Bab 36: All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 34 – Haruno Doesn’t Go on Dates 2
As it turns out, Iroha is the touchy-feely type.
Which means that, as soon as we exit the restaurant (and I pay the bill a still very pleasantly scandalized waitress presents me), she wraps herself around my right arm like a slender, curvy koala that I'm sure some otaku would buy a poster of.
And that is how Hachiman sees us enter the plaza in front of the station: a college-aged girl with a high-schooler looking like she wants to use her as a jungle gym.
…
I should get used to having a libido not centered around Shizuka, it seems.
"Senpai!" the koala wannabe exclaims with such enthusiasm I'm sure at least [some] of it is her playing it up.
Going by Hachiman's momentary tender smile, lazy wave of his hand, and the soft blush those two things cause in Iroha right before she buries her face against my arm… I may have miscalculated in my deduction.
This day is full of first times, it seems.
"Hey, so… how did the date go?" he asks with all the casual nonchalance of somebody who got here twenty minutes ago and has spent quite a bit of that time trying to decide what was the proper way to greet us.
I think. It would be just my luck to [also] miscalculate that.
"She paid for lunch," Iroha answers, as if that was an adequate summation of her baring her vulnerabilities to me, warning me she'll protect her lovers from me, and then accepting me into the fold without taking back the implied threat from before, all the while promising that she wants to see me loved, happy, and healed.
It's a good thing I'm a 'once in a generation prodigy.' I don't think I'd be able to keep up otherwise.
"Ah. So, perfect in your book?" he answers.
And Iroha enthusiastically nods to his slight chuckle.
… I am smiling.
Damn it. They're infecting me.
"And, seeing it [was] a perfect date, I guess I should—" Iroha cuts herself off mid-sentence. Mostly because she just let go of my arm and jumped up to wrap her arms around my neck and pull me down into a kiss that's far more involved than the one we shared at the restaurant.
I'm still blinking when she lets go, looking up at me with those luminous eyes of hers, throwing a side glance to a fidgeting Hachiman, and then smiling up at me in a way that—
"Thank you for a lovely date, Haruno. I hope Senpai will have to work a bit to top it?"
"As long as he doesn't use me as a credit card, he should have a leg up."
"Ouch, how mean! That's no way to treat your cute little girlfriend, you know? Anyway…" Iroha looks to the side, where she sees a Hachiman frantically trying to pretend he wasn't staring at the two of us just seconds ago. And then an increasingly familiar grin spreads over her face. "What's the matter, [Senpai?] Did watching two gorgeous girls you're messing around with make out with each other get you [excited]? Did it make you want to stare a bit more? To leer at me writhing and sweating under Haruno's experienced touches as I plead for her to finally take me over the edge? I am sorry, Senpai, but that's impossible! After all, we wouldn't be so cruel as to not have you join in."
…
Damn it, Iroha…
Hachiman seems to agree with me, going by the way he stares at her and blinks without saying anything. Right before he gives her a noogie.
"We're in public," he mutters in an almost deadpan that manages not to draw attention to the way he's hunching over with his left hand stuck far down his pants pocket.
Heh. All right, I can see the fun in it.
So, without a single word, I lean down and delicately press my lips against Iroha's as I drag the very tip of my fingers down the back of her scalp until they softly glide over the small hairs covering her nape and spine, the young girl's back arching at my touch as a surprised moan escapes her lips that turns into the preface for her tongue darting out to meet mine.
And, while she resumes her koala impression in a way that has our chests press together, I manage to open my eyes enough to shoot Hachiman a knowing wink as he stuffs [both] hands in his pockets and hunches over farther.
"What?" I tell him as I lean back from a glassy-eyed Iroha. "I'm just saying goodbye after a nice date. A kiss is proper and expected."
"Those are two words I'm pretty sure just cringed in horror at being used by [you], of all people," he remarks in that gruff voice of his that… Well, it's not [that] voice, but it's close enough.
As can be attested to by Iroha squirming against me as she keeps throwing him the kind of looks that, if he was slightly more capable of understanding positive emotions being directed at him, would have him take his hands out of his pockets and—
"Anyway!" the koala says. "Your turn! You have to date her, not us! Anything else can—[should] wait."
And, with that declaration made, she dashes away until she finally stops, takes out a camera from her handbag, and takes a picture of Hachiman and me before waving enthusiastically and resuming her retreat.
She looks cute when she's flustered.
Hachiman, as well—
"I can [feel] the condescension," he shoots at me, hands still in his pockets.
"I think you have a hard time distinguishing between that and 'amusement.'"
"I think you have a hard time decoupling the two emotions."
He, as usual, makes me laugh.
So I pat his head in the most condescending way imaginable before leaning down and whispering right in his ear:
"Don't worry your pretty little head about it," then I lower my tone down to a slow purr before continuing, "besides, I am sure your little head is already busy enough."
He takes half a second to process my actual meaning before I drop down my sight to his hands trying to mask the tent in his pants. He pales, and I smirk.
And, once again, he makes me laugh.
***
"A movie," I say in what should be a question but comes across as an accusation.
That is: just as it was meant to.
"I once suggested to a friend that a movie is a good way to start a first date so that there will be some common ground in the following discussion—"
"Hachiman… Are you counting [this] as our first date?"
He immediately shuts up and pales in what I can only guess is an instinctive male reaction to being confronted with the possibility of having missed an important event. A passing boy in his early twenties gives him a rueful nod before his eyes stray to my legs, and his girlfriend pinches his ear while I pretend not to be amused by the whole thing and they start bickering toward the movie theater's entrance.
Uncharacteristically, I take pity on Hachiman after that. I guess Yukino's recent mellowness must be rubbing off on me.
"Before you, once again, worry your pretty little head about this, what I meant is that we've shared too many things for some insipid guidelines for proper first dates to hold any water."
At that, he sags with enough relief that he doesn't bother reacting to my quip.
Which [kind of] bothers me, but let's skip right over that little revelation for now. The day's looking to be too busy with them.
"Right… So, seeing as you'd likely eviscerate any movie I cared to get you to, any suggestions?"
"My, how secure you must be in your masculinity to let the girl decide what to do on your [first] date," I needle him.
And he looks at me with haunted eyes.
"Haruno… I'm on a date with my tentative third girlfriend to see how well we can all fit together. I've recently lost my virginity to a gorgeous woman and taken a frustratingly attractive girl's first time, and that's after having been on the very edge of 'technical virginity' long enough it was almost a running gag. About the only thing I've no doubts about is my masculinity—unless I'm a very unattractive yet lucky lesbian, that is."
I arch an eyebrow, and he manages to hold my gaze for almost ten seconds before he blushes at what he just said without me needing any further input.
"Not quite used to bragging about your conquests, are you?" I tell him as I start walking away from the movie theater and the sparse crowd forming around its entrance.
"I'm not used to the idea of [having] conquests—which I don't. And please, never tell either Shizu or Iroha that I ever implied otherwise."
"You're far too prone to giving me delicious blackmail material."
"As if you needed any more of it…"
I slow down enough that he catches up to me, and then I lightly elbow him.
"And what's [that] supposed to mean?"
He shoots me another of his marvelously sardonic looks, and I preen at it. You know, they say acting naturally is essential for a first date to go well.
"I'm [pretty sure] there's something on your phone far more incriminating than anything I could ever tell you," he finally comments, keeping up with my pace along the not-so-crowded street. At this hour, most people are either at home after a full meal or not yet en route to wherever they may spend a busy afternoon.
"Oh, [that]. I mean, yes, of course, I've got that video stored, but I would rarely use incriminating material in which I show up."
"You could edit it."
"I could, but that would be work. Work I don't need to do as long as I've got you available to say the incredibly incriminating things you've already told me."
His shoulders slump in defeat. A faked one.
[Good].
"Such as?" he inquires with play-pretend dread.
"That you love me," I say, my voice suddenly far more serious.
And he freezes.
"Haruno…" he starts to say as he turns toward me.
So I lay my palms on his shoulders and look straight at him, at those eyes people with no taste think are unattractive. People who don't know about kintsugi.
It's a traditional Japanese craft, one of the few I appreciate. It consists of taking something broken and piecing it together—not like it was before. Not disguising the accident, the scars. No. Kintsugi uses gold to cover and highlight the cracks, to show the beauty of something broken yet still being held together.
I used to think Yukino was the perfect example, and then I met [him].
So, others may despise those rotten, dead-fish eyes of yours, Hachiman, but I?
I loved them since the first time I saw them looking in disgust at my cheerful mask and desperately trying to push past it.
"I know what you're going to say," I tell him, both of us caught in each other, "I know that you love me, even if you don't know what that means. Want to know a secret? I also don't know. And it's very rare that I can't read someone enough to at least have an educated guess, much less someone I've talked so candidly with, but…
"But I also don't know. I also don't know in which way I love you—and it's a surprise to realize that I [do] love you. That I don't despise you for taking Shizuka when I couldn't, that I don't hate you for setting Yukino aside, that I don't loathe you for getting so close to me and not running away. You're an intriguing man, Hachiman, and I know how I feel about you, but not what those feelings are."
He raises an unsteady hand to cup my cheek, and I can't help closing my eyes and nuzzling against it.
Damn him.
"You're beautiful," he says. And it could possibly be the worst thing to say to me because I've often been told and never cared for it, but he's the one saying it, and I know he doesn't mean… anything about my body, really. He's wrong, of course, but it's still nice to hear. "You're beautiful, and kind, and every little cruelty you enjoy comes from a place I understand, from somebody fleeing from—"
I lean down, his hand still on my cheek, and kiss him.
Once again, I taste his lips. I feel them, rougher than Iroha's still tingling touch and more demanding. Even as he's passive, even as he mostly stands there, looking up at me, none of us closing our eyes, I can feel that hungry thing inside him reaching out for me, wanting me to open up beyond the mask, wanting all of me, the real me, to be displayed to him.
How obscene of you, Hachiman.
"You don't know me half as well as you all seem to think you do…" I whisper against those very lips that keep a phantom kiss over mine.
"Then show me. Let me learn. Let me know you, Haruno—"
I kiss him again.
There's no lust in it, barely any warmth. Iroha's was more honest in what she offered and demanded in turn.
But Hachiman is as guarded as I am, and so we feel each other out. We glide around the edges, the cracks, the rough barriers of our selves.
And we could spend a lifetime doing it without ever going across.
"You're beautiful," I say, throwing it back at him as his hot breath gives me a hint of what our fearful kisses could carry. "You're beautiful, and kind, and every little cruelty you pile on yourself—"
He kisses me.
Rougher, more demanding, his open mouth prying mine until our tongues meet, and my hands go from his shoulders to his back, dancing over it as he pushes me to the brick wall behind me, the texture of it a painting on my back only marred by his left hand going to my lower back and pressing me against him as the right remains on my cheek, the gentle touch unchanged as everything else about us gets rougher and rawer.
His leg goes between mine, and I press them together, feeling him intruding between my warm, soft thighs.
"I love you," he says once again. "I love you, and I don't care what that means because it just means I want you—[need you] to be happy. And we may not be together, but I don't care about that. If you and Shizu can share that love you—"
"Don't… don't get ahead of yourself. Don't promise things you may want to take back. At least… At least let me show you if that's what you want, if you'd want to be with me," I tell him, my breath ragged, my mind desperately trying to remember the plan that had me drag him away from the cinema and stop right here, in this very place.
"Show me?" he asks, eyes lost in mine, breathing wild.
I point behind him with my chin, and he turns around.
And is faced with the not quite discreet entrance to a love hotel.
He freezes completely, his body rigid against mine as he keeps me prisoner between him and the red brick wall.
Then he slowly turns back toward me, his eyes wide, mouth slack.
"Haruno… I… I think you should have your date with Shizuka before we—[if] we—"
And I laugh in his face.
Really, it's everything I hoped for from him.
He looks indignant, and flustered, and frustrated at having fallen for one of my tricks once again.
So we bicker a bit, the atmosphere no longer so heavy, so charged with things we shouldn't be sharing so openly yet always seem to do ever since that time I told him I can't get drunk.
We walk away from the love hotel, and all the while, I keep my cheerful, smiling mask up, which only contributes to his frustration.
But I need it.
I need the mask to cover the cracks because I don't have the gold to do it with. Not yet.
And… And if I didn't wear it? If Hachiman saw what the mask's covering right now?
He would see me sag with relief. Saw the tension draining away as I delight in him being precisely what I hoped him to be rather than what I expected him to be.
Because Iroha was right: I am hot. Really hot.
And if Hachiman had just let that guide his actions, if he hadn't been so embroiled in considering my feelings and Shizuka's, and just decided to give my suggestion a try…
I wouldn't be laughing, wouldn't be needling him.
Wouldn't be walking by his side.
And I wouldn't be dreading what comes next.
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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 84 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, 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!
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