#where maria and kamitani embark upon the world's most stupid discussion trying to hash out the particulars of this arrangement

[sabraeal]

don’t speak boyshit, Chapter 7

[Read on AO3]

“You’re not sick.” The hag says it with authority, the kind she only has because she’s not the one whose skin is squeezing her bones like it’s last year’s uniform. “Go to school.”

Kamitani grunts, shrugging his shoulders like it might make his body sit right for once. “You don’t know that.”

“Of course I do, I’m your mother.” Everyone says he’s got his mom’s eyes, straight down to the squint, but he knows his don’t look as stupid when they roll. “You probably just have some test you don’t want to deal with. What is it? English? Japanese? Chemistry? Or are you worried about midterms already?”

“I do just fine in chemistry, no thanks to--” He grits his protest between his teeth. “Whatever. Exams aren’t for weeks yet. Can’t you see I’m actually--?”

That hag just shakes her head. “Try something else. Did you forget to do your homework? Oh, or maybe you’re avoiding some--”

“I just feel weird, all right?” he snaps, arms folding across his chest like a fence. “Like, I don’t know, all itchy or whatever.”

“Oh.” His stomach may already be a restless pot about to boil, but it flips when that woman smiles, all knowing. “I get it. This is some puberty thing--”

“I’m just sick, okay?” His face has got to be feverish enough now to make some mercury rise. “How are you so sure I’m not?”

The hag huffs, like he’s being the ridiculous one here. “Because if you were sick, you wouldn’t be down here complaining. You’d be in your room under the covers, acting like you’re going some ill antelope, wandering off from the herd to die.”

Well, he’ll give it to her, that’s a good point. “Can’t you just get a thermometer or something?”

“Fine.” She throws up her hands. “But if it’s normal, you’re going to school

Ten minutes later, he’s glaring at the tiny numbers like he could make them inch up to thirty-seven degrees from will alone. “I still feel weird.”

Mom claps him on the shoulder. “Walk it off, champ.”

That weirdness clings to him all morning, makes his tie sit too tight-- Hebihara snaps at him in the hall to straighten it, and Kamitani makes sure to shove that thing so deep in his bag it’d take a team of archaeologists to find it-- and his sweater itch. Which he could deal with; having the check engine flash every few days is pretty much his whole experience with puberty. It’s just--

“Is that the girl from the advanced class?” Saginuma leans over his desk, little shard of his chips falling from his mouth because he’s a fucking animal. “You know, what’s-her-name?”

Usokawa huffs, all nervous. “W-What’s she doing down here?”

His palms go clammy, stomach clenching in anticipation, and still, he doesn’t put it together, not until Side Ponytail stands up and calls out, “Inomata? Are you looking for someone?”

He doesn’t mean to look up. It’s just a reflex, a quick glance to figure out what Usokawa’s on about so that he can just call him an idiot and move on. But instead she’s there, idling awkwardly at the door like she doesn’t belong. Because she doesn’t.

Well, if he thought living through some mystery illness sucked, figuring it out is worse. Every nerve fires at once, trying to figure out which combination will get him out of his seat and through the door. Anything to keep him from having to talk to her again.

The other girl’s up there too now, the shorter one, giggling as she asks, “Kashima-kun, maybe?”

Kashima’s already halfway out of his seat, all curious because he’s too nice to look annoyed, and that’s when she lifts her chin, glaring out over the short girl’s shoulder. “I’m looking for Kamitani.”

Usokawa’s head whips around. “Dude,” he whispers, eyes round behind his glasses. “What did you do? Fail a test or something?”

Worse. He didn’t answer one of her questions.

“Nothing,” he mutters, getting to his feet. “Come on, Kashima, let’s go.”

The kid stares, like somehow he’s not sure how words work. “M-me? But Inomata-san’s looking for--?”

“I’m grabbing some bread.” With a huff, Kamitani grits out again, “Let’s go.”

Still, he‘s just crouched there, wasting precious seconds. “But I brought lunch--?”

“Don’t care.” He grabs Kashima’s wrist, hauling him up. Inomata may have gotten one door all cluttered up with his classmates and their questions, but there’s a second one. A fact he’s going to make good use of. “You’re coming with me.”

Kashima makes a good show of protesting, sputtering and stammering as he drags him across the classroom floor, but for all his carrying on, he doesn’t try to stop him. Not even when Kamitani jerks him over the door jamb, school shoes only missing the metal slide by inches. It’s one less sound to draw her attention, which is all he cares about.

“Kamitani,” the kid bleats out, glancing over his shoulder like he thinks any moment Inomata is going to bear down on them with the wrath of a righteous god. “I don’t see why we have to--”

“I’m hungry,” he grumbles, maneuvering Kashima in front of him. Kamitani hardly needs any help navigating the crowd-- he’s tall enough that people get out of his way without encouragement-- but the goody-goody needs to be babysat. The last thing he needs is his insurance to get a crisis of conscience right before the reckoning bears down on them. “You need a better reason?”

“But I don’t see what that has to do with me?” he yelps, eyes so wide they start eating up his eyebrows.

Too bad Kashima’s not a dog, or better yet-- a younger brother. At least then he’d do what he’s told. “I like company.”

Kashima glances back over his shoulder, brows shuffle like a deck of cards. “No, you don--”

“Hey!”

Great. Kamitani grits his teeth. Barely a meter down the hall and they’re already out of time. “C’mon, Kashima, get a move on.”

His eyes are wild, trailing over his shoudler. “But, Inomata--”

“Stop!”

Her shout’s got enough steel in it to arrest a grown man, but Kamitani hasn’t coasted through all of gakuen by doing what angry women shout at him, and he’s sure as hell isn’t about to start now. Not by listening to Inomata. He doesn’t even spare a look back, propelling Kashima down the hall with the same shove that’s tagged more runners than anyone else on the team combined. But when he goes to follow--

He pulls up short, like a dog on a leash. Inomata’s already pale, but next to the navy of his sweater her fingers are white as stripes, crushing the wool beneath them. He tugs, just a bit, to test her, but they don’t budge, not a millimeter. Damn, that’s some grip.

It’s a mistake to look up; her glare’s waiting, pinning him the way beetles are to cork board. “You can’t just avoid me because you don’t want to listen.”

Watch me doesn’t work when she’s got hands like a vise. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not just avoiding you,” he informs her, enjoying the dubious twist her mouth takes. “I’m going to get some food, and I don’t want to talk to you. It’s different.”

Inomata doesn’t have nails to speak of, but what little she has pricks through the wool. “If you would just hear me out--”

“Don’t want to.”

She snorts, just like a boar, annoyed. “I’m only asking for you to give me a minute--”

“Oi, Kashima!” he calls out, drawing wide-eyed confusion from where the crowd’s carried the kid down the hall. “Can you wait up a sec?”

Inomata’s grip tightens. He’s going to have bruises at this rate. “You wouldn’t.”

He rolls his head along his shoulders, letting his mouth twitch toward a grin. “Try me.”

“Kamitani?” Kashima stumbles against the flow, tripping over a few first-years before he finally ends up close enough to hear over the noise. “Did you need me for something?”

“Just a sec.” He stares down at her; funny how much easier it is to catch all the daggers her glare throws at him when he has the high ground. “Okay, now go ahead and say what you want to say.”

All that huffy stubbornness deflates underneath the pressure of Kashima’s polite confusion. “We’re not done talking about this,” she warns, but it’s nothing to tug away from her now, the strength gone right out of her.

“Yeah, yeah.” I have unlimited access to Kashima, his grin tells her, and by the way she pouts, Inomata receives the message loud and clear. “We’ll see.”

With a huff, she spins on her heel, storming down the hall with a much smaller wake.

Kashima struggles to stand at his shoulder, staring after her. “What was that all about?”

“Who knows,” he lies, rubbing at his wrist. “C’mon, let’s get back to class.”

“W-what?” Kashima is constitutionally incapable of glaring, but he comes close now. “But you said you had to get lunch!”

It’s easy to shrug his shoulders, to let all this roll off his back like water off a duck. “Just remembered I brought mine.”

The girls always groaned over gym second year, complaining that having it first period ruined their work or whatever, but in Kamitani’s opinion, having it straight after lunch is worse. Sure, a few of them might have smudged some make up, but he’d take that over the stomach cramp he’ll earn running the track on a full stomach.

At least the girls change earlier now, using part of the lunch period to go swap clothes in the bathrooms, rather than making all the boys wait outside while they switched clothes in the classroom. That shit used to take forever, and by the time the guys were done, it felt like they’d lost half the time on the field. Barely get through calisthenics before Mamizuka-sensei was waving them inside.

Now the only chunk out of PE is how long it takes fifteen boys to change into a t-shirt and shorts. Which should be three minutes tops, except--

“Dude,” Usokawa coughs. “What did you do?”

He’s got a whole policy about Usokawa’s bullshit: don’t fucking get involved. But he’ll admit-- once he’s got his sweater over his head, he does try to figure out what that idiot is on about. The guy’s barely got two brain cells to rub together most days, but sometimes whatever’s rattling around in there is entertaining.

It just so happens that today it’s him. At least, that’s what he assumes from the stare he’s fixed with. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“With Inomata!” the idiot hisses, just loud enough to sound like a whisper without actually being one. “She came here for you didn’t she?”

“Yeah, man! Are you in trouble or something?” Saginuma’s shirtless, the cotton rucked up in his hands ready to wear, but he pauses to lean in anyway, like they aren’t on the fucking clock. “Did you break a rule? Flunk a test?”

Kamitani glares. “I don’t flunk tests. I’m not you idiots.”

“Right, you just come close,” Usokawa allows, still wearing his stupid uniform. “Then what is it?”

He grunts, dragging his shirt over his head. “Why are you asking me? She comes here for Kashima all the time, and I don’t see you guys asking him what fucking color his underwear is.”

Kashima flushes; with his shirt off, it races right down to his chest. “Kamitani!”

“Well, yeah, but you don’t hang out with her like Kashima does.” Saginuma finally puts his shorts on, hands sitting on his hips. “So it’s weird, you know what I mean?”

“No.”

“Hey wait.” Ebizawa’s halfway through tying his sneakers and looking too thoughtful for the effort. “Didn’t you both disappear during the hanami? Kashima said he saw you walking off after her.”

Kashima holds up his hands, like that’ll keep him from glaring a hole right through his nosy face. “I just said you walked off in the same direction! Not, er...”

“Oh ho ho ho!” Great, now Usokawa got his chin pinched between his fingers, looking far too smug to survive this conversation. “Maybe Kamitani-kun is in some other kind of trouble then?”

His teeth grit around a, “What?”

“You know how it is. You meet a girl under the sakura, petals are falling around you, there’s magic in the air...” Usokawa flutters his eyelashes like he’s the one with his back to the tree. “Stuff happens...”

“Get your head out of the gutter.” he snaps, shoving his head through his shirt. “Like I’d do anything like that.”

“Yeah, c’mon,” Saginuma laughs, shaking his head. “Any other girl in our class would be happy to be cornered by Kamitani, so why the hell would he go do that with Inomata?”

The thing is: he agrees. Or well, as much as he can ever agree with something that comes out of these idiots’ mouths. He’s spent the last six years dodging confessions from nearly half the female student body because girlfriends are a fucking pain; the last thing he’d ever do is to turn around and shack up with the most annoying chick he knows.

And yet when Saginuma says it like that, like there’s something wrong with her, his hand starts to itch. The kind that makes him think that Saginuma’s smiling face looks really fucking punchable.

“You don’t need to say it like that.” Kashima’s always been the sort of kid that flaps in the breeze, couching all his confrontation in ums and ers and burying his meaning in a whine. But now he looks straight at Saginuma, inches taller than the last time the school measured. “Inomata-san is a good person. She might be a little high-strung, sure, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with her.”

No, but now Kamitani has a strong worry there’s something wrong with him. He drags a hand down his face, like somehow that might scrub the last ten minutes from his head. “Whatever, can we just go run our fucking laps now?”

Ebizawa groans. “Only you would look forward to that, Kamitani.”

He grunts, shoving on his shoes. “It’s easier than putting up with you morons.”

“Thanks for staying late, Kamitani-senpai.” Sato’s hair is too short to tie up in a ponytail-- I never liked stringing that through a cap, she huffed when the first years asked her if she’d ever grow it out-- so she just pushes a strand of it behind her ear. “I know it’s the club’s off day, but it’s a huge help to have two hands on deck for inventory.”

“We should have made the whole club hang back,” he grumbles, brushing some dust off his sleeve. He’s not sure when the last time the storage shed was cleaned out, but it certainly wasn’t by any of the captains he’d played under. “At least maybe then they’ll stop just throwing stuff in there without looking. I’m sure as hell not gonna go clean up their shit again.”

Makino-senpai would have huffed. She would have waggled a finger and told him that just because she was the club manager didn’t make her their mom either. But Sato just tilts her head back, a small hand rubbing at her chin. “That’s not a bad idea. Do you think you could bring it up to them? I would, but I feel like they might not take me seriously since I’m, you know...”

A first year, hand-picked by Makino-senpai from the middle grade’s team last fall. That should be enough clout to box the ears of these idiots, in his opinion, but, well-- he’s not stupid. The old hag might be the bane of his existence, but she hasn’t rattled on about lack of respect for having possession of two complete chromosomes for nothing.

“Yeah,” he grunts, shoving his hands in his pocket. “I can box ‘em around the ears for good measure, too.”

She laughs; the same trilling one that blonde girl does, the one in their class that’s always hanging around Kashima. “Well, sure, okay. Just don’t do that literally, senpai.”

“Don’t see why not.” He shrugs, scratching an annoyance between his shoulders. “They probably deserve it.”

“Probably.” Sato’s the kind of cute that always has half the team sighing and making eyes-- and the other half complaining that they prefer someone mature like Makino-- but when she grins, it stretches tight across her teeth, bloody-minded. “But if you do that, we’ll have a heck of a time getting to Koshien this summer with half our players benched.”

Yeah, she’ll fill Makino-senpai’s shoes just fine. “Fine,” he allows with a sniff. “I’ll let ‘em off easy.”

“Thanks. And again, I appreciate that you stayed behind.” Her shoes scuff on the sidewalk before going silent, and for the second time in as many days, his stomach drops. Sato’s a nice enough kid, he’d hate for her to ruin it by being a girl about him being decent. “Make sure you tell your girlfriend I’m sorry for keeping you.”

“Girlfriend?” He shakes his head. If this is a come on, it’s the first time he’s heard it. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Oh?” There’s nothing leading about that sound, only curiosity, and when he whips around she’s not looking at him. Oh no, she’s looking down, tracing the slope of the hill, right down to where it blends into the entrance, and-- “Isn’t that her standing by your bike?”

He’s not trying to be quiet, not even a little, but still that girl has the gall to startle when he grunts out, “You really don’t know when to quit do you?”

“I--!” Her back arches off the post like someone’s put a current through it before the rest of her follows, propelled forward until she scuffs up to a stop in front of him under the awning. Her mouth works, as wide and round as her stupid eyes, but all she comes up with is: “You!”

“Yeah, me.” Air hisses through his nose, but he grits his teeth before he can get any further. “Have you been waiting here since class got out?”

“Wha--? Not the whole time!” Her whole face ripens like a tomato, so quick he’s surprised she doesn’t faint from the rush. Kashima’s never mentioned what Inomata’s post-graduate plans are, but whatever it is, it better not involve lying. You know, since she’s shit at it. “I went to club.”

Kamitani’s always been tall, but that last growth spurt second year really gave him something to work with. He uses every last inch of it to loom over Inomata, folding his arms and letting his doubt fall as heavy as a piano from a window.

“I did!” she insists, defiant and squirrely all at once. “I just I told the president I had a personal issue.”

“Inomata-san skipping out on school duties.” His whistles, impressed. “Didn’t expect to see that today.”

Most girls blush all delicate, just a rosy tint on their cheeks that makes them look all cute or whatever, but Inomata approaches it the same way she does everything: head on, looking like she’s got a rash all up and down her throat. “I’m not skipping! I’m excused for personal reasons.”

He snorts. “That’s supposed to be because your grandpa died or something. Not because you’re late to being a pain in the ass.”

“M-me?” She huffs, fists on her hips as she reminds him, “You’re the one who won’t finish our conversation!”

“Uh, I did.”

“You didn’t.” She glowers, like somehow he’ll be intimidated by an ill-tempered girl. Like she hasn’t met he mom before or something. “You just laughed.”

A grin threatens to escape containment, twitching at the corner of his lips. “That seems like a pretty good answer. Especially since you wanted to ask me to give you romance advice.”

“I wanted you to tell me about boys,” she snaps, that rash reaching finger up to her cheekbones. “I don’t see why you’re being so strange about it, it’s just information. You’re already a boy, that makes you practically an expert.”

There’s something sad about Inomata trying to stroke his ego like this, like if she just greases his wheels a little he might not squeak when she pushes him. “You don’t care what boys think, you care what Kashima thinks.”

If he thought she was flushed before, she looks like she could be an entry for spontaneous combustion now. “I didn’t say that!”

"I mean, you did.” He steps closer, enjoying the way she flinches. “That’s the whole reason you even want me, right? Because I’m his friend or whatever.”

“I...” Her mouth works, trying out about half of a dozen words before she lets it snap shut, glaring at him like somehow that’s his problem.

He reaches out, grabbing his bike off the rack. “Great talk.”

“No, wait! Fine. I--” her breath hisses through her teeth-- “I did say that. About how being friends makes you a good candidate for being a tutor.”

Kamitani shrugs, stunted by the death grip he had on his handlebars. “Sucks for you then. I don’t know anything about what he likes. Frankly, I don’t think Kashima’s got a handle on it either.”

“I understand,” she blurts out, looking anywhere but at him. “I do. But even...even just regular boy stuff would be helpful. Anything, because I don’t really...um...know...about...” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Any of that...”

He shifts, annoyance dragging its nails beneath his skin. “No shit. Who would want to hang around and let you nag them?”

Kamitani has a reputation-- one he’s been building since middle school, when girls started giving him sly side-eyes and talking to his shoes instead of his face-- as a guy who doesn’t care about tender feelings. As the one who finds boxes of Valentine’s Day chocolates in his cubby and tips them in the trash. Someone who can field a confession with a simple, “Not interested.”

But sometimes, sometimes, he knows it can be too much. Back in the middle grades he tossed out a box of a dozen homemade chocolates; it wasn’t until he glanced in the bin that he saw the wrapper wasn’t from any store he knew. Freshman year he’d ragged on a batter limping to home, only for them to find the kid’s ankle swollen twice the size of a baseball back in the dugout. Only a few months after, D-- that guy left, the hag had sent him up to his room for something stupid and he’d yelled out, this is why Dad couldn’t take it anymore.

So, he doesn’t need to see behind Inomata’s fluttering hand to know what kind of expression she’s hiding. Or that once again, he’s let himself too far of the leash.

He stifles a sigh. “Fine. What do I get out of it?”

Her gaze jumps the fence of her fingers, wide and utterly blank as it fixes on him. God, this girl didn’t think about this stupid plan at all.

“As I said--” he lifts his handlebars again, trying to disengage the bike from the rack-- “great talk.”

“Wait!” Her fingers are white against his grips, bracing the bike in place. Impressive, considering that she probably doesn’t know what a free-weight is, let alone lifts them. “Study!”

He blinks. “What?”

“Study.” With a shuddering breath, she looks up at him, eyes flinty enough to start a spark. “Midterms are coming up, aren’t they? I can help you study.”

That stops him in his tracks. Inomata’s held the top spot in their class five years running, both Nezu and Yagi nipping at her heels but never landing a bite. She might not be a popular pick for slumber parties-- or parties at all, for that matter-- but around exam time there’s always some idiot that tries to tempt her into a study group, only to be met with a shoulder so cold it could freeze fire solid.

And now here she is, offering it up on a platter. Not something he can sneeze at, little as he’d like to admit it

“That’s a month away,” he reminds her, wary. “You think I want to put up with you for that long?”

“You? Put up with me?” Those eyes of hers spark, bright enough to melt this whole rack into modern art. “I’m the one who would be putting up with you. What were you on the last set of exams? Sixty-seven?”

Seventy-six, but the last thing he needs to do is help her point. “That’s just because I don’t give a shit. I could get higher if I felt like it.”

It’s not possible for steam to come out of someone’s ears, but Inomata looks like she’d love to give it a try. “What do you mean you’re not trying? Why would you purposefully--?”

“See?” This time he does grin, leaning right down into her face. Close enough that she blinks. “You already want to take up my time talking about boy shit. What makes you think I’m gonna double that time by adding studying?”

Her cheeks puff out, annoyed. “We can do both at the same time. And--” she says the word like he’s pulling teeth-- “I’ll give you my notes.”

Now that-- that’s something. He’d seen a glimpse of them before, snapped shut before he could take in more than the neat handwriting and detailed diagrams. Girl couldn’t draw a pig to save her life, and yet he’d seen jawbones with detailed articulation, and a cluster of crisp little hexagons up in one corner of the page. Color coding too, if he was to hazard a guess at the purpose of all those little tabs in her notebook.

“Never mind,” she sighs, grip loosening. “If you really don’t want to, I can’t--”

“Fine.” He jerks his thumb behind him. “Get on.”

She blinks, eyebrows rumpling right over the long slope of her nose. “Excuse me?”

“I’ll do it. You convinced me.” This time, it’s his chin that tosses over his shoulder. “Now come on, get going. I don’t have club but I don’t got all day for this either.”

Her eyes dart behind him, but she doesn’t move, just stands there looking confused. “Go where?”

They say people trade arithmetic for trig when it comes to learning higher functions, giving up something simple to make space for the hard stuff that comes after, and for a moment Kamitani has to wonder if Inomata’s given up her basic conversation skills to fit all that stuff she needs to be number one. “My place.”

Her eyebrows jump up, chasing her hairline. “Right now?”

“You said you’d help me study, right?” With a yank, he pulls the bike free-- both of the rack and Inomata. “Not gonna get a better time than now. Unless you’d like the old hag knowing you’re over our place, hanging out with me.”

Her mouth pulls into a grimace. “Ah, yes, well I suppose it would be best to get everything ironed out today.”

“Great.” His leg swings over the crossbar, toes scraping on the pavement. “Then get on.”

“On your bike?” She peers behind him, dubious. “There’s no room.”

“Of course there is,” he scoffs. “You’ve just got to hold my bag.”

Her eyes round, horrified. “You want me to ride on the bag rack? That’s illegal.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “We could get in trouble.”

“Sure,” he agrees. He’s never seen it happen, not in a podunk little town like this, but it could. “Are you coming or not?”