Disclaimer: I don't own 'em.

Don't Tell Anyone, But...

Sakura-Angel: Mmkay. Don't worry about the less serious turn this chapter will take. There is definitely a reason for it. Think of it as in between time for the intense stuff. So yeah... that said, Satoshi really shines in this chapter. Oh, and Dark, silly guy that he is, thinks he's got everything worked out again. Silly, silly boy. Aaaand I would like to thank all the people reading this story! I don't do it enough. You guys are super awesome!

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Nine floors up from the hustle and bustle of a wednesday morning was Harada Riku.

"AH-CHOO!"

With a cold. Her legs stuck out from underneath a pitfully small blanket, feet freezing cold, forehead blazing hot.

"I can't believe you'd do something so reckless--"

"You can sabe it, Riza. I know what you're goink to say."

"-As splashing around in giant puddles, fall asleep immediately when you get home, and then not change your clothes!" The younger twin yelled at her apparently brainless sister. "Why would you do something like that? You're supposed to be the responsible one!"

"Yeah. I got that." Riku attempted a 'sympathize-with-me' look on the blue-eyed man standing in her bedroom doorway, but ended up instead looking vaguely like 'sleep-with-me'. Bleary and frustrated at this failure, she waved a hand in his direction. "Bwat is he doing here?" she asked her sister. She paused, thought for a second, and opened her mouth again. "Actually, who is he?"

"Hikari Satoshi," the young man replied, stepping forward and extending a hand. Risa rummaged some more.

"Pleased to bmeet you," she said and shook his hand, not even bothered by how highly irregular this all was. "Doctor Higari Sadoshi?"

"No, just plain ol' Hikari Satoshi I'm afraid," he sounded somewhere between geniunely sorry and extremely amused. As tall as he was, he had to look down on her a great deal, with her sprawled out over her mattress.

"So if you don't bind my asking," she said, head clearing up the tiniest bit, "What are you doing here?"

He inclined his head in Risa's direction as the rummaging noises grew louder and more frantic. "Your sister insisted."

She nodded, as if this all made sense now. "Bi see." Even through the disgusting levels of mucus and two extra degrees Celsius she had on her, the cogs and wheels in her brain began to turn. "And... how egg-actly do you know each other?"

He pondered how to answer this question in a way that would increase the noises of fevered rummaging. "I had handed her drink to her at a coffeehouse when she struck up a conversation," he said smoothly. The distant crash and muffled, frustrated squeak was music to his ears.

Riku sat up now, her eyebrows going up in a sly way. "Reeeeally. Dat doesn't sound li--"

"That's not how we met!" Risa came stomping over, hair in disarray and pink in the cheeks with a blanket in hand.

"Would you care to tell her, then?" The blue-haired not-doctor smiled mildly at her sister. He did everything in a watered-down sort of way, as if doing any more was simply too large of a bother. While this was true, he didn't come off as lazy, but rather as mysterious. Eerie.

"He handed me my drink, said my name, and I wondered how he knew it--"

"Whereupon you struck up a conversation with me," Satoshi finished, and if Riku didn't know any better, she'd say he looked the tiniest bit playfully arrogant.

"I did not-!"

"Miss Harada, we can argue this all day. But the truth remains-"

"You know how he knew my name?" Risa changed the topic abruptly, turning her back to the man and focusing on Riku.

She indulged her sister. "How?"

"He's friends with Dark!" she delivered the news happily, beaming.

That was when Riku's face crumpled.

Risa's expression fell immediately after her sister's. "What? What happened?"

Riku considered just how gossiping about Dark could affect Satoshi's impression of her, but she figured that things were just about as shit as they could get. "I... sort of blew up at him," she mumbled, avoiding both their gazes.

Satoshi stared out her window impassively.

"Why?" her sister asked, not angry or upset, but with actual curiosity.

She flopped down on the bed and gave herself a headrush in reverse. She blew her nose to clear up her sinuses. She didn't need to sound even worse, really. "I... I don't know. He just makes me so..." she groped for the right words. Risa gave her a funny look.

"Weird," she said, disappointed in her vocabulary. "He makes me weird, okay? He... rescued me from the phone cord and I had all these thoughts running through my head and I just got so irritated, like when you blasted your stupid ultra-pop music when we were little..."

"RikuRikuRiku. You are weird. You're talking about phone cords and music preferences." When Risa received a perfect imitation of the funny look she had given Riku, she sighed audibly. "Expand."

Satoshi cleared his throat. Both women looked at him. It was unsettling, having two people who looked so much alike move alike as well.

"Would it be too much of an intrusion if I browsed your music collection?" he asked, trying to let them have their privacy but being too polite to say so.

Riku lifted a hand, shooing him. "Go ahead." As soon as he left, Riku mouthed "He's nice!" in a sneaky way, which Risa ignored. The younger twin was determined to keep this off Satoshi and on her sister. "You were saying?"

Riku sighed quietly. "Alright. I got tangled up in the phone cord when you phoned me at work. He untangled me. He was being so nice about it, not gross or anything. And while he was doing it, I drove myself crazy thinking about what we could be--" she halted herself. "This is stupid. I hardly know him. Why am I so hung up on him?"

"Because," her sister answered with surprising speed, "You can feel something, 'Ku. It doesn't matter how long you've known him. If you're this crazy about him, why don't you just ask him out already?"

This idea stupefied her, made her numb. For a few seconds at least. "No!"

"Why?" Risa responded, quick as lightning. Her grip on her temper was loosening. "It doesn't matter if you told him all that crap about yourself, or if you blew up at him! What matters is that he stuck around. Get this through your head, 'Ku-" here she grabbed her sister's shoulders, assertive and completely different from the Risa she used to be- "He likes you."

Riku shook her head, taking the prize for Best Case of Denial. This only made Risa angrier, so she shook her sister once to get her attention.

"And you know what's the best part about it, 'Ku? Take a guess. He likes you in spite of all that stuff. He already knows the most embarassing things about you, the things you hate the most, the stuff that makes you cry... and he still likes you." She let her arms fall. "I'd kill for that. I know a ton of girls who dream about that. But guess what? It's happened to you. Appreciate it for what it is."

Riku let herself slip a bit, gnawing her lower lip.

What if Risa was right? When she said it that way she made it sound like a fairytale. Dark was her good, faithful prince who made her laugh, who she felt that spark in the first day they met. He saved her from unlawful phone cords and paid for her drinks in full.

But still.

What if it didn't work? What if their relationship didn't amount to even half of all her fantasies and dreams and musings of them together? (Okay, yes, she thought about it.) What if they weren't as good?

"Oh, Risa..." she said softly. Her lips trembled and her heartbeat went all out of whack, just like that first day. "What if..."

And then a ring went off.

Risa checked her cellphone on impulse - not her. Riku checked her cellphone, sure she was going to get cussed out by Mariko, but luckily, it wasn't her either. Which left...

"Hello, Dark," came Satoshi's voice from the living room. "Yes..."

Riku felt an almost physical blow at his name, reminded of why she and her sister had ended up talking in the first place.

"No, I can't make it," she heard Satoshi say. "Ask someone else along. Daisuke. Emiko."

Riku felt her stomach twist at the mention of another girl, then felt stupid immediately after. She stole a quick glance of her sister, and saw that she was listening too.

"Of course you can take her. She is your mother..." Riku spluttered at this, holding back a laugh in her shaky state.

"I'm not joking," Satoshi deadpanned. He opened his mouth to reply to something Dark was saying, but then shut it again, looking mildly hostile. "Harada's... no, Riku's. Don't be frantic. I hate it when you're frantic... I'm here because I was invited." Now Satoshi shot a look at Riku sitting on her bed, and raised his eyebrows. She promptly blushed. He'd known she was listening.

"You're making an ass out of yourself. If you're so concerned, why don't you speak with her?" Satoshi handed his phone to her, and she had no choice but to accept it. She wondered if she should apologize to him for her snapping at him, but before she knew it, the receiver was at her mouth.

"Hello?"

"What is Satoshi doing at your house?" Dark asked immediately, and they both knew that with that question, Satoshi's accusation of his sounding frantic was true.

"It's an apartment. And um, he was invited--"

"That's what he said too! Tell me the truth--"

"-- by my sister."

Dark blanched. He was lucky she couldn't see him right now, because he was sure his mouth was hanging open, a most unusual position for his mouth to be in, to say the least. He'd have to kill Satoshi later. Stupid, conniving, implying-stuff... guy. Who knew he could be so... so fiendish? "Ah," he managed, with aforementioned open mouth.

She was now registering a feeling of fatigue, and honked her nose again. It seemed that he was choosing to ignore the fact that she had blown up at him not twenty-four hours ago this conversation around. "If I didn't dow any better," she said blankly, "I'd say you were freaking out."

His jaw dropped the tiniest bit lower before he commenced to shut it. A recovery came to him easily though, like slipping on a glove. "I was, but not over what you might think."

"So, not your friend at my apartbent at nine in the morning?"

"Oh no, far from it," he lied smoothly, picking imaginary lint from his shirt, adding to the nonchalant effect. "Are you sick?"

Riku fell for it, and tried to conceal her sounding disappointed. "Um, yes. What tipped you off?"

"'Apartbent'."

The way he said it was so blunt, she felt herself get warmer, and not from a fever. She felt a tremor in her arm holding the cellphone up. "Right. So, um... what were you getting shrill over, anyway?"

He took a sip of coffee. "I have this sponsorship dinner friday night and our friend Satoshi has ditched me."

"Sponsorship?" Out of all the things to pick on, she picked this one.

"Yes. I swim. Remember, Riku? The Olympic swimmer who depends upon funding to go to the Olympics? The one who comes to your humble pool each day to practi--"

"Okay, okay. You can stop mocking me now," she sighed, settling into banter mode. She put a hand to her forehead. No fever. That was funny.

There was about fifteen seconds of silence, which does not seem like a great deal of silence but in actuality is, especially when you're over the phone with a guy you're pretty much aching to apologize to...

"Dark. Um, about yesterday..."

"Not now."

"Heh?" Not her most attractive noise. "Do you even know what I'm talking about?"

"Yes. Not over the phone. Please."

She blinked, feeling that little dip in her mood again. "Oh. Um. Okay."

Another pause.

So he didn't want to talk about it. At least not over the phone. She knew for a fact that he was not an avoider (that game of Truth), so she supposed he just wanted to talk it out face to face. Whenever that would happen.

"... So will you come?"

She was operating on about two-thirds of her systems, so it was understandable that she couldn't keep up a normal conversation. Still, she felt like a moron when she let out a "Huh?"

He sounded so calm, reasonable and in control. Which he pretty much always did, save for two minutes ago. "The dinner. Will you come with me?"

Now it was Riku's turn to let her jaw hang. The switch from deep-meaningful-things-unsaid to setting-up-playdates had caught her off-guard. "Like a... date...?" She turned her head slowly to Risa and Satoshi - Risa nodded wildly, Satoshi examined the windowsill.

"Yeah, I guess," came the reply. Dark crammed his free hand in his pocket and traced the edge of his housekey. "Remember - we're still playing, and it's my turn. Be honest." He smiled, and he hoped she could hear it somehow.

Her brain was stuttering. She rummaged around for excuses. "I'm sick."

"If, by friday, you're better..." he trailed off, still smiling slightly.

She was just dreaming up another excuse when Risa's words came to mind.

It doesn't matter that you told him all this crap about yourself. He stuck around. Get this through your head: he likes--

And then she stopped dreaming.

"Yes."

Dark took another sip of his coffee, purple strands nearly falling into his cup. "Great. It's at eight. Wear something hot. It'll be an even--"

"Dark!"

"What? I'm being serious. Wear red or something. You'd look not just pretty, you'd look--"

"You know what? Satoshi needs his phone back!" she exclaimed, feeling more energized than she had in hours. "I'll talk to you later!" And she pulled the phone from her ear before he could protest with that perfect voice of his and go on about how she'd look in something strapless.

"Here," she said, thrusting the cell at Satoshi.

He looked away from his view of downtown and Risa's hair (he was rathering enjoying the play of light on auburn on chocolate, but whatever), taking the phone and sticking it in the pocket of his dress pants.

"He didn't even talk about the yelling?" the younger twin asked.

"We did, but he didn't want to really discuss it... until later."

"So... what's happening with that date?" Risa switched gears, the mistress of avoidance that she was (well, Riku and her could share the title). Her eyes lit up not unlike a predator's before lunging.

"We're going to a dinner party. Friday. If I'm not sick. Which I probably will be..." She fidgeted with the blankets, sure her temperature was up.

"Oh, just say it, 'Ku. You're going to dinner with Mousy Dark, and you're excited about it."

"Risa!" she exclaimed indignantly. She blushed and swung her gaze towards Satoshi, who was, embarassingly enough, looking right at her.

"Oh no, it's alright. I'm used to it," he said calmly, fully aware that this would make her turn even redder. "Young women always gush over him, though I can't figure out for the life of me why," he said, neither very distressed or inquisitive. She was sure this was the longest sentence she'd ever heard him say.

"Jealous, are we?" Risa elbowed him lightly in the side, and he immediately wore his watered down expression of offense at this.

"Not in the least," he stated. "What I can't figure out is why they always do it in front of me."

Risa stuck her tongue out at him, became alarmed at how immature the action was and what he thought of her now, and then turned to her sister to take her mind off Satoshi (despite the fact that he was standing about a foot away from her). "So... are you going to apologize next time you see him?"

"Well, yeah." She eased into her pillows as she said this. "But I have a feeling there's going to be more to it than just that."

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Many blocks away at Venti, Dark snapped his cellphone closed, giving an amused shake of his head. That girl was... a piece of work.

He had to admit he was wary of how she'd speak to him after yesterday. She was the angriest he'd ever seen her, and with the way she was shaking from excess adrenaline, he could be sure she didn't get angry often. He must have really pissed her off.

Maybe it was the sickness, or the obligatory drugs that go along with sickness, but she was calmer now. Maybe even the usual Riku - spunky, nervous, cute. Well, even if she was the same as before, they weren't the same as before.

After she'd left he'd just sat and thought about it more. He didn't know her. Not that this had effected them before, but now that he was aware of this, the concept of them changed. He knew all these tiny things, these frivolous facts about her. He thought he knew her. But she was clearly more complicated than he thought.

He'd understand that complicated nature. He would. He'd understand, and not just know. Because that was how much she mattered to him.

So he asked her to the dinner friday night to the hopefully-not-as-snobby-as-last-time dinner, and they'd talk there for sure. About his not knowing her.

Funny as it was to believe, Dark was a firm believer in the perfect moment. (No apologizing over phones, no, they were going to do it right.) He wanted things to be opportune, seamless. He didn't like hitches, and so he became an expert at overcoming them. And this was one such hitch.

But no matter. It was only a hitch after all. One snag in the grand scheme of things. Everything would work out in the end. He was Dark after all.

(Unfortunately for him, he did not consider that this was Riku after all.)