Love Hina - It's Not Enough
It's Not Enough[R]
Niklas "Hawk" Jonsson


Summary: In Volume 9 of the manga, Motoko looses the battle against her sister and decides to live as an ordinary woman, only to have the denizens of Hinata Sou belittle her efforts without knowing that she overhears them. Motoko runs away and Keitaro goes after her. After Keitaro finally stumbles across Motoko wet and miserable in the streets, he takes her home and treats her to hot chocolate in his room. During the events that follows, she breaks down and Keitaro has to attach a multitude of clothespins to his head in order to prevent himself from getting too intimate with Motoko. In this fic, he never gets his hand on those damnable pins and things deviates from the manga from that point onwards...

Disclaimer: Love Hina, Hinata Sou and whatnot are not mine, though I certainly wish they were. The story is mine though, all mine.

Feedback/Flames: Yes, please. Both of them are equally fun to read, although I must admit that I greatly prefer the first variety. :)
I can be found on ICQ as 21771860 or through e-mail as iamhawk@yahoo.com, more stories are available at my nifty lil' site at or by clicking on my handle up above.

"speech"
*emphasis/shouts/Kindred Domination/post-hypnotic triggers*
/thoughts/
*/telepathy/*
~translation~
+soundeffect/radio/telephone conversation/TV+

*** Previously, on 'It's Not Enough' ***


The moment the door slid close, Motoko slowly slumped and crumbled to her knees. She bent down low over her own legs and hugged herself, trying to prevent tears from emerging yet again.

What had she done? What had she done?!

"No... No... No... No... No..." she repeated to herself under her breath, trembling and shivering as she recalled the events of yesternight, as much of it as she could remember. The images were a bit hazy and she couldn't remember all of it, but what she could remember...

Her resolve cracked and tears started flowing yet again.

*** Roll credits ***






Chapter Three:


"Owie..." Keitaro whimpered and slowly curled up into a fetal position.

"Geeze, man! Are you all right?" a concerned voice inquired. "What were you doing up on that roof in those rags?"

"M'okay." Keitaro grunted out in response. "M'okay..." he repeated. It wasn't the first time once of his impromptu flights had stopped in a populated area. But no matter how often it happened, it never got any easier comming up with excuses. Thankfully, this time the one who found him had come up with half of one on his own. That would make things easier.

He wondered if the girls knew just how close they had come to being arrested on several occations as his excuses for dropping out of the skies hadn't sounded believable enough, cases in which EMT's and police had been called to the scene.

"I'll call an ambulance." the voice continued, which spurred Keitaro into action. "Hey, no, stay down! You might have broken your neck."

/No, that doesn't feel like this.../ Keitaro thought as he slowly and painfully got up onto his feet, hunched over and in severe pain. It felt like a couple of ribs had been cracked again.

"Naw, I'm okay." Keitaro lied, plastered a fake smile on his lips and stood up straight, supressing a vince as his ribs protested. "Nothing that a warm bath and some rest won't take the edge of. My doctor can have a look at me tomorrow."

/Yeah, as if I'd ever dare go see one of those after something like this. They'd lock me up in a research laboratory and I'd never see the light of day again./ he thought with a faint shudder.

"Thanks for the concern, though. But I'll pull through." Keitaro insisted, bowing and scraping until the concerned man gave up and started walking down the street again.

Keitaro exhaled with relief, looked around and oriented himself to identify just where he was and then set off towards the nearest store he knew would let him in. He bent down and retreived a sturdy textile pouch strapped to his right ankle, opened it and removed a plastic bag from it, pulling out some fresh yen from it before he returned it to it's place at his ankle.

He spent more money on clothes, then anything else these days and never knew just when he might need some cash to pay for replacement clothes, so he'd taken to wearing an emergency stash of money at all times.

Thankfully enough, Taro was at the counter as opposed to his big sister Miyu. Taro was cool about Keitaro's frequent disheveled appearances and emergency garment purchases, but Miyu always made such a big fuss about it. Not to forget that she teased the heck out of him, every chance she got. Taro merely shook his head, accepted the cash and gave Keitaro his change back after Keitaro returned from the changing room, handing Taro the price tags from the clothes he was already wearing.

"You really are something." Taro commented as Keitaro threw his destroyed clothes in the trash. "I think the boss is considering making you customer of the year." he added and Keitaro responded with a sheepish smile, trying to maintain the happy facade while he was inwardly drowning in mental turmoil.

"If it's all the same to you guys, I'd rather not." Keitaro responded and bid Taro good-bye before he hastily removed himself from the store. He briefly considered returning to the Hinata Sou straight away, but decided against it. Instead, he headed for a tea-shop nearby and paid for a cup of tea. He could have gotten one for free at Aunt Haruka's place, but he wanted to be alone for a while.

/I'm not a virgin./

/That's because I've had sex./

/Last night./

/I'm not a virgin anymore./

/That's because I've had sex now./

/With Motoko./

/I'm a dead man./

He sighed and sipped from his tea, trying to recall as much as possible of last night and the weird turn of events that now weighed heavily upon his mind. He fingered the clotted blood over the wound on his chest through his new T-Shirt. Minor injuries like that were usually healed after this much time had passed. This appeared to be one of those weird cases when the injuries stuck around for longer then usual. He did not know why that happened with some of them. Perhaps this one would even leave a lasting scar.

He gingerly touched his ribs. They appeared to be on the mend as usual, the pain had already faded into the background. His head still hurt, but he'd been through worse. He would likely not suffer any lasting damages from his last jaunt through Hinata air-space. Not physical ones, at any rate.

While being accused of being a pervert and instant violence had been what he expected from Motoko once she woke up, it still hurt. Last night, they had been so close and now...

He slapped himself and took another sip from his tea. His mind wasn't where it was supposed to be.

He shouldn't be worrying about himself, he should be thinking of Motoko. Considering the mess she had been last night, she was likely even more of a mess right now. He stared down into his tea, wondering if he should return and seek her out, or give her some space in which to calm down.

But...

She had been awfully down and he wouldn't kid himself into believing that last night had been something she had wanted, so she was probably feeling all the more awful now. But, was she down enough to do something... Drastic?

It scared him how little he really knew about Motoko. He knew a lot about her Martial Arts proficiency and knew her special attacks intimately, but there was precious little he knew about the girl behind the Martial Arts.

He knew that she was an early riser on schooldays, but liked to spend sunday mornings snoozing in bed. A fact that had cost him a beating the first time he'd strolled into her room to deliver laundry, thinking that she was spending the morning up on the roof training as usual and instead stumbled to the floor as he saw Motoko in her futon. She had thrown off her cover during her sleep and was wearing a worn T-Shirt that had hiked up significantly, revealing a whole lotta naked flesh and a pair of white cotton panties.

He knew that while she loudly and prodly proclaimed her love for historic drama novels, she secretly read Azumanga Daioh with a fervor that rivaled his and Naru's most intense study sessions. A fact which had cost him yet another beating, as he accidentally walked in on her another sunday, not having learned his lesson the first time.

He knew that she advocated simple, healthy food, but had observed that she seemed to like Shinobu's more elaborate delicatessen just as much as the rest of them, perhaps even somewhat more then the others.

He now knew that she had an older sister. He was now aware that she had a mole on her left butt cheek that wasn't visible when she was wearing panties. He knew that she detested foreign music. He knew that she was afraid of turtles.

He knew the sounds she made as she rode him like a woman possessed, fucking his brains out.

Keitaro shook his head to clear his mind, then drained his cup of tea.

Perhaps returning to the Hinata Sou wasn't the smartest of things to do, but he couldn't stay away any longer. He needed to return.

He needed... To see Motoko.




Of course, seeing Motoko wasn't an easy task to acomplish when Motoko didn't want to be seen.

After a timid greeting upon stumbling across her in his own room, she'd spluttered out a muted response, a mumbled apology and then scurried from the room before he could open his mouth to respond.

It appeared as if she had been cleaning and repairing his room for him. The broken wall was patched up, not as well as if he'd done it himself due to his longer experience in these matters, but it would do well enough until the contractors arrived. The dent in his wooden floor, seemed to suggest that his bookcase had been turned over and further study of the item in question, confirmed the theory as that too was dented. The books were now placed in an alphabetical order, rather then his own rather haphazard system of putting used books whereever there was space for them.

And for some odd reason, his room reeked of aftershave.

Keitaro shrugged and turned to the pile of magazines that Motoko had dropped before leaving as he surprised her. He paled significantly as he realized the nature of some of those magazines.

/Crap!/

Not only had he had sex with Motoko, but now she'd also seen some of his dirty magazines!

Oh, how he wished that 'Naughty Swordmaiden Minako' hadn't been one of them!

Unfortunately, volume three of the five-part series was lying on top of the pile Motoko had dropped. There was no way that she could have missed it.

No doubt, she now thought him even more of a pervert then before. Perhaps even, that he'd planned the events of last night. /Well, no. Perhaps not. After all, I'm still alive./

He left his room in search of Motoko, only to stumble across Narusegawa who revealed that she was leaving for Kyoto. Apparently, she was supposed to have gone two days earlier, but the trip had been delayed by two of her friends becomming sick. Keitaro wasn't sure how to feel about that. On one hand, it tore at his heart that she was leaving, without having responded in any way to his proclamation of love.

On the other, it was a huge relief that she was leaving so that perhaps he might have a chance to fix the situation with Motoko before Naru returned!

He stood at the door and watched as Naru left with Kitsune, who had been roped into following her to the train station. Keitaro would have liked to come with them, but him and his cast would only have slowed them down. Besides, with Naru and the largest troublemaker at the Hinata Sou gone for a while, perhaps he'd manage to talk with Motoko without interuptions or anyone overhearing just what they were going to talk about.

He sighed and headed inside, hobbling towards Motoko's room.




Motoko looked at the... The... The... At the object, with a look of determination in her eyes and an expression on her face that suggested that she was about to leap off a cliff towards a short, but colorful future as mashed human flesh with a side order of fresh blood and broken bones.

Or even worse, kiss a turtle!

Her right hand hesitantly darted out and she gingerly touched it, poking at it. With slow movements, as if it was just about to leap up and bite her in the face, she flipped to a random page and leaned forward, gazing down at the pages of 'Naughty Swordmaiden Minako' with trepidation.

She blushed furiously, then shoved the magazine shut and hurled it across the room.

She hadn't meant to take it. Really!

But she had been so surprised when Keitaro walked in on her, holding a pile of magazines in her left arm and was staring in bewilderment at the first volume of 'Naughty Swordmaiden Minako' in her right hand. She had dropped the pile, shoved the magazine underneath the apron of her dress and then left the room like greased lightening, embarressed at having been caught looking at... What she had been looking at.

She slowly crept across the room and retreived the magazine, then flipped it open and started reading the first page, just as Keitaro raised his arm to open her door from the other side...

"Keeeeiiitaro!"

+Twock+

Fortunately, Su chose that exact moment to provide Keitaro with a distraction in the form of her tanned foot making sudden and forceful contact with his face.




Keitaro sighed over a cup of tea. It had been a whole day now and he still hadn't managed to talk with Motoko. The most he'd managed to say to her was 'Good morning' and 'Motoko, do you suppose you might...' at breakfast. But as he attempted to ask if she might have some spare time later to talk with him, she rose from the table, excused herself and left the building, 'to meditate'.

He didn't quite know what to make of it. She wasn't reacting at all like he'd imagined. She hadn't hit him even once! Not even as he hobbled straight into Kitsune's chest just before breakfast. Motoko had merely blanched and averted her eyes from the scene of Kitsune chuckling in bemusement, before Kitsune pushed Keitaro off and into his seat, brazenly adjusting her breasts afterwards.

"You seem awfully introspective today, Keitaro. What's up?" Kitsune asked, strolling into the living room with a bottle of sake, a cup and a rolled-up magazine tucked between her left arm and ribcage. "You're even neglecting your studies. Missing Naru that much already?" she inquired with a sly grin and a knowing wink.

"A little." Keitaro admitted, then sighed again, before looking speculatively at Kitsune. He would probably wind up regretting it, but he could really use some advice at the moment. "Neh, Kitsune. If I... Said something... Did something... Something I shouldn't to a girl, something I absolutely have to apologize for and try to undo. What do I do? What do I say? You're a girl, you must know *something* of what I should do in a case like this!"

Kitsune gasped, her eyes opened fully and she dropped the cup, though she managed to hold on to the bottle.

"You told Naru that you didn't mean it when you said that you loved her?!" Kitsune exclaimed. "Man, there is *no* good way to go about apologizing for that!" she continued, shaking her head as she plonked down in the couch next to him. She took a swag from her bottle as Keitaro contemplated weather to set her straight or let her go with her wrongful assumption. Finally, he merely shrugged and let it be. It was easier this way and besides, with what he'd done, he might just have to do what she thought he already had and retract his proclamation of love.

He'd defiled Motoko. He'd have to do the right thing.

"But if you've... Then that means..." Kitsune rambled on, then blinked, took another swag and then her eyes narrowed back to the usual slits. "Then that means that you, a Todai student, is free for the taking..." she mumbled to herself, then undid the top three buttons of her shirt. After a moments hesitation, she undid the fourth as well. "Neh, Keitaro..." she drawled and turned a half-lap around, curling up against him. "Tell everything and let oneechan comfort you." she urged him, wrapping an arm around him.

Much to her surprise, he didn't react with his usual panic or blubbering, merely sighed and wrapped one arm around her shoulders, using it to pull her back a bit. Though he didn't push her entirely off, just enough so that they were sitting next to each other, side-by-side.

"You're a good girl, 'oneechan'. Weird, but good." Keitaro commented with a wry chuckle and a shake of his head. His gaze briefly dipped to the ample cleavage she was displaying, before it focused on her face. "Why you haven't landed yourself a wealthy boyfriend yet, is quite beyond me." he added.

"Yeah..." Kitsune responded, her brain working a mile a minute. Keitaro was behaving awfully strange and weirdly confident in the face of her sexuality, something he'd *never' done before. Was it possible... That he'd gotten laid?

She blinked as the notion occured to her. Had this coward and the skittish Naru both did the nasty and broken up before she left? It seemed an unlikely event. Neither of the two had the guts for something like that. Motoko? Hah! Mutsumi? Well, Kitsune had to admit that it was a possibility. Mutsumi certainly seemed to have a thing for Keitaro and he was a sucker for everything in a skirt that had breasts larger then his own. If Mutsumi got her heads out of the clouds, or watermelons as the case might be, and really got to work on Keitaro, she could have him wrapped around her little finger in five minutes.

Kitsune nodded to herself, wondering what to do about it. She had been prepared to loose him to Naru and bow out gracefully once again, but Mutsumi was a whole other matter. She was Konno Mitsune! She wouldn't loose a guy to that Okinawan watermelon-head without one hell of a fight!

Keitaro carefully edged away from Kitsune and hurriedly left the room, as she started emitting a furious red battle aura where she was sitting on the couch, cackling madly to herself and muttering about watermelons of all things!

He shook his head in bewilderment. He would never be able to understand how the female mind worked!

The End! ( For now... )