The chapter we've been waiting for! LOL It's maybe not as funny as you think it is. ;)

Reader - Thank you! Harasa is on a weekly update schedule, and I'm currently writing chapter 8... the entire arc should be about 9-10 chapters long. I'll likely finish it before I leave the country. The thing is, I'm flying next Thurs, so Chapter 5 should be up before we go, but I honestly have no idea if there'll be time for edits beyond that. Will be gone for a total of about three weeks... I'll queue the unedited chapters up on tumblr for like March just in case something happens to me on the trip and I don't make it back intact or something. ;)
Speechless guest - your reply is on tumblr ;)

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and its characters do not belong to me.

the sands of Harasa

Chapter 4: A Flat Tire

"What's wrong with a flat tire?" Kurogane asked as they piled out of the car in the middle of the wide, open landscape. Aside from the hill, it was flat ground as far as the eye could see, with the exception of a few piles of dark rock in the distance. Closer, there were wiry shrubs scattered around them, some in ditches, some on little raised mounds of dirt. The two suns of Harasa were shining harshly down; Kurogane could feel their stinging rays through the wider holes in his cloak. "Close the doors behind you. Don't want any of that worm getting in the car."

Syaoran began his explanation when Kurogane was satisfied with the shut doors. "The wheels keep the car level. If the car drives on a flat tire, the wheel will get really damaged. We won't be able to fit another tire onto it."

The kid and his princess trailed after Kurogane as he circled the car, cataloging the splashes of silver where snake venom had eaten away at the paint on the exterior. Syaoran had been right about the wheels—on the side of the car with more acid damage, a pin-sized hole had opened on the rear tire, and the dark rubber had begun to sag closer to the ground.

"So... All we have to do is replace it with the spare we've got, right?" Fai asked. He was standing next to Kurogane, smile stretched tight across his face. Syaoran nodded.

The car they'd bought had come with a spare tire. It wasn't really a car, one of the merchants at the marketplace had insisted. The machine was a "four-wheel drive" (whatever that meant), and its steel-reinforced underbelly and deep-threaded tires made it an all-terrain vehicle that was worth as much as they'd paid. Not that Kurogane cared about anything except its functionality, which was starting to show with how much they'd been putting it through.

He walked to the back of the angular, box-like vehicle, scrutinizing the tire at the back. "Help me with this, kid."

Syaoran hurried up to examine the tire attachment while Fai drew the princess to the side, talking to her in muted tones. His forehead was wrinkled, and he was looking between Sakura and the hill they'd just driven down. Kurogane was abruptly reminded of the examination that had necessitated their harried, awkward departure.

"Did you find out what's wrong?" he asked, drawing the wizard's attention. "With the princess."

Sakura flushed; Fai grimaced and talked quietly to her. Syaoran looked up in concern. A little tendril of doubt crept into Kurogane's chest, and he saw when Fai realized he couldn't get out of an explanation.

"I have an infection," Sakura said bravely. Fai turned and gaped at her, and Kurogane felt pride swell in his chest, that the princess had more honesty in her than the wizard did. "It's... in a bad spot."

"We'd have to return to the city for a remedy," Fai added. His frown deepened. "It's not something we thought to prepare for, I'm afraid."

"No, it's fine. You don't have to worry about me," Sakura countered, shaking her head firmly. "It's a long ways back to the city. All of you are on this journey for my sake, so I can't possibly ask any more of you."

"But we can't allow this to happen." The wizard looked to Kurogane and Syaoran for support. "She's in pain."

Syaoran gasped. He abandoned the spare tire to hurry over, and Kurogane watched as the boy clenched his fists to refrain from grabbing Sakura's hands. "What kind of infection is it, Princess? I'll do my best to find a cure—"

Kurogane sighed. It seemed that there would be no aid forthcoming for now, so he headed over to where Fai was. "What is it?" he muttered.

The wizard stepped away from the kids, both to give them privacy, as well as to move out of earshot. "Yeast infection," he answered quietly, watching as Syaoran fussed over Sakura. "It's not life-threatening, but it's painful while she has it."

It wasn't anything he'd heard of before. Infections were something he didn't fall prey to often, and feminine infections were completely outside the scope of his knowledge. "How do you even know that stuff?"

Fai angled a smug little look at him; the corners of his mouth twitched upwards. "Who knows? You're nosy, Kuro-pon."

Kurogane rolled his eyes, reached up to knock the idiot on the head. Fai dodged it neatly. "What are our options?"

"I don't have the herbs for a cure in this world," Fai murmured, looking at the only species of brush around them. He had reached up to smooth a hand over his elbow, and Kurogane caught a hint of helplessness in his eyes. "The next best option would be to use a garlic clove, but we have none of that, either. There were some in the marketplace. I remember seeing them."

But the princess had said not to, and Kurogane was all for letting her decide. "If she says no, then we keep going."

"How could you?" Fai retorted. "She's in pain, Kuro-sama, we can't just—"

"How do you propose even teaching her to fight if she can't handle pain?" he shot back. In this, he knew he had a point. Training landed one with bruises of all sorts, even if the student in question had an obscenely lucky streak. Sakura was bound to be injured.

The blond bit his lip, watching as the princess blushed and smiled at Syaoran's attention. "Especially your way of training. Syaoran-kun came back all black and blue, and he was exhausted."

Kurogane shrugged. "He wanted to learn. That's the way I teach."

"And we all know you're very good with your sword." Fai slanted a look at him.

He froze. He wasn't sure if the idiot had meant the insinuation, but it sounded indecent in a way that had heat creeping up his neck. Fai still maintained that nothing had happened between them, didn't he? "Guess you'd be a good judge of that."

The wizard blinked, his mouth opened halfway, meeting Kurogane's eyes for a heartbeat. He hadn't expected that answer, Kurogane could tell, and he was backpedaling into safer territory the next instant. "I'm a good judge of many things, of course."

Kurogane snorted. If that was what the idiot wanted to believe, then so be it. He just didn't think they'd be flirting while there were multiple issues at hand. "Sure. Do we have anything to help the princess?"

"I'm sure Mokona has some painkillers," Fai said thoughtfully. He studied Kurogane for a bit, and his gaze sharpened. "Sakura-chan mentioned that you were hurt, earlier. What happened?"

Kurogane reached for the rawness at the back of his neck; Fai was stepping up and tugging off his hood before he could protest. The wizard sucked in a sharp breath.

"This looks bad," he said, grabbing at Kurogane's wrist to stop him from aggravating the burn. He raised his voice. "Syaoran-kun! A bottle of water, please."

"Tch." Kurogane tugged his hand back. He replaced his hood. "It's just a small wound. It'll heal."

"This isn't an ordinary burn," Fai said shortly. Kurogane was surprised by the heat in his tone, so he allowed the other to drag him into the scant double shadow of the car. "Lie on your side, Kuro-pon. I need to wash the burns out."

"Can't be worse than the spines," he muttered, but complied anyway.

It was just the slightest bit cooler in the shade. A web of shallow cracks stretched across the ground, breaking its surface into fist-sized clumps of dirt. Kurogane had seen fractured ground like this once, when there was a long drought in Nihon and one of the lakes in the country had dried completely. The lake had been reduced to mud, and the mud had dried into hard dirt.

The ground burned hot through his robes and into his bicep. A plastic bottle crinkled in Fai's hand. With his head this close to the ground, he could look up at the underbelly of the car. It was heavily-scratched but still intact, and slick, greenish blood had splattered across the metal plate, dripping thickly down onto the peeling ground. Cool water splashed onto his scalp and neck; pain seared into his flesh. "Ow! Fuck!"

Like the remnants of spines that were still buried in his foot and chest, the shallow pain was sharp and hot, and Kurogane stayed still while Fai held his cloak away, dousing his hair and neck with what was probably an entire bottle of water. The water splashed onto pale ground, and what liquid there was seeped into the cracks, leaving darkened yellow-brown dirt behind.

"You should be fine now," Fai said quietly, dabbing him dry with a folded wad of his cloak. "Don't keep hiding your injuries, Big Doggy."

"Speak for yourself," he said. "I'm not a dog."

"You bark enough to be one." Thin fingers ruffled through his hair, and Fai was gone just as suddenly, leaving Kurogane to pick up after himself. They were back to teasing, it seemed. "Sakura-chan!" the idiot said from somewhere behind the car, "while Kuro-pi and Syaoran-kun fix the car, why don't I show you the comics we drew in Yama?"

"Tch." Kurogane shook the water off his head, appreciating the brief coolness against his skin when it evaporated. It wasn't as if the idiot could draw on the ground here—it was hard, and he'd have to use a lot more strength to get a knife through dirt like that. "Oi, kid. Get over here."

Syaoran hurried over apologetically. Kurogane could tell that the boy had been curious about Fai's drawings, though it wasn't like the comics were worth looking at. (Besides, he could always join the other two after they'd got this fixed.)

They quickly came to the conclusion that the tire was held in place by three metal bits, and that there wasn't any way they could unscrew those with their bare hands.

"There might be a tool to help remove it somewhere," Syaoran suggested. He opened up the back of the car, frowned at the stacked boxes of their supplies. Kurogane left him to it, looking between the spare tire and the one that had gone completely limp. The entire car was listing heavily towards the crippled wheel. Cutting the spare tire off wouldn't solve a thing—there were large screws on the other wheel that probably secured it to the rest of the car.

"How far away is the feather?" he asked the white ball of fluff. Mokona hopped over to him, wriggling her way into his hood. At this point, Kurogane figured that there wasn't any point in trying to extricate her from his clothes. It wasn't fair that she was even invulnerable to sunburn. "Think we can walk?"

"It's still far away," she said, lop ears drooping. "And it's so hot."

"We aren't walking just because of a flat tire," Fai called, looking up from the patch of ground that he and Sakura were crouched around. The idiot waved cheerily. "Fix the car! You can do it, Kuro-rin!"

"Maybe if you came over here and helped, it'd be fixed," he snapped. Syaoran was moving boxes around, poking his head into corners and looking behind the seats. "Instead of sitting on your lazy ass."

"What if I sat on your ass instead?" Fai grinned at him, poking his cheek in a way they'd seen schoolgirls do on another world. Everything about that face spelled dishonesty.

Kurogane would have blown him off, except the princess was looking between them uncertainly, almost as if she expected Kurogane to pummel the idiot. Which he could do.

Instead, he remembered the taunt that Fai had left him with earlier. How far would the wizard allow this sort of banter to go? If all they did was talk about inconsequential things, would Fai run from him as well?

"I'd like to see you try," he said flatly.

The wizard blinked at him. Kurogane had a moment to feel victorious. Fai's eyes lit up with interest then, mischief tugging on the corners of his mouth. "Does Kuro-tan think I can't do that?"

"Of course you can't."

This was how things between them started, on the pretext of a challenge (whether Fai recognized that, Kurogane had no idea). But the idiot was on his feet and closing in on him in a heartbeat, and Kurogane thought briefly that this would distract the princess from her discomfort. Blue eyes bore into his; Fai circled around him, clearly intent on bringing him down from the back.

Kurogane held himself light on his feet, spotting Fai's darts and tackles before they could connect. The jabs of pain in his soles were inconsequential by this point; he leaped to the side when Fai threw himself forward, jumped when Fai tried kicking his feet out from beneath him.

It hadn't been long since they left Yama. Kurogane appreciated the sparring nonetheless, felt the gazes of both children locked onto them. If anything, this would be a good demonstration for the kids. They'd never really fought in front of Syaoran and Sakura (and why the hell not? Because Fai was good, and so was he) and the kids could stand to learn a thing or two.

With that in mind, he began to fight back. Surprise flickered across Fai's face. He began to protest, but Kurogane swung a punch at him, tried grabbing the idiot's cloak with his other hand, only to have him slip to the side.

"Do you forfeit?" he asked between blows that Fai blocked with his forearms. The wizard was very good at hand-to-hand combat, and Kurogane had to bring his arm down to divert a knee away from his stomach.

"If that means I can't sit on Kuro-pon's butt, then no." The idiot was still laughing at him. That was fine. Kurogane increased the speed of his attacks. Fai merely dodged them, trying time and again to get into his blind spots.

Then Fai stumbled to the side, somehow, and Kurogane's arm shot out to catch his elbow before his face smashed into the ground. Fai swung towards him.

The wizard smirked; his other hand darted out, slamming into the back of Kurogane's knee. His leg buckled beneath him.

He tried compensating for that by dropping Fai and rolling, but Fai's arms snapped around his middle, and Kurogane's roll turned into an awkward sprawl across the ground, Fai dragging behind him. He turned his face away from the cracked dirt, snapped at the wizard. "You idiot!"

The arms around his midriff tightened. Kurogane scarcely had time to inhale before he felt Fai dragging himself up, his robes catching and tugging Kurogane's along, so its hem hitched up his calves. "I win," Fai crowed.

He couldn't feel the wizard's heat through the layers of fabric, but he could feel the weight of his body, squirming and light and that face pressing into his back. He felt keenly the spread of thin legs as Fai pushed himself up and sat right on his ass and did a little victory jiggle. His hips ground into the dirt. Heat jolted through his gut.

"Hyuu, the view from Kuro-pon's butt is very good."

Kurogane glanced back, saw the way the nitwit was shading his eyes and pretending to look around them. The kids were watching them with the sort of dread they usually had when he chased Fai around, and he couldn't blame them.

Right now, he couldn't decide if he wanted to punch the idiot or pin him down and slowly strip him of that smile.

"You cheated," he growled.

Fai cast an amused glance at him. "All's fair in love and war, Kuro-rin."

He wriggled again. Kurogane glared. "Things'd be different if we were alone right now," he breathed.

Blue eyes grew wide. Fai's smile faltered. He knew very well what Kurogane meant, and Kurogane read his answering desire in the darkening of his eyes. Fai swallowed noisily.

"Get up," he told the wizard. There was another moment of drawn-out silence while Fai struggled to grasp his intended meaning. Kurogane wasn't sure which of them had it worse, but there wasn't anywhere they could go right now—not that they would in bright daylight, anyway. "I have a car to fix."

The idiot pasted his mask back on, slid bonelessly off Kurogane. "Kuro-daddy is right," he said, his voice a pitch too high. "Go on, don't keep us waiting. The car needs to be fixed."

Kurogane rolled into a crouch, leaned forward on his toes to mutter, "I'll fuck you later."

Fai's mask slipped again. Kurogane glimpsed a mix of helplessness and anticipation in his eyes, knew the wizard could no more refuse him than acknowledge what they had. He straightened, turned back to the car, barking at the kid to hurry in his search.

"Later" was if they could find a safe spot for the night, and Kurogane dearly hoped they could.

.

It turned out that there was a metal wrench wedged behind the stacked boxes of their rations. Syaoran had to move half of them out of the cavernous back end of the car, and by the time he'd done that, Fai had commandeered one of their boxes of rations, turned it on its side, and sketched a whole comic across the stiff brown surface.

Kurogane was not impressed. It was one of the very first pages that Fai had ever drawn, of the blond wizard turning Big Doggy into a man, and he couldn't help but grumble, "he shouldn't even have been there at all."

"You're lacking a sense of humor, Kuro-mi." Fai waggled his eyebrows, proceeded to draw a new page of the comic that Kurogane had not seen before. "Look, this is Big Doggy learning to walk like a human!"

He stormed off instead of whacking the idiot across the head. Syaoran looked nervously at Kurogane; his relief was stark when he finally located the wrench. From there, it took barely a minute for Kurogane to unscrew the metal bits holding the spare tire to the back of the car.

Replacing the flat tire was marginally more difficult. The car had listed towards the sagging tire, pinning it to the ground, and the wheel would not come off even after the screws had been taken out. Time and again, Kurogane glanced towards the front of the car, half-expecting a little worm to come flying out at him. The back of his calf still stung from the bites yesterday. His wounds had scabbed over, and he was sorely tempted to pick at them, but picking at a scab in this world proved far more dangerous than it would elsewhere.

So, he ignored it, ignored Fai's inane chatter, and yanked at the flat tire. It refused to budge.

"Maybe we can lift the car up," Syaoran suggested. "Sakura-hime and I did that some worlds back, when we worked in that car repair shop."

Kurogane crouched by the side of the vehicle, grabbing it by the edge and hauling at it. His muscles bulged and strained, and the damn thing barely moved by a fraction of an inch. Syaoran's fingers skidded across the tire thread. "Damn it. Someone help lift the car."

Sakura was the first to scramble over, but he highly doubted that she would be able to do much. Kurogane glanced at Fai, saw the way the blond sidled away, hands behind his back.

"Get over here and help, idiot."

"I don't really have that much strength at all." Fai smiled one of his too-bright smiles, holding his hands out as if it would prove his point. "Besides, you look so good straining like that, Kuro-pon. Especially from behind."

"Keep that up, and I'll show you 'behind'." Which was probably the wrong thing to say, considering the way Fai's eyebrows shot all the way up. Kurogane rolled his eyes, yanked his fallen hood back up so it hid the flush creeping up his neck. "Whatever. We'll find a way around it."

"But shouldn't you help too, Fai-san?" Sakura asked, a frown creasing her forehead.

Fai opened his mouth, but he had nothing to say to that. Kurogane watched smugly as the blond crouched reluctantly next to her, adding his hands to the row of theirs.

The car did not budge even with Mokona's attempt to lift the wheel with her paws, and Kurogane was forced to dismiss the children from their positions by his side. He wanted a way to rid the machine of the worms—they were still on his mind—but he couldn't burn the thing, or run electricity through it.

"Dig a hole under the wheel," he instructed the boy. "That'll help." As for the princess and Mokona, he pointed them to the front. "Look out for worms on the car. Don't touch any of that crap."

"What are you going to do?" Fai asked from his other side.

"Help dig." Kurogane frowned at the wizard. "What're you going to do?"

"Get water for all of you, of course. Can't have anyone suffering from dehydration!" Fai minced to the back of the car, returning with a bottle of water. Kurogane watched as he watered the kids first, handed the bottle to him, then to Mokona (did the white thing even need food to survive?) At the end of it, the wizard granted himself a brief sip of water and stashed the bottle back into the trunk.

"Drink more," he said with a pointed look at Fai.

The idiot blinked at him, eyebrows raised. "Whatever for? I drink just as much as you do."

"No, you don't." The kids were looking at them again. Kurogane wanted to grab Fai and shake him, but it wouldn't change how poorly he thought of himself. "Idiot."

"You keep saying that. What are you digging the ground with? Your bare hands?" Fai leaned in close to Syaoran, who had found a little spade among their supplies. "Oh! That looks useful!"

"Is there only one of those?" Kurogane looked back at the open trunk. There wasn't anything left sitting out in the open, however, save for Fai's bottle of water.

"It's the first one I found," Syaoran admitted, handing the tool over. He returned to riffling through the boxes. "I'll search for more!"

Fai followed Kurogane to the flat tire, crouching down beside him when he began to dig. "We should try and get out of this world as soon as we can," he murmured, glancing towards where Sakura and Mokona were on their hands and knees, peering beneath the car. "Sakura-chan's infection will get worse the longer we stay."

It wasn't something Kurogane had thought about. His injuries healed quickly. If Sakura was so lucky, wouldn't she recover quickly, too? But Fai was the expert on ailments here, not him. "Huh. Didn't think of that."

The wizard looked so despondent that he reached up and tapped him lightly on the chin, so Fai startled, looking back up at him.

"She'll be fine," Kurogane said. "She's stronger than you think."

Fai's entire face scrunched up. "Unlike you, I can't just leave her to suffer by herself."

"She'll get over it." Kurogane rolled his eyes, shoved the spade into hard ground. "Damn. This'll take a while."

"I'll keep all of you fed and hydrated," Fai said, patting him lightly on the shoulder. He put his hands on his knees to push himself up.

"Hey, wait."

Fai stilled, looking expectantly at him.

"We're being watched again. You feel it too?" A faint shadow crossed the other's expression; Kurogane paused in his digging. "Wasn't there when we were in Yama. Until we found the kids."

"Yeah." Fai was looking fixedly at the tire. It looked as though he knew more than he was willing to reveal.

"Can you track them down? I don't know about you, but I'm damn tired of being watched."

The wizard huffed a breath of laughter. "As expected of you, Kuro-sama. You would want to rid yourself of all threat."

He saw the way Fai's eyes weren't the least bit amused. "Well?"

"Possibly." Fai looked away. "But what's the point of doing that when you don't know if they're friend or foe?"

"It's a damn stalker. I'm sure it's a foe. Even the witch doesn't track us like that."

"Yuuko-san has her own business to tend to." Fai sat back down, eyebrow raised. "Are you going to dig, or not?"

"You help dig," Kurogane grumbled. It didn't make sense, how the idiot didn't seem the least bit concerned about being spied on. It couldn't be his Ashura, or he would have been a lot more desperate to leave. And if it wasn't the witch, then who else could it be? Was their stalker targeting the kids instead? Why would Fai even consider the possibility that it was an ally? Allies did not spy. "You know who it is, don't you?"

"Why would you say that? I'm just some no-name magician." Fai's gaze slid away, and he was wearing that flat smile again. "I will protect Sakura-chan. And Syaoran-kun. You know that."

"Tch." Kurogane resumed his digging.

The spade was small and not entirely sharp, and it took effort to break the compact dirt up. He'd got about half a foot deep into the ground before Syaoran made a muffled exclamation. Kurogane looked up as the boy hurried over with a diamond-shaped frame in his hands.

"I found this," he said breathlessly, falling to his knees next to Kurogane. "It might help."

It was a contraption with movable hinges and a rod that could rotate on a joint. He watched in surprise when Syaoran flipped the rod out and began swiveling it, causing the diamond shape to elongate lengthwise.

"I'd seen something like that in the repair shop," the boy explained. He was bright-eyed, and looked as if he might burst from his excitement. "Frames like that were hanging from the roof in the shop, but I think it might be strong enough to lift the car up."

It looked too fragile to be able to do much. Kurogane shrugged, scooted backwards to give the boy a chance. "Go ahead. Not like we have much to lose."

Fai, Sakura and Mokona had crowded around by this point. The kid's excitement was infectious, and both Fai and Sakura were leaning in, cheeks flushed as they watched the boy set the diamond frame on the ground next to the wheel, feeling around the edge of the car for a good anchoring spot. When the top of the frame reached the car and pressed into it, tipping the vehicle up ever so slightly, even Kurogane was impressed. He hadn't thought that little bit of metal could have helped.

They were saturated with amazement by the time Syaoran lifted the sagging tire an inch off the ground.

"That's very smart of you, Syaoran-kun!" Fai said, his face full of that glowing, soft look again. Kurogane doubted that he would have garnered such a look, himself, but this was fine, watching Fai fall in love with the kids. The princess had admiring praise of her own, and Kurogane got to his feet, both to stretch, as well as to fetch the spare tire.

The old wheel came off easily. Kurogane took it from the boy, handed the new one over. They waited while Syaoran wiped the accumulated dirt and oil off the mount with the hem of his robe ("Sakura-hime and I learned that it's best to attach new parts when both the car and the part are clean," he explained) before sliding the wheel home and fixing it on with the long screws that had been there before.

Kurogane brought the flat tire to the back of the car, securing it with the sun-warmed pieces of metal that had held the previous wheel in place. When Syaoran was done, he ruffled the boy's hair, took the wrench over to tighten the screws. "Not bad, kid."

Syaoran brimmed with pride. He was wiping his hands off on his robes when Fai went up to give him a hug. Kurogane shoved the wrench back into the trunk, unwound the diamond frame so it lowered the car onto its new wheel.

"Can't afford to split another tire," he said.

"You're so full of positivity and good cheer, Kuro-rinta," Fai chided. He was wearing a smile though, standing with Kurogane and watching as Sakura heaped praise onto the kid, Mokona bouncing around them. "I'm glad there's a silver lining to this. They look happy, don't they?"

"Just stating the facts." Kurogane shrugged, dusted his hands off, and returned to the driver's seat. "Time to go. Get in."

Fai ended up being the one to usher the kids into the car, and by the time they ducked into the shade, each of them sighed similar breaths of relief. It had grown dizzyingly hot out in the sun. Kurogane shut his eyes briefly, accepted the bottle Fai pressed into his hand.

Their journey passed a lot quicker on flat ground. With Mokona's directions and Syaoran's map-reading, Kurogane had them speeding towards the edge of the dry lake. They jolted roughly over dry ditches twice, and Kurogane learned to anticipate steep dips in the ground from the way little round bushes grew along the sides of the ditches, marking their locations across the land.

Fai started up a string of chatter once more. This time, he asked about the kids' experiences in Shara. Kurogane watched the princess as she bubbled with enthusiasm, describing the exhilaration of walking on tightrope. It was easiest when she held a horizontal stick, she said, and she wished she had the chance to try walking on the swaying, lax ropes that only the experienced tightrope walkers were allowed to cross.

There were lines around Syaoran's mouth as he listened. Kurogane knew of the boy's protectiveness, was quietly glad that the princess had been able to learn a skill without his concern hampering her. Fai, too, looked at the girl with a mix of horror and pride. He exchanged a look with Kurogane in the rear view mirror.

The wizard was really hopeless where it came to the kids. And Kurogane was really hopeless where it came to Fai.

He smirked at the idiot, more as a response than anything else. Fai stared at him for a moment, looking for all the world like his breath had been punched out, and glanced quickly away.

The hell?

Kurogane frowned. He hadn't done anything to make the idiot uncomfortable... had he? Why else would Fai react that way? It wasn't as if he was flustered, or anything like that. (But if it was— If it was—)

He gulped, felt his heart kicking at his ribs, and focused on the land once more. Fai was afraid of the whole love thing.

(But still.)

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

"We should be heading northwest," Syaoran said, looking up from the map. He pointed at a spot through the middle of the grimy, stained windshield. "There are dry washes up ahead. They can be difficult to cross, so we should try going around them if we can."

Kurogane followed his directions. They passed over the edge of the lakebed into a field of low brush once more, and he had to slow the car down, driving over spiky plants and cacti of various shapes and sizes—ones that looked like a hemisphere, ones that were wide and flat like his hand, and speckled all over. There was a greater variety of plants, now, too. Where it had been the same tall, wiry shrubs with little yellowish-green leaves before, there were now wispy grey-green bushes with more leaves than stem, and plants with little white balls of seeds swinging from their branches.

What he hadn't anticipated was the slope of the land. From the top of the hill, this entire area had seemed flat. Yet, now that they were on the ground, the land dipped and rose and obscured what he could see of the terrain up ahead. Kurogane trusted in his instincts and drove where Syaoran directed him to, sensing no large creatures around them. The car creaked as they rolled over little plants, and the turn signal clicked.

For all the quiet of the desert, there was actually animal life if he looked closely enough. He spotted a tortoise crawling along next to a smooth boulder, a jackrabbit standing between sharp, yellowish spikes of grass, its ears twitching. A lizard was perched atop a rock, and once, he saw a snake coiled up in a dip of the ground. All of these were potential food sources, especially snakes—snakes nested together, and they would be what he'd hunt first, if it came down to that.

"Ever had snake?" he asked over his shoulder, when the conversation in the back drew to a lull.

"Aren't they poisonous?" Sakura answered, green eyes growing wide. She looked between him and Syaoran, who wore a thoughtful frown.

"My father said they were edible, but you'd have to remove the venom in their heads."

"Did he say how you catch them?" Syaoran shook his head. "You loop a piece of rope or wire over the nest entrance. When it pokes its head out, you pull hard on the rope. If you use a sturdy wire, it takes their head right off."

The boy turned a pale shade of green, and Sakura covered her mouth in shock.

"So violent, Kuro-pon." Fai's tone was appreciative. He reached into the back of Kurogane's cloak, brushed his neck with a finger. Kurogane swallowed, concentrated on the open land ahead of them. "Where I come from, 'eating snake' has a whole different meaning."

"Don't think I want to know," he said.

The wizard continued to speak, regardless. "There are snakes with only one eye, and they love hiding in clothes." That same finger tapped lightly on the side of his neck. "Have you had snake, Kuro-rin?"

"What kind of question is that?" He couldn't look Fai in the eye. (Damn that idiot.) Of course he'd had snake. He'd followed their tracks in the fields of Nihon, come across nests of writhing, gleaming scales. The other kind of snake, well.

"An innocent one, of course. But have you eaten snake?" Fai pressed. When Kurogane finally chanced a look at him, the wizard's eyes were bright, and a smile was hanging loosely from his mouth. "Do you like how they taste?"

"Why don't you answer the question first, you idiot." Heat was creeping up his neck, into his ears. How had a casual question about hunting turned into this?

"I eat them whole." Fai smiled at him. Kurogane could see the way the wizard was trying not to double over with laughter.

"You can't eat them whole. Your mouth isn't big enough." And then he regretted saying that, because Fai's grin grew all the more cunning for it.

There were kids in the car, for fuck's sake.

"They fit right in my mouth. I can demonstrate. Or maybe my—"

"You will not," he thundered. He didn't need to see Fai trying to eat any kind of snake. Really. Wasn't the idiot in denial about anything they did? Kurogane seethed, glaring at the spiny green plants disappearing beneath the car.

But he had no witty comeback to any of that, and in that way, Fai had won. When he looked again in the mirror, the idiot was wearing a gloating smile.

Sometimes, he really hated Fai.

A/N: Fai is SUCH a troll. I love him to bits. LOL

Anyhow, the dry lakebed is based off Lucerne dry lakebed in southern California (where husband and I got married during sunrise, but who wants to know that pfft), the hill is based off something like Monument Valley maybe, and the shrub-filled plains are based off the Pinto Basin. ;) In case anyone was curious.