A/N: So I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Luvira for her amazing fanart for this story!!! Seriously it was that picture that made me finish this chapter! I thought that if there was some one out there who loved my fic enough to draw for it, then I should update it!!! ^.^ The end of this has been stewing in my head for a while now so I hope that you guys like it! Again thank you Luvira on deviantart! Your picture means a whole hell of a lot to me!!!

Summary: Hey, we only attack the ones we love...

Warnings: Herm...Swearing (pretty much Standard Operating Procedure by now eh?), Kissing (then hitting...:(...) and Fai being stranger than usual (It was bound to happen people!).


Chapter 9

"Where is the next stop?" I asked leanings towards Fai.

He was scribbling away in his notebook, unaware of the world around him. And strangely even unaware of me. He just continued writing/drawing/compiling-101-ways-to-piss-off-Kuro-tan (heart!) as if he was the only person in the world that existed.

"Why are you so ditzy?" Okay, now I was just seeing if he even heard me.

Nope. If it was a response to me at all, his tongue peeked out of his mouth to be held between his teeth in intense concentration. His eyes flitted to every inch of his eight and a half by eleven notebook paper.

"Are you an idiot?"

Fai raised his hand and brushed some hair away from his face. Then as if he hadn't stopped for a second he continued to burn up the paper with his pencil.

"Yes," I answered for him. "You are an idiot."

Not a second after I had replied in his place he let out a big breath of air and hugged his notebook.

"Are you ready for this Kuro-tan?" he asked me in a hushed voice.

"Ready for what?"

"This!" Fai turned the notebook around to show me a picture he had drawn.

Across the span of the paper there was a, rather detailed, picture of Fai patting me on the head (like a dog…) with a speech bubble off to the side that said 'You're such a good doggy!'. The expression on my face was accurate, at least he knew me well enough to know what I'd look like if he were to do that to me.

"May I ask why you drew this?" I wondered jabbing the picture with my finger.

"Yes," he answered simply as he turned the notebook back towards himself.

I paused for a second to hear the rest of his response. He just flipped through the paper as if he was finished with this conversation.

"And…" I trailed off.

"Well you didn't ask me why I drew it," he pointed out. "You asked me if you could ask me why I drew it."

I wanted to smack myself.

"Okay," I breathed out my frustration. "Why did you draw that?"

"Much better!" he chimed turning back to me. "This is why."

Fai leaned over me and patted my head, "You're such a good doggy!"

I looked up at him seething, almost feeling a growl in the back of my throat.

"AH!" he exclaimed. "I knew you'd make that face!"

He laughed at me for a moment before straightening up, "I wanted to see if you would make the face I predicted you'd make!" He ran his fingers through his hair and let out an arrogant sigh, "I must be psychic or something!"

I snorted, "Psycho is more like it."

"Naw," he swatted the air with his hand, apparently ignoring what I had muttered about his mental state. "I don't believe in that stuff. It's just a bunch of crap to make you spend your money!"


Fai stretched and yawned as he woke up from his nap. He leaned his forehead against my shoulder and nuzzled his nose against my arm. I sat still, because with Fai this was normal and there was no point in trying to get him to stop.

"Do we have…" another big yawn. "Anything to eat?"

I shrugged him off of my shoulder to look in my bag. There were a few leftover tacos from last night, some gas station snacks and a couple of unfinished sodas. I handed him one of the hard shelled tacos.

Fai was evaluating the taco. He turned it around in his hand, squeezed it, peeked in at it and stuck his tongue out at it.

"You know," he sighed. "We didn't have to save the tacos."

"I paid for them, we're going to finish them," I replied gruffly. Wasting money was not something I did.

"But the shell, which was once hard, is so soft and mushy now," he told me. "And the lettuce is all stringy and brown and it tastes like it's gone bad. Not to mention the meat is all cold and greasy now."

I don't think he was trying to convince me to do what I did next. I think he was just trying to tell me about why some things shouldn't be saved like that, since he was just as big on saving money as I was.

For a moment I thought about what he said. Then I took the taco from his hand, opened the window a little and tossed it to the street that rolled below us. Fai gaped at me for a second of speechlessness.

"I- uh," he stuttered so articulately. "Um- uh- we-….huh?"

Apparently this had shocked him as much as it had shocked me.

"Are you going to just sit there and stutter at me?" I asked him.

"M-maybe," he replied sarcastically.

I laughed at him as he tangled our fingers together. Sometimes it was a good thing to shake Fai up like that. He needed to be reminded that I did listen to him every once in a while.


"I don't care about his confidences; I don't wanna feel that slow…"

"Where do you find these songs?" I asked tugging the headphone from my ear.

Fai busied himself for a second and then looked at me confusedly, "Did you say something Kuro-rin?"

"When you wanna stop, just go…"

"Where do you find these songs?" I repeated myself as I pulled his headphone out as well.

He looked at the fallen headphone like a cat would look at someone who just flicked its nose. Without saying anything he stuck it back in his ear and then placed mine back into the crook of my ear.

"I honestly have no idea," Fai finally answered with a shrug. "Sometimes I think that they just materialize on my hard drive."

"When the things we done come clear to you…"

For a second I saw the gears in his head turning. Slowly he faced me with a look that questioned and teased me all at once.

"I wanna go mad, I wanna go mad, for a minute I just wanna be in it…"

"Why?" he questioned in a tone that said he already knew the answer.

I turned half away from him and shrugged, "No reason. Just wondering."

"Yeah right!" Fai shouted hitting my shoulder. "You like these songs!!"

"Now why would you think that?" I challenged him knowing that my face was heating up.

"You mean besides the adorable blush?" he returned as he reached up and ghosted his hand across my cheek.

I smacked his hand away. In response I got a giggle and his head weighing on my shoulder.

"I promise I won't tell anyone that you like girly music, Kuro-chuu."

On top of ridiculing me he used such a girly name to address me. I rubbed my temple and waited for a headache to form behind my eyes. This guy really was too much for one person. I don't know what made me choose to stay with him but in one way or another Fai always made sure that I didn't regret it.


Finally, a rest stop!

"Where are we?" I inquired scanning the area for a clue as to where we were.

"Hmmm," Fai hummed with one finger pressed to his lips. "Give me a kiss and I'll tell you."

"Huh?" Was it just me or was Fai getting stranger and stranger.

"Kiss me," he demanded like a spoiled child. "And I'll tell you."

He smiled at me and rocked back and forth on his heels. I watched him. Fai continued to smile, though for a second my eyes played tricks on me. His smile fell for a second and then reformed on his soft lips.

I rolled my eyes and placed my hands on his shoulders. Though there wasn't much of a height difference between the two of us I had to stoop down to reach his mouth. I watched as his eyes hovered just above completely closed, his lips parted with small breaths falling over my own lips.

My hand reached up to tangle his hair around fingers. Fai leaned in closer to me and though it felt like we had finally kissed, we'd only been staring at each other for a few seconds.

Fai gripped the front of my shirt as if his life depended on it. I pushed his body closer to mine…and nearly got attacked because of it.

He tried to space us out but I didn't move. He tried to twist out of my arms but again I just held onto him tighter. Then he started hitting my chest. Hard

I broke the kiss and was about to ask him which crazy house he'd escaped from when he started talking.

"We-we're in Illinois," he told me shakily.

"Fai," I said reaching towards him.

"We should, um," Fai muttered turning around to face me. "Do our laundry."

"Do our laundry?"


So we…did our laundry.

Before we even found a nice roach motel to stay at we found a cheap Laundromat to…do our laundry. It was by far the strangest request Fai had ever asked of me. I had a feeling that from Illinois and on it could only get stranger.

I fed the washing machine a few dirty quarters and waited for Fai to separate his laundry from the many other things in his backpack. Once he finished untangling one of his long sleeved shirts from the wire spiral of one of his notebooks he carried an armload of mixed laundry to me.

"Aren't you going to separate it by color?" I asked him as I swung slightly on the grimy door to the machine.

"Huh?" he asked looking inside the washing machine. Of course since most of my clothing was black or denim my sorting was already done. "Can't I just put it all in there and then wash it with cold water?"

I sighed, Tomoyo had taught me to do laundry the proper way but I had a feeling that this was going to lead into 'but it saves money'.

"Fine," I huffed adjusting the knobs to cold/super load.

Fai shoved all of his clothes, whites, light blues, jeans and gloves alike into the washing machine while I went to go buy some of that discount, grainy laundry detergent. Once he was done, I saw Fai hop up onto the hanging ledge where we had parked all of the things that weren't going to be washed. His legs dangled and kicked in the air as he waited for me to return.

Though I wasn't upset with Fai…I still kinda wondered about why he had been so rejecting towards me.

I rubbed my head and poured the soap into a little slot and started up the washer. Fai leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. Walking over to him I decided not to bring it up. It was better to just let Fai come to me anyway, as many other encounters had proven this to be true.

"Um…" he began nervously. "I'm sorry….for attacking you. Earlier."

I glanced over my shoulder at him, "S'okay."

"No, no," Fai corrected in an awkward tone. "I probably should have told you a long time ago that you can't do things like that."

"Like what?" I asked turning around fully to face him.

"Like…all aggressive like you were," he explained strangely. "Sometimes I'm okay with it, but I don't know when I'm going to freak out. So it's probably best that you don't…do things like that again."

His eyes were distant, as if he wasn't looking at me but focusing on memories that I dredged up.

"Why do you freak out?" I had been wondering about his freak outs and odd behavior since it began…The opportunity to ask just was never brought about.

"Ummm…." He sat up fully and scratched behind his head as his eyes darted around to various points on the floor. "Pass?"

I shook my head and laughed at him. Once he saw that I wasn't mad at him he started to laugh quietly as well. I had told Fai my past of my own volition (sort of) if he wanted to I'd be willing to listen.

Fai leaned over and kissed me gently on the lips. When we broke apart he smiled at me deviously and tickled my neck with his uneven fingernails.

"You really make me wonder about the general mental health of kids our age," I told him before he leaned over and kissed me again.

End of Fai the Strange


A/N: A special thanks to TomoyoNyx!! Who correctly identified the song in the last last preview! I put in the song Go Mad by: Caleb Kane in here for her! It's strange because I swear just a couple of days before you reviewed I found that song on a SasuNaru FST that I had downloaded a while back! It was the strangest thing ever! Thank you deary for all of your reviews and I hope that this chapter didn't let you down!! I heart you!!

Okay so this chapter was strange even by my standards but at the moment I think it's kinda just a let-things-happen sort of thing so eh -shrugs shoulders-. I hope you guys liked it anyway! Oh yeah and the title is an allusion to one of my FAVORITE clothing lines. If you can guess it I'll make one of them say one line, any line, you want them to! Of course it can't be "I love you"...gotta save that for a rainy day! So go ahead and guess!

Preview: "Fox and the Hound,' Fai said resolved. 'What?' I asked wondering what had brought this about. 'It's my favorite movie,' he explained looking at me with the remote hanging from his hand. 'I was just thinking about it and that is for sure my favorite movie...'