See incompetence-pleading disclaimer in bio.

Circle Dance
by roku

Chapter Two: Quickstep

*

A month passes since Kyou and Yuki's odd conversation. They haven't had a chance to talk again, and life continues as normal. Tonight is their last night of freedom. Tomorrow it will be exactly three weeks before the final exams begin. Tohru, Yuki and Kyou have decided to start working on the different exams that long in advance.

'I know Uo-chan and Hana-chan aren't starting until a week ahead of time,' Tohru says when they discuss when to begin, and she is visibly concerned about her friends' lax attitudes.

Kyou shrugs. 'Uotani can threaten the teachers into giving her good grades and Hanajima can sense the correct answers.'

Yuki laughs lightly. 'I wouldn't be surprised.'

Tohru sighs. 'Hana is even worse than I am at schoolwork. And Uo's grades are-'

'Look, give it up already. No matter how much you worry about them, they're the ones that have to take their exams and you can't help them. Deal with it.' Kyou interrupts her.

'You don't have to interrupt Honda-san like that, stupid cat.'

'You don't need to pay attention to every little thing I do, damned mouse!'

'I can't help but pay attention to every little annoying habit of yours, you idiot, that's what makes you so annoying!'

'I'm annoying? If you ever had the chance to see how annoying you are, you arrogant, pompous-'

'So!' Tohru exclaims, interrupting Kyou in turn. 'What times shall we reserve to study together?'

'Must we study together?'

'You can study alone if that's what you want, stinkin' rat.'

'So can you, stupid cat.'

'I don't want either of you to have to study alone!' Tohru exclaims. 'These finals are hard enough as they are, it'll only make it harder if you're feeling lonely while studying!'

The boys both stare at her, shamefully feeling them selves going soft at her innocent ways to bring about ceasefires.

'And besides,' Tohru continues, a naughty little smile on her face, 'I need Yuki-kun to explain chemistry to me and I need Kyou-kun to explain literature. You can't desert me!'

Kyou raises an eyebrow and Yuki shakes his head, smiling. Tohru's sense of humor comes out on rainy days when no one is expecting it.

'Fine,' Kyou shrugs, 'I'm free every afternoon after school.'

'Me too,' nods Tohru.

'I am too, but Student Council usually needs me for something.'

Kyou snorts. 'Yeah. If it isn't some lovesick fan girl trying to hump you.'

'Oh no. I usually deal with those in a matter of minutes. No humping involved.' Yuki says with an evil grin and makes a swift punching motion; Kyou snickers. Tohru hides a nervous smile. When they forget to argue, they have some pretty good moments together. Even when it involves being unanimously cruel to a third party, she is happy they don't fight as much as they used to.

She notices a flat silence has drifted over them, bearing Yuki and Kyou's simultaneous realization that they just shared a joke together, and what a horrible realization it is becoming-

'So!' Tohru exclaims a second time, before either one of them can get up and saunter off in disgust.

'Either Kyou-kun and I go home after school and wait for Yuki-kun to get home, or Kyou-kun and I wait at school and the three of us walk home together.'

'Or, Kyou-kun goes home and eats something and waits for the two of you to get there.' Kyou offers, giving Yuki a look.

Yuki meets his eyes in a moment's surprise. Oh right, his look says. Kyou raises his eyebrows at him and turns back to Tohru.

'So there's another wonderful possibility.' Yuki says neutrally.

'I guess we'll see,' Tohru decides, 'when we get there.'

'I like the last one, where I get to go home and eat something,' Kyou adds, as an afterthought.

*

Yuki blinks and refrains from cussing as the plate slips from his hands and shatters on the tile floor of the kitchen. He stares at the shards of dish as he wonders if Tohru will let him clean it up, or if she will smile and kick him out of her kitchen.

He looks up at her. Probably the second.

He raises his eyebrows weakly at her, and she smiles back, shaking her head. He sees her eyes dance, and hears her let out a small laugh. Her brown hair swishes along and around her face.

'You know, Yuki-kun, it's good to know I'm not the only one who can be a klutz around here.' and she grins.
The song on the radio is a popular one, he thinks, and he should have recognized it but he can't. She had, she had been humming along with it.

'I'll clean it up, Honda-san.'

'That's okay. I think it'll go faster if I do it.' And she smiles at him again. 'Go on, go sit down. I'll finish up in here and then bring out tea, okay?'

'But-'

'Bye bye, Yuki-kun,' she winks at him and slides shut the door, and he realizes he is on the other side.

Isn't she human? How can this girl last through housework and cooking, and cleaning up after three lazy, useless guys who just happened to have an extra room in their house?

Yuki knows that if these tasks had been his, he would go insane and set the house on fire within twenty-three minutes.
Silently he slides open the kitchen door again. She doesn't hear him; the song on the radio has burst into its high, and he watches Tohru stretch, raising her arms and spreading the fingers of each hand. She twirls around once, eyes closed and smiling, her steps a little off balance, and she lets out a small humming sound.

Suddenly he understands this girl more than anything in the universe. He recognizes every motion her body makes; he knows those hips that swayed only slightly, and only for a moment and only to one side. He imagines how it must feel to be her, to breathe through her nose and to have that long brown hair on her head, to have that finely shaped mouth and to have the mind behind those eyes that can't keep secrets. And then, he imagines touching her and feeling her skin against his own skin.
And he imagines turning into a mouse.

She turns to clean up the broken dish. He quickly slides the door all the way open, as if he were walking back into the kitchen. She looks up from where she kneels down on the floor, slender hands retrieving a chunk of porcelain here and there. Her knees touch the ground, her thighs pressed against each other. She looks up at him.

He is supposed to be a man? He is older than she is. He is taller, stronger. He shouldn't have to let her pick up a plate that he broke in the first place. All he does is stare at her legs as she cleans up his messes.

'Well, the part about going to the living room and staying there didn't last very long, did it?' she says teasingly, and her eyes meet his from beneath her long eyelashes, which seem to be there just so he might notice them and wish they were brushing against his throat.

He realizes his mind is a total blank and that she said something approximately five seconds ago and is probably still expecting a reply on his part.

'I,' he says, rather conclusively, and then figures that probably isn't the best sort of word to comprise an entire sentence of.

'I wanted..' he tries again. Fill in subject. Here. On the dotted line. Come on. Not that hard. Think of random kitchen object- 'the cutting board?'

'You want the cutting board?' Tohru repeats him curiously. 'What are you going to do with that?'

Answers like, knock myself over the head for being such an idiot, fill his mind, but he decided those wouldn't do too well with Tohru. An idea pops into the same mind.

'To knock Kyou over the head with,' he ends up blurting, albeit rather miserably.

He said it without thinking it through, and of course now he realizes that if there is one thing that upset Tohru, it's that-

'You and Kyou-kun are always fighting!' she sounds somewhere between desperate and hopeless. She looks up at him, and he can see her wondering how she might be able to convince him and Kyou to stop fighting, without hurting anyone's feelings.

'I.. no. No. I was joking.'

But if anything would confuse her, that would! Yuki nearly ever jokes. And not to her about Kyou, anyways. Damn. He seems to be getting himself in deeper with each second he's standing here.

'Can I please just clean that up for you?' he asks her, hearing a frantic tinge to his own voice.

She frowns lightly, perhaps still confused about what he said before, and then laughs a little, as if the idea that she would let him help is ludicrous.
'No, Yuki-kun! I told you it was fine. You're very sweet to offer again, but just go and relax.'

She probably remembered the cutting board again, because she blinks a glance in the direction of the object on the kitchen counter, and adds, 'but please don't fight with Kyou?' followed with pleading eyes, another smile and a shake of the head.

He wants to kiss her each time she smiles like that, but a little voice called Sense of Reality is whispering into his brain that all he ever does when she smiles like that is stare stupidly and perhaps let a little drool run down his chin.
'I guess,' he answers (drools at) her flatly, and walks out of the kitchen.

He flops down on the couch and closes his eyes as Shigure and Kyou veg out in front of the tv. How can they have no problem whatsoever with Tohru doing all the work? Besides the fact that it was Shigure's idea in the first place that they let her stay here in exchange for her keeping the house inhabitable.

Yuki tries every day, but seems to cause more clutter than actually clean anything. He set a washing machine full of underwear too hot, and he and Tohru had stood trying to stretch Shigure's smiley-face boxers for half-an-hour before even Tohru was ready to admit it was a lost cause. Shigure had been heartbroken.

One day, Yuki asked Tohru to teach him how to cook. She kept him with her in the kitchen, and explained to him how she did everything while she did it, and let him try it all out. After the evening was over and dinner was done, she told him that she was proud of him, because he had paid well attention and hadn't burnt or broken anything too severely. He couldn't tell her that he could not fathom how she just knew amounts of ingredients and cooking times, and how she could time it all and put it together and make it taste so good. He was sure if he were to try and cook without her peering over his shoulder and cheering him on, it would become a very large greyish-muckish lump that would plop away and sit grumpily in a corner for a few weeks before anyone gathered the nerve to poke it with a very long stick.

Sitting on the couch, Yuki winces as he visualizes a greyish-muckish six-week-old dinner-lump thing swallowing the stick and poking him back with other, far scarier, things.

'Krggggghhh,' he lets out of the corner of his mouth.

'Sohma Yuki; the epitome of eloquence.' Shigure quips. 'So, how many plates did you break?'

'Just the one.'

'Stupid rodent,' Kyou grunts, his heart not really put into the insult, not looking away from the soap opera on tv. Yuki might have liked to knock him over the head with a cutting board, but that really is a reason within itself not to do it. Not to mention Kyou is his new partner-in-crime, his support and assistance, his.. er.. well.

'Hum,' Shigure hums merrily. 'Humhumhum. I wonder how many Kyou-kun would break if he ever helped Tohru-kun in the kitchen.'

Kyou mutters something vile about dogs under his breath, and Yuki asks Shigure if he might like a cutting board.

'Eh?' says Shigure, but Tohru happens to walk in at that moment, holding four empty mugs.

'Yuki-kun.. no cutting boards, remember?' she pulls her lips into a pout but then sparkles at him, and he smiles at her, caught off guard entirely.

'Sorry,' he apologizes bemusedly and holds his breath when she meets his eyes again.
She puts down the mugs, nods and makes a twirl out of nowhere, and walks back to the kitchen.

When Tohru carries the pot of tea out, his eyes are right there again, searching for hers. She meets them, looks away again and bites her bottom lip. He wonders what it means. She settles herself down and bends over the low coffee table, pouring the mugs for the men. Yuki's eyes drift from her hands up her arms to her shoulders, to her collarbone. He steers his eyes resolutely up, away from her bust- and finds her casting a peculiar glance at him. He can feel he's blushing. She smiles at him and hands him his mug of tea.

He wonders if he might be attractive, and he wonders if he might be interesting, and he wonders if, if there might be any girl on the planet to take his curse in stride, can it please be this one?

*

AN. Hey now, sweet things. Here's chapter two. Sorry for the delay but my modem stopped working (hm, maybe I didn't pay a bill? Or four?) but I'm moving back to my parents' house for a two months anyways, so the damn modem isn't my problem anymore. Anyways. A big big thanks to those who reviewed me; you know you're the ones I do this for. An apology that I don't pop over and read everyone else's fics; my life is really insane and busy right now. I did go and read (the first part of) Shin's voice's fic and really liked it so far. Hey hey, I even saw your Cheshire cat thing in the first chapter! You'd think I had already read it and was referencing you in my own story. Anyways.

Fun Fact: my spelling control's suggestions for Shigure: seizure, shaggier, and Hague. LOL. I live in the Hague. Kakkoii. Mata ne~
Roku