Warnings: Shounen-Ai (if you're looking for it, but safe enough for the whole family), mild language, genuine Omi-cynicism, and over-hyphenization.
Spoilers: references to various events during the anime series, including but not limited to Omi's Tragic Past.
Snow
Incident Number Three: Yohji Proves his Ineptitude beyond Reasonable Doubt
I was on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night when I heard some strange sounds accompanied by dangerous hissing. I peered into one of the bedrooms to find Ishida Ayame in her true form: Snakes twinged and twisted around her head in place of her hair and long, sticky tentacles held her prisoner stiffly in place.
Ken.
She held one long, manicured claw poised at his delicate throat. I had my darts ready in a fraction of an instant but Ayame struck out her reptile tongue and hissed,
"Drop them, Omi dear. This isn't a hollow threat."
What could I do but comply? My darts rattled to the ground helplessly as I looked on.
She slit his throat anyway.
I screamed, tilting upright faster than the most obnoxious of boxing dummies. It took a moment for me to realize that I was downstairs at the Villa White, sleeping on the couch, and that the vicious murder of Hidaka Ken had been a nightmare. I felt the crystals of cool sweat clinging to my face. The wind creaked and swooped in the now-closed fireplace and I felt so very alone.
Since sleep seemed suddenly to be completely terrified of me I pulled out my trusty laptop and opened solitaire; the light from the screen enough for me to see properly. The good thing about computer solitaire was that you could never lose any cards, and you could also change what your deck looked like. I chose the flapping bats and the ominous vampire castle to suit the current mood of our predicament.
And speaking of playing with a full deck, I heard a tell-tale noise from upstairs. Someone was moving around in the dark, and I bet myself fifty yen that it was her. Stealthily, I closed my laptop to extinguish the light and crept toward the stairs. She was most certainly going for the stealth factor. Peering over the top of the staircase I could see her using the edges of the hallway to reduce creaking. What a clever little siren! Where did she learn such tactics? I fortified my limbs to spring at just the moment when she passed by the stairs.
Five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
One!
I ended up splattered across the hallway on my face because I realized mid-jump that my attackee was none other than Yohji.
"Yohji, what..?"
"Shh, Omi!" He snarled, jamming his fingers into my face to shut me up. I tried to bite him, but we'd gone through such a charade so many times back at the Koneko that he was prepared for it. He seemed to always think I was there for the purpose of ruining his countless dates. You'd think he'd learn to stop picking up girls at the shop while we're working, because I wouldn't have to tell mortifying stories about him otherwise. I pulled my head away from his silencing grip and snarled at him,
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Shut up or you'll wake someone," He hissed back, "I happen to be going to the bathroom!"
"Uh great, retard, it's that way."
"I was going for a refreshing walk."
I glared at him, "Her room is right there. I know you were on your way there."
"Sure, to check up on her, you know, see if she's alright."
"Somehow I seriously doubt that leaping on someone while they are defenseless and asleep constitutes 'checking' on them."
"You know, you wound me with your lack of faith."
"And you disgust me with your shameless and vulgar actions!"
There was his hand plastered over my mouth again.
"You're so obnoxious!" His look changed from insecurity to suspicion so fast I had to blink a few times before it registered, "What are you doing awake and up here, anyway?"
"I couldn't sleep, and I saw you creeping around the halls like some sort of serial killer so I came to investigate."
"Who did you think it was?"
"Her."
"Miss Ishida?" I nodded. "You were about to attack Ayame!?"
"Well what would she be doing ninja-walking around in the middle of the night if she wasn't a dark beast?"
"Well, she wasn't sneaking around, and she isn't a dark beast."
"No, you're darker than any beast!" I folded my arms across my chest, glaring through the perpetual aura of cleverness that surrounded me. Yohji rolled his eyes.
"Look, just get back to sleep. You need it." He started back down the hallway, "and quit being so paranoid. Someday a girl will fall for you, too. You're pretty cute." With a smirk, a wink, and some fast-shooting index fingers Yohji headed back to his room. I scowled at him and twisted my face into the skankiest I could contort it, ran my fingers through my hair and said in a mockingly suave voice, "you're pretty cute."
I wanted to puke.
And as I stood there with my face contorted into an expression that was in all likelihood scarier than the backside of Baba Yaga herself, Ken spoke to me from his partially open doorway.
"Omi, is that you? Is everything all right?"
I immediately switched into a more startled expression.
"I… uh…" His hair was surely the envy of the Amazonian
undergrowth but his eyes were frighteningly sharp.
"Can you not sleep or something?"
He should have just given me a medal right there for my incomparable beached-bass impression. Why I just couldn't come out and say, 'Yohji is a creepy bastard' I still have no idea.
"You can sleep in my bed, if you want." That was the exact moment my heart let loose from all its worldly arterial connections and made a four-G plummet into my intestines.
"We can trade places," He continued, but I still couldn't breathe properly. I'm surprised I didn't tilt over backwards and fall down the stairs. When whatever had leapt down my throat unlodged itself I managed to squeak,
"Uh, no. I... um… water."
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously in a disturbingly Aya-like way.
'He can see right through me,' I thought, suddenly switched into a two A.M. panic. I couldn't let him find out just by looking what I still didn't quite understand.
"Goodnight!" I said quickly, and I ran back downstairs, effectively forgetting everything I had gone up there for in the first place.
I woke up in a warm, happy place. The blanket was tucked perfectly around my shoulders and it took my sticky eyes a moment to notice that the T.V. was on. Red kanji on the bottom of the screen informed me that the morning news report was muted. What in the hell good was watching the news on mute? I was endlessly grateful, though. Anyone but Ken would have turned the volume straight to the 'wake Omi up' setting. Yohji because he's an ass, and Aya because he would have forgotten I was there. Ken, however, was watching the news muted. He was always so considerate of others that if given the chance, I was sure Mother Teresa would have adopted him at first sight. He never put himself first, so I figured someone had to. It was closed captioned (for the hearing impaired) too; Ken was so much cleverer then he let on. Would Yohji have ever considered closed captioning, or even known how to implement it if he did? No.
Ken's face seemed fully awake and exhausted, all at the same time. His freshly-showered hair had lost its machete-impervious quality and was combed neatly in dripping strands across his scalp. I was content to simply watch him watch the ugly news guy talk and yet say nothing when my body decided to yawn noisily.
"Good morning, Omi. Sorry if I woke you." He was suddenly Mister Ray of Sunshine. The effect was startling.
"You didn't at all. You can turn the volume on now, thanks." I sat up and rubbed my eyes, reveling in the dusty sunlight that bounced through the windows from the heaps of snow outside. Ken's pants were too big, and this fact provided a view of Ken's stomach that he surely hadn't noticed was visible. Staring made me realize exactly why all the real girls at the shop went for Ken. All the girls that wished they were real went for Yohji, the girls who were tougher than old Mrs. Momoe's beef jerky went for Aya, and all the little, Hello Kitty toting middle-schoolers went for me, with exceptions of rich, creepy stalkers like Ouka, (who also happened to be a relative. Don't get me started on the surprising percentage of my family that has more than one break in their mental circuitry). But the ones that were actually something, (well, more so than the others, anyway,) went for Ken, and he never wanted them. If Yohji had enough brain cells that hadn't been converted to his sex drive to notice, it would have sent him into fits of insane jealousy enough to make Farfarello look like Strawberry Shortcake. Luckily he seemed content with the wanna-bes, as long as they were over eighteen, of course. I'm not supposed to tell how often he actually employs that little rule of his. I'm sworn to secrecy under pain of something really dreadful. Yohji wouldn't specify. I don't appreciate all the stupid stuff I end up knowing about the old blonde man, when I know next to nothing about Ken. Hell, I even know more of Aya's secrets than either of us would care to admit. But as far as Ken goes, I have about nada. For one, what really happened when he went after Koga at his beach house? And what did the Kase bastard say to him at the bottom of the stairs that day?
The world may never know.
I felt the pricking that hinted to me Ken was staring at me. I shot my eyes upward to meet his before he caught me in the act of gawking at him.
"I think I'll go take a shower."
Ken shook his head as I untangled myself from the blanket,
"Ayame is in there."
I'd forgotten all about her. Lightning flickered against the inside of my skull. My glittering, peach-skin morning vanished. I'd woken up with happy butterflies flitting through my brain, but the memory of the previous night's events sent their entrails smearing across the windowsill. Whatever muscles were holding my shoulders upright quit their job.
"I'll go make breakfast then."
Go, reassuring smile, go! I grabbed my clothes and traipsed into the downstairs bathroom (no shower) and tried my best to scrub the globs of rubber cement out of my eyes. After dressing, I returned to the kitchen to find Aya staring into his coffee.
"Good morning, Aya" I offered. He grunted noncommittally. Apparently the caffeine hadn't yet dilated his blood vessels from 'catatonic' to 'apathetic'. His morning grunt was usually slightly friendlier. I cast my lighthouse smile on him as I moved off to find the eggs. I breathed my relief to find that Ken had remembered to put them in the fridge last night. An impressive feat, since he'd left them out twice in the past and last night was nightmarishly distracting. I cracked the eggs into the pan and moved to pour myself a mug of brown slosh. I didn't like coffee, per se; I always had to drown it in milk and sugar to tolerate it, but I figured I could use the extra chemicals. I needed to be alert for the trials ahead.
"Is Yohji up?"
"hhn." That meant no. Well, no eggs for him, then. With a flourish and a sizzle, I flipped the eggs and then went and turned on the tap in the sink. It was a test, see. The water pressure in the cabin was anemic and dyslexic, so I knew by the pathetic, whimpering spray from the faucet that she was still in the shower.
Well, no eggs for her then, either. Yohji can make her some himself. I was sure he'd love that.
When she finally shows up she's sugarspun. Her dark eyelashes cover the downward tilt of her gaze as she shuffles into the kitchen. She's wearing Ken's clothes, blue jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. He follows her in, looking lost and confused. At least he still has his hat. A man is a goner if he lets a girl wear his hat. I've seen it: at school, at the movies, everywhere. They may say people wear their hearts on their sleeves, but no, it's their hats. Maybe that's why Ken wears his backwards. His hat, I mean.
"Good morning" Ken offered, slipping past a still Ayame to take his turn at the coffeepot. She did this coy thing with her hair, skirting it behind her ear as she looked up at the kitchen,
"Thank you all," Her voice was calm radiance, her smile the mother of all fluffy doves, "I don't know what would happened to me if you hadn't been there…" Insert melodrama here. I'll tell you. You would have picked yourself out of the snow and gone back to whoever hired you, spewing apologies from your devious strawberry lips. Her eyes ratcheted onto mine, as if she were a telepath.
Uh oh. Hey, if that orange-haired psycho could do it…
I tried to make my mind blank, like Hatori's math homework before he asks me for the answers. Think nothing. Her gaze sailed away and I found myself letting out the breath I didn't know I'd been holding. She was a sly one. Ken handed her a mug and she nearly drowned him in her sickly-sweet lost puppy look. Oh please. Why didn't I run her over with the car when I had the chance?
As if snowstorms themselves weren't enough, no, the sun has to come out and destroy every single rod and cone in the back of your eyes for the finishing touch. That's certainly what happened when the four of us came out to inspect the previous night's damage.
"Looks like we're stuck up here for the weekend," Yohji sighed. It was fake. He was thinking of all the ways he could trick Ayame into sleeping with him.
"Well, it's a good thing we planned to stay that long, anyway." Said Ken.
"But we didn't expect another person," I injected concern into my voice. It wasn't fake.
"We have plenty of food." Yohji shrugged.
"We still should get her back into town, people might be worried she's gone."
"We can call." I hate you, Yohji. He sauntered over and draped an arm around Ken, startling the brunette out of his inspection of the mostly-buried car. I thought I saw Ken twitch.
"Thinking about Miss Ishida?" Yohji crooned, "You're being awfully quiet, Ken."
"Yohji!" Ken ducked out from the oppressive arm of incoming love advice.
"It will be awhile before the plows make it up here," Aya said, his voice more blank than if he was announcing a hot dog sale at food-way next week, "If they come at all. We have to wait before we go anywhere."
Somehow I managed to prevent myself from saying, 'if we run out of food, can we eat Ayame first?'