Hey you guys, sorry for the wait, but school started up again and so I'm like "AUGUHUEUDUH!?" 80 percent of the time. Heh. But no worries, I will try my best to keep quick updates on this.

Many many thanks to my beta-chan paradorx who is now a licensed driver! So hide yo kids hide yo wife-I'm just kidding. Probably.

Raleigh woke up with his alarm going at 6 AM, feeling calm and rested after a night of dreamless sleep. As he sat up, shoving off piles of blankets, the air was sharp and cold, and he took in a great breath and savored the feeling of the early morning coiling into his lungs. California was usually warmer than their native Anchorage, and Raleigh coveted all the moments of cold he could; Yancy hid under piles of blankets and space heaters, keeping his half of the duplex as warm as the Sahara. Raleigh didn't care for it, and kept his side "like an icebox," as Yancy liked to gripe come winter.

He sprang into action after his moment of enjoying the cold, jumping out of bed and walking briskly into his kitchen, turning on lights as he went. The sun would normally be rising in the distance at this time, but it was gray and overcast outside, the clouds hanging low and heavy in a way that promised rain in the afternoon. The first rainfall of the year. Raleigh intended to work as much from the momentary lull as he could.

He scarfed down a banana and granola bar, shoving jeans and sweater and some graded grammar worksheets into his bag haphazardly, not caring what was crushed or rumpled in his quest to get out the door as quickly as possible. He laid his full bag at the door that partitioned his and Yancy's sides of the duplex, so that when he finally woke up and attempted to get to the garage it would block his path. Raleigh had the image of Yancy tripping over the bag and snickered quietly to himself as he left the house via the front door.

It was chilly and damp outside, the streetlamps still shining to keep back the gloom. Raleigh began his run down the sidewalk, falling to the ease of movement. Running was mindless. Silent. The world around him wasn't yet awake. Grades and upcoming tests didn't bother him, the crushing wait of upcoming standardized testing wasn't at his back; the Payload Award was a distant memory.

For several minutes Raleigh let his mind drift silently as he ran, the only sound his own breathing and the light touches of his shoes on the cement. The cold was bracing, but the warmth radiating from his bare skin kept it away. Silence and cold.

Then, there was another set of lungs, another pair of feet, moving and breathing beside him. Raleigh looked to his left and his breath caught.

"Mako?" he gasped.

She didn't respond, not even acknowledging him, but it was Mako, running alongside him with her blue-streaked hair blowing back from her face, set intently on the sidewalk ahead of them. Raleigh slowed down to talk to her, questions gathering in his mouth, but just as he was letting up she looked at him from the corner of her eye and sped ahead at a full sprint.

"Mako?!" Raleigh called out, and gave chase.

For a block he was on her heels, but then she slowed down to a normal running speed and Raleigh was at her side. "Mako, what's going on?" he panted slightly, a bright warmth in his limbs. She looked at him, this time fully turning her head. She smiled, a bright flash of white teeth, almost challengingly, and then set her face in a look of intention, once again booking it at full speed.

Raleigh thought that he was catching on. "All right," he called out, and pushed himself to run faster. They took the corner at a dangerous tilt and purposefully went through side streets to avoid traffic lights. After three blocks Raleigh was at Mako's side again, hearing her ragged but focused breath. He barely glanced at her as he kept her speed for a moment, slowly easing up back into a casual speed. She kept up with him, a dance of stretched legs and pumping arms, inhaling and exhaling evenly to try and regulate her heartbeat.

He glanced at her; she was looking at him. He smiled, full and bright and slow.

Then, he broke into a sprint, savoring the surprised oofof air she released as he began to lead her through the streets at a breakneck pace.

He almost laughed as he skidded around a corner. He was dripping with sweat despite the cool morning air, which had begun to mist softly, and he could already feel the soreness in his legs. His heart was pounding hard against his ribcage, fit to break bone, but he was only half sure that it was because of the running. Mako was close behind him, a dark blur, all speed, with her drive clear in her eyes and her mouth screwed up with concentration. It was no longer a dance; it was a fight, lithe and athletic. There was a magnetic pull between them as they wove through streets just beginning to stir in the morning.

Raleigh recognized the area they were headed through; he and Yancy had rented an apartment nearby when Yancy was just starting out as the school nurse and Raleigh was still suffering through being a teacher's aide. He began to snake his way through the streets by memory before he reached a waist-high wooden gate that opened into a dirt path.

Mako didn't even pause as she followed him over it, into an encapsulated area of woodland and trails.

The trail was uneven and went up and down between rugged hills and groves of oak trees and sagebrush. Raleigh saw Mako out of the corner of his eye, taking a higher path than him; legs eating up ground, arms moving through the air, skin glowing with warmth and sweat. She was a sight. Their trails merged at the same thunderous moment.

They were neck and neck—but neither of them tried to get ahead. The trail was so narrow that they drew their arms in to avoid banging elbows, but neither of them wanted to fall back. Their feet struck the ground at the same moment, and Raleigh focused on the sound of his breathing, impossibly loud in his mind, for several long moments before realizing that the reason it was so loud was because Mako was breathing at the same time as him; their heartbeats were in sync as they came to the end of the trail and ran side-by-side onto school grounds. The song of the air in their lungs thrummed together for a moment longer and then broke like glass, separating the two heartbeats and leaving Raleigh feeling sharply singular.

At the quad they slowed to a jog and then a walk. Raleigh was panting, his breath fogging, and he could smell the strong scent of sweat around him. Mako's hair was plastered to the back of her neck and her face was flushed as she held her hands over her head and took deep, even breaths.

They stood there in the quad for a few long moments.

"… Hi," Raleigh said, breathing raw. He braced his hands on his knees and looked up at Mako with a small smile, which she returned.

"Hi," she echoed.

"I didn't know you… run," Raleigh said stupidly, trying to think of something else to say.

She simply shrugged.

He swallowed heavily, his heart still too loud and too quick in his chest. "I… okay. See you at lunch?" his voice was uneven.

Mako nodded quickly. "Lunch," she echoed once again, and for a moment Raleigh thought she looked like she realized it. "My room?" she asked.

"Yeah. Yeah sure."

She nodded again, and once again a look flitted across her face, a small bit of shock and embarrassment as she realized that she was repeating herself. She turned on her heel and walked away with long, sure strides, towards her classroom. He watched her leave, beginning to feel the cold eating at him.

Chuck strolled by on his way out from football practice, his clipboard and playbook under one arm and Max on a leash. He looked Raleigh up and down, one eyebrow raised. Raleigh jerked his chin at him silently, a challenge to ask a question. Chuck rolled his eyes and whistled for Max to walk faster with him into the shop class, the posse of early morning detention girls conspicuously missing.

With that, Raleigh headed to the showers.

By the time he emerged, it was pouring rain in sheets. He dashed through open hallways, getting hustled through the crowds of students hiding out from the weather like they had no idea that it would end up raining on an overcast day in September. He ended up on Mako's side of the Languages Building and strolled down to her classroom, poking his head inside.

She stood at the blackboard, adding to the homework list as a few students came inside and began to settle themselves in their desks. Raleigh was stuck, half in and half out of the door as he took in how she had changed into different clothes, and her hair was slightly damp—evenly, not top-wet with rain, but as if she had taken a show before getting back to her room. The thought of Mako showering, separated from him in the boy's locker room by only a tiled wall, stuck with him for longer than it should have.

As she wrote her eyes flickered from side to side, and she spotted him in her periphery. Instantly her face was transformed, warm and bright and Raleigh had a moment of thinking oh.

"Mr. Becket," she said, and it felt like a slap to the face before he realized that while he stood in the doorway several students had slipped under his arm and her room was nearly full of kids.

"Ms. Mori," he returned formally. He glanced over his shoulder at the downpour. "We just managed to make it in before the rain," he said.

She nodded in agreement, looking past him as well to the rain, considering it. As a newcomer to the area she probably didn't consider how hard the downpour would be when she started out running that morning. She bit her bottom lip. "I should text around about getting a ride home…" she said, and began to pat her pockets for her phone.

"I could give you a ride." He spoke before he could think.

Mako looked up at him. "Really?" she asked, her voice slightly higher than normal.

No. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, no problem."

She smiled. The bell rang. "Great," she said.

"Great," he repeated, and then ducked out into the rain before he could dig himself into a bigger hole, letting his class into the room just in time for the morning announcements.

"I have a plan," Raleigh said, slamming his hand down onto Yancy's desk.

Yancy blinked up at him slowly, and then made a show of squinting out of the window. "Is that a flying pig?" he asked.

"Yancy, I'm serious."

"Aren't you supposed to have a class right now?" Yancy pressed, looking at the watch on his wrist and comparing it to the one on the wall.

"Aren't you supposed to be treating injured kids right now?" Raleigh snapped in response, pulling up a chair.

"You scare them off," Yancy replied with a wave of his hand. "What's your plan?"

"I need the car."

"Nope, sorry, baby brother, but I need the car." Yancy leaned back, smug. Raleigh almost threw himself across the desk.

"Yancy—"

"It's my academic seminar for the administration board, and, last time I checked, it was my car. Sorry. What, do you have a hot date? What happened to snagging a ride home from Tendo or somebody?"

Raleigh ignored the first question. "I just need the car, okay?"

Yancy leaned back precariously in his chair. "Do you even knowhow to drive?" he wondered aloud. "I've been your chauffeur for, like, decades."

Raleigh pressed his lips together, not taking the bait. "I need the car. I just… have a promise I need to follow through. Help me out?"

"Sorry kid, those puppy-dog eyes don't work on me anymore. I've hardened my heart."

With a strangled cry of frustration Raleigh got out of the chair, knocking it over. He stormed into the main office, with Tendo taking one look at him and deciding that there was something underneath his desk that needed his immediate attention.

Raleigh stopped, trying to gather himself. He actually did have a class then, but since his nutrition break had been taken up talking to Mako about the upcoming standardized testing—which they had both been roped into overseeing—he hadn't been able to get away. He gave them an essay prompt as soon as he could and made the break to the nurse's offices. At the thought of Yancy's response to his plead, Raleigh began to grind his teeth. Then, he stopped, something Yancy had said sticking in his mind.

Puppy-dog eyes.

Max noticed him first, lifting his head from where he laid down beside Chuck's desk and wagging his tail. Chuck looked up and noticed Raleigh standing in the doorway, bouncing his weight around nervously.

"The hell is it, Rahleigh?" Chuck demanded from the front of the class, the students all gathered at various workstations, metal screaming away. Raleigh waved him over to the doorway silently and with an eye roll Chuck walked to the door. Raleigh put one hand on his shoulder and drew him in close to keep nearby students from hearing him.

"I need to borrow your car," he said in a low voice.

"Why the hell would I give you my car?" Chuck demanded, eyes narrowed. He shrugged out from under Raleigh's arm and was about to snap something else when Raleigh spoke up.

"Because there isn't a Star Fleet regulation against it," he said simply. Chuck froze. "Or is there, Captain Kirk?"

Chuck's mouth was opening and closing like a fish. "What do you…?" he asked, eyes shifting around nervously.

"Invest in lockable desk drawers," Raleigh answered bluntly.

There was a flash across Chuck's face as he remembered his Star Trek: The Original Series DVD box set currently secreted away in the bottom drawer of his desk for lazy afternoons without anyone breathing down his neck. His face turned bright red.

"You bastard—"

"Keys." Raleigh held out his hand. Chuck eyed it suspiciously.

"What are you going to do with it?" he asked carefully.

Raleigh rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to wreck it. I'm just going to drive home."

"You double with your brother," Chuck pointed out, crossing his arms. "What's this really about?"

A crackle of electricity passed between them as Raleigh refused to answer and Chuck refused to budge. Then, with a sigh, Chuck shoved his way back to his desk, opened the top drawer, and threw his keys at Raleigh, aiming to seriously injure. They bounced sharply off of his chest and he stooped to pick them up from the shop floor.

"Thanks," Raleigh said, pocketing the keys, voice dripping with sarcasm. He made the Vulcan salute as he left, leaving Chuck red-faced and sputtering while his class looked on in confusion.

"Well, here we are," Raleigh said superfluously as he rolled to a stop in front of Mako's modest condo.

"Thank you," she said, dipping her head a bit, "for giving me a ride home."

"No problem." His voice was soft and low, and he cleared his throat to try and get it back to normal levels. "Um, anytime." Rain washed the front windshield of Chuck's truck, and pattered with a tinny sound against the roof. The inside was warm from the heater and seemed a world away from everything else. He could smell Mako's perfume, tried not to let it make his head swim.

Mako placed her hand on the door handle, and paused. "It was good," she said, "running with you this morning." She made a small motion with her head and her hair shielded how red her cheeks were. Raleigh looked resolutely at the steering wheel, tightening his hands on it.

"Yeah," he agreed shortly. "When the rain lets up, we should…" he self-consciously left the thought unfinished.

"We should," she said softly, taking his thoughts and keeping them, answering and showing how she understood. It was a frightfully heightened moment, and then she said quickly, "Goodbye," getting out of the car before he could respond, hurrying to her door and letting herself in.

With a dry mouth and nervous hands Raleigh drove the truck around the corner and parked, resting his head against the steering wheel and breathing in long and deep, feeling horribly singular as there was no other heartbeat besides his own. It was back, that mental insistent oh.

Oh.

"Dammit," he said quietly.

He drove the truck back home, parking it on the curb. Tomorrow he would drive it to school in the hard mist, more of a drizzle, and give the keys back to a prickly Chuck. Tomorrow he would smile at Mako from across the hallway, his door open despite the cold that his students complained of, so that he could catch a glimpse of her in the window occasionally, laughing at something and smiling at her students, playing bubblegum pop music in Japanese.

Oh.

Chuck's secret inner Trekkie is a callback from the last chapter (finding the DVDs in his desk during early morning detention), which is a reference to his actor Rob Kazinsky's admitted love for Star Trek. Like, he has a Kirk costume. Seriously.

Review, please?