All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 35 – Haruno Doesn’t Go on Dates 3

Chatting with Hachiman until the evening comes should be, by all accounts, an exhausting experience.

For him, that is.

"Haruno, remember when I said I loved you and needed you to be happy? I take it back. I take it all back. Please, go explode somewhere where I won't get caught up in the blast radius."

I skip in front of him, my hands clasped behind me as I lean forward in a way that I just know will draw his gaze to my bust even if we're in the middle of Chiba's busy streets as I walk backward, leading him by his libido.

"Oh, how cruel you are. Rejected twice on the very same day."

"Twice?"

"Well, there was [someone] who didn't want to get into a love hotel with an insecure, vulnerable maiden all but throwing herself at him," I tell him, my finger tapping at my bottom lip.

Yes, that also draws his eyes. Really, it's like playing on easy mode.

"As more and more time passes, I become increasingly convinced that wasn't my morals acting up, but my self-preservation instincts making an unexpected, possibly dragon-related, comeback."

"And what's [that] supposed to mean?" I ask with an icy tone, dropping my cheerful smile.

He raises a very unimpressed eyebrow as he stops walking, his arms crossed in almost arrogance.

… Damn it. Now I [really] want to tease him.

"It means that I'm pretty sure you have intimate knowledge of a praying mantis mating habits."

"Well, who doesn't love a snack after some vigorous exercise?"

The eyebrow remains precisely the same, the two fingers tapping the outside of his left biceps adding to the stern, unimpressed effect.

Pity the nascent blush ruins the effect.

Actually, that's a lie: it's not ruined at all.

"Hoh? Did you [picture] something right now, Hachiman?"

He closes his eyes and sighs.

Then he steps forward, grabs my upper arms against my body, and forces me upright, just enough that my eyes are right in front of his.

"A couple somethings," he growls out in [that] voice. "Most of which would leave you unable to keep mouthing off at me."

I rub my thighs together beneath my green tartan skirt in a way I make sure he notices. Part of it is even exaggeration.

"Because my mouth would be too busy with more… [engaging] matters?" I ask, my eyes lidded.

"That too," he immediately answers, his growl almost making my eyelids flutter. And then he dives forward and kisses me.

It's been going on since the hotel. I tease him, and he either teases back or decides to make me 'pay' for it.

Honestly, I could stop it anytime I pleased. His grip isn't even that strong, and just shifting my weight would have him on his back on the street without too much of a fuss.

But, as enjoyable as the idea of standing above him, my foot on his chest as he looks up at me is… His tongue wrapping around mine is quite enough to keep my interest.

Really, the boy has had some very extensive practice since this whole thing started.

"You need to find a better way to shut me up," I whisper when he finally allows me to.

"I find the idea hard to grasp," he swiftly ripostes.

And then we both chuckle, his chest beating against mine.

And I lean forward and hug him.

"Thank you," I whisper in his ear, my eyes hidden from his.

His hands lie on my shoulder blades, their warmth steady and reassuring as it seeps through my black cardigan.

"Anytime," he replies.

And I believe him.

Because he knows. He knows what it is that has me on edge, playing my usual mischief up to an obnoxious degree. He knows, and yet he still plays along, tolerates me, coddles me.

... He would've made such a wonderful older brother.

Maybe he'll also make a great husband. If Shizu doesn't claim the spot.

And if they don't throw me away.

***

It is time.

"Go," he whispers from right behind me, his warm breath caressing my ear as much as the single syllable that almost makes me shiver.

"You aren't handing me off to her? Iroha did," I reply without turning around as my eyes refuse to focus on the plaza in front of the station that's only a single block away from me.

"Trust me, you'll want to be alone for this."

"I… Why?"

I refuse to have my voice crack. My voice, though, may have its own ideas.

"Because you don't want me to have this kind of blackmail on you. Think of it as an early birthday present."

"You're just coming up with a way to skip on the agonizing process of choosing a gift I won't mock you for."

"Damn right I am," he says.

And pushes me.

I stumble a single step forward before my training takes over, and I regain my balance.

I could turn around.

I could do so, and joke about how he's a hundred years too early to push me around. About his needing some proper training and lacing that with enough innuendo that he'd be forced to shove his hands down his pockets yet again. And then I could keep the scene going for as long as I needed to until my nerves weren't frayed and my heart stopped hammering against my chest.

I could.

And then I take a step forward, one without needing Hachiman's warm hands on my back pushing me.

And I keep walking.

The trees are still bare. It's a mild winter, but the naked branches reach up to the sky, yellowed and darkened in equal parts by the streetlamps below them as the crowd ebbs and flows around them.

There's a bigger tree in the middle of the plaza, circled by a wooden bench crafted around it. A clock stands next to it, showing it's ten minutes too early for me to meet Shizu.

And she's waiting there for me.

She's wearing a dark blue dress, one I haven't seen before. It's sleeveless, with a cleavage that only lets me see the very start of the shadowed line between breasts I've thought about far too often, and a flared skirt that leaves everything below her knees bare to my hungry eyes, her marvelously toned calves even more defined than usual as she stands on black heels decorated with a single swirl of sequins on each one.

And she's wearing a sheer, creamy shawl wrapped around her upper arms that almost disguises the strength she wields.

I can't help it: I stand and stare.

At the woman I love. At my first love. At the one that got away.

The one in front of me.

She's in profile, all the best for me to admire beauty I forever thought beyond my reach, and the light glitters off her pink lips as if they glowed in the night, as if they were the only guidance I could ever need, but her eyes are brighter, and I could lose myself in the pale, beaming amethysts—

She turns toward me, the motion making her hair sway behind her, and only now do I realize she's wearing it in a high ponytail that leaves her neck bare except for the black choker adorned with dazzling onyx that intermittently shines with borrowed light as the matching, dangling squares in her earrings try to mesmerize my eyes away from Shizuka's surprised face.

And she walks toward me.

She doesn't sashay. She doesn't put one foot right in front of the other, her hips swinging with the motion to capture my gaze. No, she doesn't.

No. Instead, she walks like she usually does, that almost masculine gait of hers that seems on the verge of stumbling over the heels she's not used to wearing.

And that should break the magic. Should free me to quip at her, to maybe make fun of how much she must've been looking forward to this.

It's… precisely the opposite.

Because it's not just a gorgeous woman walking to me. It's not just someone I wouldn't mind having one (or many) one-night stands with. It's not just someone that would make me realize once again I like girls, and I always have.

No.

It's Shizuka.

The woman who broke my heart.

And I can't do anything other than stare at her as she approaches, as she passes from the light of one lamp to the next, clad in shadows that never obscure the beauty she carries, the beauty that took me and never let go.

"You're looking at me weirdly," she says when she's close enough.

"Uh?" I answer and start cursing myself at precisely the same moment.

"You're looking at me weirdly. Hachiman also did. Really, I shouldn't listen to Iroha, I [knew] this didn't suit me, but she was so insistent, and—"

She's rambling.

She's beautiful, a dream, a shameful one, come true, and she's rambling about how it all doesn't suit her.

And Hachiman experienced at least a bit of what I just went through and was merciful enough not to witness my utter shame and lack of grace.

… It may be the best birthday present I've gotten in years.

I step forward, forcing myself to move, to do anything other than just stand and stare at her like a lovestruck moron crushing after her teacher.

She shuts up, her eyes widening.

"Hi," I tell her, a fragile, broken smile on my face.

Her eyes relax, and a soft thing blooms on her lips as she raises a gentle hand to cup my cheek.

"Hi," she answers as her warmth holds me together.

And we stand there, in our little corner of the dark, crowded plaza, beneath a bare tree reaching up to the stars with nude branches of light and shadow.

***

Dinner is a bit awkward, with stuttering conversation that suddenly flows in cheerful bursts of reminiscence only to stop at every obstacle we find along the way. The atmosphere of the bright, little pizza place is good enough to cover for our awkward silences, and the food is more than adequate. I don't even mind eating Italian twice in a row, not when I see Shizuka stare in dread at the goopy, melted cheese dripping off her first slice, and I can all but hear her panic at staining the band of chiffon that accents the shimmering fabric beneath her neckline.

It's... It's all the little things. All the reminders that I fell in love with a woman and not a goddess.

That this isn't mere schoolgirl fancy.

That it endured throughout all the years and heartbreak.

There's one moment where I lean forward, napkin in hand, and wipe a bit of tomato sauce off her lips. And she looks at me not with annoyance, but with gratitude at my impulsive gesture, at my need to take care of the messy woman, and…

If it was Hachiman, I would've kissed her senseless.

If it was Iroha, I would've held her face between my hands, looking into her eyes for what the frustrating girl finds in mine.

It's Shizuka.

And so I hesitate, tell her she's welcome, not to mention it.

And feel the tip of my ears burning.

And then dinner comes to an end, and we have the usual discussion about who should pay, and I decide this time I should win, so I take advantage of her leaving for the bathroom to take care of it and wait outside the door to walk her out of the warm, cheerful place as she protests all the way and swears next time she'll pay for us both.

And I very carefully don't think about what the careless woman means when she says 'next time.'

And then we're on the street, and it's neither cheerful nor warm.

And Shizuka shivers.

Not even thinking about it, I take the tan coat I've been carrying folded over my arm since I left Yukino's place this morning and drape it over Shizuka's shoulders.

She turns toward me to protest because it's also cold for me, but when she does, I see her.

Not as the gorgeous woman I've spent dinner with, but as the one who carried herself like a camera and melancholy music always followed her every step, like the vision out of a cinema screen she so often was. I see my coat, so similar to her own even if I only now realize it, swaying around her with the slight breeze, and it's [her].

Shizuka.

I close my eyes and hurry away from the restaurant's entrance.

"Haruno? Haruno, wait!"

I open my eyes just long enough to glimpse the entrance to an alley, and then, in darkness, I walk toward it until I feel the air shift, and I turn to my right to look inside.

It's empty, dark, only lit by the indirect light from the main street.

It's just what I need.

And so I go inside and lean against the bare brick wall for the second time today, but without Hachiman pushing me against it, only his hand marring the lines drawn over my back.

And I cry.

"Haruno!"

She's in front of me, holding my arms, barely restraining herself from shaking me.

"I… I'm sorry," I manage to mutter.

"Don't! Please, don't apologize, just… just tell me what's wrong."

I open my eyes, my blurry sight making everything even worse as my mind turns her hazy profile into the same picture that's haunted me for years. My greatest defeat.

Yukino was my greatest failure, yes, but Shizuka…

Shizuka was the one who made me give up.

"I am," I answer her.

And she slaps me.

"You aren't." Her voice is glacial, enough to shock me more than the sting on my cheek.

"I—"

"No. No, I won't allow anyone to disparage you. Not even you. [Especially] not you."

I open my mouth to let her know that she's wrong and I am right, that the world—

"I ran away. I hurt you. I never realized how much until you forced me to see it. And I'll hate myself a bit every day of my life for all the pain I made you go through," she says before I can object.

"No," I still try. "You saved me. You made me [whole], Shizuka. I would be… I would be worse than Yukino if I'd never met you. I'd have done something—"

"Don't even think about that," she says. "Don't even tell me that word. Don't even… Don't even let me know the fear of you not being there."

I blink at her, and my tears clear up enough that I can see her cheeks flushed with rage, her eyes glimmering with something unshed.

She's always so beautiful. So heartbreakingly beautiful.

And I just want to—

She leans forward, my cheeks between her hands, her lips near me as they have never been for years.

And she hesitates.

So I lay the tip of my finger on them, on those soft, tender, warm, glimmering lips I yearned for so often.

And push her away.

"Not like this," I plead. "Not because you pity me."

Her eyes are wide as they look for mine.

And, after looking at them for a moment that stretches into something else, she smiles.

"There's that pride of yours," she says, her lips brushing my finger with every syllable. Because I may be strong, or, at least, stronger than many, but this is as far as I can push Shizuka away from me.

And her words…

She knows me.

She's always known me.

She was the first to do so.

"I told Hachiman to chase you," I confess.

"What?"

"That first day. When he kissed you, and you rejected him. When you went out to drink because you couldn't stand the thought of having pushed him away and thought everything was over. I went to his house and took his measure. And then, I told him to chase you."

She remains still, her face the only thing I can clearly see in this dark alley.

"He did," she finally acknowledges my words.

My finger's still on her lips.

"That night… When I kissed you… Did you go out to drown your worries? Were you a wreck at the thought of pushing me away?"

She freezes.

And… And I can't divine the answer that lies beneath it.

"If I did or didn't, that has nothing to do with what should happen [today]," she tells me. And that should be an answer, should have enough clues for me to figure out what really happened.

But either she's too good at avoiding me reading her, or I'm too good at fooling myself, because I don't know. I don't know what she means by this.

And I…

I need it. The truth. The truth of what my first kiss meant.

"Shizuka… Please. Please, I need to know. If somebody… if somebody had pushed me, told me to chase after you, to not let you run away… Would we… Would we…"

She kisses me.

I can't do anything to avoid it. The wall's behind me, and her hands are on my cheeks, and I'm not drunk, not with what little wine I've taken today, but tears are far more disorienting. Debilitating.

And they're running down my face, mingling with our lips as Shizuka caresses them over and over.

"I don't know," she finally whispers, her forehead resting on mine.

And I… I also don't know what to feel at that.

Because it may not be ideal, not the perfect answer that would mend all my wounds.

But it's still better than anything I hoped.

"I don't know, Haruno. Because… you're not the only one who's messed up. And it's taken me years to face my fears and defeats. And I loved you. I did. But I didn't let myself love you that way, because you were my responsibility before you were my friend, and I hated your mother so much I could've strangled the bitch, so the thought of hurting you even a fraction of what she did took my breath away. And then you kissed me."

She stops, her eyes closed right in front of mine, depriving me of clear amethyst and making me want to reach up to caress her cheek.

"You kissed me, and it was… I answered that kiss, Haruno. To my shame, I did. I let myself be kissed by the beautiful girl I'd seen become a gorgeous woman. By the brilliant mind still turning into something I yearned to offer to the world. You don't know how proud I was of you, of every step you took… And how ashamed I was of letting myself accept your touch, even for a moment.

"And… And I thought you wanted things I couldn't offer you. That… that what you'd someday become would need a husband to—"

I slap her.

She rubs her cheek, more shocked than hurt.

And then I hug her.

"I'd burn it all for you," I whisper, my voice heated and harsh.

"I don't want you to give up anything for me," she answers angrily.

"You're the only thing I ever gave up on, and I've regretted it ever since."

Her arms tighten around me, her hold on me almost crushing.

"I love you. I loved you since you first saw me, since you let me know I didn't fool you, that you knew who I was," I tell her, my voice a barely comprehensible wreck.

"I love you. I loved you since the first time you cracked a joke at me, since the first time you let me see what you were hiding," she answers.

And there are tears in her voice.

Maybe the same kind of tears there were that night that now seems so long ago, when I found her trying to drown herself in cheap beer after pushing Hachiman away.

I don't know.

Maybe I'll never know.

But, as I hold the crying woman I love, and she holds me in turn, as we let years of pain finally be shared after so long dancing around open wounds that we hid from each other…

For the first time in far too long, I allow myself the hope of maybe one day finding out.

==================

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!