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Their not-date-study-date that Itadori is adamant on is, in fact, a date, because, “Maki-san, are you blind? Nobara looks at you like..” He is lost of a comparison, but Maki is ever so quick for a fine, tender roast.
“Like you look at Fushiguro?”
Yuuji is all sorts of embarrassed, but it’s enough for Maki to wave at Itadori and leave. She doesn’t need lovebird numero uno to lecture her out on being oblivious.
“I’m going to have an aneurysm,” Nobara mutters over her notes, one hand pressing down on her temples. Maki can only afford a snort, sarcastic. Schadenfreude is what it’s called, she remembers.
“No, you are not,” she sends Nobara’s way a gentle smile, her eyes peeking out from behind her messy bangs. “If you do, how am I supposed to take you out later, hm?”
Nobara is going insane.
“Good to know I was official for a date today. Unless you meant the assassinate me kind of way.”
Maki leans back in her chair, her right hand stirring her coffee lazily, her left hand messing around with her pen. “The first, so you’d better stay alive, princess.”
God, fuck her.
They finish the rest of their assignment, or what they can manage to think of in Nobara’s case for their hangout session, in the secluded booth of the cafeteria in relative silence. Give or take the occasional huffs, the rhythmic drumming of Maki’s pen, and rustling of paper.
“Okay, break. I need a break,” Nobara sighs, desperate to come back to Earth.
Maki looks at her, content, calm and collected as always; looking like a snack with her short hair messy, eyes gentle, and her reading glasses perched on top of her head. She sinks deeper into her oversized black hoodie, a hand playing with the string of her similar sweatpants. “Are you junk food or talk oriented about this break?”
Nobara thinks. She has already had a pastry, and so did Maki. She knows the girl can eat more than three men together, but she really isn’t feeling like eating right now. “Talk.”
“Alright.”
Maki starts a conversation about mundane stuff, just to get Nobara’s mind off school, and stress, rambling about some really nonsense conspiracy theory she read about Avril Lavigne on twitter. It makes Nobara laugh, because, well, it’s Maki, and because the entire thing is just nuts. They discuss plot holes and oddly believable parts of the story, until five minutes later, they are over it.
Silence takes over, until Maki tilts her head, her eyes observing the people sat at the café. She turns to Nobara with a slight smirk, the kind Nobara wishes she could fuck out of Maki, show her who’s really in a position to be cocky and smirking. She knows she has it in her to turn the tables. Only if they weren’t situated at the goddamn campus café.
“Mai, Itadori, Gojo sensei,” Maki lists, context lost somewhere along the way.
The younger girl looks dumbfounded, like Maki’s grown a second head, that’s not a bit uglier and attached to another body and is called Mai. “Huh?”
“Fuck, marry, kill,” she elaborates. “Mai, Itadori, Gojo sensei.”
Oh, yeah, alright.
Fuck that.
Nobara’s face contorts as she lets her thoughts run back and forth in her head, and Maki can spot disgust, and maybe disappointment flashing through her face. Adorable.
“Well,” Nobara starts off, still lost, contemplating her options, “Probably marry Itadori, he’s harmless and kind. I really wanna kill that idiot Satoru, but I don’t know if your sister ever let me live down fucking me.”
“Like Gojo would,” Maki offers, enjoying the mental torture.
Nobara flashes her a glare, but the heat of it is lost when she looks into Maki’s eyes.
She just really wants to wipe that look off Maki’s face.
“Fine,” Nobara shakes her head, “kill Satoru, fuck…fuck Mai.”
Maki claps with a sarcastic smile on her lips, “Never thought I’d see the day.”
Nobara needs to get back at her, and her vengeful side says to make Maki’s raging lesbianism shatter by choosing all men, but her curiosity gets the best, or worst, really, of her.
She points at Maki, shit eating grin on her face. “Iori, Nanami,” Nobara’s grin only widens, and if Maki didn’t know her enough, she would think the girl has gone psychotic. She has learned Nobara’s smile means nothing dangerous when it’s pointed at her. In fact, it was the polar opposite. All the times Maki has ever felt slightly alive, or what she supposes felt like being alive, Nobara’s widest, most fucked up smiles were the prophets of those good times to come. “Me.”
“That’s just fucked up, Nobara.”
Nonetheless, Maki pulls out her phone, aiding her misery. Upon the girl’s question of “Are you not gonna answer me, Maki-san?” in that mocking tone of hers, Maki flashes Nobara her phone, looking at Nanami’s profile. “Dilf.”
“For real?!”
“I need to take heed of my options here, Nobara, and I’m gay, not blind,” she puts her glasses back on. “But I gotta admit, you know how to challenge me. Love that for you, babe.”
She swipes deep in thought, left, right, right, back to the beginning, typing some more, replying to a text, then back to swiping.
“Alright, I think I got it.” She puts her phone back on the table, a rather thirst-trappy picture of Nobara posing on her bed on her screen. Oh shit, right. She took that when she managed to convince Maki to come party with her, so she made sure she looked, well, fuckable. A girl can hope.
To her defense, it never took much ‘convincing’. Maki had a tendency to say yes right away, no matter how ridiculous of an idea Nobara’s presented to her. Just what soft spots and crushes can do…
“Finally! Curiosity is killing me right here.”
If Nobara were to be honest, she’d confess to hoping with every fiber of her being that Maki wouldn’t kill her. Or that her silly little rematch would help her get closer to the mystery that Maki is to her. More importantly, Maki’s feelings towards her. The mixed signals have kept her awake more times and rambling in the Itafushi HUB, her feet having her walk in circles restlessly.
Maki would call her baby and princess, and there had been that one time she’d put Nobara’s hands under her hoodie to warm it up during a movie night. Or when she wanted to creep up behind an unsuspecting Nobara, only to be caught just in time, because “Aw, come on! wanted to kiss your pretty little neck.” But each time Nobara’d suggested something that sounded an awful lot like a date, Maki would agree, without, Nobara was sure, actually realizing it would be a date.
Maki has been one oblivious little shit.
“Nanami-san? Dilf. Kill him though. Feel like he’d only complain about work and his stupid papers and reports,” Maki starts, and Nobara is quite surprised the girl is doing exactly what she needs her to. “I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life. Iori-san is, well,” she gestures vaguely, flailing her hand in the air, “fuck. She’s hot but not my type, and I certainly couldn’t imagine myself with her. Which brings me to choosing you to marry.” Maki finally looks at her for a fraction of a moment, and Nobara can see that there is more to it, and Maki is only choking back her words.
She playfully pokes one of Maki’s bigger hands resting on the table between them, trying to soothe the apparent tension in the older girl “Are you not gonna praise me? I mean you chose to marry me, after all. The least your wife deserves, really.”
Maki only rolls her eyes with a smile, but it fades fast; she clears her throat, and Nobara thinks all of this is a fever dream. There is no fucking way Zenin Maki out of everyone in the whole wide world is blushing in front of her over a stupid game of fuck, marry, kill. She’s still not looking at Nobara, her eyes intently resting on Nobara’s hand by hers. She gets a hold of it, calloused palm meeting the back of the smooth skin of the back of Nobara’s hand.
“Well,” she messes around with the rose pendant hanging from the bracelet she got for the girl’s birthday years ago, “I explained the two hags. But to be honest, I was kind of sure I’d choose you to marry from the get-go. Probably wanna know why, yeah?” She glances up into light brown eyes briefly, surprised by the tenderness that overtakes the otherwise feisty look she finds in there most of the time.
“Obviously.”
“First of all, you’re stupid enough to say yes to me, unlike the other two,” Maki grins, and she only gets a butthurt ‘hey!’ from Nobara’s way. “But mostly, I think you’d be the one who would support me. You’ve shown it many times, and I’m just curious what kind of person I could be by your side, because it feels like you’d push me to be better. The best me, perhaps. And I know I could be better than I currently am. Whether for me, or for you, I’m not sure. I just know you’d do that for me, and I’d do that for you.”
Nobara is at least four kinds of confused and feels all five kinds of attraction towards Maki upon hearing her thoughts behind the decision. Her stupid crush is in front of her, playing with the bracelet Nobara got from her, blushing, embarrassed, vulnerable.
She wants to kiss Maki senseless, until she’s just babbling nonsense, because Nobara is just so gone with her.
“I would, you know,” she answers uncharacteristically timidly of her, afraid to burst the bubble around them. “I would want it to be for you, though, Maki,” she turns her hand, her palm up, pulling Maki’s hand towards herself with two fingers, all her five holding Maki’s pointer. “You are too stubborn to have just anyone marry you and not have you do whatever you want,” she chuckles, and there is enough self-reflection resting in both of their minds to know that Nobara is more than right. “You need someone as headstrong, or worse than you to keep you on a leash, big girl,” she lets go of Maki’s finger, only to trace an ‘N’ in the girl’s palm.
She doesn’t miss the way Maki’s pupils visibly dilate at the pet name. Ooh, someone’s pushed a button.
“Besides, marry involves fuck, too,” she smirks, more confident than ever in that moment.
“You are unbelievable, Kugisaki.”
“That’s Ms. Zenin for you.”
Maki can only shake her head, but there’s a hint of a smile on her lips, and Nobara now feels closer to her truth than ever before.
-
“So, If I get it correctly,” Megumi ponders out loud, his left combing through Itadori’s hair, while Nobara is resting her head on Megumi’s right shoulder, “She confessed.”
“Somewhat,” Yuuji chimes in, his voice distant, relaxed, Megumi’s soothing hand putting him to sleep in minutes. “Did you say anything afterwards? About it, I mean.”
“No,” Nobara sighs. “Nothing of it. We talked obviously, but it was about other things. We went to the bookshop next, because she wanted to get this new crime story or whatever. Held hands, so that was phenomenal.”
“You always hold hands like some honeymoon couple,” Fushiguro comments, and there has to be some sort of irony to the remark, because Nobara can see from her peripheral the way he is playing with the now asleep Yuuji’s limp fingers.
They are so, so, so, incredibly stupid.
If only Maki were smarter.
She needs to ask her out, she can’t do it any longer, or she’ll lose it.
-
“I’m incredibly stupid.”
She’s pacing around Okkotsu’s room, Inumaki seemingly not part of the conversation as he’s tucked away at the corner of Yuta’s bed, busy with his DS.
Yuta recaps the events, much to Maki’s now enlightened mind, all the way from Itadori saying it must have been a date, to them at the café, the conversation, Maki borderline confessing, Nobara visibly eating Maki up just with her eyes, turning her on with her stupid nickname, and them going to a bookstore together, even though Nobara really wasn’t one for books.
“It was a date,” they both mutter at once, Maki more in disbelief, Yuta more on the observant, matter-of-fact side of the situation.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Toge puts his console down, placing himself by Yuta on the edge of the bed, Maki still pacing. “This is your fifth date.”
“Sensational.”
“You need to ask her out,” Yuta offers, Toge’s little “yeah” egging her on.
-
Their next study date is sprinkled with a lot of unexplained silence between the two of them. It’s not weird, per say, but none of the girls is stupid enough not to catch on that there has to be something going on with the other.
Maki is the worse one of the two, her mind always going the unnecessary extra mile when it comes to Nobara. It shouldn’t really, because the younger girl wears her heart on her sleeve, her thoughts worn proud on her lips. Maki is just afraid of rejection.
She is a Zenin. She doesn’t lose, she doesn’t get second place, she doesn’t get rejected, and she certainly doesn’t lose a girl to someone else. She is only confused about one singular thing, really, the problem is that she doesn’t know whether Nobara likes her, or is just comfortable enough to be so touchy feely. Not to mention that playboy mouth of hers.
Nobara on the other hand, is more observant and sharper on matters of the heart. She likes Maki (a light way to say that), and there is no God that would have Maki not like her after all the little stunts the older girl has pulled on her. She just doesn’t know how to ask her out.
Casually? Might bounce back off Maki’s awfully thick skull. Call Nobara a morosexual for all she cares, because she finds that hot. Or maybe it’s just Maki making the buff dumb thing work.
Romantically? Maki would throw up.
Is there any other way?
God, Nobara just feels so utterly, unbelievably fucked.
She spares a look at Maki, sprawled out on the glass, throwing her little stress ball up, catching it, rinse, repeat. Nobara takes her phone out, contemplating whether she needs cold, logical reasoning, or a heartfelt hype talk. Megumi was good with observations, logic, and connecting the dots, but the boy was emotionally constipated.
Yuuji on the other hand is like Maki, just with more zest for life. Yuuji is happy, and goes with the flow, while Maki burns her own path, relentless, unstoppable, fierce. Where Yuuji is sensitive and vulnerable, Maki is sarcastic, and guarded.
It’s just that both of them are dumb, strong, oblivious babies in Nobara’s eyes. Menaces of the sports teams, yeah…
She decides, even though Maki’s cousin would give her a clearer head, she knows deep down, especially after their talk-talk, Maki is not so far from Yuuji, so Itadori it is.
She presses Yuuji’s icon, their chat thread filled with stupid memes, heartfelt conversations and hearts. She wonders for a second what she wants to ask, and thanks to some sort of miracle, she thinks she hit two birds with one stone. Might as well help the idiots out, too.
‘how would you ask your crush out?:(‘
It takes less than a minute for Yuuji to open the text, the little check turning blue indicating his actions.
‘nobara pls stop teasing me abt gumi,’ his reply reads, and Nobara can’t stop the snort that escapes her. Maki glances at her, but she only shakes her head dismissively at the girl.
‘but I think id just ask. he acts cool n everything so i think he might overthink stuff and is just scared idk. y?’
She sits up and turns towards Maki who’s deep in thought, her ball throwing having become a muscle memory. Her eyes are telling Nobara that she’s not here, not on this Earth, not in the college’s park, not beside Nobara. She realizes that even though Yuuji is just a big toddler, he has more than to what he lets on. Maki might be somewhat like Fushiguro, too.
“Maki,” she calls out, mustering all her courage, trying to sell that she is not somewhat scared.
Since when has Kugisaki Nobara ever been scared?
The girl looks at her, stress ball effectively landing on her nose, “Shit. What is it?”
“I want to take you out on a date,” Nobara smiles, the look in her eyes genuine, and smile soft.
Maki’s eyes widen as she shoots up, face of disbelief. “I wanted to ask you first!”
Nobara’s smile only widens, because trust Zenin Maki to make a competition out of asking your crush out. “But you didn’t. You can be the first to say yes,” she offers, and that’s when it all seems to sink in for Maki.
Nobara asked her out.
On a date.
A date date.
She scoots closer to Nobara on the grass, not caring that her sweat pants will suffer a great amount from it. Her face is right up in Nobara’s, and if the girl wanted to, she could count Maki’s eyelashes. She could. She could also, perhaps, possibly, kiss that smirk off Maki for the first time in her life. But it’s Maki’s smirk that kisses her, even if it’s just for a fraction of a second.
“You’ll be the one saying the first yes down the line, princess,” she whispers and Nobara feels like fainting. “How did you say it, hm? Ms Zenin, was it?”
“You play dirty.”