Written: In around 2 weeks. Finished 1/31/12.

Rating: T for coarse language, innuendo, and romantic themes.

Notes: The next chapter I write will be for "In Yoh's Absence," I promise. But this one's good, too! Let me know what you think. Thanks, and happy (very very very belated) holidays!

Exorcism

Kiss #35

With Anna away, Yoh could sleep as long as he wanted. The winter morning's light had a hard enough time getting through the windows, let alone Yoh's eyelids. The birds had long ago migrated to warmer climes, and the only sounds that existed in the vacuum of Yoh's room were Ren's snores and the clock that ticked its way past nine, then ten, then eleven A.M…. Even Ren, the quintessential early riser, kept snoring on.

It was nearly noon when one of them began to stir. Ren sat up, blinking hard. The noon sky was hardly radiant, but it was bright enough for him to see Yoh. Ordinarily the sight of Yoh snoozing was enough for him to snicker inwardly – he's at my mercy! – but this time, all he noticed was the pillow still wrapped tightly in his arms.

Ren shook his head. "Better the pillow than me, I suppose." He remembered how it had been impossible to wake him up last night, so he gave Yoh's side a hard shove…

"What the hell was that for?"

Ren recoiled. His heels collided with the wall. Still surprised at the ease with which he had awoken his friend, he sputtered, "Well, Yoh, uh, you see, last night, you were" – making out with your pillow and I wanted to stop you? Is that really the best thing to say? – "Ah, never mind. Sorry."

"Nice way to start a Christmas Eve," Yoh grunted sarcastically, rubbing his flank where Ren had shoved it. Ren looked a little bashful, but whether that was because he was sorry or because he was still recalling last night was a mystery. "Anyway, you wanna help me make some breakfast?"

Ren gave the clock a significant look. Yoh gasped. "We really slept in, huh? It's lunchtime already…" With a yawn and a stretch, he rose and started to walk downstairs towards the kitchen.

The pair had been on countless adventures together, well more than enough for Ren to know that Yoh was, without exception, unflappable. A hint of worry, regret, or sadness never came to his face, even in those tense few moments before a battle that inevitably comes. Knowing that, Ren frowned. Yoh's expression betrayed nothing. Yet the way he was descending the stairs was just wrong. His steps looked devoid of life, right down to the limp hands that slid down the banister like raw cuts of meat.

Ren caught Yoh just as he was pulling a frying pan out from beneath the sink. "Um, Yoh, do you feel okay?"

At this, a smile pasted itself upon Yoh's features. His eyes still looked like a pair of marbles moldering away at the bottom of a fishbowl. "Never better."

Ren, the master tactician, the superior chess player, the cold calculator, was for once at a loss. He watched as Yoh placed a cutting board on the countertop. Something he saw horrified him, and it wasn't the steak knife that Yoh had just picked up. It was almost like Ren had stumbled upon something seedy concealed behind the scenes, as if he had just seen Santa Claus taking off his fake beard and lighting a cigarette behind the plastic reindeer.

Maybe all those times I saw Yoh smiling and shrugging everything off…

Ren checked his wallet. He nodded upon seeing there was, in fact, something actually in it. "Yoh, let's go and have some fun for Christmas Eve. My treat."

The shock of Ren making such an offer pushed whatever was preoccupying Yoh to the back burner – which, fittingly enough, happened to be where Yoh ended up placing the frying pan. "Your idea of fun is sparring with me. I just don't feel up to that kind of abuse today."

"No, no. I was thinking more along the lines of lunch, and maybe…" Ren had, in fact, thought of something else they could do, but hearing Yoh's uncharacteristically bitter response made him forget it. "Um, let's see, do you have balls?"

Yoh smiled despite himself. "You would know. You're always telling me I need to grow a pair." Ren smiled too when he saw the familiar glow in his friend's eyes. "Yeah, I think I put a football or something in the storage room. It's been a while, so I have to check if it's still there. I just haven't had the time to play with my balls."

Ren laughed. The joke was corny as hell, but now he was back in the familiar territory of Yoh being silly.

"Well, now's your chance, Yoh. Grab your balls and let's go."

As it turned out, the football Yoh remembered was still there. It was a little flat, but fortunately the air pump was nearby. They walked for a while, and Yoh was noticeably withdrawn, but at least looking a little less morose. By the time they had finished eating at the restaurant, however, he was downright loquacious.

"I need to walk this off," Yoh said, patting his stomach.

"Oh, Yoh, you're too much. You run, what is it now, twenty miles every day? Then you get a chance to just kick back, inhale your lunch, and sit around all afternoon, and you want to walk more? Anna's got you trained like a Labrador retriever."

Oops. Ren had deliberately avoided invoking Anna's name all day. He held his breath, anticipating some sort of reaction to his indiscretion.

"You could say that." The smile on Yoh's face, even to Ren's trained eye, looked sincere. "Now, are you coming with me, or not?"

Yoh left the restaurant, tossing the football to himself. Ren hastily paid the check and followed him out the door. A few minutes later, Yoh and Ren were standing before a wrought-iron gate that fronted a low-slung white building.

"Yoh, isn't this your school?" He got a nod in response. Ren sighed. "What part of 'this is a day off' don't you understand?"

"Trust me," Yoh said. He lobbed the ball over the gate, then scampered over. "Need a hand?"

But Ren's feet were touching down on Yoh's side of the gate almost as soon as the question had been asked. "So let me get this straight. We're sneaking into school? What happens if we get caught? Do they put us in detention at an arcade?"

Yoh led Ren around the corner of the building, down some stairs, and around another building. Their destination came into view.

"Oh. Good call, Yoh."

Shinra Private Academy was never a school known for its athletics, but it wasn't for lack of proper facilities. Football season had just ended, and the field before them was still lined every five yards from end zone to end zone. Even the goal posts were still in place, although someone had brought out the soccer goals and put them beneath.

Yoh hadn't had the time to attempt a pass or catch in quite a while, and it showed. Ren, meanwhile, was a natural. The ball never failed to leave his fingertips with a tight spiral, although his accuracy left a lot to be desired. In spite of it all, every time Ren scrambled to catch one of Yoh's ugly wobblers, every time Yoh leaped at a ball that Ren had delivered a good twenty feet above his extended fingertips, a little bit of Yoh's reticence vanished into the crisp December air. Soon they were ribbing each other, chasing each other down, faking each other out.

"You're not even trying anymore, are you?" Yoh taunted as Ren delivered another errant throw.

"My bad," Ren admitted. He shuffled to the sideline and plopped himself on the grass. "Timeout."

"What's the matter?" Yoh snickered. "Tired?"

"In fact, yes I am. You would be too if every damn pass you had to catch was wobbling around so bad. Seriously, Yoh, it's a football, not a tomahawk."

"Get over here and hold the ball for me. You can sit your lazy ass down, don't worry."

Ren bared his teeth as he propped himself back up, but inwardly he was relieved. This was the Yoh he knew. He kneeled down near the 20-yard line where Yoh was pointing and pushed his fingertips down on the nose of the ball.

"Yoh, if you kick me, any part of me, I am going to make you wish you'd never even seen a football before."

But almost before he could finish the threat, Yoh's body was hopping in a graceful follow-through. Ren was vaguely aware that he was no longer propping up the ball. Then he looked up and saw it, a tumbling blur of brown and white. It was well to the right of the goalposts, but it was still in the air.

Ren frowned, as if trying to find the cannon he knew Yoh had strapped to his leg. "Who taught you how to do that?"

Yoh frowned too. He was still staring at where the ball had crested in the air moments ago. "No one. I'm as surprised as you are. Hell, I thought I might've kicked you in the face. I guess all the training is paying off."

"Training? I thought you said no one was teaching you how to do this."

"Oh, you know, Anna's training regimen—"

Thinking of Anna seemed to suck the exuberance out of the entire field. The emptiness of the bleachers, the absence of players in helmets and pads, the lack of birds flitting overhead – suddenly Anna's absence seemed everywhere. Ignoring Ren's almost sympathetic look, he slunk away, out of the end zone, to the overgrown dried grass behind the field. He found the football and threw it in Ren's direction. Not surprisingly, it wriggled more than a hooked fish. It bounced around near his feet and he secured it about ten yards back.

Ren dug the nose of the football in the ground and began spinning it like a top. Yoh had returned. He looked up at the gray sky and heaved a cleansing sigh.

"You know, Anna or no Anna, this does beat a day of running, hands down."

Ren nodded. Something about Yoh's quick recovery dared him to ask a dangerous question.

"In the end, though. After all the brutal training, after the miles and miles of aimless running, the trips away from home, the badly expressed love."

Yoh had eased into his athletic stance three steps behind the ball. He wasn't waiting for the snap – he was waiting for Ren's question.

"Is it all worth it?"

He looked up at the sky again. Then he looked straight forward at the goal posts. I've set my sights on you, no matter how far away you may be.

"The answer to that question…" Yoh's foot and the ball made a satisfying boomp! that rattled in the empty bleachers. He hopped on one foot as he squinted at the ball.

"…Is still up in the air."

Ren didn't look forward to spending Christmas with his dysfunctional family, but traditions were traditions. With a hearty slap on Yoh's back, Ren said his goodbyes. Yoh made the trek back home unhurriedly as the silver sky began to tarnish. By the time he stepped onto the slick wood floor of the En Inn, night had fallen. He flicked the light on and looked at the football in his hands. Even as he gripped its laces with his fingers, he could see it soaring through the air through the goal posts.

I guess it's not still up in the air. If only I could say the same about Ren's question.

He put the ball back in the storage room. It'll be a while before I get to play with that again, I'll bet. He hit the light switch in his room –

There was a package on his futon. No, he realized as his eyes adjusted to the light, it wasn't just a package. It was gift-wrapped.

A Christmas present? Maybe Ren slipped it there when I was busy grabbing my balls.

He laughed, and not just because he had made yet another lame innuendo. Ren giving me a present? There is only one other person in the world less likely to do that, and she hasn't been here in over a day.

He picked it up and was taken aback at its weight – or more specifically, its lack of weight. He turned it over and over in his hands like a Rubik's cube, trying to figure out why a shoebox-sized present was so insubstantial. Then he caught sight of the label.

To Yoh. Love doesn't wait. Neither should you.

Yoh ticked off names on his mental checklist. Not Ren's handwriting, that's for sure. Too small to be Horohoro's, that guy writes like he has mittens for hands. Might be Chocolove's, but since when has he ever talked about love with me? Manta maybe?

Curiosity was rapidly getting the better of him. I gotta listen to the box. Not like I really wanted to wait, anyway.

Yoh peeled off the paper. Underneath it was a shoebox after all. He raised the lid and saw a mass of fluffed tissue paper. There was nothing beneath it.

Maybe it was Ren after all! Yoh deduced as he combed the tissue paper for some sign of a gift. He would give me an empty box.

Just as he was about to write the box off as a gag gift, Yoh's fingertips made the bottom of the box skid against something. He realized that wasn't the bottom of the box after all, it was a sheet of paper.

Only two words adorned its face:

Turn around.

Yoh obeyed and flipped the sheet over. It was blank.

He picked up the box and turned it over. Sheets of red and green tissue paper drifted to the floor. The underside of the box was plain white.

"Ren, I hate you," he sighed to himself. "You win," he muttered as he turned around –

"I'm glad I kept it simple. Otherwise I'd be standing here till March."

The shoebox shot out of Yoh's shocked hands and hit the floor. Yoh almost followed suit.

"ANNA?"

"And don't you forget it."

Yoh stared at her incredulously – the homespun brown robes didn't diminish her appearance at all. "What are you doing here?"

The beginnings of a deadly frown crept onto her features. "I could go back there, Yoh. But seeing as those reckless spirits are at peace now, I think I'd rather stay here."

"I thought you were going to be gone for three days!"

"That's what the doctors told me. They underestimated my powers. Believe me, that's a mistake no one makes twice."

Anna slid the hood of her robes back. Yoh saw her eyes now, gleaming as fiercely as the blue beads that peeked out of the robe's collar.

"But there are mistakes that are so unforgivable that they shouldn't even be made once."

Anna bowed her head. The hood slid back down and cast her face in shadow. She took two steps towards her fiancée. "I worked through the night, Yoh. Restless spirits are terrible. They get in your head, especially when you're tired. They know what you want, they'll keep you from getting it, and they'll taunt you for not having it."

Yoh couldn't see Anna's eyes beneath the hood, but he imagined they looked like the beads did now, watery and quivering…

"They made me realize that I couldn't rest until every last one was gone. Because then I could go back home and…and…and…"

The first thing Yoh noticed, after several seconds of being too stunned to notice much of anything, was that Anna's robes were itchy and rough in his arms. It was nothing at all like his pillow, but if anything Yoh hugged Anna tighter than he had ever squeezed the pillow. He loved it all – the roughness, the no-nonsense, unchanging exterior – and he thought that if this hug was better than the pillow, maybe a kiss would be, too –

He didn't have much longer to wonder. The robes were rough, but the sensation that was now upon his lips was tender, though with a kind of urgency that manifested itself upon his tongue. Anna may have been exhausted from the ordeal at the hospital, but Yoh's fire energized her. Or maybe she had been saving a little energy for one last restless spirit she saw every day at the En Inn...

"Anna, you're the best present I could've gotten," Yoh whispered.

"How do you know?" She tugged at the itchy robes. "You haven't even unwrapped it yet."

Seeing that Yoh was about to lose it, she kissed his cheek and propped his head up with her free hand. "Silly. I've got something on under this. I have to! Do you have any idea how badly this robe chafes?"

Yoh thought he was going to get to the rest of the robes after he got her hood off, but the sight of her uncovered head put that plan on indefinite hold. "You're…gorgeous…"

"Oh, come on, Yoh," she giggled softly, although there was no denying the blush that was tickling her cheeks. "This is a Christmas story. We still have to fit a moral in, and then there's the obligatory 'wishing the readers a happy holiday season' thing – "

"Okay," Yoh said. He couldn't resist nipping her on the cheek with his lips. She really was gorgeous, after all. "The moral is, spending Christmas with the one you love is a good thing. And kissing her is even better. Do that, and you'll have a happy holiday season. That good enough for you?"

"So spending time together is good and kissing is better. Wouldn't it be great, then, if we—"

Anna whispered something. Yoh turned redder than the tissue paper scattered on the floor.

"Good night, everyone!"