Disclaimer: I do not own Nodame Cantabile and I do no make a profit!

The Music, The Rhythm, the Flow Perhaps

by S.B. Kisses

He doesn't know when he fell in love with her. He doesn't know at what point in the path to Weirdo Land he stepped past the point of no return. He doesn't know when that ridiculous mouth of hers turned from irritating to kissable. He doesn't know when the sight of her clothes and PuriGorota memorabilia strewn about his apartment turned from nauseating to comforting.

Chiaki sighed.

He glanced at the clock. 8 AM. He was always an early riser. He lifted his head up from his pillow to look to his right. Nodame was still sleeping, a goofy grin on her face and drool slipping out from the corner of her mouth. Chiaki smiled at the irony. A few years back, the idea of Nodame next to him in bed would have been foreign to him. He would have laughed someone off, even smacked them, for having mentioned such a possibility.

Nodame snuggled deeper into the pillow, mumbling something along the lines of, "Shinichi is such a great house-husband…mukya, of course we can have another baby," her characteristic silly little smile getting bigger.

The covers slipped away, revealing her bare shoulders. Chiaki moved closer to bring the sheets back up around her. He let his hands skim the smoothness of her skin beneath the sheets.

Suddenly, Nodame giggled, her eyes still closed. She swatted his hand away. Looking up at him with one eye open, she said slyly, "I had no idea senpai was such a hentai, too."

Chiaki bopped her gently on the head before pulling her closer to him. "Baka, who's the hentai?" He reached one hand out languidly to pull something out from the drawers next to the bed, rummaging for a few seconds. "I thought I told you that to stop taking these. It's not like you need to have them anyways."

He revealed to her a small stack of pictures consisting of himself in various states of dress, taken discreetly from different angles.

"Gyabo! I thought I hid those really well!" She exclaimed, making a grab for the photos.

Chiaki flipped her over so that he rested lazily above her. "I've confiscated these. You can't have them back." He gave her a slow, sly, somewhat sinister grin. "Hmmm, but I wonder what a hentai like you would need to remember that taking pictures like these of me is expressly forbidden…"

"Chiaki-senpai?" Nodame said somewhat nervously. His grin became more wicked. Realizing what was about to happen, Nodame began to twist furiously in Chiaki's hold, attempting desperately to escape. She pushed against his bare chest, but he wouldn't budge.

He watched her face in amusement as he began to tickle her sides, her neck, her thighs, her laughing mingled with gasps and pleading for mercy.

"Nodame won't do it again!" She managed between fits of laughter.

"Hmmm, I think I've heard that before."

"I mean it this time! Stop, I'll do anything, just stop." Abruptly, Chiaki's fingers pulled away and Nodame looked back up above her, still short of breath from laughing, to see Chiaki again grinning slyly.

"Anything?" He repeated. Nodame gulped.

Before she could respond, Chiaki pulled the covers above their heads and no more was said between them for the rest of the morning.

Chiaki wasn't sure when his mornings turned from serene and routine to chaotic and unpredictable. He wasn't sure when his life turned from Beethoven's somber black to Mozart's jumping pink. He wasn't sure when he began to find imagining a morning without waking up to find her drooling next to him lonely.

If there was one thing he WAS indeed sure of was that this was the fate he chose. He could've gone to Paris by himself. He could have left her behind. Yet, something in him had pushed him, perplexed and irritated as he was, toward her. The music, the flow, the rhythm perhaps.

There was no running, no turning back at this point. There was only to keep going down this path he chose, no matter how ironic, no matter how strange, no matter how bizarre. Because this is what he decided, because this is what he wanted, because she was the one beckoning merrily at the end of the pathway.

Fin

A/N I love Chiaki 3 So sexy and moody and mysterious. Nodame is a lucky girl.

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