Authouress' Note: More soppy romantical business from the queen of such. This is also on Quizilla, under my name, so no panicking. For the record: Carina represents me, Gerard represents Alan. Gotcha-gotcha? Good. See you at the end. Enjoy now. -MC

This side of town was always quiet when midnight hit. It was also always warm. The streets, cracked and faded asphalt that had long forgotten black in favor of grey, were ribbons of shadow. The lighter gray sidewalks that were slowly being invaded by little plants, formed a border until the paved place dwindled, and the dirt road began. Lined with bushes and those ever-questing little plants, it led the way to the firefly-lit river.

She was there, on the wooden dock she had saved two summers ago from falling in on itself. She had lined the end of the dock with candles that had dripped their wax and cemented themselves in a riot of dripping color to the end of the wood. She watched them flicked in the slight wind that blew over the calmly flowing water. She watched the silver light of the full moon glance off the laughing currents.

The moon and stars were her playmates and her friends in her kingdom of shadow, a branching tree whose strong boughs sheltered her like a protective mother, and the running, giggling, rippling river at her feet. This was her empire. She was the queen of the night here in this inlet by the river. Her reign began each night at midnight, and lasted until the dawn, with fingertips of blood, not rose, touched the edge of her blue-black sky and sent her starry playmates hissing to the other horizon like so many startled cats.

She was beautiful, if only here in this kingdom. Anyone who saw her here would know her true beauty, and oh, it would make them weep to know they had often overlooked this beautiful creature in the garish light of the envious sun. Her skin was smooth and porcealin-pale, her dark eyes wide and intense, reflecting the light of the candles kindly, sending it back blessed with those eyes' radiant darkness and beauty.

Her perfect red-painted mouth puckered into a silent kiss blown to the moon, her best friend, as his light glanced gracefully along the curves of her soft body, the skin as smooth and warm as the air around it. She loosed her long, dark hair played with the light it took, shining it, bouncing it, and sending it back touched with the sweet-scented secrets it held. It fell around her shoulders in a melody not unlike rain, but also unlike anything on earth.

A snap, behind this goddess of the night, disturbed the equilibrium of her perfect meditation. In her most commanding voice, she said "Who goes there? Who dares?"

And then the intruder laughed. It was a short, but intolerably amused and lusty laugh.

"Carina?" said the voice that was companion to the laugh, in a quizzical tone that did not fool the goddess for a moment.

The intruder crashed out of the brush, without regard to the delicate kingdom he was parading his sneakers on. The goddess sprang to her feet, her black summer-dress's skirt rustling loudly as it floated around her feet, as if to emulate the goddess's panic.

There he stood!

The god she had secretly considered one day making a king of, a king to serve at her side in her beautiful kingdom of night. There he stood, taller than she, almost as pale as she, with eyes as dark and lovely as hers, his hair darker and shorter and falling over one eye in a most wonderful manner. His attire was unfitting a king -jeans and a black shirt with sneakers- but clothing is clothing. The body underneath is different. The goddess tore her secret-filled eyes from the form of the god before her.

"Gerard," said the goddess, only a hint of a tremor in her voice, "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask the same of you," Gerard countered. "I come here every night, from eight until eleven, and then I go home. I've been doing it since last summer."

He said this as if it were impressive or something like that.

The goddess blinked her long eyelashes, wondering if she should even honor this idiotic creature with another blessed word from her beautiful, sacred lips. She decided to be benevolent.

"This may come as a shock to you, but since the summer before last I have been coming here at midnight. I fixed this dock, those are my candles, and this is my place," she said, a vision in icy casualness.

The god blinked, just as the goddess had. "Those are yours? I'm... sorry, Carina, I've never touched them, I promise. It's just that when I come here, I somehow feel like I don't have any troubles anymore, you know? Do you get that?"

The goddess was now thoroughly confused. This creature had never shown her any kindness, much less shared any feelings with her, in the world of the cursed daylight. The only reason she knew him was because of that wretched place, high school, and she had just spent a year of that with him. He was now leaning against the trunk of the Mother Tree, with no respect or even a little warning. He kicked a stone into the Laughing River. The goddess found herself willing to let him share her palace if only he would stop torturing her subjects.

"Gerard!" she said sharply, in panic, but softened her tone when he whipped around with a look of perplexment on his face. "Come. Sit on the dock with me."

He gingerly settled on the dock, thankfully not in the goddess's throne-spot, but close enough to it that her crossed legs touched his arm as he hung his feet off the edge of the dock. She looked at him with eyes slightly softer than she should have, her body thrilled by even this unintentional touch. He looked back, and she fought the urge to look away.

Instead she told him, "You come at eight and leave at eleven. I come at midnight and leave at dawn. It is... easy to miss each other, yes?"

He nodded, laughing that slightly lusty laugh again. "We've been kind of... lenient in our security policy, I guess. I just can't stop coming here. No matter how crap my day has been, no matter how bad I'm feeling, I can just come here and everything is good again."

The goddess understood, and she said so. "Here, I am not just the little girl who reads too many books. Here, I am... special. Beautiful." She didn't even seem to realize her lips were moving. "I am the queen here, and this is my kingdom. The Laughing River, The Mother Tree, My Friend The Moon and.."

"... His Playmates The Stars," the god finished in a breath that mingled with her own in the candlelit bliss of the half-past-midnight air. "You know?" he asked, after a long, stunned silence.

The goddess only nodded, her dark hair moving in a silken motion against the bare, revealed skin of her back. He looked at her with eyes full of questions, tenderness, and a strange kind of emotion that only shows when one is oh-so-close to someone they share a particular attraction with.

He and she were moving closer without knowing it. They whispered, as if not to give their subjects privy to their talk.

"So telling you I was going to invite you here makes me sound mad, yes?" the goddess whispered through her red-painted lips.

His dark, kingly eyes met her dark, queenly ones. "Not mad. Psychic, maybe, but not mad. I'm sorry I always ignored you during school, Carina."

"I do not feel anger for that. It is hard to disobey seeming schoolwide mandate, is it not?" she said, not without a trace of bitterness.

He nodded. "Yeah, I know... I'm a scumbag, and so is everybody else at that stupid school. They hate you because you won't be like them. And that's why... I don't hate you."

"You do not hate me? Truly?" she asked, a bit too eagerly. "I mean, you certainly do not like me," she corrected, turning her gaze away in an effort to hide her feelings.

His hand gently turned her face toward him. His eyes looked hers straight and gently. "But I do."

The god kissed the goddess's sacred, red-painted mouth that had previously only been used in this place for play-kisses at the moon and the utterance of sacred prayers. The goddess kissed him back with the sweet, gentle clumsiness of someone who has only before been kissed in dreams.

"Proposition number one," he said, "I'm going to start coming here at midnight."

"You will be my king, yes?" she said, faintly out of breath.

"Yes," he answered, letting her rest he forehead against his.

"Then proposition number two," she said, "Kissing lessons?"

The empire had never been safer, as the stars danced for joy and switched positions, Mother Tree heaved a romantic sigh with her shuddering branches, The Moon beamed down in favor and beneath the King And Queen of Midnight, The Laughing River babbled and giggled its praises underneath the met lips of its new monarchs.

Authouress' Note: Disclaimers to this are as follows: Was written while listening to Fall Out Boy. It is very late at night. I have had two Rockstars. I am very sweet on the Alan young man mentioned earlier. Other than those things to keep in mind, feel free to tell me in exact words (profanity is your choice) just how crap this thing is. Dance Dance. - MC