The second part is here! There's a surprise in it for y'all who can choke through it. Once again, y'all who were here for Straight Lines, don't be discouraged. It'll be lurking about in the darker corners of Yukiru fanfiction by the end of the month. Or at least trying to.

Running Water

Soap, shampoo, and towels in hand, the two ventured into the forest while pretending the other person wasn't there. Yuki had considered hugging Tohru and changing into a rat to bathe simply to relieve the brunette of inevitable embarrassment. Tohru had thought the same thing, but then she made the connection that when Yuki was a rat, he was naked – an idea she hadn't delved into before. She started humming to cover the thought. This was neither the place nor time for embarrassment. So the idea went without true consideration.

They reached the pond together, standing barely a foot apart, shoulder to shoulder. They stared wide-eyed at each other for a moment, very determinately trying not to attempt conversation and thoroughly sound like a dork or Shigure. Then Yuki suddenly turned and strode away, blurting, "I'll just-…"

"And I guess I'll-…" Tohru called after him, completing their combined success at sounding like a dork.

Well then. To work. And ignore the man behind the curtain. Tohru stripped to her underwear and waded into the pond until she was waist-deep. She lathered up her hair, fingers sprawling on her scalp. Was it the man behind the curtain or the man in the closet? Her hands did the work for her. Tohru had the secret ability to wash her hair perfectly. She drew out all the dead hair and kept her scalp clean painlessly. It was yet another skill her mother had taught her when Tohru had insisted on growing her hair out.

Yuki was having no such luck. His hair – also grown out by weeks of indifference – liked to tangle with things. Buttons, branches, fingers… The list was never-ending. Today's victim happened to be a wet plant of some kind that had been transferred to his hair when he was rinsing it. Cackling wickedly, his hair had pounced with silver claws gleaming. He pulled at the plant impatiently. He could almost hear Tohru calling out, worried, "Sohma-kun, it's been half an hour. Kyo-kun will be up soon. Do you need help?" And then – oh please God, no – coming after him. The last thing he needed was to be naked except for his boxers cursing at nothing while tugging some indescribable goo out of his hair in front of a girl he… he… Well, whatever. It would be bad.

He gave up on the plant, swearing by every fiber in his being that he would cut it out of his hair – hell, all of his hair if it was required- as soon as he was home, and quickly finished scrubbing down. He waited a couple of minutes, idly drying off. If he walked back to where Tohru was before she was finished… He blushed, feeling all the eyes of the forest focus on him to witness his descent into lechery. He cradled his head in his hands. It was such an easy slope to slip down. Especially when life provided him with thousands of banana peels around the edge.

He'd long ago gotten used to living with a girl in the house. In fact, most of the time, it was hard to even think of Tohru as a girl. Okay, practically every molecule in his being was electric with the knowledge that Tohru was a girl, but she wasn't a girl. Not like the balloon-brains who bobbed around him at school, all airy gossip about nothing. He slowly began to walk back towards where Tohru was.

No, Tohru wasn't a girl. She was something better, something beautifully intricate yet simple. The Golden Rectangle in the petals of a flower, its delicate leaves and stem giving way to strong roots that firmly held it to Earth. But the true beauty of the flower floated above the earth, heart full of sky and sun. The silver-haired teen smacked the side of his head with his hand. It was too early for extended metaphors.

Tohru, meanwhile, was just pulling her blouse back over her hair when she spotted Yuki wandering toward her, still in his boxers. His gray eyes were focused elsewhere, but they soon settled on the brunette, zeroing in on her as he reached speaking distance. Yuki said almost too cheerfully, "Are you ready to go, Honda-san?"

"….Yuki-kun?"

He studied her downcast eyes and pink face. Was the goo that noticeable? He replied, "Yes?"

"Your pants."

"Yes?"

"You forgot your pants."

Suddenly, the goo was the least of his problems.

It wasn't like Tohru hadn't seen Yuki's boxers before. Or, in fact, Yuki naked before. The curse had swiftly dealt with the latter, and laundry duties to the former. There was just a natural disconnect between person and underwear. It is a human ambition to see as little of one's acquaintances in their underwear as possible. To see them in their underwear does bad things to a person's mind. Tohru's had to be resuscitated.

"I'll just –" He said, backing away, as if not to startle her.

"I'll-see-you-back-at-the-house-breakfast-if-I-can-bye-Yuki-kun!"

There was a minute of silence as Yuki slowly tried to unfreeze parts of his body so he could at least put his pants on. But the horror of it all had tensed every muscle into a taut mass of ropes. It wasn't until the sun bleached the lovely violets from the sky that he was able to stumble his way back to Shigure's house.

Tohru had given up on cooking breakfast. If Shigure couldn't provide water and electricity, then she couldn't provide hot food. Simple as that. She reached far back into the cupboard and drew out an aged cereal box. The brunette stared at it for a moment, shook her head, and bravely stuck her hand into the open box.

A few minutes later, after practically boiling her hand with hot water and anti-bacterial soap and deducing that whatever was inside the cereal box was not suited for eating (or even composting), Tohru settled in with some yogurt. She heard Yuki enter the house and venture upstairs to get dressed. She hoped he wasn't too embarrassed. It would be dreadful if he would never meet her eyes again. She couldn't imagine –

And that was the moment that Honda Tohru, hair still dripping pond water down her back, realized that she was in love with Sohma Yuki.

So that's the surprise. It doesn't end there. The chapters are short, but I can't think of it in longer bits without my brain hurting a little. Think of it like fifteen minute shows rather than thirty-minute ones. The third and last part will be out whenever it is out, probably before July.

Until then, ja ne.