Yes hello again. It's almost midnight, excuse my inability to ramble.

Blah blah beta-chan paradorx. It was her birthday yesterday, sing to her.

Raleigh looked out of the car window and watched the light drizzle drifting past, occasionally sticking to the glass and collecting droplets, rolling softly across the window. Yancy, sitting in the driver's seat, made a noise under his breath.

"What?" Raleigh asked.

"Nothing," Yancy muttered. His hands were tight on the steering wheel. Raleigh shifted his weight so that he was leaning over the center console, staring directly at his brother. Yancy's eyes flickered, looking at Raleigh's face in his periphery, before locking back onto the road.

"Stop it," he said after a tense minute.

"Stop what?" Raleigh asked, squinting to better dissect his brother's facial expression as he answered.

"That… mind reading thing you do. Stop."

"You're the one who always got a kick out of how 'we should have been twins'," Raleigh pointed out easily. "Now sit still and let me get into your head."

"The only reason you need to get in my head is because I'm in your head," Yancy replied. "And what I see is freaking me out. You're like an overgrown puppy or something that just got a new toy. And I can't figure out why."

Raleigh looked out of the window again, heart beating away like he was afraid at being caught at something indecent. He could feel Yancy's eyes on him as he took in the scenery, remembering the run with Mako through the mist two days ago. The way her face looked as she fought to move faster, eyes focused and legs straining. The wind moving her hair back from her face. How she smiled at him, the way she said his name.

Oh.

Raleigh pressed the knuckles of his fist into his mouth to fight the enamored smile that was trying to break free. He wasn't the kind of guy to run screaming from terrifying emotional precipices, but he had never taken such a large leap before. Oh. Oh, she fit. Oh, she was like a missing piece he never knew was missing until her face lit up, her hair damp from a shower, as he stood in the doorway of her classroom.

Oh. He was in love.

The problem with the revelation was not that he wasn't totally up for it; it was that it took him completely from left field, like a mad slap to the face, like a knife between his ribs. He was in love with Mako Mori, and it ruined everything. Now their lunches weren't casual or fun—he would be fighting to impress her, keep her interested, worrying about what he was doing with his arms and leg, etc. Also, what if she found out? That would be a catastrophe, almost as bad as if she found out, and didn't return his affections. Why would she, anyway? He was a washed-up twenty-something, getting far too close to thirty-something, still living with and getting car rides from his older brother, a thirty-something who seemed perfectly happy to stay at home and watch Mean Girls late at night, laughing to himself. He owned too many sweaters and had had too few girlfriends. He, Raleigh Becket, was a mess with a teaching degree.

And he was in love. With Mako Mori.

Yancy pulled into the faculty parking lot too soon for Raleigh, who ended up lingering near his mailbox once in the main office, pulling out and putting in the same papers in an attempt to stall for time. Tendo noticed and decided not to say anything, for a time. Ten minutes passed. Papers out, shuffle, papers in.

Tendo poked his head inside the filing room again and narrowed his eyes. "Aren't you down for test monitoring today?" he asked suspiciously. Raleigh made a noise and then coughed to cover the high-pitched whine. Tendo gave him another look, like he was scanning a barcode in Raleigh's soul to pull out the necessary numbers and prices to all of his secrets. "If you hurry up now, you can catch the last of The Speech," the secretary informed him, and then ducked out, still figuring over Raleigh's behavior.

After considering the papers once more, Raleigh groaned and shoved them haphazardly into the box, heading out of the office and ignoring how Yancy tipped his chair back to eye him through the open doorway.

The testing would take place in the gymnasium, and was scheduled for a full week of five days: one day for each grade, and the fifth day for make-ups and independent study students. Foldable tables and chairs were set up in rows for the kids to sit at, but teachers were needed to hand out tests and make sure that no one would be cheating. At the end of the week, the test results would be sent in and received to be filed away for reporting to the district administration. The school with the highest average score would be one step closer to the Payload Award.

Raleigh slipped into the gymnasium with all the students for that day—freshmen—looking slightly aghast and astounded as they received The Speech—the same speech given before each round of standardized and AP testing session by the head of the counseling office. The teachers were all milling around in the background, too used to it to be anything other than offhandedly interested in listening. Along with Sasha and Hermann, Herc was standing at the back wall in his suit, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. Raleigh could relate as he leaned against the wall as well, purposefully not looking around for Mako and turning his attention to the man standing at the front of the gym, with all the students facing him, delivering The Speech.

He just caught the tail end of it. "… now I know that there is all this talk about 'doing your best' but I also know that a passing test score is worth fifty bucks a pop, in school funding and rewards that you'll all be getting when your scores come in. So—what's the big idea, little fella?"

A student gaped up from his lap as a barrel-chested man in a red suit descended on him, gilded teeth glistening as he bared them in a savage smile. Hannibal Chau, guidance counselor, stood in front of him, having cut off his speech a few lines early.

"Um…" the poor kid said.

"Give me your phone." It was not a request. The phone was lifted from his lap and passed over to Mr. Chau, who held it up over his head.

"This," he said loudly, turning so that everyone could see the cellphone, "is exactly what I'm talking about." He threw the phone across the room; several students gasped loudly, but Herc caught it easily with one hand and rolled his eyes to show what he thought about Hannibal's performance.

"If you are caught cheating," Hannibal continued as if nothing had happened, "or sharing answers on your mobile devices, then your score, and the scores of anyone with your test version are rendered void. Do you know what that means?" he asked a frightened girl as he stalked like a shark through the rows of tables. She shook her head, too focused on Hannibal's welding-glasses-like eyewear to think clearly. "It MEANS," he raised his voice, "THAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR FAILING EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!"

The kids all made frightened noises and Hannibal looked perfectly pleased with himself.

"And if you are responsible for that," he continued with his voice at a normal, almost friendly level, "then you won't be answering to Mr. Hansen there. Or Mr. Pentecost." There were a few exhalations of relief. Then Hannibal pulled off his tinted glasses, showing off his impressive scar and glaring through one blind eye at the assembled students.

"You'll be answering to me."

There was a moment where Raleigh could almost hear each and every student swallow at the same time. With that final threat, The Speech was finished, and Raleigh was given a stack of scantron papers to hand out to the masses, up and down the rows. He kept his eyes down, saying small hellos to a few of his freshman students that he passed. He stopped when his elbow struck something.

He made the mistake of looking to see who it was.

Mako grinned briefly at him as she stood there next to him, her hands grasping a large bundle of pencils that she was handing out down the same row as Raleigh, going the opposite direction. His heart made a far-too-loud noise and he barely smiled back before quickly moving on. Mako was left in his wake looking slightly confused before she continued on as well.

It was petty and childish, but Raleigh was well and capable of being petty and childish. There was something with Mako—he had thought it platonic before, but now knew so much better that it definitely wasn't, at least on his side—something that was almost like a bridge between their minds. There was so much that they didn't have to say when eating lunch together or comparing workloads on their students. It was completely silent, a look here, a smile there. He had enjoyed it before, but now he was worried. How much of his soul could Mako rake through in a single look? Could she somehow look into his eyes and see that two nights ago he had dreamed of them running together, ending hot and sweaty with them together in the boy's showers, the tile cool against Raleigh's back as she kissed him against the wall? Could she see that?

He hoped not, but he also wasn't taking any chances.

Raleigh finished passing out papers and lounged lazily against one wall as Herc started the timer at the front of the gym, letting all the students know how much time was remaining before the first break. At his direction, Raleigh walked a circuit around the room, looking to make sure no one was checking out their neighbor's answers or checking out hidden cheat sheets. He looked up from the tables once to see Sasha whispering to Mako, looking at him over her shoulder occasionally, and then turned his attention back to his task. Not talking to Mako was a choice of his own, but it was painful and smoldering. The knife driven between his ribs had made a wound that was festering. Mako was the only thing to make it go away, he knew, but it was too risky.

Sasha passed by him once and gave him a withering glare. Raleigh could feel a headache starting. Now he had to worry about not letting his secret slip to Mako and worry about having a homemade bomb being placed in Yancy's car. One time Sasha had had her chemistry class recreate C4 from average home cleaning supplies and had started a fire in her room. She was not someone Raleigh wanted to be on the bad side of.

After a few more turns of the room Raleigh took a break, sitting at an empty table with a relieved sigh. The morning had started off so promisingly.

He stiffened as Mako snuck up behind him and took the other seat. He briefly considered getting up and moving, but that would be too obvious.

Something poked at his elbow with a crinkle. A paper was tucked underneath his elbow and Raleigh chanced a glance at Mako, seeing her looking rather disinterested at her nails. He unfolded the paper, a piece of blank scrap given out for the math section of the test.

On it, something was written in tiny, purposeful script:

Two truths/one lie

1. This is boring

2. You are ignoring me

3. Sasha is a natural blonde

He bit back some laughter and pulled over a spare pencil, circling number 3 rather guiltily. He slid the paper back over to Mako, who read it silently. It was better than speaking with her, since no eye contact was involved. The paper returned, with something else added:

Your turn

After a moment, Raleigh added his own question, and then under Herc's hawk-like eye got up and did a quick circuit. He returned to an empty table with the paper awaiting him. Mako was across the gym, watching a close cluster of girls.

The paper read in his own hand:

Two truths/one lie

1. I was born in Alaska

2. I'm sorry for ignoring you

3. Yancy is my twin brother

The number 3 had been carefully circled. He checked the back of the paper and Mako had drawn a small picture of a tiny cartoon girl with bobbed hair. It could only be her.

Where is this girl from? If he had been asked two days ago if it was possible to fall in love with handwriting, he would have said no. But now he knew better.

He drew a Japanese flag of his own and then did a much sloppier doodle of a little boy with a mop of hair shivering in a parka surrounded by snow. I was raised by snowmen, he wrote, and then with hot cheeks abandoned the table to a circuit of the room, tapping the table occasionally to remind a student not to let their eyes wander.

The day passed slowly like this. Raleigh and Mako would duck in occasionally to add to their paper of notes and scribbles, posing questions and drawing bad, lopsided doodles in vastly different hands. Raleigh's was large and slanted messily; hers was tiny, methodical, and perfect. It healed the wound of loneliness in Raleigh's heart somewhat, with the added bonus of him not having to face her. Soon, he might be able to. But not now. Sasha and Herc watched them and muttered together out of earshot.

Facts on the paper grew and grew. Mako was an orphan. Her parents were sword makers—no, really. She had been adopted and raised for a time in England before moving to America and getting her teaching degree. The biggest surprise of the evening was that Stacker Pentecost had adopted her—it threw Raleigh for a loop until it made sense. The man was especially fond of her, and looked out for her constantly. She would sometimes talk to him outside of his office in Japanese for long stretches of time.

Raleigh let slip about his father's abandonment. His mother's cancer. Vagabonding with Yancy down from Anchorage before ending up at school together. It was personal—more personal than he had ever gotten with her face-to-face, but it was good. Filling.

The day passed faster than he would have wanted.

The students filed out, mentally spent, and the teachers all worked to gather the papers and pencils separately from the tests, which would be locked away under Tendo's careful eye and personal key. When everything was sorted, they were dismissed by Herc to have the rest of the day—two class blocks—free. A reward for volunteering.

Raleigh, against his better judgment, hung back to talk to Mako, waiting until the others had left the gym.

"Hey," he said uneasily.

She looked curiously up at him from beneath her straight black fringe. "Hey," she replied shortly, lifting her bag higher on her shoulder. There was tension in the air like lightning about to strike.

"So…" he said, "Sailor Moon, huh?"

She ducked her chin into her collar like she did when embarrassed, but she smiled nonetheless. "Animaniacs?" she poked back, and his smile grew wider before flickering out.

"I'm sorry. For brushing you off like that this morning." He was looking at her, straight at her, and his stomach was doing loop-de-loops, but so far so good. Nothing bad had come spilling out. "I've, uh, had a bad night." It was a good night, on the contrary, with a very vivid dream involving her, but she didn't need to know that.

She looked at him, and there was a warning flash in his mind of her diving deep for the truth.

"Okay," she said, and smiled up at him, enough to make his knees go weak and his mind to open up like clouds before the sun. She was radiant.

"Lunch?" he tried, pushing his luck. "There's a few things I definitely want clarified." He lifted his hand, holding onto their scratch piece of paper, not a blank spot to be seen.

She didn't need to say anything. He could see the yes in her eyes as she watched him as they walked together down the hallway. He was freshly aware of every inch of skin he had, the exact length of his limbs and the way his arms swung as they walked. But contrary to what he thought, it wasn't frightening. It was new, but it was like a weight being lifted from his body. She, impossibly enough, seemed to take the weight from him, fill up the empty places, smooth over the roughness. He never felt as happy as he was when he was with her, with her explaining the intricacies of Sailor Moon cosplay as a child to him. Her face was glowing and her hands moved artfully through the air as she talked, and he never wanted to listen to anything else ever again.

Yancy Becket = Diego Klattenhoff = that dude from Mean Girls who made out with Regina in the projection booth.

This chapter was supposed to be the "drift" element, but ehh if I succeeded. *rests chin in hands*

Review, please? Next chapter is a heartbreaker.