The Off Track

By Aoi Umi

A/N: Yay! I got this one done quickly. I love holiday break! n.n Ehhh...I guess I'll stop apologizing for writing fluff, as apparently fluff is a very popular thing. So, here goes. By the way...Happy 2005, everyone!

Chapter 10: Moo'nlight Shadows

"You fiend! You shall not have Shuichi's hand in marriage! I will not allow it!" Valiant knight Eiri Yuki burst upon the scene wielding a fine blade of moon-dipped silver. He rushed to the altar and heroically drew the point to the nose of his vile, scheming enemy. "Unhand him!"

The giant robe-clad rodent immediately blinked and made a soft, strangled noise. Demurely, it released Shuichi's hands from its own and then fled in fear.

"Oh, Yuki!" The relieved pink-haired bride rushed to his embrace and shed her (er, his) veil along with sparkling tears of gratitude. "If you hadn't shown up, I would have become the bride of the awful Count Twitch! Do you know how scared I was of our honeymoon?? Oh, Yuki! Yuki! Yuki!..."

"Yuki! Yuki!! Yuki, wake up!"

Yuki's painful bloodshot eyes snapped open to a desperate, clinging Shuichi bathed in pallid moonlight.

"Yuki! Yukiiii!"

Wow. That was one fucked-up dream. Mental note: Don't sleep within three hours of eating cardboard. Or don't eat cardboard to begin with.

"Yuuuu—(gasp)—kiiiiiiii!!"

"Shh!" Yuki growled. "What are you trying to do, wake everyone up from here to Canada?"

"Sorry," Shuichi apologized, looking slightly ashamed. But immediately, he was repossessed by his previous ridiculous panic – it showed in his eyes. He trembled and clung again to Yuki's side.

"What are you doing??"

"Y-Yuki! L-l-look outside!" he pointed behind Yuki's head. "There's something really scary in the window and it's watching us!"

Yuki lowered his eyes (although they had never quite opened all the way to begin with). "Shuichi, don't tell me you woke me up at two o'clock because you're imagining monsters. This is way too childish, even for you. Go to sleep before I hurt you."

"No...Yuki! I'm serious! There's something out there, I swear!"

"Uh-huh," Yuki mumbled as he pulled the covers about himself and rolled over to face the window.

Shuichi sat, anxiously watching, with his hands to his mouth in nervous fear.

Yuki's eyes snapped open. He bolted to a sitting position and turned to Shuichi. "What...is that?"

"I don't know, Yuki; that's what I was trying to tell you..." he whined.

Yuki accepted Shuichi into his arms and just stared at the preposterous silhouette outside the window. It wasn't a human...what the hell was it?? "Shuichi...go and see if you brought a flashlight in all that junk."

Shuichi nodded. He reluctantly detached himself from Yuki's embrace and stumbled to his pile of stuff in an urgent panic. Digging through it, he threw several useless objects over his shoulder.

Yuki ducked just in time to avoid a painful encounter with a small stapler that was traveling in his direction. He cringed at the sound that resonated as it made contact with the wall behind him. Next, he was hit in the face with a squishy bath sponge. He was thankful the objects had had such considerate discretion, all things considered.

"Yuki, I can't find my flashlight!" Shuichi fretted in a strained whisper.

"You mean this?" Yuki carefully dislodged a fuzzy green object from between the bed's pillows.

"Oh! Yeah, that's it." Shuichi leapt back onto the bed and seized it.

"Why is it fuzzy?"

"Why not?"

"Mrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..."

The two of them stopped dead.

"Yu-Yuki?" Shuichi, deliberately not looking toward the window, clutched the flashlight in one hand and fumbled for Yuki's arms with the other. Once he found them, he drew himself into their safety again.

Yuki instead stared at the window and tried to identify the figure and probable source of the noise.

"Yuki, this motel is haunted and we're going to die!! Or else we'll get cursed and be robbed of our souls and forced to live the rest of our lives as slaves to the creatures of the undead world!! I don't want to say goodbye, Yuki! I don't want --"

"Will you shut up?!" Yuki snapped. "What kind of a man are you? If I ever catch you watching a horror film again, remind me to pull the TV's plug out of the outlet and smack you with it."

Shuichi sniffled.

Yuki somewhat regretted this harshness as he felt a small tremble from the body in his arms. Oh god, is he going to cry?

"Mrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..."

"Give me that." Yuki snatched the flashlight from Shuichi and switched it on. He shone the beam of light out the window to show once and for all that the figure outside was not a ghost, but...

Shuichi opened one eye and ventured a look. He slowly opened the other and pulled his face out of Yuki's chest in order to get a clearer view. "Is that...?"

"There's your 'ghost,' idiot."

"Haha! A cow! That's pretty funny, right, Yuki?" Shuichi chattered, brightening and returning to his usual insufferably perky self. "What's it doing looking in our window?"

"It probably has some mad desire to mate with you," Yuki mused teasingly.

"What?? Yuki, eww!"

Meanwhile, the cow finally got around to noticing that an intensely focused beam of light was burning into its eyes. It blinked as furiously as cow eyelids allow, and tried to turn away. But after Yuki removed the light, it returned to its post and insisted upon staring into the little motel room.

Shuichi leaned back into Yuki nervously. "Why won't it go away, Yuki?"

"I don't know! What, do you want me to open the window and kick it or something?"

"No! I just..."

"Then what do you want me to do about it?"

"I don't know..."

Yuki forcefully drew the shades closed. "There."

"It's still outside...it's creepy," Shuichi whined.

Yuki was growing impatient. "I thought you liked cows."

"I do, but..."

"Go to sleep," said Yuki as he pulled the covers around himself and rolled over.

Shuichi nodded defeatedly. He sat, blinking in the dark, thinking about how very un-sleepy he was. He decided that he needed to use the bathroom.

When he was finished a minute later, he realized how completely dark it was now that the shades were drawn. He couldn't see anything. He stumbled in the general direction of the bed, but apparently miscalculated its exact location, for he bumped into its side and fell awkwardly onto it.

"Ow!"

"I'm sorry, Yuki," Shuichi hurried to apologize. He hesitated to get off, though. He found that he was breathing somewhat heavily from the shock of falling.

These warm breaths tickled Eiri's ear. As much as he wanted to dismiss them as an annoyance, they insisted instead upon becoming the opposite – an irresistible turn-on. He shuddered almost imperceptibly. Damn those sensitive ears. He turned his head deliberately and very softly pecked Shuichi on the lips.

Shuichi was stunned. He didn't question it, however, and very happily kissed back. "Yuki..." He abandoned the use of all the muscles that had been supporting him and fell completely. The soft 'thump' of his landing was mirrored by another in his chest. He felt Yuki's strong hands upon him and released a small gasp of excitement.

"Unn..."

As he lay there in blissful abandon and allowed Yuki to have his usual marvelous way, something inside of Shuichi unexpectedly snapped. Inexplicably, it drove him to turn right around and give everything back, only double.

This took Yuki by surprise. Shuichi was certainly feeling...forceful. He would have laughed at Shuichi's clumsiness, but with a sudden well-deployed touch, he momentarily lost all sense of reality and fell a little bit.

Now Shuichi had the upper hand. He panted and looked down at Yuki's face. His eyes had gotten used to the dark by now.

And then...he blinked like a kitten that had killed a mouse and didn't know what to do with it.

Yuki smiled sharply with sarcastic indulgence. Through his challenging eyes, he dared Shuichi to make another move.

Shuichi smiled, too, deciding in that moment that he was going to blow his lover away. "If you're going to keep acting like my sulky captive on this whole trip," he breathed, "I really am gonna make sure you don't go anywhere."

"Bold words." Yuki raised an eyebrow. "Let's see what you've got, loverboy." He lay back and waited.

"Mrrrrrrrrrrrrr..."

Shuichi stopped. He paled with an awkward realization. "The cow...it's still there."

Yuki laughed. "Too bad – if it's hearing any of this, it's going to be disappointed in you."

Shuichi stared defiantly into his eyes. "Oh, yeah?"

Yuki just continued to lie there smugly.

"Here I come, Yuki...! Nn...n...nnhhh!"

Eiri Yuki blinked groggily. It was still quite dark in the room, but now there was a halo of sunshine begging to pierce the spotted curtains. Suddenly his head throbbed immensely. "Ow..." he muttered. Maybe if I go back to sleep, it will go away.

Sleep was not an option, however, as the novelist's head relentlessly begged and screamed for aspirin. Although he was lying still, it hurt more and more with each successive throb.

There was nothing to do but grumpily stumble out of bed and ravage the room for a bottle of that miracle drug. Of course, this meant disturbing the sleeping Shuichi. Eiri considered this, but barely. Sacrifices must be made, after all.

"Haa...hm? Yu...ki?" Shuichi yawned, not quite awake, and turned over to see why his darling was leaving that warm, cozy bed. Just enough light streamed into the room for Shuichi to be able to see that Yuki was looking for something.

"Dammit...! Where is that aspirin?" Yuki overturned a few bags impatiently. Then he heard a loud yawn, which informed him that Shuichi had rejoined the land of the waking. He wasted no time in greeting his lover to the new day: "Shuichi, do you have any fucking aspirin??"

Shuichi twisted himself in the blanket and flopped over so that he lay on his back, perpendicular to the bed's orientation. He watched Yuki upside-down. "Aspirin? I don't think so. (Yawn.) I don't know. Why?"

"Because I have a headache. Another one besides you, I mean. A real one."

"Haha...you're so...(yawn) funny, Yuki."

"That doesn't do me any good when my skull is threatening to split into five pieces."

Shuichi smiled cattishly. "Could it be because I was that good nyaa?" he sang.

"No. It's because of the injury from yesterday. You were terrible."

"What??" Shuichi fully awakened and tried to leap up indignantly. But he had worked himself into such a cocoon of blanket that he was unable to move, and instead he fell out of the bed headfirst with a thunk. "Oww..." His eyes became swirls. "Now I need aspirin for my head, too..." he whined dizzily.

"Then by all means, get up and help me navigate through this veritable landfill of your junk. Maybe we'll find some."

"Veri..what? Yuki, you shouldn't use such big words when your head is hurting. And especially not when mine is. Ow."

"You shouldn't even bother thinking with a headache. Get up."

Shuichi would have nodded, but his head was sort of tied up at the moment, supporting his neck and his body in a very uncomfortable vertical position. He gave a "thumbs-up" instead. (Or "thumbs-down," depending on your perspective.) He struggled a bit and attempted to remove himself from the blanket, but it was no use. "Um...Yuki?"

"What?"

"I can't get up. I'm...stuck."

"Stuck?"

"Uh...yeah. I'm stuck inside the blanket." His face flushed a little. He knew that he must've looked very stupid.

Yuki turned around and looked. "Well, isn't that cute," he teased. "Is Shu-chan going to turn into a beautiful butterfly and float away, across the sky and over the rainbow, never to be seen again?"

Shuichi sulked. "Yuki! Help me!!" He thrashed about wildly.

Yuki looked down at him with mock sympathy. "I can't believe you're the same man who (bleep bleep bleep bleep) me last night," he said casually.

Shuichi stopped, eyes beady and mouth very small. He turned quite red.

Yuki took pity on him and grasped the end of the blanket. Lifting it high, he caused the blanket to spin open, and Shuichi fell to the bed with a soft bounce. There he sat, hands resting in front of him, and blinked. "Ohh, Yuki!" He attacked Yuki gratefully. "I'm alive! I'm alive! Isn't life great? I'm alive!"

"Yes, life can be something marvelous when one is not being assaulted by both a headache of supernatural proportions and a psychotic pink caterpillar."

"I'm not a caterpillar!"

"Oh, pardon me. You can't dispute the 'psychotic' part, though." He parted the shades halfway and light permeated the room.

Shuichi blinked. "I'm not psychotic!"

"What are you, then?"

"I'm..." Shuichi paused and considered this. He thought back to what Yuki had called him. "I'm...pink? Yeah, I guess so. My hair is, at least," he agreed. He looked up and smiled. "You're being so nice to me, Yuki! That was only two-thirds of an insult!"

Yuki rolled his eyes. But smiled. A little. Something about Shuichi's logic was actually almost charming. Almost. "Now get off of me and help me find that aspirin before I give you a worse headache."

Shuichi nodded.

Yuki was the one who ended up locating a bottle of the medicine, however. He was surprised that he even had any left after what he had already endured on this trip. He opened the bottle to find that there was only one tablet remaining.

Shuichi leaned over his shoulder and peeked into the bottle. "It's okay, Yuki...you take it. I'm still sorry about yesterday and the boat thing, you know..." he smiled sheepishly and stood on his tiptoes to kiss Yuki lightly on the head.

Yuki was a little flustered by this rather silly gesture. He was grateful that he didn't have to deal with it, however, as Shuichi left to gather some clothes and headed toward the bathroom.

"I'm taking a shower, Yuki," he announced.

"Okay."

Shuichi peeked his head out the door. "Oh...Yuki?"

"Hmm?" he replied after downing the aspirin.

"I'm hungry. What are we eating for breakfast?"

"I don't know. Why is it up to me? What do you want for breakfast?"

Shuichi thought for a moment. Then his eyes lit up spectacularly. "Yuki...I want...pancakes! Can we go out for pancakes?" he pleaded childishly.

"Sure. Whatever."

"Yay!" Shuichi squealed as he shut the door behind him. Then, a muffled exclamation came through the wall: "Hey! There's a cow-spotted shower curtain, too! Hahaha!"

Yuki smiled a little and lay back on the bed, propping his head with pillows and switching on the television. But he soon switched it back off and just rested. Perhaps it was because of his headache, or because there was nothing good on TV, but it might have had a little to do with the fact that Shuichi's pure, joyful singing resounded happily throughout the room. Maybe.

Ahem. Phantom cows do not appreciate non-reviewers. Please do bear this in mind.