Author's Notes: Yep. Yep, it's late again. I was writing and re-writing bits of this because at first it was GROSSLY over sexual and it just didn't sound right, so now I think I have it at a nice balance. It did take a while, but I'm happy with the outcome.

To say Akihiko was reluctant to have Yukari touch him again was an understatement.

But he'd be lying if he said he didn't want it to happen... it was just a terrible idea.

He fought two urges, one to wrench his hand out of hers, and the other to pull her closer, so he just stood there like an idiot as she tugged on his arm to get him to stop walking.

Their almost-kiss on the train... he couldn't let that happen again. He let his emotions get the better of him and Yukari had been through enough for one night. That thought brought the horrifying truth – what would have happened to her if I wasn't there – and then he couldn't get rid of it. Trying desperately to push the thought away, he looked down at the girl looking so small in his coat, but at the same time looking like she belonged in it, and was at a total loss.

"I... I really can't thank you enough for what you did tonight, Akihiko," she said, no honorific attached to the end, but instead as equals, as one friend to another.

Speechless, he didn't really know what to say, his whole world narrowed down to the warmth of her hand seeping through his leather gloves and her eyes shining in the dim street-lights and her looking so damn adorable in his jacket.

It was such a perfect night, and she was a perfect person to spend it with.

His breath hitched once, twice when she reached up with a speed he didn't expect to cup the back of his neck, his breath dragged in through his nose, Yukari standing up on her toes so they were at face-level, and kissed him with a fervour he never thought possible from a girl.

His nerve-endings sizzled, his bag dropped to the ground and he stumbled back slightly as his knees threatened to give away. Needing to hold on to something, his hands snapped up to cup her shoulder blades, his eyes shutting and his face heating and her lips were caressing his in a way he didn't even have words for.

It was strong, nameless, and so ungodly warm-

She pulled away only so that their noses were touching, still cold despite the heat radiating off him, and her eyes were half-lidded and her mouth was an enticing, swollen red - holy shit. Those eyes were the colour of black tea; dark brown in the dim light and her nose was cold at the tip when it brushed off his.

"I..." he eventually slurred out, only then noticing how his fingers had wound themselves into her shirt and were getting tighter by the second. "I..." but he didn't have words for what he was feeling. Excitement? Relief? Terror? Whatever it was, it was making his head numb and his limbs shake and she was just looking at him with those tea-brown eyes like she was going to do it again and he was really okay with that.

If he was really honest with himself, he'd been thinking about it since Hagakure. He'd never... well... once because Shinji dared him to kiss some girl they knew and Akihiko never backed down from a challenge... that was like 7 years ago too but that was different and this was different-

Yukari closed the short gap between them again with more softness, less haste and fire and he was just putty in her hands because she could have asked him to do anything at that moment and he would have happily complied. Different, different because a 12 year old kiss from some sweet girl on the monkey-bars was nothing like the incredibly adult feeling of Yukari's warm mouth on his. The pounding in his chest, the way his face lit up like someone threw gasoline on him and struck a match... he'd never felt anything like it.

Not the buzz before a match. Not the hum in his muscles after a hard workout. Not even the electricity in his hands when he summoned his Persona. None of it.

Without thought, like he'd known for years what a kiss was supposed to be like, he angled his head, needing to get inside her mouth, their kiss becoming much more open, her fingers tightened in the front of his sweater. He reached up to her face to cup her jaw, their tongues met in the middle somewhere and she was finally the one to moan when he followed her into her mouth.

Whatever sort of sound she made, coupled with her hands smoothing up the back of his neck into the sensitive hair on the back of his head did something to him. Something he was sure he should have felt before when looking at other girls and wondering what being with them would be like, but never did. The shudder was so powerful it near knocked him off his feet and he was weaving unsteadily on his legs. The low whine that came out him should have been embarrassing, but he was far past the point of caring much about anything other than the tongue in his mouth.

Or who that tongue belonged to...

It lasted... weeks, maybe years... seconds? It felt like a whole lifetime. Especially when she pulled away and the cool autumn air hit his face and he felt deprived.

There was a kiss on his cheek – was that his breath that sounded so loud? - and then his jaw and his eyes twisted closed because she was at his throat, slowly, warmly, like they weren't in the alleyway between two houses in the middle of the night, minutes before The Dark Hour. Like they'd been lovers for years.

It was then that he realized he hadn't known real arousal until that moment.

Yukari had focused her efforts on the side of his neck with a small, simple peck, like a parting gift; but he couldn't physically let her go with his hands gripping her shirt so tight it would probably tear. Past that, nothing mattered through the haze in his brain that wasn't urging him to get on her, all over her, inside her-

The terrifying, deeply exciting thought kept him completely still.

The brunette took her hands from his hair and smoothed them down his chest, between his arms and around his waist, leaning against him with a sigh. It took some time for the nervous tremors in his body to stop, and when they finally did he relaxed into her surprisingly strong hold. Putting his cheek against her hair, Akihiko was at a total loss of what to do, or say. On one hand, he didn't want to stop, on the other he had no idea where to go from here and what exactly the next move should be.

That thought, more than all of them, was the scariest.

Though there was something strangely comforting in her embrace, something he didn't really have a word for, something he was actually very grateful for because his heart felt like a mess and she was soothing that.

"We should..." he smoothed his sweaty palms down her back, kissed the sweet-smelling hair at the top of her head, "we should get back."

"Yeah,"

They parted reluctantly and the situation was not lost on him. He'd just... been kissed by Yukari. Yukari Takeba, from 2-F who was his junior and fellow fighter. The girl whom he'd been idly thinking about her beauty since earlier on in the night.

And she'd kissed him.

She'd kissed him like she owned him.

Akihiko thought the spell might have been broken between them after pulling away from her, but when he got to the dorm and she reached up to kiss the plaster on the corner of his brow, he wanted to start kissing her all over again. They stepped inside just as the clock chimed midnight, and the dorm was plunged into darkness.

He didn't want to part from her as they got to the top of the stairs, but they both knew they couldn't take it any further than they already had. Even still she stole a quick squeeze of his hand as he turned for his room, and he smiled when she handed him back his jacket, smelling like her perfume.

Akihiko didn't let the jacket out of his grasp for the whole night, keeping his nose pressed to the collar as he slept, wondering if Yukari was feeling something similar.

Author's Notes: Okay so let me explain.

When I first wrote this chapter, I wrote the whole thing like "pants are coming OFF" sexy. And it was just. Awful. It was way too much for what was essentially someone very extroverted kissing someone very shy and introverted. Akihiko has never come across as very overly sexual, so it didn't make sense to write him that way.

I wanted Yukari to take the lead in the situation here because coupled with Akihiko's easy-going and soft temperament, if she liked him she would have to make the first move.

It didn't make sense any other way.