Dresses are a Boy's Best Friend

Disclaimer: This is a purely non-profit story for entertainment purposes only. All characters of Legal Drug belong to their respective owners.

(Slight) Warning: As you may have noticed, this contains a small reference to something in the 3rd manga. There aren't any major spoilers, but it may not make perfect sense if you haven't read the 3rd manga yet. Notice I said perfect sense; you'll understand the story, but the reference might seem a little strange. This, of course, contains yaoi. (I'm assuming that if you read Legal Drug, however, that obviously doesn't bug you).

Author's Notes: Umm… yeah. More weirdness that spewed out from my mind. Occurs after the 3rd manga, before the 4th. That's about all I had to say… so… sayonara for now!

Dresses are a Boy's Best Friend

'I can't believe this,' Kazahaya thought angrily, face flushing a brilliant crimson. 'How did I manage to end up like this again!'

"Lift your arms up a little, dear," Mrs. Fujimoto said to him, and Kazahaya reluctantly did as he was told.

They were on another mission, of course; another mission that he had accepted without knowing what it would require him to do. As it turned out, Kakei had only wanted them to acquire some thread… a good length of some green thread that they were supposed to recognize as soon as they saw it (owing to its magical properties or something of the sort). It hadn't sounded very hard; Kakei had even told them the store it was going to be in. It was a little dressmaking and alteration shop that was reasonably famous, sitting in the middle of a large plaza and owned by the old and talented Mrs. Fujimoto. Having no other way to get into the back room of the store to look for their object, both he and Rikuo had applied for a job. Unfortunately, Mrs. Fujimoto had declared that she really only needed one worker… a clerk/cashier type to handle all her transactions and bookkeeping. Since Kazahaya had no idea how to manage accounts, Rikuo was given the job. Furious (and not to be outdone by that jackass), Kazahaya had pleaded with Mrs. Fujimoto to give him a job… any job, so long as he could work. She had listened to him patiently, her failing eyesight causing her to squint at him in something akin to a glare. He had held his breath, waiting, hoping… in the end, she had declared that she did indeed have a job for someone his size, as long as he accepted it. Too overjoyed to ask what his job would be, he had acquiesced as soon as the words were out of the old woman's mouth, and turned to stick his tongue out at Rikuo.

'Damn it, damn it, damn it!' Kazahaya cursed his own stupidity, still hearing Rikuo's triumphant laughter echoing in his ears. Of course he had to end up in a dress; it was almost inevitable. When Mrs. Fujimoto had meant 'someone his size'… she had meant that he would be perfect to use as a model for her dresses. He was the average size of the girls who ordered dresses from her, Mrs. Fujimoto had told him, and it was much easier to have a real person as a model versus a mannequin, since she could get him to move his arms about to see how well the sleeves fit, or get him to hold a piece of fabric while she stitched the hem. The only thing she had to complain about was that he had no breasts, and that made it a little more difficult for her to proportion the chest. Kazahaya felt all the blood in his body rush to his face at that moment, and Rikuo had laughed so loudly that some of the birds outside had flown away in fright. Kazahaya had glared at his partner, but that was until Mrs. Fujimoto had declared that once she had these express orders out of the way, she would make a breast mould for him to wear.

At the first opportunity they got, the two boys had gone into the storeroom of the store to pick up what they came for. To their utter horror, this 'storeroom' was more like a 2-storey library: lined with shelves all around, and on the shelves were hundreds and hundreds of boxes.

"Err…" Kazahaya was aghast. "Don't tell me that we have to find the thread in all that…" he was about ready to cry.

"Kakei's jobs are never easy," Rikuo shrugged, and opened the box on the shelf closest to him. "Well, it doesn't look like she sorts by colours," he said sarcastically. "Start looking if you ever want to get out of here."

Whenever the Mrs. Fujimoto was busy with a customer, the two of them would sneak back to search a few more boxes. They had found loads of green thread (it seemed to be the old lady's favourite colour), but the disconcerting part was that they might have already found their prize and not known it. Kakei's description of the thread was weak at best, and Kazahaya had felt no sort of magical presence any time he was ever in that room.

As it was, Kazahaya had been standing on the same stool, in the same dress, for nearly two hours. It was a hot day, and it was even more stifling under the many layers of fabric. Although her eyesight was no better than a bat's, the old woman really could see flaws where dresses were concerned… and she was a perfectionist to boot. She had been trying to get the fabric to hang a certain way for hours, and Kazahaya was about ready to faint. It was more than a relief to him when she finally gave it up as a lost cause and told him to take the dress off.

"We'll work on this one instead," she smiled, handing him a blue satin gown trimmed with lace. "It won't take long, I promise. Then you can take a break."

He had just slipped the thing over his head when the phone rang, and Rikuo called out, "It's Mrs. Kichira, she wants to know if her order's ready."

At the name, Mrs. Fujimoto started.

"My word!" she exclaimed, and took the phone from Rikuo. "Yes, Mrs. Kichira… yes, I'll have it done for you by tomorrow."

She hung up the phone and turned back to Kazahaya with a determined look. "Take that thing off, dear," she said to him kindly. "I'm afraid you'll have to work a little harder today. It completely slipped my mind that I had Mrs. Kichira's order to finish for tomorrow, and I've barely started. Now wait here, I'll just get my things."

As she bustled away from him, Kazahaya slipped the dress off his head and hung it on the hanger. He felt eyes on his back, and turned to find Rikuo starting intently at him.

"What!" he said irritably, knowing that Rikuo was bound to make fun of him.

"Oh nothing," Rikuo said coyly, the familiar smirk already on his lips. "I was just thinking that you seem to be wearing dresses a lot of the time…"

"Shut up!" Kazahaya fumed, and almost threw something at the (laughing) bigger boy when Mrs. Fujimoto bustled back in. Something hit him like a wave, and he knew Rikuo must've felt it too because he stopped laughing immediately. Both turning to look at Mrs. Fujimoto, they found that she wasn't doing anything differently. She had in her hand her scissors, measuring tape, a tray of pins, what appeared to be part of a dress draped over her shoulder… and a small spindle of green thread in her hand.

Kazahaya looked over at Rikuo to signal 'this is it', but that turned out to be entirely unnecessary. Mrs. Fujimoto was just getting the material pinned onto Kazahaya's small frame when three giggling girls entered the store. When they saw Rikuo, their giggling decreased slightly, only to be replaced by conspiratorial whispers (that really weren't whispers at all, because Kazahaya would hear them quite clearly).

"Wow, who's he?" one of them giggled to the other two. "He wasn't here before."

"What a hunk," the tallest one sighed, and the other two giggled again. "We really have to come here more often…"

For some reason, their girlish talk irritated him more than he could say. He really didn't know why, but having people talk about Rikuo like that really pissed him off. 'It's probably because I know what a jerk he really is,' he thought to himself, 'and it's so annoying to see people think he's some sort of angel…'

In his annoyance, he had shifted around on his stool and served in annoying Mrs. Fujimoto. "Stand still!" she berated him. He stopped wriggling, but the girls were still talking and he was still aggravated.

"He's so big… and I bet in more ways than one!" they kept on giggling. "Hey, why don't you go and talk to him?" the two suggested to the tallest girl, who was obviously their ringleader.

"Do you think I should?" she asked, and they nodded and giggled in reply. She sauntered over to the counter and leaned far, far over it to talk to Rikuo, but Kazahaya couldn't hear their conversation over the giggling of her two friends.

"Kudo!" Mrs. Fujimoto snapped, finally fed up with his fidgeting. "Well, I can see you're not going to be any use to me so long as they're here…" and Mrs. Fujimoto irritably went to greet the girls, and hopefully get them out of the store as soon as possible.

Kazahaya took the opportunity to grab the thread and slip quietly into the back room. He had just cut off a sizeable amount and stuffed it in his pants pocket when Rikuo appeared.

"What are you doing here?" Kazahaya glared.

"Making sure you don't screw up," Rikuo replied, smirking. "Do you have it?"

"Yeah, I have it." He pulled the thread out of his pocket, and opened his hand for Rikuo's inspection. "Satisfied?"

"Oh, I could be."

"Don't you want to get back to your girlfriend?"

Rikuo simply laughed at him. "What's the matter? Jealous?"

"Jealous of what!" the room was starting to feel a little too hot for his liking.

Rikuo laughed again (which annoyed Kazahaya even more), and said softly, "I don't like her. And nothing happens unless it's mutual, remember?"

Caught off guard, Kazahaya was reminded of the words Rikuo had said to him under the Tree of Sweet Nothings.

"You said that to me once," he reaffirmed quietly, looking straight into the other boy's eyes. "What did you mean, Rikuo?"

The look Rikuo gave him was so uncharacteristically soft that he found he couldn't look away. Rikuo reached for a strand of his hair and toyed with it between his fingers. "It means that I'm not going to do anything to you unless you want me to."

Suddenly nervous, Kazahaya looked down at his hand to avoid Rikuo's gaze, but found that the thread staring back at him was the exact same colour as the eyes he had been trying to evade.

"Hey, this thread matches your eyes!" he exclaimed, but realized too late that Rikuo wasn't listening. Before he knew what was going on, he felt warm lips press against his own, and warm arms circle his waist. Feeling completely overpowered (even though Rikuo was holding him in the gentlest of touches), he went limp in the embrace.

When Rikuo had finally drawn away, Kazahaya's brain didn't function and he found that the room felt even hotter than before.

Rikuo smiled and walked away, calling back over his shoulder, "See you later, princess."

Finally regaining his senses, Kazahaya only had enough time to open his mouth before Mrs. Fujimoto bustled back in to make him work again.

-

(Back at Green Drugstore, in their room)

"What the hell were you doing back there?"

"Kissing you, what'd it look like?"

"You said you wouldn't do anything unless I wanted you to!"

"Oh, you so wanted it."

END


AN: I seem to have spawned a series, almost, of Legal Drug stories that end in this manner (yes, perhaps to your chagrin, there are more). I feel compelled to write a sequel… but we'll see how that turns out.