Alicia Blade
For the record, I don't always succumb to pleas for a sequel. But… you guys were right, this one kind of needed one, didn't it? Will there be more? Who knows, who knows. Enjoy! Dance 4 will be up, well, probably today. ...
It isn't just his eyes that drive you crazy, though they certainly don't help any. And it isn't his body, his height, his hair, his idiotic smirks, his broad shoulders, his cool confidence, his muscular arms, his resonating voice, or the scent of aftershave and earth that hangs around him. But none of these things help either.
What really pushes you off the edge—and it took months to pinpoint it—is how his gaze loses focus when he looks directly into your eyes, and his quirky smile twitches and fades in such a hairbreadth of a second you thought for a long while you were only imagining things, and how sometimes you almost feel like you can read into his thoughts when he's so close and watching you so intently and his hands are clutched around a coffee mug or the edge of a table so securely that it seems as though he's holding himself back, but from what you don't know.
It's in those tiny, peaceful, almost nonexistent moments when you think, when you know, that he's going to kiss you.
Of course, he never does, and your 100 certainty crumbles away with the next stupid jab he makes.
Sometimes, you even think you hear his voice echoing in your head, though he hasn't opened his lips.
Odango Atama, what would you do if I…
The voice always fades then, leaving you wondering what he would have said, no, thought, if he wasn't always holding himself back.
Of course, it's only your imagination because, after all, this is Mamoru, and crazy though he makes you, there's nothing really there between you two. To him, you are little more than an annoying flea perched on the skin of his life, and while he swipes at you with insult upon insult, he simply can't get you to go away.
Because I can't leave you alone.
Because something inside keeps telling you that one day, one day, that flicker in his eye will stay and he really will put his arms around you and brush the hair from your forehead and kiss you. And from that day forward, the teasing will be over, the name-calling will be over, and it will just be you and him in your happy pocket of a world and you'll never have another thing to worry about.
This, of course, is where even that little optimistic voice begins to laugh at you, because there will always be evil and pain and sorrow and even the happiest couple bickers from time to time. Besides, what with the Negaverse and your favorite feline advisor breathing down your neck day in and day out, where would you ever find time for a boyfriend?
But that doesn't keep you from watching him saunter down the street with his nose in an overly large novel. That doesn't keep you from crashing into him—this time, this time, he might hold me, just for a little while. That doesn't keep you from calling him every name in the book just so you can inch a bit closer to him, put your finger on his chest, and glare right into those vibrantly smirking eyes, all the while wishing, wishing, wishing everything could be different.
You can't help hoping, because hoping is what you do. So you keep imagining the day when you'll ask him for the millionth time,
Mamoru, why are you so mean to me?
And then he'll tilt his head apologetically, the walls around his heart breaking even as you watch, and whisper so that the words reach only you, meant only for you, "Because you drive me so crazy it's all I can think to say."
And that is when he'll kiss you.
But he never does. He never, ever does. Even while those tiny, miniscule moments of his eyes softening and his smirk lapsing begin to grow longer and more obvious, his knuckles grow whiter around that coffee mug as he fights with whatever inner turmoil he's been battling since the day you met.
You pretend that he's fighting the urge to kiss you.
In reality, you know he's probably biting his tongue to keep from pushing you out of his eyesight, out of his life, forever.
But even while your eyes fill with tears and his uncaring smile hardens, you still can't help it. You still have the most undeniable, painful urge to bury your fingers in his hair and push your body alongside his and whisper,
You baka. I love you. Come kiss me.
But you never do.