a few steps standing next to the futon. He looked at her expectantly, and she realized she was just standing next to the table.
She took a deep breath and slowly crossed over to the futon. He was making another trap, but the spring was her words and her quick agreement. She never thought things through. And he saw too far ahead.
He looked at her, clearly inviting her to sit down, a subtle humor to his eyes, as if he was aware that she was aware of the trap, and was also aware that she had no one to blame but herself.
Why didn't she ever think things through? He knew this about her.
Do you think you are...trying to aid him by sabotaging yourself?
It was a scary thought, and one she didn't want to consider. There would be no escape, not if that were the case.
Because she was just stubborn enough to insist on getting her way, and if her subconscious had sided with him...
She bit her lip, looked at the black TV, the perfectly made futon, then the gentle, patient look on his face that said he would give her all the time that she needed to come to terms with the fact that-
She had just helped him trap her.
How truly generous, she thought, but it lacked real bitterness. Oh no, it carried the distinct taste of fear.
She wanted him to sit down first. She really, really did. Once he was placed, she could then stake out the farthest corner from him as her own, and defend it as such.
If she took her place first, that left him the choice of anywhere that he wanted.
And naturally...
She fidgeted, twisting her fingers nervously around each other. She looked down at the futon, then at him. She bit her lip again.
His eyebrows slowly raised, but that spark of humor still remained. "Have a seat," he invited sweetly.
You...you brat, she wanted to hiss at him, wanted to reach out and pull his hair like a proper sister. However those actions took on a different connotation in the language of lovers. She was still learning that language, but she had a vague idea of where that could lead them.
The horrible truth?
She. Was. Tempted.
But he meant too much to her. Too, too much to her for her to allow any mistakes. Even in the heat of...of misplaced lust.
It was misplaced, right?
It all went back to that old joke, right? Not if you were the last man on Earth! She was a healthy, heterosexual female, he was the only outlet for her hormones while they had to be so guarded with their identities, right?
She wasn't so involved with self-deception to believe that. She saw other males almost every day. If her hormones were just looking for an outlet, they would have found it by now. In Rei. In the boy who came by the cafe every day after school and sat alone reading his manga. In the any number of random males that came and went in her work-life.
So...she wanted Aki.
Not because he was there.
Not because he was all that was available to her. She wanted him because...
Because...
Her hands tightened into fists at her sides, a gesture of determination.
Because the way his hair fell over his eyes, and the way he brushed it back when he was thinking. The darker turn his humor sometimes took. The tricky ways she was just beginning to realize that his mind worked. The honest way he told her how he felt, even though she tried so desperately not to hear.
The way...the way he had said her name that first night...
She didn't know if her own attraction began then, but she knew at least that she started to become aware of it then.
She was staring, and she realized that he was letting her. She realized this only because his expression gentled to something truly sweet, and he reached out and touched her closest fist.
"It's okay, Aya. I won't do anything you don't want me to. I promise."
Well, that was the problem, wasn't it?
What did she want him to do?
Give her space to think things through?
Force her to choose him?
Yes.
And, yes...Gods, yes.
She swallowed hard, felt her hands shake, hidden in the tight curl of her fists. She slowly forced herself to focus on him, and steadfastly fought down an urge to cry. She had cried enough about this.
She wanted to say, "I know you won't, Aki." She wanted to say, "This is what you wanted." "I'm so confused." "I can't feel this way." "Stay away from me." "Never let me go."
'I love you.'
'I do love you, but I don't know if that will ever be enough. Convince me. Convince me that we can do this. That we can take something that isn't suppose to be, and make it last...'
'It has to last...'
She forcefully bit the inside of her lip, forcefully pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth.
She couldn't say any of that. Every one of those statements was a decision. Was an invitation.
Force me.
Convince me.
He was too smart not to hear it. And he was too determined not to leap at taking her up on that challenge. Twelve hours could be a long time-if she let her emotions speak for her now.
...well...
The flush to her cheeks was answer enough, the dull throb that clenched in her stomach, she wanted it too much, right now, that she knew she would make herself an easy mark...