A/N: Only the second show I've ever seen in over 20 years that touched me so much that I wanted to write fic about it, I found Steins;Gate to be a masterpiece, with an amazing story, comedic moments, drama, and characters I could root and care for. Not just Okabe and Kurisu, but the entire cast. And when the credits rolled on the movie, I realized that I was way more invested in Okabe x Kurisu than I thought possible. Then this happened. Enjoy.

This takes place after Déjà Vu. Less comedy than the show employed, but that's mostly because the comedy in Steins;Gate is amazing and I don't think I can ever achieve that (and it's hard to convey Okabe's awesome gestures and pronunciations into text).

It shouldn't have surprised her when she opened the door and saw Okabe Rintarou leaning against the frame of the door. It still did, but it shouldn't have. She saw it coming from a mile away.

"Yo, Christina."

She felt the twitch in her facial features. She really wanted to punch him sometimes. "What do you want?"

Okabe raised his eyebrows. " You didn't get my text?"

Kurisu pulled out her phone and found the offending text message. "SOS! Need to crash at urs, The Organization has located our whereabouts," she read aloud, and tucked the phone back in her pocket. "That tells me exactly nothing."

Okabe started laughing, in that annoying way of his that told Kurisu that he was reverting back to Hououin Kyouma. Suddenly he leaned close and she could feel his breath puffing against her cheeks. God, she didn't want to admit it, but she missed him. "It wasn't The Organization, Christina," he whispered.

"Then who was it?" she said, hating the way her voice had reduced to a whisper as well. She shouldn't be enabling him like this.

He stood back to his full height and any sense of intimacy immediately left the room. "Mr. Braun threatened the lab with raising the rent again after our microwave exploded," he said and shrugged. "I tried explaining that it was the Organization's doing, that they were sabotaging our lab, but Mr. Braun got really scary so we left. Mayuri is with Faris, Daru went home and I just need a place to stay. I'm pretty sure the lab is radioactive right now."

Kurisu sighed. "That's not how microwaves work."

"Either way, The Organization will not beat me, for I am the Mad Scientist, Hououin Kyouma!" he said, while striking an unnecessary pose that Kurisu remembered doing when she tried to jumpstart the lab members' memory with regards to Okabe's existence. He pushed her aside and strode into the room.

"Hey!" Kurisu said, "I didn't tell you, you could come in."

"You didn't have to, assistant. What's mine is yours, and what's yours is the lab's."

"Whatever," she sighed and closed the door to her hotel room. She had come back to Japan for a few months to see everyone again. It had been six months since she had accepted her feelings for Okabe and traveled back in time to pull him back to the Steins Gate world line. Not a month later, she was back on a plane heading to LA to finish her studies, with the promise of definitely returning.

Her relationship with Okabe had taken a step, although she wasn't sure where they stood. Yes, he had told her he loved her in America, and yes she had kissed him, and yes she realized that a life without him in it wasn't worth living, which was why she pulled him back to their world line... but the long distance relationship was definitely tough.

They had texted a lot, but more often than not Kurisu had wondered whether Okabe was being genuine, or whether she was talking to Hououin Kyouma. Not only that, but she was slightly disappointed when they saw each other again at the airport. She had hoped her return would spark some excitement out of him, but all she got was a 'welcome back, assistant', which had left her in a foul mood.

Still, it was nice to see them all back together. Mayuri was preparing for another convention, so her mind was absorbed with all the silly cosplay that she was crafting. Daru was busy with... actually, she didn't really want to know what he was doing. Probably still drooling over his 2D girls, despite the fact that she heard he had somehow managed to find a girlfriend.

(the poor girl had probably not seen Daru in person)

Moeka had even come around to celebrate her being back, although Kurisu somehow resented the woman. She had been told by Okabe what horrible deeds she committed in the different timelines, where she was a part of the group that would end up killing Mayuri. Kurisu knew it was irrational, to hate someone for actions they would not take in a different timeline, but she was still wrapping her head around the idea of more than one timeline and the Reading Steiner. The dreams she was experiencing were real for someone: notably Okabe. They had actually happened.

Even with six months of absence and having experienced a shift in a timeline firsthand, she still couldn't quite piece together how everything worked, which annoyed her. That's why she was back in the States, to further study the human brain, to try and understand how the Reading Steiner worked.

Okabe dropped down on her bed and looked around. "Whoa, your room is so nice!" he said.

Kurisu crossed her arms and frowned. "Sure, make yourself at home, why don't you?"

He looked up from the bed and noticed her expression. "Are you upset with me?"

"Wh- what? Why would you think that?" she said as she walked into the room herself.

"I don't know," he said and started ticking off points of his fingers. "You've been snappy ever since you touched down, we've barely talked and every time I say something you act like I'm an idiot."

Kurisu grumbled. He'd noticed. She knew that maybe it was a bit irrational, but damn it, did this entire relationship mean nothing to him? After he had confronted her on the highway and made his declaration of love, she thought he was serious about the whole ordeal... and they had been together a lot since then, but she expected a bit more romance out of the entire thing.

"You want something to drink?" she asked, to change the subject more than anything else. She didn't want to answer his questions right now.

"Dr. Pepper!" he immediately exclaimed and she smiled, before walking to the mini-bar and grabbing a bottle.

"Here," she said and threw the bottle to him. He caught it - a part of her thought he wouldn't - and untwisted the cap.

"Thanks," he said and started drinking. She watched as he downed half of the bottle in one go. He wiped at his mouth and averted his gaze to watch out of Kurisu's window. "You haven't answered my question though."

She sat down on the bed and turned her back to him. "I don't know," she said. "Things have been weird lately."

"Is it your studies?" he immediately asked. She shook her head.

"It's... well, I guess it's us," she said. She didn't want to look at him, to see his confused expression that she knew was there. "I just don't know if there is an us. You barely said hi at the airport. We've been on maybe four dates since... y'know... it seems like you don't even care about me anymore."

She heard him choking on his Dr. Pepper and winced when she heard the liquid falling on the ground. Rather than saying anything, Okabe kept silent, with the occasional cough as he was forcing the drink out of his lungs. She heard the fizz of the soft drink as it spilled over the carpet but still Okabe kept silent.

"I thought it would be easier," he finally said, his voice barely carrying over the sound of the Dr. Pepper. She felt the bed shift as he picked up the dropped bottle. "I thought it would be simple, we just say we love each other and then everything ends up happily ever after."

"That's not how it works. We have to work at it."

"I know... I'm sorry... I'm new to this."

"Yeah," she said, but she wasn't sure what else to say. It wasn't like she was completely innocent."Well, it's late. Let's just get to bed. We can go to the lab tomorrow and clean it all up."

He agreed and she finally turned to look at him. He seemed sad. There was a shadow falling over his face, which only made Okabe look more pale than he already was. "Where do you want me?"

"You can sleep in the bed as well. I'm not going to let you sleep on the floor," she said. "Especially not after you spilled Dr. Pepper over it." She stood up and went to the bathroom to undress. When she came back, Okabe had already crawled under the covers, still watching the window. She joined him and turned off the lights. His back was turned to her.

She turned her back to him as well, shutting her eyes, but she knew that sleep wouldn't come easily to her. Despite protesting so much, and having a hard time accepting the fact that he knew her so well from the other timeline, she still had grown to love him. His quirky habits, his weird manner of speech, and his kind heart, despite the fact that he always called her anything other than Kurisu.

Which made it all the more frustrating that there seemed to be so little progress. She knew that this was partially because she kept traveling between America and Japan, and partially because they were both completely new to this 'romance' thing.

She felt the bed move and figured that Okabe must've turned over. A few seconds later she felt his hand searching out hers. His fingers linked through hers and she sighed. "I'm sorry," he whispered, but she didn't reply. "I know it's unfair to you, but every day I still think I'm about to lose you. I've seen you die twice already. I even killed you once. I'm terrified that I'm going to screw it up." He let out a bittersweet laugh. "I guess I'm screwing it up because I'm so scared of screwing it up."

She turned to face him, and even though she couldn't make out his features in the dark, she knew she was looking him in the eye. "You're not. We're going to make this happen, you and I. Call it fate, call it the will of steins;gate, I don't care. I believed you when you told me this crazy story about different world lines, hell, I believed you when you said that I loved you. So we're going to try our hardest to make it work. Not just because my brain is telling me to do this, and not because I feel obligated to you, not even because this is how humans develop and so I really don't have any choice in the matter because my body has already made the decision for me, but because I want to."

He squeezed in her hand. "Thanks... Kurisu."

She felt her breath catching in her throat. He almost never called her by her real name. "Okabe," she whispered.

"Hmm?"

"Close your eyes."