Chapitre 88: All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 84 – Haruno Yukinoshita Spends Too Much Time With Hachiman Hikigaya
She looks beautiful when she sleeps.
Which is utterly unfair, given that I've just woken up yet again, this time due to the unforgiving nature of the sun and how it's inconsiderately decided to show up before seven in the morning despite me and Shizu having gone to sleep no sooner than four.
On the floor of the living room.
So, it is unfair that she's still sleeping despite the early rays of light tracing her profile in strokes of flaking gold. That she's peacefully breathing under me, holding me on top of her, her hand still grasping my fingers.
It's unfair that she's so beautiful despite my bleary eyes, my muddy mind, my…
We didn't have sex.
Nor did we make love.
And I… It's not like I wanted it for the act itself. That I lusted after her when she was so clearly hurting. That I wanted something carnal after the revelations of the day.
No. I can say that I did not want any of that.
But I still wanted her to want me. I wanted her to find something in my arms that would let her shy away from the pain and hurt.
I wanted her to…
To accept me.
And she did, just not in the way I expected or wanted.
But maybe in the way I needed.
"Haruno?" she asks, blinking slowly, the sun coming in from behind her not getting in her eyes like it did on mine when I looked up to find her.
Unfair.
She's always been unfair.
"Good morning," I say with a voice raspy with sleep and lack of use.
"Good morning," she reflexively answers, showing me a radiant smile that has very little to do with her finding joy in the new day and just…
Just wanting it to be a good morning.
For me.
See?
Unfair.
"We should move to your bed," I say before immediately dropping bonelessly down on top of her and burying my face in her chest.
"… I am getting mixed signals."
"You have always been manly. Time for me to relentlessly exploit that," I say into very soft, yielding, and not at all manly flesh.
"Suddenly, I sympathize with Hachiman. That's not a good feeling to get this early in the morning," she grumbles.
I make a noise that could be amusement, assent, or a thousand other things.
She sighs.
It, as always, makes my heart race.
And when she catches my hint and maneuvers to sit up with her arms around me, shifting my body around until I end up in a princess carry, and she stands up with a grunt of effort?
Well, that doesn't calm me down at all.
"See? Manly," I say with a tone that tries to be joking despite my heart hammering in my chest, my dry lips, and my eyes finding her silver-grey ones and getting caught in them like so many times before.
"Keep that up, and I'm dropping you on the couch," she says, rolling her eyes and…
And I wrap my arms around her neck.
She looks back at me, surprised at the suddenness of the contact, but I bury my face in the crook of her neck and just breathe in the aroma of sleep still clinging to her.
The scent of Shizu. Of Shizu after being helpless. Trusting. Open.
I took her bra off during the night because the wires were uncomfortable to lie my face on, and so she's only wearing her panties and her unbuttoned shirt while I'm still wearing my own blouse buttoned up to the neck, even if I had the presence of mind to kick off my skirt when we shifted around and I ended up on top of her.
Sleeping on top of her.
Clutching her hand and wrapped in her embrace.
It's still too much. Too many barriers. Too many things standing between me and the woman I love.
"Haruno?" she asks with a hint of worry.
I shake my head without looking up, laying a single, brief kiss on the side of her neck that makes her fingers close against my shoulder and below my knee.
Because the unfortunate truth of the princess carry is that our fingers are no longer interlaced.
After hours of holding me, Shizu has, once again, and because of what she felt was best for me, let me go.
I wish the words would stop hurting one of these days—but a part of me doesn't. It wants the pain to remain, to remind me.
It was, for a long time, one of the few things of her I could cling to.
"Sorry. I'm a bit moody today. Must be the lack of sleep," I say, acting like an entitled brat that needs to be coddled when it's her that has been attacked and wounded.
"You being just a bit moody is quite an improvement," she says with a light tone before kissing the top of my head.
And then she starts walking toward her bedroom, and I take the excuse to cling closer to her. To feel her arms shift around me with every step.
Until she stops.
"Could you… uh… would you get the door for me?" she says.
I shake my head.
"Haruno, I've got my hands full. Literally."
"As if you ever expected not to have them full when dealing with me," I mumble right beneath her ear.
She, for some reason that sends a thrill of delight down my back, shudders.
"It's too early for me to deal with this level of banter," she says.
"Tough luck. And I'm giving you a handicap: I haven't slept even three hours."
She goes silent, and I can feel the gears shifting.
"That's incredibly unhealthy," she says.
"I don't want to hear that from the chain smoker, borderline alcoholic."
"I—I'm not a—"
"[And] sex addict."
"I'm [not] a sex addict."
"Sure could've fooled me, what with having three lovers at your beck and call—"
"I can drop you, you know? And not on the sofa."
"No, you can't," I say.
"And why is that?" she answers with a tone about as dry as Hachiman's homework.
Or, well, I presume he doesn't have the patience for inane busywork, but maybe he channels that in ways other than visible lack of effort, contempt, and disdain.
For all I know, he may get [creative].
For some reason, the thought makes me smile.
Which is just what I need to finally pull away from Shizu's neck and look up at her with my lips broadening into something impish before I answer her.
"First, because I'm holding your neck, so letting me go won't accomplish that much."
"I can throw you. Easily."
"And second, because you love me and want me to stay by your side. To wake up with me being annoyingly clingy, sharp-tongued, yet still visibly smitten with the love of my life."
Her façade breaks for a second under my blunt assault, and I can see…
A lot of things.
But, to me, the most important one is that I'm right.
That she loves me.
Wants me.
It makes my heart clench.
And she, without saying a single thing, struggles to shift her arm under my knees, holding me up as she struggles to turn the doorknob and open her bedroom.
She steps inside, still looking into my eyes with tremulous care and affection.
And I only see the hint of mischief when it's too late for me to do anything other than yelp as she throws me on top of her bed.
***
Waking up for the last time is easier.
My head is clearer, the fog of exhaustion, emotional and otherwise, more manageable after a few more hours wrapped around Shizu, breathing her scent, feeling her warmth and softness.
It could even be a great start to the day under other circumstances.
As it is… I'll just have to treasure the memory. Both the good and the bad of it.
Which is not the easiest thing to do when the rest of the morning goes by in a haze, not even the quick shower helping me center my thoughts before we spend breakfast in carefully idle conversation, and…
And then we get into her car, and we barely speak before she drops me near my campus.
"Promise me you'll go right to your parents," I say, still refusing to leave the ridiculously expensive car.
"Haruno… They are working. Both of them," she says, trying to weasel out.
"Then go to your father's gym. I don't care; I just don't want you to be alone," I tell her.
"I can handle—"
"It's not about what you can or can't handle but about what's best for you," I tell her.
"I—"
"Either you go bother your father at his workplace, or I'm skipping the rest of my classes," I say, with what amounts to an empty threat, even if she doesn't quite realize it.
"Fine! I'll go to Dad's gym and make a spectacle of myself in front of the regulars, seeing as Dad has yet to learn what an indoor voice is! Happy now?"
"Ecstatic," I lie.
And then I launch over her, kissing her lips, forcing them open with my tongue, and taking her as forcefully as I can while we're both still clothed.
It… It takes me some time to let her go, and when I do her cheeks are pleasantly tinged with a pink hue, her eyes are wide, and her tie is askew.
She looks as effortlessly gorgeous as she ever does.
As unfair as she ever was.
"I… I know I'm supposed to be good at this. Great. That you know precisely how well I can command the language to tell and imply precisely what I want," I say. Stupidly. Clumsily.
"Haruno?" There's worry in her eyes.
"But I… That's knowledge. A skill. It's… mechanics. I know where to inflect my speech, how to shift my body, what expressions to adopt or hint at repressing. That's… That's the easy part. The trivial part."
I wait for the interruption, but she only lifts her hand to cradle my cheek and look at me in a way that makes me realize just how and why I fell for her.
Again.
"What I am bad at… It's the truth. It's dropping the mask and just caring for the person in front of me. I… I tried. I tried and failed, so many times, with Yukino, hurting my sister when I only wanted to help her not become what I was. And now it's you that's hurt in front of me, and the only thing I can do is to send you away to people that can care for you better than I will. I am… I am wretched. I am not what you deserve—"
And then comes the interruption I had been waiting for.
Just as if I had planned it.
Except I hadn't, and so it works.
"Never," she says in a tone quite similar to what Hachiman would've used to say that same word. "Never again hurt yourself like this. Deserve me? [Me]? I have… You know what I am. You know the mess that I barely manage to hide on a good day—"
"Wait, you were [hiding] it?"
She glares at me, and I shut up.
I am, at the very least, a [tad] smarter than Hachiman.
"Even if… I should've told you this years ago. Taught you this. It's not about deserving, Haruno; it can't be. It's about… about what you feel and what you're ready to do about it. About what you share and what you want to build from it. It's about who you are and who you want to become. Deserving never plays a part in that, or, if it does, it's because we all deserve to be loved. Accepted."
I look at her like I did on a high school rooftop all those years ago when the sun shone by her side, and purple smoke lazily drifted up from fascinatingly glossy lips.
I look at her like I did when she changed my life.
Because she very well may have.
"Regardless," I say, trying to gather myself before I fall deeper still, "I still need to do more than what I have. I—"
"You came to my home in the middle of the night to care for me, Hachiman, and Iroha. You handled me when I woke up, and I would've had a panic attack if you hadn't been there for me. There's nothing, absolutely [nothing], to apologize for."
Her hand on my cheek pushes, and I fall back on my seat right as she unbuckles her safety belt to straddle me.
To look down at me, her black hair cascading down the right side of her body and draping over me in a blanket that will always be enough to warm me.
To hold me still. Captive.
And I do my best not to cry.
"You give me too much credit," I finally mutter, just to fill the silence with something other than my thundering heart.
"Someone has to," she replies with a half-smile that only reaches her eyes to mix with what's already there.
"No. No one has to. But you still did," I say.
And she, wordlessly, leans down to kiss me.
I want to hold her. To cling to her. To wrap my arms around her and never let go.
But what she needs is for me to softly answer her kiss with barely open lips, with a light touch filled with all the things I wanted to give her.
And not with the ones I needed.
***
"You can skip," she says with some hope in her tone.
I look up at her.
And I mean [up].
Because, through what should've been a short, sweet kiss, Shizu ended up reclining my seat and lying on top of me fully enough that it's a good thing we're nowhere in sight of the security guard that already chased after me once when Hachiman decided to be himself, and I answered by being myself.
"I really, [really] can't," I say, "but I will if you want me to."
It's a bit of a dirty trick, making her feel responsible for my choice, but that shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me.
Shouldn't.
It's amazing how many things people do that they shouldn't.
"No. No, I… You're right; I should go visit Dad. He should hear in person that I'm fired—"
"That's [not] what you're going to tell him. You're going to tell him that you [were] fired but that the situation is already handled," I say, frowning at her in about the same way as I do when she orders one beer too many.
That is: with a studied, perfectly rehearsed gesture that she will see nothing wrong with.
"I… I am still—" she says.
"I told you: Hachiman solved it. No more blackmail, and I still have enough pull in Sobu to make Inoue go back on his 'administrative mistake.'"
"You can't be sure about that," she says.
"I can. I am," I answer.
"Then… Haruno, I'm not that oblivious. If there's nothing wrong, what's up with you this morning? What—"
Of course.
Of course she would notice, but only tell me when she's forced to.
Of course she would be considerate enough to care for me and not push me when it's her that's been attacked.
I shouldn't have been surprised, after all.
Funny thing, what happens with all those 'should.'
"Because it was close. I… I thought I would lose you, and yesterday I was able to focus just on what you needed, but I kept waking up through the night, looking at you, knowing how close it was that… Shizu, I love you. I already lost that love once, and just the idea that I could lose you again for something this petty…"
My words trail off.
And I let the tears flow.
It's… It's hard for me to stop them. To get just enough of them to overflow from my lower eyelids without devolving into a bawling mess, but the last thing I want is to show her that ugly side of me, the red eyes, the incoherent ramblings, the hiccups, sobs, and screams that I quickly learned to only allow in solitude and away from judging eyes.
I… It's been years since I let myself…
"Shush. I'm here. I'm here, and nobody's taking me away," she says, dropping on top of me, caressing my hair, kissing my left cheek.
Telling me she loves me in all the ways she can without saying the words or breaking public decency laws.
My lips curl into a surprised smile, one that isn't studied or rehearsed.
And I clutch her hard enough that, for a single moment that I stretch as far as I am able to, I can believe her.
***
"Go to the gym," I say, leaning into the car through the open passenger door.
"Yes, [Mom,"] she says with a very displeased eye roll.
"Oh? Is that a new fetish I should be aware of?" I say, letting a bit of my teasing mask comfortably slip into place.
"Imouto—"
"I will hurt you."
"Yes. Yes, you will," she says.
And… And there's something in that radiant smile, in the knowledge and acceptance that there's pain in loving and that I am worth that pain…
I almost cry again.
"You and Hachiman need to write a book of pick-up lines," I grumble, finally getting out of the car just so I don't end up draped over her yet again.
"If you get him to write a first chapter that doesn't involve bears, I'll think about it."
"Bears?" I ask, the arched eyebrow implicit until I slip, and it becomes very explicit.
"You don't want to know. Well, no, actually, you [do] want to know, but I'm saving it for a special occasion."
I blink at her.
She smirks at me.
"Are you really going to dangle that and not expect me to deduce that it has something to do with his academic malicious compliance—"
"It's easy to guess the vagaries of the case, but you won't get to the true artistry of it all that way. Some things must be experienced firsthand."
I glare at her.
"This is going to bug me all day," I say, my neck already complaining at how long I've been holding the door open and leaning to look in.
"It's preemptive karma," she says with a cheeky little thing that I wish I had an Iroha handy to capture for me.
"You're the third most annoying, insufferable person I've ever had sex with," I say.
"Guess I need to work a bit harder, then," she says with a smirk and a cocked eyebrow.
"No. No, you don't," I say with a soft, tender smile that makes her drop the façade and lights up her cheeks.
And, with that lovely image, I shut the door of her car just hard enough that she'll be annoyed but not enough that she'll complain, and I finally part with her before heading to my campus.
She slowly drives by my side just moments after, and she waves goodbye at me with her whole arm, making me giggle and answer with a finger wave.
Then I reach the gates, and she finally drives away, speeding up into the distance.
Rather than enter my campus, I stand there, watching until I can no longer see a trace of the sports car that an unemployed teacher shouldn't be driving.
And then I turn around and walk back to the nearest intersection to catch a taxi.
***
The ride goes by in peaceful silence after I slip the driver a tip just so he will shut up and turn off the radio.
I could be checking my notes, writing a speech, doing a thousand and one things to prepare for what's quickly approaching.
I don't.
That's what my mostly sleepless night was for, after all.
"We're here, Miss," he deferentially says.
Because money talks, but old money talks eloquently.
So I nod, give him a bill that covers the ride and a bit of an extra tip, and step out.
In front of the Yukinoshita compound.
Because Shizu is going to her father's gym so she can be consoled and taken care of.
And me?
I just arrived at my mother's household so I can fight her.
==================
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!
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone