Summary: Yoh thinks Anna's just a bit under the weather. But if that's the case, why's she being so recalcitrant about it? Meanwhile Yoh's friend formulates his own idea as to why Anna's really sick…
Written: In about 5 hours on 9/4/07.
Rating: T for suggestive themes, romance and mild language.
Special Thanks: To Smart Angel for the story suggestion. If you have a plot you'd like to see done, let me know and your name could be here in the next story!
Notes: I know this one took awhile to write; I apologize, but I've been busy. Nonetheless I hope you like it, and feel free to make suggestions!
Immaculate
Kiss #15
Yoh couldn't quite put his finger on it as he stood in the kitchen that morning, but something was definitely off kilter. Like the non-stick spray he had just applied to his frying pan, it was intangible and invisible, but undeniably there. As he peeled strips of cold bacon from the plastic pack and slapped them onto the griddle, he gave a cursory glance over his shoulder, and felt himself inch closer to pinning down why that morning felt so odd. "Anna?"
No response came. My imagination again…or maybe one of the overactive poltergeists in this place. One of these days I'll take care of their unfinished business and maybe I can live in peace.
Something else, however, was gnawing away at the back of his mind, that had nothing to do with the haunts, but rather concerned another resident of the En Inn who was still alive. He paid it no mind, though, and soon the strips of bacon were crackling. A pair of sunny-side-up eggs later, he had nearly forgotten the indescribable malaise he had felt minutes ago…
As he cracked an egg against the countertop, though, he heard an awful sound reminiscent of a demon in the midst of an exorcism—a horrific, sickening retching noise that completely inundated Yoh's mind with its dissonance. He was vaguely aware that his hand was dripping with viscous raw egg white and bits of shell onto the floor, but he was too preoccupied to pay it any mind. "Anna!"
A plate in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other, Yoh bounded up the stairs three at a time, but abruptly stopped before the door to his fiancée's room. He heard soft footsteps upon the wood floor, and a ruffling of the sheets; whatever had happened to her, he figured, she had recovered awfully quickly. She had a nightmare and decided to use the toilet since she was already up?
With his hands both full, Yoh couldn't knock, so he called out. "Anna?"
He barely heard the response. "Come in, Yoh."
Yoh nearly dropped the plate when he kicked the door ajar and saw her. She was lying down upon the rumpled sheets, her slightly disheveled hair vaguely resembling a haystack, her chest bereft of its usual sky-blue beads, and instead of her trademark black top and skirt she sported a white evening gown that left very little to Yoh's imagination. He was more than willing to continue enjoying the view, but Anna's face precluded that option.
The glare that Yoh had all but come to expect after years of Anna's company was absent, and in its place was a decidedly queasy, unfocused countenance; her skin appeared somewhat more flushed than usual; and her hands were clasped upon her stomach, giving the appearance that she was trying to keep her organs from slipping out through her navel.
It didn't take long for him to realize that his nightmare hypothesis was incorrect. He knew he should do something, but what exactly eluded him. Even so, he hesitantly laid the breakfast tray at the foot of the bed and stood above Anna's form, gazing down at her torso from above and forcing himself with all his willpower to ignore the bare contours of flesh he could see through her all too loosely threaded garment. He saw her give a weak smile as he knelt upon the floor to whisper, "What's wrong, Anna?"
Anna's bleary eyes focused as they locked on to Yoh's concerned face. She swallowed, licked her lips and replied, more softly than Yoh, "I…just don't feel too well this morning."
Without thinking to, Yoh found his fingers combing Anna's mussed hair into their usual straight locks. "I'm sorry to hear that. Here, maybe…" He slid the tray forward from the foot of the bed, but Anna meekly shook her head. "No, Anna, you'll feel better once you've got some good food in you, trust me…"
Yoh clumped eggs onto the fork and snapped off a segment of crispy bacon, and he felt a chill of excitement as Anna acquiesced and opened her mouth, and his fingers grazed the bottom of her chin and then her lips…
"Thank you," Anna said, with somewhat more volume, once she took the glass of orange juice Yoh offered her.
"See? You feel better already!"
Yoh could have sworn he heard a note of hesitance, even the traces of an outright lie, in her reply, but he took her words at face value. "Y-yeah. I do." He felt relieved that Anna did indeed look healthier now, but he overlooked the fine wrinkles of worry at the corners of her eyes and the tips of her brow, the way her breaths were shallower than usual, the way she was trembling ever so slightly…
He stood up and brushed off his knees. Feeling strangely bold, he bent over slightly and whispered, "I'd better start my training, but I'm glad you're feeling better." Then, emboldened by Anna's lack of protest to his actions thus far, he bit back his nervousness and quickly grazed his lips against her forehead. He felt them tingle, but also noticed her skin felt clammy, almost nervous, about something…
Yoh was about to turn around, but he saw Anna's hand jerk quickly. Damn it, shouldn't have pushed my luck, he thought, and he winced slightly, anticipating the slap he knew was coming. But Anna's hand stopped way short of Yoh's face, instead gripping his wrist shakily. He felt the same clammy sensation from her hand and gave a slight start. "Yoh…I…"
"Yes?" Yoh turned to fully face her once more, his black bangs swaying slightly, framing his innocent eyes and concerned expression. He saw Anna's lips, barely holding back a torrent of words, and knew that the malaise he had felt earlier that morning would be explained in the next moment…
"I…just wanted to say thanks for…for caring, Yoh." Even if he hadn't noticed the way she sped through the last of her words, or the way she looked away abruptly as soon as she had finished, he still would have detected the lie.
"No…nothing you wouldn't have done for me, Anna." And with one final, almost disappointed but not insincere smile, he turned and left her staring after his back, wanting more than anything else to come clean, but fearing too much his reaction to the truth…
He left the gates of the inn mired in confusion. Why would Anna hide her sickness from him? He cared for her well-being more than anyone else, and hiding an illness would only hurt them both eventually. Buildings blurred at his sides as his pace quickened, as though expecting his speed to centrifuge out the uncertainty and deception and reveal the truth, but all he saw was a blur of stores and cars around him, and at the center, a streak of icy blue hair above a snowboard—
The figure gave an enthusiastic wave, and Yoh stopped dead in his tracks. Only one person in all of Japan would walk the streets in summer with a snowboard strapped to his back. "Horohoro!"
"Yo, Yoh," came the irreverent reply. "A bit warm for a jog, don't you think? Or…" His beady eyes widened as he concluded, "Anna's making you, huh?" A sound like a cracking whip slipped through his slender lips.
At the mention of his fiancée, Yoh gave an involuntary lurch. He recovered, trying to pass off his twinge as a cough, but his friend was too vigilant for such a ploy. "Is something going on between you two? I know how she can be sometimes…"
"No, it's just…" Yoh shifted his necklace nervously. "She was really sick this morning, and then she didn't want to talk about it."
Horohoro frowned. "Anna's headstrong. You should know that. She probably just doesn't want to make you think she's too weak to beat the sickness herself. The flu's been going around, by the way. I'd keep away from her for a few days, unless you want to catch it too…"
"I don't think it's the flu, though. It sounded like," Yoh recalled, hesitating slightly, "well, like she threw up, I guess, but no cough, no runny nose, no fever…"
"No idea, but if I were to venture a guess…" Horohoro looked deep in thought, but then he gave a scandalized gasp and wagged a finger at his friend. "You and Anna have been…naughty lately! ( 1 ) Well, no wonder she's sick…Congratulations, by the way!"
Yoh didn't feel the hearty slap on the back he had been bestowed. Instead, he looked at his snowboarding buddy with puzzled eyes. "Nothing to congratulate me for…I mean, you'll find that special someone soon, and then you can be naughty too…But what's that got to do with anything? You saying I gave her some kind of disease? That's impossible, I've only ever been with her…"
"No," Horohoro replied, looking—and sounding—slightly exasperated. "Don't worry about Anna's sickness. We Ainu explain it this way…the impurities in a woman's body must be purged before she can become a fit mother. That way, the child is born free of corruption. So—"
Yoh heard the words, but they imparted their meaning to him only slowly, but when they did, they hit him hard. He felt as though someone had just pulled the Earth out from under him, and he was falling ever faster, hurdling into an inky nothingness that would never cease, and he bellowed at last, "Anna…is PREGNANT?!"
"That…surprises you? I mean, yeah, you love each other, I get it, but that doesn't mean you can just hope for the best and skip the condom—"
"BUT WE DIDN'T DO THAT!!" Yoh's mind was deluged in thoughts and memories, and he saw nothing but a flood of white, just the way that it had been when he was in the shower with Anna not long ago…He remembered declining Anna's offer because they just weren't ready, they certainly hadn't done…what was necessary to create life…but then he recalled dimly what he had done with his fingers…and not washing them first, when they had come in contact with his—
And then the fog dissipated and Yoh was back on the sidewalk, seeing his friend through the same fingers that were now cupped around his face. Nothing he could have thought, much less spoken, could come close to expressing the emotions that were clawing at his chest, but finally he managed to speak.
"Oh man…I screwed up."
He felt a strong hand close upon his shoulder. "What's all this then?" Horohoro's usually brash voice was subdued, almost gentle. "Yoh, I said 'congratulations,' dammit, and I meant it. You'll be a great dad."
"But…" Yoh felt the distinct sensation that he was grasping at straws, both in the present conversation and in the bigger picture, of him, Anna, and their infant child… "Dude, I'm not even sixteen! I'm still a kid and now I'm gonna have to raise one?!"
"Yoh," and he felt a firm grip upon his wrists, forcing his hands to stop covering his anguished face. He could see his friend's sincere blue eyes now, and he blinked hard as he continued, "Seriously, you'll be awesome at it. Every kid in the neighborhood will want you as their dad. Laid-back and unshakable, but respected as an awesome role model!"
Yoh felt a hotness in his eyes. "I…Thanks a lot, Horohoro."
"Listen, I'll always be there if you don't think you can cut it on your own—Aw, quit that crying, you big sissy," he shot back shakily, wiping at his own eyes with the backs of his hands...
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Yoh knew he had been under considerable mental duress the entire morning, but now, as he returned home and peeked into the living room, he did a double-take and blinked, dumbfounded. Unless he was very much mistaken, and unless the revelations of the day really had rendered him temporarily insane, he could swear that Anna was sitting in her usual spot on the couch, with a bowl of vanilla ice cream cradled in her lap. Nothing unusual about that…except that in lieu of a spoon, she was holding in her slender fingers a particularly juicy, deep-green, ten-inch-long pickle. ( 2 )
He shook his head in utter disbelief as he saw a dollop of ice cream materialize at the tip of the gherkin, only to vanish with a crisp crunch as Anna consumed both simultaneously.
This is just too strange to be true. Maybe I'll wake up any minute now and everything will go back to normal, oh please…
The bowl of ice cream clattered onto the floor as Yoh strode into the room, knowing, in spite of every shock he'd endured that day, exactly what to do next. Anna leapt to her feet and tried to kick the bowl under the table, but only managed to flip it over, spilling mushy ice cream and a half-eaten pickle onto the wood floor. She hopped with a gasp, but cleared her throat. "It's just, uh…for the North Beach Diet, you know, I've been gaining a little weight…"
"Well," said Yoh softly, and the words, unlike all the disjointed thoughts that rattled his brain up until that moment, rolled clearly and fluidly off his tongue, as though he had known all along he would need to speak these very words, "it's normal for you to gain a little weight when you're…"
And in one smooth motion, Yoh took a single stride to stand directly behind her and ran his hands beneath her nightgown until both came to rest gently upon her stomach. Slowly Anna craned her neck around, until it could rotate no further. He could just barely see her profile, a single eye that glimmered with nerves, half a pair of quivering lips that were parting now to speak…
"So…you know…?"
Yoh pressed his body against Anna's back; he didn't know whence the sudden warmth, the sudden calm and acceptance, had come, but somehow, holding her in his arms, he incontrovertibly knew everything would be all right. "I do."
"And…this is…you're not…?"
"What?" he asked rhetorically, feeling the silkiness of her blonde hair lapping against his cheek. "Upset? Afraid? Regretful? Anna, you're the strongest person I know, and alone you can do just about anything. But you're not alone."
She turned to face him; his hands migrated to the small of her back.
"You have me. You'll have me until, God forbid, you decide you don't want a screw-up like me around anymore. But together, there isn't a damn thing we can't do."
"Oh, Yoh, I…"
They had both closed their eyes, but the magnetism of passion drew their lips together flawlessly. Yoh could taste the bitterness of the pickle upon her tongue, but it was complemented by the sweet ice cream, and he whimsically mused that, in the same fashion, their child would be a similar blend, inheriting Mom's relentlessness counterbalanced by Dad's slack, and both of their love and compassion…His hands could almost palpably feel the new life that was, even as their kiss intensified, maturing within her womb, but Yoh could feel the maturation of something else, something that grew at that moment within them both: their love…
Yoh drew back his head slightly. He saw Anna's delicate eyes opening slightly, still narrowed with passion, saw her perky nose hovering above full, vibrant lips, and could not help himself: "Anna, our kid…is gonna be beautiful, just like you."
For once, Anna looked slightly abashed; it was cute. "Yoh…you're pretty easy on the eyes yourself."
As the minutes ticked by and neither Yoh nor Anna moved from each other's arms, the ice cream on the floor continued to melt unbeknownst to them, and a pool of immaculate white was oozing slowly to engulf the pickle, the sweetness conquering the bitterness drop by drop…
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( 1 ) See Kiss #14, "Eclipse"
( 2 ) During pregnancy, women sometimes get cravings for very strange food. I swear I'm not making this up, I saw it firsthand before my brother was born. Ask your mom about it if you want...
