Summary: People always assumed he had been the one to seduce her, with dark sensuality and a hungry mouth. Little did they know that she was the one who had devoured him whole. Implied sex, set Vol. 5-6 ish. Nothing you kiddies can't handle.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless

-George Bernard Shaw

He could hear her banging around the compact kitchen, bare feet sweeping over his linoleum flooring, house smelling like soba noodles (her delicacy of the night) and longing. She could hear him sitting at the table, all soft exhales through his cigarette and soft tapping of his cell phone keys, the quiet to her loud. They had been dancing around each other for weeks, elaborately spinning circles through his apartment that all at once seemed much too small and achingly large, and simply for the sake of what?

Anonymity?

Comfort?

They both understood it was too late for either, because he knew that she knew that he knew. Because they know. He knows all of her hidden sorrows and tender words and the taste of her complete, utter trust. She knows his true identity, a blonde-haired thug of a school janitor, the man she's fallen in love with; her Daisy finally unmasked, but at what price? And he knows this too, can see the recognition flashing through her eyes when he says something especially kind or wise, and wonders if she felt even the least bit betrayed.

He doubts it though, that the thought had even crossed her mind, much less taken root. And she thinks about all that she's told him, the embarrassment, the horror…the joy of it all. She wonders what he would do if he knew that he had been discovered, not even thinking of how he might have read through her already. They think and wonder and pine for one another. But neither can find the right words, if any, to say anything important so he continues to tease her and harass her and she continues to be her earnest self, fondly telling him to "Go bald" several times a day. And they both pretend they're not avoiding the significant things, that the air between them isn't filled with static and repressed feelings and words with mismatched meanings.

Those blue daisies of theirs are still in bloom, bright and fresh through the first month of summer, a bit of cool color in the heat. He's watering them leisurely, shirtless but for a thin sheen of sweet, cigarette dangling dangerously from his lips. He can hear her slightly to the left, pulling weeds and grumbling good-naturedly about grass stains on her uniform. He almost smiles as he takes her in, knees folded, smudged with dirt, the back of her neck exposed and shining.

The skin there is lovely, smooth and pale. He muses about it silently, and the stare lingers a second too long for his liking.

Her knees hurt from crouching and her hands are coated with soft soil and the remnants of leaves, once pristine school attire sticky from the humidity. An especially tough little weed is meeting its imminent doom when she becomes more conscious of him (more, because she's not even bothering to deny that's she's always somewhat focused on his presence), his sounds, his movements, the air he's displacing. She hears the soft hiss of the hose in his grasp and the ever-familiar exhales that puff smoke from his cigarette. Her eyes wander, and she giggles almost sickeningly at his slouching posture, before noticing how bare he is. She looks her fill at all of him, but it's the strange elegance of his collarbones that distracts her. The hollows of them, the shape, the prominence.

She's silently thinking about how they would feel when he catches her looking. She knows her stare lingered a minute too long.

"What're ya staring at, A-cup?"

"I-IDIOT! I was staring at your pale, fat body!"

"WHAT? As if, you were staring at my-"

"GO BALD, KUROSAKI!"

He doesn't actually bother getting angry because she's blushing hot and furious, and ripping the weeds out with a renewed, violent vigor. Her knees are trembling too, and he stares at the soft curve of them, then the hem of her standard-issue skirt, and he's observing her left shoulder when she glances in his direction.

Their eyes meet, and it's just an ordinary summer day, average in every aspect, except in that one moment. The distance between them is more than a foot, and they're not even in one of those accidentally suggestive positions she sees in Shoujo mangas, but their eyes meet in that second, like a thousand times before, but maybe it's the heat or his collarbones or her neck because something burns in the air separating them. And something burns in the pit of her stomach, and in the cavity of his chest.

"Aha! Now who's staring, baldy?"

And it ends, bright and resonating. They return back to their usual bickering, not knowing whether to feel relieved or disappointed.

It all started with that stupid secondhand music box, she thinks. That little piece of polished wood and chipped shells, that song with too many implications.

They're sitting in his car, on the way home (home, when had his meager offerings become home?) with all the windows down amid the compressing night air, and it's been almost a month since her trip to the beach, since either of them has said something they really really mean. Since that damn music box.

It's been almost a month since and he hasn't played the song again. And they're both aware of it too. He wonders if playing it will make her think of Daisy and him and how he is Daisy and how she feels about him being Daisy and…playing it will make her think too much. And he thinks enough for both of them. So he doesn't play it.

She wonders if asking him to play it would be an admission of guilt, if it would be her confession to knowing, if it would make him realize that he'd been unveiled. As if the words of that song could reveal to him the secret she's been hiding under her tongue, one that takes on the form of an innocent, overturned music box. And she has enough guilt for both of them. So she doesn't ask.

"Kurosaki, have you ever been to the beach?"

He starts at the sudden question, teeth clenching on the hard end of his cigarette. He's turning around to face her with a sarcastic comment on how they all live on a giant island when he catches the look on her face, the look in her eyes. She looks serious and hopeful and cautious and vulnerable. Raw. It almost seems like the wrong words could bruise her. And he's never wanted to hurt her, so he coughs and tries to be serious, just this once.

"Yeah. Only a few times though…why?"

He feigns indifference but, suddenly, her answer seems to be of utmost importance. Even with that strange face she has. Especially with that strange face she has.

"I…I'm not sure. It's just that days like these, with all the sun…and heat, they really make me think of being at the beach."

She pauses, leans to her open window, looking as if she is looking very hard for the right words, as if this answer is of the utmost importance.

"I guess I just miss the ocean."

"Huh…so you really love the ocean, hm?"

It's just a filler question, an obligatory statement, but she turns to face him straight on, a smile unfurling across her face, large and free and beautifully, wonderfully her.

"I do, Kurosaki. I really do."

There's about a week of summer left before all her classes start again, before the whole cycle starts again, but in the heavy, moist night air it's easy for her to pretend the clock isn't spinning and that she's not afraid of where they'll be after reality hits. Her night clothes feel too sticky and her new apartment feels too tight and her world tonight just seems much too empty. Riko is gone on another ambiguous business trip and the whole space seems to vibrate with the sheer silence of it all.

She's tired of feeling sweaty and lonely and just a little miserable, straining to hear his breathing from the other side of the wall, wishing softly that she would hear the whisper of her name. And maybe it was the sweatiness or the loneliness or just the unbearable knowledge that she was here and he was there, and that here and there were so so achingly close, that brought her out of her bed and to his door. Standing on his place mat, her heart hurt. It hurt, and she knew why. It wasn't because she was terrified and nervous and confused and ready to give up and return to the desolation of her own home, but because he was in reach, within grasp, and she knew, inexplicably, what she wanted. She was so sure of it. She was at the edge of a precipice, wind stinging her eyes, and she wanted to fall, wanted to fly right over, not because she knew he would catch her, but because she had never wanted anything so much.

So she pushed his perpetually unlocked front door open, and leapt.

Their apartments were the same design, the same floor plan and framework, but his felt different. It felt like something she'd watched for a long time, something she could map out with ease and familiarity, a safe place. And gliding across his flooring felt like an out-of-body experience, because she didn't feel embarrassed or flustered, didn't doubt herself. She would be the one to reach out over the chasm between them, young and with conviction.

His bedroom door was open, gaping and inviting, and she stopped only once to touch the doorframe before entering, closing it softly behind her. The room was a play of photonegatives, a black-white noir film. White for the huge splashes of moonlight flooding in through his open window, and black for shadows splayed across his bed. Dark and light highlighting the long lines of his figure under the blanket. She moved to the end of the room, facing the foot of the bed, and watched him patiently, knowing he was awake and aware. He shifted and rose, shuffling to sit at the edge of his bed to stare at her, eyes open, alert, seeing. For a moment they simply took each other in, both surprisingly unafraid in their world of stillness and summer nights.

He was a study of angles and hard shapes under the dark's semi-cover, body cutting through the shade in broad shoulders and lean fingers and harsh, beautiful collarbones. A marble statue splashed with ink, the blonde of his hair rendered silver, and she felt herself burn.

She was all softness and concaves and slopes with the light on her skin. Her skinniness made her look almost transparent, a fragile nymph with the hollow bones of a bird. And the curves of her face were so supple, fresh, young, but the dip of her neck, the arch of her hip, seemed vulpine in quality. Looking at her, he let himself burn.

But because he was older and knew better and loved her so so so much it ached, he swallowed hard, collected his thoughts, and opened his mouth to question her (with the intentions of dismissal of course), but the look in her eye stopped him. He couldn't remember the last time he had looked her, really looked at her, and seen her. He was seeing her now though, her eyes glinting like broken sea glass, green and blue and grey under the white-washed moonlight, filled with what looked like an angry ocean. No, not angry. Her eyes were a storm, but not a typhoon or a tempest or a hurricane. They were thunderstorms and sun showers and warm, sweet rain. They were love and peace and intensity.

As strange as it was, he felt dwarfed by her, feeling reverent and speechless before her confidence, her faith in her own feelings, the surety in her movements as she shed first her shirt and then the rest, all dropping like silk onto the floor. Her quiet knowledge as she stood before him, bare and uncovered and naked because she chose this, chose him. And he had never seen such a look of complete trust in one's own desires as he did on her face that night.

Her breasts were pert and small and lovely to him in a strange profound way, body dressed in only moonlight, looking as if she could melt into the air or fly away with iridescent wings any second. He didn't look away from her as she approached him, fluidity and beauty and poetry in the simple bends of her things, the only shadow on her body at the cleft between her legs. His mouth was dry as she reached him, standing small and nude between his fully clothed legs, a living goddess poised over her lowly mortal worshipper. She touched his check, a warm, solid touch, and prodded at the seam of his lips with her thumb. He sat still, terrified and enraptured by her, and his own feelings. They were burning together, held not by the touch but by their eyes, a slow spark, a slow burn. And she saw the love in his, smiled because she knew.

"Tasuku."

They didn't talk that night, because they understood that two months had already been wasted on looking for the right words and that being eloquent wasn't a necessity, and that "Go bald" and "A-cup" really meant "please look at me and hold me and don't leave me." Daisy didn't belong in that world, their world of black and white. So she washed over him like the waves on the shore that night, drowned him with her body, and he willingly gave himself to her, completely and fully, to be devoured.

Alternately titled: The Slow Burning Sea

Hullo guys, Cat here with my exciting first ever published fanfiction! How exciting! You can all expect a few more one-shots (and maybe even a story, woah) coming out since it is currently summer and writing is the food on which my deprived romantic side feeds on.

IMPORTANT: Yes, I realize there are an abundance of run-on sentences, it just happens to be one of the ways I write. If this causes you extreme irritation either 1) PM me or review stating your problem and I shall dedicate any one-shot of your choice to you, any pairing, any fandom (with as minimal run-on sentences as possible), or 2) Refrain from laying your eyes upon any writing of mine in fear of my horrid run-on's and devote your life to becoming a grammar professor solely for the purpose of destroying the run-on sentence phenomenon.

Also, I don't think this particular piece could be considered Mature because it only has implied sex and some non-graphic depictions of nudity. IF anyone happens to strongly, absolutely believe that the rating MUST be bumped up, PLEASE DO NOT REPORT, PM or review and I will gladly consider changing the rating. Thank you!

Please review if you liked it (or if you didn't, constructive criticism is welcomed) and favorite please, all is appreciated. Reviews are the fire which burns brightly inside of my heart, NYAH NYAH!

Until next time!