He is in a mood for something sweet today. Of course, nobody else is going to be making something sweet, so he has to make it himself.
No matter, he's done it plenty of times before. In fact, he almost enjoys it.
He rises out of bed early, since he is awake anyway, and silently drifts into the kitchen.
The pots and pans take no more than a minute to find, and he extracts them from the cabinets with a minimum of clatter.
The sugar and food coloring are a bit more difficult, but he eventually locates them.
He is humming, softly, tunelessly.
Not tunelessly, but a tune he tells himself that he doesn't remember, that he doesn't recognize. He pretends. He is very good at pretending.
Sometimes when he is pretending, he does it so well that it becomes real. He enjoys those moments as much as he despises them.
The sugar and water is boiling, great pans of colored liquids steaming and bubbling on the stovetop. This time he remembers to use potholders when taking the pans off the stove to cool, congeal. He doesn't like that he has to remember things like this now.
The red is the first cool enough to work with, so he dips his meticulously scrubbed hand into the pot and begins teasing the first strand out.
The sugar-candy cools much more slowly than he is used to, so he is able to do so much more with it than he used to. He has time to work in all the colors before leaving it to harden, instead of having to work in layers.
Strands of creamy brown twine with emerald green strands, and scarlet strands with cobalt strands, and all of them mingle together. The colors are blurred in places, but not entirely mixed or murky.
He delicately places his masterpiece sphere in the freezer to harden it more.
He cleans thoroughly and meticulously. Nothing is left dirty or out of place.
Finally, he is done. A quiet smile graces his face as he leaves the kitchen to await his companions' awakening.
:-:-:-:
"Morning Fai-san." Syaoran mutters as he walks into the dining room rubbing the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes.
"Fai-san is up early this morning." Sakura observes cheerily from the table. She was the first to awake and find him there already lounging on a chair.
"Yes, this world is much too nice a place to be sleeping the day away in!" Fai exclaims exuberantly, throwing his arms up in the air.
By the time Syaoran has seated himself to the right of Sakura, Kurogane is walking in.
He slouches as he walks, but does not yawn or blink tiredly. He seats himself at the last remaining chair, next to Fai and across from Sakura.
As soon as Kurogane sits down, Fai leaps up with boundless enthusiasm to fetch breakfast. It was a simple affair, consisting of omelets and toast for everyone. In his good natured mood today, he had catered to everyone's whims. Kurogane got peppers and onions in his, Sakura cheese in hers, and Syaoran broccoli. Fai's own was plain egg.
Fai sets the plates around the table with large flourishes and much ado. He gets small gasps and even a little squeal of delight from Sakura for having guessed or known their favorite types of omelet. He is very good at knowing things he shouldn't.
After the meal finishes, a slightly uneasy silence descends. They feel guilty for sitting there doing nothing, but no one wants to leave this moment.
"One more thing!" Fai jubilantly pronounces, once more leaping from his chair into the kitchen. He hadn't been planning on this until later, but now is a better moment, he is sure.
His creation is still in the freezer, and he pulls it out gently. Although it feels as hard as steel, he knows that it is waiting to break at the slightest jolt.
He sets it on a platform-platter, with a slight indent in the center to prevent it from rolling around.
Fai gracefully brings his creation into the dining room, and carefully places it on the table.
He doesn't even get gasps this time, but the wordless expressions of wonder say everything that needs to be said. Even he must admit to some surprise at how magnificent it looks glittering in the sunlight streaming through the window.
After he returns to his seat, the unsettled silence comes again. The globe is so pretty and so nice, no one wants to break it to take the first piece. Even if it is assured to taste even better than it looks, since Fai made it.
"Ahhh… Come on. Someone dig in." Fai says in a light and lilting tone.
Kurogane looks around the table. They would be stuck here forever if no one did anything. Of course, he would be the one who has to do something to get change going. He reaches out and seemingly carelessly crushes in a small part of the sphere to break a piece off from the inside out.
There was a barely perceivable shattering sound as Kurogane broke off his piece, which seems to echo in Fai's mind. He ignores it. He knows he shouldn't, but he does anyway.
"Good." Kurogane says curtly as he munches on his blue piece.
"Kuro-wan likes it? Kuro-wan has a sweet tooth?" Fai teases. Tension is broken, and things return to their easy old pattern.
:-:-:-:
Soon everyone has some, and all that is left is a bunch of shards on the platter. Syaoran, Sakura, and Kurogane go outside.
Kurogane wants to get some training in before the next world, and Sakura is going to watch, after she wakes up Mokona and gives Mokona some of the candy shards she saved.
Fai picks up the platter and heads back to the kitchen, sucking on a red piece and thinking.
Thinking is something that he tries not to do too often. It brings up too much. But right now he thinks almost absently of happy things, of fun times and rough times all spent in the company of friends. Of times he didn't feel haunted, and times he caught himself laughing and joking carelessly. Of moments he felt like everything was ok, or even good.
He also thinks he should do things like this more often, even if only to watch smiles so much more valuable than his own.