Purpose...

[Michiko]

It?s amazing how things can hit you when you are not looking for them. She had not been looking for another lover this soon, much less losing her heart again. Yet, she was falling hard and she didn?t want to stop it this time.

No reservations?

Sure she had reservations about Mish?Cael. She almost had been waiting for the other shoe to fall there. Too fast, and she had been an innocent there. He had showed her the delights, to be sure but there was that little niggling bit of mistrust.

Her fault she imagined?

Then there was Caine. She let herself think she was in love with the smooth talking man for sometime, but this was not her. He was an underground arms dealer and kept a thermonuclear warhead close to them. She was unnerved and in many ways scared of him and what he could do. She broken away clean and left him behind in Sabbatt. She could imagine that the Black sisters were happy that there was no one to distract the boss now.

Her fault there too?

She nestled in close to the sleeping form at her side. He was different. There was a great deal in common between them and enough different to keep things interesting. He was more traditional and she was the bratty kid from Yonkers. This school was his dream and she had been drifting without purpose. Perhaps there was purpose to be found here - Purpose for the girl of mixed blood.

With him?

She couldn?t sit by and do nothing with her time. It was why she didn?t give up volunteering at the shelter at Perp Miz. Why she didn?t give up the nighttime activities outside of Dueling. She needed to feel useful, needed?

He made her feel oh so wanted. He knew what she did, what she was and accepted without question. She accepted him without question knowing how he hinted at a darker past. He was not only a Samurai. She could read that in his moves, in his fighting. He had melded the ways of the Samurai with the darkness? The Shinobi-no-mono. He had come out better for the experience. She saw his honor and his remorse for the past.

A delicate seeming hand drifted along the plane of his stomach. The sheet had been brought up to cover her and yet managed to stop at his hips. Even in sleep, cloth just refused to cover his upper torso. That brought a smile to her lips.

She spoke a few languages fluently. One she rarely spoke if at all. To her, it meant a level of intimacy that she never felt before now. She was more comfortable in the language and some of the traditions of her father. Though they had been disregarding a lot in their openness.

The words were for him only and she never had spoken them to another, not like this.

?(vq) Ais***eru, Ryutaro.?

[Quiet Contradiction]

Training, once ingrained, is something that can nearly never be turned off, he's discovered.

True, with time, and without practice, one can slip. It happens to everyone - you get complacent, lazy, and it catches up to you.

He is too proud for such a thing to happen, and yet it has once or twice.

But at the same time, there are some things that can never be truly turned off.

For instance, that awareness of his. Even in the appearance of deep sleep, he is aware of every breath of air, of every change in the environment. An ant crossing the floor could not move in his room without him being at least peripherally aware of it.

But more than that is the lovely, lissome, slender form next to his. Her heat, her tender touch, her soft breathing. The smile on her lips, the feel of her gaze on him.

So many things to be aware of.

He had, for himself, never considered having someone this close - it had in fact not seemed a possibility to be looked for, and yet it had found him.

He's had lovers, of course, but never anything serious...never anything he had seriously considered to be lasting, never one he had wanted for his own, to curl in close to by night and be delighted to find there at the first morning's light, when he always awoke.

And so it is that his dark eyes open at her words to meet hers as he turns towards her in the bed they've shared...words he has himself held in his own thoughts. Sacred words, not often spoken in his native tongue, by the people he comes from...and all the more precious, all the more sacred for that.

His own voice is a soft, warm murmur as he wraps an arm around her waist to pull her intimately close to him, his lips brushing hers as he speaks to her softly.

"Ais***e imasu, Michiko."

[Michiko]

There is no blushing to the words, but a thrilling within her heart. She moved that much closer to him as he pulled. That kiss was so gently returned and the hand that had been exploring moved up to rest on his chest about where his heart was.

There was a bit of a smile on her lips as she spoke to him in the night "(vq) I did not mean to wake you, anata."

Those jade eyes tilted up to meet those dark ones. "(vq) I... wasn't expecting this so soon, Ryu. Yet, I welcome it."

The truth of how she felt was there. She did not favor the words overly with endearments. She was very content where she was now and those lips tilted up to brush against his.

[Quiet Contradiction]

Such things are often unexpected, and yet he does not feel the need to say so, only to pull her closer into that kiss, settling the lines of his body firmly against her own.

Marveling once again at the way she fits against him, the heat between them, the way she seems to fit just right in his encircling arms.

For a long time he does not break that kiss, until lungs make their demand and he eases away, though he doesn't loosen his grip on her as he smiles, his dark eyes settled on her emerald greens.

"I...did not come here looking for anything like this, Michiko...but I am glad to have found you waiting for me now."