It Has To Be You

ORIGINAL AO3 LINK: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2271318

The cutest thing about Kashima right now, Hori thinks, is that she actually thinks she's being suave and clever about this. (She isn't.)

So when she lingers around him this time, way too close than she usually is in her normal pleas for attention, he lets her be. Let it be known that he is not always stingy and uptight towards his underclassmen.

In fact, it is widely well-known that Hori is anything but stingy as far as Kashima is concerned, albeit all the reprimands and whiteboard-throwing that'd prove otherwise. But putting that aside, for now.

Putting that aside in favor of noticing what he's actually supposed to be focusing on this very moment, something which is not someone looking over his shoulder with their warm breath ghosting over the shell of his ear.

"What's that, senpai? New script?"

"Yeah." Nozaki had handed it over the other night, just as Hori had been in the middle of measuring out a pair of classroom windows for next month's chapter.

It's not a jaw-breakingly original script - just a Beauty and the Beast kind of thing, with the special peculiarity of having the beast be a bull-headed one, at Hori's earlier insistence. But Hori knows, more than anything else, that if anyone can do something off Rumplestiltskin and turn the plainest of plotlines into spun gold, it would be no one else but Kashima herself.

"You'll be the prince, of course. You don't mind, do you?"

Ever since that stunt she pulled before - that time that ended with her waltzing home in Hori's uniform slacks (she'd returned them perfectly pressed and smelling of detergent promptly after, of course, and he had spent a good half of the day mulling over what it was supposed to mean, that the thought of something of his being washed in the same detergent of hers actually made him happy ) - he'd always made sure that she was fine with another male role, first.

Sure, that time had ended in a joke, made at his expense no less, but there's no telling when the one time she might tell the truth would be, and Hori does not want to miss it.

"Aw, of course I don't mind, senpai, you know that!" Kashima grins happily in reply, awkwardly batting at his shoulder. It's the kind of motion tic that Hori'd expect from any one of his male friends, and he would've let it pass, if only Kashima didn't lose her balance shortly afterwards. Because here's the thing: Kashima never loses her balance. Ever. Not when she did sports or worked onstage or went about being herself. So why is she losing it now??

Why is she sucking in breaths through her teeth, all of a sudden?

"I don't think I'll ever mind," she says, and it comes out sounding more serious than any of her high-drama plays and more confused than the time she asked him about which skirt to wear, all at once. He doesn't know how she does that, but here she is. "I won't ever mind, not if it's you asking. Hori-senpai."

The first thing that comes to mind: normally, when she's up for saying something as ridiculously sappy like that, she tacks on the unnecessary '-chan' onto his surname and usual honorific. The fact that he knows her so well that he's even obsessing over her diminutive honorific usage should scare him, but Hori is exceptionally good at not being scared of things that would terrify some lesser man, so he decides not to be.

And the second thing: there's only one other smoother way to phrase her words. Hori-senpai, I would do anything for you. But Hori won't be so presumptuous as to assume that's what she means, not when he's not one of the usual 'princesses' Kashima saves all that cheese for, not when the Kashima in front of him right now, with her irregular breathing and awkward movements, is just about as smooth as Mikoshiba (Mamiko) in his corner of woe, so Hori tries not to think about this too much anyway.