This is an idea I started from a line inspired by my N/M fic Arrythmia, and intended as a chapter of 'Some Things Never Change' but it reeked of so much potential that I couldn't resist turning it into a fun chaptered story.

This is my anti-fic, which I will explain at some point, but just get on and read the thing :)

Mikan Sakura was doing something Mikan Sakura never usually did. Mikan Sakura was going to the Library.

If she could avoid this unfortunate experience she would, and she'd succeeded many years all the way up to her senior year doing just that, aside from passing through for the odd chick-lit, but with university entrance exams looming she had been hit with the unfortunate ultimatum 'study and pass or you'll have to start work as soon as you graduate', and as much as she enjoyed her part time job she didn't want to do it for the rest of her life.

However, on this occasion she was not at the library for herself, but running errands for her tutor: Hotaru Imai made damn well sure she was paid in more ways than money if she was to sacrifice any time out of her schedule to teach drop-outs like her.

Mikan wandered into the Alice Academy High-school-branch library with an air or distaste, wrinkling her nose at the musty papery smell that always accompanied the place: empty, as usual.

This was probably thanks to the staff; they were notoriously antisocial here, and students were actually seen to go to Libraries outside school just to avoid the ill-tempered boy who worked most of the hours there. The one with the Alice of Fire.

He was there on this occasion, his spectacled nose buried deep in a book as usual.

"Excuse me?" Mikan tapped the spine of her book on the desk impatiently as he completely failed to register her waiting, "woohoo, anyone home?" She waved a hand in front of the library assistant's eyes and they snapped up from the pages they had been so resiliently glued to.

"What?" He said gruffly, putting his finger on the page he was reading but not closing the book.

"I'm just trying to return a book!" Mikan huffed – really; the way he acted it was as if he didn't want people in there. She half-remembered his name was Hyuga Natsume or something, but she couldn't be sure, because he didn't really mix with many other students apart from Nogi Ruka, who was training to get into veterinary medicine.

"Then put it on the desk and leave," he spat in irritation and went back to his book. Mikan slammed her book down on the desk hard and nearly laughed as Natsume almost jumped out of his seat; he was obviously quite edgy and startled easily. Scowling he flicked his eyes over to the cover placed before him and then his lips twisted into a pitying grin.

"What trash," he sniggered as he picked out the title of a trashy chick-lit, and Mikan felt her cheeks sting red with a mixture of anger and embarrassment – not everyone was a top-grade bookworm like him.

"Well what are you reading?" she retorted to save some face, and leaned across the desk to try and pull the book from his hands, but the second her fingers touched the page he clapped the thing closed and stared at her with a gaze of pure hatred.

"Nothing you would understand," he hissed, now close enough for Mikan to be able to see her reflection in his suitably bookish glasses, "So don't touch my book."

"OooOoo, stressy," she jeered, "what will you do to me if I do, library boy?" and then stuck her tongue out at him: she ate boys like this for breakfast.

Natsume glowered and then snatched Mikan's book off the counter, scanning it into the library system and then quickly typing in a series of codes. As if by magic a buzzer sounded and Natsume turned back to Mikan with a menacing smirk.

"It seems this book is overdue," he sneered, "the fine will be-" before he could finish Mikan had pulled the novel out of his hands and flipped it open to the first page.

"It is not overdue!" she whispered furiously and pointed to the date stamped in there, but Natsume only shrugged and pointed at the computer screen.

"Not what that says," he announced snottily, and as much as she wanted to jump over the desk and box his ears, and she would, she couldn't risk being banned from the library and begrudgingly gave in, paying him out of her carefully budgeted wages.

"You are such a jerk," she spat as she handed over the money he'd embezzled off her, "a dorky jerk." Natsume glared at her and then raised a hand to push his glasses up his nose self-consciously in a moment of classic geek.

Mikan grinned as she watched him and scorned upon how the glasses were the least of his problems: Natsume (aka library boy) had a nest of dark hair that hung so far over his eyes so you barely saw his lame glasses in the first place; it was always such a mess she doubted he'd ever brushed it since he left home; he had ink and newspaper print stains on his fingers all the time, and he wore disastrous jumpers that looked like they were knitted by his mother. He was just a dork,in plain.

"Better than being a dumb slut," he muttered as she was walking away, but she caught it and whirled back around indignantly.

"Well at least I don't go around thinking I'm better than everyone else all the time!" she snapped at him, upsetting people trying to study in the library as she shattered the 'silence' policy. "And at least I'm not actually an ugly geeky jerk who can't even get a girlfriend!" she yelled and Natsume cocked a single eyebrow at her, as if to say 'oh really?', and the corner of his mouth twisted up in something far from a smile.

Mikan had thought she was right in an assumption that the reason Natsume was never ever seen to be hanging out with girls was because he was useless at talking to them and, like many of his kind, socially awkward – but she had in fact only scratched the surface.

"Silence in the library please." Was his only, stony, reply, and with it Mikan stormed off into the library to get out the books Hotaru had asked her to check out.

"…Let's see…" she said to herself as she found the neglected and secluded section of the library that housed all the heavy-going technical reference books, "…sciences…chemistry…engineering…microbiology…necrology…nanobiology…nanomechanics…aha! Nanotechnology!" she triumphed as she found the first book on the list Hotaru had given her, and ticking it off proudly moved on to find the next title 'robotics and synthetics'.

However, when she got to the right place she found out it wasn't there – it was either put away somewhere on the wrong shelf or already taken out, and as she definitely did not want to have to deal with that awful library kid again, so she just picked up the book next to it and hoped that it would do.

"What on earth are you doing here?" a scathing voice suddenly inquired as she was about to add the second not-listed book to her pile, "the crap is put out in the troughs at the front."

Mikan turned around and was unsurprised to see that stupid jerkish library kid standing at the end of the corridor with a large stack of text-books in his hands, the top of which being the very one that she was looking for.

So he was good for at least one thing: being a shelf.

"Oh there it is!" she said gleefully and ran towards him to yank the book away from his grasp, "It is none of your business what I am doing here. I am simply a customer looking for some books on nanombology…nanama…na…no…te…" She floundered pitiably.

"Nanotechnology?" he supplied dryly, and turning away started to put the books in his arms onto the shelves.

"Whatever." She snapped in embarrassment, and wished that all Hotaru's books weren't right at the back of the library where no one ever came and didn't all have super-long words in the title.

"If you need something to prop up the corner of a table don't use the library books," Natsume remarked sarcastically as he proved unable to allow the two of them to just dislike one another in silence, "I know you won't be reading them."

"How do you 'know'?!" Mikan accused angrily, "you have no idea what I'm studying!" He dropped his whole pile of books on the floor with a bang and walked slowly over to Mikan; making her realize that sat behind a desk she had never realized how significantly taller he was than her.

"I know a stupid girl like you wouldn't be able to handle something like this," he said almost threateningly, and lightly laid his finger on top of the books in her hands, and up close Mikan realized that if you squinted a bit he actually didn't have a particularly offensive face... so long as he wasn't scowling. This addition, of course, made him pig-ugly all the time.

It was as she thought this that Natsume slowly raised an arm and leant against the bookcase behind Mikan, coming forwards and closing the space between them with only the books in front of her keeping them any distance apart.

Contrary to what she had speculated, he didn't reek horribly of BO or antiseptic like 'all dorks', but he smelt of a mix of things: cologne for one, just a subtle amount that smelt vaguely spicy but was not overbearing like most of the guys she knew who used it, and books and old paper – musty but vaguely nostalgic and not overbearingly sickening, and correction fluid, which as she glanced down she saw specked across his fingertips in an explanatory way.

It took a second look up through his thin-framed glasses for her to realize he was using one of the most predatory positions on her; all he'd have to do is place his other arm on the surface behind them and he'd have effectively pinned her, and it wasn't in an entirely un-sexual way, either; for some reason this proximity harked to images of being screwed against a wall or propositioned in an alleyway: how he was inciting this in her was something she wouldn't be able to work out.

But Mikan unwillingly started to become a little anxious about this. After all, she had no idea what this social reject might try to do if he was trying to copy some lame seduction technique he probably read in a book.

However, Natsume only watched her through his thin frames and red irises and didn't so much as twitch, just staring at her as if he was waiting for something.

"What…t-the hell are you doing?" she stammered very slightly and he smirked again.

"Just reading," he replied allusively and then stood back up again and turned to walk away.

"Hey!" she yelped in surprise, "what's that all about!?" he stopped mid-step, and he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Looking at him from behind brought to her attention that in spite of his occupation he was actually quite lean; he had one sleeve rolled up and as it hung at a slight angle she saw the tendons twist in between noticeable muscles on his forearm: perhaps stacking heavy books every night of the week was the nerd's workout.

"Don't go around making assumptions about people when you know nothing about them," he said darkly over his shoulder, and was about to carry on when she called after him again.

"Likewise!" she spat disdainfully, and before she could say 'nanotechnology' had both her hands under his as he pushed her hard up against the 'human biology' section of the bookcase, Hotaru's books thumping heavily to the floor.

"What depth could a cheerleader like you possibly have?" he snarled as she felt his leg slide between hers. "Miss dates-the-captain-of-the-football-team." Mikan herself couldn't see what was wrong with being a cheerleader or having dated Tsubasa Andou… so what if he was the captain of the football team? He was a good player!

"Miss sleeps-with-teachers…" Natsume continued breathily, and even though Mikan wanted to fervently deny that, she had spent a few nights in bed with Professor Narumi over the years…

"A girl like you is totally transparent to someone like me," Natsume glowered as he ducked his head in closer to hers and she met his eyes straight on and saw something there that scared her: this must by why people avoided the library.

However, she was Mikan Sakura, who doesn't let anyone push her around and would get into any argument with the right kind of provocation.

"Is that so?" she questioned acidly, as she pulled one of her hands out from under his in a flash and reached out for his glasses, pulling them off his face and sniggering at the fact that it made him blush and fidget, "Well jerks like you are all the same to me." She threw his glasses across the corridor and they hit a bookcase hard and dropped to the floor.

"Though usually they try better pickup lines when they're trying to hit on me," she added bitchily, as Natsume was, after all, more or less failing in what she believed was an attempt at seducing her; probably provoked by the 'can't get a girlfriend' line she threw at him earlier. However Natsume just laughed.

"You think I'm hitting on you?" he scoffed, and then smiled an evil smile as he carefully grabbed her escaped hand and pinned it back to the bookcase by the wrist, and then shifted his leg so it pressed poignantly against the top of her thigh, while she wished she hadn't worn such a short skirt today and felt a powerful reminder of who really had dominance here, "How obnoxious."

"Says you," she snapped furiously, about to start screaming rape, molestation and general perversion – if nothing then at least as a precaution, "you're the one with the problem."

"Am I?" he jeered, "Am I really?" He shifted his thigh again and if it was a little in one direction it would be properly in-between her legs, and as much as she tried to pull at her hands he had too much strength wrapped up on those lean arms: she was at his mercy.

He leaned in, slightly thickening the scent of cologne rising subtly off his skin, as if it was the natural scent of his sweat or something prickish like that, and he brought his mouth close to her ear as he muttered, "I think that it's sluts like you in skirts like that who have the problem."

His lips parted and she felt a hot rush of breath on the neck just below her ear, and this may've just been breathing out but for her it was finally crossing the line and she suddenly jerked up her knee to pound him in the groin, and when he jumped backwards to save his essentials she broke away and hit him with a punch right in the stomach, finishing as he doubled over with a conveniently-placed backhander across his right cheek. She may be a girl but she wasn't one of those pathetic little pushovers who couldn't hold their own with a bit of sexual harassment.

"Fuck you, Hyuga," she spat as she brushed herself down and bent over to pick up her books, and he wheezed with the unexpected force of her punch. On her way out of the library she 'accidentally' noticed his glasses on the floor and 'accidentally' cracked them with the heel of her shoe – the lenses weren't very thick and they shattered satisfyingly easily.

Natsume fumed and clutched his aching abdomen in an almost directionless rage, but he refused to let it lose all direction; only idiots became so angry they lost their purpose. He wasn't an idiot.

He watched Mikan Sakura strut away from him with seething anger hung on her last words – 'fuck you,' she'd said, and it was with a loathing and sinister grin that he muttered, "You will, Sakura, you will."

So, your thoughts? Like? Dislike? Leave a review and let me know!

It's rather cliche, but I'm hoping to take an old forula and add a bit of spice to it, I'm trying to have it dark without angst or drama like my other chaptered fic (which don't worry, isn't abandoned, I'm just taking a little break).

It only takes a minute of your time, so do leave a review please.

F&L