Kapitel 87: All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 83 – Shizuka Hiratsuka Can Be Comforted
"Go back to sleep," a soft voice tells me right before I open my eyes.
Which is alarming enough for me to jerk upright and suddenly be far more awake than I intended.
"Hey," Haruno says, torn between panic and amusement, "just how much do you want to contradict me?"
Her hands are on my shoulders, gently pushing me toward the sofa's backrest.
There's a soft, warm blanket draped over my lap. My thighs.
I am not wearing pants.
I [was] wearing pants when I fell asleep.
So I arch an eyebrow.
"Just wanted you to be comfortable," she says with a shrug and a bit of an indecent wink, obviously guessing my implicit question.
Or wanting to change the subject away from something other than my semi-nudity.
She must have read something in my eyes because she sighs and sits by my side, her right hand sliding under the blanket to grab mine.
To lace her fingers through mine.
And then she… doesn't say anything. Just leans against me, her head on my shoulder, over my white shirt, her short hair close enough to tickle my cheek.
That's when everything rushes back in.
Inoue. The offer being retracted. Me losing my words, not knowing how to argue or whether I should argue.
Just…
Accepting.
Submitting.
And then going home, to my empty apartment, and crying for hours until I could call Hachiman without bothering him or disturbing his studies.
Without being a burden.
The clingy girlfriend who is too needy, who keeps calling and texting for no reason, who is just too high maintenance, too annoying.
I am so afraid of being just that. Just what so many have told me I am.
But I called.
And he came.
He consoled me. Held me.
And he was furious.
Not at me, but because of me. In my stead.
That… I think that's what finally comforted me. That he would be just so [Hachiman], that he…
That he didn't think I wasn't worth it.
So I let him hug me, kiss my hair, comfort me, and hold me in my [perfectly hygienic] sofa until the emotional drain just… just took me into comforting darkness.
Into a respite from the world set on punishing me.
Do I deserve it? Am I… Am I really that good person they keep saying I am? I… I have been seduced by [three] of my students, and as much as I love them, that's not normal. That's not something I should…
"You're getting deep inside your head, aren't you?" Haruno mutters, her fingers briefly squeezing mine.
"How do you do it?" I ask, but mostly because I need to ask [something].
"What? Glean insight into your thought process after having known you for years? Gee, I don't know, it must be ESP or something," she answers.
And I elbow her.
Not too hard. Definitely not Muay Thai hard.
No matter how tempting she sometimes makes it.
"That almost caught me in my boob," she accuses me.
I try to glare in answer, but the side of her head is still resting on my shoulder., so I end up just watching the highlights over her glossy hair drawn by dim streetlights coming in from my balcony.
She smells… nice.
Like Haruno.
A hint of lavender. Always lavender.
And she's warm and soft while resting against me, even if her hand's hold on mine is maybe tighter than firm.
Afraid rather than reassuring.
"It's gonna be all right," I mumble into dark locks, my lips almost kissing her hair with the words that I offer her on instinct.
She giggles, but there's a surprised, shocked note in the usually deliberate sound.
"Shouldn't I be the one telling you just that?" she says, turning her head over my shoulder to face me without losing any contact with her cheek on my shirt.
Lavender eyes.
I… I remember almost losing myself in them that first time she kissed me. Right before she did.
How guilty I felt at the unthinkable thought that she would do what she was about to do. How mortified at the mere suggestion that [Haruno] would ever feel for me what I once felt for Miki.
How shocked when she finally did it. When she proved to me that what I had imagined was really there.
How wretched when I crushed her heart with my lying rejection.
"I'm sorry," I say, acting once again on sheer impulse and nothing else.
Lavender eyes hold me, searching me in silence.
"I know," she finally says, making me laugh in the same way she just did, more out of surprise than humor.
And then her hand is on my cheek, and her warmth seeps through me.
"I love you," she says.
"I know," I answer with a bit of a wry grin.
Which ends up with her pinching my cheek as she tries not to snort in something undignified.
And then she kisses me.
It's… It's not all-consuming. Heat doesn't beat in my chest, nor do my thighs clench together.
But my fingers squeeze Haruno's.
And I let her keep kissing me.
The blanket falls away, and she climbs on top of me, straddling my bare thighs, her maroon skirt riding up, teasing me with the soft touch of cashmere woven light enough that she can still wear it when spring is so close.
Our twinned hands rest between our bellies, and she arches down to keep our lips touching.
Then she pulls away, and the world rushes back in.
"Hachiman…?" I ask, unsure of where the man I called to comfort me is.
"He already went back home. It's three a.m.," she says, still cupping my cheek, tilting my head back and over the sofa's backrest so that I have to look at her.
At lavender eyes.
"I… I guess I no longer have to get up early, do I?" I joke.
Or try to.
"Well, I'm still a flawless honor student, so I would appreciate it if you didn't drag me down into your NEET ways," she says, returning my joking tone.
My attempt at it.
Our poor attempts at it.
"I—" I don't know what I'll say, just that I'll say [something], and then I'll start crying, and even Haruno, after years of loving me without hope, will get tired of me and cast me aside.
But she kisses me.
And so I don't speak. Don't cry.
Just let her kiss me.
Like I did in Chiba Port Park years ago for a brief, guilty moment of respite.
The soft pressure of her lips leaves me not suddenly but with a slow parting. A caress that lingers. A promise of more.
I have been promised so many things, so many times…
"Hachiman solved it," she says.
And I blink at her.
"What?" I answer in, possibly, the most frequent question I'll ever utter when the topic of one Hachiman Hikigaya comes up.
"He… I brought Iroha to talk him down from doing something likely stupid and possibly illegal, and then he did something very clever and completely illegal."
I groan.
"That [does] sound like them," I tell her, my eyes begging her for the mercy of a swiftly completed story that won't turn me into an anxious wreck due to the duo's shenanigans.
"It was your neighbor," she says.
Clarifying absolutely nothing.
And smiling.
[Because Haruno].
"Context," I demand.
And she kisses my forehead.
"You're too good a person, you know? Always helping others without asking for anything in return, meddling in the lives of those around you without understanding why they would refuse an offered hand… It had to backfire at some point," she says, her tone going from airy to strained at the end.
I blink at her. At the way she tries not to frown, keeping her eyes open as something very much like pain flashes across them.
"Mrs. Kubo," I say.
She nods.
"I made a list of all your neighbors with the right angle to catch people coming and going from your apartment. I have a detective checking them for possible blackmail material," she says, sending cold horror up my spine as she confesses this with an irreverent lack of concern for her disregard for the law. "Our boyfriend just had to jump the gun, though."
"If your goal is to make me want to strangle you until straightforward answers start pouring out, you're doing a great job," I tell her.
She, of course, smirks.
But it doesn't last.
"He… He's very damaged, you know? He was coming back here to check on you before going back home, and then he heard a door open. He immediately guessed it could be the blackmailer and jumped at it, pushing the door open, barging into the old woman's house, telling her that calling the police would be useless because he would already be done before they got there… Honestly? I don't know if Iroha was scared or turned on when she told me how things went down."
"Both. She was both," I say with a note of despair.
"Oh, you know us [so well]." She licks her lips, but the teasing façade doesn't last long. "And that means that you can guess what happened then."
I can.
Of course I can.
"He deduced about her being a widow with an estranged family and came up with a story about how that made her resentful and bitter. He told her in minute detail everything that he thought of her until the broken woman was shattered," I say without even a hint of uncertainty.
Because I [do] know him.
I have for almost two years.
And… And I'm not so old that two years can be easily discarded.
Neither is he.
"He did. He did just that. After seeing a single picture of a young woman holding a small child. Because that's how he's primed to see relationships, to see [family]: as tragedies already unfolding."
"You would have also guessed the very same thing," I accuse.
And she, once again, lays a slow kiss on my forehead.
"Months ago? I would have. Right now? Well, I [also] would have, but only because I am that good."
There's… a lot to infer from that sentence.
Some of it makes my heart race and my cheeks flush.
The rest just makes me stab her side with my free hand.
"Hey! I'm having a moment here!" she protests without bothering to hide her grin.
And I almost join her. Almost fall for her obvious ploy to keep me feeling too many things to focus on the one underlying all of them.
"Don't," she says, her tone suddenly lower.
Her eyes sad.
Like I never wanted them to be.
"It's… I am sorry, but… I'm still fired. That can't be taken away. And… And my whole life—"
"You're not even [thirty.] Your whole life? That's still ahead of you. Don't be stupid, Shizu; that's not who you are."
"I fell for [you]."
"All right, maybe a bit self-destructing. But with impeccable taste."
I try to facepalm.
And she catches my hand.
My wrist.
Her thumb is on the inside of it, massaging sensitive skin before she pulls my hand up to kiss my fingertips while lavender eyes burn through me.
"You will be all right," she promises between kisses.
I keep squeezing the fingers laced between mine as I look at her. As she forbids me from looking away from her.
"You don't know that. Not even you can know that, Haruno. I just… My career…"
She pauses, her lips on the pad of my middle finger, their softness as entrancing as ever as the left side of her hair is streaked by the light of a passing car shining through my balcony until she's once again left in dimmer light.
In almost darkness.
"I already told you: Hachiman solved it," she finally says, whispering the words as her eyes fall from mine and toward our twinned hands on my lap.
"It's not so easy. Inoue—"
"I'll talk with him. Tell him that the blackmailer has backed off. You… You'll most likely not go back to Sobu High, but the transfer can still happen. Just claim that the paperwork got mixed up with another teacher's termination, write an apology letter, and send you off to heal some other traumatized teens who will hopefully not end up crowding our future home—"
"Stop joking about this. There's no way it—"
"There [is]. Just… Just let me work. I know how to solve this, Shizu. Just… trust me?" she asks.
And, for a single moment, she's once again that lost, hurt, rejected girl I saw in a park long ago.
The one begging me to accept her.
But the truth is… I always did.
Even when I rejected a romance with her, I accepted Haruno. Wholeheartedly.
The mischief, the cruel wit, the sharp mind.
The hurt girl.
I just… Was very bad at showing her.
"I always trusted you," I say.
And she kisses me.
But, this time, the pressure of her lips on mine doesn't abate. She keeps pushing forward until I open my mouth, and her tongue slides in, as dexterous as everything she ever does before she teases mine into following her in a swirling dance that takes me past her lips even as she pushes my head over the backrest.
She doesn't let up until I close my eyes and take faster breaths, my heart hammering in my chest right before she pulls away, and only her soft hand on my cheek stops me from chasing her.
From doing what I should've done before I hurt her.
"I… Haruno, I don't know if I am in the mood to…"
I don't finish my sentence.
Because I [don't] know if I am in the mood to have sex. Because everything is too raw and painful, even if she promises it has already been all but fixed.
But also because I see her eyes.
The flash of pain she always hid so poorly from anyone who bothered to look for it.
"I…" she trails off, her tongue peeking out from her lips for a moment of insecurity that she tries to mask with a sad yet determined smile. "I am here for you. To be whatever you need me to be. And if you want not to think, to just forget… I can make you do just that," she finally says.
And it sounds so wrong.
"No. Not that. I don't… I don't want to use [you]," I say.
Her eyes are closer.
Her forehead on mine.
And I could never look away.
"You have been used," she says, the words a sharp, sweet wound. "For comfort, and pleasure, and even money. You have been used by hateful, despicable men, so you hate it and despise it. But I will always be willing to be used by [you]."
My breath catches in my throat.
And she kisses the side of my neck.
I hold back a moan at the surge of sensation when she sucks on the hollow between muscles, her tongue slowly coming out to wetly soothe me with ever more electrifying sensations.
Her hand drops from my cheek to my collar, and deft fingers start unbuttoning my white shirt.
And, through it all, our tangled fingers keep desperately grasping for one another.
"Haruno… You don't have to… Just… Just staying with me is more than enough—"
"I don't want 'enough.' I never did," she says.
And then her stocking-clad legs press on my bare thighs, and she does something with her hips that ends up with me lying on my back, sprawled on my sofa, with Haruno on top of me, her arms stopping me from falling off the border.
My shirt's parted.
And her hand is now pushing up the black cups until they slide over my breasts, revealing them to her touch as her lips trail down my neck and along my collarbone, making me gasp, making me reach for the back of her head to pull her away or push her [in], to do [something—]
"I love you," she says, her breath scalding over my wet skin.
"I… Haruno, I always—"
"Don't lie," she says. "Not ever again."
Her eyes meet mine as I look down at her, at the girl crouching over me, her lips almost kissing my flesh just above where my bra is now crumpled and doing nothing to protect me from the hand already tracing lazy circles around my right breast.
The one that isn't holding my own hand between our bellies with as much strength as her toned forearms hold.
"I am not lying," I finally say. "I did love you, back then—"
"Yes. Yes, you did. But not like I loved you. Not with… With this intensity. This desperation. The knowledge that you were the best thing to ever happen to me and my only shot at ever being happy."
"That's not true. I am not that good, and you aren't that bad. You are [extraordinary]. You would have healed on your own, found somebody else to be insufferable at, to be impossible with, and—[hn!]"
Her lips latch around my nipple right as her fingers twirl around the other one, ghostly caresses turning into too-intense touches right before her thigh pushes between mine, pressing down on black panties that are getting warmer and wetter with every turn of her tongue over quickly hardening flesh.
"Just… Just how far are you willing to go to shut me up?" I mutter as I finally manage to thread my fingers through short, black hair, and I can't find it in myself to pull her away.
She doesn't answer.
Except by tightening her grasp on my hand.
I gasp as she suckles on my breast, a hard suction punctuating each maddening caress of index and thumb on my right nipple.
She's looking at me. Straight at me.
There's no expression I can discern, not with her lips pressed so tightly against my yielding flesh, but her eyes don't stray away as she studies me, as she suits her actions to every minute shift on all the myriad things my own face tries to tell her as she plays with my body.
I don't forget, not really.
I still feel the need to cry lurking just under the surface. The sheer injustice of Ms. Kubo being set on ruining my life, of Inoue caving in after having tricked me into trusting him, of me finally being happy only for that to destroy the career I have worked years for.
But… But it's under the surface.
And over it, there's the heat of Haruno's lips and fingers. The pressure of her soft thigh making me bite my lip. The piercing eyes looking straight through me, not promising, but demanding.
Demanding that I let her make me feel good.
That I let her be used.
Useful.
Ah. So that was it, after all.
I let go of her hair and trail my fingers down her nape, under the collar of her blouse, kneading the hard flesh of shoulders taut with worry and anxiety.
And my face softens.
"I love you," I tell her.
Her tongue pokes at my nipple, pushing it into my breast with a hard point of wet flesh that makes me shudder and tilt my hips up against her thigh.
"I have for a long time," I continue.
She softly moves her head side to side, denying my words as she moves my breast with her sucking lips before her fingers go from gently teasing to almost cruelly pinching, forcing me to close my eyes.
But I open them and look back down at her.
"I did. Back then. I had felt guilty for years at noticing how attractive you were, and then you suddenly were an adult, still sticking around. And I loved you so much that I was afraid of hurting you. Of losing you."
Her unyielding eyes falter, and her tongue pauses.
So I stop ineffectually massaging her shoulders and slide my hand under her armpit before pulling her up toward me until my wet nipple meets the air of my room, and she's once more over me.
Looking down at me.
As lost as she ever was.
As she, despite everything we have done, still is.
Hachiman told me about their first time. About looking into a mirror and taking her, forcing her to watch herself be loved and desired.
I should've done the same.
Or I should've taken her years ago and spared her the need for this.
"I am sorry. I am sorry that I was a coward. That I let you be hurt just because I didn't want to risk hurting you. Or myself. That I lied after years of telling you to be true to yourself, to stop hiding behind a mask that didn't suit you. I am sorry that I ever made you feel like I didn't love you," I say, my throat becoming rougher and rougher with every word.
She shakes her head, her dangling bangs swaying side to side.
"No. Not now, please. Just… I just want to make you feel good," she says, the pleading note in her voice making something in my chest clench.
"You know me, Haruno. How could I ever feel good if you didn't?" I say.
And she, rather than answering, drops down on top of me.
Her lips find mine, but without any of the inevitable, deliberate conquest she usually executes. She's just frantically peppering me with kisses, with bursts of sensation that I'm too stunned to properly react to other than by holding her as close as I can with my half embrace as her belly presses our joined hands into mine.
Then I hook my right leg behind hers, completing my hold on her body, and I tilt my head up to better receive her, to return as much of her kisses as she lets me in her frenzy.
In her desperation.
Until, finally, she stops.
She buries her face by the side of my own, her soft hair tickling my right cheek as she shudders and pants in…
In something.
Something that I can't begin to guess at.
"Why do you all have to be so complicated?" she finally asks. "I swear I could give Hachiman a blowjob under the breakfast table, and he would turn it into an impromptu therapy session…"
"That [does] sound like him."
"If he ever becomes a therapist—"
"That is forbidden. I'll break his leg as many times as I have to until he drops out of college," I tell her, leaning into the joke.
Right.
The [joke].
"That will only get him even closer to his sister," she says. Also [joking].
"Said the siscon…" Look at us. Joking so much. Hilarious.
"I—I am [not]—Yukino is an adorable little sister, and she's just—why are we talking about this while you're naked?!"
"I don't know, but if you want me to call you onee-sama—"
"Gah! [Never], ever say that to—"
"Or imouto—"
"Do I need to remind you about the last time we shared this sofa and just how many joint locks I can put you in?"
"Do I need to remind you that I cross-train?"
"What does that—" she starts to say right before her eyes fly wide open.
Which mostly coincides with her realizing that my right leg is now hooked right over her ankle, something she tries to squirm out of just as I push up with my left hip, the soft cushions of my sofa helping my movement by depressing under the displaced weight to my right as I flip Haruno over me and toward the floor below.
The wooden floor.
That is going to make quite a loud noise at three in the morning.
Particularly with me following her and falling right on top of her, guided by our still tangled hands, because if she ever falls, I need her to know that I'll be right behind her.
So I end up looking down into wide, scared eyes that…
That are finally showing me what she's been trying to hold back since I woke up.
"Hey," I whisper with a soft smile as my hair finishes settling down around the girl below me.
"Hey," she answers before she licks her lips in nervous fear.
And then we just look at each other for… for longer than I care to keep track of.
"I don't ever want to lie to you again," I say. "So I'll tell you that I'm hurt. Scared. That I spent the whole day crying and trying not to be a burden to any of you until I finally called Hachiman because I thought he would be the one who would be able to handle all of us better."
"I am feeling so insulted right now."
"You should," I tell her with an impish grin. "Because I just [knew] that, as soon as you knew, you would do something rash and stupid, and I still don't know how to keep you from doing that, but I trust [Hachiman] to be more calculating than you."
"I was the one who [pacified] him when he was about to murder somebody."
"Right. Because then you had that as your focus, but if you hadn't had that? Who would have stopped you, Haruno?"
She glares at me.
"Who says I need to be stopped?"
"I do. Because if you did what you thought of doing, then I wouldn't be able to do this anymore," I tell her.
And then I dip down and take her lips, as slowly and deliberately as I should have in Chiba Port Park.
She twists under me, her blouse brushing across my bare nipples, her legs going over mine…
And I kick her away before she can hook her foot over my left ankle to pull yet [another] reversal.
"None of that," I say, my voice rougher than I meant it to be. "Just lie under me and let yourself be loved."
She blinks at me.
That pain from earlier flashes for a moment.
And she nods.
"I… I am not good at it. Being loved," she says. "I think I'm out of practice."
I smile at her words with something that is both sad and proud.
"I know. But we have a lifetime to practice," I tell her.
Her hand brushes past my cheek before she buries it into my hair.
But she doesn't pull me down.
"Promise?" she finally says with a thin voice that I only hear because of how close we are.
"Promise." I nod.
And lavender eyes that look almost black in the low light filtering through my balcony drag me down like the hand on my hair hasn't.
"I'm not going anywhere, Haruno. We'll find a way," I say, making another promise that is the same as the earlier one.
Reassuring her. Soothing her remaining wounds.
And, in doing so, my own fear and hurt lessen.
Because that's the truth of my own selfishness. The ugliness behind Shizuka Hiratsuka's belief in genuine things:
Helping them has always helped me.
"Thank you," she whispers, her lips brushing mine.
And then…
Then we don't make love through the night. We don't forget about our worries in a tangle of sweaty limbs. We don't chase momentary pleasure to forget about enduring pain.
We just…
Hold one another.
Because the pain I feel, and the pain she feels because of me…
Those are also genuine.
==================
This work is a repost of my second oldest fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/all-right-fine-ill-take-you-oregairu.15676/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 98 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).
Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Brain-chan's intrusions into Hachiman's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance
Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and help me keep writing snarky, maladjusted teenagers and their cake buffets, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
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