Frosty Glares and Defrosting Poultry
By Sofri
A/N: For Hikari of the Moon's challenge. Had to write a story with the following piece of advice in it: "Do what you didn't do last time."
Summary: Axel doesn't get along with moogles, Vexen protests the sacrificing of frozen goodness to the horrible heat monster, and it's just another (ab)normal day for Aeris Gainsborough.
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: Don't own KH or FF
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FROSTY GLARES AND DEFROSTING POULTRY
"You're ruining it…"
Tears formed in the blonde's eyes as another wave of unaccustomed emotion rolled through his body, causing him to nearly jump.
Once the Organization had at last received their hearts, it had taken Vexen the longest to recover emotion. He supposed it was because he was the Chilly Academic, meant to be as cold as the ice that was his element. But, chill as he may have been, Vexen was slowly beginning to feel. As of now, there were two things that could make him experience emotion, and one of them was right in front of him…
The large lump of perfection that was currently making him cry was held in the arms of a brunette girl. It was something he'd learned the humans called a 'chicken,' a sort of winged animal that they skinned and ate. This chicken was frozen, a rime of perfect, glasslike ice covering its crispy brown skin. And said brunette girl was ruining the perfect chicken by sacrificing it to that awful monster of heat…
"No, I'm not ruining it, I'm cooking it so we can eat it," Aeris Gainsborough sighed as she attempted for the millionth time to explain to Vexen the concept of frozen food. The former number IV seemed to have difficulty comprehending that most humans couldn't eat the icy chicken, and that the oven was not a "horrible monster of heat" but in fact necessary for the consumption of the poultry.
Inside, many thoughts ran through the flower-seller's head. Why must I be cursed with this infernal kindness? Why did I have to agree to take in not one, but five members of the former Organization?? She'd thought that the house had gotten lonely after Cloud left her for Tifa Lockhart, and none of the five had had anywhere else to go…
Aeris had eventually gotten used to the burn marks on all wooden furniture, the kunai stuck in her precious pictures, and…dare she admit it…maybe even liked the flowers growing in every hidden nook and patch of sunlight. But the one thing that tried her patience again and again was their inability to come to terms with concepts most humans found "normal".
Case in point was the second of three former Nobodies currently occupying her kitchen. He'd just burst through the door, and the cause of his problem was obvious. One hand sported a fresh open wound, blood drops nearly the same shade of his hair splattering onto her just-cleaned floor. His other hand clutched by the neck an innocent-looking white creature with squinty eyes, a bulbous red nose, and tiny wings.
…A moogle?
"Aeris!" Axel whined in his best child-voice. "Aeris, it bit me! I was walking down the street and it looked so cute and I tried to pet it and it bit me…" Tears (probably false) formed at the corners of the pyro's green eyes.
Ignored for a moment while his caretaker tried to calm both hyper pyro and suffocating moogle, Vexen hurried over to the third former Nobody in the room and his usual source of wise advice: Larxene. The blonde sadist (now much less so with the addition of a heart) was reading a novel in the corner and smirking at the chaotic events.
"Larxene, what should I do?" Vexen begged in a very un-Vexen-like manner. "She's going to sacrifice the perfect chicken to the horrible heat monster!"
Larxene rolled her eyes before giving her usual sarcastic response. "We-ell, Mr. Chilly Academic, my first suggestion would be as follows: Do what you didn't do last time."
The scholar frowned, confused by the female's wording. Sighing gustily, Larxene explained, but not before leveling a frosty glare at the former number IV. "What you didn't do last time was find a peaceful, nonviolent way to get Aeris's mind off the chicken so you could have your peace of mind and we could still have something to eat. What you did do, and I advise you don't do again, was try to grab the chicken out of her hands forcefully, which resulted in it landing on the floor, where the stupid dog Pluto ate it and we had to put up with the absence of dinner as well as the wrath of Mr. I-Have-Emo-Denial-Issues because it turns out chicken is his favorite food."
Vexen frowned a little, returning Larxene's frosty glare with one just as cold. "Well my advice to you, Miss Savage Nymph, is this: never try a frosty glaring contest with the Chilly Academic."
As soon as Vexen finished speaking, he whipped around…nearly too late. Aeris had finished tending to Axel's moogle bite, and now both pyro and um…creature…had retired to the corner. She held the chicken a few feet from the oven, its ice coating glistening in the light from the horrible heat monster.
His normally brilliant mind frozen at the thought of losing his icy goodness, Vexen did something that was against his normal logical reasoning…something that he'd never done before (there had been no need to when he had been unable to feel) but had seen several Somebodies doing over the past several weeks of living with them:
He kissed Aeris Gainsborough.
He sort of acted on impulse: he jumped forward, standing uselessly for a moment between chicken and heat monster, then quickly grabbed both of her shoulders and firmly introduced her lips to his own.
After a few seconds, the brunette female realized what was going on and quickly freed her hands (by placing the still-frozen chicken on the nearest counter) to wrap them around Vexen's waist, returning his kiss.
An audible groan was heard from the corner. "What?" Larxene questioned.
Axel frowned as he watched the couple. He turned to his blonde friend, a look of childish dejection on his tattooed features.
"We're going to have to learn to like frozen chicken!"