FASH: I want a kitty!

""-speech

''-thoughts

Sena hummed to himself lowly as he made his way to the address the Hiruma had told him to go to, feeling much more secure about this 'play-date' thing after having done it with Mizumachi.

Strange thing though, once they had finished swimming and had gone to Kakei's to see if he felt any better he didn't look sick at all, but by then Sena had confirmed with Mizumachi that Kakei was supposed to be there, Hiruma had told them both to be there.

'I wonder if Kakei-kun knows what Hiruma-san is up too...' But that couldn't happen right? Could Kakei really see through Hiruma's scheming and if he could, why did he leave Mizumachi and Sena alone together? 'What if... Hiruma-san and Kakei-kun have ganged up together in this madness to try and get me a boyfriend?' Oh it was practically to horrible to think about Hiruma was enough to deal with already, if any other people, besides Suzuna because she didn't really scare him, decided that what Hiruma was doing sounded like fun, Sena would be so screwed.

But Sena attempted to take some comfort in the fact that if Hiruma really didn't want him to be completely alone with, uh, his 'suitors' if he was going to be with Sakuraba, Shin would probably be there, and if Shin was going to be there they'd just train together like normal, and if they just trained together like normal Sena had nothing to be nervous about.

But what if Shin was in on it too? No, wait a minute, Shin didn't seem like he would particularly care about 'matters of the heart'.

Sena stopped in front of a park, carefully craning his neck to look at the name of the street he was on. It was the right address... 'I'm sure that Sakuraba and Shin are just training in the park for some strange, incomprehensible reason.' He suddenly spotted Shin doing chin ups on the jungle gym with Sakuraba staring at him with thinly veiled shock.

To his immense relief the day turned out just like Sena thought it would, a lot of training in the park in Shin's case and a lot of jogging around the block in Sena and Sakuraba's case since neither had the nerve to train with a bunch of park equipment and nothing really major happened between them.

'Come to think of it, nothing really major happened with Mizumachi-kun either, and I was all alone with him. Does that mean that neither of them want to make the first move?' Sena frowned a bit, because if he knew Hiruma, and he knew Hiruma, then Hiruma would know that Mizumachi and Sakuraba would be unlikely to make the first move, and then he'd probably somehow coerce Sena into making the first move.

The mere thought made him pale and Sakuraba paused his jog for a moment to ask if Sena was alright.

"I'm okay, really, I've just, uh, got a really bad headache." "Do you want some aspirin? I don't have any on me right now but I don't live too far from here." "Uh, sure..."

Would it be overestimating Hiruma's abilities to assume that he knew this would happen?

It was about a seven minute walk from the park Sakuraba's house with a couple sentences shared between them to keep an awkward silence at bay. As soon as they stepped inside Sakuraba dashed off, claiming he'd be back in a second and Sena looked around curiously.

Sakuraba's house was very clean, everything appeared to be in it's proper place and there was no doubt in Sena's mind that Sakuraba's room would be spotless and tidy like the rest of the house... Not that Sena cared about what Sakuraba's room looked like or anything.

He pulled off his shoes and took a couple steps further into the house, peering into the living room curiously and smiling when he saw a calico cat stretched out on the back of the love-seat in front of the window.

"Sorry to keep you waiting." Sena flinched a bit when the voice suddenly sounded off behind him, but turned around with a smile, still glancing at the cat from the corner of his eye.

"It's no problem, thank you." Sena quickly downed the Aspirin and sipped at the water Sakuraba had brought him.

"What's your cat's name?" "Akira." Sakuraba stepped into the living room and Sena followed behind him. "It's a boy then?" "Yeah, a very lazy boy." Sakuraba reached out his hand and scratched the cat behind it's ears, Akira cracked one eye open and looked at him before nuzzling the hand.

"Well, most cat's get a bit lazy once they grow up." Sena moved forward and started running his fingers through the fur on Akira's back. "But it's nice when they just lay down and let you pet them."

"Y-Yeah. Do you have a cat Sena-kun?" "Um-hm, her name's Pit, she's a bit more active than Akira cause she's still pretty young." Sena smiled widely. "Most guys tend to like dogs and hate cats, I don't see why, they're so adorable." "Y-Yeah." "If I ever get married, it'll definitely be to someone who likes cats." Sakuraba's face slowly became a rather lovely shade of pink. "Is that so?" "Yep. Oh! We should probably get back to the park before Shin-san wonders where we've run off to." "Yeah..." Sakuraba pulled his hand away from Akira and began making his way back to the entrance, Sena stayed a few seconds longer to give Akira a couple scratches behind the ears before following Sakuraba's lead.

They pulled their shoes on and began to slowly walk to the park, both of them wondering out load what type of weird exercise Shin would be going through when they got back before Sakuraba got the nerve to ask:

"Um, Sena-kun, before when you said if you were going to marry someone, it would have to be someone who likes cats, why didn't you say it would have to be a girl who likes cats?" He twiddled his thumbs in a very un-Sakuraba-like gesture.

"Well, it's because I'm kind of, you know, as long as we could make each other happy, I don't care what the gender is." Sena replied, mentally noting how Sakuraba seemed to stand a bit taller and smile a bit brighter after hearing that.

'Well, I suppose hanging out with Sakuraba-san wasn't so bad, he is a cat person after all.'