Sorry about the delay, I'm still here I swear. This is finished after the loud 'n proud Jigokuai yelled me something terrible (in a good way) to update ;)

Big emotional chapter is big and emotional.

He stood at the doorway, half dream, half reality. The smell of smoke was strong around him, like the cologne he used to wear, but more sinister – this scent was deadly, this scent threatened. He'd actually started wearing strong aftershaves to cover up this very smell, but now it was raw and unclouded; he had no such preprations.

His head was hung, but there was no mistaking who it was – in spite of the couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't be here – that was her earring on his ear, and his body before her.

She was crying before she even knew what to do.

"What are you doing h–?" she gasped.

"I love you," he rasped; his voice hoarse, and gravelled by the fumes he'd been breathing in for too long. She couldn't believe her ears, let alone her eyes. This had to be a dream.

"You can't be..."

"I love you," he said it again, and looked up at her. It was Natsume, no mistake about that. "Don't do this to me," he pleaded suddenly. "I can't stand it."

In the space it took Mikan to release a breath he was against her; pushing her against the wall and pressing himself into the curve of her neck. She felt his breath against her skin, warm, and his body against her chest.

"Why are you here?" she whispered fearfully, and in the next movement found herself eye to eye with him.

"Are you listening to me?" he said angrily. "I love you. Dammit, I've said it three times already!" Then he kissed her, and Mikan felt her own tears palming off on his face. When his hands curled around her waist, hugging her, she finally broke down, letting a jag of cries escape her chest.

"Why are you crying?" he murmured in confusion. "Stop, Mikan. Mikan, I'm here. I love you." Again he kissed her, and she sensed her legs going weak underneath her. They ended up in a heap on the floor – the front door still wide open and the cold air chilling them both.

He couldn't understand; she was kissing him back, but she was also crying, and he'd said he loved her more times in a minute than he ever thought he'd say in his life, and she wouldn't even stand up straight. He thought it was going to be hard to say; everything he knew about himself and her made him think it would be so hard to actually confess his feelings, but the words were firecrackers on his tongue – eager to leap into the air without a second thought.

He lost count of how many times he said it, as he ran his fingers through her hair and kissed the tears from her face. It was a murmur that replaced his voice, words that formed without effort.

"Stop it, god, stop it," he pleaded as she continued to cry, and he hugged her to him with a frustrated groan.

"This can't be real," he finally heard her whisper. "This can't be happening."

"It is," he said. "I'm here, I got your address and followed you, across the whole country." He tucked his hands around her thin frame and inhaled her – he needed this.

"Where?" she said. "Where did you get it?"

"Imai-san," he answered. "She... look, it's a long story." He was feeling something now, and although directly attached to love in this case, it was not simply that. He was as horny as hell. He pressed himself against her and put his lips next to her ear. "Can't we do it now?" He felt her shudder against him, and he knew she wanted it too.

"Please," he said, kissing whatever was close to him. He wanted not just to be inside her, in the literal sense of the word, but to just crawl into her. He wanted to to throw himself so deeply into her that he wouldn't have to worry about being parted from her, of even worry about having to be himself ever again: he wanted to breathe her.

"Mikan?" someone said, and although Mikan tried to turn her face to look in the direction of the sound, Natsume wouldn't let her – engaging her face in other activities. "Ooooh," the person – a woman – said knowingly. Eventually a break was permitted where Natsume and Mikan could look towards their voyeur. A woman who looked rather like the girl Natsume was tangled with right now, and one he'd seen in photographs before.

Yuka Sakura-Kinemoto; Mikan's mother.

"So, you must be the boy stealing my daughter from me," Yuka said coolly, and for once Natsume's libido also cooled off.

It was a mess, it was all in a horrible mess. Natsume had an awful feeling that he was bleeding his heart everywhere, and in addition Mikan had not said it back to him once. He didn't know what he would do if she didn't love him back; he couldn't take rejection now - he simply wouldn't make it home.

"Mom," Mikan said quietly, trying to pull herself away, but Natsume held her firmly in place next to him.

"Don't think about it," he threatened, and then turned to meet Yuka's gaze. "Hyuga Natsume," he introduced himself. "I could say the same to you."

"What?" Yuka's brow furrowed; she did not follow him.

"You've stolen my girlfriend from me," he explained, squeezing Mikan so that she squeaked, and then leaning forwards to rest his face against her cheek.

"Parents are more important than boyfriends!" Mikan argued: half trying to get away, and half trying to wrap her legs around his waist.

"I couldn't carry on without telling you," Natsume said in frustration. He could've said the l-word again, as he seemed to be having a real blast with it recently, but with someone else watching, he suddenly felt a little more embarrassed. With Mikan intimacy was granted, but her mom was another story. "And you're more important to me than my parents." Mikan groaned, another tear escaping one of her eyes, and she fisted her hands in the back of his top. To hell if it stunk of god-knows-what and smoke and his Alice, she was breaking to pieces.

She couldn't hold out much longer, and in the end, she didn't. It was getting late, and the joint efforts of Natsume and her mother delayed any discussion of serious matters until the next morning. Obviously Natsume wasn't going anywhere now, and her mother - having been that age herself - was understanding enough to let it go unsaid that Natsume would be bunking with Mikan.

When there was nothing else that could be said or done, they simply went to bed. Or, more accurately, Natsume dragged her to bed as she provided directions.

She didn't stop crying though, or, more like she started again as she saw what had happened to him in her absence. As she pulled off his top between kisses, pressing her chilled skin against his, she felt the cuts, the scabs, the bandages. She held his forearm in her hands, and stared at him.

"Who did this?" she whispered in the quiet dark of her room.

"I did," he said stonily. She knew what he meant; she understood what he'd done to himself. His Alice had to be that dangerous, didn't it?

"Who bandaged it, I mean," she said.

"Imai," he answered, and Mikan nearly yelped with surprise.

"What?" she hissed. "How on earth did..."

"Can we talk about this later?" he pleaded, running his hands up from her stomach to her shoulders and around to her back - he had been the one lying on the bottom at this time, and it felt so delightfully right. "I really need..." He groaned, and there was no need for an end to that sentence. She could feel it anyway.

They hadn't actually managed to have sex many times since she went on the pill before this whole thing blew up, and it was still a welcome pleasure to do it without the obstruction of a condom. It couldn't feel any better. This was all Natsume needed for the moment; long enough to forget about this doomed future ahead of them, long enough to lose himself for a while.

He knew she was still crying - she cried when he entered her; it had been a while, and he felt the contraction that had taken place. If it did anything, it made it even better for him. But she cried out - it probably had hurt a little - and he closed his lips over hers to stop the sound reaching his ears. He couldn't stand it; he didn't want her to cry; it made him know something bad was coming.

He would be a liar to say he wasn't aware that Mikan's behaviour so far suggested that firstly she didn't love him (she hadn't said it back to him, had she?), and secondly that she wasn't going to reconsider her decision - this felt like a goodbye. He didn't want to be aware of this, but in the back of his head he was, so there was nothing he could do about it except make love to her and hope.

Natsume was rarely ever wrong about things, but there was one thing he had not expected; as he and Mikan neared the peak of their love-making, he had almost completely shut out any outside sound, when he heard her speaking - saying words, at least.

"Oh god," she gasped as her fingernails drew cresents across his shoulderblades; carving skeletal wings on his already-marred skin. "Natsume..."

He still loved it when she said his name, especially when it was in these circumstances.

"I love you," someone said, but it wasn't until he realized it wasn't him that Natsume took note. Yes, it was her. As she lost control of everything, she couldn't stop her lips betraying her mind's resolution over her heart.

Don't tell him. She'd told herself.

It will only make things harder.

By now they were almost perfectly in sync; a rise from her was a retreat from him, and surges from him crashed into her territory, broke, and then washed back out. Best of all, again and again she made her confession, broken half-breaths and short gasps. I love you, I love you, Natsume, I love you so much.

She was crying again now, proper tears; streaming down her face as she sobbed her own love to him. He finally understood. Love hurt, and the more they admitted they loved each other the more they were going to harm each other to part. Ignorance and denial were bliss, but the kind of sham happiness that burnt out like a breath of flames from a bottle-neck.

"Don't do this," he groaned after he finally came, and they slowed to a stop - still together - and fell against each other like waterlogged towels; a flat, sodden pressure; borne out of pure exhaustion. "It can work, don't cry. It's not over," he whispered, his fingers wiping her salty cheeks.

"How is it not over?" she said sadly. "There's no way we... I mean, it's not going to... even if you came all the way here then..." He stopped her mouth with a kiss.

"Stop this," he said. "You said it, didn't you? You said you loved me." Mikan fidgeted.

"I was..." she said awkwardly.

"You said it," he insisted. "I love you; you love me, right?"

Mikan had never foreseen this situation in a million million years, but, wild as it was, it was true. So she nodded.

"Then shut up and don't ruin it," he said harshly. "We can worry tomorrow." He kissed her again, and with a little more cajoling she was persuaded to let go of it. Leave the night untouched, he argued; the morning was for their problems. They both needed it.

Even so, they didn't sleep well: despite being together. All night one or the other woke up for no determinable reason, and whenever one of them did, they immediately became desperate to consolidate their doomed love, and they ended up having sex all over again; the last time being when the new light of dawn was glowing behind her curtains.

Mikan fell asleep again, but Natsume did not, and when the time dragged on to a more reasonable hour of the day she awoke to find he was no longer in bed with her. She missed his presence beside her already, and she hated it because she knew it wasn't allowed to last.

She didn't know where he was, but a sudden horrible thought possessed her, and she wondered if he'd just turned up, said he'd loved her to get her to crack and confess her own feelings – and have sex with him – and then take off again. She didn't want to believe it, or even think it was likely, but in her current state of mind it was a possibility.

She hurried out of bed, dragged on whatever clothes she could find and raced downstairs, about to burst into her kitchen and ask her mom when and where he'd gone, when she noticed the boy himself sitting at her table with a mug in his hand. He was wearing, it would seem, a t-shirt of Haruki's. In the light, and with short sleeves, she could see the cuts and burns dotting his skin all the more clearly.

"Hey," he said; his voice still hoarse and barely above a croak: smoke inhalation.

"Um, good morning," she replied awkwardly. Why had she been so stupid as to think he was going to leave?

"I couldn't get back to sleep, so I came downstairs. Haruki was up already," he explained, and Mikan remembered that Haruki's work started very early – he would've been up when Natsume came downstairs, but would have left by now. He must have given him the shirt.

"That's fine," she said, for lack of anything else to say. Then her mom came into the room.

"Oh, Mikan, you're awake at last," she said cheerfully, and a shared glance between her and Natsume led Mikan to believe they had been talking before she came downstairs too. Natsume drank from his mug and stared out of the window.

"So are you going to ask?" he said quietly, and Mikan looked back at him.

"Ask what?"

"Everything."

"Yes, that works," she said, sitting down opposite him and watching her mother out of the corner of her eye; she was bustling about in the kitchen, but quite obviously with the intention of listening in on them.

So he did tell her everything; from hitting his Alice hard after she left, which was where many of those burns she now saw on him were from, to yesterday night, after she called him. He explained how he managed to get a contact for Hotaru, and managed to get her to open the door to him in the middle of the night, which was probably more impressive than getting the number.

Mikan could barely believe the story; especially when he mentioned that it was Hotaru who bound most of his bleeding wounds – actually touching him in the process – and loaned him money to get the train.

"She's never been like that," Mikan gasped. "I just can't believe it was my Hotaru who did this."

"She did it for you," he said.

"Eh?"

"She did it for you," he said clearly. "She... cares about you a lot, and she doesn't want you to be apart from her as much as I do. Well, nearly as much." Mikan found it hard to ignore his leg pressed against hers under the table at this point. He coughed suddenly, and she heard the dry sounds escaping his throat as hacked it raw. Too much smoke and solvents.

She was struck with the realisation that he had quite literally been destroying himself – she'd been away barely two weeks and he was cut, bruised, burnt and broken. She didn't want to do this to him.

"What..." she said sadly, and he picked up the tone change at once, "what do we do, Natsume?" She could hear the tremble in her own voice, and pleaded with herself not to cry anymore. No more tears, please.

"I don't know," he said hoarsely. "But I know that... I can't call it like this." He looked straight at her, and she felt the heat of his body against hers through their legs under the table. "I don't care what's supposed to happen, or how we're 'supposed' to get over this because it's the first time or whatever: I'm not. I love you, and I'm not letting you go."

Mikan stared down at the table and breathed slowly; hearing him say the words made her want to have hope, but the voice in her head spoke of being rational and not throwing it all away for a guy like her mother had, so she quietly said, "But how, Natsume?"

They were still – in spite of confessions, romantic gestures and an unhealthy amount of sex – back at square one.

"Darling," Yuka said brightly as she walked by the table and set a cup of green tea down next to her daughter. "I've been chatting to Natsume-kun, about life the universe and everything and so on, but I wondered, have you actually thought about...?"

Haha, cliffhanger ;P

Review please, even if the counter looks high, I hang on every single review I get :D You hold my happiness and the speed of the next update in your keyboards.