Note: This was written as a class assignment. I was supposed to use as many cliches as I could, and I think I went above and beyond the call of duty this time...but you be the judge! (Don't take this story too seriously, the plot takes a back seat to all of the cliches.)

Enjoy!

That Takes the Cake

Kiss #28

(Clichés are underlined throughout)

They say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but this was news to Yoh Asakura. He sulked over his lot in life, even now, as he rinsed pots and pans in the sink. It was about as stimulating as watching paint dry, but after having done all the cooking in the house for the better part of two years, the hollow metallic ring of water against pot was music to his ears compared to the living hell of Anna's "special training regimen."

Speak of the devil, he thought as he caught sight of his fiancée from the corner of his eyes. He didn't have time to prepare himself for the mayhem that inevitably followed when she graced him with her presence, though. "Yoh! Drop whatever you're doing and break out the mixing bowl on the double!" she screamed bloody murder.

"Take it easy, Anna," he soothed, though inwardly he was coming to pieces. Let loose the hounds of hell. Anna's seeing red and taking no prisoners "What's gotten into you, anyway? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"You don't say," she snapped sarcastically. "In light of the fact that we're both shamans, seeing ghosts is part and parcel of our job, you know. But that's beside the point. Get your act together!" she demanded, slamming the countertop for emphasis. "If I don't see that mixing bowl in five seconds, there'll be hell to pay!"

"All right, all right, keep your shirt on," Yoh muttered, softly enough to be just out of earshot. He hit the deck and began rummaging under the sink, hoping to find the wayward cooking implement. After peering into every nook and cranny, he found it hidden in plain sight. "Ah, there it is! I'm not letting you out of my sight," he said, triumphantly spinning the bowl upon his finger.

"Three cheers," Anna said, clearly not brimming with praise. "But I'm only getting started. You'll also have to come up with some flour, eggs, a whisk, sugar…" Anna was rattling off a laundry list of ingredients. At first he made it a point to simply memorize them, but he couldn't wrap his mind around the various and sundry reagents she was still listing. "Nutmeg" might have been the ingredient that tipped the scales, or perhaps "chocolate chips" was the straw that broke the camel's back; in any event, Yoh now found himself scampering around the kitchen in hot pursuit of the ingredients while they were fresh in his mind.

"I swear to God, it's just in one ear and out the other with you, isn't it?" Anna took a fine-toothed comb to Yoh's selections, making a fuss whenever she didn't see eye to eye with one of them. "Nutmeg, not paprika, for crying out loud! If you want to eat a paprika-flavored cake, I couldn't care less. But I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole."

"Jeez, get off my case," Yoh mumbled, again quietly enough so that you could hear a pin drop. Louder now, he asked, "So I'm baking a cake, huh? That's a fine kettle of fish." Anna, already on the brink of madness, positively went into conniptions at his mixed metaphor. It slowly dawned on him that it might be in his best interest to change the subject. "Anyway, what's the special occasion?"

"I'm going to a friend's birthday party tomorrow and I can't come empty-handed. On my budget, buying a gift is out of the question. She's got quite the sweet tooth, though, so giving her a cake fits her like a glove. Plus, if I have you whip it up for me, it'll cost me not one thin dime. Icing on the cake!"

"Laying it on a bit thick, don't you think?" Yoh asked, groaning at the terrible pun.

"Whatever. I just like the idea of killing two birds with one stone."

"The way I see it, this cake is killing way more than two birds," Yoh commented as an egg met with a messy end on the side of the bowl. "Let this be a lesson to you. Don't count your chickens before they've hatched."

It was Anna's turn to groan, and she followed suit. "A taste of my own medicine." She turned around and had one foot out the door when Yoh's voice stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Just a minute!" Yoh protested. "I can't help but feel I'm getting the short end of the stick here." A handful of eggshells slipped out of his angry hand and rushed headlong to the floor. "Here's the lay of the land. You're off to have the time of your life at this party, while I work my fingers to the bone? This has happened a thousand times before," he continued, although the voice at the back of his head urged him to put a damper on his impending rant. "I'm sick and tired of being at your beck and call."

Anna's usually stoic face lit up like a Christmas tree. However, she did not break the silence. Yoh, seething with rage, carried on. "Anna, I'm starting to think, from the bottom of my heart, that…"

Yoh knew he was about to say something that he could never take back, but he couldn't keep it to himself any longer. Staring his fiancée directly in her wide eyes, he finished, "Agreeing to marry you was the biggest mistake of my life."

Upon speaking those words, Yoh felt as though all the wind had been knocked out of his sails. He gasped like a fish out of water and a slow, sinking feeling engulfed him. Well, that's all she wrote, he thought as he tried to size up Anna's reaction to his outburst. I dug my own grave there…

Much to his surprise, Anna merely looked shaken, but not stirred. Then again, although it obviously wasn't Yoh's forte, hiding one's true feelings was second nature to Anna. He felt a chill run up his spine as she turned to face him directly and licked her ruby red lips, preparing to speak.

He breathed a huge sigh of relief when he noticed she wasn't screaming to the high heavens. "It…sounds like you've got quite the axe to grind, Yoh."

Yoh still suffered from nagging doubts, but he steeled himself and pressed on. "You better believe it. Where do I begin?"

Anna bridged the gap between Yoh and herself in three nervous strides. "What…is bothering you the most?"

Said the spider to the fly, Yoh thought apprehensively. Why's Anna suddenly letting her guard down? Usually she avoids any display of emotion like the plague. This sudden one-eighty's throwing me for a loop. Do I go with the flow here? Oh…she's waiting for me to answer…then, into the lion's den

"Lots of things, here and there," he hemmed and hawed. "But number one with a bullet would have to be this whole…" He gestured with his hands, trying to put into words what he felt. "You know, you're a ticking time bomb! The slightest thing could set off your itchy trigger finger." His nervous pacing was crushing to a powder the eggshells he had dropped. "I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm tired of walking on eggshells."

Anna had nothing to say. It was obvious that her ability to stay cool and collected in the face of Yoh's anger was putting him ill at ease. He toyed with the ingredients still scattered hither and yon. Hoping against hope to pretend nothing had happened, he started adding this and that to the mixing bowl again. He tried to measure out a level teaspoonful of oil, but found his hands shaking too much to be even in the ballpark.

Yoh found himself speaking once more, against his will, as he whisked the ingredients together. "We're…I think…it's just not meant to be," he said, increasing the intensity of his mixing as the oil kept rearing its ugly head out of the mixture. "We're like oil and water. And I know opposites attract, but we're like night and day. I value my free time, but that doesn't sit well with you, now, does it?" Yoh hadn't meant to point any fingers, but he couldn't keep the accusatory tone out of his voice. "No, you want me slaving away every waking hour! I know it's a tired turn of phrase, but I mean it: Give me a break, Anna. For both of our sakes, give me a break."

"Yoh," Anna finally said, getting a word in edgewise, "we went over that before, remember?" Her voice was a calm blue ocean, maybe even a little beseeching, and it was so unusual it caught Yoh off guard. "All the training…is for your own good…"

"My foot!" Yoh roared as he poured the mixing bowl's contents into a cake tin. "Remember that demon that tortured you to within an inch of your life? Of course you do—who could forget? Well then, you remember who your knight in shining armor was, don't you? ME!" he boomed. "I put my ass on the line, came this close to winding up six feet under. But it went off without a hitch, right? The demon went back whence it came. That, you see, was 'for your own good'. Not this," he finished, scraping the last bits of batter off the bowl with a fork. He waved it in the air for emphasis. "Stick a fork in me. I'm done."

"But then," Anna stammered, "if you hate it so much, why'd you hold out for so long?"

He mixed a few drops of red food coloring into the frosting, and it took on the delicate hue of roses. "Oh, Anna, I saw the world through rose-colored glasses back then. We were just in middle school, after all, and first love grabs your heart and never lets go."

Anna looked thunderstruck. "Love?"

"Don't be such a doubting Thomas. What wasn't there to love? You used to laugh all the time, and it never failed to bring a smile to my face. Yes, I was truly, madly, deeply in love. And then the Shaman Fight rained on our parade. Your smiles never saw the light of day again. You put my nose to the grindstone, and somehow you just kind of drifted away. I don't like it," he concluded, setting down the pink frosting, "but I let myself fall for you, so hard. I got my just desserts."

"But…Yoh, you have to understand," Anna pled, abandoning all pretense of maintaining the demeanor Yoh detested. "I can't stand the thought of you…kicking the bucket just because I didn't make you train harder…"

"Can't you see?!" Yoh raged. "I'm already dead! I'm dead tired from this round-the-clock regimen. And I'm dead to you."

"Yoh…oh, don't…the night is always darkest right before dawn…what can I do to make things right? I can't take this feeling that…"

Yoh was preheating the oven. His back was turned to her. He said flatly, "If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen."

The rest was silence.


Yoh stared at the cake he had made with his own two hands. True, it wasn't perfect, and it certainly had more than its fair share of blemishes, but just the same, seeing it gave him such a rush. He was so enthralled by the cake that the soft footsteps behind him went unnoticed.

"Yoh," called a voice behind him. He swiveled around in the blink of an eye.

"Anna! I—" he stuttered, but words couldn't express what he wanted to say anyway. Together they looked down at the cake before them, in a kind of reverential hush.

"Thank you, Yoh."

"Think nothing of it. Was a piece of cake, really."

Anna sighed. "No, I mean…Yoh, thank you. For everything. The cake. Doing all the housework and the chores. And last but not least, putting up with me, day in and day out."

Yoh knew it was a cliché to go by the books and reply with a "You're welcome," so he broke the mold and instead replied wordlessly with his lips. Yoh would've seen the sparks of their kiss had his eyes been open, but they were glued shut from the passion of the moment. It was an act of love, sure, but for both of them it was more so an act of contrition—and that being the case, judging from their kiss' intensity, both Yoh and Anna were as sorry as sorry can get.

"Hold the phone," Anna said once their lips finally parted. "Am I seeing double? Why are there two cakes?"

"Oh, there was some leftover cake batter, so I thought I'd go the extra mile and make another. It's the best thing since sliced bread…or cake, at least."

"Er…About that, you see…the whole party thing…how should I put it?" she asked, wondering if she should mince words or bite her tongue. "It was a little white lie."

The irritation in Yoh's face at this news was plain as day. "How could you?!"

Anna realized she just might be up the creek without a paddle. Nonetheless, she knew that honesty was the best policy, so she finished what she started. "I just thought it'd be a nice change of pace to pull out all the stops and have some dessert."

"I guess you got more than you bargained for."

"I did, right as rain. Yoh, listen," she said, finding it hard to look him in the eyes, "I don't say this often, but…I'm sorry I pulled the wool over your eyes."

"It's okay," Yoh managed after the shock of her apology wore off. "No skin off my back."

"Really?"

"Yeah! Besides, this way," he said, struggling to hold back a laugh, "you can have your cake and eat it too!"

Even Yoh knew that was a bridge too far, but Anna took it upon herself to point it out. "Don't push your luck."

Yoh shrugged. "All's well that ends well!"