Warnings: Shounen-Ai (if you're looking for it, but safe enough for the whole family), mild language, vague sexual references, genuine Omi-cynicism, over-hyphenization, and bizarre similes.
Spoilers: references to various events during the anime series, including but not limited to Omi's Tragic Past.
--Snow--
Incident Number One: Yohji and the Miniature Mountain of Snow
There wasn't really much to see out the windows. The snow splattered around the car in giant, wet flakes that stuck faster than if they were made of glitter-glue. On second thought, that stuff isn't really all that sticky. Yohji was driving, which in and of itself was scary enough, but rendered more cheap-horror-movie-esque by the fact that he couldn't see outside either. He had his brights on, and the extra light bounced blindingly back. I was amazed he hadn't hit something already.
"Yohji, turn on your fog lights, you'll see better." I said for the fifth time at least.
"What are you smoking? The fog lights are dimmer. Therefore if I turn them on, I'll see less. It's common sense. You don't even know how to drive, Omi."
I sighed. Let him wreck his precious convertible. What did I care? Stupid Yohji.
The ride to the Villa White was relatively uneventful. Relatively because nothing the four of us do together is ever completely uneventful, seeing as how we're usually interrupted by either one of my renegade distant biological family members or another equally devilish scheme to usurp the world. At that point, however, things were pretty quiet. Ken snored quietly in the seat next to me, his breath fogging over the doodles he'd made on the window with his finger. Aya was silent in the front passenger seat, glaring at the snow outside as if the weather was the reason his sister was in a coma. Yohji hummed tunelessly along with his music, which Aya had made him listen to on headphones instead of on the car radio.
I'd given up trying to make conversation an hour ago.
I took the opportunity to work on my calculus homework, since I knew once we got to the cabin my comrades would leave me no time for schoolwork. Yohji's driving plus the chain rule of derivatives left my head feeling a bit sandy and my stomach disturbingly similar to Jello. I didn't say anything, though, about my motion sickness. Even if Yohji would have been able to hear me past his headphones he wouldn't have stemmed his James Bond driving style. He would have told me to suck it up and be a man, which, coming from Yohji… well, I'm not so naïve as to not be a little bit disturbed. Just as I completed a particularly vicious problem involving implicit differentiation the car started down a hill. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, except it didn't stop when Yohji hit the brakes. Instead, his precious Jeep skidded in violent circles down the sloping road and stopped suddenly in a snowdrift toward the bottom. The wheels churned uselessly as the car settled itself comfortably in the snow. Without any kind of ceremony I flung open the door and vomited into the storm. When I returned my head into the car Ken stared blinkingly at me and Yohji was cursing his car to all sorts of imaginative places. I closed the door against the snow that attempted to set up a miniature whirlwind inside the Jeep.
"Are you okay?" Ken said, confused, having obviously just been awakened during the drama. I nodded the affirmative but felt otherwise. I wished I had something to get rid of the acrid taste in my mouth.
The wind battered even harder against the slightly tilted car, and eventually Yohji's furious screaming faded into more helpless cries of slightly calmer frustration.
"Well," Aya said, his voice flatter than the cover of my calculus book, "We could get out and shovel."
Yohji gave the gas pedal another desperate push.
"The snow is falling pretty hard," Ken observed, wiping away his window-steam art to see outside.
"Do we even have a shovel?" Yohji asked after giving up on the car and turning off the ignition.
"There's a collapsible shovel in the trunk." I said.
"There is?" Yohji turned to look at me. I nodded, not trusting the bile tickling at my throat.
"He put it in there this morning before we left," Ken said for me, giving me his classic look of worry as he spoke.
"So," Yohji began carefully, "Who's shoveling?"
And I thought that creepy Takatori lab was quiet.
"Let's all take turns, since we only have one shovel." I said eventually, glancing nervously between Yohji and Aya in the front seat.
"I'll go first." Ken offered, and Yohji beamed.
"Hey thanks Ken, you're a real pal."
Ken unbuckled his seat belt and turned to rummage in the trunk for the shovel and his hat, gloves and scarf. He donned his finally found items and with a cheery wave left the car, promptly disappearing into the blizzard.
"Don't you think we should go out there and, you know," I began, "freeze too?" Yohji said the second part also at the exact same time I did, only his was swarming with sarcasm.
"Why should we? We'll each have our turn, anyway. When Ken gets tired he'll come in and one of us will go instead."
"We'd just be useless standing around out there, doing nothing." Aya added. I slumped over, lying across the spot where Ken used to be. My head sloshed as it slowly recovered from its previous motion sickness. Aya gave me a look that I could not meet, so I closed my eyes instead.
"Yohji, turn off the car." I said quietly once I realized he'd turned on the heat.
"Are you crazy?"
"The carbon monoxide is considerably more deadly than the cold. Haven't you heard of those people who got stuck in the mountains, just as we have, and died; not from the blizzard but from the exhaust of their car as they left it on for the heater?"
Yohji turned the car off with a nervous chuckle.
"Ever the dramaticist, Omi."
"Dramatist." I corrected automatically.
"Yeah, that." He said, and he put his headphones back on. I could hear the guitar leaking out of them in faint, cackling waves.
It could have been a long time, it could have been short, but I felt the trembling, snow-strewn wind before I heard the door open and Ken enter the car. He almost sat on my head, and I had to wrench myself backward so quickly it made my brain gurgle unpleasantly. He was breathing slightly harder than usual as he peeled of his coat and gloves, the water rattling off of him and spraying everyone in the car with occasional droplets. He leaned back against the seat and sighed. Occasionally fat, juicy snowflakes tumbled one by one from his hair and landed on his cheeks, nose and shoulders. This image brought to mind the most surprising feat of imagination I had quite possibly ever had, and it was such that it made my cheeks feel warm and I wanted suddenly to disappear. It was also such that I will never tell a soul what it was. I pretended to have forgotten the slightly-confusing fantasy immediately and decided to stare at the back of Aya's head.
"What's it look like?" Yohji said, having removed his headphones. I saw Ken wipe the hair from his eyes from the corner of my own.
"It should be about done, I suppose. Look."
Yohji started the car and flicked the windshield wipers into action. Barely visible through the streaming snow, a crooked path led back to the road.
"Ken, you are now officially my hero." Yohji pulled down the parking break.
"It's nothing." Ken said softly, "It wasn't that bad."
I never knew Aya's hair was so fascinating.
Smiling, Yohji revved the engine in an attempt to drive somewhere, but the weather foiled him again. The wheels refused to grip the slick sleet they sat upon.
"Damnit!" Yohji wailed. Ken pressed his face against the window,
"I bet we could push it back to the road. It's sort of plowed there, at least."
"Everyone out. Except Omi. He's steering." Aya commanded.
Yohji winced, "Omi? Steer? He can't drive."
"You don't need to have a license to be able to steer a car, Yohji. You have one and you still can't steer."
"Well excu-use me! You…"
"He is the lightest." Ken intervened brightly before fists started flying. Aya was never one for pubic relations, and unfortunately Yohji was the quintessence of the public masses. To make myself useful while Yohji complained about me I dug around in the junk yard of luggage that spanned the trunk for their things. I passed coats, scarves, gloves and hats to the front seat.
"Don't let me down, kid." Yohji said gravely as he stepped out into the snow. I slid on my winter boots, just in case,
"Aye aye, Captain."
I crawled into the front seat as soon as there was room and buckled myself in after moving the seat forward the foot or so it took for me to reach the pedals.
"Stupid Yohji," I muttered, shifting the car from first gear into neutral and dropping the emergency brake. Honestly, if it wasn't for me that old man would have gotten himself killed a dozen times by now, and that's being modest. It took longer than it should have for the car to start moving, probably because of senseless bickering. Eventually, however, the other three managed to start the car forward at a surprising rate. I kept the wipers vigilant, and narrowed my eyes through the windshield against the show that allowed only a few yards' visibility. Despite the handicaps, I saw a dark shape in the snow. It could have been a rock, it could have been part of a tree, it could have been my imagination, but whatever it was I was sure Yohji didn't want to hit it with his car. Unfortunately, the object was right in Ken's neatly-cleared path. I scrolled the window down and poked my head out to call for Yohji to stop. The brakes didn't work when the engine wasn't on. I had only the accessories as allies. Naturally, he didn't hear me. I couldn't even see him through the gale. I pulled on the emergency brake: I considered our near-hit with whatever-was-in-our-way an emergency. The thud of three bodies hitting the back of the car amused me but unfortunately, they didn't see it in quite the same way.
"Omi, what the hell are you doing?" Yohji demanded after his attempt to rip the driver-side door off to get to me.
"Look." I pointed. Ken was already at what I now realized what a human figure sprawled in the snow. Aya stood safely back, watching, and Yohji frowned and moved away towards Ken and the stranger. I immediately stepped out of the car and made my way towards them as well. It was shockingly cold outside, but I was already only a few steps away.
The person was bundled tightly in layers of dirty jackets. Goggles and scarves obscured their face, which rolled slightly as Ken shook their shoulders as per the first instructions of any trustworthy first aid/CPR course.
"Are you okay?" If no response, check breathing and check the pulse simultaneously. Ken could have been Red Cross's protégé.
"He's breathing," He called against the wind.
"What do we do with him?" Yohji replied, holding his arms up to protect his face from the flurries.
"We'll have to take him with us, we can't leave him here." Ken began to drag the person up by the arm. Moving a body rendered unconscious by unknown circumstances was usually a lifesaving no-no, but Ken the heroic genius realized the external dangers were far worse if the victim was left alone. Suddenly, I realized I couldn't feel my arms.
"Omi, you idiot, get back in the car! You're not wearing anything!" Yohji bellowed.
"I am too!" I insisted. I was very decently clothed in a T-shirt and jeans. Aya stooped in to help Ken carry the stranger and Yohji grabbed me by the arm and dragged me back to the car. I wondered if his grip should have been painful. Distracted by the scene in front of me, I'd forgotten that I was coat-less in a blizzard, and my limbs were definitely out of the neurological loop. Oops. Something seemed to be hoodwinking my mental capacities, but I couldn't figure out what. But there was no time for that; our mystery guest needed attention.
"We need to check for frostbite and stuff." Ken said carefully once we were all loaded into the car. I was once again behind Aya next to the window, but now Ken was in the middle seat, with the bundle of rags to his right. I was sitting very, very close to Ken, and he was stripping the clothes off a complete stranger. For some reason this didn't bode very well with my innards, and I wished vehemently that my body would just get over the post-crash nausea and move on. Although, with Yohji's driving it was a miracle I was alive at all, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. Luckily for all of us, the car found no obvious disagreements with the terrain and meandered forwards and back onto the road. Someone ought to give tokens to Yohji for driving much slower than before.
"It's… a girl." Ken said a few minutes and countless layers of clothing later. I leaned around, ending up practically on top of Ken (Yohji's car isn't really all that wide, there wasn't a lot of room, what with the intruder and all…) to take a look. Yes, it was certainly a she, and she was wearing the most hideous set of long-johns I had ever seen.
"Well is this just peachy." I thought, the sarcasm burning a hole in my brain. Judging by the startled look Ken gave me I'd spoken aloud. What kind of innocent woodland creature did he steal that look from, anyway? He could put the foulest of American rappers to shame with just his eyes. You'd think since that embarrassing incident in the car with the Shota kid I'd have learned to keep my borderline-psychotic outbursts to myself. Apparently not, and a team doesn't like to see that their personal human-Prozac-overdose is prone to his own less-than-euphoric emotions, especially about taking in a helpless female victim. Isn't it natural to have a few reservations? We found her in the middle of the wilderness, in a blizzard. Seriously, I saw Dreamcatcher too.
At least I had the presence of mind to offer Ken an apologetic grin and look away as fast as I possibly could.
I'd hate to consider the girl's presence, however conveniently distracting at times, lucky. You'll undoubtedly see why soon enough. No, no aliens ripped their way from her intestines, but I think that's what I would have preferred by the time the whole event was over.