Surprisingly enough the chapter before the lemon got more reviews than the lemon, lol. It's the only one you'll get in that much detail :)

Anyway, not much else to say, so go diago go!

That Monday at school, Mikan and Natsume couldn't seem to find a bit of time to get together, in spite of how much they both wanted to – if this was what he meant by 'working around' his infidelity then he had certainly succeeded, because the desire to see him was much stronger than the bitterness from before. She was still angry and hurt when she thought about it, but she understood why it happened, and she didn't want to ruin what they'd managed to build back, almost miraculously so.

However, the rest of the school didn't know this, and the word was they were either broken up or just about to. That was why Koko, a childhood friend of Sumire's who hung out with them quite a lot, was staring very obviously at Mikan that day, and putting around talk of making a move on her – if she'd date him, she wouldn't be able to turn a guy like himself down.

Mikan didn't really register this, and as he lavished attention on her at lunch she simply wondered why he was being so odd; for the last two weeks he'd barely said a word to her, and now he wanted to know lots of things… weird.

She wondered where Natsume was – not noticing that Koko's eyeline was slowly sinking down to her chest – until she promptly discovered his whereabouts.

Koko turned around when someone tapped him on the shoulder, and looked around to come face-to-face with a bowlful of cold noodle soup.

"Enjoying the view?" Natsume hissed sarcastically, as he dumped the contents of an abandoned meal over the bastard's head.

"Eh? What the fuck are you doing, Natsume?!" Mikan squealed, and then shrunk down when he gave her a genuinely furious look.

"I don't like watching people hit on my girlfriend," he said angrily, and – much to his relief – saw Mikan's confused 'what-what-what?!' face. He didn't want to entertain the thoughts of her letting something like that happen willingly. Not after yesterday.

"He wasn't hitting on me!" she protested, and then looking back on it and realizing that it could be, at least, to Natsume it could.

"You're barely together," Koko snarled, and then shot a lusty look at Mikan. "I thought she was free game."

"Free game?!" Mikan and Natsume yelled back at him in outrage.

"Who are you calling 'game', huh?" Mikan snapped. "What am I supposed to be?!"

"What the fuck do you think you're saying!" Natsume said at the same time, and then hesitated as he heard Mikan talk as well. "You've got some balls talking like that," he glowered. "You better be prepared to back it up."

"What?" Koko grunted, only to realize a second late that Mikan had leant over the table, almost in perfect sync with Natsume's words, and flipped his lunch in his face.

"One, I have a boyfriend, so fuck off," she said coolly, as Koko was covered in his own food. "Two, that was the most pathetic chat-up ever; and three, what's going on between me and my boyfriend is none of your fucking business. So keep your mouth shut." Natsume crossed his arms over his chest.

"I haven't seen you today," he remarked moodily, and she returned an equally dispassionate look.

"I know, it seems like people assume that if we aren't making out then we must be breaking up," she retorted tartly.

"I wonder how we could fix that," he suggested, walking around the table so he was on her side. He'd stopped trying to appear so brashly off-putting and dorky at school, because he obviously didn't want to look like a complete prat in front of his girlfriend. However, he did have that musty paper-smell she knew meant he'd been reading or doing stock-takes in the library.

She was growing to not-hate it, though, and it didn't bother her that his hand, as he took her jaw in it, held that faint papery page-turning scent.

He tipped her face upwards and kissed her; quite openly, but without tongues, in the middle of the busy hall.

"I think that makes it clear," he said darkly, shooting another threatening look at Koko. He held her close for a few seconds and added a further few pecks for good measure, and then stopped before he got carried away. After yesterday he wasn't exploding with lust anymore, but it felt like the connection he had with her had been set, and it was hard to hold everything back.

"Sit down," she encouraged, but he shook his head; he wasn't an idiot: he wouldn't sit with her and her shallow friends to be subject to ridicule.

Ruka was also waiting for him.

"No; I've got to go," he explained, "but I'll see you after school."

"Fine," she sighed; he would have to socialise with her friends eventually, right?

As he left, Natsume touched his palm on top of her head and ruffled her hair, a small but intimate gesture, and needless to say, her friends were suitably baffled. Many of them started asking questions, but one person's voice stood out of the crowd.

"So when did that happen?!" Sumire squawked when Natsume was out of earshot. Mikan knew what she was asking about; she read Mikan uncannily well.

"Um… yesterday," she replied awkwardly.

"Where did that happen?"

"His house."

"You've been to his house now?"

"Well… on Saturday I had to meet his family for dinner…"

"You've met his family?!" The last time Sumire had checked Mikan was clinging onto Natsume, as she tended to do with doomed relationships, while they crashed down onto the rocks after he went and cheated on her. Now she'd met his family and had slept with him as well?! Some weekend.

"It… all went quite quickly," Mikan confessed, and Sumire slapped her hand down on the table.

"Exactly, girl!" she warned. "That's where he gets you." Mikan stared down at the table sadly. Or, Sumire had thought it was sadly.

"Don't, Sumire," she threatened suddenly, her tone firm and serious.

"I know exactly what you think, and I know what you're going to say, and believe me he knows too, but…"

"But?" she prompted.

"But… well… it's not like that." Sumire cackled.

"That's what they all say, babe. You're being played."

"I am not!" Mikan snarled, slamming her hands down on the table and glaring at Sumire. "He's not…like that, with me," she said quietly; it sounded so weak when she tried to explain it to other people. "I know exactly what you mean, but it's different. He…" Sumire, and most of her other friends for that matter, didn't look impressed. "Look," she said calmly. "I know what I'm doing, if I fuck up it's my bad, so can you all just… stop judging me."

She was worried by two things, firstly that she'd lied to her friends – she didn't know what she was doing, she was trusting her emotions on a complete whim, but she didn't feel like she could tell them that. Secondly she sounded…

She sounded like Natsume. Telling them not to judge her, knowing they were judging her.

Everyone was quiet.

"Fine, Mikan. Whatever," Sumire sighed. "It's your call; we won't say another word about it." – to you, was the implication there, but it was the best Mikan could hope for in the situation.

"Hah, Koko, you got made such a fool of," someone laughed, and the mood defused.

No one could believe that he'd been made such an idiot of by the library kid, and Mikan tried to join in, but quickly gave up when she realized how much she wanted to yell at all of them for being such idiots about Natsume. He was different, he was bookish and a bit quiet – not to mention anti-social – but why did that mean he had to be ridiculed? What stupid rule meant that not fitting in with everyone else made you into a joke?

She realized that this was very alike to what Natsume used to say, and she saw, for the first time, one speck of truth in his analysis of her friends. She hated it.

She wondered what it was Natsume had to do, and suddenly wished she could be there; she could find out if he and Nogi-kun were like… this. Maybe that was why Nogi-kun didn't hang with them, even if he was 'cool' enough to do so.

"Mikan, can I have a word, babe?" Sumire leant over and whispered in her ear, and glad for an opportunity to get out of there Mikan eagerly said yes.

"Look, if this is about…" she started wearily, but Sumire shook her head.

"Not him, I meant it: I'll lay off, it's your choice or whatever," she reassured her. "But… well, you're going out with… him and everything now… and you know how he's always with…"

"Nogi-kun?" she suggested perkily. "You want me to get in with him?"

"Well…" Sumire mumbled bashfully. "If you were just, like, with them sometime, I could come up and introduce myself... see, then it would be easy!" she boasted. "Once I talk to him everything will fall into place." Mikan laughed; Sumire was, and always would be, pure Sumire.

"Sure, easy," she replied. "I can do that."

"You can? Oh thanks!" she squealed, jumping at Mikan and hugging her, and then within a second she had changed tack completely. "So you two finally got it on, huh?" she said in a hushed tone, pushing the two of them towards a bench.

"Well… yeah," she replied, and as Sumire glared the 'explain the rest to me now' out of her, she was urged to continue.

"We had an argument the night before, right? I was saying all those things you keep trying to tell me, I asked him if it was all just a game and what I was supposed to think, seeing what he was like, you know, before." She looked away as she wondered why she was talking like things were totally different now she was around, but Sumire's prodding made her resume talking. "And well, he's just… and he says… and…" she floundered, unable to find words to explain it; even when he'd said it so well himself. She couldn't recapture the moment at all.

"Talk sense," Sumire taunted.

"He's just different!" she cried. "He says all these things, like, they sound so crap if I say them now, like how I'm the only girl he's actually liked, or that everything now is different to what he did before – it sounds lame – but at the time you can just tell…. He's…he's..."

"Intense," Sumire finished for her. "I know. Mikan, I'm not trying to talk you out of him, I just... you two act like…"

"Like?"

"Like you're in love," she blurted. "You do. You've only been with him like two months, and I think you're going too fast."

"You've slept with boys in less than two months," Mikan remarked, not bitchily, but as a statement of fact.

"Not that, I mean, it's just… I didn't think people could get over what he did to you, and you're there. It's almost freaky." Mikan was quiet. Sumire had mentioned the l word, the L word she'd been trying not to think about for fear of jinxing it.

"I…" she murmured shyly, "really like him. But I can't…"

"Fall in love?" Sumire prompted; they both knew it, she was just the only one who could say it.

"I know!" she groaned. "It's there, it's definitely there. I could fall for him if it carried on being like it is now… I mean, yesterday, it was so lovely."

"Lovely?" Sumire echoed. "I can't believe you referred to sleeping with him as 'lovely', I've been there," she muttered bitterly, "and it wasn't lovely.

"I know, and I hate that part of him that did that, but the flipside, who I was with yesterday… god, he's amazing. The sex, when we finally got to it because we didn't even just jump into bed either, was great, really great for a first time... but it was everything. He knew, because I'd told him, how I thought he'd just leave as soon as we'd done it, and then he stopped, and he thought about it, and he, like, cuddled."

Sumire laughed. "He cuddled after sex?"

"It sounds stupid, but it meant a lot at the time. To me," she confessed, and Sumire gave her a hug.

"You have such a soft head, Mikan," she giggled.

"He did it," she complained. "I was fine, and he came along and made me go all gooey."

"You know, I bet he's saying the same thing about you," Sumire said with a smirk. "It's hard to believe it's the same guy."

"From before? I know," she rushed. "He's completely different… or, more like, he only used to be one face, just one personality he showed to everyone, and as soon as you do a little digging there's this human being underneath; he's a freak, and seriously fucked up, but every shitty point has this amazing opposite in there somewhere."

It could be said that Sumire saw it coming second; Mikan seemed to know Natsume in a way that wasn't normal for who, what, and how long they'd been.

As much as she was trying to deny it now, she was falling for him, even at this stage. Big time.

"But hey, you don't want to listen to me ranting about him non-stop. We're going out tonight, right?"

"Oh yes!" Sumire cheered, "There's a goukon I promised Anna I'd go with her on, but that doesn't mean you can't come as a friend." Of course not, Mikan thought, and arranged to meet Sumire later that night. If anyone approached her she'd just say no, which was fine obviously.

"So you finally did it?"

"Yes."

"Well, was she good? You've chased it long enough."

"...Yeah, it was."

Ruka couldn't understand why Natsume was being so reserved. Normally he loved to go into obscene and detailed boasts about who he'd slept with (and how), and he'd thought Mikan would be the absolute pinnacle of all of that. But for some reason he didn't seem to be willing to chat.

"That it? You… usually seem a bit more…"

"Look," Natsume said frankly. "It was nice. I don't really want to talk about it right now; it was… private." He could barely believe the words coming out of his mouth, but as soon as he thought about trying to tell Ruka, he lost his words. How could he explain it? He wasn't ready to think about how he'd felt, how good it was more than physically, how he'd enjoyed lying with her afterwards, and that sweet kiss on the cheek that'd given him goosebumps; he'd just fucked her and she gave him goosebumps with a peck on the cheek.

Not to mention that, instead of scrounging for food like he'd planned, she dragged him and Aoi into the kitchen and made lunch instead; ordering them about like she was a head chef or something, which made them both laugh (when she wasn't throwing spoons at them), and felt wonderfully comfortable and domestic.

And how afterwards everything just continued, there was no wash-back of feelings now the surf had broken he'd been so accustomed to. It was business as usual, except there was none of the 'will-we-won't-we' of before. Which made it even better, if anything.

"Oh," said Ruka, surprised. "That's fair enough then." Natsume was sure he'd tell Ruka in good time, but just not now, he reasoned. He couldn't put it into words yet.

Mikan stood outside the school impatiently, picking off her nail varnish in boredom – where was he?

She knew when she felt a presence near her, and not a second after a pair arms wrapped tightly around her from behind.

"Hey," he said, mostly into her hair, but she heard him well enough.

"Hey!" she chirped brightly. "You're hugging me! You actually came up and hugged me!" She sounded so surprised he was almost offended.

"Can't I do that?" he questioned as he let go, standing up straight and stepping up to her side.

"Yeah, you just don't normally," she explained. "You're always going in for a snog, but you barely ever 'just hug'."

"I like kissing better than hugs," he replied, trying to go in to prove his point, but she stopped him with a hand over his lips.

"Hugs are special, really special," she argued. "Hugs do something nothing else does... hugs are universal, hugs..."

"I get it, I get it," he taunted, hugging her from the side and draping his arms over her shoulder. "You like hugs. You know what else is really special?" he suggested suavely, whispering softly in her ear.

"What?" she asked a little dryly – she did know the answer already.

He darted his head close to her, held it for a second, and then stuck his tongue in her ear.

"Ahhh!" she screamed, pushing him away. "What the fuck! That was weird! What did you even do that for?!" He laughed, in fact, he cackled, and flicked her in the middle of the forehead.

"It was funny," he said, as if that excused everything, and she scowled. "Anyway, I was just telling you about..."

"Sex," she finished the sentence for him. "This may come as a shock to you, but I know about sex already."

"Are you sure?" he teased, stepping closer and slipping her hand into his. "Maybe I need to give you a quick test."

"What kind of kink is that?" she scoffed, winking at him mischievously.

"Well, you do like teachers," he retorted, and she gave him a very narrow look. "Just saying," he pleaded, holding his hands out defensively. "I'm not into any kinky shit anyway," he added on the side.

"Oh really?" Mikan said brightly, starting to walk away from the school. "Well I guess you'll have to learn then..."

He registered what she'd said about ten steps after she said it, and suddenly bounded after her.

"Wait... what?!"

I ended on a joke for novelty value. Is Mikan into kink?

Wouldn't you like to know ;P

Natsume is also a gross boy who sticks his tongue in girls' ears. Because we all know that all boys do this.

Leave a review :D