It's been a long, long, long time since I wrote anything Ranma-related! But I went about a week without a computer and I kinda put the anime on to pass the time. I forgot how much I loved this series! I've been practically drowning in Ranma fic for the last week or two, re-reading old favourites and looking at new ones. I couldn't help myself and felt compelled to make yet another contribution to the fandom.

So, here it is, almost six years after the last one: my third Ranma fic. I'd appreciate it if you could review at the end. I've been away from this fandom for far too long.

Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½ or anything associated with it. All rights to Ranma ½ belong to Rumiko Takahashi and the other proper entities.

Summary: The heat had been unbearable the past few weeks. Akane stuffed a fist against her mouth to stifle a giggle as she remembered Ranma standing in the yard after dinner, shouting to the sky that it took every possible opportunity to rain on him when he didn't want it, so here he was, giving it ample opportunity.

Rating: K+

Genre: Friendship/Romance

Pairings: Ranma/Akane

Heatwave

The heat had been unbearable the past few weeks. Akane was glad that school had let out for the summer just before the heat wave had washed over Nerima. There was no way she'd have been able to concentrate in a stuffy classroom full of over twenty other similarly-suffering students. As it was, the eighteen year old couldn't even manage to put any effort into her summer homework.

The sky had been heavy with purple clouds all day, though it had yet to actually begin raining. Akane stuffed a fist against her mouth to stifle a giggle as she remembered Ranma standing in the yard after dinner, shouting to the sky that it took every possible opportunity to rain on him when he didn't want it, so here he was, giving it ample opportunity. For a moment, it looked like it had worked—a few droplets fell on Ranma's face, but not enough to trigger his curse before it ceased. He'd stood in the yard for well over ten minutes before Kasumi had called him inside and insisted on him helping her move a heavy box out to the storage shed.

Akane stared out her window with her chin in her hand, blowing her hair out of her face. She was clad more scantily than usual—the unbearable heat had forced her into a tank top and shorts. She briefly wished that the combined families could afford to take a trip to the beach for a few days, but they were still paying off the repairs to the house and dojo after Ukyo and Shampoo had brought all those explosives to the wedding a few months ago. She steered her mind away from that thought. She was far too hot to get angry.

Giving up on her homework, Akane threw her pencil down with venom. Stupid math.

She wandered downstairs in search of a cold drink and maybe a popsicle. The lights were on, though it was only seven in the evening. The sun shouldn't be quite set yet, but the dark, foreboding clouds prevented almost all light from making it through, casting Nerima into darkness.

She met her sisters in the kitchen, Kasumi washing up the dishes from dinner and Nabiki drying them and putting them away. She reached around the middle Tendo sister to pull a large glass from the cupboard and poured herself a soda in front of the fridge, not wanting to get in anyone's way. Pulling one of those popsicles with two sticks from the freezer, she unwrapped her frozen treat and headed out to the family room with half a mind to see what was on TV.

The shoji were thrown wide open in the hopes of enticing a breeze into the house, giving her a clear view of the koi pond in the yard. She wandered out onto the engawa, wanting to check on the skies again, biting off a bit of ice from her cold treat. Noting that it was a little cooler outside than up in her room, she stepped out onto the grass and wiggled her toes. She thought about bringing her homework downstairs and working on it in the engawa, but decided against it. She wasn't in the mood.

Instead, she wandered over to Ranma, who was meditating under one of the trees. Quietly, she took a seat beside him. He gave no outward sign that he'd noticed her approach, but he greeted her with a quiet "Hey."

"Hey." She crossed her legs Indian style, settling her cool glass between her shins. It send a cold shock through her body, but she ignored it in favour of breaking the melting popsicle in half and offering him the side she hadn't taken a chunk out of. "You want?"

He cracked an eye open to see what she offered before he let his posture relax. Shifting to a more comfortable position, he accepted her offering. "Thanks."

She licked her hand to clean up the sticky syrup that had melted onto it, reaching forward to pick up her glass with her now-free hand. "Where's our parents?" She asked. "I haven't seen any of them since dinner."

"Mom dragged the old man off to check on the repairs to her house." Ranma shrugged, speaking around a mouthful of sweet ice. Akane didn't have the energy to tell him not to talk with his mouth full. "I dunno where your pop went. He got a phone call about an hour ago and took off."

"It was probably Mr Sato again." Akane sighed, taking a mouthful of her soda before wordlessly offering it to the boy beside her. He took a mouthful before handing it back just as silently. "His son's been getting into all sorts of trouble lately and Daddy's been trying to help set him straight."

"That's Shouta, right?" Ranma frowned, trying to think. The boy in question was two years younger than them, only having just started at Furinkan High earlier that year. He'd smart-mouthed Ranma once a few months ago. Only once. Ranma had refrained from causing the little shit any real damage, but the message was loud and clear: you don't say whatever it was he said. He'd never given Akane the details, which led her to suspect that it was something about herself.

"Yeah." They lapsed back into silence, eating their popsicles and sharing Akane's glass of soda. Akane made a face at Nabiki taking pictures of them from the engawa, but made no move to stop her. "You get any of the homework done?" She asked.

He snorted, lying back on the grass, chewing on his popsicle stick as he finished off the frozen sweet. "In this heat? Are you kidding?"

She huffed a chuckle, finishing off the last of her soda before setting the glass aside and placing her stick in it. The glass toppled over, but she couldn't be bothered picking it up. She let it roll a short distance away as she stretched her hands over her head, feeling her back pop in several places. "Yeah, I couldn't get much done today. I wish it'd hurry up and rain."

"You and me both, for once." Ranma sighed, closing his eyes again. "Figures, the one time I wanna be a rain-magnet, it doesn't come."

Akane giggled. "Maybe if you stood out by the pond again."

He snorted. "I was sitting on the rocks around it after you went upstairs. Nothin'."

Akane scooted back so that she was sitting level with his head. "Well, you tried." She teased, poking him in the side. "Maybe you should call the Nekohanten and ask Shampoo and Mousse to stand outside for a while. The three of you might get it done if you tried."

He cracked an eye to look at her. "And risk Shampoo coming over here? No, thank you."

"Speaking of Shampoo coming around," Akane drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them as she determinedly stared at the pond a little ways in front of them. "I haven't seen her hanging around you lately."

"I know." She glanced down at him to see that he was grinning. "It's great, isn't it?"

Her face broke out into a dazzling smile, though he couldn't see it through his closed eyes. "Yeah, it is." Really, with Ukyo giving them both a wide berth and Ryoga still lost, the only thorns in their side that week had been the siblings Kuno—but that was more or less par for the course these days. Though Kodachi attended a different school and her brother was going to University, they both made random appearances at Furinkan High School in the mornings to challenge either Ranma or herself. Thankfully, with his classes now halfway across town, Kuno didn't have nearly enough time most days to bug them.

"The old hag told me the other day," Ranma began in halting tones, "the Kiss of Marriage has a time limit. If I don't agree to marry her for two years after she gives the kiss, it's over."

Akane started. They rarely discussed his various engagements since the foiled wedding, by mutual unspoken agreement. "Is it?"

He nodded, opening his eyes. "Yeah. It runs out at midnight. Fat chance of me changing my mind between then and now, I think."

"Tonight?" He nodded. Akane felt the air whoosh from her body. "So that's why Shampoo's been absent the last few days, then?"

Ranma hummed in the affirmative. "That's why she was kinda desperate last week, too." They both grinned, remembering Shampoo's disastrous attempt to feed Ranma yet another love potion. Genma had snatched the bowl out of Ranma's hands and inhaled about half of the dish before anyone had been able to stop him, and had spent three hilarious days following Shampoo around like a lovesick puppy before Cologne had managed to feed him the antidote. He'd even gone so far as to challenge Shampoo to a fight in order to 'win' her hand, and had announced that he was willing to leave his current wife for the much younger woman if he won. Ranma and Akane had happily gone to the Nekohanten to laugh at the chaos over a few bowls of ramen. "I guess she kinda gave up after that."

"So, what happens now?" Akane asked, chewing on her bottom lip.

Ranma shrugged. "Shampoo goes home in disgrace and I get left alone. Their elders'll dig up some kinda humiliating punishment for her and she's gotta start all her training again." He paused for a moment. "I actually think the old ghoul was trying to guilt me into marrying Shampoo when she was telling me. She looked a bit surprised when I told her that it was Shampoo's problem and that I'd be glad to see the back of them."

Truth be told, Akane was a little surprised, too, though she didn't say so. He'd always been considerate of the other girls' feelings, though he claimed never to return them. A small voice in the back of her mind reminded her that that was because he'd chosen her, even if he hadn't outwardly admitted as much. He could deny it all he wanted, but she knew what she'd heard at Jusendo.

"Well," Akane's voice was light and cheerful. "That's one problem off your back, at least!"

"Off our backs, you mean." Ranma poked her in the hip. "She pisses you off just as much as she annoys me."

"True." Akane laughed. "Hey, I think it's starting to rain!"

The stones around the koi pond were starting to speckle with raindrops. Shooting to his feet, Ranma exited the shelter offered by the tree and stood with his arms out, face turned up toward the sky. She laughed at the relief on his face as she watched the transformation from male to female take place; it was over in less than a second, kind of a 'blink-and-you-miss-it' thing. The red bled down from the roots of his hair. His arms, legs and waist shrank, while his hips and chest swelled, until he was one hundred percent outwardly female.

While Akane held no sexual attraction for Ranma's female form, she couldn't help but appreciate it. He did truly make a beautiful woman. Akane had on more than one memorable occasion become far too familiar with both his default and cursed forms; while he was no less physically fit, there was something about Ranma's cursed body that was soft where his true body was not. She-Ranma curved where he-Ranma was all angles; she had padding where he was all hard muscle. It made for some interesting sensations the few times that he'd been holding her for one reason or another while the transformation had taken place.

She watched him spin in circles for a few seconds, before standing and retrieving the forgotten glass and popsicle sticks. She sprinted for the engawa to avoid getting too wet. Dropping the sticks in the trash and leaving the glass in the sink to be washed the following night, she headed into the changing room to grab Ranma a towel. Now that it was raining, it was really coming down. Thunder pealed, so close that she felt it rattle her teeth.

He was standing, dripping on the wooden floor of the engawa by the time she came back. He didn't even try to enter the house proper, having gotten more than one gentle scolding from Kasumi about trekking water through the family room in the past. He grinned at her as she tossed the towel at his head. "Thanks."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. "You gonna change back?"

Ranma scrunched his nose, rearranging his pretty face into an expression of distaste. "Nah, not right now. It's way too hot. I'll wait til it cools down." He paused, pursing his lips. "I might sleep like this, maybe."

Akane shrugged. "You might wanna at least change your shirt." She raised her eyebrows as she looked pointedly at his chest. His white tank top had gone nearly transparent, clinging to him like a second skin.

He waved her off as he toweled his hair. "Yeah, yeah."

"Ah, there you two are." Both teenagers looked over to see Kasumi watching them from the other side of the family room. "Ranma, your parents just called to say that they'd be staying the night at your mother's house. They forgot to take an umbrella and your mother doesn't want to get wet. They'll come back tomorrow, when it lets up."

"Awesome." Ranma grinned. "Means I get the room to myself tonight."

Kasumi laughed lightly. "I'll make sure someone wakes you up for breakfast, then." She promised, turning around to head for the stairs. Akane laughed as Ranma good-naturedly stuck his tongue out at her older sister's back.

"What do you say," she offered, "that we finish off that tub of chocolate ice cream in the freezer and pretend to do homework while we watch one of those crappy old movies on TV?"

Ranma's face lit up. "Sure, just lemme go change my shirt and grab my crap."

"Get my homework while you're up there!" Akane called out as he raced up the stairs.

"Sure! On your desk, right?" Ranma's voice floated down to her.

"Yeah! Touch anything else and I'll kick your ass into next week!"

"In your dreams, maybe!"

Akane didn't bother to make any further comment as she rolled her eyes and headed for the kitchen to collect the ice cream and a pair of spoons. Maybe they'd get some of their homework done, maybe not. Privately, she wouldn't mind if they didn't; they occupied themselves thus quite frequently, and always had way too much fun making fun of the characters in those ridiculous movies to do anything productive. Last time, she'd felt so comfortable and happy that she'd nearly choked out that she loved him… before Nabiki had come in and thrown a glass of cold water at them for laughing too loudly while she was trying to sleep, triggering Ranma's curse.

She sighed over the fact that Ranma would be female this time, too. While she'd long ago accepted it as part of who he was, and that he would likely never be rid of it, she didn't want the first time she told him she loved him to be when he was a she. Without even asking, she knew that that would not go over well. But now that it was raining, the heat wave seemed to be breaking—it had already cooled considerably since she'd come downstairs. Maybe he'd change back before the night was over.

And if not, there was always tomorrow.

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