Sang's eyes rhythmically went back and forth, left to right, top to bottom. To Nathan only half conscious lying across the leather couch in his living room, she appeared to be reading her required novel for her English class. If he had not been running on only two hours of sleep the night prior due to an Academy assignment, he would have noticed Sang's eyes going over the same page of the tattered paperback for the past half hour in the armchair.

While her body was caught up in the motions of reading, her mind was focused on something entirely different from A Farewell to Arms. Instead, her thoughts were on something else she read earlier that day.

During lunch period at Ashley Waters, North demanded Sang to hand over the notes passed on to her from the first half of the school day. Most of her friends were up late the previous night and had not intercepted all the notes from their classmates due to fatigue and exhaustion. A few managed to land on her desk, and she dutifully shoved them into her backpack with the intent to surrender them to North anyways. She never bothered to read the content.

As she fished them out of her book bag, a gust of wind caught one and whipped it away from the rest. It didn't get too far though; it smacked right into Silas's broad chest. The Greek took it and unfolded it in curiosity.

He didn't get a chance to read too much before a fight in the cafeteria broke out. Kota shot up and instantly barked out orders, demanding Nathan, North, Silas and himself to head straight into the scuffle. Victor was to contact Mr. Blackbourne, leaving Gabriel and Luke to keep Sang company at the benches.

Everyone jumped into action, forgetting the notes for the moment, including the one Silas opened and left face up on his seat.

Right next to Sang.

Darn her traitorous eyes for scanning over the scribbled words on the lined loose leaf paper, because she came to understand the proverb, "Curiosity killed the cat."

She managed not to think about the contents of the note for a while, filing her contemplations away while she worried about the wellbeing of her friends among the mob in the cafeteria. No one got hurt; two girls just got into a heated argument over a boy, and no disciplinary action was needed.

The note Sang accidentally read surfaced in her thoughts as she did her homework at Nathan's house that afternoon. The words and implications plagued her mind and refused to let her focus on her studies. She feared Kota's disappointment.

"You want something to drink, Sang?" Nathan asked her as he lunged up from his reclined position on the sofa. He really wanted to get some juice into his system to wake himself up.

Sang looked up from the pages of her book but it was obvious she did not hear the question. Her face easily betrayed her and broadcasted other things were on her mind, things that worried her.

"Peanut? Are you okay?" Nathan asked as he stretched with his arms over his head.

"Hm? What did you say?" She blinked several times as her mind returned to the present.

"I asked if you wanted anything to drink," he said with a raised eyebrow.

She closed her book with a finger in between the pages to keep her spot. "Yes. Thank you."

He made his way to the kitchen and poured two glasses of orange juice, handing one to Sang when he returned. "What are you thinking about?" he asked after draining half his glass.

Sang knew that once he suspected something was on her mind, there was no point in hiding it. Her friends always managed to pull it out of her and face the issues to be discussed and anything that needed to be solved. "I accidentally read one of the notes passed to me in class today," she admitted on a weary sigh. She held up her hand to keep Nathan from exploding and going on the expected tirade. She had heard it before. Thankfully, Nathan understood and obliged to the gesture, allowing her to continue. "I know I'm supposed to ignore anything they say because none of their words matter. It's hard to control my thoughts about it, though. The implication, and with what we are…"

Nathan sighed and ruffled his mahogany hair until it stuck out in every direction. "What is seen cannot be unseen, right?" He knew that ignorance was bliss, but very fragile. Once broken, one just had to pick up the pieces and move on.

Sang bit her lip and nodded.

"Do you still have it?"

She leaned over to her backpack at the foot of the armchair, rummaging around until he grasped and pulled out the folded sheet of paper from the very bottom. Nathan took it from her fingers, making sure his own brushed against hers to reassure his affections before he fell back into the couch across from her. He cursed after opening up the folds and reading the words inside.

"Peanut, this isn't true. You have to know that, right?" He crumpled up the note and tossed it onto the coffee table, where it bounced and spun a little.

Sang's eyes did not meet Nathan's, preferring to watch the balled up trash on the table instead. "It has a point." Her voice was hollow.

Nathan stood and pulled Sang up by her hands until he could gather her shoulders in his arms for a hug. She clutched at the front of his t-shirt and buried her nose into his collar bone. "We aren't 'grooming' you to be a pet, sex kitten, or anything like that. You're family, an equal. You're nothing less than any one of us. Hell, you're probably more."

"I seriously doubt that last bit," she muttered, muffled by his shirt and surrounded by the comforting scent of leather and cypress.

"Shush, you. You underestimate yourself." Despite the claim that she was not a pet, his hand rubbed up and down her back in comforting motions. "As for 'your snatch is the only thing keeping you in their good graces,'" he quoted with a sneer; the crudeness of the wording felt gross on his tongue as he said it, "that's the furthest thing from the truth. I like you for who you are. I like this…" he lifted his hand and poked a fingertip onto her temple, "…and this." His feet stepped back a pace while bracing her to stay still, putting air between their bodies so he could tap a spot under her left collar bone.

Sang's nose crinkled. "You like my boob?"

Nathan's eyebrows rose to nearly his hairline as his face flushed red. "No! I mean, yes. NO! Oh god, Sang." He smacked himself on the cheeks a few times, his head playing tennis between his palms. "You have great boobs, but I'm talking about the heart behind one of them. That's what makes you you."

She sighed, but her eyes were still forlorn. "I understand you, and I believe you, but I can't help but think that I wouldn't be here with you and the other guys if I wasn't a girl. My gender seems to be the only thing working for me at times, then against me at others."

The chuckle from his low voice surprised her, making her jerk to look at him in the face for the first time all afternoon. His dark blue eyes twinkled in amusement to match the upwards curl of his lips. He guided her to the couch and situated them until she sat sideways on his lap, tucking her head under his chin with his arms wrapped around her waist. She did not resist.

"Let me tell you a story," Nathan began with the smile still on. "We told you Kota, Victor, Luke, Gabe, and I were in school together since Kindergarten, right?"

Sang nodded.

"The five of us were really close friends. Victor couldn't really hang out with us after school, and Gabe only sometimes. That didn't make them any less of friends. We shared things among each other, from clothes, to toys, Gameboys, and secrets. Then there's the pranks. The pranks were epic. We pulled some on people who deserved them, but mostly we just pranked each other. Of course, Luke was behind most of them, but there were times when we got him back pretty good.

"Just before first grade started, Luke got Kota to convince me I was actually a girl."

Sang jumped until she sat erect to blink repeatedly at him. "You can't be serious!" Her eyes scanned down his upper body from his angled jaw stubbled from a day's worth of growth, to his muscled shoulders and arms that bragged of his disciplined weight training, and the trunk of his body hugged by the undershirt leftover from his faux school uniform that showed his inverted triangle form. She knew she sat on thighs that rippled in strength and led down to the rest of his legs covered in manly, curly hair hidden by the dark grey slacks he had yet to change out of. There was no possible way he could have been mistaken for a girl.

Nathan outright laughed at her, being able to read her thoughts from her facial expressions and the path of her examining eyes. "This was way before puberty, Peanut. I was a cute kid. Remind me next time we're at Kota's, and we'll get out Erica's photo albums."

Sang thought he was still pretty cute. Well, maybe cute wasn't the correct term. Drool-worthy and aching-to-be-touched handsome was far more applicable.

Nathan appeared he could read those thoughts too and bellowed with more laughter, the deep timbre resonating through him and into Sang. He bounced his knees up and down, jostling her playfully in his lap.

"As I was saying, the lot of them convinced me I was a girl. They said the hospital where I was born made a mistake and didn't realize it until after I was taken home, but my mom decided it was best for my father to keep believing I was a boy. The logic was that my mother was a girl, and look at the way he treated her." The humor was gone from his eyes as bad memories from the past were dredged up. The story came to a lull as he lost himself in dark feelings.

Sang panicked slightly. She didn't want Nathan to get depressed by trying to fix her own depressing thoughts, so she picked up his hand, isolated his pointer finger, and slipped it past her lips. Her molars gnawed on the fingernail, and it was enough to bring him back to the present with a half-smile.

"Where was I? Oh yeah." He was content to leave his finger there. He wanted to pop her own finger into his mouth, but the teen figured it would make his story telling too difficult to be clearly understood. "Now that I think about it, the excuse the guys came up with was kind of mean, but that's all beside the point."

Sang thought that was really mean.

"So, for my own good and because it was too much trouble to change my birth certificate, I was dressed up and was told I was a boy for my entire life. They even got Erica to play along for a bit when Jessica was a toddler. I asked I could dress Baby Jessica in boy clothes so I wouldn't be the only girl wearing Charizard pajamas and Batman undies." He shook his head back and forth, chuckling to himself. It was obvious Nathan held no grudges. "It stuck the entire school year.

"There was a point where I got so bummed about being a girl, I tried to keep away from Victor, Gabe, and them, and especially when at school we all teased, pointed, and made fun of the girls in our class. I figured they couldn't like me since I was a girl too. They wouldn't have any of that, so they cornered me one day and made me understand that it didn't matter if I was a boy or a girl to them. I was still Nathan, and I would forever be their friend.

"They still played with me. Erica still let me run away to Kota's house when my dad had his episodes. We all still shared toys, video games, and secrets. We threw rocks at other girls and called them stupid."

Sang was giggling incessantly with the mental images she conjured.

"It all ended at the end of the school year. I worked myself up and was determined to accept myself for who I was. I got up all the courage a seven year old could ever have and demanded my mother to get me a dress to wear for the first grade awards ceremony the last week of school. It had to be red. Well, my dad heard of it and beat the tar out of me, then my mother for putting sick ideas into my head. I escaped to Kota's house, and that's when Kota told me it was all a big joke Luke made up. I didn't believe him at first. I still didn't believe it after Erica sat me down, explained the anatomical difference between the genders, and reassured me I was a real boy. Kota had to whip his peener out and show me for the fact to finally sink in, not with Erica or Jessica in the room, of course."

A blush burned across Sang's cheeks when he got to that last part. She was glad she was nestled back into his chest so he couldn't see her embarrassment for imagining what he told her.

"The point of the story," he continued, "is that I don't give a rat's ass whether you're a boy or a girl either. You're my friend. You're family. Male or female, you're one of us now. And I promise you, Peanut, all the other guys feel the same way. If you were a dude with a twig and berries who hung to the left, we'd still choose you as family."

She sucked on his finger to draw the excess saliva off the calloused skin before slipping it out of her mouth. Her brows were furrowed in concentration, her innocent mind trying to decipher what he meant by 'hung to the left.' What if she hung whatever it was to the right? Would it matter?

Nathan cupped her cheeks in between her palms and focused her green eyes onto his pair of blue. "It's a guy thing, Sang. Don't hurt yourself thinking too hard." He tried the thing Gabriel did with her every so often and squished her cheeks forward until her lips puckered comically toward him. He smirked, proud of himself. "But I will let you know that if you were a guy, I guarantee I would not enjoy doing this." His own lips puckered and came in contact with hers for a sloppy kiss.

A/N: This was intended to be pure humor for me to tease and poke fun at Nathan, but things got a little serious at the beginning. Now that it's over, I kinda like Nathan now. Well, he's growing on me. Darn my Left Boob for automatically rooting for the underdog.

For the record, this prank was one we pulled on one of my sisters. She believed it for three years straight. I'm driving the bus to hell if anyone wants a ride!