All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! [Oregairu, Poly]

Words are inadequate.

I can't count how many times I've thought this line since I confronted Yui and Yukino in the room that I will always think of as ours. The many occasions in which it's been proven true. The times that a touch, a look, or even a scent have meant…

Have meant much more than words ever did.

This is true in fiction, as well. There's a reason why so many genres lean on the visual and auditory. Why visual novels will invest in swelling soundtracks, why animation studios will polish a single frame much more thoroughly than entire segments of dialogue.

Because words are… inadequate.

Not worthless. Not that. Not by a long shot.

But it is in the space between words that we often find meaning.

In shared silences through a car ride, with a wise woman sitting by your side. In refraining from the impulse to say something stupid just to fill something that doesn't need to be filled. In all the thoughts and feelings that words would usually distract us from.

Despite it all, despite everything that I've lived through… I like words. I live in them. I think through them. I have to make an effort to take in the soft touch of the leather upholstery by my side, to acknowledge that the inside of Shizu's car does not reek of stale tobacco, and that's yet another sign of her caring more for the things around her than she lets on. I have to consciously refrain from diving into another string of worded thoughts carrying me ahead and away from this very moment so I can process the steady thrum of the car's engine and how much smoother riding inside it is than when Mom and Dad took Komachi and me on a field trip on their utilitarian sedan that I now know they could've afforded to upgrade quite a few times over.

But, more than anything…

I see her.

By my side, trying to look as if she's focusing solely on the road ahead even as she brushes her hair back over her ear and her fingers trace a languid line down a neck I've kissed… not enough times. Not enough times, because I owe her a lifetime of kisses, caresses, and embraces.

"Stop looking at me like that," she weakly mutters without looking my way.

"You'll have to offer me quite a bribe to get me to look away from you," I say with a smile that I only notice after a moment.

"You're incorrigible," she says, still looking in front of her even as her lips curl upwards and she tucks her chin.

I am tempted to answer her. To maybe joke about how my beautiful Christmas Cake mentor could at least try and correct her wayward student now that his delinquent blood's roar has become a deafening battle cry.

To say a hundred stupid things just to see which of them would get her to laugh at me or with me. I don't care which.

But… words are inadequate.

And so I just look at her. I just take in that profile of hers made to be cast on a silver screen, the masculine grace of her decisive movements, the glint of sunlight reflected off glass buildings twinkling past her brow.

I admire her.

And… And I stay like that. Observing her. Taking her in. allowing something that surpasses all of my words and thoughts to be engraved in my heart so that I can come back to it, to her image and memory, when I need all the strength I know I'm going to need.

She keeps driving, her eyes sometimes darting toward mine, her smile going from shy to mildly annoyed, amused, or pleasantly embarrassed as she tucks her hair unnecessarily back twice more before her car gently slows down, and her brow furrows in focus while she parks.

Then… Then, the ignition key turns off, and the rumbling of the engine fades away to leave us in deeper silence.

"We haven't talked," she whispers without looking my way.

I unlock my seatbelt and guide it to snap back in place behind me before I turn toward her and reach for her face with hands extended like a supplicant's.

"We will have time to talk," I say, maybe trying to delay what will need to come sooner or later.

Her eyes look at mine, and my heartbeat picks up when I see the corners of her lips twitch in an attempt at repressing her smile that I understand perfectly well because it's the same reflex I sometimes have to fight back when encountering Iroha in a school corridor with too many witnesses who would be reticent to sign a permission to be filmed slip.

The same spark of joy at looking at someone you love.

"You aren't going to sweet talk your way out of this," she says with what I hope is fond frustration.

"I mean, I wouldn't say I've ever sweet-talked my way in or out of anything. I, if anything, am more of an expert in sour talking."

"You're incorrigible," she repeats.

"Or maybe you're too lazy to try," I shoot back.

Her cheeks are warm and soft in my palms, and I can feel the tightening of her jaw muscles that accompanies the narrowing of her eyes and makes my smile turn into a grin.

I still am not fast enough to stop the kiss that surges forward—not that I was inclined to do so.

Soft lips are on mine, still tasting of inadequately juvenile cherry lip gloss. A tongue that is usually more gentle pushes into my mouth to drag mine into a disorienting, swirling kaleidoscope of pleasure that is only accented by her hands possessively clutching at the hair on the back of my head when she pulls me closer until…

Until I realize how badly I want her to never let go.

Which is, of course, when she lets go.

Steel eyes stare right into mine as her forehead rests against me, feeling like she's both stoking and soothing the fever she brings out of me, and her pink lips are parted in cruel temptation, gusts of warm air washing over me, reminding me of going to sleep with her by my side, surrounded by blankets carrying her scent, enveloping me, reassuring me that…

That words were inadequate.

That she didn't need to speak to get me to relax and unwind, to let go of the long day I had gone through. That I was safe, and warm, and loved.

With her.

And with Haruno, but, really, that's merely a slightly discordant note in the symphony of reassurance that Shizu's bed was until this very morning.

"I love you," she reminds me.

"I love you," I tell her out of sheer bubbling need.

Her eyes soften, and her thumbs press along my temples.

"We'll talk. Today. When you get back from school," she says.

"And here I was, hoping that we could slide right into the stage of married life where we pretend to be strangers and never talk to one another," I answer her with a renewed grin.

"You wouldn't be able to shut up if your life depended on it. Especially if your life depended on it," she says, her cheeks pushing up on my palms with her likely fond yet exasperated smile.

"I can think of a few things that would silence me quite effectively," I say, sliding my right hand down her cheek, her slender neck, over the front of the inconveniently stiff cloth of her black vest, and then cupping the insinuated form behind it, pressing up and forward, feeling the pleasant weight as I watch her face so that I can catch the hint of desire that she tries to hide from me.

"You're incorrigible," she mutters once again.

"I am yours," I say, not quite correcting her.

Her eyes open wide, and I catch the vulnerability and shock for the fraction of a second it takes for her to pull me back into her kiss.

To show me that there was more than a hint of desire.

I cradle her neck and push forward, bending her back, making it feel as if I'm taller than her, as if I could ever conquer and dominate the impossible conjunction of wisdom and foolishness mewling into my mouth, and her hands go from my hair to my upper back, her weight hanging from her purchase on my body.

"We aren't going to have sex in my car, Hachi," she says with a very unconvincing flush.

"Not with that attitude," I say with a crooked smile before I dive right back down to her neck and fulfill some of my earlier urges regarding just how many kisses I owe her.

She allows herself to moan, to tilt her head to further expose pale, tender, smooth skin to my lips and tongue as I lick, suck, nibble, and kiss. As I give her as much pleasure as I can while her stupid anti-NTR barrier remains up and impeding my touch with frustratingly stiff fabric.

I keep kissing and caressing her, holding her, pulling her against me, possessing her.

"I… I guess we could do something… quick?" she asks with trembling eyes.

"Woman, the way you're making me feel, I promise at least one quick thing. Followed by a couple of slow ones."

"That bad, huh?" she asks with a hint of mirth.

"Shizu… you're you," I say as the only explanation I need.

Her eyes are clear, and her smile brightens into something pure enough to make my heart ache with the need to one day see it in Iroha and Haruno's eyes. To be able to get all of them to be…

Happy. Uncomplicatedly happy.

Like I feel we all could be.

Of course, that dream (and a few others of a slightly less wholesome bent) are immediately shattered to pieces when a slender hand finds its place in the middle of my chest, and Shizu pushes me away until I'm once again seated on the copilot seat, with her reaching across from me to open the passenger door.

I look at her with as much mournful dejection as I can muster without reliving the ending of A Dog of Flanders, and she, cruel woman that she is, laughs.

"Go. You're gonna be late," she says.

"Seriously?" I ask her, now keenly aware of the dire need to adopt Standard Adolescent Gait Number Two as soon as possible.

"I left Haruno hanging. I don't see why you think it would be any different with you."

I flutter my eyelashes, pout, and do my best Iroha impression before answering:

"Because you always liked to play favorites?"

"Out!"

"Wha—I was kidding."

Hands no longer intent on roaming my body push on my shoulder, and she turns on her seat to add feet that, not that long ago, were decisive in getting me out of her bed.

"Out," she repeats, masterfully reinforcing non-verbal language with a concise summation of her feelings and intent.

"I feel that physical violence does not bode well for our future cohabitation," I say through clenched teeth.

"There'll be no future cohabitation if that gets you to skip even more classes."

"To be fair, given how little attention I pay, the only likely effect that me skipping would have on my grades is getting the teachers to hate me less."

"Stop making sense!" she yells from where she's pushing her back against the closed door of her car.

"Stop attacking my core values!" I say before I twist my body between her hands and free myself of her pushing, and…

And…

Huh.

"Get off me," she mutters with scarlet cheeks that send a somewhat contradictory message.

"Yeah. Sure," I say.

She arches an accusing eyebrow.

I try not to rub my hardened cock against the front of her pants.

Given our simultaneous hisses, I may have failed in my gentlemanly pursuit. Mission successfully failed, as they say.

"Hachi, I am serious—"

"I'm serious. And don't call me Shirley."

"Couldn't you be a fast learner for anything other than quips and sex?!"

"I am also a decent cook. I, in fact, could go back to your home and give you a very quick reminder of how good I am at making you breakfast while wearing the same thing that Haruno wasn't wearing moments ago."

"Sex. I'm going to count your cooking as sex."

"I'm both flattered and confused."

"Welcome to the club," she says, only to stop and let out a soft groan when her attempt at squaring her shoulders in an intimidating manner ends up with her shifting a part of her carelessly pressed against a part of me that would be very happy to stop doing any pressing at all so long as that meant getting inside her—

"Hachi," she says with eyes narrowed in something hard to untangle at this very moment.

"Shizu?" I ask while… While holding myself above her, and—

"I'm going to make you do your homework when you get back," she says.

And then, as I recoil from the sadistic threat with an appropriately dramatic gasp, her hands push up on my chest, and I almost fall out of her car before I catch myself on the open door.

"Are you sure…?" I try.

"I'm going to go back home and cross my fingers that Haruno doesn't have any classes today because I need to fuck one of my lovers without feeling like I'm negatively impacting their future," she answers through clenched teeth.

"I mean, you just sacrificed your entire career path for—"

"And I don't want you to sacrifice your career path—"

"I feel like I've taken great strides in fulfilling my lifelong ambition to become a househusband—"

"I can and will punch you."

"If I've learned anything from you and Haruno, it is that this is pillow talk for you."

"… You being right doesn't make you right."

"I'm pretty certain that it does, in fact—"

"Hachi."

"Yes, dear?"

"Go to school."

"Yes, dear," I say with a defeated slump of my shoulders… right before I propel myself from the open door to the surprised woman and crash into her with a kiss that I make as intense as I can, doing to her tongue what she did to mine earlier.

"Later," I say through ragged gasps.

"Get out of my car before I get you inside of me—out!"

"Yes, dear."

And then I force myself to get out and close the door behind me before I stand there, in the middle of the sidewalk, despondently looking at my disheveled girlfriend through the window until she gesticulates with her hands for me to go away.

Which I, as much of a connoisseur of social cues as ever, take as a subtle hint to walk to school.

Just… with a bigger smile than usual. By which I mean an actual smile.

Mostly because Shizu's car remains parked as she watches over me.

***

"You still there?" I ask into my cellphone.

"I… Maybe?" she says.

"Good."

"Hachi, please, don't tell me you're going to try to seduce me again. I don't know how much I can—"

"I need you to stay right where you are, Shizu."

"Hachi, please—"

"So I can go and get my bag. I forgot it inside your car."

For a moment, there's only silence on the other end of the line.

The moment doesn't last long, and, while I run back to Shizu's parked car, my smile shifts into something less wistful and more cheerful when I hear my woman whine.

It's good to know that my suffering is shared.

***

"Go to the principal's office," an inadequately mirthful English teacher says.

I manage to shift my teacher-dealing protocols in time not to shoot him a despondent moue and instead manage to scowl like a surly, malcontent, burgeoning delinquent is supposed to before taking the by now disturbingly familiar path toward Inoue's office.

The secretary offers me a suspicious glare and shoos me in without me having to wait for undetermined reasons, which I take as either a good or a bad sign, and then I step into the office with the tall glass window behind the balding, grey, kind man.

"In my defense, my parents called yesterday, and I, for once, had officially valid reasons to skip," I say, getting things out of the way as efficiently as possible.

"You did, didn't you?" he says with a quirked eyebrow before tilting his head toward the chair in front of him.

Drats.

I warily sit down in front of him and wait for him to further question me.

And wait.

And keep waiting.

"Is this one of those interrogation tactics where you're hoping that I'll start talking and incriminate myself if you give me enough room to? Because I'll be sad to inform you that it's very unlikely that I'll run out of incriminating, yet unrelated to my academic pursuits, confessions before your workday is over," I politely tell him.

He, for reasons known only to educators tasked with overseeing the Hikigaya siblings, sighs.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

I pause.

I look at him. Really look at him. I… I look at the person and not the job. At the man who's been impossibly kind and understanding through this whole mess that could've cost him his own career.

"I'll be," I tell him with a tired smile.

He slowly closes his eyes and sinks back into his tall leather chair, his shoulders noticeably lowering as he allows tension to drain out of him before looking back at me.

"Good," he says.

"Do you… do you have any more questions?" I say, maybe offering something I shouldn't, but… but trusting him.

Trusting him despite all my deeply ingrained need not to.

"Just one," he says, leaning forward to rest his forearms on the imposing desk between us. "Just what possessed you to unleash a Yoshiteru Zaimokuza on my staff?"

I blink at him.

He very noticeably doesn't blink back.

And I feel like this would be a perfect time for me to smile sheepishly as I rub the back of my neck.

***

Lunchtime comes around faster than I thought it would, as I spent most of my classes trying not to think for a change, and so I found myself taking notes.

The horror.

But, well, lunchtime does come, and that means there are no more teacher-shaped excuses to distract myself with.

Which means I need to find my own distractions.

… I'm sure if I was an even slightly different character, this thought would've been followed by ominous thunder.

'Kuno Tatewaki did have his good points.'

No, he didn't.

'No, he didn't.'

Right. So, as I find myself in agreement with my own brain, and that can't be a good thing at all, I desperately strive to think about what to do to get away from my own thoughts before I drive myself insane.

The first, likely more sensible, yet definitely riskier idea is to go hunt down Iroha and try not to end up being filmed in a semi-public location.

The second possibility is to retreat to my club room and talk with Yui and Yukino, delighting in destroying the lily-scented mood of our shared room as I inflict the horrors of the past few days on two women at an impressionable age who shouldn't be exposed to what passes as sanity in my life.

Speaking of sanity? I guess I could track down my two male friends and share lunch with Saika and Yoshiteru, one of whom may be elated to learn that the principal of his high school has protocols Christened after him.

Yeah. I could do all of that.

And, well, there's a funny thing. In fiction? The rule of three is ever-present. It works in humor, presenting two elements to establish a trend and a third that clashes against it. It works in storytelling, in pretty much the same way. It works in…

In a lot of things.

Rule of three. Three elements.

Choose one.

I look at the classroom around me. At classmates who have gained names and distinct faces as I've gotten dragged out of the safe confines of my head and out into a world that I don't always understand as neatly as I keep thinking I should.

There's Hayama and his clique, the blond man shooting me a cordial, brief smile that I know hides some wariness and discomfort, Tobe grinning guilelessly at me, Ebina frantically scribbling something in her drawing pad that I'm uncomfortably certain will feature me and a certain prince of Sobu High…

Miura isn't there, and neither is Yui, for reasons that I'm sure Yukino won't be upset about.

And… That's a fourth option; approaching the group of people that I've interacted with the most in this school, other than the closest friends I've ever had. Maybe a casual greeting, something that reinforces the idea that we are more than casual acquaintances. That they've been as much of a part of my life here as I have been of theirs.

That we've gone together on trips, on an amusement park visit that was fateful enough in getting me and Iroha where we now are. That these are, rather than anonymous, hostile normies, people.

People I may not have that much in common with.

Except a shared year that I suspect has reshaped not only my life.

So I smile in a way that I'm pretty sure Miura would deem creepy, even if it's about as sincere and warm as I can make it under the circumstances, and stand up, looking at the fourth option that wasn't part of the rule of three.

Then I get out of the classroom, take my phone out of my pocket, and call the fifth option.

Even if, in too many ways, many of them unhealthy, she will always be number one.

"Hey," my little sister says from the other end of the phone.

"Hey," I answer as I walk along the windows that look out of the corridor and over the same yard that Yoshiteru gazed upon yesterday when I called him to vent and rely on my oldest friend.

"Are you okay?" she asks with a hint of doubt.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think I am. And you? How did you spend the night?"

"… Likely worse than you, oh grossther of mine," she says.

I once again smile, but in a way that would not get mislabeled by Miura.

"Well, Haruno did have a good surprise ready for me when I woke up," I say.

"Gah! Gross! Super gross! Hachiman-levels of gross!" my cute, adorable, traumatized little sister says.

And so I manage to do the one thing I thought all but impossible yesterday at this very hour:

I laugh.

Without bitterness. With joy. With all the love I can feel for both girlfriends and family…

I laugh.

And, of course, Komachi complains about how creepy it sounds.

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

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