A/N: SO UH. HI GUYS. Guess what I started reading again? Air Gear. Air Gear Air Gear Air Gear. I cannot tell anyone who was waiting for an update of Eye of the Storm how sorry I am that it dropped off the face of the earth. I can't make any promises, but I can tell you all that I'm working on catching up in Air Gear, and that I plan on rereading all of Eye of the Storm and seeing if I dub it salvageable. It's..pretty damn old at this point.

BUT. I thought I could at least write a fic for my dear Kazu's birthday. Happy January 23rd, everybody! I wrote this all today and it's rough and probably OOC, but. I had to at least get back into it. I love Air Gear too much to ignore.

I LOVE ALL OF YOU. SO MUCH. I ALSO LOVE THESE BOYS WHO ARE NOT : Ikki, Kazu, and Air Gear are regrettably not mine, this fic however, is.

Much much love,

Masi

Kazu rolled over, nose and face buried deep in the sweet cotton of the freshly washed pillowcase. Now, Kazu wasn't a huge fan of waking up. Not at all. But inhaled slowly and deeply, accepting the fact that he needed to get up and that the soft silence was ready to be broken. The sunlight from his window shone past his thin pillowcase and aimed for his closed eyelids, tinting his dark world red, and he grumbled lightly as he turned his face away from the window, keeping it smothered in his pillow as he continued his slow waking process.

The boy was in the middle of another long inhale when he noticed another scent coming into his lungs. A slight note of…was that chocolate? He blinked his eyes open, and saw nothing. Then he tried again, squeezing the sleep and the sting of the cold room's winter air out of his eyes. Wait, Kazu wondered, why is it so cold and shit inside? When he opened his eyes again, he saw a cake on his bedside table and a Crow sitting on his windowsill.

"Ikki, what the hell? How long have you been there?" Kazu brought his forearm up to his face and shaded his blue-grey eyes to peer at his friend.

Ikki grinned smugly. "Wouldn't you like to know."

Kazu frowned. "Why are you here?" he asked, cake temporarily forgotten until Ikki pointed it out again.

"Happy Birthday, dude."

Kazu blinked, looking from Ikki to the cake, and then back to his messy haired friend. "Thanks…" Kazu mumbled, feeling mildly embarrassed. It was just like Ikki, the point on bluntness that Kazu could never hope to mimic. "You didn't make this, did you?"

Ikki scowled. "That was rude. Of course I did."

Kazu eyed the cake suspiciously.

"With Ringo's help, of course," Ikki added on, amused by Kazu's wariness. "Don't be a dick."

Kazu's expression relaxed and he grinned. "Thanks." If Ikki was willing to actually ask Ringo for help with something, he really meant it to be worthwhile; Ringo normally just criticized half of the stupid things Ikki tried to do whenever he gathered up the testosterone to ask for help.

Ikki grinned back. "No problem." He raised up his right hand, and Kazu only had time to see the sharp glint of something sharp and metallic before Ikki launched it.

The blonde dodged with a quick jump backwards, and a small metal fork bounced off of the side of the plate that the cake was placed on. It angled off to the left, falling and bouncing on the floor with mildly jarring tink of metal on wood.

"Tch, I missed," Ikki pouted, bottom lip jutting out in protest of the failure. "Pick that up and you can eat."

And Kazu sighed, grinning none the less. There was always a limit to Ikki's blatant actions of kindness. He crawled out of his bed and picked up the fork, sitting back onto his bed next to where Ikki had just plopped himself.

"Hey, AT's off the bed, Ikki."

"Mm," Ikki complied reluctantly, uncrossing his legs. Kazu took the flat complacency as a birthday present as well.

"Hey, Ikki," Kazu mumbled through his first mouthful of cake. "Why chocolate?"

"Because I like chocolate." Ikki grinned, puffing his chest out.

"But it's my birthday and you know I like vanilla." Kazu took another bite, honestly not giving a shit about the type of the cake – it was damn good. Ringo knew her stuff, and Ikki knew his taste testing.

"That's why I made it vanilla cake. The frosting's chocolate."

"So I suppose you plan on eating all of it?" Kazu scowled and moved it away from the crow. "Because it's mine, dick."

"No no," Ikki disagreed. "I won't take even one bite of the cake."

Kazu twitched his mouth to the right. Somehow he didn't believe his friend's response. Why the hell would his take his preference into consideration if he didn't get something out of it? "What's your motivation?" Kazu peered over at Ikki, placing the cake carefully back on its place atop his bedside table.

Ikki grinned. "This," he responded, leaning in forward and stealing a deep kiss from the birthday boy.

Kazu froze up, stunned. This wasn't the first time Ikki had kissed him, no, but Kazu had assumed those other times to be a joke, or just a drunken prank. And he sure as hell didn't know how he felt about the concept yet, either. But Ikki's grip on his shoulders was unrelenting, and Kazu shut his eyes to stop staring at Ikki's intense expression and own closed eyes.

All he could notice was how long the guy's eyelashes were and how his eyebrows were furrowed lightly with determination. So he shut his lids and tried to contemplate his own feelings of the matter, tasting the way the chocolate disappeared from his mouth and was replaced with…something else.

Mostly Ikki's tongue. Was that normal for a second or third kiss? The boy wasn't exactly sure, but Ikki let up once the entire taste of the frosting was gone from his mouth.

Ikki then took a finger, ran it across the top of the cake and smeared it on Kazu's cheek. Kazu opened his mouth to protest but lost possession of his mouth again when the other boy kissed him hard one more time, took a big lick from the icing on his cheek, and then vaulted himself out of Kazu's window with one last "Happy Birthday!"

Kazu sat on his bed, dumbfounded. How was someone supposed to respond to that? Ikki sure wasn't drunk, that was for sure. He only really got ahold of alcohol with Onigiri snagged some from his dad's shop. And the plan had obviously taken some premeditation, unless Ikki had originally planned on eating the cake with him, instead of…yeah.

The blonde laid back down on his bed, legs hanging off and hair falling back off of his face. He brought his right hand up to his face and brushed the remaining frosting off of his cheek and looked at his skeptically before licking it off of the back of his hand.

One thing was for sure though; Kazu had to admit he liked the taste of chocolate frosting a little bit – no, a lot bit – more now.

"Damned bastard."