Author's note: This is in honor of my own dearly departed birthday (I'm how old!) and its my first fanfic! Please R&R!
"Where the hell is she," Tsukasa muttered to himself; as always he was looking for Makino Tsukushi the love of his life, "or the hellspawn sent to plague me," he thought darkly.
It was Friday morning and Tsukasa had just arrived at Eitoku, still unable to believe that he was currently dating a girl who did not drop everything to wait at the front for his arrival. He stomped towards the entrance to the school glowering with dark thoughts of how he would yell at her when he saw her.
"Hey, Tsukasa!" Tsukasa turned around to see Soujiro calling him. With Soujiro stood Akira and Tsukushi; Tsukasa released a breath he did not even realize he had been holding. He walked towards them quickly,
"Hey you! You didn't call me last night," he yelled at Tsukushi.
"Good morning to you too, Sunshine," Tsukushi said smiling warmly at him. The F3 stared at her stunned.
"Makino, why are you in such a good mood?" Akira asked.
"Yeah, you usually yell back at him," Soujiro added while Tsukasa came up next to her and concernedly put a hand to her forehead. "No, she seems fine," he said peering into her eyes to see if she was feverish or high or something.
Tsukushi turned red, "Is it so unheard of for me to be in a good mood!" she yelled.
The F3 sighed in relief. "Whew," Tsukasa turned to the others, "for a second, I was really worried." Tsukushi scowled at them, "Bakas! The reason I'm in a good mood is-"
"Tsukushi, Tsukushi!" The F3 and Tsukushi turned to see Kazuya and Makiko running towards them; from Kazuya's hand, they saw a bunch of balloons streaming behind the pair.
"Tsukushi-chan," panted Kazuya as they approached the group. He turned slightly to Makiko and they both focused back on Tsukushi.
"Happy Birthday!" they shouted in unison.
Tsukasa goggled, "Birthday, who's birthday? Tsukushi's!" he thought frantically.
Tsukushi was blushing slightly, "Oh you guys! Thank you so much," she exclaimed while accepting gifts from both of them.
After giving her his present, Kazuya presented her with the balloons. "I remember when we were little Tsukushi-chan loved balloons so I got some for you," he piped.
"I knew I should have killed him when I first saw him with Tsukushi," Tsukasa thought murderously. But he was also completely panicked. How had he forgotten Tsukushi's birthday! He thought furiously, why hadn't she mentioned it? Or had she when he wasn't paying attention?
"Makino," drawled a quiet voice. Everyone turned to see Hanazawa Rui strolling up. Jaws dropped. Rui gazed at them. "Is something wrong?" he asked.
"Yo man, you realize its 9 am," Akira said disbelievingly, "as in 9am in the morning!" Rui smiled a little, "Yeah." Everyone sweatdropped.
"And so what are you doing here so early?" Tsukasa shouted.
"Oh that." Rui turned to Tsukushi and held out a wrapped gift, "I came to wish Makino Happy Birthday."
Tsukasa reeled back in horror; even Rui knew it was her birthday! "And he got her a present? Just whose girlfriend did he think she was," he fumed in silence.
"Rui, thank you!" Tsukushi dumped her other presents into Makiko's hands and proceeded to rip open Rui's. "Oh, you remembered that I like poetry! And this is my favorite type too," Tsukushi said looking carefully at the book.
While she was looking at her present, everyone turns to look expectantly at Tsukasa. "Damn," he thought, starting to sweat feeling 5 pairs of eyes boring into him.
"Well, Tsukushi and I are going for a romantic dinner tonight," he improvised while thinking, "Yes! Yes! Tsukasa you are so oily….wait that doesn't sound…"
"Do you need to call in at work," he asks turning to Tsukushi.
"Oh no, remember, I told you Yuki is taking over for me today."
"Ah yeah, just checking. Haahaa. It's all a part of my master plane."
Akira wearily rubbed his face, "Do you mean plan?"
Tsukasa turned to look at him, "Plan what?" he asked confused.
Akira closed his eyes and Tsukushi patted him on his arm, "Don't bother, it won't make it past the curls."
"Anyways, getting back to the topic," Soujiro turned to Tsukasa, "dinner's nice but did you get anything for her now?" he asked, pointing his thumb at Tsukushi who was opening the presents given to her by Kazuya and Makiko.
Tsukushi looked up from opening her presents, "Dinner is fine. I'm scared of his presents; I can't afford to have the floor in my apartment collapse again."
"Hey, I didn't do that," Tsukasa yelled. "No, but I'm scared all the same. Anyway though-" Tsukushi was interrupted by the morning bell. "Oh, I'm going to class. Bye!" Tsukushi goes off towards the school with Kazuya and Makiko, the balloons streaming behind her.
"I need to make some calls," Tsukasa said to the F3 and stalked away. Tsukasa goes off frenetically getting dinner reservations and kicking himself in the ass for not realizing it was her birthday. "And everyone else remembered! Well, except Soujiro and Akira but they don't even remember who they were with last night. Damn that Rui though!" Tsukasa stopped suddenly by a thought, "Well, I could just buy her a poet. But then she would say that I was copying off Rui," He grimaced. "Hmm, what to do, what to do..." Tsukasa was pacing back and forth his head bent in thought.
"Tsukasa what's wrong?" Soujiro asked. Tsukasa looked up from his contemplation to see Akira and Soujiro walking up to him.
"Yeah, it looks like you smelled something bad," Akira quipped chuckling.
"Where's Rui," Tsukasa asked.
"Went off to bed." Tsukasa sweatdropped, "What else."
He continued his pacing with his chin in his hand. "Wondering what to do for Makino?" Soujiro asked lazily.
Tsukasa whipped around, "How did you know I forgot?"
"Are you stupid?" Soujiro demanded.
"Please don't answer that," Akira immediately put in. Tsukasa and Soujiro both glared at him and Soujiro turned back to Tsukasa. "What I mean is, you can never keep anything to yourself and if you had known it was her birthday all you would have told us for days was whatever you cooked up for Makino."
Tsukasa grimaced, "Do you think she noticed?" he asked.
"Nah," waved Akira, "she was so excited Rui remembered she didn't even pay attention."
Tsukasa saw red, "Wait till I get Rui! He's gonna wish he slept in this morning!" Tsukasa yelled stomping towards one of the exits.
"Tsukasa wait!" Soujiro and Akira ran after him. "The important thing right now is Makino!"
"Yeah, Don't lose focus!"
Tsukasa stopped, "Right, right. Tsukushi…."
"Take her to Paris for the weekend," Soujiro suggested, "this way you can entrance her in the City of Love" Tsukasa nodded his head, "and then maybe get some loving for yourself!" Tsukasa hit Soujiro in the face.
"No, take her to a spa resort. You can indulge in his and her mud treatments," Akira said in a dreamy, reminiscing voice.
Tsukasa and Soujiro turned to look at Akira.
"What? Its really relaxing," Akira defended.
Tsukasa rolled his eyes, "what else could you expect from these two?" he thought in disgust. "No, I want to get something Tsukushi would like. No wait, something she'll love!" he said and continued his pacing while the other two continued with more helpful suggestions.
"Rio!"
"No, a shopping spree!"
"A new apartment!"
"Ooh, good one!"
Tsukasa snapped his fingers, "Yosh! I've got it!" he yelled dancing around Akira.
"You mean you thought of something," Soujiro asked in disbelief.
"With your brain?" added Akira.
"Shut up! Listen to this..."
Later that night……..
Tsukushi turned to look around the posh restaurant. Tsukasa had sent over a dress (with accessories) and a massive arrangement of orchids to her apartment in the afternoon. Though she had yelled at him about the dress, in reality she was touched that he would pick out something so lovely for her. It was a red orange sheath dress that ended high in front revealing her ankles and fanned out into light orange and yellow tail in the back.
When he had come to pick her up, he himself snazzily dressed in a suit, (and remaining speechless for a full ten minutes) he settled her into the back of the car and got in after her. After listening to her stern lecture on the evils of spending money needlessly, he turned to pull something out of a bag next to him. Tsukushi's eyes widened as Tsukasa wrapped her gently into a yellow pashmina. He brought his face close to hers, "So you don't get cold," he said.
Tsukushi melted, "How can you argue against such sweetness?" she thought and wrapped her fingers around his hand.
"O.k." Tsukasa began after they had finished dinner, "so…here's your present" he said bluntly and dropped a wrapped box in front of her.
"Tsukasa! Thank you..." Tsukushi trailed off as she unwrapped and opened her gift.
She was quiet for so long that Tsukasa got worried and started to explain, "It's a scrapbook. I know you don't have a camera and even if you did, you would never have the time to take pictures so……"
Tsukasa became even more worried as Tsukushi remained with her head bowed, her hair masking her face. "Here, if you don't like it I'm going to throw it out!" Tsukasa grabbed the edge of the book that was in her hands.
Suddenly her hand flew onto his and she turned to face him, "Tsukasa, you made this for me?" she asked softly.
Tsukasa began to sweat a little. "What if she hated it?" he thought abruptly. "Yeah" he replied.
"Now I know how you felt when I gave you those cookies," she said smiling and Tsukasa felt his heart lift up into his throat. "You made this for me," she exclaimed excitedly and began looking through the book.
Tsukasa smiled in relief; she liked it!
She delicately turned the pages with pictures of Makiko, Kazuya and Sakurako at school. There was a picture of Yuki at the dango shop, two add-in pictures of Shizuka and Tsubaki. There were even pictures of her parents and Susumu. And of course there were several of the F4 in various locations. Tsukushi raised her eyebrow at the tenth picture of the F4.
"Hey, I had too! Akira and Soujiro were acting like divas!"
Tsukushi looked up with wondering eyes when she saw pictures of Kin-san and even Amon.
"Don't even ask!" Tsukasa looked the other way and grimaced over how he had actually gone to see the other guys. "Ugh. The things he did for Tsukushi," he sighed. He turned back to watch her go through the album.
"Wah!" "Kyaa!" "Ohhh, how sweet!" she exclaimed while turning the pages carefully.
When she had turned to the last page, she stopped, "Tsukasa, this is empty," she said, tapping her finger against the blank spot and looking up at him.
"Haha, not for long," he said and snapped his fingers.
As if he had been standing waiting for this signal, a waiter hurried up. "Yes, Doumyouji-sama?" he asked almost prostrating himself on the ground.
"Here," Tsukasa thrust a camera into his hands, "take a picture of me and my girlfriend."
"Tsukasa!" Tsukushi exclaimed and turned to the waiter, "that is, if you wouldn't mind, could you please take a picture of us?" she asked, smiling at him. The waiter nodded as if his head were on a spring.
Tsukasa smirked and threw his arm around Tsukushi bringing her closer; he started to blush a little when he felt Tsukushi brush her lips against his ear.
"You forgot didn't you? That it was my birthday today?" she whispered.
He swiftly turned to look at her. "What! How could you think something like that?" he spluttered out.
"Baka, your digital cam records the date and time of your pictures." She looked into his eyes and smiled. "You ran around all day today taking snaps didn't you?" she asked, gently wrapping her hands around his shoulders.
"Well, I mean, Tsukushi you can't blather about all your poor people activities and then stick in something important like your birthday in the middle and expect me to remember, I mean come on…" Tsukasa blustered, unable to believe he had been found out.
The waiter, who had been fiddling with the camera, had finally discovered the shutter switch, "Say cheese at three! One…"
Tsukushi leaned in and brought her lips to Tsukasa's ear, "Tsukasa,"
"Two…"
"I love you."
"Three!"
And the final picture in Tsukushi's Birthday Album was a picture of Tsukushi kissing the cheek of a beet-red Tsukasa.
(8/30/06 A/N: Sorry no update here! It's just that the original one was so badly formatted that I had to edit and re-post it.)