The song that Yohji sings is called 'You're the One' by Sugarcult. I do
not own it, of course!
Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I can't thank you individually here because I fell off a horse the other day and sprained my wrist...ouch. It hurts to type so now I'm just doing a one handed deal and I'm lucky I even got through writing this here... I PROMISE I'll thank you all in the next chapter! Please keep on reviewing!
~~~~~
"This place is a mess! A little help here, guys!" Omi skipped through the store, tidying things up as he went and trying to right a vase of flowers that Schuldig had carelessly knocked over and not bothered with cleaning up earlier. "Schuldig! Yohji! Please, this is her first time out of the house in weeks! Let's keep this place presentable!"
"It's only Bonnie," snorted Schuldig, leaning his face into his hand with a disinterested expression and a roll of blue eyes. "She wasn't even seriously injured! Just a little scrape - that's all." He sliced his finger lightly across his upper arm, smirking. "Remember the days when you likened such a wound to a splinter? Little Bonbon isn't a china doll - she won't break and she...she's a little tougher than she looks." His face took on a more serious, brooding expression as he recalled her reaction to finding out about his secret.
Omi frowned, hands poised on his hips as he stopped his frenzied cleaning long enough to consider the German's words. "Well, maybe..."
"YOU'RE THE ONE!" Yohji sauntered out of the storage room with a bag of potting soil cradled in his arms, head bouncing along with the beat of the music flowing from his headphones. Singing out the top of his lungs, unaware of his extreme volume, he moved past Omi without ever hearing the boy crying in distress. "You're the one who's making me crazy! I'm in love but it's only temporary! You're the...ONE! Take back this and that, shut your mouth -"
"YOHJI!" The young man pounded a fist on the his taller ex-teammate's back, effectively stopping the singing. "Quit it!"
Yohji ripped the head phones off his ears and was about to retaliate in annoyance when the shop door opened and all turned expectedly to see Bonnie walk through, all smiles and with her arm bandaged neatly. "Hi!" she said, waving with her good arm. "Is it time to open shop?"
Schuldig shrugged a shoulder and straightened, yawning. "Few more minutes. You feelin' better?"
"Oh..." She grimaced a little. "It's really not a big deal. Just a little scrape, in fact. I - I just made too big a deal of it to begin with because really, all it did was bleed some. And besides, it's almost completely healed now."
Shuldig shot Omi a knowing look, whispering into his mind, ~*~Told you so. You're such a mother hen!~*~
"Thank you for the flowers, Omi, Yohji," she said, putting on her apron and tying it around the back, no longer smiling and moving a little stiffly. She'd never realize they'd felt partially responsible for the injury. "Schuldig, have you seen Farfarello lately?"
"Here and there...lurking in the shadows...you know Farf."
"I wish I knew him," she grumbled and then, with a cheery smile, "How are Brad and Nagi?"
"Uptight."
"Ah, so normal?"
Schuldig let loose a nasal laugh and ambled out from behind the counter, one hand on his hip and the other running through his flaming hair. "Oh, well, now that all this is out of the way, the greetings and all, I'm craving caffeine. Anyone want coffee?" Before Omi could protest, he added, "It's right across the street!"
Yohji accepted while all other present parties declined and Schuldig swept out of the store, hurriedly making his exit. Bonnie worked in relative silence arranging some flowers and humming softly to herself, not that it could be heard above Yohji's careless singing.
It was a little strange - these guys were her friends, right? So why was it that now she examined their relationships, they were all so far away from her? No matter how much time they spent together, would it ever feel like they were close? Probably not, she decided sadly. After all, they had more secrets than she'd ever learn, if what Farfarello had told her was right, and they'd most likely made a practice of not letting anyone in. They were past assassins, and they had all the friends they needed. Themselves and their partners in combat.
And somehow, that made her feel terribly left out.
When Schuldig returned with the coffee, Farfarello was trailing in behind him, a delicate, quite breakable smile on his face. It was the kind of expression you had to hold your breath around for fear it would break if you so much as disturbed the air around it.
"Bonnie, look what the cat dragged in," Schuldig told her jokingly, handing Yohji a Styrofoam cup and then sauntering off to the back to drink in the quiet and store it up for the strenuous day ahead.
Bonnie grinned at Farfarello and winked at him, as if to say, 'I remember you came to visit me. I won't tell.' And aloud she said, "Farfarello - you haven't even called!"
He drew his head back a little in surprise and inclined his chin, gold eye gleaming ruefully. Under his breath, he muttered an apology, but his expression and stance was light.
"Oh!" Omi cried, coming out from the back again with a huge pot in his arms. He always seemed to be making trips from one end of the store to the other. "Bonnie! We're having a picnic this weekend! Sort of an end of summer thing. You're invited. Bring your brother."
"That sounds like fun," she commented, and immediately began to try to picture Farfarello and Schuldig and Yohji at the event. They simply weren't picnic people. Neither was Aya or Crawford, really. After all, picnics tended to get your clothes at least grass stained, and for immaculate people like the stoic redhead and the American, that was just unacceptable.
Bonnie couldn't imagine them EVER getting dirty.
~~~~~
"TACKLE FOOTBALL!" Yohji declared loudly, and Ken nervously glanced over at Mikazuki, who was beaming widely and nodding in enthusiasm.
Bonnie looked unsure but cast in a weak vote, while Nagi called out, "No way! Look at all this mud!"
Schuldig immediately put him in a headlock and ground his knuckles into the boy's hair, a little too roughly, Bonnie thought. "Computer geek!"
The picnic had turned out to have been placed on a horrible day. It had rained the night before and left gigantic puddles and slightly damp tables at the park. The skies were gray and cloudy and the air was humid. It was unpleasant, but the company was good, and just when they had hit a boring patch, Yohji had come up with a crazily brilliant idea.
Ryan, Bonnie's brother, looked concerned. "Bonnie, you shouldn't play."
"Neither should Mikazuki," decided Ken, though he backed off immediately after Mikazuki shot him a withering glare.
"My arm is fine," Bonnie snapped, flexing it to prove to them that she was worthy of joining. "Just no one tackle me too hard and I'll be ok, alright?"
Schuldig declared himself captain of one team, and Yohji took up choosing the other side. Schuldig's first choice was Farfarello, Yohji's was Ken, and then Schuldig took Brad and Yohji claimed Aya. This went on until the teams were Schuldig, Farfarello, Brad, Nagi, and Ryan for one and Yohji, Ken, Aya, Omi, Mikazuki, and Bonnie for the other. Bonnie had been picked last and was trying not to feel rejected.
Since none of them were sure how to play football, they opted for tossing Ken's soccer ball into the air, diving for it, and then running towards opposite ends of the field. Schuldig elbowed Omi and shoved him out of the way for the first toss up and took off down the wet grass in a blur of orange, surpassing everyone and bulldozing smack into Aya on purpose so that they both tumbled into a muddy puddle, leaving one fuming redhead and a hysterically laughing German.
Bonnie managed to claim the ball after that and dodged Brad with a delighted shriek, knowing the man had let her escape either out of pity or kindness or just lack of effort. Nagi was not so nice, tackling her in the next instant and sending them both flying to the ground.
"Let it go!" he commanded, trying to wrench the ball from her arms, but she held tight, rolling and writhing about in the mud.
"Get off me!" she screamed, mostly in jest, kicking out, crying out, laughing and hugging the soccer ball tight to her chest.
He flipped her over onto her back and reached for the ball, but froze only moments after, realizing that their position was much closer than it had ever been before. She was still pressing the ball to her chest, and with his hands now cupping the sides of it, he felt a little embarrassed, a little out of line, and suddenly noticing how cute she was with dirt smudged on her cheek and her round, hazel eyes wide. They really weren't that far apart in age, he thought then, and at first glance he had not been attracted to Bonnie at all, but now that they were both lying there in the wet, dirty grass with noses only an inch apart...oh, never mind. This was Farfarello's territory, which brought him to the question: was it appropriate for him to be playing this game with her?
Nagi always thought too much.
Bonnie smiled a little, wondering why the older boy seemed to be so deep in thought all the sudden, and lifted her head to get it out of the cold mud.
Farfarello misinterpreted it, however, and stalked over, grabbing Nagi by the back of his shirt, hoisting him up, and throwing him carelessly aside. The boy cried out in disbelief and self righteous anger. Farfarello was on his team, after all.
Bonnie simply lay in the mud, dirty and wet and cold and stunned to see Farfarello extending his hand to help her up. "It's part of the game," she said quietly, accepting the hand and letting him pull her to her feet. "He was supposed to tackle me! You didn't have to throw him off like that..."
Farfarello blinked at her curiously, shaking his head. "Don' scream then," he growled, and sauntered away, carefully stepping over Nagi as he went.
The entire field was silent as Schuldig and Aya, still sitting on the ground, blinked at her in disbelief and Yohji responded more vocally, murmuring, "What in the world...?" As for Nagi, he pouted, Brad remained stoic, and Omi was all smiles. Her brother grasped none of what had happened.
"Alright, team!" Schuldig said loudly, rising and looking very much unlike himself with mud covering just about every inch of his front. "No one touch Bonnie! I don't want mutiny here!"
Farfarello pretended he had not heard.
The game resumed almost immediately, and as Bonnie stepped forward to join once more, a hand caught her wrist, surprising her. She turned, blinked, and came face to face with Ryoko, a girl from her class.
"Bonnie," the girl said in happy surprise. "There you are! We heard you got hurt! You ok?"
Bonnie stared at the Japanese girl in shock, her mouth gaping. Then she glanced back over to where Farfarello was in hot pursuit of a screaming Yohji, looking almost as dangerous as he truly was as he leapt forward and brought the blonde crashing to the ground.
"I'm fine," she said, gulping down a lump in her throat.
Ryoko made a big show of sighing in relief. "Good! So, this is the first time I've seen you since that singing contest!" She smirked, an evil school girl-type gleam in her eyes. "I saw Hiromi kiss you. What's going on?"
"It was a victory thing," she replied coolly. "I have a boyfriend. He's not Hiromi."
"Oh? Someone from school?"
"No."
"Well..." Ryoko seemed to be carefully mulling something over, and then, clapping her hands enthusiastically, "Bring him to the water park tomorrow! A big group of us are going and we miss you and it'd be great if we could meet him! Besides, tomorrow is the last day it is open, and I know you haven't gone all summer. It'll be fun!"
Bonnie turned thoughtfully to admire Farfarello once more. He was sitting in a mud puddle and gathering globs of the thick, dirty stuff into his hands and packing it easily together, his entire body covered in the stuff. As Nagi sailed by, he chucked one of the mud balls at the boy, hitting him square in the back of the head. In that moment, he looked normal - the mud covering his skin so that his many scars and even the eye patch were hidden. He looked absolutely handsome and so innocently child-like.
Ryoko noticed her staring and directed her gaze in the same direction. "Oh? Is that him? In the mud puddle?"
"Yes."
"Aww," Ryoko gushed. "What a sweetheart! He's so cute! You DEFINITELY have to bring him!"
"Alright," Bonnie said quietly, knowing full well that Ryoko's statement would be withdrawn once she saw him up close and not covered in dirt. "I'll bring him."
It was past time she face her friends' opinions, anyway.
~~~~~
Review!
Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I can't thank you individually here because I fell off a horse the other day and sprained my wrist...ouch. It hurts to type so now I'm just doing a one handed deal and I'm lucky I even got through writing this here... I PROMISE I'll thank you all in the next chapter! Please keep on reviewing!
~~~~~
"This place is a mess! A little help here, guys!" Omi skipped through the store, tidying things up as he went and trying to right a vase of flowers that Schuldig had carelessly knocked over and not bothered with cleaning up earlier. "Schuldig! Yohji! Please, this is her first time out of the house in weeks! Let's keep this place presentable!"
"It's only Bonnie," snorted Schuldig, leaning his face into his hand with a disinterested expression and a roll of blue eyes. "She wasn't even seriously injured! Just a little scrape - that's all." He sliced his finger lightly across his upper arm, smirking. "Remember the days when you likened such a wound to a splinter? Little Bonbon isn't a china doll - she won't break and she...she's a little tougher than she looks." His face took on a more serious, brooding expression as he recalled her reaction to finding out about his secret.
Omi frowned, hands poised on his hips as he stopped his frenzied cleaning long enough to consider the German's words. "Well, maybe..."
"YOU'RE THE ONE!" Yohji sauntered out of the storage room with a bag of potting soil cradled in his arms, head bouncing along with the beat of the music flowing from his headphones. Singing out the top of his lungs, unaware of his extreme volume, he moved past Omi without ever hearing the boy crying in distress. "You're the one who's making me crazy! I'm in love but it's only temporary! You're the...ONE! Take back this and that, shut your mouth -"
"YOHJI!" The young man pounded a fist on the his taller ex-teammate's back, effectively stopping the singing. "Quit it!"
Yohji ripped the head phones off his ears and was about to retaliate in annoyance when the shop door opened and all turned expectedly to see Bonnie walk through, all smiles and with her arm bandaged neatly. "Hi!" she said, waving with her good arm. "Is it time to open shop?"
Schuldig shrugged a shoulder and straightened, yawning. "Few more minutes. You feelin' better?"
"Oh..." She grimaced a little. "It's really not a big deal. Just a little scrape, in fact. I - I just made too big a deal of it to begin with because really, all it did was bleed some. And besides, it's almost completely healed now."
Shuldig shot Omi a knowing look, whispering into his mind, ~*~Told you so. You're such a mother hen!~*~
"Thank you for the flowers, Omi, Yohji," she said, putting on her apron and tying it around the back, no longer smiling and moving a little stiffly. She'd never realize they'd felt partially responsible for the injury. "Schuldig, have you seen Farfarello lately?"
"Here and there...lurking in the shadows...you know Farf."
"I wish I knew him," she grumbled and then, with a cheery smile, "How are Brad and Nagi?"
"Uptight."
"Ah, so normal?"
Schuldig let loose a nasal laugh and ambled out from behind the counter, one hand on his hip and the other running through his flaming hair. "Oh, well, now that all this is out of the way, the greetings and all, I'm craving caffeine. Anyone want coffee?" Before Omi could protest, he added, "It's right across the street!"
Yohji accepted while all other present parties declined and Schuldig swept out of the store, hurriedly making his exit. Bonnie worked in relative silence arranging some flowers and humming softly to herself, not that it could be heard above Yohji's careless singing.
It was a little strange - these guys were her friends, right? So why was it that now she examined their relationships, they were all so far away from her? No matter how much time they spent together, would it ever feel like they were close? Probably not, she decided sadly. After all, they had more secrets than she'd ever learn, if what Farfarello had told her was right, and they'd most likely made a practice of not letting anyone in. They were past assassins, and they had all the friends they needed. Themselves and their partners in combat.
And somehow, that made her feel terribly left out.
When Schuldig returned with the coffee, Farfarello was trailing in behind him, a delicate, quite breakable smile on his face. It was the kind of expression you had to hold your breath around for fear it would break if you so much as disturbed the air around it.
"Bonnie, look what the cat dragged in," Schuldig told her jokingly, handing Yohji a Styrofoam cup and then sauntering off to the back to drink in the quiet and store it up for the strenuous day ahead.
Bonnie grinned at Farfarello and winked at him, as if to say, 'I remember you came to visit me. I won't tell.' And aloud she said, "Farfarello - you haven't even called!"
He drew his head back a little in surprise and inclined his chin, gold eye gleaming ruefully. Under his breath, he muttered an apology, but his expression and stance was light.
"Oh!" Omi cried, coming out from the back again with a huge pot in his arms. He always seemed to be making trips from one end of the store to the other. "Bonnie! We're having a picnic this weekend! Sort of an end of summer thing. You're invited. Bring your brother."
"That sounds like fun," she commented, and immediately began to try to picture Farfarello and Schuldig and Yohji at the event. They simply weren't picnic people. Neither was Aya or Crawford, really. After all, picnics tended to get your clothes at least grass stained, and for immaculate people like the stoic redhead and the American, that was just unacceptable.
Bonnie couldn't imagine them EVER getting dirty.
~~~~~
"TACKLE FOOTBALL!" Yohji declared loudly, and Ken nervously glanced over at Mikazuki, who was beaming widely and nodding in enthusiasm.
Bonnie looked unsure but cast in a weak vote, while Nagi called out, "No way! Look at all this mud!"
Schuldig immediately put him in a headlock and ground his knuckles into the boy's hair, a little too roughly, Bonnie thought. "Computer geek!"
The picnic had turned out to have been placed on a horrible day. It had rained the night before and left gigantic puddles and slightly damp tables at the park. The skies were gray and cloudy and the air was humid. It was unpleasant, but the company was good, and just when they had hit a boring patch, Yohji had come up with a crazily brilliant idea.
Ryan, Bonnie's brother, looked concerned. "Bonnie, you shouldn't play."
"Neither should Mikazuki," decided Ken, though he backed off immediately after Mikazuki shot him a withering glare.
"My arm is fine," Bonnie snapped, flexing it to prove to them that she was worthy of joining. "Just no one tackle me too hard and I'll be ok, alright?"
Schuldig declared himself captain of one team, and Yohji took up choosing the other side. Schuldig's first choice was Farfarello, Yohji's was Ken, and then Schuldig took Brad and Yohji claimed Aya. This went on until the teams were Schuldig, Farfarello, Brad, Nagi, and Ryan for one and Yohji, Ken, Aya, Omi, Mikazuki, and Bonnie for the other. Bonnie had been picked last and was trying not to feel rejected.
Since none of them were sure how to play football, they opted for tossing Ken's soccer ball into the air, diving for it, and then running towards opposite ends of the field. Schuldig elbowed Omi and shoved him out of the way for the first toss up and took off down the wet grass in a blur of orange, surpassing everyone and bulldozing smack into Aya on purpose so that they both tumbled into a muddy puddle, leaving one fuming redhead and a hysterically laughing German.
Bonnie managed to claim the ball after that and dodged Brad with a delighted shriek, knowing the man had let her escape either out of pity or kindness or just lack of effort. Nagi was not so nice, tackling her in the next instant and sending them both flying to the ground.
"Let it go!" he commanded, trying to wrench the ball from her arms, but she held tight, rolling and writhing about in the mud.
"Get off me!" she screamed, mostly in jest, kicking out, crying out, laughing and hugging the soccer ball tight to her chest.
He flipped her over onto her back and reached for the ball, but froze only moments after, realizing that their position was much closer than it had ever been before. She was still pressing the ball to her chest, and with his hands now cupping the sides of it, he felt a little embarrassed, a little out of line, and suddenly noticing how cute she was with dirt smudged on her cheek and her round, hazel eyes wide. They really weren't that far apart in age, he thought then, and at first glance he had not been attracted to Bonnie at all, but now that they were both lying there in the wet, dirty grass with noses only an inch apart...oh, never mind. This was Farfarello's territory, which brought him to the question: was it appropriate for him to be playing this game with her?
Nagi always thought too much.
Bonnie smiled a little, wondering why the older boy seemed to be so deep in thought all the sudden, and lifted her head to get it out of the cold mud.
Farfarello misinterpreted it, however, and stalked over, grabbing Nagi by the back of his shirt, hoisting him up, and throwing him carelessly aside. The boy cried out in disbelief and self righteous anger. Farfarello was on his team, after all.
Bonnie simply lay in the mud, dirty and wet and cold and stunned to see Farfarello extending his hand to help her up. "It's part of the game," she said quietly, accepting the hand and letting him pull her to her feet. "He was supposed to tackle me! You didn't have to throw him off like that..."
Farfarello blinked at her curiously, shaking his head. "Don' scream then," he growled, and sauntered away, carefully stepping over Nagi as he went.
The entire field was silent as Schuldig and Aya, still sitting on the ground, blinked at her in disbelief and Yohji responded more vocally, murmuring, "What in the world...?" As for Nagi, he pouted, Brad remained stoic, and Omi was all smiles. Her brother grasped none of what had happened.
"Alright, team!" Schuldig said loudly, rising and looking very much unlike himself with mud covering just about every inch of his front. "No one touch Bonnie! I don't want mutiny here!"
Farfarello pretended he had not heard.
The game resumed almost immediately, and as Bonnie stepped forward to join once more, a hand caught her wrist, surprising her. She turned, blinked, and came face to face with Ryoko, a girl from her class.
"Bonnie," the girl said in happy surprise. "There you are! We heard you got hurt! You ok?"
Bonnie stared at the Japanese girl in shock, her mouth gaping. Then she glanced back over to where Farfarello was in hot pursuit of a screaming Yohji, looking almost as dangerous as he truly was as he leapt forward and brought the blonde crashing to the ground.
"I'm fine," she said, gulping down a lump in her throat.
Ryoko made a big show of sighing in relief. "Good! So, this is the first time I've seen you since that singing contest!" She smirked, an evil school girl-type gleam in her eyes. "I saw Hiromi kiss you. What's going on?"
"It was a victory thing," she replied coolly. "I have a boyfriend. He's not Hiromi."
"Oh? Someone from school?"
"No."
"Well..." Ryoko seemed to be carefully mulling something over, and then, clapping her hands enthusiastically, "Bring him to the water park tomorrow! A big group of us are going and we miss you and it'd be great if we could meet him! Besides, tomorrow is the last day it is open, and I know you haven't gone all summer. It'll be fun!"
Bonnie turned thoughtfully to admire Farfarello once more. He was sitting in a mud puddle and gathering globs of the thick, dirty stuff into his hands and packing it easily together, his entire body covered in the stuff. As Nagi sailed by, he chucked one of the mud balls at the boy, hitting him square in the back of the head. In that moment, he looked normal - the mud covering his skin so that his many scars and even the eye patch were hidden. He looked absolutely handsome and so innocently child-like.
Ryoko noticed her staring and directed her gaze in the same direction. "Oh? Is that him? In the mud puddle?"
"Yes."
"Aww," Ryoko gushed. "What a sweetheart! He's so cute! You DEFINITELY have to bring him!"
"Alright," Bonnie said quietly, knowing full well that Ryoko's statement would be withdrawn once she saw him up close and not covered in dirt. "I'll bring him."
It was past time she face her friends' opinions, anyway.
~~~~~
Review!