Um, fuck.
Was she wrong in trying to get Horio to see his idiocy? No. Had she kind of gone overboard in trying to get Horio to see the results of his actions? …Yes.
Hey, anything was fine as long as Ryoma didn't cry into her shoulder and tempt her to basically steal him from Horio again, right?
Oh my God, he'd gotten naked in front of her. Oh my God, if only he'd done it for her. If only. Life was a mishmash of half-achieved achievements and terrible if-onlys. She once lay down on her bed, closed her eyes, and thought so hard about how Ryoma(…-sama) had looked without any clothes on that she could now recall the sight whenever. Fuuuuuuck, he was seriously a gift to the world. Both his talent and his body and his lovelyred c… c… co… anyway.
A week had gone by since she'd forced Horio's self-pity glasses off him. Hopefully they'd resolved their issues by now, and she wouldn't be asked to get involved with them again. That would be sweet! Sweet like Ryoma's lips had tasted. Ugh, this was so fucking complicated. Ryoma wilfully cheating on his ex-boyfriend (is it still called cheating when they're not together?) with Tomoka just so she'd have some incentive to go talk some sense (lol) into Horio, that is. Because no matter how hard she tried, she still kept wanting to feel his hot body covering hers. It was wrong. She'd done the right thing when she'd pushed him away that time, no doubt. But she'd been in love with him since way before that and there's no way feelings like that just vanish! There's no way the lust of a couple (five) years built up over time just fades away!
She walks around school after hours occasionally, hoping Ryoma'd pull her into a classroom like before and maybe push his knee up between her legs just right once more, but leaves after five minutes of nothing every time, feeling foolish and ashamed of herself.
Of course, with her luck, the day she gives up on ever knowing anything more about Ryoma and Horio is the day it happens.
She's walking down the hall to go home when she's pulled into a classroom, horror-anime style. Maybe, just maybe, she should scream.
But then there's a warm palm on her mouth and Tomoka has, unfortunately, memorised how Ryoma smells and feels. She goes limp with shameful want, enjoying his chest pressed against her back, an arm snug around her waist.
"Hey," his voice is in her ear, "don't scream or elbow me, okay?"
Tomoka, instead of nodding, licks his fingers, daring.
Ryoma doesn't whip his hand away.
But he does when she doesn't go further.
"Have you talked to Horio yet?" he asks in a whisper, hopeful, happy. Tomoka feels her heart fall to her feet and shatter, yet again. She turns around to face him.
"Yeah, I did," she replies, not knowing what her face looks like at that moment, "and I think I did a pretty good job of it. Hasn't he come running back to you yet?"
Showing him her scars and telling him to stop the pity parties. Pretty good job.
Ryoma apparently knows what her face looks like while she's saying all this, because all his hope and his smile are wiped off his face and he says, "Are you okay?"
No, she's not.
"Yeah, I just have a headache, I guess. You should talk to him, he's enough of a coward to not be able to face you after hurting you this much."
Ryoma laughs, joy restored. "Yeah, I should. Thank you, Osakada." He moves to hug her, very uncharacteristic of this averse-to-showing-affection boy, and she moves backward a step. He hesitates. "Sorry," he says, looking away from her face to the clean floor they both are standing on.
"Hope he stops being a wuss," Tomoka says, and Ryoma smiles so beautifully that Tomoka's heart rises from the dead, only to break again.
She goes another week without news and then suddenly Horio and Ryoma are "boifrndz" again, going around together, eating lunch together, definitely fucking each other (probably in empty classrooms and storage sheds again). Yay. Good for them. She sighs deeply. She'd stop going to tennis practice (is this depression) but Sakuno would be worried and alone and made to do all the fetching work, and she won't let her best friend make it through the "ball-basket-onegai-shimasu" time again. What if she was the one that chanced upon Ryoma and Horio in the tennis shed? Tomoka was a little stronger, but Sakuno, she'd die of heartbreak!
No, it would have to be done.
When she joins Sakuno at the tennis courts, Ryoma looks around from his match against Momo-chan-senpai and smiles at her briefly, as if to convey the news of his happiness through that tight widening of his lips. She doesn't smile back, which shocks her more than it does Ryoma, because let's be honest, all this while she's begged for a little attention from the brat and now that she has it, she's repulsed by it.
"Are you okay?" Sakuno (also stunned but courteous enough to save it for later) asks Tomoka, (very cutely) putting a palm to Tomoka's forehead and another to her own, checking for a fever. Tomoka doesn't hesitate before giving her a small smile though. "Yeah, just a little headache. I haven't been getting enough sleep these days."
One of those sentences was the truth. Tomoka really did spend sleepless nights hopelessly aroused by the memory of Ryoma's mouth on hers and the sight of his hand moving over his... stuff not six inches from her, but refusing to do something about it, and simultaneously feeling the happiness and emotion inside of her ebb away continuously because of the guilt and shame of what she'd let him do to himself. That guilt and horror at her own actions was ruining her image of that boy! But he'd done nothing wrong! (One thing wrong.)
After practice, she was just getting finished with the nets when Ryoma asked her to get a coffee with him. Sakuno looked like she'd been slapped, and Horio looked a little worried, that fucking irritating gnat Tomoka stop thinking like this, but she accepted because their seniors were watching, too, and regardless of however muddled she was feeling about Ryoma, she wouldn't let herself be a reason for them to good-naturedly tease Ryoma further than they did already.
The nearest Doutor was open, and they found seats in a darker corner and got their coffees quickly, not having spoken a word during the short walk there.
"Have I done something?" Ryoma asks once they've both taken a sip of their beverages and figuratively consigned themselves to staying there as long as needed to finish it. "You're not even fangirling over me anymore."
"Really?" Tomoka laughs. It's not mean-spirited or anything. It's just funny, that out of all the things she's stopped doing around him, he notices that one. Natural, though, she did fangirl most often when she was in his vicinity, stupidly hoping he'd notice the loud, chatty, prominent girl over by the benches, hoping he'd notice how shiny her hair was and how white her teeth were.
"I guess I've just grown out of it," she continues. "Most fangirls do."
"Yeah," he says, unusually not-taciturn himself. He's talking more around her, he's more open around her. Does that mean he trusts her more or something? He should, given all that she's done and sacrificed for him, but it's still strange to see it happening.
"This coffee's nice," he offers as a change of topic, but Tomoka'd just rather stay silent.
Ryoma looks hurt (hurt, look at the audacity of him) when she just nods and sips more coffee to avoid answering verbally, but doesn't vocalise it. How nice.
"Satoshi came back of his own accord," he says after a while when both coffee cups are half-empty and their tongues are sticking to the roofs of their mouths. Tomoka glances at him. "Not the coward I'd thought he was, then."
"He said you... you have a lot of... injuries."
He's not a coward, Horio Satoshi, but he is a massive idiot.
"Yeah, well, that's no one's concern."
"I didn't see them when..." he trails off. Tomoka suddenly hates him with everything she has.
"Well, it was too dark to see and you were too busy dripping tears and snot everywhere to properly feel me up, yeah?"
Ryoma's eyes widen. Tomoka, just as suddenly as she'd hated him, feels guilt crush every bone of her body. She'd asked him for a show, and then she'd pushed him away, and she'd let him masturbate in front of her to get rid of his erection. He hadn't asked for any of it.
"I... thought we were friends," Ryoma says, leaning slightly away from her, aghast.
And it's the tone of his voice more than the words of his sentence that snap something inside of her so now she's the one dripping tears and snot everywhere. She pushes her coffee cup away and hides her face in her hands, trying in vain to stop the trembling.
It had been coming, really. It just came at the wrong time.
No one around them had noticed, too busy peering into their notebooks and cellphones to look around and see a stupid girl who ruined her own stupid life with her stupid luck sobbing into her hands while a distraught boy looked on.
"I love you," she says between deep breaths, "I've loved you all the while you've loved him, and I was okay with it until I fucked up by catching you guys in the shed and then in the classroom and then letting you do all that around me."
"Tomoka," Ryoma says, but nothing further.
"Just go away, Ryoma-sama."
That title for him slips out as naturally as it had used to in the much-less-complex past, but the world just slightly tilts as Ryoma grabs one of her wrists and pulls her hand away from her face.
"You've got a beautiful mole," he says, and Tomoka's eyes overflow that much faster. She turns her face away.
"Satoshi's waiting, will you come?"
She doesn't know what for, but she nods so she can get away from this strange place with the people around her minding their own business but surely, now, aware of the drama that had taken place so close to them.
He doesn't let go of her wrist the entire walk back to the school, and she has to forcefully choke back her tears so they don't look like fools to the well-dressed, life-not-in-pieces people around them.
He leads her to the shed she'd first caught them in, not even bothering to hide his walk; the courts were abandoned this hour of the day, anyway.
He shuts the door behind the two of them. Tomoka sees it's not as bright as it had been that day, but it's still bright enough to show Horio sitting on an upended box. He gets up as he sees them, and gives Tomoka a tentative smile.
"What-" Tomoka begins, but Ryoma cuts her off. "You've seen us naked twice, and that's not really fair."
Tomoka still doesn't get it, head still light from all that crying. "What are you talking about?"
"We're saying, we need to even things."
Oh.
"But-"
"Satoshi doesn't mind," Ryoma says, walking over to him, not looking for acknowledgement because Satoshi's not so weak as to stay silent despite objections.
And also maybe because they'd planned this beforehand.
"But I-" Tomoka says again, confused and a little angry. "If I don't want to?"
Ryoma's face goes slack with surprise but he quickly recovers, "No, I'd never force you to, getting even was just an excuse. I'll even walk you home right now, if you want me to."
Horio still says nothing. Tomoka thinks he won't say anything for a couple of hours, and that he's only here so he knows who Ryoma truly loves.
"Can I?" Ryoma rephrases. "Can I please get even?"
"Why do you want to," Tomoka says dully, feeling the situation sap her emotion again.
"He's not the oblivious idiot you think he is, that's why," Horio says, proving Tomoka half-wrong.
Ryoma looks at her, waiting for an answer.
"All right," Tomoka says. "Yes. "
Horio really doesn't mind seeing Ryoma pushed up against someone else, does he? Based off his reaction to them being, you know, pushed up together. And kissing.
Tomoka could die from Ryoma's kisses. He's not crying this time, and can focus more on the actual kissing part, and he's making Tomoka's knees go weak (directly, this time!) from the taste, the sensation, the heat and the obscene, filthiest sounds.
Also from how his hands are moving under her clothes, let's be real. One up, one down.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.
He has really nice, slender fingers. Tomoka's toes are tightly curled and they're probably not going to stay that way for long, going by the way Ryoma is taking his time and teasing everything within reaching distance.
Her strapless bra has been unclasped under her shirt for a while, and Ryoma pulls it out, with a 'it's getting in the way'. He smirks (Tomoka could fall to the floor right now, she's so gone) at how pink and sheer it is. "Feel like we should've seen you in it," he says, and while Tomoka notes the 'we', she can't say anything resembling a coherent word, so she just moans softly before she's kissed, hard, again.
Her hands move to the front of Ryoma's shorts. Ryoma immediately pulls away from the kiss and says, "You don't need to-"
"Shut up, Ryoma-sama."
He shuts up, and mutely withdraws his hands from her and helps her to get his shorts and boxers off. Over Ryoma's shoulder, Tomoka sees Horio's eyes fixed on Ryoma from behind, on his... behind.
"Can I hold you?" she asks Ryoma, who smiles and guides her hand to it.
It's hot in her hand. And pretty. She knows what to do, she saw it in a yaoi manga once (a lot of times) and she's read a ton of fanfiction, so she does it. Ryoma's fingers immediately go under Tomoka's skirt again. Toes are curling again. Fuck, Ryoma is... good.
They're both making strange, soft noises now, can't look away from the sight of their hands doing what they are (Ryoma's hidden by Tomoka's skirt but moving suggestively all the same), and Tomoka's knees are really weak.
Ryoma comes all over her hands with a gasp and no warning, and it's, basically, orgasmic to watch. Tomoka tastes him. Ryoma's eyes open after his climax to the sight of Tomoka licking his come off of her fingers.
He immediately falls to his knees, face disappearing under the skirt, hands gently pushing her knees apart.
Tomoka doesn't last five minutes more, and she wishes she could have because Ryoma and his lips and his tongue are heavenly and she's never going to feel the same again.
Ryoma hugs her after they put their clothes back on, and she lets him this time. "Thanks," he whispers in her ear, familiar with her, trusting and intimate. "No, thank you," she replies, kissing his cheek and relishing the closeness one last time.
Then he's no longer physically close to her, and Horio meets her eyes once in silent thanks for her giving him a piece of her mind. She takes Ryoma's hand and squeezes it tightly, not willing to relinquish the permission she had to touch him without inhibition, but doing so anyway. Ryoma squeezes back, and both of them are very strong in that moment.
She's out the door, not looking back to see Ryoma looking at Horio with pure love and apology. Not looking back to see the same in Horio's eyes.
She has an uncanny feeling she'll never accidentally walk in on them ever again.