He sighs dejectedly as he lifts his shirt, finally having the courage to check himself in the mirror. There's a nasty bluish purple splotch on his side near the bottom of his ribs. If he squints hard enough, can he see an outline where her boot was? Shoving the shirt back down, he frowns at his black eye. Akihiko's just lucky he dodged the tip of her rapier – instead, she'd gotten him in the face with the hilt of the weapon. Even under that Shadow's frenzied confusion attack, Mitsuru had injured him far less severely than he knew she was capable of.

But if Junpei and Minato hadn't been there to stop her, reverse the effects of the Shadow's spell...

Akihiko stumbles back and lays as comfortably as he can in his bed. "Shoulda hit her back," Junpei had teased him as they walked (hobbled, in his case) back from Tartarus the night before. "That would have showed Senpai."

He rolls his eyes at the thought of it. He hadn't even defended himself. The most basic fighting instinct he had, and he'd just let her pummel the crap out of him. He hadn't raised a hand (in spiky glove, no less) to her. The end of January is looming heavily for all of them, and the Shadows in Tartarus have only gotten more vicious in their attacks. In this instance, the Shadow didn't have to lift a slimy finger – it'd let Mitsuru do enough on its behalf.

Yukari's at the door with some noodles in a cup, and she leaves them on his bedside table. "She's really sorry," Takeba tells him, and he waves her off.

"I know that, I'm not mad," he says.

Yukari perches at the end of his bed, eyeing him curiously. "Junpei says you didn't fight back."

Oh great, the third degree. He grabs the cup of noodles and the chopsticks she brought and starts slurping them up. "Nope."

The eyebrows raise. "Why not?"

"I don't hit girls."

This isn't satisfactory. "She had a sword, Senpai. I don't think chivalry matters when there's a crazy person charging you with a sword." He reacts when she refers to the calm and polished Mitsuru Kirijo as a crazy person. She notices.

There's a question on the tip of her tongue, and she's fighting herself to ask it. Just what is going on with you two, he expects. She doesn't ask. He eats. "Well, whatever. Feel better, alright?"

She leaves, finally. He's got entrance exams and other exams and the end of the world to worry about. The last thing that needs to be nagging him is how he behaves around Mitsuru and what it really means.

It's already the Dark Hour when she comes to visit. Her knock on the door is as firm and practiced as always. The noodle cup's long finished, but it's sitting empty on the table and the room still smells like it. Well, he doesn't notice it, but Mitsuru does. There's the characteristic nose crinkle of "Commoner Food Stench Detected" as she hovers in his doorway.

"The others wished to train at Tartarus, so I let them go on ahead."

He couldn't sleep, so he's got his TV on to watch a few boxing matches he'd taped the other night. Well, he HAD been watching TV until the clock struck midnight a few minutes ago. Instead, he must have been blankly staring at the screen when she knocked.

"You let them go without you?"

"I wasn't feeling up to it." She looks so uncomfortable, and it's making him uncomfortable now. "I only wished to check on you. Takeba said you looked better than when we brought you home last night."

He shrugs. "Painkillers will do that for you."

The lights are out – Dark Hour – but he can just tell that she's blushing in shame. "Akihiko, I cannot even begin to apologize."

"You don't have to. That Shadow could have messed with anyone's head."

"I should have fought it."

He shifts in the bed, adjusting the pillows behind him. "You did. That's why you didn't run me through, right?" He's never been good at cheering her up. It's just not in his programming. The books – the relationship books – hidden under his bed aren't a real good primer for dealing with the girl you like who just beat you up under a monster's influence.

"I could have killed you."

Why is she so upset? It wasn't her fault. Between Yukari's nosy insinuations and Mitsuru's rare and puzzling behavior now, Akihiko is certain that he knows less about women than he did before. Which wasn't all that much to begin with. "Uh, look. It's okay, really."

A normal guy would probably pat the bed and ask her to sit, give her a chance to relax and calm down. But Akihiko's not that normal, and Mitsuru wouldn't sit on his bed anyway. So he gets up, crosses the room slowly until he's looking down at her.

It's been a long year, he realizes. Last January, they were the only ones living here in this dorm. Now they're fighting Shadows every other night with a whole slew of people. He spends more time around her in a night at Tartarus than he had in all those months earlier in high school. It's only messed him up more and more. He's tried to shove the strange feelings down, tried to focus on his studies or on training. But each month it gets worse. Someone gets taken away, and in a matter of weeks the pair of them may not even be alive if Nyx gets her way. He's convinced they'll win, but he's not sure Mitsuru's as confident.

Sure, he's friendly enough with the others, but she's the only one he's got left that really matters. Of course, he's not going to articulate that with any skill.

"Do you need me to forgive you or something?"

She shakes her head at him in disbelief, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. Don't look down – it doesn't matter that she's in your room and everyone's at Tartarus. "I don't know."

Mitsuru looks miserable, and the greenish tint the world seems to take on during the Dark Hour is leaving a sickly pallor to her skin. He wonders – is he the only one she's got left? Well, aside from the Kirijo Group. Let's not be that selfish, Akihiko. Lifting his one arm hurts so he only holds her shoulder with one hand. He really has no idea what she needs to hear. "I'm not going anywhere. We'll get Nyx together, just like old times."

This seems to calm her. She rarely lets the others see this side of her. The human bit, he always thinks of it. "Sorry for the black eye."

"I'm on the boxing team, you know. Nobody asks any questions."

It surprises him half to death when she leans forward, tilting her head up to kiss the side of his mouth. Well, that's the best apology he could have hoped for. But then again, he thinks he'd rather deal with Mitsuru racing after him with her sword than with her lips. He does not know what to do. At all.

They started this on Shirakawa Boulevard, months ago. His mind is still hazy, but something happened. Almost happened. Whatever. He makes himself stop thinking about Nyx and about the boot bruise on his side and what that stupid book would say. So he kisses her, and it seems welcome enough because she embraces him gingerly and kisses back.

The end of the world is a pretty hefty burden to bear alone. They make it over to his bed, where he hadn't expected she'd ever sit, much less lie with him. He's on his back, and if his side is aching he's ignoring it because he's kissing Mitsuru and unless there's some Shadow messing with his head again, this time it's going to stick. So far the not thinking is really helping him out. They've bumped noses a few times, but otherwise, it's far more natural than trying to talk to Mitsuru, that's for sure.

He lets her take the lead on this. She's always so naturally gifted at everything, academics, battling, whatever, so why not this too? "It's okay," she whispers against his lips as she guides his fingers to the buttons of her blouse. Akihiko's heard guys in his class whispering about getting to see just what's under Mitsuru's clothes, and he's always felt oddly protective of her. Now he gets to find out and feels all the more privileged for it. They chuckle a few times trying to get his pants unbuckled and off since he can barely bend, and her fingers are shaking. He's not much help with her things since he's still too surprised that this is happening right here, right now, in his bed when there's still an empty cup of noodles on his bedside table. He hears the zipper on her skirt, and the rustling of cloth as it's unceremoniously tossed to the floor next to his bed.

He realizes that her eyes have been closed this whole time. If there's a manual for your first time with the closest thing you have to a friend, he hasn't read it. They figure out how things go without talking, and she gasps. Before he can apologize she's just nodding, holding onto him, wearing the same dedicated grin she has when tackling her homework. This isn't really a cerebral exercise for him. It seems like his body knows what to do even if his brain doesn't. It's just shallow breaths now and the creaking of the bed, and Akihiko is so glad everyone's at Tartarus without them because this would be difficult to explain.

The Dark Hour's winding down, and it's over sooner than he wishes. He'd be embarrassed, but he's tired and his side is killing him. But Mitsuru is a rational person – he hopes she didn't have unreasonable expectations. His bed's not that big, and he does his best to disentangle himself from her. But as soon as his mind thinks "time for sleep," reality comes crashing back and fast along with his breath.

"I'm...Mitsuru, oh shit..."

He expects her to put her usual defenses back up, to rationalize their behavior, to find a way to explain that what just happened was only a fluke brought on by teenage hormones, her guilt over hurting him, so on and so forth. But she doesn't. Instead, she traces his jaw with her finger curiously. They'd never so much as held hands before tonight, and now she's laying against his good side with her head on his shoulder. The room is suddenly aglow then as the TV comes back on, boxing match playing as if it had never stopped. The Dark Hour is over.

"The others will be returning soon," is all she says. Her cheeks are flushed as they often are when they've had a long night in Tartarus, but he's half-satisfied, half-embarrassed to know that he's the reason for her current state. Akihiko always imagined the first girl he'd be with would spend the night, but it's still a dorm, and privacy is a rarity. He still feels funny about letting her leave.

Mitsuru rolls away from him to reclaim her clothes from his floor. There's a fluid grace to the way she moves, and in the way her deft fingers shift buttons back into place and slide zippers. She's not as put together as she was when she came down earlier, but it doesn't seem to faze her, at least as far as he can tell. He hurriedly steps back into his boxer shorts and hobbles his way over to the door.

Say something, you idiot. Even now words fail, and he still has no idea how to talk to her. He leans an arm on the doorframe, and she lets him kiss her again. She gently brushes the purple bruising around his eye with the pad of her thumb. "Get some rest."

He watches her walk all the way down the hall, not looking away until she disappears up the stairs. When he lays back in his bed and smells her on his pillow, he can only smile.

--

It's just like ice building up inside darling
We've accumulated too much miscommunication

-My Brightest Diamond, Ice and the Storm