Happy Friday! I'm sending you into the weekend with a new kiss! For this one, I took a canon moment that I half hate and half ADORE and fixed it and put a kiss in it. SO THERE.

A Kiss After A Small Rejection

The world was unfair and out to get her and her head hurt from Rei's skull and why the hell was this always happening to her this was unfair.

Shouldn't the universe cut her some slack? Even when she didn't have any intention to ever set foot in a cram school (as if) - if, for whatever weird reason, she were so inclined to do so after all, she wouldn't even have time for it. Besides, she'd had to use the Silver Crystal the other day to save the world from Evil Space Aliens From The Future along with her future, unevil-sized daughter and had slept for three days afterwards and really these test results were utterly unfair.

She sat, shoulders slumped, on the concrete stairs leading up to the edge of the park from the main street and pouted at her indeedly very poor test results.

"I can already hear what Mamo-chan would say if he saw this," she sighed down at the paper.

"That's really terrible," his voice would say. Definitely.

She nodded sadly. "That's what he'd say, alright."

And then it clicked, and she found his eyes in shocked panic as he gave her that look over her shoulder, and she shrieked and jumped and hugged the wall opposite of him very, very tightly and comically stupid.

He clicked his tongue. That look looked really, really annoyed, she had to say. And she laughed the most godawful laugh in all of the history of fake laughs and said something about the weather.

"Usako…" he glowered.

She flinched, ducking, slipped into that same consoling and terrified voice she used with her Mama all the time when it came to her grades. "I'm… The girls and I are gonna sit down and buckle up and study now. In fact, we're going to have a study session at Rei's later."

Don't take away my free time privileges, that tone said. I know you think I'm lazy, but I already have so little of it, it said.

"You should've been doing that all along," he pointed out. "Maybe we shouldn't date for a while. Until you catch up on schoolwork."

She froze, dumbstruck, horrified. Oh shit. Right. Entirely different sets of rights and privileges at stake here…

Oh no. Please. That's my emotional support snuggles you're taking away. Again.

She was rendered to a helpless, fumbling, begging stutter, then clicked her mouth shut. "That's extreme," she squeaked out. "I... I don't think we have to do that…"

He sighed, his pretty features dissolving into regret, as if he was losing something, and she not, like, everything. Then he picked up her schoolbag that she hadn't even noticed having flung about the place and pressed it into her dumbstruck hands.

"You should study hard…" he said with a regretful, sad little smile, and turned to leave.

A moment passed in which her heart pounded wildly, shocked. "WAIT!" she yelped out, and he stopped.

He turned around but didn't walk back, just shot her a questioning glance.

She knew it was stupid. She knew he didn't mean it like that… hopefully… probably... but… that's how it had happened, right? Right here. At the concrete wall bordering the side of the park, behind these steps. Where she'd walked into him with a bad test grade in her hand and saw him collapsed against the side of the wall, glomped him without reading the situation right and got… got left.

The reminder flashed through her and paralyzed her and shot into her eyes. She hadn't believed him that time, went back to his apartment in hopes she'd misunderstood. Surely, this wasn't happening again…?

"Are you…" she gasped out, tears springing to her eyes "Just like this? 'We shouldn't date'?!"

His eyes moved into alarm and he took one wary step back.

She felt her lip quivering. "Are you breaking up with me again? Over THIS? Over school?" And then the first tear fell.

He was at her side in a flash, his hands on her cheeks and catching her tears and he looked absolutely horrified. He shook his head wildly, "Usako, no! That's not what I—"

"Because, you know, we saved the world and all," she sniffled, but her eyes dried again under his concerned look, and it was ok, really, he was here, he looked alarmed, she knew this wasn't… but. "Last week. I'm not good at school even when I have time for it, and I…"

Her tone turned petulant, angry.

He shook his head again firmly, but this time his eyes were tender, careful, and his thumb stroked across her cheek. "I promise it's not what I mean. You just obviously need the time to study, Usako…"

But it seemed her angry pout soothed his nerves, and the alarm flew from him, too.

She pouted at him. "We saved the world and the Crystal sucked me dry and even before that we were time traveling and stuck in a time storm and there was Black Lady and Diamond and it was emotionally exhausting! This test asked stuff that felt like I'd heard it months ago and no wonder it sucked," she defended herself, and might even have stomped her foot.

One of his hands lowered even when the other remained stroking her cheek, and he didn't move a bit away. Yet, he was the most aggravating person in existence because after all that he still had the gall to say what he said next. "I take it Ami got full score despite all this?"

She glared. About to point out that Ami hadn't used the Silver Crystal, and also visited fancy cram schools, but she guessed none of this was going to help her in her cause. "Ami is secretly a cyborg. Only explanation," she grumbled. "Or, ya know, Senshi of wisdom and all. I'm not."

He huffed at her. "Or more like you hung out at my place the last few nights while she was studying."

She glared.

"I would have sent you to study with the girls if I'd known you had a test coming up, Usako."

She pouted. "I could study at your place," she groused.

He cracked a smile, rolled his eyes ever so softly. "We both know that doesn't work."

Her pout only grew. "Fiiiiine," she said, all the shoulders she had to her convenience falling in defeat.

But he leaned in and pressed soft, soft, slackened lips to her in the slowest, most tender peck of a kiss he'd ever given her. And she kinda had to melt against it with a sigh.

"I promise it's not what I meant. I would never break up with you. It's never been what I meant, ok?" he whispered against her lips, stooped over, his thumb back to stroking her cheek.

She nodded, "Ok," she whispered back heavily.

"I just don't want to distract you. School is very important, Usako."

She scowled abruptly.

He smiled, pressed another soft, innocent, impossibly sweet kiss to her lips and then, once again, pressed her bag into her hands.

She nodded when he turned to leave again, and she sighed.

"And hey," she called after him. "Maybe next time you begin a sentence basically with 'Maybe we shouldn't see each other anymore'..."

He threw her a look, one that clearly screamed, 'that's not what I said', in full irritation.

"...maybe don't do it in the exact same place you did this to me before?" she ended with a pout.

His eyes widened comically wide as he looked around. Obviously, so, so obviously, he suddenly realised what exactly she was pointing about.

He was back with her in a blink, and this time the hands on her cheeks were more insistent, shaking her a little, and the quick kisses he pressed to her lips weren't soft at all, they were hard and insistent and a little worked up. But she puckered her lips, and received every single one gladly.

"I promise," he breathed against her lips between kisses, in a way that meant 'I'm sorry,' and even when she nodded, he kept going. Kiss after kiss after kiss.

He didn't leave after that. He walked her to Hikawa and the girls and their study group, and stayed to explain what he could.

Obvious Setting Tag: S. Specifically, Episode 90, the first episode of S.

There. I love the original scene for its humor, but the obvious simile to a different scene in that exact same spot and the placement of this scene DIRECTLY after the break up arc, never reaaaally sat right with me, so there. (And yeah, obviously I hope it WASN'T a week between R and S, I hope it was a whole summer or something or even longer, and most probably it WAS, I like to think they had gaps between seasons in general, but, ya know, EMOTIONAL CONTINUITY – this girl was affected by the break up arc in STARS still, so even if there was a gap between seasons, this would have reminded her of the break up arc, so yeah – that scene's a little in poor taste in a lot of ways even if it was hella funny…?)