Ketchup & Strawberries
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Kairi liked food. This wasn't to say she ate all the time, though. In fact, that statement couldn't have been further from the truth. She was one of those girls that constantly watched her figure for fear of it ballooning outwards beyond control, stipulating careful amounts to eat at every meal, never stepping over her neatly laid-out boundaries. All in all, a perfect normal teenager.
Still, just because she had a natural aversion to all things laced with sugar and sprinkled with E-numbers, it didn't mean she didn't like them.
Cupcakes, muffins, éclairs, strawberry tarts, sponge cakes covered with inch-thick icing and topped off with glacé cherries – they were all heavenly despite the fact she'd never allowed herself even a single experimental lick or chew or swallow in all her fifteen years.
Every time Sora tried to offer her any number of tempting snacklets from his moogle-print lunchbox – "come on Kairi, a doughnut! Just try one" – she'd always decline (in the politest way possible, of course).
"I just don't get you sometimes, Kai-Kai," the brunette mumbled through a full mouth, lips stained with cream, fingers sprinkled with sugar. "I know you like junk food just as much as everyone else. So what gives?"
Kairi would always shrug and mumble something about "being on a diet", spearing, cutting and quartering lettuce leaves and cucumber slices to prove her point.
She wasn't on a diet, though. Sure, she liked to watch her figure, but there was something more to it than that. Something she was sure she couldn't ever tell Sora, because the brunet would probably call her a weirdo.
It was just that everybody seemed to love chocolates and cookies and candy-coated things and Kairi couldn't help but think if they were really that wonderful, why did people eat them? It was a crying shame to devour food that looked so beautiful and smelled so delicious, and the mere thought of it made Kairi feel sick to her stomach.
Kairi loved food so much she just couldn't eat it.
She liked to classify people through use of various foodstuffs, as well, and really could not think of anything else that would make a better judge of character. Food was very much like humans, after all – sweet, sour, bitter, cold, hot, attractive, ugly, messy, the list of adjectives went on and on.
Ever since she was about three Kairi had thought of herself as a strawberry, what her red hair, perky smile and love for athletics – strawberries were a fruit, thus healthy, much like Kairi's love for netball. It all fit.
Sora, Kairi's bestest best friend ever, was a nut. She wasn't sure what sort of nut (a hazelnut? A monkeynut? A coconut?), but he was a nut all the same. Like a nut, he was physically strong, hard-headed, stubborn and spent a lot of time up trees. And, coincidentally, he'd also fallen off a lot of trees as well, much to Kairi's amusement (showing off had deadly consequences sometimes).
Riku, Kairi's second bestest best friend ever, was a tuna. Not a whole tuna fish, more like the flakes of tuna one could find in a tin, all nestled up under a blanket of brine, much like Riku hid behind a façade of aloofness and apathy.
Naminé, Riku's girlfriend, was a tub of mayonnaise. A stark white mayonnaise like the dresses she wore, a girl who was incredibly good at solving arguments and keeping things held together.
Roxas, Sora's brother, was a jar of mustard – a little hot-headed, hard to keep under control and quite the rebel, judging by the way he was often found sat outside the headmistress' office with a moody look on his face and his arms folded.
There were more, of course. A vast plethora of names were all written down in the girl's diary with little equals signs next to them and then their assigned edible, bullet points listing reasons exactly why Demyx was like a milkshake and exactly how Zexion was like an ice-cube, all taken down in blue biro in Kairi's painstakingly neat print.
Marluxia, a fruit cake.
Yuffie, an energiser drink.
Larxene, a sour sucker.
Pence, a frankfurter.
The list went on and on.
And still Kairi pushed her food to the side of her plate, sighed as she watched others tear their teeth into sugar-speckled delights, winced as throats convulsed and hands grew sticky and mouths gaped like caverns.
It was like witnessing murder, sat there in the canteen watching Sora pick at another doughnut – this one with jam filling, dribbling onto the cheap orange table-top like gooey blood. Kairi's face turned white as ash, white as mayonnaise, white as Naminé's dress.
The slip of a girl on her right turned in alarm, putting one hand on Kairi's shoulder. "What's wrong Kairi?" she asked, words sweet. Her words were too sweet, slurred slightly due to a brightly-coloured lollipop stuck into a corner of her mouth, drool running down her chin.
Kairi was going to be sick if she stayed and watched the massacre any second longer. She gagged a little, watching as everybody chewed their food like cattle – oh God, this was horrible. "No… Gotta go… Restroom…" Kairi shuddered, wincing as Naminé nodded, clashing the lollipop against her pearly teeth with a sick clack.
Dear God…
The red-head winced and got to her feet, staggering slightly, eyes and ears tuned in to the sights and sounds of food being devoured, torn apart, ripped limb-from-limb…
Maybe Kairi liked her food too much.
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After wiping her face with a blue paper towel and breathing in through her nose, out through her mouth for a good minute or two, Kairi was slowly starting to come to her senses.
She walked blindly back to the canteen as if in a daze, droplets of water sliding down the slope of her nose, from the tips of her hair, onto the floor in a cascade; drip, drip, drip. It reminded her vaguely of that nursery rhyme; the one about the spider that got washed down a drainpipe. Incy wincy spider…
The girl allowed herself a small smile at her eccentric musings, barely noticing a shock of red hair and apple-green eyes until she was on the floor, gingham schoolbag skittering off to one side.
"Oh, I'm so, so sorry!" Kairi apologised frantically, trying to pull her school skirt down over her butt to avoid any further embarrassment. She'd already walked head-first into this undeniably attractive male; did she really need to add salt to the wounds by giving him a good flash of her pretty pink panties too? Not that she supposed it would've mattered that much. The tall red-head was so damn pretty it seemed almost impossible that he was straight; slender physique, large eyes lined with 'guyliner', lips pulled back into a smirk.
Once Kairi untangled her limbs from the sorry mess that they were in and got (shakily) to her feet, flicking a few strands of damp hair out of her face, she was now able to get a clearer picture of his face; he was that kid that Roxas always hung around with.
Yep, definitely gay then. Pity.
"Nah, it's OK, princess," the boy – his name was some sort of car-part, wasn't it? Axle? Piston? Steering wheel? – replied with a cavalier grin. "People walk into me all the time – dunno why, it's not like I'm hard to spot. Your schoolbag, m'lady."
Kairi grinned foolishly and accepted the bag Axle/Piston/Steering wheel was holding out for her, a few apologies flitting from her lips like butterflies; delicate and dainty. And with fairly short life spans, she soon discovered, because Axle/Piston/Steering wheel – just call him 'the boy, Kairi – was interrupting her again, her words dying in her throat and falling to the fall.
"I told you it's OK, princess. Hey, do you want one?" he asked in a bolt-out-of-the-blue manner, rattling a box of something under Kairi's nose. "They're sort of squished 'cause you ran into me, but they're still edible."
Kairi found her eyes attacked by a vicious onslaught of red and her eyes crossed in order to follow the box's movement to her face. She blinked a couple of times and had to push the box away slightly so as to get a better look.
Ah… What had once appeared to be the scene of brutal murder was merely a plastic container full of strawberries, some indeed a tad squished, bruised and battered but not at all life-threatening. And yet, Kairi couldn't help but feel her foolish food-derived fears tying a knot in her stomach, her breath becoming erratic as she stared from the strawberries, up to Axel. Kairi couldn't eat strawberries; that was what she had classified herself as ever since she was this high!
"Don't like strawberries, hmn?" the boy asked in an amused sort of way, watching as Kairi's face contorted into one that suggested she was going to retch and use the box as a sick bag. "Well, neither do I, really. But… I do like strawberries and ketchup."
"Ketchup?"
"Sure. Why don't you try one? I think I've got a spare sachet somewhere…" Those words were accompanied by some swift rooting through numerous pockets of the boy's non-school-regulation trench coat until, finally, he presented Kairi with the prize; a (lint-covered) packet of tomato sauce. "Go on, try it."
"Uh… Okay…" Kairi said slowly, watching as Mr. Car part tore open the sachet at the opposite corner to the one you were meant to use. At least, according to the instructions printed on the back of it. Then again, what idiot needed instructions to open a packet of sauce? (Unwittingly, an image of Sora flashed across Kairi's mind.)
"A strawberry for m'lady," Axel grinned, proffering the ketchup-covered strawberry and accompanying the hand movement with a quick courtesy (the gay percentage thing was just climbing higher and higher…)
Kairi accepted the bloody piece of fruit tentatively, picking it up between the pads of her thumb and index finger as though it were diseased. She winced slightly as the contrasting smell of strawberries and ketchup entered her nostrils, face an exact replica of the one she had worn in the cafeteria before she had to run away and barricade herself in the girl's restrooms.
"Come on, Kairi. Whatever doesn't kill you can only make you stronger, right?"
Kairi blinked slowly, opening her mouth to ask how exactly her knew her name (wasn't he a year above her? Two years? Although later she figured she probably should have known better – he was one of Roxas' friends) when Mr. Car part took her rather by surprise. He closed his hands around her shoulders and bent down quick enough to give one whiplash, planting a kiss upon those open lips.
Kairi's eyebrows rose up above her hairline at that bold manoeuvre, all ready to throw him off and scream 'fire!' (it was a tried and tested fact that more people paid attention if you shouted 'fire!' than if you shouted 'rape!') but, for some reason, she didn't… Instead of pushing him away, as she had first intended, she felt her manicured nails close around the front of his trench coat, pulling him closer.
She could taste the strawberries on his lips mingled with the strange, sharp taste of artificially-enhanced ketchup, and it tasted nice; so nice, in fact, she found herself sticking her tongue in his mouth, attempting to become submerged in the bizarre blend of flavours.
Amidst all the confusion, her own strawberry had dropped to the floor, ready to be smushed under the heel of an on-coming cheerleader who would no doubt complain very loudly about the whole ordeal and shout "OMG!" at random intervals throughout the day.
Still doing that damned annoying Cheshire Cat grin (the sort that seemed to herald some sort of on-coming riddle about borogoves and mome raths), Axel drew back slowly, retrieving his box of strawberries from the floor, and Kairi couldn't help but notice his hair really was rather red. Red, just like ketchup.
Ketchup and strawberries, huh?
It was a strange combination, true, but it tasted so good.
"Want another strawberry, princess?" Mr. Car part inquired, tilting his head to one side. When Kairi nodded, his grin merely stretched across his face further, teeth shining like zippers, taking one ketchup-drenched strawberry and putting it in his mouth. "Come and get it, then."
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a.n: for lamatikah, who gave me this idea to begin with :D ketchup/strawberries axel/kairi. yay.