Disclaimer: Read Way of the Wolf. It's a good book. Author is E. E. Knight. I'm not sure if E. E. Knight is a man or a woman, but it doesn't matter. It's well worth the read, even though it freaked me out a little bit.

He had been so tired when he'd come back from his shift on security that Sora had collapsed on the bed in the Yellow Room as soon as he saw it – which meant that three-quarters of his body had missed it. Kairi had been sleeping on her side already, but woke up as the huge "thump" from Sora landing on the floor made the entire bed vibrate. She sat up, blinking tiredly, and rolled her eyes when she saw him. Crawling to the end of the bed, she grabbed up under his arms and hauled him up onto the bed, pushing him in the general direction of the pillows. She was about to go back to sleep on her side of the bed when she took notice of the compromising situation.

Grinning wickedly, Kairi snuggled up on his stomach and arranged his hands over her before tucking her head under his chin and closing her eyes. Whoever said you couldn't make the most of a situation?

Sora woke up with something warm on him. At first he thought he was five again and it was his dog, Scruffy, curled up over him like a possessive blanket. He laughed through his teeth and rubbed the warm thing, expecting to find fur under his fingers –

And jolted fully awake and upright when he felt smooth skin and craftily woven fabric against his fingers.

Looking down wildly, with possibilities (and not good ones) spilling through his mind faster than he could grab them, Sora scrambled out from under her, awakening his roommate in the process.

She opened her navy blue eyes, looking up sleepily at him. He tried to ignore the fact that she was really pretty with her red hair all messed up like that and stammered, "K-Kairi! W-what happened l-last n-night?"

She giggled into his shirt, which made him extremely uncomfortable. "Nothing, silly. You were dead tired and I put you on the bed, and I guess we sort of found each other in the night," she said, a secretive smile on her face. "We do sleep on the same bed, you know."

He nodded nervously, pushing himself up against the headboard. Kairi giggled again and sat up, scooting around so that she was right in front of him, her face the picture of innocence. She pushed a lock of his gravity- defying hair away from his eyes and cocked her head, leaning forward. Sora was completely frozen when she finally dared to kiss him, and remained that way, dumfounded.

"Hold the phone. You kissed him?"

Yuffie couldn't hold back the blush that spilled across her face as Aerith stared at her blankly. The healer had straddled a chair in the Accessory Shop while the ninja was sitting on one of the black couches, her legs folded under her. Her eyes were down, because she thought that if she met Aerith's emerald eyes, she'd spill out the whole story like a four-year-old apologizing for spilling a glass of milk. She wanted to keep a strong front, but she knew that she couldn't last. Nobody could beat Aerith in dragging the truth out of someone.

"Yeah. But it's not like what you think, I guarantee it," Yuffie tried to assure her, but Aerith remained skeptical. She raised an eyebrow and tilted back in the chair, making her top tighten provocatively. Cid, behind the counter, was watching the Flower Girl's back with a smirk until Yuffie made a rude gesture at him. The older man scowled and stalked into the back room.

"Then explain," Aerith said firmly. Yuffie groaned, massaging her temples with two fingers. She wasn't going to get out of this, she knew.

So, taking a deep breath, she recounted the entire night for Aerith – from being pissed off at her and Cloud for ignoring her, the couple she'd randomly yelled at, and, finally, to how Leon looked like he needed a good kiss in the Waterway. She knew that she probably had needed that kiss more than him, she told herself mentally, but the proverbial Devil Yuffie yelled at that voice and said that it was his fault for looking so kissable.

"...Then he was staring at me like I grew another head or something, so I took off. I locked myself in the Red Room and didn't come out until early this morning, when I knew he would be asleep. I've been taking care of the Heartless all day and haven't gone back to the hotel since," she finished, fidgeting under Aerith's eyes.

Her friend blinked, unsure of how to judge the situation. Aerith screwed up her face and ran a hand through her chestnut bangs. "Well," she finally said, "you can't just keep running away from him. He's going to expect an explanation, or at least that you continue with your training or whatever it is you're doing for him. Since you started that, he's been in the most tolerable mood I've ever seen since before his girlfriend died."

The brakes slammed on, and Yuffie literally almost fell backwards onto the couch. Eyes wide, she scrambled back upright, her eyes locked on Aerith's.

"Back up. He had a girlfriend?" she asked, disbelieving. Aerith gave her a weird look.

"Well, yeah," she said in a tone of voice that suggested she'd told Yuffie this before. "Didn't I tell you already? He was going steady with her for like two years, but she died," Aerith finished, still looking at her strangely.

Yuffie felt like she was in a different world. Girlfriend? Since when did cold, emotionless Leon have a girlfriend? He'd never mentioned her, even hinted that he'd been in another relationship before, in all of those weeks she had trained with him. Surprisingly, he would slip and tell her strange things about himself or the military he'd worked for, but never once had he said anything about a girlfriend.

She blinked, making Aerith cock her head like a sparrow. Yuffie wondered detachedly why she cared that he had a girlfriend; it's not like they had anything going on between them. Besides, this alleged girlfriend was no threat to her. Wait a minute – no threat? Since when did she consider Leon a possession of hers? She always thought he was one of the best flavors of eye-candy she'd ever encountered, but why was she acting like it was she that was dating him?

"Are you alright?" Aerith asked, snapping her out her chance. Yuffie's head jerked up, and she nodded mechanically.

"Sure," she said, still puzzled about why she felt this intense jealousy of a woman she didn't even know, a woman who was dead, who had dated Leon two years ago. Aerith was still looking at her strangely, like Yuffie had contracted a disease or something, so the ninja sat up and began walking towards the door. "I...have things to do. Important things," she affirmed, giving a nod and darting out the door like a fox.

Aerith blinked, completely confused. "What was that?" she asked aloud, and Cid, coming out from the backroom, shrugged and blew some smoke out of the corner of his mouth.

"I told ya she had loose marbles," he said sagely. Aerith rolled her eyes.

"If she has loose marbles, I'd hate to find out what you have," she said, grinning at the abashed look on Cid's face.

All laughter faded, though, when she thought about Yuffie again. She could have sworn she'd told the ninja about Leon's girlfriend before, and even so, why was she acting so weird? Well, the kiss might have had something to do with it, but still...Aerith was an expert at reading people, and if she was wrong, she'd put on a modest shirt.

As strange as it seemed, she was almost one hundred percent positive that Yuffie was in love with Leon.

There was a knock on the Red Room door, causing Yuffie to yelp and fall off of the stool she'd been sitting on. The book she had been reading (Yuffie only read when she was stressed out, and this book was huge) fell on her back as she landed on the floor, causing her to groan in frustration. Pushing herself up with her hands, she said glumly, "Come in."

Expecting it to be only Aerith, Cloud, or Kairi asking for more lavender soap (she'd found out that was the girl's name, and her roommate's was Sora), she didn't bother looking at the door or opening it. She concentrated on getting back onto the stool and putting her bookmark back in between the pages (it was a gift from an old friend at the Academy for Candelmas in her sophomore year; it said Vincent Valentine3's You!) and, in doing so, didn't realize that the person that had walked through her door was the person she had spent all of the day before avoiding.

Yuffie's eyes became as big as saucers. "Leon! What are you doing here? I'm busy! Go away!" she said in a rush, dropping the book again and darting to the door.

"Wait a minute," he said calmly, folding his arms and taking a step forward. No limp, Yuffie noticed absently. "I need to talk to you."

Her hand wouldn't turn the knob. Why was that? She didn't think she had broken anything in her tumble off the stool, but then again she hadn't really taken the time to examine herself, either. Maybe she'd cracked something, or had hit a bone and made the entire thing numb.

"About what?" she managed to get out through teeth that didn't want to make any words.

Now he looked a bit embarrassed. He turned his eyes down, and his confidence dropped away. Not meeting her eyes, he said, "Yesterday. What...happened?"

Yuffie shifted uncomfortably, leaning back heavily against the door. She really had wanted to avoid this confrontation, but, like Aerith, it was impossible. She wished the healer would come in right now and save her, but she knew fate would never be that nice to her – after all, it hadn't exactly given her the greatest amount of control over her words, or a polite or quiet attitude (which, actually, she was thankful she didn't have).

Finally she relented. Taking a deep breath, she said in an undertone, "I don't know. Aerith and Cloud were acting really lover-ish and ignoring me, and it got on my nerves and made me do irrational things. For weeks now all I've been thinking about is you; I don't have a clear head when I'm training with you or anything, and I'm constantly saying stupid things if you're around. You were like me – alone, by yourself. Aerith had Cloud and those two roommates down the hall had each other, and everyone else in Traverse has someone for themselves, so I latched onto you because you were alone. Yesterday everything sorta just came spilling out...and I kissed you."

Yuffie realized belatedly that she had just, in very bare terms, told a man that she'd known for only two months that she was basically obsessed with him. She felt like she had just dropped all her clothes and was standing in front of him, completely naked, and that only made her feel worse. Leon blinked, trying to digest everything.

"It's not like you totally despise me, either," she countered suddenly, not wanting to be the complete fool in this. "You didn't pull away. You enjoyed it!" Triumphant, she let her confidence show through. She was Yuffie Kisaragi, legal adult, The Greatest Female Ninja Ever, and she wouldn't let some stupid kiss ruin her pride.

"Yeah, I don't despise you," he replied, his voice gathering strength as he went. "But its not like I just asked you to kiss me! I mean, just because I've gotten to know you and tell you more things than I've told anyone in years and you make me want to go out and train doesn't mean –"He broke off suddenly, staring at her angrily, as if she had made him spill out everything.

"You don't show anything," she murmured, taking a step away from the door. "You never show any emotion, not even now. But all those things you said – that must mean, in Leon-speech, that you..."

"Can you love someone in the space of two months? Can you realize that the person you are frustrated by the most is the one for you? Can relationships built over fallen weapons and injured legs ever have a hope of surviving? And, most of all, can a I, a man who can't even say what he feels the most attempt to admit that, while you was pining away for me secretly, I was doing the same?" he said, so softly that Yuffie had to walk another three paces to hear it.

For the first time since he'd come in the room, she gave the smallest of smiles. "You never know," she whispered.

Woah. That came out of nowhere. Well, it was dragging on too long already, and it was easier just to spit it out in one chapter. And I got the Sokairi in, just like I promised! –pride—

This story will be about eleven chapters. Maybe one less, maybe one more. It all depends on how I'm gonna wrap things up.

Yes! My computer's being dumb right now and not letting me see my reviews to see who wrote this, but yes, whoever you are, you are correct about the Latin with the 'to arrive' and stuff. Originally I had everything in the first-person conjugation (it was like 'I Arrive') and had to change it when I realized what I was doing. Thanks a lot for your help, and apologies that I don't have your name.

I GOT 89 REVIEWS!!! OMGWTAFANGIRLGOOSH!! Everyone who reviewed last chapter ROCKS MY SOCKS!!

But I would be even happier if you reviewed this chapter. Please? –big anime eyes--