The Only Exception
snow
"The driveway needs to be shovelled."
"I sincerely hope you have fun."
"I meant together... Yakumo?"
"We should just leave it."
She draws her hand out from under the blinds and sharply turns to glare at him but she can only see the his profile as he has his eyes trained on an old second-hand Higashino book. It takes a few moments of silence, including extra hard effort on Haruka's side because glaring is never an easy task, for him to finally glance at her and reluctantly lower the book from his face. He lets out a small sigh and it's clear to Haruka that he would rather delve further into Detective Galileo's deductions than have this discussion but there was a time and place.
He stares directly back, rolls his eyes and says, "We don't even have a car yet. It's unnecessary." His fingers are practically twitching to raise the book up again but he tries to resist.
"But we need to take care of our house!" There is a tinge of disgruntlement and Haruka tries to keep it at bay. It wasn't too unusual for Yakumo to do this whenever she brought up topics fixing things up in the house. She is sure it was a mix of laziness and rational thinking but she's even more sure that laziness was the largest factor.
It's quiet except for his fingers tapping against the book. "If the homeowners don't care too much then I don't see why anyone else should." He glances past her to the scene of bulky winter jackets and people with long sticks and plenty of white surrounding them and judging by the way his face scrunches up, she guesses he'd rather not join.
She takes a few steps toward him and he thinks it's an attempt at an intimidation tactic because now he has to turn his head higher to look at her face. "That's not the point. Neither of us have had to do something like this before and... I think it would be n—" and Yakumo almost lets out a sigh of relief when Haruka walks away to answer the door.
She lets out a whispered, "That's odd," when she sees something in the windows to indicate that the doorbell-ringer is not a usual guest. Anyone other than Gotou would be an unusual guest, she amends, but the old man usually knocks while his assistant simultaneously rings the doorbell.
Haruka hears Yakumo's quiet footsteps stop a few feet behind her and she opens the door enough to be courteous. It's four children, three are two-thirds her height and one that's about a head shorter than the rest. She takes note that they're all boys as they raise their faces to look at her.
"Hello, ma'am." She's curious but still gives them a polite smile. The tallest grins back at her and continues, "I'm sure you have noticed that today isn't a day for the beach. But rather one that takes hard..." He looks down and one of the boys beside him whispers something, "labour." This time, they all grin. "We have a solution for that."
In a span of seconds, there's a whole bunch of shuffling and muffling and more whispering and all of a sudden, there is an oddly shaped human jumble of human limbs covered in winter jackets that slightly resembles a cheering position. "Pretty Boy Shovelling Troupe!"
From the left, "We will." Right, "Kindly and perfectly." Bottom, "Shovel your driveway." Top, "At a rea... reason-ah... low rate." She looks up to see a smile full of baby fat and teeth and boyish charm from the youngest of the troupe and something makes her want to crush him to her chest.
It's back to the oldest, "A fine young lady like you," Haruka swears she hears a snort coming from behind her so she responds by clenching a fist behind her back, "should've have to work so hard to have your driveway looking spotless. So here we are, ready to help to work and look good while doing it." Now Haruka's the one who wants to snort. "So what do you say?"
There is an array of situations that surround the basic concept of her rejecting their offer and she is in the middle of eliminating her choices when she chime of the phone ringing interrupts her. Yakumo hardly ever picks up the phone, at least when Haruka's there, because he practically the role of answering all the phones within her vicinity. She steps back, softens her smile and skids away with a, "I'll get someone else to talk to you."
She walks past him swiftly to retrieve the phone but manages to mumble out, "Let them down easy," and the innocent look, the one where her bottom lip juts out a tiny bit, doesn't go unnoticed by Yakumo either.
She greets the person on the phone and faintly hears Yakumo's footsteps stop at the before no further sounds are heard after his own greeting to the boys.
The phone call takes slightly longer than she expected, Haruka is never good with letting down telemarketers especially when they offer such appealing deals and she just ends up encouraging them to tell her more details when she should be giving them a negative response.
She walks into the living room to find Yakumo lounging on the couch and she is in a good mood before her eye catches a bunch of little boys holding shovels in her driveway. She can almost hear sirens going off in her head when she turns to glare at Yakumo once more.
"It's for a good cause, I swear." He doesn't even give her the decency to look up from his book this time.
She almost bites down too hard on her tongue. "Don't tell me—they're going to restore a hospital in Cambodia."
He ignores her blatant sarcasm. "They're going to buy new trading card packs for some show and there was something about a video game," it is lazily drawn out and Haruka should be even more angry at his attitude but she fleetingly wonders if he was ever interested in such things. Maybe Gotou knew of such a Yakumo. "I also promised a tip if they do really well. It feels so nice to inspire such motivation in young people." He's mocking her.
"We were barely able to afford this house, we have a mortgage dragging us down and you think we should spend our money on this? What happened to shovelling not even being unnecessary?"
He sighs while still looking at his book. "It's good to help the neighbours out. Besides, neither of us have had to do something like this before so at least now we know the job is being done right."
Haruka lives with a jerkface and she knows it and she wants to tell him just that. But instead, "But that doesn't make the fact that we're losing money disappear. It only makes our money disappear."
He looks to her with such finality that she wavers when he says, "You worry too much." She reluctantly lets it go, knowing the pair of heels she bought for her friend were probably more expensive than whatever rate the kids were asking for.
"But Yakumo. They're children, that youngest one doesn't even look like he's in fourth grade." She's pacing now and she doesn't even pay any attention to whether or not Yakumo is still listening to her rambles on child labour and stories about things she heard about the cruel things sports equipment factories have done.
She's out in the driveway with her pajama pants still on because she decided the matter was too important to waste time with putting on proper pants. She thinks she can hear a deep rumble of a laugh from behind her and she assumes he's watching her from the window in amusement but she refuses to give him the satisfaction of looking back. That'll show him.
He's been mocking her behind her back too often today. "I called you a busybody from the beginning for a reason. You are so predictable sometimes," is what he yelled to her as she walked out the door and a little part of her is theorizing whether or not he orchestrated all of this.
She surveys the neighbourhood, there's plenty of adults out shovelling and she notices a majority of them seem to be women. She feels a sentiment of pride in them taking charge that dies once she thinks that maybe they all had lazy men lying around in the house just like her.
She urges herself to fling thoughts of the gremlin living in her house out of the crevices of her mind and her eyes spot the children. Or the Pretty Boys Shovelling Troupe, as they called themselves. She wonders which one of them made the name up.
The homeowners before their left shovels so she grabs one before running off to join them. That's when she takes notice that they are not making much progress.
Haruka has always been good at theory and in theory, she knows how shovelling works. Person pushes snow to designated area of snow piling, they lift shovel and drop snow in the pile. Despite confidently selling that they would do a good job, she's sure this is their first time as she watches them use the shovel to gather snow and then use their hands to throw the snow in the big pile.
Judging from the success rate of their technique, Haruka decides to stick to theory. They smile a bit when they see her and Haruka thinks they're thankful for the help as they shuffle their feet in nervousness. She smiles from behind her scarf.
After awhile, her arms get tired from lifting the snow and she tries something different on instinct. There's a feeling akin to acing a test that explodes in her and she walks over to the kids to show them.
"Once your shovel has a bunch of snow gathered, just use your foot to hit the bottom and help it lift so your arms don't have to be completely burdened." She hears a faint woah, that's helpful when she demonstrates and then all of the children are scrambling to put her technique to use.
She's sure it's nothing too special but something in her blossoms into self-pride.
They have most of the driveway done in half an hour and Haruka has managed to confirm that this was the first job they obtained. Her insides twinge when they tell her about the previous rejections they got. She's a little grateful to Yakumo now. Or at least, for his laziness.
They take a bit of a break and are sitting on the porch discussing the pros and cons of visual art in grade school, they're all having a tough time, when the oldest speaks to her once again, "By the way, the name's Akihiro but you can call me Kai. Because it's cooler," he tells her and Haruka is both stunned by his cheek and amused by it. Yup, he's probably the one who came up with their group's name.
Akihiro suddenly lurches forward and something jumps to Haruka's throat but a snigger from behind her tells her that it was harmless. After stare down between the five of them, it's an all-out snowball war. When one snowball accidentally hits the window in their living room, Haruka cringes but she sees no response from Yakumo so she thinks she's in the clear for now.
She's in the middle of getting the youngest to stop from shoving ice cold now down Akihiro's winter jacket when she hears someone call out in their direction from across the street. Her and the children freeze but when they see the person from across the street run over to the neighbour on Haruka's left, they relax and return to shovelling.
It's not like Haruka is taking a glimpse of the situation over there every few seconds, of course not. Respecting your neighbours' privacy is basic knowledge.
She notices them walking over to her and suddenly, Haruka sees the other neighbours walking over too. In a few minutes, something resembling a makeshift neighbourhood meeting forms on her drivewayand Haruka is bewildered because even when she lived with her parents, save for a few close neighbours, they mostly kept to themselves after the... incident.
"He's mending the plumbing and I would pick this over that any day." Haruka figures they're talking about their husbands' whereabouts.
"Mine decided the football game was worth having his car snowed in for a day."
"At least yours is awake, mine is trying to break his own personal record of sleeping for 16 hours straight." Haruka suspects Yakumo also keeps track of such things.
The only two adult men in their little group talk about their sick wives and letting them sleep in. Haruka can almost see when each of the other women decided they'd trade their husbands for them any day.
She finally notices how numb her toes have gotten when they all turn to her. She knows they're expecting words but she can't think of any right now. One of them comments on the adorability of her cartoon pajama pants, Haruka doesn't agree with them because pajamas are the last things anyone should wear in the wild. She could have sworn her face was too cold to heat up on its own but it only gets worse when they laugh as she tells them about the situation with the Pretty Boy Shovelling Troupe and Yakumo.
Her voice sounds sharp when she speaks of his ridiculousness that he displays sometimes and then they all have to lean in to hear when she talks about his finer points during other times because her voice takes on a different tone. There is a knowing look going around and an unanimous decision among the group—they all like the new neighbour.
When Haruka walks through the door, she feels an odd bubbling in her stomach and realizes it to be a sense of pride. She wonders why, as she takes off her boots, because she's sure she hasn't won a Nobel Peace Prize or anything in the few hours she spent doing labour in the frigid chilly air. But sometimes the satisfaction of doing an act of raw, sweat-inducing labour can cause one's self-satisfaction to raise a level.
Not that she should have ever realistically expected Yakumo to come jogging up to the door and twirl her around in joy like her father used to do when she came home with Ayaka from a day of preschool. Quite frankly, she'd find it downright odd. But that train of thought does nothing to stop the warm sensation in her stomach from leaving and being replaced by an oncoming twist.
She takes a quick peek into their living room and when she neither hears the murmur of news reporters speaking about the latest stunt puller by their town's mayor or sees a big lump of limbs on the coaches, she goes to their shared bedroom with a mission to change into something more comfy as well as to continue her mission of finding Yakumo. When Haruka squirms out of her layers for a single large tshirt and turns to look for Yakumo anywhere in the room, a knot in her stomach further twists when she doesn't find him. She rushes to their guest bedroom only to discover the same result. Jumping down from the third last step, she nearly trips upon her landing but quickly recovers and makes her way back to the living room.
With a single blanket covering only his lower-half of his body, Haruka finds him, at last, on the floor. He has one arm lazily splayed over his eyes but she knows this is the basic position he takes on when he's looking for sleep. She walks over to him and slowly folds her legs under her to give her access to his cheek. Haruka can't resist so she tries to gently caress his skin without disrupting him. Yet, she sees his arm slowly lift away from his face. She knows he was never asleep but she thinks nothing of it as he reaches for the fingers on his face and motions her to lay down with him.
She can hardly do anything but comply as his piercing look stays trained on her face. Suddenly the twists in her stomach come undone in a burst when he mimics her previous ministrations and brushes his thumb across her cheekbone. She can feel heat rising to the areas he's touching her and she distantly scolds herself for still being affected by such things so easily.
He uses the hand on her face to gently lead her closer to his own and at this point, she's pretty sure he could get her to anything with only a little encouragement from his side. Her head stops so near to his that she can feel their warm breath mingling in the space between their faces and she feels nothing but pure heat all over when he whispers welcome back busybody before pushing forward to meet her lips.
They are still on the ground with the blanket thrown over them and because she is so tired, Yakumo decided to take over the conversation. "I heard that comment about me being lazy, you know. My reasons for hiring those children were completely justified."
Haruka knows she should say something back to him because no, his actions were not. She should warn him not to even dare to throw his responsibility off, no matter how "unnecessary" the task. But at some point during his warm greeting for her, one of his hands slipped under her shirt to her bare back and he knew exactly what he was doing. His fingers gently moving from the top of her spine to her lower hip, barely skimming the surface but she knows they are there and that's what does her in. It's when his hand stops to pay attention to just one area that her mind reels because she can't concentrate on arguing with him now. So she lets the issue go for now, instead burying her face in his shoulder and shutting her eyes to focus on the vibrations his breathing makes as he continues teasing her.
She can feel his breath coming closer to her face and her breathing quickens a tiny bit again—when the doorbell rings for the second time that day.
"It's the kids coming to get paid, isn't it?" Yakumo asks, having leaned away from her.
Haruka thinks about the warmth she's surrounded in right now and the tingling in her hands before she sits up, nodding. "Just a second." She brushes his hair out of his face and then rushes to their bedroom to grab a few things before getting to the door.
It sounds like they attempted to have their ownf rendition of Mary Had A Little Lamb with their doorbell and Haruka greets them with a charming smile that becomes more genuine as she sees them beaming at her.
"Here's the pay based on your hourly rate, you better be checking the amount I've given is correct otherwise I'll be very disappointed in your business skills," and she has to let out a smirk when Akihiro is hit by the youngest child and hurriedly starts counting the money. "And here's a little tip," she says and hands them a gift card to an electronic store. "There's enough for a video game."
She can feel her smile wanting to break out even further as they look up to her with happiness and that glint in their eyes that only children have. "Thank you ma'am. We'll be sure to harvest this," and Haruka doesn't even try to correct Akihiro because she thinks she understood his sentiments.
She closes the door and is once again welcomed to warmth in the envelope of Yakumo's arms.
Haruka thinks she received a lot of warmth today.
A/N: That's three chapters in a row where I take advantage of the current season, I refuse to allow this to be a pattern.
I wanted to write about Haruka and her day consisting of slightly odd situations basically. I should probably copyright Pretty Boy Shovelling Troupe, who knows the idea might make a profit? I haven't stated whether they are married here or not but they bought a house together—read into that however you choose to.
So this piece honestly was just me fooling around and I will eventually get to writing something serious but I need to learn some things first. I think I avoided updating this for awhile because I didn't like the earlier stuff in this collection too much, it makes me cringe to reread and I feel so sorry to anyone who reads them now. So here's a longish piece because I'll be going back and cutting and heavily editing a lot of things in those earlier chapters. Hopefully that means I'll update this more too then!
And I'm fine choosing my prompts but I've been mulling over this and I'll leave the option open for now. So you can give me a single sentence/situation and a word, or even just a single word, as a writing prompt and there might be a chance that I'll use it. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading!