A/N: This is my Buddyshipping entry for round three of Compy's contest. I really needed some comedy right now to lighten my mood…so…this was born…
Note: Jounouchi and Honda are in college and have come to help Shizuka decorate her apartment for Christmas.
Disclaimer: I don't own it…
Paint
The car sped down the road. Overly pompous passers by shot the vehicle and its two, adolescent passengers agitated looks as its blaring music hit their ears from a mile away. "Children have no respect these days." An elderly man with a tooth brush mustache growled under his breath as the blonde in the front seat shot the driver of a nearby Chevy a non- too- polite hand gesture.
Several loud honks followed the speeding convertible. Drivers stuck their heads out of their windows to holler furiously at the rambunctious teens as they tore down the road.
"Sorry!" the blonde driver called, guffawing as the elderly operator of a car that seemed to have been plucked strait from the early 80's shook her feeble fist at him.
The pointy haired brunette beside him grinded lopsidedly, taking another swig of the half empty Heinekens bottle that he held loosely in his right hand.
"Give me somma that!" the blonde slurred, swiping at the bottle and chugging down the rest of its contents in one giant gulp.
"Jounouchi!" the brunette growled, snatching the now empty container back and shaking it upside down over his tongue as though he could still salvage a drop. "That was my last one!" he huffed, throwing the bottle of his shoulder and ignoring the shrill cry of cat heard seconds later.
Jounouchi just giggled, throwing an arm around his friend's shoulder and grinning stupidly "The early bird gets the worm Honda!" he chuckled.
Honda rolled his slightly alcohol clouded brown eyes. "More like the lazy bird steals the worm from the bird that got there first!"
"Potato, potauto." Jounouchi tittered, turning so abruptly that the car tires screeched and skidded for a moment before the vehicle came to a halt.
"Here we are!" the blonde proclaimed, ignoring the logical action of opening the door and instead kicking his feet up and jumping right over it, quickly followed by a slightly stumbling Honda.
"Shizuka!!!!!!" Jounouchi bellowed, pounding his fist against the front door and then pressing his ear to the wood. "Open up sis!"
Muffled scuffling preceded the red heads arrival at the door. "Big brother!" the brown eyed girl cried warmly, flinging her arms around the boy's torso and burying her face in his shirt. "I missed you!" she said with an enormous smile.
"I saw you last week …but thanks for the warm welcome! It's good to know I'm wanted somewhere." Jounouchi grinned, ruffling his sister's hair affectionately.
"Who's there?!" a muffled voice called from within the apartment. Jounouchi and Honda exchanged raised eyebrows. "It can't be…" as soon as the phrase had left the brunette's lips and tall blonde woman appeared in the doorway, eyeing the two arrivals with wide violet eyes.
"Jounouchi! Honda! It's been ages!" Mai laughed after a moment, pulling the two confused boys into a giant hug. "Man!" she said, releasing them and wrinkling her nose disdainfully. "Have you guys been drinking?"
"We're old enough to drink, Thank. You. Very. Much!" Jounouchi huffed, shooting Mai an irritated and slightly guilty look. "What's it to you?"
"Oh nothing…" she laughed, flicking her mane of curly hair over her shoulder. "You just smell like a bar threw up on you."
Honda and Jounouchi's faces flashed identical shades of beet red.
"She's right; you two do kind of smell." Shizuka giggled. "Anyway…" she continued. "Long story short Mai and I started taking the same art class down at the University and now we're roommates!" the red head smiled. "Now come on in its freezing out here!" she ushered them in through the open doorway.
The apartment beyond was small but oddly open. There was little furniture to be seen, only a black futon and a small battered coffee table made up the living room décor. A doorway off to the left led to a tiny kitchen, which stood adjacent to a hallway which, Jounouchi and Honda assumed, led to the two girl's bedrooms.
"So…" Jonouchi said after shedding his coat and getting a good look around the space. "What's that stuff for?" he pointed over at a jumble of canvasses and paint cans that stood in the far corner. A single white sheet obscured the surface of one of the canvasses.
"Oh, that just our project for art class." Shizuka said, looking over at the covered painting and gesturing to Mai and herself. "It's not quite finished yet though….umm? What are you doing?"
Jounouchi had already moseyed over to the cluster of art supplies and was lifting the end of the white sheet up curiously.
" KATSUYA !!!!!" Shizuka cried, wrenching his hand away. "You can't look at it yet! It's not done!"
Acknowledging the desperate look in his sisters eyes, the blonde relented "Alright, I won't look!" he said, holding his hands up in surrender.
"Thanks." The red head smiled once more. "Now then…Mai and I need to get the decorations out of the storage unit down the street…Can you two set up the tree while we're gone?" she pointed over to a cardboard box leaning casually against the far wall across from the art supplies.
"Ummm…sure?" Jounouchi said, eyeing the box with apprehension.
"Great!" the brown eyed girl beamed, hugging both boys tightly around the middle before taking Mai's hand and bounding towards the door. Both girls pulled on their jackets, waved and exited the building, Mai calling back over her shoulder "Be back in a few!" and then they were gone.
"I guess we should start on this tree huh?" Jounouchi called over to Honda as soon as the front door had swung closed, taking the box in his hands and turning it over so that its plastic green contents spilled out over the floor. "A little help here dude! Honda?" the blonde turned in time to see the brunette drag the white sheet down off the concealed painting.
"HONDA!" he said irritably, wrenching the cloth from his friends limp fingers and turning to throw it back over the canvass. Then he stopped. He raised an eyebrow as he took in the painting, if it really could be called that. Red, blue, purple and green lines scrawled across the white expanse in chaotic and uneven patterns. Here and there a random blot of yellow or pink would appear, as though someone had simply thrown a handful of paint at the canvass.
"What the heck is it?!" the blonde chuckled. "It just looks like a two year old on a sugar high got a hold of some paint and went to town!" he sniggered.
"I think it's called abstract art." Honda whispered "The artist expresses internal form rather than pictorial representation."
"How the hell did you know that?!" Jounouchi said incredulously, whirling around to face his friend.
The brunette shrugged, placing a piece of paper back down on the coffee table. "Shizuka wrote it down in her report."
"Well that's a relief!" the blonde said, wiping his brow in an overly dramatic fashion. "For a moment there I thought you'd actually said something intelligent!"
"Hey, I'm smart!" the brunette bristled, face going red.
"Keep telling yourself that." Jounouchi rolled his eyes and turned back to the painting. "You know…" he whispered, tilting his head slightly and squinting "If you look at it like this…then it short of looks like a fuzzy Abraham Lincoln…"
"Let me see." Honda said, striding over and mimicking Jounouchi's action. "You're right it does!" he said after a moment. "A blurry Abe wearing a purple top hat!" they both snickered.
"I bet you I could make a better one." Jounouchi said.
"What do you mean?" Honda's question was answered quickly as he turned around just in time to see a glob of red paint fly past his right ear and splash against a blank canvass.
"Dude what the heck?!" the brunette cried, gripping the side of his face defensively as though he expected another ball of paint to assault him.
"What do you think?" the blonde said, ignoring his friend's remark and gazing at the canvass. Crimson dripped down from his finger, pooling on the ground beneath his hand, not that Jounouchi noticed.
"Well…" Honda muttered, taking a step closer and examining the gigantic splotch that now marred the previously pristine canvass surface. "I think it could use some blue…." He dipped his hand into an open bucket at his feet and flung the gelatinous mass forward. It hit Jounouchi's puddle dead on and, upon contact, fanned outward, creating several rippling veins of blue.
"Nice." Jounouchi nodded in approval. "Now there's only one more thing left to fix…"
"What?" Honda turned towards his friend and froze.
Jounouchi stood, arched back and poised to throw. There was a malicious gleam in his brown eyes and a fist full of oozing red liquid held tightly in his right hand. "Oh…just your face."
"You wouldn't-" But it was already too late. The glutinous mass hit Honda square in the face.
Jounouchi's face twisted as he tried, with difficulty, not to laugh.
Honda slowly swept his hand across his face, clearing the scarlet mass from his vision and leaving a small trail of blue in its wake. "Alright man, he said slowly, shaking the red paint from his fingers and spreading his arms wide "…now come give me a hug."
"Oh no!" Jounouchi giggled, backing away from the advancing, paint splattered Honda. His foot slid backwards and collided with another paint bucket, causing its contents to flood the ground in a violet tide. "Think fast!" the blonde cried, sweeping the lilac substance into his hands and hurling it at the brunette.
Honda took the blow strait to the chest. Purple leeched through his white shirt like amethyst blood. "I know you did NOT just stain my new shirt!" the brunette bellowed, scraping the offending mass off his stomach and flinging back at the blonde.
And so it began.
"You'll never take me alive!!!!" Jounouchi hollered, diving behind the futon as a green paint projectile splattered against the stretch of wall his head had previously occupied. "Retaliation!" he screeched, lifting a pink liquid ball from the puddle beside him and hurling it towards the now unfurled Christmas tree box, behind which Honda cowered.
Honda heard the paint 'plunk' against his cardboard shield. "We can't just stay here men!" he whispered urgently to the soda cans lined neatly beside him. "The enemy will over take us…I'm going in…" The brunette placed his fingers over the can farthest to the left and shook it slightly, squeaking from the corner of his mouth, like an amateur ventriloquist, as he did so. "No sir! You can't!" the 'coke can' squealed. "You'll get caught!"
Removing his hand from the can, the brunette placed it proudly upon his chest. "I know…" he sat up straighter, adopting an overly dramatic heroic pose. "…but I have too!"
"Be good little soldiers!" he whispered, before standing. "CHARGE!!!!!!!!!" Honda cried, hoisting the box up like a shield and bowling forward.
"Oh no!" Jounouchi squeaked, chunking rainbow globules at the on coming force. "It's no use!" he cried once the brunette was less than five feet away. "His barrier is impervious! Noooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
With a triumphant grin, Honda tossed the cardboard shield aside and tackled the blonde. Both teens fell in a heap on the ground! "Surrender!" Honda yelled, his beer-breath wafting into Jounouchi's open mouth.
"Never!!!!!" the blonde giggled, trying to force the taller boy off of him. His hand traveled up to Honda's face as he attempted to move it away from his own, and then he stopped. The other was starring at him with an intensity Jounouchi had never before seen in his dark brown eyes.
Wordlessly, the taller teen slipped his hand under Jounouchi's blonde head and brought their faces closer and closer until their lips met.
"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY APARMENT!!!!" a shrill voice cried from the doorway followed by a resounding crash.
Both boys separated, lips still comically parted and covered in crimson paint, like sloppily applied cherry lipstick. Their heads turned slowly towards the doorway where Mai stood, amidst a mass of fallen Christmas boxes, her violet eyes alight with fire.
"Ummm…we can explain!"
A/N: I actually did something like this at my aunt's house…with her permission however…anyway please review…I guess…