When you're stoned, baby, and I am drunk

And we make love, it seems a little desolate

It's hard sometimes not to look away

And think what's the point when I'm having to hold this fire down

I think I'll explode if I can't feel this freely now

If you won't let me fall for you

Then you won't see the best that I would love to do for you

Instead you will be missing me when I go

Cos' I'm bored of hangin' out in your cold

Dido - Stoned

"I can't believe she hasn't told us."

A pause, then, "Of course she's going to tell us."

"If she ever wakes up out of that daze," a third replied.

Mika could hear her friends, she could feel herself chewing on her lunch, but she couldn't manage to stop spacing out long enough to talk to them.

Ami, having had quite enough, decided to pull her friend out of her thoughts with a sharp tug to her hair. "Earth to Mika!"

"What?" It sounded lame, even to her. How was she supposed to tell them that nothing happened with something happened?

"Why are you holding out on us?" Minako snapped, her pretty brown eyes set in a glare.

"I'm not holding out on you." She paused to look at each of them. "You all seem pretty informed."

"So it is true?" Yuka asked.

"Well, I guess that's where you'd need me." Mika replied.

"Aren't you going to tell us?!" The three replied in stereo.

"Maybe." She paused to decide exactly what she could say to them without turning this into some sort of blaze of gossip. "Start with a "yes" or "no" question."

"Hmm, okay. Easy one: was Bakura the one who saved you from your tormentors this weekend?" Minako asked, her face showing that she clearly already knew the answer.

"Yes."

"That's it? Just yes?" Ami huffed.

"I feel like something major happened. You always do this when something major happens, Mika." Yuka said, her eyes gleaming.

"Define major." Mika mumbled, her eyes shifting to her wristwatch. Lunch had never been this long in the entire history of high school.

"Major. Like, huge. Like, he asked you to be his girlfriend!" Minako exclaimed (ever the romantic).

"Nope. He didn't ask me that."

"What?!" They shrieked in stereo.

"Well, you wanted answers. No, he didn't ask me to be his girlfriend."

"Then it has to be something bad that happened, right?" Yuka pushed on.

"I did hear from Reiko that Ryou's mother had died. Who even knew that their mother was still around, though?"

Mika shot a sharp look at Ami as the girl finished her sentence. "Their mother did pass away. I guess that is relevant to this conversation, but you don't have to be so callus."

"You slept with him." It wasn't a question that Minako whispered (somehow louder than all the shrieking a few moments ago), it was a fact. Despite her timid voice, she had said it with a certain degree of conviction so that there was no point for Mika to deny it.

All of her friends stopped eating, their faces still as they watched how Mika mechanically swallowed her food. The color that rose in her cheeks was more muted than they had expected it to be, but it led them to believe that they were on the right path.

"Yes. We - we slept together." Mika said her voice quiet but lined with a hint of longing.

"That's still not the big news," Yuka said, ever astute.

"Of course it's the big news." Mika sighed, her eyes shifting around the crowded cafeteria room. Her eyes landed on Ryou and Reiko. They were sitting together a few tables away. They were pressed so close to one another one might have suspected they had had their uniforms sewed together. Her head was leaning on his shoulder. They looked so comfortable and she longed for that. Bakura wasn't that type.

"What are you looking at?" Ami asked, her eyes trying to follow the path of Mika's gaze. "Ryou and Reiko?"

Mika blinked at her friends and they could see the sadness that darkened her blue eyes.

"The big news isn't that you slept with him." Yuka paused and then spoke up, "It's that you are in love with him and you don't think he feels the same."

"Where have you been all morning?"

Bakura looked at Marik from the corner of his eye as he continued to chug orange juice out of the carton. He made a slight attempt at a shrug and set the juice down back in the refrigerator. "I went for a run."

Marik scoffed and pushed Bakura out of the way as he made his way to the fridge. "Right, in the same pants that you were wearing last night after you skipped dinner with the guys to 'study.'"

"No point in dirtying another pair." It was a half-assed lie, especially for Bakura.

"Uh-huh." Marik poured some milk into a bowl before reaching for the cereal. "I wonder what Mika would think of her valiant savior running around on her."

"I knew I shouldn't have said anything to you. You're such a gossip."

"Look, I'm not saying that you should be monogamous all of a sudden." He paused to slurp and crunch through a large bite of breakfast, "I'm just saying that you've been leading Mika on for years. This is probably a big deal for her."

"Well I didn't tell her to get emotionally involved," Bakura barked back. He had been very irritable these past couple of weeks.

Marik had noticed something was up right away, but had decided to give Bakura the benefit of the doubt. Like he had been saying, Bakura had been leading Mika on for years and he always figured that he wouldn't be so flippant about it when it finally happened.

"I think you forget that Mika is still a girl, you know, despite some of her finer qualities. A girl that was a virgin, a girl that has been one of your closest friends for quite some time, a girl that is probably in lo-"

Bakura slammed the bathroom door so hard that they whole wall shook. The door bounced on its hinges for a moment before settling. Marik heard the shower turn on and sighed. Since when did he have to be the logical one? He set his cereal bowl into the sink and pulled a joint out of the fake Pringles can on top of the fridge.

He lit up and inhaled deeply. This wasn't his shit to deal with, and now that he'd been tossed into the middle of it, he was going to deal with it the best way he knew how. The smoke streamed out of his rounded lips and he grinned as the last of it passed into the air in front of him. Another inhale and he'd be set until lunch.

Mika stared at her hands, her fingers white as she gripped the rail on the side of her seat on the bus. It was Domino High's annual overnight field trip to the local college (to their college). She finally acknowledged that her fingers hurt and she leaned back into her seat as she rubbed them.

"So you told them we're coming, right Mika?" Ami was grinning her face off, excited that they were going to be spending a night in the girls' dorms. Well, their parents thought that they were going to be spending the night in the girls' dorms.

"I texted them, but they haven't gotten back to me yet. They must have class right now or something."

Her friends took her answer at face value and went back to chattering about the crazy party that they might be attending that night. Mika pulled her phone out of her sweater pocket and scrolled through her contacts. Maybe she should tell them that they were going. Or remind them that it was today. She had mentioned it to Marik when they had spoken a few days earlier.

She hadn't really done more than text Bakura every once in a while to check in or send him some funny link or interesting article he might enjoy. She tapped on his name and contemplated what to say. Somehow, "Hey I forgot to mention that my friends and I are coming for the annual sleepover. They think that you're going to get us into a party. Funny, huh?" didn't seem right. Especially since they hadn't really been together since they had been together.

"You don't seem into this, Mika. What's up?" Minako asked her eyes wide and sincere.

"Ah, yeah, you got me." Mika squirmed, tucking her phone back into her pocket. "I just don't know if there's anything fun going on tonight. I don't want to let you guys down."

"I'm sure that Marik and Bakura will have something up their sleeve!" Yuka piped up. She pulled out her makeup bag and looked at herself in her compact. "Is Marik seeing anyone?"

"What about Chiharu?!" Ami squealed, her eyes bugging out.

Mika tuned them out as she went back to her phone. She was about to type up the message that she had been putting off when her phone started vibrating with a phone call. She only had to glance at the blurry picture of one brown eye to know that it was Bakura.

"Hello?"

"So, are you coming on that school trip today?"

"Uh, yeah, how did you know?"

"Marik just remembered about it right now."

"Oh."

"So, I guess I'll see you soon?"

"Well, we have a tour of the school first."

"Yeah, I'm actually one of the tour guides. Some half-assed promise I made to some –"

"You're going to be a tour guide?" Her voice was dropping steadily at what he had been about to say.

"You're okay with that, right?"

"Why wouldn't I be? I haven't seen you in forever."

"I've been busy with – class and stuff."

"I'm sure."

There was silence on his end and she could feel the awkwardness growing. She glanced out the window and noticed that they were at the halfway point.

"We're about an hour out."

"Oh, well, I guess I'll be seeing you soon."

He hung up before she could say anything more and she sunk back into the uncomfortable bus seat. Hopefully there wasn't anything to worry about. Maybe she was reading into it too much. She wadded up her sweatshirt and used it as a pillow, her eyes shutting almost automatically. With any luck everything would look better after a nap.

Back from the dead? So it would seem! I'm actually avoiding a piece for my creative writing class. Whoops. I hope that you enjoyed it. It's kinda filler, but I needed this chapter to set some things into motion. I'm pretty sure where this is going now, so let's see how quickly I can knock it out.

Thank you all for waiting for this, I hope that it was worth it.

Xx,

Red