"I am so, so sorry for being so late," Fang continued to apologize, minutes after having picked Lightning up from her house. "It's just that I share the car, and the guy who was using it before me didn't get back 'til late, and—"

"Really, it's no big deal," Lightning tried to convince her, "You weren't that late. At the most, we'll just miss the previews and opening credits."

"Okay. Yeah." Fang bobbed her head up and down in understanding, but that stressed look as if she were guilty of committing murder was still very much evident on her face.

Deep down, a part of Fang really couldn't wait until she got a chance to get back to the reservation to chew Dane out. He knew what she had had planned for tonight and still kept the car out late, blaming a sudden surge in business at Sazh's for it. She should've known he'd pull something like this from the moment she told him she needed the car for a date. She could still hear his voice in her head asking, "With who? The pink-haired Cocoonian chick who savagely ran us down in the street that one time and tied Flea to a mailbox? No, no problem. I'll get the car back to ya in tip top shape for it." She didn't even notice until she had already sped a few miles off the reservation that there was some weird, funky smell emanating from somewhere unbeknownst to her in the vehicle.

Beside her, Lightning kept checking from Fang to the window. The extra time she had spent at home waiting for Fang to pick her up did nothing to quell the extreme nervousness she had been feeling all evening. If nothing else, the suspenseful time by herself had made her even antsier. However, she was able to find a little comfort in being able to see that she wasn't the only nervous person in the vehicle.

A few minutes later, Fang pulled the car into the lot for the week's drive-in movie special. Fang had initially suggested this venue because it was a place rarely visited by most of Bodhum's teenage population, which she thought would make Lightning feel more at ease about being there with her. Fang also didn't mind the extra privacy that would be afforded to them by staying in her car.

As predicted, the previews were just beginning to wrap up as they pulled into a spot near the back, as most of the prime spots had already been taken. "For contraception's sake…" Fang breathed, leaning forward against the steering wheel to peer out the windshield at the small groups of children screaming and running zigzags around many of the parked cars, "Who in the hell brings this many kids to a drive-in horror film?"

Lightning also let her eyes wander to follow some of the youngsters on the other side of the windshield. As a famed neighborhood babysitter for a few of these little demons, she knew quite well why. "So they don't embarrass their parents at an actual movie theatre and get bored enough to either fall asleep or leave mommy and daddy alone while they run around outside with the other overly-active neighborhood kids."

"Hmm. The little boogers are lucky I didn't accidentally run their tiny asses over…" Fang mumbled, not liking how mood-threatening all the screaming little kids were. She then paused. Threatening to run over small children with one's car wasn't good date-conversation material, was it? "Uhh, I mean, ahem!" Fang cleared her throat nervously as she thought of a decent cover-up. "It's just such a safety hazard and I would hate to see any of these little angels harmed or…"

THUD! "Eeee heeee heee heee heee!"

Fang turned her head to disdainfully glare at where one particular child had ran into the side of her car before jumping back to his feet, maniacally screaming, and racing off again. "….in some way incapacitated."

Lightning arched an eyebrow at the girl.

"I, uh… Do ya want me to go get some popcorn or something?"

"No, no thanks. I'm fine," Lightning politely declined. She folded her arms tightly against her chest and snuggled into her seat as Fang fiddled with the radio to find the station that the movie was playing on.

"It was 106.3, right?"

"Yeah. It's written on the receipt stub."

"Awww, fuck me sideways…" Fang let out in an exasperated breath as she hunched over to inspect the radio. Lightning just watched her curiously, wondering what was going on until Fang turned up the station's volume. The sound from the movie was competing over a constant hum of static in the background and would sporadically go into pitchy fits where the volume would jump from extremely high to extremely low, making it clear enough for them to hear and understand everything that was being said, but contorted enough to make sure that they would be utterly annoyed by it the entire time.

"Does it look like anyone else is having this problem?" Fang asked, turning to look out of her window in an attempt to spy into someone else's car. Apparently everyone else seemed pleased, so Fang leant over to play with the radio a bit more. After turning to a few of the area's music stations, the problem became clear. It wasn't the station, but the radio itself. "I don't get it," Fang thought aloud, lifting her eyes to look at Lightning apologetically. "It was working just earlie—" she halted in mid-statement then grumbled something under her breath that Lightning couldn't catch.

"It's fine," Lightning excused, just wanting to be able to get on with the date without any more speed bumps. "It's supposed to be a scary movie anyway, right? Maybe it'll add to the ambiance."

"I'd like to add my foot to a certain someone's 'ambiance' right about now…"

Lightning allowed the girl to grump as she settled back into her seat.

As the movie played on, Fang furtively glanced from Lightning to the screen. "It's, uh, kinda chilly in here, don't ya think?" She slowly began to stretch her arm out to reach behind the middle of the front seat. "Maybe we should—mmmm…" Fang's request slowly faded out as she watched Lightning lean forward to adjust the car's heat settings.

As Light began to lean back to snuggle into the crook made by her seat and the car door again, she turned her head to glimpse at Fang, curious as to why the girl had trailed off in the middle of her statement the way she did. She immediately realized her fault, along with the hidden intent of Fang's question, when she saw the dismayed look that passed over Fang's face as she slowly retracted her invitational arm. "Oh…"

Shit.

"Um…" Lightning nervously looked back out towards the screen of the movie that neither of them seemed to be paying much attention to anymore. "The windshield's kind of foggy on my side. Maybe I should… sit closer on yours?"

Fang stared at her blankly for a quick moment before her brows lifted and eyes perked up. "Oh! Uh, yeah. Yeah. Here. Lemme raise this up for ya."

Fang reached to lift the small compartment between them that could fold up to convert into a middle seat space, but as she lifted the piece up, a pungent odor filled the car.

"Oh, gods…" Light groaned, covering her nose with her hand.

Fang's eyes narrowed as she continued to lift the compartment upwards. "And of course…" she grumbled to herself as she eyed the long, thick tendons of murky ooze that reached up from the seat cushion to continue to cling to the bottom of the compartment as it rose higher and higher in the air. That settled it. Dane was definitely getting a foot in the ass when she got home. Not being able to really stand the foul odor that now entirely filled the car, Fang dropped the compartment back down and rolled down the windows. Unless she could somehow convince Light to sit in her lap during some point in the movie, it looked as if all cuddling hope was lost.

More quiet minutes passed between the two, mostly spent with both of them trying to discreetly stick their heads further out the windows to get more fresh air. After one line where a woman's shrill voice suddenly jumped up five levels of volume in mid-scream, Lightning agitatedly reached forward to shut the radio off. Fang turned her head from the window to watch her date inquisitively.

"The dialogue wasn't good enough to bear through the radio to begin with," Lightning explained.

Fang slowly lifted and lowered her chin in an understanding nod. "So now it becomes a silent film?" she asked.

Lightning hadn't really thought it through that much. She had just reached a tipping point with all the mishaps that were going on tonight. She thought if she couldn't control the smell, at least she could control the sound, but now that left her in the car with Fang, alone in silence. Part of the allure of going to see a movie with the other girl was that she wouldn't have to talk. She consistently admitted to herself that she wasn't much of a talker, and she couldn't help but feel that that would end up being a huge turn-off for Fang, a girl who always seemed to have something to say. Just thinking about it made her sweat glands kick up as if she were doing a triathlon and her stomach stir from all the nerves. She tried to hold onto the thought that she had sat in this very same car with Fang hundreds of times already without radio assistance. Certainly she could do it again for just another hour or so without coming off as a total bore.

"Hehehe. Look at that guy's face."

Lightning snapped back reality to see Fang smiling and pointing at the man currently on the screen.

"Dude's totally freakin' out," Fang continued to chuckle. "Whattaya think he's saying?"

Lightning examined the man's horrified face for a moment, and with such a pained expression, only one thought could come to her mind for a caption. She wasn't sure if it were the best thing to say, but it was the only thing she could think of and anything was probably better than silence, so she lowered her voice in an attempt to make herself sound more manly, and ground out, "Etro, at the rate this movie's going, even I'm going to owe the audience money for time wasted."

Fang lightly chuckled before letting her smile tone down into more of a subdued smirk. She lightly cleared her throat before speaking in a high-pitched feminine voice as a woman now appeared on the screen, "Well, Johnny, it's not like we actually expected people to be watching the movie."

Lightning's eyebrows flew up. She turned to look at Fang with a slightly critical expression on her face. Fang just shrugged in a "don't act so surprised" sort of way. When the man appeared again, Lightning lowered her voice to reply, "What exactly did you expect everyone to be doing, Judith?"

"Something a bit more entertaining, Johnny," Fang spoke again in her high-pitched tone as well. "Everyone does happen to be sitting in dark cars with spacious back seating."

Lightning was now staring callously at her date, who was contentedly staring at the screen, a smug look on her face, and ignoring the taken aback pinkette sitting next to her. "Kind of ambitious to think anyone would be getting that physical on the first date, don't you think, Judith?"

Fang then turned to innocently gaze upon Lightning with a slightly confused expression on her face. "I was only talkin' about having a popcorn war, Johnny." Lightning's face dropped into one of plain disbelief. "But don't feel bad. The other thought has crossed my mind before too." Fang winked.

Lightning could feel her cheeks begin to redden as Fang faced the screen again and fought to hold in a smile.

"You're an ass. You know that, right?"

Fang couldn't hold it in anymore and burst into a hearty fit of laughter. "I'm sorry, but you should've seen your face. It was soooo good!"

"Glad to see someone's being entertained."

"Aww, don't be like that. It was just a joke. Want me to make it up to ya? Should I stand in front the screen and break into another dance routine?"

Lightning now tried to fight back the smirk that was pulling at the corner of her own lips as she watched the screen and continued to act as if she were giving Fang the cold shoulder.

"C'mon…"

Lightning slightly jumped on feeling a warm hand grasp and cradle her own. She peeled her eyes away from the screen to see Fang leaning across the middle compartment with Light's hand in hers. "Is there anything I can do to help save this date even a little?"

Light released a relenting sigh and looked up to meet Fang's eyes. The girl looked so eager for an answer. "The car might be trashed and the movie might be trashy, but it could be wors—"

"THAT'S IT!"

Neither Fang nor Lightning had enough time to register the high-pitched shout before two neon colored lines zipped past their faces.

"Huh?" Fang curiously turned around just as another neon strain spurted in through the car window and straight into her face. "AHH!" Fang yelled, quickly snatching to pull the bunched substance off her cheeks and out of her eyes. She clutched the gooey, stringy mess in her hand and leaned forward to sniff at it. Silly string… "What in the name of—"

"Halt, evil doer!"

A small face popped up in the driver's seat window as young boy stuck his head into the car.

"Yeah! Halt!" Another voice chimed in as an even smaller boy stuck his head through the passenger seat window, right where Lightning was carefully peeling silly string from off of her top.

"Fiend! We command you to stop bothering the nice, pink-haired lady!" the child in the driver's seat window exclaimed in a raspy voice.

Fang narrowed her eyes. "You little twat…" she growled. "You have til the count of—Aaah!" Fang spluttered as another wave of silly string was shot directly in her face.

"You're safe, Little Miss!" the child called to Lightning, who had just finished tossing a handful of silly string out of her car-side window, watching disinterestedly as it bounced off the forehead of the kid whose face was peering through it. "C'mon, Jackson! Let's find another crime to bust!"

The two children backed away from the car and looked around in search for another vehicle with its windows rolled down as Fang once again finished picking silly string off of her face. "If you two don't get the hell outta here!" she threatened once she was able to clearly see again.

Both children yelped and broke out into a run. "It's all in a day's work for Snowman!" one of them called behind them as they ran.

Fang paused for a moment as she watched the kids curiously. "Light, did you hear that? I think that kid just called himself—"

"Fang, this isn't working…"

"Huh?" Fang quickly turned around to give Lightning an alarmed look.

"Oh. No," Lightning quickly corrected on seeing the anxiety in Fang's eyes. "Not-not this." She used two fingers point to Fang before rolling back to point at herself. "But THIS." She then looked around the car signal the whole movie situation. "Do you… do you want to get out of here?"

Fang let out a relieved breath. "Pretty badly, actually."

Fang leaned forward on her toes to look over the grassy edge of the ridge that they stood on. "So we're supposed to just jump off it?" she asked, looking up at Lightning for confirmation.

"Yeah. As long as you're holding one of these, you should be fine," Lightning assured, pulling a small anti-grav unit from out of her pocket. Ever since she had snatched a handful from PSICOM HQ, she had been carrying a few around with her in case of an emergency, and if the disaster at the drive-in didn't qualify as an emergency, she didn't know what did.

"And it magically just creates a nice, big, electricky cushion for us to land on?"

Lightning turned to give Fang a disbelieving look. "You can shoot white balls of energy out of your hands whenever you want, but you don't have faith in a scientifically trusted mechanism?"

Fang tilted her head and casually shrugged her shoulders.

"I thought that the esteemed hunter, Oerba Yun Fang, whose first kill was a mighty behemoth, was supposed to be fearless. I was told that she used to love cliff jumping on Gran Pulse before she even had super powers. What happened to that?"

Fang gave Lightning a look as if to reproach her for mocking her. "That was different. There were pools and lakes at the bottom. And big, uh…" She fluttered her hands as she unsuccessfully thought of the name that she wanted to say next. "Big flying things in the air. Not a little push pin whose technique is to just hold on and pray."

"Isn't the thrill of it supposed to be half the fun?"

"Sure. If you're thrilled about dying."

Lightning rolled her eyes as she took a second anti-grav out of her pocket. She had assumed that it would be much easier to persuade Fang into cliff jumping considering how much she had loved to do it back on her home planet. "Just trust me." She placed an anti-grav unit into Fang's hand, letting her fingers slowly run over Fang's as she closed the other girl's hand over the device. She could feel a twinge of triumph on seeing the little smile peeking from the corner of Fang's lips at the small gesture. "It'll be worth it when we get to the bottom."

Fang grinned and clenched the anti-grav device tighter in her hand. "If that's the case…" Fang turned her back to the edge of the cliff and stretched out her arms. "…then see ya there." She gave Lightning one of her customary winks before falling backwards over the edge. Lightning smirked after her before hopping over the side of the cliff herself.

The sensation of cliff jumping was much more exciting than jumping off of a jungle gym with her father when she was younger. The wind rushing past her body, the feeling of her stomach dropping, and not to mention the beautiful, tan young woman beside her (who scrunched her nose and made various cute faces at her during their descent) made Lightning feel an unexplainable spark of excitement.

Just as Lightning had said, when the girls neared the ground, two big, electromagnetic pillows swallowed them to cushion their falls, allowing them both to gracefully land on two feet.

"That felt amazing!" Fang whooped, a huge smile plastered across her face. "Almost like back on Gran Pulse! The air! And the wind! And the-the gravity!" Fang was speaking more with her hands than with her words as she paced back and forth, that wide smile still on her face as she looked back and forth from the small anti-grav device in her hand to the sky. "It was just—man…" Her eyes then landed on Lightning and the girl took a deep breath to calm herself down before continuing. "Just… thanks, Light."

Lightning could feel herself beginning to blush for the second time that night. She had expected the activity to go over well, but not this well. "Don't sweat it. I've been wanting to try this out myself for awhile now, so it helped learning that you used to cliff jump," she excused modestly, turning to look away from Fang and back to the path up the ledge. All the while, Fang just watched her with a warm and knowing expression on her face. Lightning's face was feeling so heated that she just knew it probably looked more like a beet was attached to her neck rather than a head. "Do you want to go again?" she blurted, feeling the need to find another activity that would distract from the deepening redness in her face. "Let's hurry up and go again. I'll race you." And without waiting for an answer, Lightning took off up the grassy path to the top of the hill.

As she ran, her thoughts circled around scenarios of how she could play it more cool for the rest of the night. She was so into her own thoughts that she didn't even hear the quick footsteps in the grass behind her that continued to work at a double-timed pace until a pair of strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her to the ground to tumble in the grass.

"Hey!" Lightning gasped when the two of them had come to a rolling stop. Fang's arms were wrapped securely around Lightning's upper body, keeping the pinkette's own arms pinned closely to her sides, and her knees were tightly pushing on the outside of Light's thighs.

"Sorry, love," Fang apologized with a smile, as she leant close to Light's ear. "Just didn't want ya to get the jump on me."

Lightning's body stilled as Fang jumped from on top of her to start running up the hill again. She could've sworn that for a short moment, just a tiny millisecond, that she had felt Fang's lips graze her neck, right near the base of her jaw line, in a quick kiss. Without much thought, her fingers ghosted over the spot as she watched Fang's back begin to move further and further up the grassy slope. This date really was starting to get a bit better.

Still feeling a bit numb with shock, Lightning clambered to her feet to take off after the Gran Pulsian.

"…because all that runnin' and cliff divin' has definitely got me beat," Fang admitted as she and Lightning walked up the path to the Cocoonian's front door. "And you said ya don't get physical on the first date."

Lightning turned to give Fang a stern look as she they stopped at her doorstep. Fang let out a shaky breath of air and ran a hand through her hair, noticing how inappropriate her comment actually might've been at that exact moment. "Uh… soooo…" she dawdled nervously, sending a sheepish glance Lightning's way as the two stood by her front door. "Guess this is it, then."

"Yeah…" Lightning breathed, sending her own nervous glances right back at Fang. She had felt so comfortable and at ease with Fang just moments before, but now it felt as if she were sitting in that quiet car, not sure how to properly use her words again.

The girls continued to stand awkwardly at the doorstep for a while longer, mindlessly fidgeting and swaying before Fang finally cleared her throat. "I should probably get goi—"

"Do you want some water?"

Fang raised an eyebrow and looked at Lightning with a puzzled expression.

"I mean, we did do a lot of running and you said you were tired, so do you want to come in? For some water?"

"Oh… Uh, sure."

Lightning gave a resolute nod and quickly turned to unlock the door. She led the way through the dark living room to the kitchen, where she reached into the refrigerator to pull out two water bottles. She handed one to Fang before opening her own to take three large, nervous gulps.

Fang opened her bottle and just stared into it for a second before looking up at Light again. "So on a scale from one to ten, how badly would ya end up rating this date?"

Lightning paused in the middle of her fourth mouthful of water before taking a hard swallow and slowly lowering the bottle away from her lips. "Probably around a four, four and a half," she admitted.

"Wow. I'm glad we're past the sugarcoating point in this relationship…"

"But it really wasn't that bad," Lightning quickly covered. "Especially near the end. I had a lot of fun." Fang's eyes lit up from across the room. "Which shouldn't be such a surprise. It's not hard to have a good time with you around."

A light smile graced Fang's features as the tanned girl looked to the ground in search for something else to say. "So then ya wouldn't mind if we went out again? On another date? Or better yet, a better date? This time I promise, no—"

"Claire? Is that you?"

Fang paused as the tall and muscular Colonel Farron stepped into the kitchen, donned in an old PSICOM training t-shirt and sweatpants. The man froze as well on seeing the Gran Pulsian standing in his house, only a few feet away from him.

"Dad!" Lightning let out in shock, staring at Farron as if he were a ghost. "I-I didn't know you were home. Your car wasn't outside."

"I parked it in the back today," Farron replied, giving his houseguest a calculating stare. "Yun Fang."

"Mr. Farron," Fang greeted in a low voice. There was something unnerving about seeing the man in such casual attire. Every other time she had seen him, he had been wearing a suit. It almost reminded her of a story she had heard when she was younger about a scorpion that tried to dress up as a mouse in order to drop its enemies defenses.

Farron kept his steely blue eyes trained on Fang as the girl uncomfortably looked down to the floor. "I was unaware that you two were training today," the man said, now looking to his daughter.

"Uhhhh, we weren't."

Fang's head flew up to look at Lightning inquisitively.

"We were out with a study group. We have history together."

"Oh," Mr. Farron said with a distant look on his face, making it hard for either girl to be able to tell whether he had accepted Lightning's explanation or not.

"It's getting late," Fang announced, making a slow move for the door. Her discomfort levels were currently on the verge of reaching an all-time high. "I should start heading back to the—"

"No. Stay," Farron encouraged. He took a few more steps into the kitchen to lean against the island.

Both Lightning and Fang's jaws slightly dropped at the request.

"W-w-what?"

"Dad?"

"You seem to get along well with my daughters." Fang couldn't shake this uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, despite the very amiable face that the colonel wore as he spoke to her. "And here I am, feeling as if I don't know you at all."

"Oh. Okay..." Fang said unsurely, trying to take an inconspicuous step closer to the kitchen door.

"So why don't we amend that now? I'd love to know more about you. First things first, I must say that I'm quite impressed that you've been able to keep up with my Claire on the sparring field. When she was still competing, she used to burn through partners, matches, and teachers alike." Farron settled more against the island so that he was contentedly staring the still confused Fang in the face.

"Um, Dad?" Lightning asked softly, taking a quiet step closer to her father with somewhat concerned eyes. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Don't be childish, Claire," Farron dismissed, waving his daughter off. "I'm fine. So, Yun Fang, how is it that you fight so well? Have you had any official training?"

"I, uh… I've trained under my elders a bit. That's all."

"Starting at what age?"

"Young?"

"And you continued this training even after moving to Cocoon?"

"Dad!" Lightning shot again, immediately garnering the attention of the other two people in the room. "I mean, Dad. It's our off day. Can we not talk about training?"

"Very well, then," Farron consented, before turning back to Fang. "So exactly how many non-sparring outings do the two of you go on together?"

Fang's eyes grew panicky and she quickly glanced to Lightning. Light could feel her own muscles tense as she took a step behind her father and whipped out her phone to send a quick text to Serah:

"SOS. Get dad upstairs NOW"

"I guess…" Fang drug out under Farron's questioning stare, "I guess we might—"

"AHHHHHHHHHH!" a shrill cry from upstairs interrupted her. Farron's head darted to the ceiling. "DADDY! DADDY! COME QUICK!"

Farron released a loud sigh before looking back down to the two girls currently in the room with him. "Seems like I have to make a trip upstairs. But you," his eyes were once again studying Fang, "don't go anywhere. There's more I'd like to talk to you about."

Fang simply nodded, not knowing what else to do as the colonel left the kitchen to jog up the stairs. Her fixed stare on the stairwell was interrupted by Lightning roughly grabbing her wrist and pulling her out the kitchen and towards the front door. "We've got to get you out of here," she simply explained, without breaking stride. "I don't know what that was about, but something weird is definitely going on with him. Might be the resurgence of the flan flu or something…"

Fang just obediently followed as Lightning marched her all the way back to her car.

"Could be somethin' else." Fang had indeed thought that it was weird that her arch-nemesis had taken such a friendly curiosity to her life all of a sudden, but now that she was safely out of the house, she was starting to see the comedic value of the whole situation. "Maybe he's finally just warmin' up to me. We did have a moment a while back, ya know."

Lightning shot Fang a stale look that made the taller girl chuckle in return.

"Alright, alright. But I really should get going before he does come back down to start asking about what I had for breakfast this morning or something… So I guess this is goodnight-goodnight then?"

Lightning's stomach started to flutter. This was the exact nervous situation that she had been trying to avoid when she had invited Fang inside for water in the first place. "I guess so. We can talk later about a second date, if that sounds good."

Fang smiled and nodded. "Heh, sounds great. So, uh…" Fang bit the inside of her lip and watched as Lightning took a sudden interest in her nails. Hell, they were on a time limit and Serah couldn't stall the colonel forever, just like they couldn't stand outside beating around the bush forever. She just had to put her nerves aside and go for the gold; it was now or never.

Gathering all the courage that she could muster, Fang slowly, nervously leaned forward. As she inched closer, she flicked her eyes up to peep at Light, who hadn't moved at all the entire time. The pinkette's facial expression was damn near unreadable, not giving Fang any clues as to what the girl might actually want and ultimately killing most of the nerve Fang had gathered only seconds before. Making a last second decision, Fang craned her neck around to press a kiss to Lightning's cheek… just as Lightning turned her head to barely graze the corner of Fang's lips with her own.

Both girls stiffened and jumped back in surprise.

"I'm sorry! I thought—"

"My fault! I totally thought—"

Just as they had both started apologizing at the same time, the two of them simultaneously stopped to stare at each other before both letting out two pent up breaths.

Fang looked to Lightning earnestly, allowing her eyes to silently communicate her next question. Try again?

Lightning nodded and tilted her chin up as Fang leaned forward again, this time brushing her lips against Light's in a shy, tentative kiss. Their lips parted a moment later but neither girl moved away. Lightning took the prolonged closeness as a signal to move in and bring their lips together again in another slow, albeit a bit less curious kiss. To show her approval, Fang reached out to gently cup the side of Lightning's jaw, right under her ear, to bring her in closer as she pressed her lips more firmly against Light's in their next kiss.

They continued on that pattern. Each time their lips slid away from each other, someone would lean forward in order to capture the other's lips again in a new kiss.

"Whoa, hey…" Lightning finally breathed, pulling her head backwards and away from Fang after the girl had gripped the other side of Lightning's face to bring her in for an even deeper lip lock.

"Heh, sorry," Fang embarrassedly apologized, rubbing at her lower lip with her pointer finger and thumb. "Got a little carried away there. Ya know, pent up emotions and all just flyin' right outta there."

"It's… it's okay. Just took me by surprise." Lightning looked over her shoulder to her front door before ruefully turning back to Fang. "I should probably go in before my dad comes out, though."

"Yeah, I understand. Wouldn't wanna have to make out with him to prove another point."

Lightning's face crinkled disgustedly at that.

"What? It was a joke."

Lightning shook her head and grabbed Fang's hand to pull her closer for one final kiss. "Goodnight, Fang."

"Night, Light," Fang replied with an elated grin as Lightning's fingers pulled away from hers as she walked back to the front door. That elated grin would stay on Fang's face for the entire ride back to the reservation, just as the content smirk that Lightning wore as she walked up the path to her home would stay on her face until she fell asleep that night. So content was the pinkette that she didn't notice either pair eyes that had been spying on her activities with Fang from out of their respective windows.