A/N: Just a little idea twirling around in my head, inspired by airplane snacks...
Disclaimer: Grapes, cool hair, anesthetics in morphine needles and ostriches. Among the things I do not have in my possession, is also the Fruits Basket series.
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Kyou lounged around the kitchen, trying to gulp down the remaining water from the glass so he could go back to his room and sleep off the rainy night. Oddly enough, listening to the downpour made him thirsty, but he had poured himself too much water and now didn't want to waste the rest of it. His eyes wandered from the mismatched curtains, to the oven that was busy cooking something up at this ungodly hour, to the time on the microwave to confirm his assumption.
9:23.
It wasn't that late.
Yet the house was uncharacteristically quiet. Shigure was being held at gunpoint by his editor in his room, and Yuki was buried to the chest in student council paperwork in his room that Manabe had so generously left for him.
The house read his thoughts and made noise.
He strained his ears to listen to poorly muffled sobs from the other room, accompanied by the occasional squeaky hiccup. He put down his glass on the counter and strode into the other room.
Tohru sat at the small table, a very large bag of animal crackers lying open in front of her, with an assortment of said crackers in a line on the table surrounded by crumbs. He raised an orange brow, no longer alarmed by Tohru's strange antics, all caused by her uniquely absurd train of thoughts, which occasionally derailed and maybe even crashed from time to time.
"What are you crying about?"
She looked up at him, not bothering to wipe the tears off her saucer-sized puppy eyes.
"I- I was trying to.." sniff. "To make the zodiac-"
"Out of animal crackers?" He interrupted, attempting to be discreet in his amusement, but just barely containing the laughter from his voice.
"Y-yes.. But, but.. they didn't have Hatori or you!" She cried. Now his other brow joined the other somewhere higher on his forehead. He could understand why they wouldn't have a seahorse, but a cat was a pretty basic and common animal. He felt slightly offended. Mostly because that meant they had the rat. Who would eat a rat?
He sighed and sat across from her, and began rummaging through the package. At last, he found it. He grabbed the cookie-model of a horse and waltzed right back into the kitchen, grabbing his unfinished glass of water and setting it on the table in front of her. He sat down and held the horse in front of her face. He just held it there for a while. She stared. At least she was too confused to keep crying. After another moment of holding back a smirk, he dropped the horse on his glass of water. He watched as her saucer-eyes followed the cookie, not a trace of realization in them.
"...Sea-horse." He clarified. Her eyes widened even more and she gasped; she could hear the smile in his voice then, and he had to admit he was pretty proud of his cleverness.
She almost smiled, keyword almost, before her shoulders slumped once again.
"But.. what about you?"
He didn't get what she meant at first. It hit him a second or two later- the cat! She meant the cat.
He grabbed the bag and descended on his mission to make his girl happy. It took him a while, but he figured it out. He sighed and took out an unidentifiable creature.
"You see this messed-up, shapeless thing that sorta looks like someone colored in a squiggly 'Q' with two ear-shaped-tumors on its ass end?"
She nodded.
"Unfortunately, this is the closest thing to a cat those morons could mold into a cookie." Certainly, cats were much better-looking than these animal crackers made them seem... right?
She sniffed, and sent him an appreciative look. "Thank you, Kyou.. I'm sorry for having you go through the trouble of all this for me.." She blushed.
"Nah, it's not that big a deal, 'Sides, it wasn't that good, Hatori's dissolving." He watched as she squealed and dipped her hand in the glass, trying to save the soggy remains of the 'sea' horse.
"Tohru.. Why do you cry so much?" He'd meant it as a nonchalant question, but regretted it the instant she got all flushed and pulled back her dripping hand from the glass. He was going to apologize, not expecting her to actually try to answer.
"Well, my mama always said it was healthy to-..." She stopped herself there, hands flying under the table to bunch up her skirt, where her eyes were now fixed as her face reddened with embarrassment. She sure did blush with amazing ease.
He sighed. "If you want to mention your mom, that's okay. I thought we'd been through this before." He spoke quietly, and met her gaze, holding it there.
"It's okay to have a role model, to have just one person who gave you all these lessons of life, so you can put them to good use and so when the time comes, you can pass them on. Like for example, Shishou was the only one who taught me everything I know, and I'm proud of that, so I can say it." It wasn't completely true. She'd taught him plenty. So much he was so grateful for. But he wasn't completely sure he was ready to share that confession that made her eyes shine all happy-like, and he could feel the warmth radiating from her like a heated bulb. He could not compare her to a fire, because she could not burn.
"So then when the time comes that I have to share this, I could pass on what you've told me, and then I can proudly say that Kyou-kun was the one that taught me this!"
He couldn't help it. He broke out into his trademark awkward smile. He leaned over to kiss her and her face went straight back to its only other setting- red.
It really, truly surprised him sometimes how such a klutzy space-cadet as she could contain this unfathomable amount of wisdom in her small person. Maybe the secret of her wisdom was her simple-minded ways.
..No, no, there was not one dim bone in her body.
She gasped. "Oh my goodness, I left the oven on!" She whipped around to lunge for the kitchen.
BAM!
"Ow! Agh, since when has that support beam been there?!"
...Well, maybe just one.