Disclaimer: I don't own Beyblade.
Title: Waiting in the Wings
Chapter Title: Waiting and Dreading
Rating: T
Categories: Romance/Drama
Summary: Mariam and Kai both want to be independent, not relying on someone else. Not relying on 'love'. When they meet, their opinions only grow stronger. But could there be love waiting in the fiery wings of Dranzer?
Feedback: Reviews spur me on. I thought that you would have figured this out by now.
Status: Slow updates due to exams and lack of interest in Beyblade.
Notes: So after a long, long hiatus, I bring you another update.

WAITING IN THE WINGS

Kai/Mariam
Mariam and Kai both want to be independent, not relying on someone else. Not relying on 'love'. When they meet, their opinions only grow stronger. But could there be love waiting in the fiery wings of Dranzer?

Flowerperson
© 2006

Part XI
Waiting and Dreading

Kai tilted his head back to try and stop the nose-bleed, content that she was out of things to throw. "I went to the hospital but they said you had gone back to your apartment."

"Oh, so you're still my stalker, huh? I thought I had gotten rid of you! Why didn't you wait for me to come back in the morning?"

"Because... because... just shut up!"

That insufferable man! "Me? This is my apartment! YOU shut up!"

She should apologise.

No, no, no! She wouldn't— couldn't —apologise! It was his fault so why should she have to say sorry?

Mariam sighed as she stirred the milky tea. She had refused to go to 'Caffeine', just in case a certain Russian was there so had instead bought a cup of tea from the 'Tuck Shop Lady', or 'Mai', at the hospital as her cart wheeled past. It wasn't as great as the coffee, but it was quite sweet. With her mood at the moment, she needed sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. Chocolate ice-cream sounded good too.

Well, she did chuck lamps and other objects that weren't glued to the floor at him. Mariam knew for a fact that she had a powerful throw (thanks to her training when she was a beyblader) and the baseball had hit his nose directly. It was probably broken.

Served him right.

And he did come to ask (Kai begging would have been entertaining) for forgiveness.

But he was ogling her… 'nakedness'.

He didn't know that she had decided to sleep naked.

He was stalking her!

She should be flattered, really, from such an attractive man such as Kai…

What was she doing? How was Kai attractive? He had such weird, blue hair—

Hmmm, and her blue locks were just so normal.

—narrow, evil eyes—

That she found herself enchanted by.

—make-up, which made her believe he was homosexual—

Hopefully, he was at least bisexual.

Okay, fine. Perhaps she was slightly attracted to him. But that was only physical attraction based on his toned body. How had she seen it? Come on, every girl had seen the topless picture of Kai in 'Beyblade Boys!' Embarrassingly, she had even swooned over him then too… Not that she was swooning over him now. She was a woman, dammit! A fully grown, mature woman.

He had big feet too. And everyone knew that big feet meant…

Big socks, her mind answered dumbly as a warm, red blush consumed her face like a virus. Great. She couldn't even finish the sentence mentally without blushing like a teenager. 'Mature women' did not blush at the prospect of men's 'private parts'. She had seen a man's 'private parts', so why did she find this so embarrassing and blush-worthy?

Because it's Kai's 'private parts'.

She hated this— hated being attracted to a guy she had probably broken the nose of. Would the emotionless Russian even accept her apology? She hadn't really accepted his… so she supposed he could turn it round on her as payback.

Mariam despised the concept of 'revenge'. Such an ugly word, and always brought the worse repercussions. Like the time she had painted Dunga's toenails bright pink so he had drawn a moustache on her face in permanent marker (that took weeks to fade).

Kai was probably the most vengeful; he'd probably do much worse to her.

Maybe he'd let me see him naked… that wouldn't be such a bad thing…

As the mental picture hit her, Mariam fell out of her chair.

"Urgh," she grumbled as she got onto her feet. Looking at the clock, she saw that it was around one o'clock. The doctor said he'd be finished with Joseph around two. She would use that time to locate Kai, and apologise. Then run off before he could start chucking stuff at her.

Oh Spirits, please don't let Kai be a vengeful man.

"Hey, Kai! What you been up to?"

Brows furrowing, Kai tried his best to ignore his childhood rival from behind the paper he was reading. Trust the idiot to be in the vicinity when all the Russian wanted was some peace and quiet. He was getting fed up of his bad luck.

Tyson, undeterred with Kai's lack of response, sat across from him in the café.

Personally, Kai preferred the coffee shop 'Caffeine' but could not chance another run-in with Mariam for a long time. That woman was dead-set on castrating him slowly after the… incident. And now, he was stuck with the pig. Perfect, he thought cynically.

A waitress brought Kai the espresso he had ordered earlier then turned to his companion.

"Can I bring you something, sir?" she asked, smacking her gum and taking out a notepad.

Tyson flashed the waitress one of his cheesy smiles, "My buddy here is treating me to a large soda and deluxe-meat sandwich, isn't that right, Kai?" Kai grunted, not wanting to be dragged into an argument with the loudmouth. Really, he'd had enough. His paper had still not been lowered. It wasn't like it would affect his accounts much, anyway. (Although Tyson was rolling in the money after all the sponsorships and guest appearances he made. Cheap-skate.)

The waitress rolled her eyes at his wink, then went off to fetch the sandwich and drink— Kai hoped she poisoned it, or at least spat in it for the blue-haired man's stupid behaviour. Dranzer knew how many times Kai had wanted to insert toxic substances into the former-Beyblading Champion's food.

"Kai! Oi, Kai! Earth to Kai!"

Couldn't the pig see that he was not in the mood to have an argument? And that was exactly what having a conversation with him would lead to.

Beginning to be irked by Kai's deliberate silence, Tyson snatched the paper out of his hands. "Aren't you even going to— oh, ho, ho!" he suddenly broke out into loud laughter, making more than a few people look their way.

Mahogany eyes narrowed and an angry growl ("Tyson…") was heard from his lips.

"What happened to you, huh?" Tyson chuckled, pointing at the bandage over Kai's nose (yes, Mariam had managed to damage the stoic Russian's nose with her hysterical throwing of objects). He poked it, making Kai wince before grabbing his wrist, tempted to snap it. "Get into a little fight on one of your nightly patrols, eh, Phoenix-Man?"

"Shut up, Tyson," Kai hissed, rubbing his throbbing nose, "I'm not in the mood."

Tyson burst into snickers, "Just wait when I tell the guys about this— you'll never live it down! So who was it? Some drunken weightlifter? They'd have to be big to take down the infamous Kai Hiwatari!"

He frowned, "No, it wasn't."

"Some lady smacked you with her handbag?"

Kai flinched. Tyson grinned.

"It was, wasn't it? It was a girl! A girl! Now I gotta tell the guys…"

In the blink of an eye, Kai had reached forward and grabbed Tyson's collar with both of his hands, bringing their faces merely a few inches apart. "You tell anyone— anyone— and I'd make you wish you had never been born."

"How you gonna do that, Kai?" Tyson replied, smirking. Stupid, arrogant pig!

"Oh, I'm sure I can think of something…" Kai leaned back into his chair, aloof. "And it begins with H."

This time it was Tyson who frowned. He waved his hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, sure; whatever. Not like I care about your twisted love life anyway. To be honest I thought you swung the other way…"

"Tyson," Kai warned.

The chocolate-eyed man chuckled nervously, remembering his ex-team-mate's threat. He recovered after a few seconds, resting his head on the palm of his hand, curiosity alight in his eyes. Kai suppressed the urge to run a hand through his hair. He knew what was coming…

"So…" Tyson began, "Why did this lady hit you? Young or old? Attractive or repulsive? Easy or frigid?" Kai scowled at his crude interrogation and picked up his paper, resuming his reading. "Ha, you know I'm only kidding. But you must have done something for her to hit you… Unless it was someone like Hilary… Wait a second, was it Hilary? Doesn't take much for her to get upset and start throwing punches," he rubbed his head, as if remembering one of his past experiences with Hilary's fists.

"It wasn't Hilary." Although now he thought about it, she was similar to Hilary in some ways. She wasn't as loud, or as bossy but she still had her weird moments. Or maybe all women were just like that.

The waitress had arrived with Tyson's food and he eagerly tucked in, showing no table manners— as expected of the pig.

With a mouthful of bread and meat, Tyson asked more about the mysterious woman. "So, do you know her name?"

"If I did, I wouldn't tell you."

"Met her before?"

No response.

"Have I met her before?"

Again, no response.

"Hey, I have, haven't I? Oh, this is great! Better than great; it's fantastic! Now… let me think… Mariah? She's feisty; but she hasn't been her for over a month so it's not her. Emily's still in America, and I doubt she'd have enough power to hit you, anyway… Ming-Ming?" he paused, shuddering, "Well, she's still on tour in the USA, anyway. Queen has been 'missing' for years, as has Salima."

He put a finger to his stubbly chin (obviously the slob hadn't shaved in a few days), thinking.

"Mariam… well, Max told me she had moved to Tokyo recently. I haven't run across her yet, and Max said he hasn't heard much from her either. Maybe she couldn't take the busy streets, since she comes from a small village. I wonder why she left her home, anyway…" Tyson rambled on (forgetting why he was talking about all the girls he knew, luckily for his former team-mate) whilst Kai pondered over the topics the rambling idiot brought up.

Who knew that the pig could actually mention something Kai would be intrigued about? Why did Mariam leave her village? And why did only she and Joseph come? Kai had always believed in the phrase 'Curiosity killed the cat', but, well, he wasn't exactly a cat, was he?

A few minutes later, Tyson's plate was empty and he downed the last of his soda. "Well, I guess I'll be leaving you know. I was supposed to meet Chief twenty minutes ago but you know him— he won't mind if I'm a bit late. Heh-heh. See ya!"

Now that the loudmouth pig was gone, Kai was left with peace, quiet and the bill. He fished the money out of his pockets and left the exact money on the table, leaving no tips for the gum-chewing waitress; the service wasn't that good. The Russian checked the time— half past one; perhaps he'd phone Gou later— and walked along the streets back towards the grand Hiwatari mansion.

Bah. What did he care about those stupid questions? The woman was crazy with a capital 'C'! If she saw him, she'd probably chuck more stuff (except probably to more intimate areas to see if she could damage those too).

Really, it would so much more beneficial for him and his body parts to avoid the ex-Saint-Shield as much as he could, if not for the rest of his life. However, it was annoying how every other thought seemed to centre on her, if not every thought… with the occasional disgust for Tyson, of course. Then again, when he had been younger, every thought of his had centred on defeating Tyson (and Brooklyn, and many other adversaries) and regaining his title as the Beyblade Champion.

But Fate was unkind, and that damn amateur was lucky. He knew that without Tyson, he'd probably be as crazy as Brooklyn, back in the Biovolt complex and pushing himself towards death. Heck, he'd probably be dead before he even became an adult. Now Kai had his own house (with no evil relatives alive or out of jail), a son, friends— he grimaced at the prospect that Tyson could be included in that oh-so-selective group— and… well… a girl that he was sort-of interested in…

Abruptly, Kai slapped himself. And then realised that he had thwacked his delicate nose and began cursing in pain.

Damn woman. She's not even here and I'm still getting hurt because of her.

Attempting to soothe his ache by lightly brushing it, Kai was oblivious to the figure in front of him, standing by the gate to his home.

"Kai," an all-too familiar voice greeted; "I've been waiting for you…"