Disclaimer: Don't own any of Full Metal Panic's series, or it's characters

Rating: M

Takes place after The Second Raid, anime/OVA only, but with a few nods to events from the manga. Sousuke is more-or-less the same, and Kaname should be the same, but she'll be a bit quicker to her softer side in some cases - and that might translate to somewhat out-of-character depending on your point-of-view lol. Will be a fairly long story, but will only start to show it after (at least) the first few chapters.

"Finally we're on summer break!" Kaname exclaimed, smiling like a cat.

"Tell me, Kaname, what do people do on summer break?" Sousuke asked beside her as they walked back home. "With the absence of school, and until I'm called away on another mission, I have little idea what to do with myself."

"What do you mean, "what do people do on summer break"!? she said indignantly, rounding on him, only to stop in the middle of a thought. "Wait... you've... never had a summer break before, have you?"

"No" he said, still walking with the same expression. "I can understand the practicality of a 'break' if there is work to do over the time involved, but there is none assigned to us for quite awhile."

She sighed with a sweatdrop. "Well listen, Mr. Sagara" she said with exasperation. "What people do on break is exactly what people do normally: we sleep, we go out and do stuff, and generally live our lives."

"Can you be more specific on those last two points?"

She gave him a flat look, but said nothing as they walked. Then out of nowhere, this came out of her mouth: "Well, perhaps you can come to my apartment and I'll explain a few things." She was taken aback after she said it, but Sousuke's only response was to keep walking, plus "That will be satisfactory; I'll go with you to your apartment."

She felt seriously annoyed, and readied herself to swat him - but decided against it at the last second, sighing with further exasperation. She had to stop doing that; though Sousuke was a lot like a dog, he was particularly difficult to train, because he simply didn't understand 99% of what people meant the way they meant it...

"No, hitting him is getting both of us nowhere" she thought as she walked slightly behind him, looking at the back of his head a lot. "How can punishment be effective if he doesn't even understand why?"

She had to do something about that, but first she needed to think about how to approach this.

"Actually, Sousuke, I just remembered" she said quickly, the man in question turning toward her. "I'm a little low on food at the moment, and will need to go shopping. Can you enter my apartment in an hour or so, and wait for me?"

"Of course" he said. "I will await your arrival" he continued, walking off without her, leaving her fist to clench involuntarily for a moment.

"What the hell am I going to do about that idiot?" she thought in frustration, at the store browsing. "The very problem I'm trying to solve is exactly what's in the way! That dumbass wouldn't know love if it shot him in the face!"

She punched the side of a freezer in her anger, drawing odd looks from others. She stood there for a few moments, panting as she tried to control her thoughts; getting mindlessly angry at Sousuke would get them/had gotten them both nowhere, as she thought earlier.

"And yet" she breathed, so softly no one else could have heard her. "It's exactly that dumbass who I've fallen in love with."

She snapped up, her cheeks turning red. That had come much too easily, especially compared to all the other times she'd tried to tell him, and miserably failed for one reason or the other. How on earth had it suddenly become that easily!?

"And yet..." she thought involuntarily. "It's still true."

She had no more thoughts or breakthroughs on that front, and continued about her business as usual: getting two heavy bags of groceries in both hands, taking the train back to the area she lived in, slowly walking up to her apartment and setting down the bags to get her key, and STILL she had nothing on what to do about Sousuke.

But she had to, even as she hesitated to put the key into the lock.

"Mr. Military Terms probably set a trap for intruders" she thought vaguely. "Well, better get it over with-"

She snapped up, her eyes wide and her breathing heavy. "Military... Terms..." she breathed, barely able to comprehend what had just happened.

She started giggling, then it became outright laughter. She just might have a way to break through that thick-skulled idiot's head, and it couldn't be at a better time!

The door opened in an instant, and Sousuke quickly came out, gun in hand as he searched for possible problems. "What's the reason for your sudden outburst, Ms Chidori?" he demanded evenly, then eventually noticed she hadn't responded. "And why are you still laughing?" he asked, completely baffled in his own way.

She failed to hear or see any of this, and her only thought was "Look out, Sousuke! I'm gonna get you to understand things if it's the last thing I do!". Then she went back to reality, intending to open the door... only to stop and see Sousuke staring at her uncomprehendingly, right in front of her.

They stood there in silence as black dots slowly flitted across the screen, Kaname slowly comprehending what was happening.

"Kaname, please explain why you were laughing" Sousuke said, completely unfazed.

The naive, idiotic question made her anger rise briefly, but she ignored it. "Um, nothing of importance" she said, weakly laughing it off as she bent down to get the groceries. "But to be honest, I was surprised there wasn't a trap sprung on me."

"I had one set, but I knew it was you almost immediately" he said, following her inside. "The weight of your footsteps, accounting for possible variances with groceries, was within acceptable parameters."

"Of course it was" she thought, her face flat as she put away the groceries, her back to him. "You know, most girls are offended if the guy knows their exact weight" she said aloud.

"Why is that?" he asked, the slightest confusion in his tone, making her sigh; he was hopeless, even if there was promise there.

"Because idiot" she continued, "it's like walking on a land-mine: if you step on it, it most likely goes off. If you don't, there's no immediate danger, but you still have to be careful". "Did I even use that right?" she wondered. "I'm nowhere near as good with this stuff as Sousuke."

"Interesting, and informative" Sousuke said, making her head snap up at his tone: thoughtful. "I admit I do not understand why a simple question would trigger such an explosive rage, but still, that's the best information I could have gotten about that particular detail. Thank you."

"It worked?" she thought in disbelief, her eye twitching. "That actually worked?"

Whatever they were gonna do/say next was interrupted; a beeping from Sousuke's computer, which he immediately opened with a "I have to take this". She looked at him, her emotions mixed... then she smiled slightly, and went to make dinner.

Half an hour later

"Dinner's ready!" she announced, setting a plate full of food by Sousuke. He didn't look at it directly, but his sharp senses knew it was there, and he mindlessly picked at the food as he typed one-handed. "So who was that?" she asked, sitting down at the table.

"A message from Captain Tessarossa" he said, without taking his eyes off his work (though the name nearly caused her to spit-take). "She was expressing her apologies for a misunderstanding and her inappropriate conduct during a routine visit to a port."

'Misunderstanding', 'inappropriate conduct'... those words alone made her suspicious, and her expression matched her feelings. "What did she do?" she asked with an edge.

"Due to an incident with Sergeant Major Mao, the Captain had a drink with alcohol in it, which she was unaware of. The result of which was after a few more incidents, she ended up on the bridge of the ship" he said, then he visibly gulped. "She was partially unclothed, sleepwalking after that, and stumbled upon me."

"Like I'm supposed to believe that was accidental?" she asked, her tone hard. "And I'll bet you were just plain scared when she stumbled in."

"Scared? No, but I was quite mortified" he admitted, looking down for a moment. "And quite relieved when the Captain truly woke up, then left quickly after apologizing profusely."

"Humph" she said, muttering under her breath.

"But she has explained, and it's not a problem" he said, typing a few more keys, then closing his laptop.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, during which she cooled off after a few glances at him. "It was still a problem when you just suddenly left" she said quietly. "I had been worried you wouldn't come back, and went to your apartment, only to find it completely empty. And worse, I had to face someone following me without you-"

"Another assassin?" he asked instantly, his attention focused directly on her. She found it weird and flattering at the same time.

"Well, I thought so" she breathed, remembering. "Maybe it was because your habits rubbed off on me, but I was paranoid, and finally went into a hotel with a complete stranger because I figured out that if this person was watching me, it'd be from up there". Then her expression soured, "But then the stranger got the wrong idea and tried to rape me, so I tazered him... then I changed, and slowly got onto the roof, where I found a guy by the name of- I think it was Wraith?"

The look on Sousuke's face told her everything; but surprise was unexpected. "He must have slacked in his duties" Sousuke muttered to himself, then turned back to her, demanding she continue with expression alone.

"Then, I was attacked by this woman with red eyes" she said, shuddering. "I managed to use my surroundings to block her shots, and get away just long enough to survive, and taze her from behind. I even heard your words about 'no mercy' right before I did so."

"That was very commendable, Kaname" he said, with an actual small smile at the corner of his lips, or she thought it was. "I am impressed."

She blinked several times, blushing. "Well... uh..." she stuttered, suddenly tongue-tied. "Thanks."

He leaned back, then gazed off into space just to her right; the slightest furrowing of his eyebrows told her he was having a bad memory. "What, what is it?" she asked, the blush disappearing instantly.

His eyes closed, and his voice was quiet: "The man who tried to rape you" he said in a hard voice, and he was tense. "A similar thing almost happened to me as well."

She stared at him, not quite comprehending. "Wait, what?"

"There was a woman in Hong Kong who looked almost exactly like you, Kaname" he continued, much to her startled surprise. "Except her clothes were different, her lips were slightly bigger and her facial structure was off. And she seemed inordinately interested in any guy who happened to be nearby, including me. I didn't notice it at the time, but in hindsight-"

"Never mind that, what happened!" she said loudly, her heart thumping with rage.

"Very well: she took me to her apartment, and proceeded to immediately drink alcohol. I was preoccupied, so I didn't pay much attention, but I did notice when she pushed me onto the bed and got on top of me..." he said, trailing off.

She was about ready to physically strike him along with some vicious comment, but his next sentence stopped her cold: "While she muttered things I didn't understand, I kept hearing your words, and seeing your face."

She blinked slowly, halfway through pulling out her paper fan. But still he continued: "That, and many other things, grew to be too much for me; I couldn't take it. So I pushed her off me, and left."

She slowly sat down, staring at him. Sousuke rarely, if ever, opened up like that - and she held a hand to her beating heart as she remembered Sousuke's report: viciously shooting Gauron over five times, purely because he falsely claimed she was dead, was overkill even for him. Perhaps he really cared, and just didn't know it...

He stood up suddenly, startling her. "I apologize" he said, looking straight at her. "I was out-of-line there. I'm sorry to have ruined your evening with my conduct" he continued, walking straight towards the door afterward.

"Wait, Sousuke!" she exclaimed, reaching toward him, but she was too late: he'd already left.

She was left standing there, slowly considering everything she'd heard today... and smiled. Perhaps there was hope for him after all.

The 'Military Terms' revelation is probably the only realistic way Sousuke would ever understand love, but what can you do? Still, I thought it did pretty well for a set-up chapter. Long way to go, but a good start.