Forbidden Fruit

["A metaphor describing any object of desire whose appeal is a direct result of the knowledge that it cannot or should not be obtained or something that someone may want but cannot have."]

Disclaimer: I do not own the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. That is owned by…whoever conceived the idea of Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya! (walks off)

AN: I'm SO sorry for the long wait, I had a writer's block for quite some time on this chapter but I finished it today. It feels a little rushed but here it is at last!

All-Nighter II

"That maid dress…it is so much more becoming on you than your real uniform." Damien whispered in her ear just as they parted ways. Watching him take his own way home, she sighed. The vicious cycle had begun anew, like it always did. Some way or another, he would find some way to hurl insults at her.

And as always, Mikuru would act like she did not hear him. The time traveler was already used to this; she's been working with him from the moment she became a professional, after all.


"He's rather friendly with you, isn't he?" The jealous edge to Itsuki's voice pulled Mikuru out of her reverie and for a few seconds she stared at the esper, puzzled. "I'm sorry?" He began tapping his pencil against the table's wooden surface. "Hesselius-san…He is friendly towards you, perhaps too much for my taste."

The time traveler sighed and refilled her cup. She had been expecting that. "We're just colleagues; he and I were partnered together shortly after graduation. Damien-kun is not…an old flame; in fact, I doubt I could label him "friend." Mikuru replied, drinking her tea. "How did you come to be partnered with him? And if you don't get along, couldn't you have requested a switch?"

Itsuki inquired, reaching to hold her spare hand and running his thumb across the back of her hand. "Impossible. Time travelers are partnered with those who are closest in age. At the time, he was the only person closest to my age in our class." She placed the cup back on the table. "Doesn't this problem impede your teamwork when you're at work, though? Partners who don't get along can jeopardize a job, you know." The time traveler covered his hand with the one that previously held the cup.

"There's a place and time for everything; these spats of ours have no place at work. Those…we leave them for when we're done and until we have a new case." The esper sighed, taking the hand he had grasped earlier and kissing it lightly. "Something about him still rubs at me the wrong way, though." Mikuru smiled, leaning over the table and placing a soft kiss on his lips. "I'll be fine but it's sweet of you to worry."

Sigh. Itsuki cupped her face with his right hand, stroking her cheek. "Of course I would worry, Mikuru: I love you, remember?" The time traveler could not hold back the heat rising to her cheeks at his words. He smirked, dropping the pencil on the page he had been writing on before moving over to Mikuru and capturing her lips with his. At first, she resisted but it was not long before the time traveler sighed and succumbed to the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck.

The esper slowly lowered her onto the floor, a hand cupping her face as they kissed. It seemed like forever before they broke the kiss to breathe, and while that was fine, both Itsuki and Mikuru wished it could have lasted longer. The esper shifted his position so that the time traveler was on top of him. He felt her body rise and pulled her back down. "A few more minutes? We'll get back to homework in a bit." Mikuru smiled slightly and placed a feather-light kiss on his lips. "Five minutes."

Several hours later found two time travelers on a tall skyscraper conversing in low voices. Both were dressed in black clothing so as to better conceal themselves in the darkness. "So what's the crisis?" Damien flipped his hair back. "While I was out today I found there was a sector that was affected by time compression. Luckily, it wasn't so advanced that it was beyond my ability to quarantine the thing."

Mikuru's brow furrowed in thought. In this day and era, time compression—or rather, time-space compression—was a technological term for processes that accelerated time and distance. In her time, that definition still held. Immediately after it was time compression: the concept of condensing the whole of time and space into a single moment. The exact specifics and details regarding the concept were still unknown, but it did not take a genius to realize that such a concept would undoubtedly spell dire and possibly irreversible consequences were it to occur. Sighing, she looked to her partner.

"Avante or Vanguard?" Damien cracked his knuckles. "Vanguard." She nodded to him and leaped off the building and he followed in her wake, easily keeping pace with her as they jumped, ran and propelled themselves from building to building. When they got to the area however, something prevented the time travelers from moving forward.

At this Mikuru groaned in frustration. "Again?" Damien raised an eyebrow. "Again, you mean this isn't the first time?" She nodded.

"In my last job, the thinny I had to close was within a Remote Dimension." The time traveler deliberately omitted the presence of the espers, though she could not say why. "Anyway, I'm going in; you find someplace where you won't be disturbed." Damien nodded and ran off into the darkness while Mikuru braced herself before charging into the Remote Dimension. Meanwhile, Itsuki flew through the air attacking the giants, ganging up on them one by one with his fellow Espers.

For a moment he thought he felt something enter the Closed Space, and shrugged it off; the giants were the higher priority at the moment. All the same, he couldn't help feeling something felt off about this Closed Space… Down below, Mikuru crouched near a partially demolished sky scraper, a holographic image of a complex keyboard in front of her, which came from a small electronic device similar in appearance to a mine. "Okay, I've got most of it decoded." Mikuru frowned at Damien's words.

"Most of it?" There was some static but she still received his answer. "The lock on this one is very complex. I've had to go through several ciphers to figure out the combination." Pause. "Type down what I'm about to tell you. Ready?" The time traveler took a deep breath, fingers poised above the keys. "Speak to me."

Still fighting the giants—there had been more of them than normal but nothing the Agency couldn't manage—Itsuki felt something give in the atmosphere. He couldn't be certain but the air about him felt lighter, and he himself felt he wasn't giving his all in killing the shinjin. The red orb zoomed through the air with its companions, cornering the last of Haruhi's blue giants before cutting it to pieces. The work of a moment, the giant vanished and the Closed Space's existence was terminated.

The esper barely heard Mori's words as he gauged his surroundings. Nodding at her parting words, Itsuki made as though he was walking home but once the other Espers had vanished from his sight he quickly turned right back. The esper approached one of the more isolated buildings in the area, being careful to make sure he was not detected. Once Itsuki judged he was close enough, the esper reached out and grabbed whoever was there. Sure enough, someone was there but the person's identity caught him completely by surprise.

"Mikuru!?"