disclaimer: I do not own Skip Beat!

Author's Note: This features Kyoko and Ren as a newly minted couple, one of my favorite SB fanfic setups. It gets over the main emotional hill of them acknowledging their love for one another, but still contains quite a bit of Kyoko's shyness where Ren/Kuon is concerned as well as all the trials and tribulations that comes with building a sustainable relationship (and a celebrity one, to boot).

I can already tell I'm going to get called out for being OOC, but just stick around, read the chapter and then my very well-intentioned (if long-winded) rant at the bottom explaining why I went about things in this way. You'll (hopefully) be glad you did.

Hope ya'll like it!

Chapter One

The familiar chaos of a film set post-shoot wasn't enough to rattle a seasoned actor like Ren Tsuruga: not even close, in fact.

The red leather-bound journal sticking out of his girlfriend's bulging bag, however, was heavy artillery that he wasn't at all equipped for, and therefore more than enough to unbalance the normally unshakeable star. He glanced over at it for about the millionth time as it beckoned to him like a lover's hand.

Take me ... Taaaake meeee, it called out to him.

Shut up, Ren Tsuruga silently hissed in reply. He glanced around the gradually emptying sound stage, praying no one was picking up on his agitation.

He sighed, unable to cope with just how pitiful he was being at the moment. The decision to read the damn thing had been made days prior to this moment, but he still couldn't bring himself to get it over with. He knew he had to do it in the next ten minutes or so before she came looking for her bag.

A reprieve arrived in the form of a PA who was frantically clearing the tables and folding them up to be put into storage. He scooped up Kyoko's bag and a few others, carrying them off to an empty break room that was a few doors down from the gradually emptying studio. He set them gingerly on a nearby counter and then stood contemplating the journal.

He remembered the day she'd first gotten it. Well, he hadn't actually been there to see her buy it, but he remembered first noticing it - sticking out of her bag in much the same way as it had and asking her about it. It had been for a LoveMe assignment, back when she was still in that division. More than a year later, she still kept up the practice of writing in it. She had seen no reason to stop, having gained a measure of clarity in her life from the practice, and so had continued to write down her dreams each morning in the journal.

Ren stared down at the book for a few more moments. Then he heaved a sigh and pulled it out of the bag.

Get it over with.

He flipped it open to the latest entry and began to read:

January 3, 2013

2:12 AM

I don't know if I should put this down as an entry. I dreamed it, so obviously a record has to be made of it, but ... I highly doubt this is the sort of content the journal was intended for. It isn't exactly symbolic or hard to decipher or indicative of some deeper issue (at least I hope it isn't ... that would be scary). But here goes:

I'm lying in Kuon's bed -

He immediately froze when his eyes landed on the sentence with his real name in it.

True, since he and Kyoko had recently become a couple, she made a habit of coming by his apartment whenever she could find the time; she even had her own key now, at his insistence and with his blessing to come and go as she pleased, even if he wasn't there (though he made it clear he loved it when they were together in the privacy of his home). Often enough it was in the early evenings, and she was obliged to sleep over if she had stayed late enough, as he outright refused to let her go traipsing about the city after dark.

She wasn't unfamiliar with his bed by this point ...

... Well, sleeping in it, at any rate.

In fact, the whole reason he was even going against his own sense of integrity and violating her privacy was because of her sudden tendency to toss and turn next to him in a way that went far beyond any ordinary restlessness. She said things in her sleep, things he couldn't always make out, but that troubled him when he could.

He knew just enough about her childhood to let that worry him. There had been a time or two when he had heard her carrying on grim conversations with her mother. These incidents he didn't try to call to her conscious attention, knowing that ignorance was bliss where that painful relationship was concerned. Most recently, just two days prior, he could have sworn he heard her calling out for a doctor, though he had only recalled it the moment he'd awoken the next day.

Ren had tried to broach this topic the following morning, but his guilt and concern seemed to have troubled her more than whatever was going on in her dreams, which she didn't seem to recall vividly enough to trouble her waking hours. She had instead fussed at him endlessly that morning, asking several times why he looked at her "with such needless worry" and practically begging him to let the matter drop.

He didn't fancy himself some sort of dream interpreter or therapist. But he had to at least know if he was somehow causing her unrest. Or if it was tied to her grim past and if there was anything he could do to help. What better way to find out than to read the dream journal she had been keeping for months on end?

How about just asking her, you moron? he thought for about the millionth time since coming up with this harebrained scheme. Reading her private thoughts and presuming to know what's best for her ... that's something that Fuwa bastard would have done.

The thought lanced him right in the chest, flooding him with shame at the thought of stooping to that fool's level. Kyoko didn't need more of the same in her life, not after going through all she had to fully disengage from him. He summoned his very well-founded reasons for doing this, needing that clear line between him and the singer.

He knew Kyoko: If he expressed any worry on her behalf, she would take it as a sign to repress herself further. She still seemed to think of herself as a burden to him, despite all the evidence to the contrary - not the least of which was the love he felt for her in no uncertain terms. And she certainly wasn't about to ask for help, not even from him. Perhaps least of all from him, since the dream seemed to involve him.

Which left the red leather journal as his only chance. His only portal into that part of her mind she wouldn't readily share with him.

His eyes drifted back to the entry, noting again the date and time at the top of the page. She must have woken up without him knowing and written it immediately. This had only been a few days ago, the same night he had heard her calling for a doctor. He picked up reading where he had left off just a moment before:

- and I seem to be wearing a blindfold. My wrists are bound behind me and my ankles are as well.

He blinked, reread the two lines, reread the entire passage twice in the space of about three seconds, and still couldn't quite believe what he was reading. What just ... What? Ankles ... ? What?

I hear him come into the room, recognizing his tread on the carpet. He draws close, the heat of his body warming my face as he settles in front of me.

His eyes widened, and heat flared from his neck all the way up to the roots of his dyed hair as the image Kyoko laid forth invaded his mind like the insistent buzz of a chilled white wine.

He's a doctor ... I think. That might just be dream logic telling me so, because he doesn't actually declare himself as such. But he's a doctor nonetheless.

Why am I a doctor? More importantly, why am I the kind of doctor who ties up patients in his bed? I wonder if this dream ends with me being arrested ...

At least, I hope he was a doctor. Or some sort of licensed medical practitioner. Otherwise, I'm not sure I should have been so compliant when he started my ... "check-up", as it were.

His jaw dropped, and a few years worth of sexual frustration reared up within like a storm.

He stuck a thermometer in my mouth.

Oh, God.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't really a thermometer, either. In fact, I know it wasn't.

Oh, GOD. Kyoko, darling, shut up, please, what am I saying, I'm the one reading it, why am I still reading this ... ?

I've never seen that part of him, but I know it was ... that. This is so far beyond wrong, even for me. When did I become such a deviant? And, God help me, the things he said to me as I was unable to talk back ...

The storm within quickly escalated into a flood that threatened to drown him where he stood.

... I dare not even commit them to this page.

Thoughts became impossible to manage in words, much less complete sentences. He could see the scene in his head, the image so sharp and crisp it seared his mind's eye and moved his blood in very unhelpful directions at a speed he found dizzying. He pinched the inside of his wrist hard enough to bruise, using the pain as a distraction. It was an old trick, one he hadn't had to use in quite some time. His heart hammered in relief as his erection became tame enough to hide once more. He glanced around the empty room, his hairline damp with sweat.

You see? his conscience sneered at him. This is why you don't go reading other people's journals. You never know what you might find.

Despite lacking a history of respiratory problems, Ren felt the unmistakable signs of hyperventilation coming on and shut the journal for a moment, his thumb wedged firmly between the pages he had left off on. Once he got himself back under control (just barely), he reopened it and reread the last passage, just to be sure he wasn't imagining things. Then continued on to the next, aroused and apprehensive and aggrieved all at once:

Part of me wants to tell him about this, just to see the look on his face.

He snorted in acute self-disgust, imagining just how he would have taken this if she had posed it to him directly. The mental image of him tackling her like a quarterback, the dinner table toppling in their wake as he pinned her to the floor, gave him pause. Was he really such a barbarian? Couldn't he approach it like a civilized man?

The answer seemed to be a very decided No. This didn't sit well with him at all.

The other part is far more prudent and doesn't want him to know how depraved my mind can get.

He smiled sadly. He knew how she felt. There had been quite a few questionable daydreams he had had of her.

And there's still another part, a very troubling part of me, which is making quite a bit of fuss at the moment and won't let me go back to sleep any time soon.

This line gave him pause. He could really sympathize with her there.

Especially with "The Doctor" in question still snoring up a storm down the hallway. He just looks so cute when he sleeps.

As do you, he thought, allowing a tiny, affectionate smirk to curve his lip.

I don't think he'd take too kindly to being woken up with my nonsense. I think I'll just meditate and then try to go back to sleep. End dream log #259.

She had written this in his home, most likely in his office if the reference to him "snoring up a storm" (Oh, you're one to talk, Kyoko-chan) down the hall was anything to go by. And she had acted so normally when they had breakfast the morning after, apart from her concern about him. He hadn't suspected a thing as they sat chatting at the table. She had been every inch the charming oddball he knew and loved that morning. He hadn't suspected a thing. Not a thing.

That she was having these kinds of dreams ... these kinds of thoughts ... right under his nose ... right in his bed, no less, was nothing short of mind-blowing.

His mind began to drift into a haze. Contrary to what she believed, he would have taken very kindly to this "nonsense". True, he might have missed out on another few hours of sleep.

But those hours would not have been wasted ...

"... Ren?"

He swung around to face the open door, the closed journal clutched tightly in front of his crotch, looking for all the world like a schoolboy caught with a dirty magazine.

"Yashiro! Hello. Hi. What's ... ? Hi."

Jesus, Kuon, why not just take out a billboard proclaiming what you've done? That's FAR more subtle than this nonsense right here.

The blond manager goggled at the sight of a very obviously flustered Ren Tsuruga. It didn't seem possible, but there it was before him: He of the unshakeable composure and nerves of steel was flustered. And with a luminescent blush on his face, to boot. It was at that moment that he looked more his age than Yashiro had ever seen him look.

Yukihito Yashiro glanced around the room, fully expecting to find Rod Serling* in the corner talking to an unseen viewer.

"A-Are you okay, Ren? Is everything alright?" his manager asked in blatant concern.

"Yes. I'm fine." He clutched the journal tighter in front of him, wishing he'd never touched the damn thing in the first place, even as he guiltily savored the residual after image of him taking Kyoko's ... "temperature" ...

"Are you sure? You look kind of ... I don't know ... "

If he says 'turned on', I'm slitting my throat right here and now.

"... Guilty?"

"I haven't anything to be guilty for," he lied, most of his trademark composure returning out of sheer defensiveness.

Yashiro nodded, looking thoroughly unconvinced. "Oookay." He glanced down at the book clutched in his charge's hands. "What's that you're reading there?"

Before he could come up with an answer, a familiar voice echoed from outside the open door of the break room:

"I just need to find my bag! I'll be right there, Moko-san! Don't leave without me, I'll just be a minute!"

At the sound of his girlfriend's voice coming closer, he hastily stuck the journal back into the bag at an approximation of the haphazard angle it had been when he'd found it. Then gave a pointed look at a very stunned Yashiro, a finger pressed to his lips in a plea for silence. What have I become ... ?

His infinitely pitiful state was immediately forgotten when the love of his life came rocketing into the room.

Her chestnut hair was tied low in pigtails, one of which was crinkled from an excess of humidity while the other somehow lay perfectly spiky-straight as usual. She was still sporting one false set of eyelashes and errant patches of white body paint from her role as a pale wraith.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Kyoko Mogami was life and death and love incarnate, a perfect little package of chaos and joy tied up with neurotic ribbons. He wouldn't change so much as hair on her head for anything in the world.

He felt it come over him then, as he always did and likely always would: He had nicknamed it The Mogami Effect.

A strange blend of calm and excitement that started at two different points - the calm deep in his gut, the excitement high in his chest - flared within. The two poles converged and ignited somewhere in his sternum. It created a slow simmer not unlike the pots of stew she would often make in his otherwise unused kitchen, wafting heavenly aromas through his lonely apartment.

This feeling was love, of that there could be no question. And yet, it was a separate magic all her own as well, a bewitchment she wasn't yet fully aware of, but could stir in him and just about anyone else without any discernible effort on her part. Something that made the air around her charged and electric and fragrant and so blissfully dangerous that you couldn't resist her even when it might be wise to do so.

She pulled up short when she recognized them across the room and bowed, smiling over at them. "Oh, hello, you two! Have you seen my - Oh, there it is! Thanks for looking after it, Ts ... Ren-kun."

She called him by his real name readily enough when they were alone, but was still getting used to calling him by his given stage name outside of his apartment (at his insistence, of course). The emphasis with which she called him torqued his insides like an eggbeater, scrambling him up into a frothy mess.

Truth be told, you are a frothy mess.

Ren beamed down at her as she approached. "Not at all."

Kyoko slung the bag over her shoulder and smiled nervously up at him.

"I-I'll see you later?" she asked. Pleading. Beseeching. As if he wouldn't be utterly ecstatic if she burst into his domain unannounced.

He nodded, smiling wide and languorous. "You will."

She nodded back in relief, dazzling and unsure and hopeful all at once. "Good."

Then, rather than indicating that he should lean down (the way any other girl would), she jumped about a foot in the air, hovered just long enough to plant a kiss on the side of Ren's jaw before landing and running out of the room, passing an infinitely amused Yashiro as she did.

As soon as they were alone once more, Yashiro turned back to find Ren leaning back against one of the counters, hands raking through his dark hair.

"Sooo ... ?" the older man inquired curiously.

"It was her dream journal," he confessed quietly. "I read one of her dreams."

Yashiro's eyes widened, his mind spinning with all the myriad possibilities of what could have been written on those pages. Kyoko Mogami's mind was strange enough during her waking hours. He could only imagine what her dreams were like. "Oh."

"It was about me."

Yashiro's eyebrows lifted in transparent interest. His face reddened as the myriad possibilities racking his brain taking on a decidedly intimate focus. "Oh."

"It was ..." Erotic. Disturbing. Disturbingly erotic. Erotically disturbing. "... something."

Ren raked a hand through his hair and started off after his manager. He had the definite suspicion that his own dreams tonight were going to be haunted by stethoscopes and a squirming, nubile patient with chestnut hair ...

Then he remembered that he had just invited her over, ostensibly for a late supper, and stifled a groan.

As if I want to eat ... Well, not food, anyway ... Oh, God, already with the double meanings? This is going to be a long night.

Rod Serling! Get it? Because he's landed in The Twilight Zone? ... Ugh, I need to stop explaining my own jokes. -_-

I don't want to hear the same old bullshit about how Kyoko is OOC, alright? There's a lot of reasons why this is plausible.

For one: Kyoko is a young woman. An unusual young woman with a thought process that may boggle the mind at first glance, but a young woman nonetheless. And as such, she is not devoid of sexual fantasies any more than any other person. And given how left-of-center she is in most other ways, it shouldn't really be considered so surprising that she would be somewhat kinky as well. For god's sake, people, in the manga she made a life-size replica of Ren Motherfuckin' Tsuruga. That's many days and many hours of physically reconstructing a man's body with her own two hands. A man she happens to know personally. (Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that's a fetish or kink in its own right. Rule 34, darlings ...)

For another: she is in a committed relationship. This is an important step for Kyoko's character, given her past issues with love and trust. She may not be comfortable telling Ren what's going on in that particular part of her head yet, but she's no longer afraid to feel what she feels, even if what she feels makes her uncomfortable. And naturally, once that door (or in her case, box) is open, there's no telling what's going to come out.

For yet another: the subject of sex has not been explicitly delved into in the SB! manga (though obviously 196 is by far the closest to explicit the manga has ever gotten). And as this isn't a hentai, it probably won't ever get explicit-explicit. Now I ask you: Whose to say what would go on with those two behind closed doors? Exactly! This is what fanfiction is, people: Conjecture. Dwelling on what could possibly be.

And finally: It's my story, and I fucking felt like it. So there! XP

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I'm going to enjoy writing it.