Title: Sometimes, I Think About You Just a Little Too Much

Summary: Yuki caught Tohru on his mind just a few too many times.

Genre: Romance

Rated: T

Word Count: 1,951

Her voice. It sang out to him like a muse, or possibly enchanted him like a siren. Whether she called him out for his destruction or not, he never knew, but he couldn't help reaching out for her. Just for another snippet of that voice. The voice that placated him in his dreams after a vicious nightmare. The only voice he responded to in the morning without the violent urge to destroy. The voice that kept him floating amongst the dreary, dark abyss of his cursed existence. He always found himself wandering towards that voice, regardless of its form. She could be talking, whispering, singing, humming, or merely just breathing, and she'd captivate him, ensnaring him in a lyrical rope and luring him to her side.

Her eyes. Those mahogany swirls, trapped behind eyelashes that seemed to curve up forever, always captured his own silver orbs, keeping them as prisoners until she turned away with a flushed face. He adored the depth of her eyes and how they darkened with severity to shadowy shades of umber and brightened to flashes of honey brown that seemingly danced with shimmering gleams of gold. He adored their imperfections too. How her left eye sat a millimeter higher than her right and how they were a tad too big for her face. They left an endearingly innocent and quizzical tweak to her otherwise jubilant expression. That jubilance sent glimmering rays to her eyes half-shut from the wide grin lifting her cheeks.

Perhaps those smiles of hers made the smooth, rose-colored, curved flesh of her lips all the more tantalizing. They reminded him of the ripe strawberries thriving in their secret base, and all the more, he wished to pluck them off her delicate face take a taste of what looked like the sweetest fruit he had ever seen. He watched them slowly open and close as she read a problem aloud to herself, fighting the urge to finger the small dip in her upper lip and the fiery desire to press his own against hers when her lower lip began to jut out in a small pout as she concentrated too hard on her studies, which reminded him…

He really meant to glance down at her spread out notebook and check over the math problems she was scrawling out, but she lifted her hand to sweep her hair from her face and he was lost again.

He watched as the silky tousle of hair settled behind her ear for a mere moment before a fan of hair spilled forward again as she leaned down towards her textbook, sending a auburn waterfall cascading past her shoulders and down into little pools on top of the table. He tried to ignore his twitching fingers that begged to run themselves through the shiny strands pouring down mere inches from their grasp. As his right hand started inching towards the russet silk, he quickly yanked it back with his left and shifted until he was sitting on top of both sets of fingers to keep them still. Yet that seemed hardly a help as his eyes wandered down the long winds of dark hair to her smooth, pearly skin.

He stared at her slender fingers wrapped around a yellow pencil as her hand glided over the blue-lined paper like a dancer, elegantly weaving and twirling with the writing utensil along the white page. He smiled at the chewed fingernails with the slightest hint of a light shade of pink nail polish and relished the memory of how they felt clasped in his own, the skin of her palms rough from work, yet soft and warm. So warm, loving, and inviting that he felt tempted to wrestle the pencil from her hand and claim the warmth as his again. So warm that he found his fingers extended towards her, seemingly of their own consent.

Startling back, Tohru queried with her eyes wide, "Yuki-kun? Is something wrong?"

"No, no!" he nearly shouted as he lowered his fingers away from her warm skin to gesture at her notebook as he added, "You did this all right."

Looking down at her paper, he followed his extended finger to the large square on the page filled with numbers and equations. Quickly he scanned her work, relieved when he found the answer to be correct after all. Tohru didn't seem to notice this as her smile broadened into a wide grin. Dropping her pencil, she too returned to peruse her work proudly as she reached forward, interlacing her fingers and stretching out her aching arms. She didn't know, but she was making his inner battle to concentrate exponentially more difficult when she turned her beaming face back towards him.

"Really?" she peeped almost hesitantly.

He could only manage a weak nod, realizing he was quickly losing this battle against himself thanks to Tohru's next actions.

"It's all thanks to you, Yuki-kun!" she exclaimed as she tossed her arms around his neck.

He could barely acknowledge her arms locked around his back before a cloud of smoke consumed him, and he felt a familiar shrinking sensation as he fell onto Tohru's lap. It took a minute before the smoke cleared enough that he could make out Tohru's flushed face, marred with an apologetic frown and creases of worry. He opened his small, furry mouth, but before he could even lift his paws off of her soft, navy skirt or even squeak, those two dainty hands he couldn't stop thinking about scooped him up.

"I'm so sorry!" she gasped.

Yuki had planned on mustering up something romantic, something charming to sweep her off her feet and head over heels for him or something else cliché to make her fall for him, but a poof of smoke interrupted his thoughts and sent him sprawling over her, knocking her down and pinning her onto the ground. Both too shocked to react, they both stayed there, perfectly still and wide-eyed. Hovering over her with his knees planted on the ground on either side of her and his hands buried deep in her long strands of hair on either side of her face, he grew conscious of his overwhelmed senses. Yuki sucked in a deep breath as tingles danced through his fingers threaded through her hair, his nostrils flared as her sweet aroma wafted around him in intoxicating swirls, and his eyes burned as they locked onto hers. He was deeply aware of the rise and fall of her chest with each silent breath and the brush of warm air that followed. Before he could lean down for a taste, however, a choked snicker interrupted his trance.

"I see this study session is going well."

Turning his head towards the doorway where his kimono-clad cousin stood leaning, Yuki's once wide eyes narrowed into a venomous glare as he shoved himself off of the poor girl trapped beneath him. Jumping to his feet, he stalked over to Shigure, grabbing the top of his kimono with a tight fist, tugging him nearer to his icy glower, a threat hidden deep in them that needed no words. After releasing Shigure with a shove into the doorway, Yuki marched up the stairs and into his room, not quite slamming the door behind him, but Tohru could hear the click of his lock as she slowly lifted herself onto her elbows, staring after where Yuki once stood.

"Yuki-kun?" she voiced hesitantly.

"Ah! Don't worry about him, Tohru-kun. He's just upset that I saved our precious flower," Shigure cooed, quickly recovering as he sent Tohru a sly grin.

Blinking in confusion, she shook her head with a light smile, deciding not to question another one of Shigure's responses that she couldn't quite grasp. Turning back towards her spread out books and papers, Tohru let out a sigh, and her smile faded into a frown of dismay. Gently shutting her textbooks and piling them neatly on the corner of the table, Tohru stood, dusting off her skirt before heading to the kitchen to start dinner since trying to do her homework without Yuki was as hopeless as his cooking. She couldn't help wondering about Yuki's reaction that afternoon as she made dinner though, fighting the fear that she had done something to offend him. An hour later, she was shocked to find dinner, steaming and smelling delicious, set on the table, despite her distracted mind.

Soon everyone had seated themselves at the table and were busily eating and chatting away, but Tohru could only notice how Yuki pointedly ignored her. He hadn't as much as looked at her since he came downstairs five minutes after Shigure and Kyo had already helped themselves to the platter of food. With her frown deepening with every second, Tohru could only push the food around on her plate and could hardly respond to Shigure and Kyo's inquiries. Dinner seemed to drag on for hours before Shigure and Kyo finally finished their third servings and returned to their rooms, leaving Yuki and Tohru at the table with an awkward silence hanging between them.

"I better get back to work. Thank you for dinner, Honda-san," he finally addressed her as he picked up his plate and stood.

Lifting her eyes towards him, Tohru could hardly hold back the tears as she noticed his half full dish. She had never seen him leave the table with anything other than an empty plate and a stream of compliments about her cooking that left her flushed from head to toe before, but now he only left her pale and guilty, so before he could take more than two steps away from her, she reached out and caught hold of the end of his shirt.

She couldn't tell if he had turned to face her since she kept her head bowed, but she cried regardless, "I'm sorry, Yuki-kun! I ruined our study session, didn't I? If you tell me what I did wrong, I promise I won't do it again."

He seemed to hesitate before she could feel him turn around, twisting the hem of his shirt around her fingers until he took her hand in his and responded slowly, "No, don't apologize, Honda-san. It's not your fault. It's not anything you did… It-It's everything you do…"

Tohru lifted her head at this, staring up at him with her eyebrows twisted in confusion. She could feel tears bubbling to the surface of her eyes, but he only gripped her hand more firmly, setting aside his dish and encasing her hand with both of his. Holding her hand close to himself, he took a step back in her direction. His actions left her more bewildered than before.

He took a deep breath before continuing, "It's not a bad thing, really. Well that depends on your interpretation, I guess."

A pause as he took a second to squeeze his eyes firmly shut.

"But it's just that sometimes I think about you just a little too much," he confessed too quickly.

He stroked her hand gently before releasing her fingers, letting them drop back down on her lap as he gave her a faint but embarrassed smile. In a rush, he then picked up the plate he had set down and turned back towards the kitchen, dropping off the dish before slinking off out the backdoor, leaving Tohru alone with her whirling thoughts and reddening skin.

"I think I think about you a lot too much, Yuki-kun," Tohru murmured to herself.

A small smile slowly spread across her face while outside, a similar smile and a similar blush spread across the pale face of a teenage boy lying down beside a small garden with a hand covering his face in disbelief.