A/N: Title is from Fiona Apple's (my muse/wife/goddess) Love Ridden.
A/N1: Implied Mayaka/Satoshi/Hōtarō, but only if you squint.
A/N2: Heavy use of metaphors, just because I wanted something different.
A/N3: Started as a run-of-the-mill drama headed into romance and then it turned into just drama (or did it? I don't even know). I'll probably delete this in the morning when I reread it. We will have to see.

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"Do you want a ride home?" he asks her, once, leaning forward on his bike to make space for her. It's the fall; the air is crisp with orange and brown. Satoshi listens to the crunches beneath the rubber wheel of his bike and remains firmly unremorseful. Mayaka gives him a blank look and an unconvincing smile, and shakes her head.

"Actually – I have something I need to do first," she says, like she's reading off a script, and turns on her feet; reenters the school at the same time she pretends she isn't afraid of him.

He knows she hasn't got library duty today, but whistles all the way home anyway, even when his breath catches.

"Hey," Hōtarō says blandly, one afternoon, when Chitanda's home with the flu and Mayaka is nowhere to be found. He's leaning against the metal rail, foot leaning on someone's bike. Satoshi halts, gives him a smile and thinks about television idols before settling beside him.

"Hey," he replies brightly, and wraps his hands around the rail. Their fingers almost touch; he thinks about Mayaka's hands pulling on his shirt, loosening the collar of his shirt, and decides it's not worth the self-infliction half a second later. He glides into an easy conversational subject instead. "What's the plan for today, Oreki?"

The other boy shrugs and says nothing.

"Your sister's home, right? That's why you're still at school!" He laughs, like a cherub, and then springs onto the floor, pulling out the keys to his bike chain and waggling them in front of Hōtarō's face. His gaze doesn't part from the school building. "You're such a bum, Oreki. Learn how to live a little."

"Shut up," Hōtarō says, with no bite to bear. His eyes are half-lidded; glorious, egregious, comatose green snapping at him instead of his voice. "I'm leaving."

"See you tomorrow," Satoshi says, and breaks open the lock. When he steals a distracted glance at the shadow of the building, following Hōtarō, he finds Mayaka instead, giving an absent nod to an upper-classman, her hands full of books. She drops them on the older boy's hands and bows down low, chirps a 'thanks', nightingale-like.

He stands unmoving, glancing, his favorite passive-aggressive stance. He knows she sees him.

Chitanda is still sick. Hōtarō is a lion leashed; a little liar who spins tales about vacuuming carpets even as he jumps on his bike and turns left instead of right. Satoshi watches him go and then turns to Mayaka. She looks as surprised at Hōtarō's explosive decision as Satoshi feels, but he's a great actor, so the only change on his face is the quirk of his mouth.

"What do you suggest we do today?"

When Mayaka turns to excuse herself, Satoshi is already leaning on the door, nonchalant hands on his head. He is a database; it figures he knows how she behaves. The state-of-art flight she takes when she wants to avoid him has become repetitive and stale.

"Oh," she half-exclaims, covering her mouth with her tiny hand, and then plays it cool; she's on the defensive. "Well, we're not going to do anything without them, right? I need to go study – we'll have mid-terms soon."

It's a flawless excuse. He flips through his mental calendar and finds that she's right, that there is no way to refute her escape route.

"Well, I'll be off," she continues, and her fingers make the corner of the door handle until his cover hers.

"Why are you avoiding me?" Satoshi asks, even though he knows (even though he knows she knows he knows). Her fingers are soft and tiny and nothing like a boy's, and he is startled, but he doesn't let go. Mayaka sucks in air through her teeth, eyes wide and angry.

It's the first time she hits him. It stuns enough to give her time to make the run.

Chitanda calls him that night. Satoshi expresses surprise at the thought that she has his number, and then remembers Hōtarō's treacherous green eyes, and everything falls into place.

"Fukube-kun?" Chitanda asks, silky and steely, and he knows he's screwed up. A vague recollection of an afternoon reminds him of Chitanda's self-confirmation, of how she thought she could get angry, how she explained herself. Satoshi has never thought that he'd be in the receiving end of her wrath, but the occasion is anything but divine and he knows his own deviant ways. This is punishment, God-given, delivered with a frilly bow and a soft voice.

He does not answer.

"Fukube-kun," she says, again, waiting for him to explain himself. She still sounds sick; her voice has that edge of feverish nasal that only a bad cold can give to someone.

"Yes, Chitanda-san," he replies, but phrases it like a question.

She's patient in her ire, playing along: "Do you know why Mayaka called me this afternoon? She seemed very distraught."

He sighs onto the plastic receiver, slides down to sit on the floor. Satoshi runs his hand through his pixie hair and sinks unto himself.

Satoshi turns the tables himself and stops going to the club meetings. He decides to abuse loopholes and when Hōtarō's inevitable confrontation materializes in the shape of a snowy school day, he shrugs and says that he's busy with his club, and that – technically – he isn't actually a member of the Classics Club. Hōtarō, as usual, does not reply. His silence, unlike usual, cuts deep.

"I don't know what to do," he confesses, after a minute of green-eyed accusation. He'll never be able to counterattack Hōtarō; he'll never be able to hide things from him when he's right in eye distance. The clubroom is empty of female presence and he realizes it's been a long time since it's been just the four of them. It's his entire fault. His nails press inside the skin of his palm, bringing him down to earth.

"Talk to her," Hōtarō replies, and returns to his book. "You're good at that."

Said like that, it sounds like a compliment, but he knows it isn't.

"Okay," he obliges, like he always does when it comes to the other boy.

Hōtarō's anger is cold and rational, and Satoshi hates it, but he thinks, as he avoids another book, that he prefers it to Mayaka's boiling fury. He looks at her heaving chest, and then at her flushed, twisted face, and offers her the palms of his hands, raised high like a white flag. Her eyes are hard and bright as she throws him the hard-cover edition of something heavy. He's too slow to dodge, and it strikes him below the nose.

"Stop," he says, tonguing his copper-tasting lip. "Mayaka."

Her eyes follow his every move, from the small trickle of blood on his mouth to the small, slow step he takes in her direction.

"Stop," she says back, and sounds like hammered glass. "Just—stop." He does. "I told myself that I would grow up, I—" she inhales, keeps her chin steady, "I said to myself, 'I can do it'. But I can't. Not when you keep me in limbo like this." Her eyes are a glass of water waiting to tip. Satoshi wants to drink her up, maybe. "How am I supposed to stop liking you when you won't let me?"

His teeth hurt. He doesn't trace them with his tongue.

"I don't know how to stop doing that," he replies.

"Liar," she whispers. "Of course you do."

Satoshi takes another step, but Mayaka's fingers harden around the body of another book. Her knuckles turn a watery, angry red, and then settle for a constant white. Satoshi searches his catalog for things to say, but finds nothing. For the first time, he is speechless, but so is she. They stay in combat positions until the janitor comes inside and starts shouting at them after seeing the books Mayaka has thrown everywhere.

The rooftop is bitingly cold, so he takes off his polo and hands it to her. Mayaka is shivering, hands cupped around her forearms, but she doesn't take it. Her eyes are still hard, still narrow, but they are dry, and that's his consolation prize.

He thinks he still hears the janitor stomping around two stories below when he leans over the rails, so he closes the door and scratches at his nape, relishes the bittersweet feel of his raking nails. He pictures them hers, and doesn't feel anything.

"Do you like me," Mayaka says, finally, after fifteen minutes of silence, "or not?"

"I—" he starts, and immediately regrets understanding that he doesn't know what to say next.

"Do you want a ride home?" he asks her, even as he wonders how he'll make it home with all the snow piled on top of the sidewalks. There is water all over, spilling from the trees, running down the gates, pooling at their feet.

"No," she whispers. This time, Mayaka does not bother with an excuse. Satoshi watches her go until she turns the corner.

He whistles all the way home anyway, even when his breath catches.