"Phantom Pains"

Disclaimer: standard disclaimers apply

"Nagisa, did you and Kayano get divorced or something?" Maehara asks like he's in legitimate confusion. "Is it the whole, secretly-making-herself-a-living-weapon-and-used-everyone-thing?"

Nagisa sighs for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Kayano and him aren't even together, and even if they were, how could they be married anyway? And honestly, the assumption that anything could disrupt their completely-platonic relationship is way off point because they are just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Being not-together, honestly, is a cornerstone of their friendship. Granted, their classmates think too much about it, Nagisa and Kayano think too little, but there's comfort in that. The kind of comfort that is pleasant, like the calm hum of a song in the distance, or the slight scent of baked cookies lingering in the kitchen. It's a small, quiet warmth that's been absent for most of his life, a life built on ostracization by his peers and unmet expectations at home.

Even earth (moon if they were being more appropriate) shattering revelations didn't change Kayano and Nagisa.

Or at least, he's pretty sure. Lately, there's a bit of nagging in the back of his head he's been ignoring, that maybe, just maybe, something was different. Different for the most part is okay, Nagisa is adaptable by nature and he can handle sudden changes that've been thrown at him. But the problem was, it wasn't Nagisa and Kayano that has changed.

It's Kayano and Itona.

Since the incident, they've suddenly grown close, despite barely making eye contact before. It was little things at first, Kayano would wander by his desk before class, Itona would sit next to her during assassination practice. It was an odd friendship because there wasn't a lot of conversation, just a lot of proximity.

Thinking too much about it is ridiculous, Nagisa decides. It's not that they don't have friends outside of each other, Kayano has Yuzuki and Touka, and Sugino has been Nagisa's friend for as long as they been in school, and Karma is… well Karma is Karma.

Maehara raises his eyebrow and Nagisa realizes he spent the entire time in his own head without giving him an answer, leaving a rather cold, uncomfortable space of silence in the classroom.

"We're fine," Nagisa reassures him, and probably himself. It's easier to go along with these things rather than explain that they are not-married, not-dating, and everything has not-changed.

"If you say so," Maehara shrugs and returns to a group of way too interested fellows that weren't even bothering to pretend like they weren't watching.

"He says everything's okay," and roughly half of them make noises of disappointment, while the others give large grins and hoots.

"Pay up, losers," Rio looks like a cat that caught a mouse, flipping long blond hair over her shoulder, while Sousoke, Okajima, and Kimuira groan, reaching for their wallets.

Of course they made a bet. It's so expected that Nagisa couldn't be bothered to deliver a good straight man reaction.

Because life is a cosmic joke and decided Nagisa was the punchline, Itona and Kayano decided to walk in the class at that moment, so close they rub shoulders. They lean their heads closer to each other when they talk so only they can hear. Rio and the others take a long look at the two, and then reluctantly returns their money back.

This does not bother Nagisa, not one bit, also why is it so damn hot, and Nagisa does his best to try and concentrate on the heat. Unnaturally hot.

Kayano takes her seat next to him, Itona walks away, and the heat is forgotten. The pleasant calm returns again and all is right with the world.

She turns gives him a small smile, "Ah I forgot my textbook, can I share yours?"

She doesn't really need to ask because neither of them say no to each other, but they do it anyway. He scoots their desks closer until the plastic of the tables clink together, so close he could almost feel the proximity on his skin.

Oh, the heat's coming back again with vengeance. Nagisa tugs at the collar of his shirt.

Kayano leans in and Nagisa silently blames Maehara for saying weird things and making him hyper aware of meaningless things. This whole thing in general with Itona, for that matter, has been making rounds in his heads lately, it's keeping him off balance and making him act weird.

"Why do they keep looking at us?" Kayano whispers to him.

Hm? Nagisa looks up to around to see Maehera, Rio, and the others abandoning their English books and boring holes into his skull. For aspiring assassins, he notes that the class lacks a socially acceptable level of tact.

"Don't mind them," Nagisa lets out a long suffering sigh. "It's just a weird bet."

"Oh, the one if Bitch-sensei sexually harasses you as a demonstration again?" Kayano asks with innocent, wide eyes.

"No, wait- what? That's a thing?"

Kayano did a head tilt that Nagisa thought was entirely too unfair. "Not that one then?"

Nagisa ignores the tick in the back of his head. "How many bets are there?"

"All the ones I know of? Or the ones just about you?" Kayano eyes the ceiling as she began to mentally count, her eyebrows furrowed (cutely, Nagisa thinks) in concentration.

"You know, I think I'm okay with not knowing everything," he says, he tries to laugh if off but the weak chuckle sounds more like self depreciation. Anyway, the important thing is, if she's still trying to guess what it could be, then she probably doesn't know about the bet about them too. And that is good.

"You know I was saying to Okuda," Kayano begins, then stops, the pencil stills in her hand and amber eyes zone out of focus, like she is looking at nothing at all.

Ah, it's happening again. Recently, Kayano falls into these spells, where she lapses into her own head, like she's forgotten where she is, or is confused by her own words. It's pretty infrequent and barely noticeable, and unless you are like Nagisa who seems to pay an unnatural amount of attention to her (not especially her, of course, but he is interested in information gathering) no one would notice it, but it's enough to be a pattern. At first he believed that it was because Kayano was confused on a school problem, or preoccupied with drawing up a kill-kuro-sensei plan, but she doesn't seem to be concentrating or pontificating, she just looks lost.

Nagisa begins to wonder if he should try to snap her out of it, and if he would even know how to, when Itona casually strides behind them. He brushes the back of her hair, green locks gently part as he runs a finger from the back of her skull, down the mid neck. Kayano shivers a bit, reacting to the light touch, and the awareness of her eyes came back, she exhaled slowly and it looked like life slowly drifted back into her.

The movement was so mild that no one noticed, even Kayano and Itona acted like it didn't happen. Kayano simply smiles at him and resumes the conversation where she left it dead in the air, and all Nagisa can think is;

What the hell? What the hell was that?

He doesn't really ask those questions, and he never gets an answer.

-x-

In his years of collective wisdom, Nagisa has learned there are two kinds of questions; ones you ask and ones that that must be avoided upon pain of death.

For example, questions that Nagisa did ask Kayano today are: "How was your day?" and "Do you think a close combat stab or a sniper shot would be a better way distract Kuro-sensei?" and "What do you have for lunch?"

Questions Nagisa absolutely does not ask include; "Why do you still keep your hair in pigtails even after we know the truth?" "What do you think of me?" and of course, "Why does Itona keep touching you?"

He isn't sure why he doesn't ask these questions, maybe because some of these matters are way too private, definitely because he doesn't want things to get awkward, but also probably because he's scared of the answer. And Nagisa isn't scared of much these days, he's built a decent resistance of fear due to dealing with men who eat lunch using loaded guns as utensils and learning about moon destroying rodents.

Kayano though, with the wrong replies terrify him.

He acknowledges that this is stupid and is comfortable in that knowledge.

"Just onigiri." Kayano interrupts his thoughts, before sipping on some water.

Nagisa blinks twice. "What?"

"You asked me what I had for lunch just a second ago," she says with an amused tone. "Onigiri."

"Oh. Yeah, I see that now," he says.

Sugino plops down to the desk right next to him, opening a bag of chips. "You okay Nagisa, you've been kinda out of it." He shoves a handful in his mouth, obviously not really expecting an answer; for a guy who wants to a professional athlete he seems to run strictly on junkfood.

"Hm, I don't really see any difference. Why would he be acting different?" Kayano asks.

Warning bells ring in his head as further line of inquiry would lead to awkward revelations and Nagisa immediately goes into damage prevention mode. Luckily Nagisa is nothing if not quick on his feet. "I've been helping Kanazaki-san with her assassination technique."

Sugino promptly chokes on his chips. His face starts turning an interesting color before Nagisa does a sympathetic pat on the back as he coughs it out.

"That's… good," he squeaks and Nagisa isn't sure if that's from the lack of air or just because Kanazaki has that effect on him. Kayano gives Nagisa a knowing smiling and excuses herself as Sugino attempts to regain composure.

Disaster has been successfully averted and Nagisa can't help but feel proud of himself for such a smooth transition out of the danger zone. True, as a best friend the situation could be described, as Terasaka would put it, a "total dick move" but he still feels it was completely fair.

He watches as Kayano walks to the back of the classroom, near where said Terasaka is draping against the back of his chair and ranting to his friends. He takes a large bite of his store bought bread, and with mouth full, complains about something or other that no one is really paying attention to. This includes Itona who looks so bored he has the same dull look Kayano sometimes gets, but that's nothing new for Itona; he's always looked like he's in his own world.

Kayano is right behind the group now, and Nagisa diverts his attention to his own lunch. Who cares if they are close, not him of course. Afterall the entire class is close, regular life and death situations have a tendency to do that to people. No, everything is completely fine.

It's not until Kayano begins to run her fingers through Itona's hair that Nagisa begins to choke on his own lunch. Irony seems to want him dead.

Terasaka was mid sentence when she began to brush Itona's white hair, and had apparently forgotten to close his mouth because bits of bread fell out on the floor, gaping at them with eyes so large they threatened to roll out of socket. Justice wrinkled his nose at the "see-food" sight but the rest of the group just stared in confusion at the scene.

Kayano continues to nonchalantly stroke his head as if he were a child, if this was odd to Itona he showed no sign of it. Instead he leaned ever so slightly into her touch, and a tension that no one knew was there eased out of his squared shoulders.

Itona looks at Kayano from his periphery and gives her a little nod, to which she walks away like there was nothing weird about her running her hands through someone's hair what the hell.

"You okay Nagisa?" Kayano asks when she returns to her seat, "You looked like Sugino there for a second."

Nagisa immediately wants to ask, "What was that?" or "What's going on between you two?" and "Why is everything terrible?" But those questions are very solidly in the questions-we-do-not-ask section of their friendship, so instead he says the only thing on his mind, "So how about that weather? It's hot, isn't it."

Kayano gives him a weird look.

-x-

This week isn't going very well at all, Nagisa is exhausted and there hasn't even been an attempted murder or overzealous authority figures with questionable life choices pushing him around.

As of late, even ignoring Kayano's really weird friendship with Itona, Kayano has been getting even more distant, and for some reason that's really getting under Nagisa's skin, which has always been hard to do.

Nagisa instinctually blames it on Itona, it was both petty and strangely satisfying- something he is, at the present time, he is completely okay with.

So he's in an understandably bad mood when Itona approaches him. Nagisa doesn't show it though, he's passive that way.

It doesn't help that Itona still must have some lingering problems with standard social cues because his face is way too close for comfort.

"We're not dating," Itona says, inches from his face. Nagisa takes a step back.

"I know," Nagisa replies. Then amends, "And it's perfectly fine if you do anyway." Just in case. His reply doesn't seem to satisfy Itona's obscure objective because his eyes narrow.

"There's nothing between us," he insists, taking a step forward. Nagisa takes another step back. "Our relationship is completely platonic and devoid of romantic affection."

"O-okay. But that's not really my business."

"You should talk to her," Itona says, a small frown on his face. "She probably needs another friend and it would great if it were you." Before Nagisa can reply Itona pivots on his foot and walks away- much to Nagisa's relief. Itona can be a bit intense.

The white haired boy suddenly hesitates mid step, quickly whirls around and gives him a thumbs up with a completely stoic face. "Good luck." He stalks away.

Nagisa isn't sure exactly what he needs luck for so he tries his best to keep his head down and concentrate on assassination and algebra. That's hard to do when Kayano keeps brushing her bangs from her eyes and Nagisa makes silly connections like, ah, she brushed Itona's hair like that. But everytime he looks away, he manages to catch Itona's eye, who happens to have been staring hard at him like he was Itona's next target.

Once mid class when their eyes met, he gave Nagisa the thumbs up again, but that just confused and irritated him.

"Dude, what the hell did you do?" Sugino asks him at break, because even the blind would notice Itona glaring at him from across the room.

Nagisa wants to throw his hands in the air and shout nothing, but instead goes for a pained shrug. He has decided to play it cool, he gathers all the knowledge he's internalized for the past year; steady as a rock, calm as summer wind.

When Itona strolls up to Nagisa and Kayano, he half suspects a fight from the way he's being eyed. Calm, I'm steady. I'm a trained assassin who has faced many dangers. That's right, nothing this week or any other is is going to breakdown his newfound resolve.

Then Itona bends down to the back of Kayano's neck like he's going to kiss, and very lightly bites it, his teeth gently scrapes her skin.

Nagisa falls out of his chair, which is quite a feat because he wasn't even on edge. Even Kayano looks surprised when Itona walks back to his chair and sits down, and he's still looking straight at Nagisa like he issued a challenge. If anyone else saw, Nagisa wouldn't know because there were a thousand competing thoughts pounding through his skull, all so loud that he couldn't understand a single one.

A flash interrupted his stupor, he could clear the telltale sound of a cellphone taking a picture.

"Now that is a face worthy of immortalizing," Karma says with a song in his voice, he sits on Nagisa's desk as he pockets his phone. "I might even put it as my wallpaper."

Nagisa takes a deep breath. Calm, so calm he could have been in a state of nirvana.

The red haired boy pats Nagisa on the shoulder. "You should do something about that bloodlust."

Well hell, if Karma is telling Nagisa to do something about his bloodlust, then there really must be a problem. Karma leaks bloodlust when confronting his breakfast.

Nagisa then, comes to a revelation, a terrible, horrible revelation that feels a little like the end of the world. If he wants this to end, he's going to have to take Itona's advice, he's going to have to talk to Kayano.

-x-

Summer is approaching and it just makes the days feel longer, the lazy hours and humid air stretch his normally unshakeable patience.

Kayano is behind the shed, sitting on the dry grass so long it could ripple in the heavy wind. Nobody from the school bothers to come up here to maintain the area anyway, because who cares about where Class E studies.

"We could just talk on our way to the train station," she said as she placed her school bag over her knees.

"Oh yeah," he lies, because he isn't sure he wouldn't chicken out at the last second and let her walk away without saying anything.

Nagisa's about to break one of his golden rules to Kayano and his relationship: don't ask the intimate questions.

He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and nothing comes out. Enough times passes so that he can no longer smoothly cover up his awkwardness.

Wow. Woooow. Attempted murder was easier than this.

Kayano begins to laugh and says, "You want to know what's up with me and Itona."

"Huh? No," he denies as reflex. "Wait, no, yeah, I do." He wants to kick himself, and if Kuro-sensei wants to blow up the earth right now, he would not consider it a terrible idea.

For a long pause Kayano is absolutely silent, she leans back on the wall of the shed and quietly listens to the buzz of the cicadas. She doesn't seem to be bothered by his question but she's an actress by trade, good enough to fool Nagisa on her worst days.

When she looks at Nagisa it's with calculated smile. "It's the tentacles."

Nagisa could have guessed, should have guessed even, but he was being a bit stupid these days. "I thought that since they're gone they can't affect you anymore."

Kayano nods, "No that's right. It's not physical… more like… phantom pain. You lose an arm or a leg and sometimes you feel like it's there when it's not."

"Oh," Nagisa says and a part of him feels guilty at his annoyance with Itona (but not too guilty). "So how bad is the pain?"

"No, maybe pain is a bad way to put it," she says slowly, weighing her words like they were made of gold. "Having the tentacles there was like a constant… stimulus as Okuda would put it. It was always there, and it was impossible to forget it, it was a part of life. It was the bad kind of presence, it made you angry, it hurt like thorns in your head, but you learn to deal with it. Now that it's gone, it feels kind of empty. It not being there really throws you off balance. Itona and I just… space out sometimes because it feels like something is missing."

"That's why he touches your neck," Nagisa begins to see the connections.

"Yeah, and why I touch his hair. Having some outside pressure on that area jumpstarts your head back to reality," she hugs her schoolbag. "It's weird and I know our class doesn't stop talking about us, but I'll take it over having disembodied tentacles living in my head any day."

"It could be weirder," Nagisa nudges her with his shoulder and that small movement runs goose bumps down his arm. "You could be sexually harassed by your foreign English teacher so often that the class has a running bet on you."

Kayano laughs, but it's small and quiet, and she's fidgeting with the ends of her skirt. "That would be something." She clicks her feet together before she starts again. "I don't know why I didn't tell you, I guess I feel like we don't tell each other some stuff. Sorry for worrying you."

"I wasn't worried," he blurts out and then his face begins to warm like he isn't some sort of trained government sponsored assassin. Too late to go back now, and he couldn't stop himself if he wanted too. "I was jealous."

Kayano's mouth forms a small "o" and her eyes go wide; and like she isn't some sort of world class actress who can mask her emotions, flushes a bright red. He can't help but think that is really cute, which is unfair because he probably looks ridiculous blushing. She fidgets even more until he takes one of her hands so that she doesn't accidentally rip off the seams of her skirt. Her fingers really are like her, tiny and slender, but they lost all their softness from callouses long ago. It's an attractive contrast.

Nagisa averts his eyes, looking everywhere but at her. "So, like. If your phantom pains come again, you don't need Itona, I'll do it for you."

The heat is practically radiating off Kayano at this point, and it makes the warm weather even hotter. "Oh, thanks." Pause. "You'll do the same for Itona too?"

Nagisa deadpans. "If I have too."

"That's no good. I'll get jealous too."

Nagisa's dead. Straight up, bury him here. In a good way.

Nagisa coughs. "I'm not going to have the do the… bite thing will I?"

Kayano's hand flies up to the back of her neck and she purses her lips in embarrassment. "N-no. I don't know why he did that, it's never happened before and there was no reason for."

Some mysteries aren't meant to be solved, Nagisa supposes. It would annoy him, if he weren't holding her hand anyways.

-x-

"Pay up," Itona says to Rio when Nagisa and Kayano walk back hand in hand.

The blond grumbles and groans, reaching out of her bag and taking out a small box labeled "When Will Nagisa and Kayano Get Together Bet." She gives him a stack of yen begrudgingly, like she's handing him her first born.

"That's some bullshit luck," Rio protests.

Itona takes it, and nods to Nagisa. "If I learned anything, it's that I don't leave it to luck. You just have to push the right buttons."

A/N: OOC is serious business, but I just wanted to write a fun NagisaxKayano, while capitalizing on some unmet fan expectations. I mean, how cool would it to see Kayano and Itona team up considering they are tentacle buddies. I'm almost half rooting for AssClass fillers if it would let us see different characters interact.

Anyway, I can totally see everyone in the class consistently making bets about Nagisa's life and everyone participates, including the teachers. And Rio making a killing from it.