Sorry I'm late Christmas preparation came up. Merry Christmas! Here is ur present

peace out ~Me

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September passed in a blur and soon it was October 13.

"Alyssa!" Carly shrieked in surprise.

"Huh?" Alyssa groaned groggily, having just been woken up from a peaceful slumber. Still comfortable in Yami's arms she attempted to block out all thought and go back to dreamland.

"Alyssa, I see Yami had given you your birthday present early..."

"Wha...?" Alyssa mumbled into her pillow, the fog of sleep still clouding her brain. She finally opened her eyes, only to find Carly standing next to her bed, looking scandalized.

"When did this little development happen?" Carly inquired, gesturing to Yami.

"We sleeping together since September. No big deal. Let sleep." Alyssa rolled over.

The shocked and horrified expression on Carly's face only increased. She stood there agape, barely believing what she had just heard.

Suddenly Alyssa was very awake. Alyssa had realized that no one else was home, they were cuddling w/ the covers up to their neck and therefore probably looked naked, and they had been sleeping later than usual. To Carly it must have looked like they had been... "Oops, sorry Carly. I didn't mean to scare you like that. I mean *sleeping*, no adultery involved."

Carly breathed a sigh of relief. "Phew, you really had me going there for a moment."

"Now will you let me be so I can go back to sleep, not as if I will though," Alyssa grumbled.

"No way! It's your birthday. Get up!"

"Oh yeah! Way cool, I'm 18 at 2:06 today. Let's eat breakfast."

"You never change..." Carly laughed as they walked out of the room, leaving Yami, surprisingly, still sleeping.

"Woohoo, corm muffins and syrup," Alyssa exclaimed as she sat down at the table.

"Muffins... that reminds me of a joke I've heard," Carly started to say. Alyssa rolled her eyes, knowing what was coming. "So there are these two muffins in an oven, right? One muffin turns to the other muffin and says 'Man it's getting hot in here.' The other muffin screams 'Ahh! A talking muffin.'"

Alyssa rolled her eyes again; she wasn't awake enough for this.

Meanwhile, Yami slowly awoke. A bit chilly, he tried to pull Alyssa closer for warmth. When his hands met nothing but air next to him, Yami was immediately wide awake, sitting up strait, and panicked. /Where's Alyssa? Did Marik take her? Is she suffering? How did he slip her out without me noticing?/ Yami's thoughts continued in this depressing spiral.

He jumped out of bed, not bothering to get dressed and ran out to the kitchen, fully prepared to search for Alyssa wearing only his boxer, a wife- beater shirt, and the Millennium Puzzle.

When Yami ran into the kitchen, barely clad, the girls started giggling.

"Nice legs Yami," Carly sarcastically pointed out.

"Hey! I love those legs," Alyssa defended honestly between giggles.

Yami blushed a deep red, no one besides Alyssa and his light were supposed to see him this dressed down. "Oops, I'll just go change now," Yami called back as he dashed to Alyssa's room.

"Anyway," Yami came out, still a little embarrassed, but fully clothed. "Happy Birthday, Alyssa!"

"Thanks. Funny I seem to be the only one who didn't remember it was my birthday"

"So Alyssa, if you like Yami's legs so much why were you laughing?"

"Because the look on his face was so funny when he realized that you were here." Alyssa laughed harder.

"Gee thanks honey," Yami said sarcastically, while sitting next to Alyssa and pulling her small frame onto his lap. She turned to look at him, about to ask why, but before Alyssa could open her mouth, Yami answered her in the most torturous of ways-tickling.

"Oh now who has the funny face? Huh? Huh?" Yami taunted a viciously laughing Alyssa.

"Y-you!" Alyssa gasped out, trying to catch her breath. As we all know that is impossible to do when being tickled. Yami tickled her harder and faster.

"Now?"

"You." Yami moved to tickling the most ticklish spot on Alyssa, her ribs.

"F-fine, m-me." Yami stopped his torture while Alyssa caught her breath.

"Now who has had the last laugh?"

"Actually me," Alyssa teased back.

"Arg, wrong way to word that."

Carly watched this whole exchange, amused, from her chair. "So when's the wedding?"

"Wha?"

"Huh?"

"Well you two already act like newly weds. The waking up together, the mostly naughty teasing and the constantly being together would indicate one is married."

Yami and Alyssa looked at each other and shrugged both thinking that being married wouldn't be such a bad idea.

"So are you ladies ready to go yet?"

"No way, we just woke up about five minutes before you. Besides I need to wake up Bakura and the others." Carly went off, presumably to wake up the guys.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Thankfully, the blissfully warm spring/summer/fall season in Florida continued well into November. Therefore, the sand under the teens' feet as they ran into the ocean was still pleasantly hot but refreshingly cool a few inches down.

As they reached the surf, Yugi and Hannah instantly started paddling out, preparing for a day of surfing. Carly and Bakura, claiming the water was too cold, decided to build a sand castle. But before ten minutes had gone by it had turned into a sand war. Ryou and Jackie, however, opted to have a one-on-one volleyball match a few dozen yards down the beach. Yami and Alyssa had taken an inflatable raft and swam out the buoy marking the civilian swimming limit. Since the camping excursion, they had not had much time to be alone together. Tonight was going to be no different, with Alyssa's friends coming over to celebrate her birthday.

"The water has to be at least 20 or 30 feet deep out here," Yami brightly observed.

"Y-yeah," Alyssa chattered, but not from the temperature fo the water.

"What's the matter?" Yami asked Alyssa, picking up the waver in her voice. "The water isn't cold."

"I've never been out this far from the shore," Alyssa sheepishly admitted. "And I'm scared I'm going to drown or something. I know it's silly, but that is just one of my irrational fears."

"It's not that irrational, it could happen. Granted it is very unlikely..."

"I'm also scared of sharks." "Oh. Yeah that is scary, but the odds of getting attacked by a shark are millions to one, and even less for being killed by one. Besides you have lived here you're whole life and never even seen a shark."

"I know that, but still... Every time something causes the water to ripple or move differently around my feet it makes me nervous. This water is so murky I can't see past my bellybutton looking down. I worry about my feet."

Yami didn't know what to say to that. Everything that Alyssa said had made sense to him. Granted he wasn't going to admit to being afraid of sharks and their rippling water until it was the only way to stop 5,000 years of torture.

Alyssa watched Yugi and Hannah hug each other after a good wave and head to the car to get something. "Yami I- hey stop playing around! That isn't funny!" Alyssa scowled at him, after feeling the water rush past her feet. Alyssa figured that Yami had just kicked water at her to terrify her.

"Stop what?" Yami asked, genuinely confused. Alyssa's eyes widened.

"Something just brushed my foot!" Alyssa near panicked.

"Don't worry. Most likely it was seawee-" Yami was cut off by a shrill scream from Alyssa, followed by her being roughly jerked backwards off the raft by and unseen force.

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WOOHOO!! Another chapter.

PLEASE REVIEW!!! or I'll wait longer for the next chapter buahahaha! Actually it'll come out on Saturday cuz it's mostly written It's quick and it makes me very happy and I write better!!!! Tell me what you think of the chapter please. Anything works likes, dislikes, flames, or what you thought of this Saturday's episodes, anything!