Author's note: I've been having a hard time figuring out how to include all the aspects into this story that I actually planned the beginning chapters around, expecting that they would occur later on. But with dwindling interest (both on my part and some readers, to no one's fault but my own and the passage of time) has made it more crucial that I decide which elements to do without, and how to include the ones I can't bear to eliminate. Hopefully I've come up with a happy balance, as well as a moderately decent way to include a few requested occurrences that I thought were interesting concepts.

By the way, I meant to have this up earlier but I was having so much trouble getting it going. And then my friends were here for new years, and between the holidays and school starting up again, among other things… Ah man, it's just been crazy. Sorry for the delay, m'loves.

I also apologize for the swearing. Daisuke-muse was not letting me filter, despite my best intentions.


Looking back hours, days, and weeks later, Jun still wouldn't be able to tell you how she got him to go to that party. The conversation had gone a little something like this:

"That was the one you were talking about online, right? Sounds pretty fun." Takeru had picked up his mug and sipped carefully at it; he was going to need a refill, she observed. Jun still had plenty of her own drink left; she had been nursing the whipped cream for most of their conversation thus far.

"Just how fun does it sound, exactly?" Takeru frowned inquisitively, trying to figure out what she meant by that, and how he was expected to answer her. It was fairly obvious that when he opened his mouth to answer, he still hadn't figured it out.

"Um..." He didn't have an answer, not even one he could bullshit through until he figured out what she meant for himself. So Jun decided to give him a little nudge in the right direction. "I don't know, interesting I guess. You hang out with Miyako's sister, right? Is she going too?"

Why he would want to know that, she had wondered with annoyance. But he didn't look particularly fascinated with getting an answer; it was just a polite question, a way to stall while he figured out where she was going with such a simple question. Watching the wheels turn was fun, more fun than Daisuke. Takeru's seemed to turn too quickly for him to grasp what was right in front of him. It was kind of cute, you know?

"She might be. A lot of my friends are," Jun shrugged indifferently. It didn't matter to her if they were going. Maybe it had mattered last night. Maybe it had mattered just a few hours ago when she woke up from a dream, only to remember the party and smile and wonder who she would see, who she'd be glad if she didn't, and who she might meet. But now, all she wanted to know was if she could talk Takeru into going.

He didn't answer her at the café. Just nodded and went back to his coffee. They sat in relative silence for a while, although not once did his hand move to cover the book as though longing to peel open the pages. Not once did she see his eyes flicker towards the door or the window, longing to venture into the world beyond and away from her. He just sat there, intently drinking his coffee in silence. It was absolutely maddening. Maddening, I tell you!

"Daisuke wanted me to come over, right," he asked after a little while; Jun didn't pretend not to notice the change in conversation. She rolled her eyes, but otherwise she left it at that. He was such a boy.

"Yeah." Jealous twerp. But she kept that part silent. She didn't think it would be a good way to get into Takeru's good graces and talk him into going to the party with her, you know? Insulting the best friend of either gender never worked very well in your favor. Even Jun knew that life lesson.

"It's okay if I go over for a bit this afternoon after all?" She didn't know why he was asking. She had remembered to pass along the 'anytime' clause right? It was an offer both Daisuke and Jun actually agreed on extending, and Takeru was being overly polite and considerate as usual.

"You said you don't have anything to do today, didn't you? So go ahead." She sipped at her latte; she had worn down the whipped cream to little more than a frothy dream that lightened the thin surface of her drink. It was gone after the first sip, and she dabbed at her lip with the back of her hand for fear of a frothy moustache. Nothing was there.

"You don't mind?" He sounded skeptical, like she actually did mind, and she actually laughed. The sound seemed to confuse him. He frowned and drew his brows close together.

"I might have known you existed for a while, but we weren't actually friends till recently, so I'll let you slide," she joked, setting her drink down. "If I minded, I wouldn't invite you over to begin with. If I minded, I would have conveniently forgotten that Daisuke asked me to say anything at all." There was a shadow of a smile on Takeru's face. She didn't add that she probably would have said he should come over whenever he wanted even if Daisuke had told her to tell him never to darken their doorstep again; maybe it was implied, she didn't know.

"Alright, alright." He chuckled and pushed his coffee away; it was empty. "I'll stop over for a little. Wouldn't want poor Daisuke to feel left out." The sad thing was Jun thought he was actually serious. Crushing on someone who actually liked her brother was such a pain sometimes.

They didn't talk much on the walk back to the Motimiya apartment. Jun had said all she had to say, and although people considered her ruthless and unrestrained, she liked to think that she was working on a new front. Or maybe it wasn't new. Maybe it had always been there, this little voice telling her "slow down, cut it out, think" that, like her mother's advice, she more often than not chose to ignore. Instantaneous gratification had always been on the menu, but she was beginning to wonder if maybe holding out a little and weathering the storm might provide better results. And if it didn't, well… she'd try this once, and then say "screw this" and go back to reckless and irrational and fun. But she could try responsible and slow, just once. It was fun to throw people off their footing a little, she thought.

But she was also being hard headed and stubborn, and as much as she didn't like it, she couldn't deny that to herself. She had put a lot on the table here: she had taken down her poster of the Teenage Wolves last night. She had taken her diary of all things Yamato and thrown it away (and kept herself from writing one about Takeru, just in case Daisuke might chance upon it). She had even considered canceling her online ticket order, but reconsidered; she might be able to use it as a way to hang out with Takeru again, provided… Well, provided a lot of things. And a head strong, take charge girl like Jun didn't like how much was out of her hands this time around.

When they did talk, it was silly things, like how he had seen a salad advertised as a "vegetarian salad" in a restaurant, which made them both laugh. After all, it wasn't like steak slapped on top of the lettuce leaves was considered ordinary for a house salad. If anything, he said, they ought to make a warning when a salad isn't vegetarian. That way, people would thank the house for the heads up instead of walk away shaking their heads in suppressed laughter.

Gag conversations seemed to be Takeru's comfort zone because he could get the easiest responses to them, and upon discovering that Jun wouldn't not reply to a funny or ridiculous story, he had proceeded to tell her about a video of a heavy-set, middle aged man singing nonsensically and smoking in the shower with his face messily slathered with shaving cream. Ridiculous, Jun had insisted. No one would waste their time with such a ridiculous video. But obviously, Takeru shot back, somebody had, and it had quite a few hits… if only, as his theory went, because people would watch it again trying to figure out why.

As lame of a conversation ice breaker as it may seem, it worked. Jun forgot about ignoring him until he decided whether or not he wanted to go to that party because it was just fun to talk to him. She spent so much of her time pretending to hate Daisuke (although sometimes she really wasn't pretending; he could be seriously annoying), trying to impress people by acting cooler and older and more suave than she really was. But Takeru wasn't older, didn't care about being suave, and was just happy and jubilant and it was a bit contagious, to tell you the truth.

"I still swear you're jesting about that video," Jun insisted. A multi-lingual speaker since his childhood years, Takeru had been telling her about YouTube, which she didn't use herself because she couldn't be bothered with changing language settings and had never done particularly well in her English courses. That was the site where Takeru had found that ridiculous video, and it made Jun both happy she chose not to use the site, and consider going through the hassle to tackle the language settings just to be able to use it once she was alone in her room.

"I'm not! I swear, it was the stupidest thing. Which is part of what makes it great, you know." Takeru stood to the side, leaning against the hallway wall while Jun dug for her keys in her handbag. "It's so small," Takeru commented, changing the subject as he cocked his head curiously towards the bag. "And yet, you fit so much stuff inside. It's like a black hole."

"And my keys are probably on the other side," Jun replied. She didn't understand much about the scientific stuff concerning black holes, but she remembered when she was little hearing about how black holes were like warps that could spit you out on the other side… albeit in a billion particle sized pieces. If it was right or wrong, she didn't know because Takeru didn't correct her or comment. He wasn't big on correcting, making people look stupid, or things like that. Unlike Diasuke, he actually lived by 'If you have nothing nice to say, then don't speak'.

"And Daisuke's probably either passed out on the couch, or too engrossed in the TV or computer to hear you," Takeru commented, rolling his eyes in a good-natured way. When he did seem to speak ill of someone, he made it apparent he was only teasing, even if it was true stuff. And the fact was, in this case he was one hundred percent correct. He was a lot more mature for someone the twerp's age, and for being the twerp's friend. (The twerp, of course, was Daisuke-chibi.)

"Probably. Ah, wait," Jun said, enthusiasm raising the volume of her voice. She beamed and pulled the keys from the mess that was the inside of her purse. "Found 'em!"

"Don't put them back in," Takeru advised teasingly as she unlocked the door. "They only just got out to breathe."

"But I change my jacket every day," Jun argued. "Classic black clutches go with everything."

"And seek to destroy everything unfortunate enough to land inside," Takeru replied without missing a beat. He was smiling.

Jun scowled (all in good fun) and hit his arm in a teasing slap. He feigned looking hurt, just as Daisuke looked up from the couch. Takeru had the angle of advantage, for Jun's back was still to her brother's second favorite place in the entire apartment (as it placed second to the kitchen, where there was obviously food), and it was Takeru who spotted Daisuke's expression darkening as he watched them, suspicion burning in his eyes. Jun followed Takeru's gaze as his smile faltered, and rolled her eyes at her little brother. Inside, though, her heart was thumping so wildly that she wondered if Takeru could hear it.

"Hi Dork," she greeted, a standard hello between the siblings. Daisuke narrowed his eyes at them, a look she remembered seeing when Takeru was sitting next to their friend Hikari during some of the times the lot of them had hung around the Motimiya apartment.

"You two look chummy," he said, and Jun thought the words sounded eerily like a challenge, like daring them to say they weren't really friends or anything and that it had been entirely coincidental, even though Jun knew that Daisuke knew where she had been going and who she was meeting up with. Thank you, Ami. You made home life kind of suck almost as much as that time Jun's phone got taken away for going on a date with a boy from the higher grades without telling her parents.

"Coffee was good," Jun told him, shrugging with more nonchalance than she felt inside. Takeru took a very small side step away from her, so small that it might have almost been coincidence, if you couldn't cut the tension in the air with a knife. Mind, you'd need a butcher knife and some pretty good muscle power. The tension was that thick.

"I bet." The retort was childish, but it still stung of the same suspicion and disbelief. Jun shrugged again, feeling annoyed now. This was a game she was well acquainted with.

"Well, I've gotta call Ami back," Jun replied cheerfully, neglecting to add that she was likely to use every insult in every language that meant back stabbing bitch that was in Jun's arsenal, whether it meant Google-translating it or not. She thought she could come up with two or three off the top of her head. "Play nice."

"Yeah. See you, Jun," Takeru said, heading over to sit next to Daisuke, who followed the action with ever-narrowing eyes. They were squinting nearly shut by the time Takeru sat on the couch, one leg draped over the edge of the arm chair. "I kinda wanna play Tekken. You game?"

"That game is ancient," Daisuke complained, but he began thumbing through his disk collection anyways as Jun left the boys to their toy – their very expensive toy – and headed or her room. The second her door shut, however, she could hear Daisuke's voice rise. Unable to resist – considering she had a pretty good gut feeling as to what Daisuke was flipping his lid over – Jun leaned against her closed door and leaned the side of her head against the cool wood in hopes of hearing exactly what was being said. After all, she had a feeling neither Daisuke nor Takeru would tell her all the finer details.

"What the hell are you playing at," Daisuke demanded. She heard a thud, and figured he had put down his disk collection with a bit more force than necessary.

"Keep it down, Dai," she just barely heard Takeru mumble; she granted that he might have said it a little more loudly, but the wood against her ear made hearing a little bit like looking through a keyhole: things looked and sounded a bit distorted when you weren't right there in the middle.

"Screw that. What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Playing. At," Daisuke said loudly, slowly emphasizing each word. He held favor with swears and profanity when he was pissed. Or bored. Always, really. But he sounded really ticked off.

"I'm not playing at anything. You won't put the game on," Takeru pointed out; Jun cringed despite the fact that she wasn't in the room to see Daisuke's face. His reply was calm, but cool, and she could imagine Daisuke's face in reaction to Takeru's calm snark.

"You know what I'm fucking talking about," Daisuke spat. "Don't play dumb." Takeru said nothing, but Jun was fairly certain he was making that thin line his mouth forms when he's thinking and doesn't like the conversation. "What the hell is with you and my sister?"

"She's not as bad as you make her out to be," Takeru pointed out, and Jun glowed at the… compliment? Well, it was defense against Daisuke's tirades, which made her happy because Takeru had actually encouraged her own against Daisuke.

"Fucking answer me, 'Keru."

"We had coffee. I helped her get into my brother's concert because she's a fan. I'm allowed to talk to her, aren't I?" He sounded annoyed.

"Depends," Daisuke replied, although with considerably more heat and sneer. She couldn't even see it, and Jun wanted to wipe the look off his face. Stupidly suspicious. Annoyingly accurately so, at least in Jun's case. She still wasn't one hundred percent certain about Takeru. He was a weird one to read.

"On what." It didn't sound like a question, although the words implied that it was. They sounded like a challenge. Just try it, try to tell me what to do, they said. I'm gonna make you eat those words. Maybe they didn't say exactly that because Takeru was too nice to say them, but that was the gist of his cool tone that made Jun shiver despite her sweater dress.

"On what you want with my sister," Daisuke replied.

"You're being stupid," Takeru spat, annoyed as Jun had ever heard him. There was this exasperated impatience in his voice, and Jun realized that there was a feeling of familiarity there too. Takeru was annoyed because this wasn't the first time he'd said those words to Daisuke because of his friend's jealousy over a girl. But the last girl had been Hikari, hadn't it? Never Jun. Not till now. "I think I'm gonna go home after all. Mom might want help with dinner."

"Right. Whatever," Daisuke mumbled, and Jun pulled away from the door. There was nothing else to hear, and she felt her heart thudding wildly. And she felt… guilty, sort of, because she had come between friends, even if she had been working on pissing off her little brother daily since the day he learned to speak. Probably before that, but Jun couldn't remember any earlier.

Even if Jun didn't actually care what Daisuke approved of or thought (because he wasn't so good at the second, let's be honest), she knew that Takeru did, deep down. So she couldn't help the feeling of hopelessness, the sadness that overtook her as she sank down onto her bed and ran her hands through her hair. How did that stupid saying go? Bros before hoes, and while Jun glowered at the idea of being called a ho, she knew the basic connotations. Friends before girlfriends, the boys before the girls, ball games before candlelight dinners,… It all boiled down to one thing in her mind: He's not going to go to that dumb party now.

Sigh.

Her phone vibrated in her bag that she had thrown carelessly at her feet. She stared at it for a minute, wondering stupidly where that annoying sound was coming from before she figured it out. And then she dove, digging frantically through the small purse (It really was a black hole, honest), fingers grazing against everything except –

"Hello," she asked, trying to sound calm and cheerful, like she hadn't just listened to her brother smash her heart and wasn't suffering severe disappointment about the upcoming night, nor like she was contemplating putting her best friend's picture on a dartboard for ruining the secretive thrill she had been experiencing for the past couple of days whenever she talked to Takeru.

"Jun, it's Takeru. Um. Your cell number was in an away message the other night; I know I should've asked instead of just taking it but –"

"It's fine," Jun said quickly. Her heart was thudding wildly in her throat. "What's up?"

"Um. I was… I was just wondering," he stammered, and he sounded nervous and hesitant and for some reason that made her even more nervous because Jun's manicured finger nails were clutching her phone, wondering what the hell was he trying to spit out? She was tempted to ask, but she bit down on her tongue to keep from saying anything involving swear words and not nice language. After all, Takeru was the one she wasn't mad at.

"Hm?"

"Is it too late to accept the invite to that party?" His voice sounded a little stronger once he finally got the sentence out, like it took all his nerve to say it. Too cute.

"Never," she promised.

"Good. I'll meet you at seven. Um, in the lobby," Takeru added as an after thought, and Jun could imagine him running his fingers uneasily through his hair. Lying and going behind someone – Daisuke's – back was not in his nature. But Jun was practiced at it.

"It's a date," she replied coyly, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. It was the ultimate test, his reply. Was this a friends thing? A "I'm doing what I want whether you like it or not" message to Daisuke?

There was a brief pause.

"Yeah." She could hear the smile in his voice and punched the air silently with her fist. "It's a date."

Jun smirked when she hung up the phone. She'd won, the battle anyway. Maybe they weren't a couple yet, and that was okay. She could move a little slow, she could take a step back. She'd been doing a pretty good job of that so far, hadn't she?

"Take that, Ami," she murmured, clicking on her friend's screen name. She'd show her. Ami didn't know what she was talking about, and she'd crossed the line. Jun glanced at the door on the off chance that Daisuke would come barging in before typing furiously at her keyboard. Ami had some 'splainin' to do.