Summary: Anna's acting very un-Valentine's Day-like, and clueless Yoh is…clueless as usual. That is, until…a typewriter comes along? What the hell kind of Valentine's Day story is this, anyway? Read on to find out.

Written: In around a week; finished 1/30/08.

Rating: M for strong suggestive themes and coarse language. (Yeah, I know it should be a T story, but come on, it's Valentine's Day. Let your hair down!)

Notes: So this is my Valentine's Day present to my readers. I ask you now: Will you be my valentine? ;) Enjoy, and Happy Valentine's Day to you all.

Valentine's Day Massacre

Kiss #23

Although the skies were clear as the light breeze that descended from them, there was something almost palpable in the air that fine February morning. Yoh certainly felt an indescribable something as he drained a glass of orange juice, and stared out the kitchen window to the fragment of pure sky he could view. It was almost as though the air, laced with some effervescent drug, had leached into his bloodstream, energizing him, and making him almost intangibly more…passionate…

Almost instantly, before Yoh's newly passionate mind could imagine anything too risqué, the rude clatter of porcelain onto countertop assaulted his ears. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a bright yellow meteor streak past him.

"Pfeh! Yoh, by any chance, do you like the texture of eggshells? Maybe you think they're nutritious? Or that leaving them out of my scrambled eggs would be a terrible waste?"

If there was indeed something in the morning air that day, Anna would have been well advised to take several deep breaths of it—although, considering how upset she appeared now, she could've stood to take several deep breaths regardless. With a colossal flick of her wrist, she shoved the plate of eggs towards Yoh, nearly overturning it in the process. "If so, put them in yours if you like. But keep them the hell out of mine!"

He swallowed reflexively, noting that the tartness of the orange juice was nothing compared to Anna's mood. "Yes, of course, sorry…"

"Ugh. As if that's not bad enough, now I've got to write that paper on an empty stomach. Damn teachers…"

Yoh had hesitated at hearing these words, but realized he had appeared a little too stunned for his own good.

"What're you looking at?!" she demanded. "Yeah, I don't like school either, but at least I do the damn work before I'm in danger of failing. Which is more than I can say for you."

Yoh sighed inwardly. Usually Anna waited at least till the afternoon before she began her character assassinations, but perhaps she had merely woken up on the wrong side of the bed today. Rising from his stool to clear the table, he said, "Guess I'm off to the gym again today. Good luck with the paper, Anna."

"Yeah," she grunted, slamming an empty glass onto the table for emphasis. "Good luck with suddenly not becoming an idiot."

"Anna," Yoh replied, noticing that he was biting his tongue rather forcefully. "You're not your usual…kind self today. What's wrong?"

"What? Are you mocking me?" She looked positively scandalized, drawing her head back in a cascade of blonde, her bright eyes narrowed and gleaming. "No, I'm fine. I'm used to dealing with imbeciles, thank you very much." She turned her back on him roughly; Yoh watched as the hem of her black skirt sashayed in rhythm with her tense steps. In the parlor she rummaged around in a closet before emerging with a dusty object covered by a threadbare shroud. She placed it on the table in front of the TV and fed a sheet of paper through it. Soon the clacks of a poorly maintained typewriter intermingled with the buzz of the television, and Yoh, who was still mystified by Anna's uncharacteristically hostile mood, was watching her form as she depressed the ancient keys with her slender fingers…

"Oh, this piece of shit!" she screamed in cadence with the typewriter's ding. Her fingers clenched into a dainty fist now, and she pounded upon the keys like a drunken pianist.

"Hang on, the linotype is probably jammed, you just have to—" Yoh scuttled forth from the doorway and bent over the key assembly of the typewriter, but recoiled in a flash from the sudden force imparted on his cheek. Smack!

"When I want something broken by your incompetence," she hissed, her left hand still hovering before her, "I'll be sure to let you know."

With that, Yoh headed for the door, rubbing his cheek.

●●●

There was no denying that Anna could deliver a mean slap, but a different sting flooded his entire body once he shoved himself off the bench press. Every muscle in his sweaty body throbbed with the intensity of a salted wound, and he bristled from the stiffness of his exerted tendons. He staggered once he regained his footing, feeling his knees buckling beneath him, and supported himself clumsily with arms that were scarcely sound enough to keep him upright. He swooned to the door, barely managing to nod a goodbye to the front desk, and ended up holding it open for himself with just his body weight.

"Ahhh," he sighed once he had wobbled his way downstairs to the sidewalk. The afternoon air downtown was no less refreshing as it had been at home that morning. But, he suspected as he made his way up the street, perhaps it wasn't just his imagination, or just the crispness of the air. Maybe the day itself really was special. He suspected this more and more as he caught sight of numerous couples, one after another, squeeze their way past him on the sidewalk, holding hands, strolling arm in arm, even occasionally, ah, "too occupied with one another" to avoid colliding with Yoh as he took it all in, bewildered.

Lesser beings, or perhaps simply more embittered ones, might have become overwhelmed with waves of nausea at the sight of so many public displays of affection. Yoh, however, grinned vacantly at the couples as they passed him. Some were carrying heart-shaped boxes of chocolate; others tethered Mylar balloons from their wrists, or had tucked upon their arms stuffed animals and flowery bouquets. They were, however, invariably intimate, and Yoh quite often averted his gaze from one kissing couple only to catch sight of another on the way. It was, quite frankly, a sight that would've triggered most people's gag reflexes.

Perhaps Yoh was notoriously slow on the uptake, but even he had to realize it eventually. His epiphany arrived as he entered the drugstore, intending to buy a bottle of water, and nearly walked into a display of Valentine's Day paraphernalia. "Doh," he said, bonking himself on the noggin. "That would explain all the kissing and stuff, if it's Valentine's Day. How could I forget? Oh well, it might be a good idea to get something for Anna…I'm pretty thirsty, but that's alright…

As he wandered the crowded aisles, Yoh noted the diversity of the romantic gewgaws for sale. Heart-shaped boxes filled with chocolates. Candy hearts that looked as though they were made of chalk, and had a flavor to match. Teddy bears with snow-white pelts, pink pelts, deep crimson pelts, and every shade in between. An entire shelf of greeting cards. Yoh picked up one of these, too bedazzled from the sheer variety to know where to begin, and read it to himself. "…Heh. I guess that's not bad, it's pretty corny, though." After opening several more cards, though, his relatively optimistic outlook darkened. "Sheesh, these are so…cliché. Isn't there anything heartfelt I can give for this special occasion?"

Yoh meandered past another aisle or two of Valentine's Day accoutrements before an idea formulated itself in his mind. "That's…perfect!" The items Yoh purchased were from opposite corners of the drugstore, but he would find a way to make them work.

In front of him in line was a couple, arms encircled around waists, and Yoh blushed visibly when he saw them place their sole purchase upon the conveyor belt. He stared at the box of condoms with a kind of embarrassed intensity until the cashier plucked it up and scanned it. Yoh cleared his throat and pretended to be very interested in the newsstand. The clerk gave Yoh a curious look as she scanned his purchases; he merely shrugged and paid for the items, wondering whether or not Anna had cooled down any since he last saw her.

Once he left behind the outskirts of downtown, he saw fewer and fewer couples dotting the sidewalk. Yoh watched his shadow lengthen and blend in with the intensifying darkness around him, until he reached the gates of his home.

It was just as dark and quiet inside as it had been on the street, and Yoh felt for a second uneasy. "I'm home," he called out hesitantly, not really expecting and answer. No response came, and Yoh began sifting through the assortment of junk under the kitchen sink until he found the toolbox. He set it upon the kitchen table, turned on the light, and made his way into the parlor.

"Anna?" Although he now saw his fiancée before him, he once again did not expect a reply, for she was sound asleep. The typewriter before her, Yoh could see, was even more out of sorts than it had been that morning. He knelt down to hoist the typewriter, and caught a glimpse of Anna as he did so. He froze with his arms halfway to it, momentarily transfixed by the sight of her…

"What a rough Valentine's Day you've had, Anna," he whispered, as though she could hear him through her gentle snores. For Yoh now noticed all of the crumpled and torn sheets of paper upon the floor, some smeared with ink, others tattered from various typewriter malfunctions, and still others written upon in an aggravated hand. There were smears of ink, also, upon her fingertips that, even in the release of sleep, were tensely clenched into her white palms. Her eyes, too, were shut tightly and a gentle furrow bisected them from her brow. Even in the clutches of sleep Yoh could sense in her the tension.

"Try to relax, Anna. The stress can't be good for you."

Were she awake, Yoh would never have dared what he did next; but her taut eyelids emboldened him. He cupped his hands around his mouth and breathed hotly into them, coating his fingertips with condensation. Then he extended his index finger and began to rub at an ink spot on one of Anna's otherwise flawless cheeks, until her face was spotless once more, if still stressed.

"Out, damned spot," Yoh chuckled to himself. "Oh, Anna, if only you could've heard that joke, I think you'd be proud of me." (1)

With one last fond glance at her sleeping figure, Yoh turned around and picked up the typewriter. For something that looked so dilapidated, it certainly was heavy. Yoh's fatigued muscles threatened to give halfway to the kitchen table, but with a final grunt, he deposited the apparatus upon the tabletop.

"Let's see here," he said to himself, lifting the dust cover and revealing the typewriter's innards. "Geez, what a mess!" Yoh may never have been paying attention in shop class, but as he polished, oiled, and dusted the various widgets and gizmos of the typewriter's machinery, he was filled with a sense of resourcefulness. He mumbled to himself every now and then, sometimes with a towel or cotton swab or flashlight pressed between his lips, "Ah! So this connects to this," or "I don't know what this does, but it looks like it could use a little lube," or, perhaps all too often, "Oops."

Yoh began to realize how Anna's fingertips had become so stained as he discovered ink smears in places one would never expect to find them. There were crusted deposits of ink on the undersides of the keys, upon the sides and bottom of the typewriter chassis, even upon the places where a sheet of paper would ordinarily prevent it from going. In fact, Yoh noted with an ironic laugh, the only thing not endowed with a surplus of ink was the ink ribbon itself. "Fortunately, I'm prepared for that." Yoh pulled out a slender box from his drugstore shopping bag, smearing both with ink in the process, and began threading the new ribbon upon the spool assembly. With a few tightened screws and more than a few curse words, Yoh reassembled the typewriter and slid a sheet of paper into it.

"Let's see," he muttered, plunking out individual letters and watching with excitement as they materialized, smoothly and clearly, onto the sheet. "I did it!"

Yoh was too ecstatic at his success to notice that the message he was typing was about to exceed the typewriter's margins. As he neared the end of his message, he typed one letter too many, and the typewriter responded with a clarion "Ding!"

"Eep!" The bell resounded through the kitchen; Yoh could only imagine how loud it must have sounded to Anna. He snatched his bag from the countertop and bolted upstairs.

His hands rummaged through the bag's contents and emerged clutching a book of matches and a pair of tapered red candles. He roughly struck one of the matches, coming close to singeing his fingertips, and a small orange globe of light danced to life atop the candles. He thought he heard motion coming from downstairs as he stopped the bathtub drain and cranked the hot water tap.

There was now no denying the motion Yoh thought he had heard earlier. A rhythmic creaking of the staircase just outside told him Anna had been awakened by Yoh's indiscriminate typing a few minutes earlier. He swallowed hard, emptying his mouth just as the bathtub began to fill. A wispy, insubstantial steam billowed out of the spigot, warming the chilly air before Yoh's face…

"Yoh?"

He involuntarily redirected his attention from the filling bathtub to the doorway. Anna leaned against it drowsily, her hair shaggy, her eyes squinting from the sudden onslaught of light. She looked as though she was about to try to rub them, but saw the grunginess of her fingertips and reconsidered. Her hands briefly returned to the pleats of her rather rumpled black skirt, before they crossed tightly before her chest. Under one of her arms, he noticed, was tucked a sheet of paper.

"Did you just get home?" she asked slowly, and no trace of her rage of that morning remained, although Yoh perceived, from the way her arms resolutely refused to loosen, a certain lingering tension about her. "I…The dream I was having felt so real. You came home and found me sleeping, and you whispered to me, and rubbed a spot off my cheek…Ah well," she continued, taking no notice of Yoh's wide-eyed reaction, "I…I got your message, Yoh."

The sheet of paper drifted towards the floor. In letters that were now slightly smudged, Yoh saw what he had typed just a few minutes ago:

"Happy Valentine's Day, Anna.

"I fixed the typewriter for you.

"When you wake up, there is a surprise waiting for you upstairs. I think you'll enjoy it."

Yoh shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. The tub was more than half full now, and the steam grew thicker.

"Well, I woke up, and I'm here," she said, interrupting the sound of cascading water. "What's the surprise?"

Yoh's nerves nearly got the better of him, but he took a deep breath and spoke. "Anna, I was at the store earlier, and there were all kinds of things I could have gotten for you for Valentine's Day. But I thought, what's the point of all the candy, all the cards, all the teddy bears? I could give you one of those things and tell you 'Happy Valentine's Day,' or…"

He broke off for a second, daunted by Anna's unwavering, unflinching stare. He felt as though he may as well be explaining himself to a wall, but there was no stopping until he had finished. "Or, I could get you something that won't collect dust on a shelf somewhere, something that I thought…you could really use, given how tense you seemed to be earlier today."

Then Anna's arms uncrossed, and the beginnings of a smile played upon her thin lips. "Good call." When Yoh did not cut in, she continued, "I don't care much for Valentine's Day, really. It's so commercialized. It's uncomfortably close to putting a price on kisses and hugs, and on love itself. Plus, I don't really look forward to seeing all the people making out in public. It makes me tense."

Yoh smirked. "That would explain it."

Anna nodded in acknowledgment. "I was so afraid you were going to give me one of those damn heart-shaped boxes of chocolate or something…well, I'm glad you fixed the typewriter instead. You…you did good, Yoh. Happy Valentine's Day."

"Hang on a second," he said, leaning over to shut off the faucet. "There's still one more thing in my bag of tricks. Like I said, you seemed really stressed out this morning, so I thought I should get you something to mellow out a little." Yoh emptied the remaining contents of his bag into the palm of his hand. He began to sprinkle a handful of crystal granules into the bathwater, wafting the warm water in between his fingertips, and soon several exotic scents caroused with one another in the temperate air.

"Hope you like it, Anna….Anna?"

He looked up from the bathtub and saw Anna, eyes closed once more, but the tense furrow between her eyes was gone. Instead she seemed to be inhaling the fragrant air deeply. She let out a sigh and opened her eyes. "Ahh…oh, that's nice, Yoh. I'd take eggshells for breakfast every morning if it meant I could bathe in this."

Yoh felt color rising to his cheeks, making them even warmer than the thick ambient air. "Well…take your time in the bath tonight, Anna. I'm probably not going to make such a mess of breakfast tomorrow morning." With that, he ambled towards the door, flicking off the lights as he did so. He was about to shut the door behind him when Anna stopped him.

"Hold on, Yoh," she said. "First of all, I didn't get to thank you. Secondly," she continued, placing a gentle hand upon his shoulder, and he noticed with some irony that it was he who now felt remarkably tense, "I didn't get you anything for Valentine's Day."

"Oh, it's okay, Anna," he dismissed her with a casual shrug. "To be honest, I didn't remember either until this afternoon—"

"Why don't we share what you got for me?"

"Huh?" Yoh looked bewildered. "Oh. Sure, I guess I can use some of the bath salts too, if you don't mind. Kind of a girly thing for me to do, though, don't you think?"

"No, I mean," Anna replied, and Yoh was in no position to point out that Anna never really did complete that sentence. She did, however, pull Yoh back into the bathroom. In the absence of the light, only a pair of flickering candles illuminated them. Yoh could see Anna only in profile, but her face was positively enraptured, but above all stunningly beautiful. The sparse light cast her features in sharp relief, framed by only a few distinct blonde strands of hair; her eyes locked onto Yoh's face now, and with a little gasp he realized her hands were at his collar, manipulating his buttons…

"Anna," he rebutted softly, but any further resistance died in his throat as she unfastened his last button. Blood suddenly rushed to his head and he felt as though the room was pirouetting around him. Panicking, he swooned dangerously, and Anna supported him in a firm embrace that steadied him momentarily. Yoh felt relieved for a second before he realized, from the sheer warmth and silkiness of her embrace, that no garments were interposed between his skin and hers…

The apprehension, however, was temporary, and Yoh's arms loosened slightly around Anna's midsection, though it certainly felt no less passionate to her. Gently, he lowered her into the warmth of the tub. A kind of sensual tickling brushed upon Yoh's skin as they sat down facing one another.

Yoh swallowed hard. "Well," he gasped, "I guess you could say this turned out to be a better present for me than it was for you."

"Speak for yourself," Anna smirked, pulling Yoh closer. "I should get moody with you every morning, maybe."

"What—you don't already?" The flickering candle flame reflected in his pupils belied his lightheartedness.

"Oh, you," Anna chided teasingly. "Happy Valentine's Day, Yoh."

"Happy—" But Yoh never got to return Anna's sentiments. It was difficult enough for him to speak at all, considering how short of breath the sight of Anna in the nude left him, and even more so with another pair of lips threatening to suck the remainder of his air out of him. But it was a pleasurable kind of asphyxiation, a preternaturally intense kiss that left him feeling as though drowning in a sea of passion, although the water in the bathtub barely reached his chest. The water lapped at his back, shoulders and chest heatedly—or perhaps it was Anna caressing him; his eyes were closed and his nerve endings so sensitive, he could not discern the difference—their lips undulated, smacking and puckering. At long last, the water grew cold and the candles smothered themselves in pools of hard wax, but even in the cold darkness Anna and Yoh were warm as one, and neither wanted to leave for the warmth and light of the parlor so long as they could be in the cold darkness together…

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(1) From Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 5, scene 1): "A little water will clear us of this deed (...) Out, out damned spot! Out I say!..."