A/N: I should be working on Lost in Stereo, but this is stuck in my head instead.

Disclaimer: The only thing skins-related I own is a poster. A signed poster hanging proudly in my room.

All mistakes are mine and mine alone.

The first time you saw her, you remember being engulfed by a fire. A fire that started at her cherry red hair and ended in the pit of your stomach. She didn't notice you for a while, but she must have felt your eyes boring into her from across the room. When she turned and saw you standing there, off to the side, arms crossed defensively, but eyes staring openly, she cocked one eyebrow up and smiled using just the side of her lips opposite to the quirked eyebrow. Despite your ridiculous bravado, you always knew it was ridiculous, you found yourself blushing and staring at the ground. When you convinced yourself that she would no longer be looking at miserable ole' you, you finally looked back up. You didn't mean to look right at her again, but she was there and god was she beautiful.

She was still smirking, but her eyes were burning dangerously. The fire grew to an almost unbearable level.

She turned back to her friends for a moment before practically stalking over to you. You felt like you were sinking into yourself, you could feel barriers you spent years constructing melting the closer she got. And all it took was bright red hair and a sultry smile.

She didn't stop where you expected her to. You expected a safe distance, the typical distance one gives when meeting a stranger. But she walked right up to you, put her cheek against your own and whispered in your ear, despite the fact that the music wasn't even that loud.

"Are you going to keep burning holes in my back, or are you going to come and dance." She pulled back, her eyes flashed to your lips for the briefest of moments, oh how you wished it wouldn't have been so brief. Then she walked to the middle of the dance floor.

She turned back to face you and began twisting to the beat. Her body wrapped around the notes and rhythms in a way your sure your body could never manage, but when she stuck her pointer finger out and made the universal 'come hither' motion, you knew you were damn sure going to try.

You stomped your way across that room. Erecting your barriers as you went, this time trying, and failing, to shield them from the fire that was this mysterious little redhead.

You stood in front of her, realized that all of your walls were gone again, and immediately froze up despite all the heat. You couldn't do anything but stare at this incredible woman who somehow rid you of your barriers, yet still made you feel trapped inside yourself.

She just rolled your eyes and grabbed your hands like it was the easiest thing in the world, like she hadn't just caused tectonic shifts inside your soul.

Then she put your arms around her shoulders and grabbed your hips. When she pulled you close you realized that it really was the easiest thing in the world.

The first time she kissed you, really kissed you, not a drunken snog or chaste peck at the end of a date, you remember thinking it was nothing like you expected it. But, even then, so early in your relationship, you had already learned that nothing about her was the way you expected it.

You expected it, or rather her, to be more forceful, more in charge. But instead it was slow and lazy and exactly how it should have been. You spent hours kissing and being kissed back, it never became what you expected. It never became more than lazy kisses on a Sunday afternoon.

You began to realized that this is what she looked like when she was in control. When she had a handle on her emotions she didn't feel the need to consume you with her kisses or her actions, she just simply was.

But that was exactly was scared you about that kiss. You were so wildly in love with her, you saw no point in denying it, at least not to yourself even if you would never say the words, not at least so soon, and she was so perfectly fine.

How could she be fine when everything inside you was starting to tumble apart after just matter of weeks.

Then you began to realized that maybe, just maybe, that tumbling apart, that feeling of falling, was exactly fine, was completely right. Maybe that's how you're supposed to feel when someone collapses every wall and breaks through every boundary you've ever set just by quirking her eyebrow.

Then, you began to realized that the falling was in fact flying and the tumbling was actually you being put back together. That she was putting you back together.

The first time she made love to you, you remember thinking it was exactly how you expected it, in the fact that it was nothing like you expected it.

It wasn't really making love. It wasn't feeling completely alone in the middle of a crowded party. It wasn't lazy kisses on a Sunday Afternoon. It was fucking. It was her slamming you against the wall and pinning you to it with invasive kisses. It was her climbing on top of you and taking total control as she plunged her fingers deep inside you without a second's thought.

It was her losing control.

It was rough and it was dirty and it was the complete opposite of what you expected, what you thought you wanted. But oh, was it ever exactly what you wanted. You wanted her to lose control enough to try to control you, to try to own you. You wanted her to feel as much as you did.

And as you came, as she broke you down to nothing only to build you right back up again, you realized that it was her making love to you in the most pure, filthy, and volatile way possible.

The first time you fought with her, you remember not, even for the briefest of moments, thinking that it could be over.

It started for a stupid reason. You were late to pick her up. It wasn't your fault you got held up at work. You tried to explain that to her.

You did a shitty job.

You knew the entire time that it was completely your fault, but you're stubborn, and you're never wrong.

That's what she was fighting about.

You didn't need to fight about that though. You know you're stubborn, and soon enough she'd start finding it endearing, everyone eventually finds it endearing or just leaves so they don't have to deal with it. You hope'd for the former.

You knew, from the very second you saw her, with ever fiber of your stubborn being, that she was it for you, that you would fight tooth and nail for her. And you were glad for that because there was no way you would ever be able to resurrect those walls after she had already torn them down plank by plank.

But you tried to rebuild them. You kept on trying. You hated, still hate, being exposed like that. She could see everything, she could stare right into your soul and then just leave.

That's what you were fighting about.

Really, it was a much smaller fight than it should have been with two completely different fights going on.

You thought that once the fight was over, you would lose more than her, no matter who won. She wouldn't need to rebuild walls. She never had those walls. She never needed them. She couldn't understand them.

But she knew that you used to have them. She knew she was the reason that they were gone.

So, instead of continuing the two separate fights, she stopped fighting with you and starting fighting for you.

She broke down and demanded that you stop being so stubborn and stop thinking that she's going to walk away.

Because

The first time she ever told you she loved you, you remember feeling that familiar fire kick into full force.

But it wasn't just the fire that had lasted since the first time you saw her, it was mixed with anger and hope and above all else, love.

That very first time she told you she loved you, she didn't just say it, she yelled from the rooftops without really yelling it at all.

Her eyes were burning and laced with tears from your fight, your very first fight. But they were filled so completely with love. Her stance was so open, her arms held out wide with a slight shrug to them as if she was saying "I love you and it scares you, but I'm not hiding it from you anymore, no matter what happens."

It didn't scare you at all. You wanted to tell her that. But, if you started talking, you would never be able to stop, and you couldn't say the words yet, even if you knew you loved her since that very first moment.

Instead, you held her so tight, just trying to convey even half the emotion you felt, you were sure you would crush her tiny frame. She held on just as tight though. She clawed at your back and sobbed into your shoulder.

You nearly said it then just to make her understand that you weren't going anywhere either, that you weren't afraid of loving her, but of losing her. But you were sure she knew how much you loved her, she knew everything after all. You didn't need to say the words to prove anything to her.

You knew you weren't running away from this, from her.

She knew that too.

The first time you told her you loved her, you remember not remembering anything.

You had decided to go to a pub with your old college friends. The three of you, which was such a small number considering that there used to be seven of you, stayed out far to late recalling old times and old mates.

You were drunk and feeling awful sentimental, she was sober and trying to take care of you.

And she was just so lovely, she's always so lovely. You were stumbling and had just shown up at her place in the middle of the night and she just took you inside, got you in a bath, while getting completely drenched herself, and into her bed, which, because you tend to spread out when drunk, forced her to spend the night on the couch. She didn't even care that you had tracked mud in or that you probably smelled of vomit or that it would have been completely reasonable for her to yell at you for being such a git. She just took you in and took perfect care of you.

How could you not tell her how lovely she was?

It was a throwaway comment, a spur of the moment confession to a woman caring for a complete invalid. And as many times as she's told you that the fact that the only thing you could think to say when you were barely able to think at all was that you loved her made it special, you'll never forgive yourself for not doing it properly, not doing it the way that's expected.

But, then again, nothing with her is ever as you expect it, so maybe it was perfect after all.

Good? Bad? Let me know if you're feelin' up to it.

Thanks for reading!