Title: A Kiss In The Dark
Author: Princess Destiny
Email: In Profile
Author's Homepage: destinysgateway DOT com
Rating: M 15+
Summary: 'One Hour Challenge' #1 and 657 Combined: Response Fanfic. Eleven years ago, Mamoru's father married Usagi's mother. It's now almost Usagi's sixteenth birthday and she has to juggle her secret life as Sailor Moon, on top of school and a job at Motoki's shop. Her life is turned even more upside down when she begins to suspect the masked hero she is falling in love with is actually her awful step-brother!
Genre: Romance/UST/Comedy/Adventure/Action/Angst
Couple: Usagi/Mamoru
Category: SMTK
Chapters: 12/?
Status: Unfinished
Year Completed: N/A
Size: 232 KB

One Hour Challenges #1 and 657 Combined:

"Why did you say you wanted me to take my top off again?"

"May I serve you? And I mean that in a totally platonic way!"

Comments: Hi everyone! I hope that you like this Chapter. It's gone back to being a little funny now. And I've got a big cliffy at the end, with Mamoru caught by his own cleverness.

Donations: By the way, if you've been to Destiny's Gateway and enjoyed it, please consider helping us out by donating. We're buying space for another two years, and having a little trouble raising the money because I can't work due to my injury. It would be much appreciated.

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A KISS IN THE DARK

By Princess Destiny

Chapter Twelve

"Odango? Wake up," Mamoru demanded, leaning over his step-sister's form under the covers. She looked pretty cute with her hands curled up under her chin that way.

But the drool...now that wasn't attractive at all!

"Wha?" The blonde girl murmured, lips closing. She made unhappy sounds as she started to come around. Her lashes fluttered, and then she was looking up into Mamoru's face. He was bent over with with a look so determined, it astonished her. "What do you want?" Usagi growled, seeing that the light spilling into her room looked relatively bright. Which meant is was very early on Sunday morning. It also felt as if she had just gotten to sleep.

Her step-brother leant back to let her sit up. He pointed to her bedside table, where he had place the medical kit. This was beginning to be a habit. "I have to go out and do a study group with some students I know from school," Mamoru grinned at her death glare, as she put the pillows up against the headboard and settled there.

The Senshi of the Moon's eyes kept wanting to close, but she couldn't possibly sleep with him hovering over her like that! "So?" She said sourly, glancing at her clock to assure herself that 'yes' it was seven in the morning. She was lucky to rise before twelve noon on this day of the week. "Go do your studying thing, you freak." Usagi smiled at him teasingly. Really, her step-brother was something to be proud of. He was only two years older than her, but he was studying to become a doctor so he had to do a lot of extra work.

"Love you too, brat," His blue eyes twinkled as he reached for the kit. "Now roll up that pyjama sleeve so I can change your bandage."

Luna watched the commentary that was bouncing back and forth between the siblings and thought how wonderful it was that they had each other. However, it was together that chaos happened. When they played their little games with each other, and even the incident from yesterday with the thief.

"Aww," Usagi murmured, feeling all warm at his words. He loved her. That was just really sweet, because she never got those words from Shingo. As she rolled up her sleeve and waited for Mamoru to change her bandages, she wondered what had happened to her other brother. "Mamoru, do you know if Shingo is home?"

"I checked in before I went to bed, but he wasn't there. I assume that mom and dad sent him to a friend's house when they heard about us being at the police station," The dark-haired man murmured, trying to push her pink sleeve up far enough that he could get to her wound. It wasn't working though. The material was just too bunched up when pushed that high. "Take off your top." He told her calmly, meeting her incredulous eyes. "I can't get to the wound."

What!? Usagi gawked at him in disbelief. Her jerky step-brother wanted to get her half-naked so he could get to her bandages? Umm, no this just wouldn't work. He was a seventeen year old guy, even if he was her sibling-and he was Tuxedo Kamen! There was just no way in hell-

"I can't do a thing if you're going to be like that," Mamoru informed her bluntly, hands so tight about the medical kit that the fingers were white. Asking Usagi to take off her top in front of him had been said by habit, and hadn't really been thought through carefully. It should have been! He had seen her naked when she was younger, but his step-sister was not a little kid any more. "I'll turn my head and you can pull the covers up." He hinted, getting impatient. The look she was giving him was rather unsettling. It told him that she was just as hesitant to bare herself as he was.

This whole conversation didn't make much sense to the dazed blonde. She couldn't quite get her head around the thought that she would have to take her pyjama top off in front of the guy who was her crush. And brother. No, no, this just wasn't right! "Why did you say you wanted me to take my top off again?" She mumbled, not meeting his eyes.

"Use a little sense, Odango," The dark-haired man snapped back, running a hand through his hair in frustration. Did she think he was doing this to embarrass her? "I'm in a hurry, so don't pussy-foot around."

Luna made a choking noise at this reference to cats.

Usagi turned her head to look at Luna appealingly. The cat rolled her red eyes in exasperation, her gaze saying clearing 'as if I could do something!' "Oh...er..." The blonde muttered. She glared at Mamoru when she finally got the courage to look at him. His expression was rather harassed-looking, but his eyes had a strange look to them. "Luna, get me that t-shirt, will you?" She said without thinking, pointing to a light green shirt laying in a messy pile with other clothes near the closet.

The black cat muttered under her breath as she leapt from the bed to do the blonde's bidding.

It wasn't until Mamoru made a shocked noise in his throat that the two remembered that he wasn't privy to Usagi's secret identity. "Your cat-Luna just did what you said!" The upperclassman choked, pointing at the cat, who had frozen with the shirt in her mouth.

Oh shit, what had she been thinking? Usagi stared from Luna, to her step-brother and back, as if trying to find inspiration. "I taught her fetch!" She protested hurriedly, trying to plaster an unconcerned look on her face.

The dark-haired man's eyebrows hit his hairline as Luna continued towards them with the shirt, her head held high so that it wouldn't drag too much on the ground. Okay, this just wasn't normal. Could a cat be taught to fetch specific items? Never having had a pet, he couldn't say for sure. He would be looking it up in the library when he arrived, however. "Usagi-" He began. But then he shook his head when the cat stopped at his feet and waited for him to take the material from her mouth.

Luna was thinking very bad thoughts right about then. Her air-headed charge had almost given the game away. 'You airhead!' She yowled silently, eyes promising retribution.

Mamoru rolled his eyes, and snatched the t-shirt up. Then he turned and hurled it into his step-sister's face, all patience gone. "Change into the bloody shirt!" He glanced at the clock. They had already wasted fifteen minutes of his precious time.

"You ingrate!" The blonde yelled from under the shirt. She grabbed it off of her face and glared at him. "Turn your back, pervert!" She added, starting to undo the buttons of her pyjama's.

The dark-haired man stared for a long moment as more and more flesh was shown from the undoing of the buttons. But then he realised what he was doing and hurriedly turned his back to her. She could have at least waited for him to give his back to her! Mamoru rested the kit on his knees and crossed his arms, body shifting around anxiously on her covers. He couldn't seem to sit still, hearing her changing right behind him. Oh good lord, was he the pervert she had accused him off? "I don't care that you're naked behind me," he muttered desperately under his breath.

A flash of something slid in and out of his mind, of a beautiful girl all in white and gold, laughing up into his face. They were laying in a field of flowers...

"I'm done. Let's get this over with before I have to kill you," Usagi said ominously. She yanked up her sleeve as far as it would go and waited. When her eyes went to her step-brother's back, she noticed with surprise how still he was. "Mamoru?" She whispered, head tilting to the side in curiosity.

The upperclassman cursed under his breath, having recognised the girl from his vision. It had been the Princess. The one who haunted his dreams night after night. Why had he conjured her up right then? He shook his head in bewilderment and turned back to Usagi. A frown stayed between his brows as he tended to her.

"Are you angry at me?" The girl said unhappily. She and Mamoru fought a lot, as any siblings did, but he was rarely truly angry at her.

Mamoru blinked at her, confused, then realised that he was scowling at her. "No, I'm just thinking about something," He sighed and closed the medical kit, grabbing the bloodied old bandage as he went. "And I'm running late," He threw her an irritated look, then smiled warmly. Usagi looked like a rumpled bunny! She was really funny when she just woke up. He could clearly recall times when she had walked into walls, or fallen flat on her face when she was getting ready for school, and wasn't entirely with it.

"Thank you," She said shyly, looking down at her arm, which wasn't hurting so badly today. "Did it look better?"

Mamoru made a thoughtful sound, as he got to his feet and prepared to leave. "It didn't look as swollen at the edge of the wound, come to think of it." How strange, now that he thought of it. But he wasn't the best person to ask, seeing as he usually healed quite fast himself.

"Great!" Usagi beamed at him, then promptly wiggled back under the covers and pulled them over her head. "Don't forget to close the door." She told him, voice muffled.

Her step-brother glared at the form under the covers, but then he smirked. "Sure," He said, nodding. The upperclassman leant down to pat Luna on the head, then he walked to her door. There was no sign that Usagi was watching.

"I'm late, damn it!" Mamoru hurried out the door, deliberately leaving it wide open.

Usagi's eyes peeked out from under the bunny covers, expression angry. He had done that on purpose! The cool air from the hallway was still coming into the room and she wrapped herself up tighter. "Luna, shut the door?" She pleaded, not wanting to get up yet.

The cat sniffed disdainfully, then also walked out the door.

The Senshi of the Moon heard the front door slam and knew that her step-brother had left the house. She tried to go back to sleep for another ten minutes, but finally threw back the covers in frustration. Expression like a thunderstorm, she got out of bed and stalked out of her room. She passed Shingo in the hall, a bag over his shoulder.

Shingo gaped at Usagi as if seeing an apparition. "Sis? You're up already?" He said in disbelief. "You know it's sunday right? And it's not even eight O'Clock yet!"

"You can thank our jerk of a brother for that one," She retorted, heading for the bathroom. She shut the door behind her with some force, eyes angry.

"Go Mamoru! You still remain my hero!" Her younger brother called out tauntingly.

"Shut up!" Usagi shouted back, quickly stripping from her pyjama bottoms and the t-shirt. A good shower would solve all her problems. She could wash her hair... Standing in the stall with the water on, she remembered putting dye in Mamoru's shampoo. With a suspicious look on her face, she carefully unscrewed the cap and stared at the fragrant liquid. It looked normal.

But she wouldn't have put it past him to try and dye her hair. A thoughtful look crossed her face. "Mamoru likes my hair though, I'm sure of it." Despite calling her Odango constantly, and making fun of her silky locks, his actions the other morning said differently. The Senshi of the Moon recalled her step-brother's fingers trailing through the strands as if fascinated.

Did brothers do things like that? She could have sworn for a moment, he had forgotten who he was with completely. His blue eyes had seemed so tender and enraptured as his hands touched the silky locks... "I'm crazy!" Usagi said incredulously at her own thoughts. Mamoru was a jerk, and her brother, and maybe he did like her hair after all, but he had not acted as if he loved her hair.

And boy had she gotten him good by changing the colour of his hair! She snickered under her breath, then got on with her tiring task of cleaning her long golden hair. As she did so, an evil thought crossed her mind. She had started a battle after all, and Mamoru, that sneaky bastard, had already started it by deliberately leaving her door wide open.

Pain brought her back to the present and she cursed herself for the airhead everyone thought she was when she remembered her wound. Oh, just great, not only had she gotten it wet, she now had shampoo all through her hair and she couldn't even lift her arm to wash it out. "Damn it to hell!" She shrieked.

Someone was watching him.

He knew this because he was Tuxedo Kamen, and his skills at this sort of thing were pretty darn good. The person who was staring at him from somewhere unknown also seemed to be good at it. A stalker? His brows rose in surprise. Mamoru looked about surreptitiously, eyes going around the table and resting on each of his study buddies. There were eight of them in total, and none of them seemed to be concentrating on anything but their own books.

This was a group of what was kindly referred to as 'geeks'. And damn if he didn't feel mortified at the thought that he was turning out like Usagi's pesky friend Umino! The things he did for his shining future...

It still remained that the back of his neck was tingling, and he could feel someone eyeballing him like a knife in the back. Hmm, he didn't have any girls interested in him to the point that they would follow him around. Then again, he never really paid any attention to that sort of thing. Other than Sailor Moon and the Princess in his dreams, that was.

"You okay, Mamoru?" Shingi asked him questioningly, pushing his glasses further up on his nose so that he could peer at the dark-haired guy better.

"I-yeah, I just lot my place for a minute," The hero of Tokyo said sheepishly, lowering his eyes again to his books. The sensation of being watched only increased as the minutes ticked past and it was annoying the hell out of Mamoru. He finally turned in his seat to glare suspiciously out of the window, having figured out that his watcher was not in the library with them. When something bright glinted under the morning sun, his eyebrows almost hit his hairline.

If he didn't know better, he would have thought that the stalker was gazing at him through binoculars! Nah.

Someone was indeed peering intently through a pair of binoculars.

Usagi sat on the roof of the gym, where she had laboriously climbed along with Makoto a half an hour ago. Just what she thought she was doing had totally escaped her. She had a revenge of some sort in mind, since they had started a new battle...

"I know I'm here for a reason, but this is just stupid." Makoto groaned, throwing a arm over her face so that she could block out the hot sun. She was laying on her back on the tiled roof of their school gym in slacks and a t-shirt. A bag of snacks and drinks lay near their feet. She peeked at her blonde friend, surprised that the blonde was so intent on her prey that she wasn't even listening. "I'm going to eat all the food!" She said warningly.

That finally got Usagi's attention. She ripped the binoculars from her eyes to stare at her friend. "You wouldn't do that to me, Makoto!" She protested.

"I've been really good today, getting out of bed to come to help you rinse your hair out, then coming with you to stalk your step-brother," The Senshi of Jupiter informed her irritably. "If Luna found out you used the communicator as a phone again, she'll skin us both."

Actually, the call had gone out to all three other Senshi, but Rei had merely ended the call with a disdainful look when she had found out it was to help the blonde with her hair care. Ami had looked very long-suffering, then informed them that she was busy studying. Only Makoto had been up for the challenge. She had been even more delighted when she learnt they were on a mission to get Mamoru back.

That gleeful emotion had ended a rather quick death when they had been on the roof for less than fifteen minutes. It was summer and the heat was crushing!

"Never mind that, where on earth did you get these?" Usagi demanded, shaking the binoculars in her friend's direction. It was a brilliant move on the brunette's part to bring them along and spy, but it was sort of scary to think why she had them.

"A misspent youth," Makoto said innocently, sitting up. She grabbed a pack of chips from the bag and started to eat them. "Want some?" She mumbled through her full mouth. Neither of them had gotten any breakfast in the mad dash to the school. It wasn't as if Mamoru was going to leave the study group any time soon.

"You're still in that youth," The blonde said in exasperation. She concluded that it would be better that she didn't question her friend more closely.

"Have you come up with a plan to get him back yet?" The Senshi asked in interest, looking from Usagi to the library on the other side of the basketball court. She couldn't make out a thing at this distance, even though the library was made of huge windows, facing them directly. "He's there, isn't he?"

Usagi nodded, and then reached for a drink. She popped the lid and chugged it down till it was half gone. She was also feeling a burning sensation all over her exposed skin and knew she would probably be looking like a lobster by that evening. Damn Mamoru! It had been her cunning plan, but he had gotten her yet again anyway! "Did we bring sun screen?" She moaned, trying to cover her arm from the sunlight.

"Nope, but your nose is going red already," Her friend informed her with a grin. "Luckily, I tan."

"I'm thrilled for you," The smaller girl glowered. She frowned deeper when it occurred to her to wonder why she had picked this spot. It had a great view of the library, but then, so had the ground. It had been sort of fun to come to school when they shouldn't have been there, leaping up from the ground, then from roof to roof on the school buildings till they had reached the roof and act like spies. The novelty was wearing thing really fast!

"I can't think of anything I haven't tried before on the jerk." She mused, going over the various tortures she had put Mamoru through over the years.

"I love what you did with his hair," Makoto gloated, chuckling. The brunette had taken one look through the binoculars when they arrived and collapsed into a laughing heap.

Yeah, it had been a major gotcha moment! Usagi giggled, covering her mouth with her hands. Her eyes went back to the binoculars and she raised them to look at the library again.

Mamoru was gone.

"Oh shit!" She squealed in shock, hastily swinging the eyeglasses left then right in an effort to spot him. Unless he was in the stacks, and looking for a book, that mean that-

"I wondered who was stalking me," An amused voice drawled from above her. The blonde looked behind her to see her step-brother standing right behind them, his arms crossed. His eyes looked positively wicked as they went from her face to Makoto's. "I can't believe my eyes, but the sensation I felt of someone watching me was really my bratty sister and her friend." He went on in a sardonic tone. "Are you two taking up a new vocation?"

"Umm," Makoto began, mind reaching desperately for a lie to tell him. They hadn't really been gawking at him through binoculars with a picnic of snacks at their feet. Nope.

Usagi's mind was completely blank as her eyes locked with her step-brother's mocking ones. A million retorts sprang up, but were repressed. Damn it, she had really stuffed it up this time. There was no excuse she could come up with that wouldn't sound incriminating. "We're-bird watching!" She blurted out.

Her brunette friend groaned and turned away. "Oh my god, she actually pulled out the corniest line in the book and tried it out!"

"Bird watching?" Blatant disbelief dripped from his tones, and his blue eyes pinned Usagi like a scorch of heat. His step-sister was burning something terrible on her little nose, but she looked just so guilty that he couldn't let it drop. He couldn't believe his eyes when he'd leapt up onto the roof using his Tuxedo Kamen powers, and spotted the two with their incriminating evidence. Food and binoculars, and in clear sight of the library he had been studying in? They had been watching him and he was dead sure! But why?

And what normal fifteen year old dreamt up this sort of thing anyway?!

"Hey Mamoru?" The Senshi of Jupiter said suddenly, brows drawn together in a confused look. "How did you get up here?"

Since he couldn't tell them he had flown up, as per Tuxedo Kamen's usual arrival, Mamoru was struck into a flabeghasted silence.

Usagi's eyes widened in dismay. Oh dear. She knew he had to have gotten up here the same way they did, by using their Senshi abilities, but what could her step-brother say in response?

To Be Continued...

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