A/N: it's so fluffy i exploded. My cat exploded. my stuffed animal, that is already fluffy, exploded.

Lime warning ahead.

I just can't do lemon, guys. Too hard to write.

And if you can guess who's at the end of the chappie, I'll give you a cookie.

MOONY RESIST THE URGE. YOU ALREADY KNOW.

Chapter 37: Principles

I don't think she noticed when it started to rain again, I didn't really care for that matter. All that mattered was her.

This kiss, this incredible, unbearably sweet kiss, was going against all my principles.

"Don't look at her like that!" they screamed. "Don't even think about entertaining the thoughts that swirl around your mind when you two kiss!" I was ignoring the screaming warnings in my head, warnings that I'd set up for myself to prevent myself from pushing Rose's boundaries.

Yet, with every soft whimper that escaped her lips, with ever star that fell around us, one of those warnings stayed silent, for every noise that she made, I kissed her even more forcefully. Soon, I had her pinned to the ground.

Don't kiss her too roughly! At the moment, I was..."ravaging"would be the right word, really, I was basically attacking her.

Don't hold her like that! No, I was holding her as close as I dared, as close as I wanted. I could feel every little movement she made, felt every little curve of her body as it was pressed to mine...

She had her eyes wide open, watching me through every second of it, and I loved it. Her hair was splayed out on the grass, webbed with droplets of water, for it had started to rain again, just lightly misting.

My hands were shaking, forcing myself to drop the wall I'd built to restrict myself, allowing the low, growling moan that had built in my throat to escape, causing her to kiss me with such force, it wasn't enough to push me away, but it was enough.

Her eyes, almost feline, had attained a sharp edge to them, and they sent a shiver up my spine. As she put more feeling into the kisses, those eyes began to close. We rolled onto our sides, and she pressed herself even closer, as close as physically possible, and her leg hitched up onto my hip. One of my hands moved to her back, pulling her closer, if that were possible, and the other went up to tangle itself in her hair.

I gasped as she pressed her hips against mine, her hand grabbing a fistful of my shirt as she did so. It was almost instinctual when I brought my hand from her back to her leg, firmly holding it in place so it couldn't leave my hip.

Be careful! I yelled at myself mentally as the last star fell, silenced for the night. Keep it modest! All the same, no matter what situation you were in, I'm pretty sure sliding my thumb into her belt loop wasn't modest... at all...

[line here]

The plane touched down. It was morning, but it was usually night by now, back at home.

Roger greeted me with open arms, and I felt kind of guilty. Last time I saw him, I was yelling at him for L's decision. I cringed as the man willingly hugged me, knowing the last time we made contact was when I had grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. I needed to make up for that.

"MELLO!" I heard a familiar voice yelling from behind me. Roger stepped away, chuckling as a pair of arms were threw around my waist.

"Gwyn? You're still here?"

"Of course I'm still here, Mello. Where else am I supposed to go? How's Matt?" she asked before I could answer. She jumped in again before I could answer that too. "Where have you been? Do you still hate Near? Have you heard of Roslyn lately?" I chuckled. The girl did miss me. SHe was probable the only one, though.

"Uhmm. answering these in order, I hope... Matt's fine, I've been in California, living with Matt and Roslyn, actually, I despise Near, and the last one's been answered already." She giggled.

"You're living with Roslyn because it was a package deal, right?"

"What?"

"Come on, Mello. You remember! We all anonymously voted Matt and Roslyn 'Most likely to stay together after Wammy's'. Don'tcha remember? We didn't let them know, of course, but I stick by my word. You had to live with Roslyn because Matt wouldn't move in without her. Right?"

She still talked a lot, I see. "Actually, Roslyn was on her own for a while, living with her mom. But Near wanted her to be safe, because Kira'd started up again..."

"OH! I get it, now. Near played match-maker."

"What? No. It's a good thing he'd sent her to live with us, too, cause if it weren't for Matt..." I shook my head, not really wanting to know what would have happened, though at the same time, I knew street thugs. She would have been raped and dumped on the side of the road, dead and in a ditch.

"You mean, she almost...?"

"It was at a concert. What?" she gave me a disapproving look. "We can't have fun? Anyway, somebody kidnapped her and Matt saved her, long story short. She's better now; this was way back in January."

"I see." She switched to a new subject. "I missed you! When do you think the others are going to come up?"

Made sense she would miss me. I kind of missed her. Actually, now that I thought about it, didn't we date for a while?

Yeah, now that I remembered, we were about nine years old. I wouldn't call it love, because, come on, we were nine. And if I remember right, she broke up with me cause I was giving Near Hell, and at the time I really didn't care. I actually find that hilarious now, if you believe it.

She dragged me to the living room, and I was almost instantly bombarded with children who wanted to ask me questions.

"Mello!"

"Mello's back!"

"You're not going to leave again, are you?" A small girl with a bow in her hair grabbed onto my arm and looked up at me with her big green eyes.

"Uh..." I blinked. So they did miss me? I smiled. "I'll probably go back home, but if you miss me, I wonder what kinda welcome Matt and Roslyn's gonna get." Roslyn was Rose's alias, and we were pushing it just calling her Rose around the house. But we couldn't exactly call her Roslyn in front of her friends, and besides, when Rose was young, and visiting Wammy's frequently, everybody was under the impression that Rose was short for the alias Roslyn and called her Rose anyway. So really, her real name was her alias. And if you thought about it, L was her alias now. But the kids couldn't know that.

"Matt and Rose are coming down?" a little boy with brown hair and brown eyes, sporting a baseball cap asked, popping his head over my shoulder from behind the couch.

"Maybe," I said. "I'll have to ask them about how they feel about coming up here."

"I do hope dearest Andrew isn't coming up," a chillingly familiar voice said from the stairwell, behind me. I dropped my chocolate bar.

All the kids slowly disappeared, heading off nto the kitchen, under the pretext of seeing if Linda had finished baking a cake. I knew that wasn't why, they were as terrified as I wanted to show I was. But I knew two things fueled this psycho: Suffering and fear.