'Tis the season~
Here are the first three gift-fics I promised - *giving them in chronological order, so it's fair?* I should've posted these yesterday, but I must shamefully admit I forgot. ^^;;; Warnings for spoilers about the end of Tsubasa, and general strangeness. X3
*****
Nihon: Snowmen
Fai discovers mint for the first time, post-canon - for Crys
White was a strange colour for Kurogane, but still, he stood speckled in it, having shrugged off his customary black jacket and dumped it over the head of Syaoran half an hour before, the boy shivering after having stumbled into a snowdrift. Fai, the self-proclaimed group mother, had ordered the youth back to their home on this world with Mokona for company, and then had promptly resumed hanging off of Kurogane’s arm, laughing as Kurogane made fun of his far too-long scarf.
“I could choke you with the damn thing,” the ninja had grumbled, running his right hand through his hair to dislodge the snow that clung there, more falling from the sky to stubbornly replace all he brushed away. Let no man ever tell Kurogane Youou he was fighting a losing battle. (Sakura or Tomoyo might just get away with it, but they were young and wide-eyed and it was a well-accepted fact Kurogane never could say no to sweet-faced sparkly girls.)
“But Kuro-puu would miss me too much!” Fai found it strangely exhilarating in this new world, dancing down a cobbled street with the windchill on his cheeks as evening fell, snow catching on his shoulders, on his scarf, in his gold-bright hair. The shops along the pavement spilled contrary light over the pavements, squares on the snow and ice that crunched underfoot.
“Keep telling yourself that.” More laughter, Fai actually unlooping himself from his stranglehold on his companion’s arm, abandoning the softness of wool to spread his fingers against cold, frosted glass, eyes as wide as a child’s at the colourful display in one shop window. Strange, interesting smells floated out from the shop’s entrance distractingly, a group of three teenage girls coming out giggling and talking amongst themselves, clutching paper packets to their chests. A sweet shop, where they made the products themselves.
“Can we-?”
“No.”
“But Kuro-tan,” Fai lamented - and there he actually tore his eyes away from the foreign, sugary delicacies in the window to make eyes of woe at Kurogane, who had stalked up beside him to glare at the treats, unimpressed, “they have little snowmen - see? I’m sure Syaoran-kun would love it if we brought him back a little snowman.”
Kurogane frowned at him. “You mean you would love it if you bought a snowman.” Why had this store moulded sugar into such weird shapes anyway? It was just clumps of sugar with added decorative sugar, a saccharine taste that lingered stubbornly in the mouth and refused to go away no matter how much tea or black coffee Kurogane downed to drown it.
Fai turned around completely, his back to the glass and a devil’s smile upon his face. “Does Kuro-chii remember how Syaoran-kun was talking a few worlds ago about local foods and diets being linked to the socio-historical state of each world we land in?” Fai was using potentially long words. Things never boded well for anyone Fai spoke to using long words; generally, it meant some sort of half-assed explanation was in mid-flow, and the best way to end it was nod, smile, agree and shut up, else Fai would come out with a whole host of weird and wonderful attempts at logic. “Even the confectionary counts as being a representation of the state of the country, and the world as a whole, that we land in, so -”
Kurogane sighed, and tuned out the babble; waiting for a suitable point of silence as Fai drew breath to launch into the second branch of his argument before cutting in, halting the mage before he could get another word out. “Just go buy what you like.” That was the real angle behind the whole conversation, anyway.
Fai beamed as soon as the words left the ninja’s mouth and vanished inside the store in the blink of eye - that guy had moved scarily fast even before he’d ingested vampire blood, but the genetic change certainly hadn’t detracted from any of that. Kurogane stomped in after him, grumbling under his breath and kicking off the snow on his heels on the mat just inside the entrance. He saw a familiar blond head flitting about the shelves in distraction quite easily, before seeing Fai go to the counter and actually stay put for a few minutes to watch one of the shopkeepers construct some form of tooth-rotting confectionary there. Fai struck up a conversation with the confectioner and Kurogane sighed and leaned back against the wall out of the way of the other customers in the shop, knowing he was going to be there for a while.
“Ne, Kuro-rin,” half an hour later - and that was quite good for Fai in a sweet shop on a new world -, they were walking back down the street again, Fai with a decent-sized paper packet in his hands (and at least one more in each of his pockets), plucking up the sweets he’d bought to study in the chequered light gifted to them by the window-panes they passed, admiring the shapes they’d been moulded into with a dreamer’s eye. “Do you think it would hurt to be a snowman?”
Kurogane’s boots crunched into the crystals beneath his feet, unforgiving. “Snow can’t feel.”
“But if it could?” Fai sounded wistful, so Kurogane granted him the grace of not looking at him, knowing the expression that would linger in mismatched, ever-changing eyes. Both of Fai’s home worlds had been cold ones, and the people in them colder. Still, he’d loved some of them all the same. “If you could really make a person out of snow, and let it breathe and move and love? Would that hurt?”
“Probably every day.” Kurogane was honest, knowing of cold hearts, and he heard Fai breathe in, the clench of ungloved fingers in paper. “Snowmen are only around in winter, after all.” It would be living with endless loss. “But they make kids happy, when they’re around. I suppose if I were a snowman, I’d be glad of that.”
“Kuro-chan was always a daddy at heart, hm?” That sounded a little brighter so Kurogane glanced over, seeing Fai examining one of the confectionary snowmen he’d bought in the shop, white sugar decorated with coloured icing glittering in the light. It certainly smelled sweet, a vague scent Kurogane recognised floating through the air. Fai saw the other’s attention, and smiled, presenting one to Kurogane. “The man behind the counter said it was flavoured with menthe, whatever that is. It smells good though, don’t you think?”
“It’s mint.” Peppermint - they had it in Nihon as an import, but Kurogane had never heard of it being used as a sweet. It was a plant used primarily by the healers, to cool and to soothe.
Fai broke off a little of the snowman and put it into his mouth - he seemed pleased almost immediately, eyes brighter, humming a little as he savoured the strange taste. “It’s wonderful.” The sweets were hard to touch but quickly melted in the mouth, turning into a soft, sweet cream that was easy to swallow.
“…Right.” Kurogane watched as Fai quickly demolished the first treat in its entirety, rummaging through his little packet for another snowman as soon as the first one was gone. Fai apparently liked the flavour, the fresh scent lingering on his hands, on his smile, in the air as they headed home, all around the mage as he presented the packet to a then-dry Syaoran and Mokona with a triumphant flourish.
Syaoran peered inside the packet, before smiling slightly. “Fai-san, you brought us mint creams?”
“Is that what they’re called?” Fai leaned on the back of the couch as Mokona dived upon the sweets with a cheer, Kurogane too busy stamping the snow off of his boots at the door - and grousing that Fai should have taken his own thigh-high boots off at the entrance instead of trekking snow over the carpet. (Fai ignored him as usual. “Kuro-sama, you’re so strict on mommy~!”)
“Has Fai not had them before?” Mokona looked up from rummaging in the packet to ask her question, the blue earring jingling on her ear.
“He ate a whole packet by himself coming home.” Kurogane grumbled as he padded through into the room in his holly-patterned socks (Fai and Mokona had bought them), having ‘lost’ his slippers a few days beforehand (Syaoran had yet to summon up the courage to explain to his mentor that he’d seen Fai and Mokona using them to decorate the snowman in the back garden).
“And Fai liked them, yes? Yes~?” Mokona hopped from side to side, clearly hoping the answer was in the positive. Fai nodded and the white creature cheered again, Kurogane taking a seat and covering his ears. “Now Fai will make us mint hot chocolate and mint cakes!”
Kurogane didn’t look happy at the thought. “More sweet crap?”
Fai held out his palms, and Mokona hopped into them. “Mokona will have to tell me the recipes!”
Mokona nodded. “Mokona will help, and Fai will make lots of tasty treats!” The meatbun was evil. And greedy. Kurogane was undecided as to which was the more prevalent trait.
Syaoran carefully offered out the packet he’d been holding. “Kurogane-san, would you like one?” Kurogane looked at the boy. Syaoran returned the packet to his lap - Mokona took the opportunity to dive-bomb out of Fai’s hold and straight into the bag head-first, happily stuffing her face with what was inside.
Kurogane stomped over, and yanked Mokona up by the feet. “Those were for the kid, manjuu.”
Mokona hung upside-down, and flailed her little arms. “Wah, daddy is mean and picks favourites!”
“You ate half the bag already!”
“Mean - mean!” Mokona wriggled free and bounced to safety - Kurogane dived after her almost immediately, and Mokona took flight with a squeal. Syaoran watched as they ran out of the room’s door, Mokona still wailing about neglect, and Kurogane roaring at her to shut up.
Fai laid a hand on Syaoran’s shoulder. “You should try one of the creams, now it’s quiet.” There was a loud crash from upstairs. (“Silly daddy broke the vase!” “Who broke it?!!”) “Quieter, anyway,” Fai amended, rueful, and then disappeared into the kitchen to most likely put the kettle on.
Hearing the distinctive thump-thump of Mokona’s body bounding back down the stairs - and Kurogane’s stomp after it - Syaoran decided the kitchen seemed like a very good idea, and quickly vanished after Fai. (He took the packet of mint snowmen with him.)
A/N: I noticed that my Nihon fics seem to have this tendency to run more to a descriptive side of things and tried to keep that same voice here…I think I got it, but I’m a terrible judge of my own writing.
This piece is from a world without Christmas, as I can’t really see it as being feasible for everywhere the group lands to have that holiday, but it’s still about the same time of year, heading towards Midwinter. There might not be a holiday for the occasion, exactly, but I think some feelings would be the same from world to world, regardless.
…Incidentally, I love mint creams. Especially decorated ones. ^^ But then again, I’m a sugar-fiend.
*****
Princess Princess
Tomoyo-hime meets Tomoyo Daidouji - for SJ
Tomoyo-hime, the Tsukoyomi of Shirasagi castle, the younger sister of Amaterasu - Imperial Empress of all Nihon -, dreamseer and maintainer of the wards that defended the country from invasion by monsters, was ten when she first had a dream about a version of herself from another world. The other Tomoyo was twelve, taller, and had a cute hat, so Tomoyo-hime told Kurogane about it in the morning over breakfast, daintily picking her way through a bowl of rice. (Kurogane was politely unimpressed - Tomoyo strongly doubted he was listening -, and disappeared to the training yard as soon as she’d finished eating to go slaughter a target-dummy.)
Tomoyo dreamed again, and once more found herself looking into a mirror of her own violet eyes, another face framed by dark, curling hair. The other Tomoyo seemed a little brighter, a little preoccupied, and, instead of expressing curiosity about why it was she was dreaming about a younger version of herself dressed in elaborate court robes that were better suited for the fifteenth century than modern Japan, distractedly inquired of the slightly smaller girl whether she might know a good colour that would go with magenta pink other than canary yellow? Only, that had been Sakura-chan’s colour scheme the month before, and Tomoyo did hate to repeat herself. Sakura-chan deserved something beautiful and unique, every time-!
Tomoyo-hime told the older girl that of course, the complimenting colour for the pink would very much depend upon the complexion of the one that was wearing it, and so the other Tomoyo proceeded to go into great depth about the particular, intangible green of her Sakura-chan’s eyes, her skin tone, her hair and blush and smile. She was unaffected by the fact she was only wearing her school’s winter uniform and was therefore probably quite underdressed for the company she was in - she was a Tomoyo, after all, and confident in herself -, though she did offer a brief apology as she took a seat beside the princess in the dream, and introduced herself: Daidouji Tomoyo, of Tomoeda, Japan. Again, Tomoyo-hime recounted this over breakfast the following morning to Kurogane - he was staring out of the window at some impossibly distant assumed threat so she didn’t think he heard her, so Souma hit him over the back of his head with her shoe and scolded him for his bad manners. (It was a little impossible to tell anything after that, as the two descended into yelling.)
The next time she slept Tomoyo dreamed of a pretty brunette. She was dressed in the same sort of clothes as Daidouji Tomoyo, and had green eyes and a brilliant smile. Sakura-chan. It was only a vision of the other girl - Tomoyo-hime couldn’t interact with her, only watch, see the brunette dash through a shower of cherry blossoms in some other world’s spring. When the other Tomoyo arrived Tomoyo-hime asked if that was the Sakura that belonged to her - and Daidouji’s smile was sweet, so sweet, but so terribly sad. That was the Sakura-chan she knew and loved, she explained, but Sakura-chan ‘belonged’ to someone else. He was called Li-kun, and Daidouji was so very glad Sakura-chan was happy. Tomoyo-hime tried to explain this to Souma in the morning, thinking she’d understand, but they were interrupted by four assassins and Kurogane. (Naturally, the assassins were dealt with, but it was Kurogane who broke the room’s antique table and flower-patterned screen.)
Tomoyo-hime didn’t dream of the other world’s version of herself for a long while after that. She saw Sakura-chan, though, and then she saw another Sakura, and another and another, all from different worlds, all with the same smile and warmth and radiating loveliness. And then one day Tomoyo dreamed of a certain special Sakura - though they all, were of course, special in their own way, this one… She was a princess, Sakura-hime, and she was about Tomoyo’s age, dressed in pink and white and laughing as she played in the sands of her desert country. And Tomoyo tried her very hardest to dream of that Sakura often, because she couldn’t quite bring herself to look away, her senses called to this child around which so very much revolved. She watched the girl’s life before it had even happened; saw laughter and strangeness, and then tears and pain and heartbreak. Sakura-hime and Sakura-hime, one and the same and two and different, each with a ‘Li-kun’, a Syaoran, a -
She saw Kurogane, older, grouchier, and colder, and another male beside him, thin and fair in a way Nihon men weren’t. Kurogane yelled at him a lot but Kurogane defended him - Kurogane looked after Sakura-hime too, and the boy that every Sakura seemed to have a version of, so that the boy would come into himself, and could defend Sakura himself.
Tomoyo-hime didn’t try to explain what she saw to either Souma or Kurogane the following day. Souma looked at her inquiringly but Tomoyo only drank her tea, listening to Kurogane go through some people that had been causing a ruckus in the courtyard outside her window. (Souma ran to said window after some time after there was a loud splash - apparently Kurogane had pushed some people into the sacred koi pond. Souma scolded and Kurogane yelled, and the two bickered for half an hour.)
Daidouji appeared in Tomoyo-hime’s dreams again a few nights later. The princess didn’t tell the schoolgirl how very lucky the older girl was - not every Tomoyo was lucky enough to be with a Sakura, after all; she’d seen countless Sakuras and so few Tomoyos beside them. Daidouji had a bunch of different flowers on her lap - flowers in red and pink and purple and yellow. She was holding them up against a bolt of white cloth, seeing how they matched the shifting hues there as the light played over them.
Tomoyo-hime approached, her own clothes rustling slightly, giving her away. She knelt down beside the other girl, taking a purple flower to hold in her own hands, smelling its sweet scent. “For Sakura-chan?”
“For Sakura-chan,” Daidouji Tomoyo confirmed with a nod, smiling a welcome.
Tomoyo-hime could do nothing but smile back, and dream of a hundred thousand different girls, most of whom she’d never meet. “How can I help?”
A/N: I must admit I got stuck with this prompt. I thought it would be rather sparkly nonsense at first, with the Tomoyos comparing dress notes, but then it wandered off into this odd direction. Most of it is in reported speech as, in TRC canon, most of what we hear of Piffle!Tomoyo and Tomoyo-hime saying to one another comes to us through reported speech.
I see Kurogane being about seventeen/eighteen in this? Souma’s a little older.
*****
Aisle Number Eight
Kurogane and Fai meet in the supermarket, AU - for batzypan
Kurogane had never been a great believer in destiny and fate; he didn’t really care all that much for them, never mind how his batty landlady and her two impossible cats harangued him about it. Ideas like that were best left for dreamers and people with time to waste - Kurogane was Kurogane, and he had better things to do than stand around and contemplate the possible many meanings in life.
Sadly (or perhaps very luckily, depending upon one’s opinion of the matter), those ‘better things to do’ often took Kurogane into some form of mental dire straits or other: Kurogane may not have had much time for the heavens, but the celestial bodies certainly made sure they set aside a regular amount of time for making sure their favourite chewtoy was thoroughly and ritually subjected to some kind of wonderful grievance. That day’s schedule consisted of blond hair, blue eyes, and sinfully long legs dashing down a row of dead bound-up octopi in the supermarket.
The collision was swift, startling, and enough to send Kurogane back three steps, arms full of the thing, straight into an uncomfortably cold seat on the edge of the open freezer along the wall. Shock - both at being so suddenly ran into and having his behind planted firmly among the fish fingers - blanked Kurogane’s mind for a few seconds, before he very quickly shoved at the thing sprawled across his lap, sending it onto the supermarket floor, and hastily removing himself from the freezer because hell, that thing was cold.
There was a groan from the floor. “Ow…”
“What do you mean, ‘ow’?!” Kurogane wasn’t in the mood to be especially forgiving, roughly trying to pat himself down of ice crystals so they wouldn’t melt on his butt and leave a wet patch for when he walked home. “You ran into me!” The idiot on the floor had nothing to gripe about - it had been Kurogane who’d acted as a cushion in the collision, and Kurogane who’d ended up sitting amongst the frozen produce. He looked down, annoyed, and caught sight of blond hair, a skinny frame picking itself up from the ground. Some foreign idiot - wonderful.
“My apologies,” the stranger had an accent in their soft voice - Kurogane puzzled over the gender for a second before flicking his gaze down the other once. The stranger’s jumper was clinging and the chest seemed noticeably flat - he was male, then. “But did you really have to shove me onto the floor?”
“You were sitting on my lap.” Kurogane’s voice was flat.
A teasing lilt, “With that sort of reaction I guess Mr. Black doesn’t pick up dates very often then, huh?”
“I - what does that have to do with anything?!” A few of the shoppers around jumped at the sound of Kurogane’s yell, before hastily scurrying back to their own business when the man glared at them.
“I’m Fai,” the stranger extended a hand, all smiles. Kurogane ignored it. “Fai D. Fluorite.”
“I’m busy.” Kurogane made to stalk past the twit - but paused when a hand caught at his arm. He looked back over his shoulder, meeting a far too-bright gaze, and snarled. “What?”
“That wasn’t very polite.” ‘Fai’ chided him. “When someone introduces themselves, Mr. Black, it’s customary to introduce yourself back. Let’s try again, hm? I’m Fai D. Fluorite; it’s nice to meet you.”
“My name isn’t ‘Mr. Black’.”
Fai sighed at him. “That’s a start, but it still needs a little polishing. Once more, then. I’m -”
“Kurogane.” Kurogane yanked his arm out of the idiot’s grasp, wondering just what it was he’d done to be landed with perpetual stupidity.
“…I beg your pardon?” The idiot tilted his head, questioning, and Kurogane hated how he noted the way that blond hair slithered to the side, a shimmering mess.
“My name,” Kurogane growled, wondering just why he was humouring this Fai, “is Kurogane.”
There was a delicate pause.
“Well,” Fai said consideringly, “that’s not very cute, is it?”
“It’s not supposed to be ‘cute’!!”
“Do you like ‘Kuro-chan’?” Fai ignored his companion. “Or ‘Kuro-pon’? Kuro-chan’s just got that sort of air about it, but Kuro-pon rolls off the tongue much more easily -”
“Idiot, my name is Kurogane.” Kurogane’s hands tightened into fists at his side - if he loosened them in any way he knew he was going to wrap them around this fluffy-brained stranger’s neck and throttle him.
“Kuro-rin?” Fai continued on, oblivious, finger tapping his chin in thought. “But then there’s Kuro-pyu and Kuro-chii and Kuro-mu and Kuro-tan -”
Oh hell no.
“IT’S KUROGANE!”
“Kuro-chuu,” Fai said chidingly into the quiet that followed the taller man’s exclamation, tugging the other into a nearby corner away from the baleful eyes of the other shoppers. Stunned at the blond’s audacity, Kurogane unthinkingly went. “You shouldn’t yell like that in public. It’s very inconsiderate.”
Kurogane was inconsiderate?!
“Listen here, idiot,” Fai clasped his hands together and looked up at Kurogane with the attention of a rapt student, and if the sparkly thing he was doing made him look stupidly pretty Kurogane was not noticing it, forcing his words out through gritted teeth with what he thought was admirable calm. “My name is Ku-ro-ga-ne. Kurogane. Not Kuro-rin, not Kuro-pyu, and most certainly not Kuro-tan.”
There was another pause.
“Kuro-mii,” said Fai simply, “I think I’m in love.”
“What?!” Kurogane’s voice echoed throughout the supermarket, about an octave higher than it should’ve been. A baby near the tills woke up at the sound, and began to cry. “Like hell you are - we just met!!”
“That’s why it’s called love at first sight, Kuro-pii!” Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle. Some village - no, some country - was missing its idiot. “Clearly, this is destiny at work, uniting two chosen souls in the fish-food aisle of their local supermarket -”
“This isn’t my local supermarket.”
“Exactly why this is destiny!” Fai wagged a finger in his face; Kurogane was tempted to grab it and test whether idiocy could persist under finger-bending torture. “Could we have met on any other day but today?”
“I was here last Tuesday.”
Fai looked at him blankly. “…Why?”
“My landlady wanted a specific kind of toilet roll.”
“…You buy toilet roll for your landlady?”
“…Once you’ve met the witch, you’ll learn buying her anything she asks for is worth it as long as she shuts up.”
“I’d love to meet her!” Fai all but sparkled. Again. “Will you be at home Thursday evening? I can do Thursday.”
“That wasn’t an invite!!”
“Of course, I’ll need your address -”
“No. Do you hear me? No, no way in hell -”
“Thursday’s a bad day? Oh well,” Fai moved closer, and looped his arm through Kurogane’s, clinging to it even as the other began to immediately try and detach him, “you’ll just have to take me out for a drink now, then.” Kurogane tried to protest, he really did. “It’s the least you could do after dumping me on the floor.”
“You pushed me into a freezer!”
“It doesn’t seem to have had any effect on Kuro-tama then.” Fai was somehow related to a limpet, Kurogane was positive of it. All the prying he was doing at his arm couldn’t get the idiot to budge an inch. “He seems just as hot-tempered as when he first stalked in here.”
“…You were watching me?” So the collision hadn’t been -
Blue eyes slid evasively away and Kurogane was about to comment on it, but suddenly there was something cold and hard shoved into his free hand - a bottle of milk - and Fai was smiling again.
“Kuro-rinta will help me with my shopping, won’t he?”
“Do I look like somebody’s housewife?!”
Fai smirked and tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear - Kurogane’s stomach plummeted to somewhere about ankle-height. “I wasn’t the one shopping for toilet roll for my landlady, Kuro-kun.”
Kurogane chose to reply to that with a choice set of expletives that made some passing old ladies tut, a few reproving mothers cover their wide-eyed children’s ears, and a bunch of teenagers look at Kurogane with a whole new level of respect. He didn’t, however, drop the milk he’d been given, or even try and shove it back into Fai’s grasp.
“…Kuro-myu,” Fai said thoughtfully after Kurogane’s tirade had finally come to an end, the taller male slightly out of breath, “I don’t think those last three suggestions of yours were even anatomically possible.”
“You -”
“Muffins!” Fai finally let go of Kurogane’s arm, dashing away to a nearby shelf that had caught his attention, plucking up a packet of sweet-smelling sugary goodness - blueberry muffins, as the packet proclaimed them - and returning to hand them to Kurogane to carry, pulling at the other man again to get him to follow Fai down the next aisle. “Do you like muffins, Kuro-chirp?”
“Kurogane - and no.” Kurogane found himself saddled with some fruit as well as the muffins and milk, a loaf of bread, some butter - “I don’t like sweet things.”
Fai looked as if someone had stabbed him. “That’s terrible!” he frowned, thinking, and shoved a pack of toothbrushes on the rapidly-growing pile in Kurogane’s arms. “We’ll just have to try a few things on you - I bet I could find something Kuro-sama would like.”
And some shampoo. “I’m not your goddamned pet.”
“Of course not!” A bottle of red wine. “Kuro-wan-wan is a grouchy puppy; he needs training before he can be anyone’s pet.”
“What?!” Kurogane’s head hurt.
“This way, Kuro-ti~!” Fai pulled him off to the tills, taking the shopping off of him to put on the conveyor belt - it was only as the stuff left him Kurogane realised just how much he’d been lugging around the supermarket.
“You -”
Fai patted him on the arm. “Doesn’t Kuro-pup have some toilet roll he needs to fetch? We wouldn’t want to disappoint your landlady after all, especially not after you came all this way.”
Kurogane growled, but stomped off to get the toilet roll. Fai was waiting for him when he came back, his own shopping already paid for. Somehow or other, after he’d paid for the rolls, Kurogane ended up carrying Fai’s shopping back to the blond’s car for him (the supermarket was glad to see them both go), Fai taking his arm and dragging him to a nearby café to get something to eat and drink as, as Fai reliably informed him as they took a seat, ‘it would be terrible to drink alcohol and drive, so some hot chocolate and cake would have to do!’ Kurogane ordered black coffee and Fai pouted at him and ordered hot chocolate and some sticky…cake…thing, spearing a chunk on his fork when it arrived and shoving it in Kurogane’s mouth when the other wasn’t paying attention. After chewing and swallowing Kurogane yelled at him again, but his ire was only met with more of Fai’s laughter. The blond was impossible.
(Somehow, somehow, Fai weaselled Kurogane’s phone number and address out of the other in that meeting, and vanished back off to his car about an hour later with a wave and a smile and an irritatingly distracting sashay. He promptly called later that evening, and again, somehow, Kurogane ended up going out for a proper drink with him, much to his landlady’s voyeuristic delight when the idiot walked him home afterwards and demanded a kiss goodnight.)
It was only much, much later that Kurogane discovered just why it was Fai had been running in the supermarket that first day anyway, dragging a half-hearted confession out of the idiot weeks later that had something to do with nasty dead octopi, rather bad arranging of the seafood on the shelves, Fai’s oh-so-delicate stomach and Kurogane’s much more appealing ass. Deciding his sanity - already much abused - would be all the better for not inquiring about the details Kurogane left it at that, and went back to happily occupying his mouth with a more-than-willing idiot’s - it was a much more satisfying enterprise, after all.
A/N: I really had too much fun with this one. X3 Er…the situation really sprang up when, when trying to think of ideas, I asked SJ what the weirdest thing was she’d ever seen in a Japanese supermarket. When she described the dead octopi on the shelves that looked at you I couldn’t help but imagine sushi-hating Fai’s reaction - and thus came this, with Fai doing a runner away from the stinky seafood to the siren call of Kurogane’s butt.
…Kurogane should just accept the fact he’s been domesticated, and live with it.
(…The supermarket near my university’s halls has a bunch of weird things in its eighth aisle - it changes with the season/week/day. And it seems to have no organisation to it, either…)
*****
Nihon: Snowmen
Fai discovers mint for the first time, post-canon - for Crys
White was a strange colour for Kurogane, but still, he stood speckled in it, having shrugged off his customary black jacket and dumped it over the head of Syaoran half an hour before, the boy shivering after having stumbled into a snowdrift. Fai, the self-proclaimed group mother, had ordered the youth back to their home on this world with Mokona for company, and then had promptly resumed hanging off of Kurogane’s arm, laughing as Kurogane made fun of his far too-long scarf.
“I could choke you with the damn thing,” the ninja had grumbled, running his right hand through his hair to dislodge the snow that clung there, more falling from the sky to stubbornly replace all he brushed away. Let no man ever tell Kurogane Youou he was fighting a losing battle. (Sakura or Tomoyo might just get away with it, but they were young and wide-eyed and it was a well-accepted fact Kurogane never could say no to sweet-faced sparkly girls.)
“But Kuro-puu would miss me too much!” Fai found it strangely exhilarating in this new world, dancing down a cobbled street with the windchill on his cheeks as evening fell, snow catching on his shoulders, on his scarf, in his gold-bright hair. The shops along the pavement spilled contrary light over the pavements, squares on the snow and ice that crunched underfoot.
“Keep telling yourself that.” More laughter, Fai actually unlooping himself from his stranglehold on his companion’s arm, abandoning the softness of wool to spread his fingers against cold, frosted glass, eyes as wide as a child’s at the colourful display in one shop window. Strange, interesting smells floated out from the shop’s entrance distractingly, a group of three teenage girls coming out giggling and talking amongst themselves, clutching paper packets to their chests. A sweet shop, where they made the products themselves.
“Can we-?”
“No.”
“But Kuro-tan,” Fai lamented - and there he actually tore his eyes away from the foreign, sugary delicacies in the window to make eyes of woe at Kurogane, who had stalked up beside him to glare at the treats, unimpressed, “they have little snowmen - see? I’m sure Syaoran-kun would love it if we brought him back a little snowman.”
Kurogane frowned at him. “You mean you would love it if you bought a snowman.” Why had this store moulded sugar into such weird shapes anyway? It was just clumps of sugar with added decorative sugar, a saccharine taste that lingered stubbornly in the mouth and refused to go away no matter how much tea or black coffee Kurogane downed to drown it.
Fai turned around completely, his back to the glass and a devil’s smile upon his face. “Does Kuro-chii remember how Syaoran-kun was talking a few worlds ago about local foods and diets being linked to the socio-historical state of each world we land in?” Fai was using potentially long words. Things never boded well for anyone Fai spoke to using long words; generally, it meant some sort of half-assed explanation was in mid-flow, and the best way to end it was nod, smile, agree and shut up, else Fai would come out with a whole host of weird and wonderful attempts at logic. “Even the confectionary counts as being a representation of the state of the country, and the world as a whole, that we land in, so -”
Kurogane sighed, and tuned out the babble; waiting for a suitable point of silence as Fai drew breath to launch into the second branch of his argument before cutting in, halting the mage before he could get another word out. “Just go buy what you like.” That was the real angle behind the whole conversation, anyway.
Fai beamed as soon as the words left the ninja’s mouth and vanished inside the store in the blink of eye - that guy had moved scarily fast even before he’d ingested vampire blood, but the genetic change certainly hadn’t detracted from any of that. Kurogane stomped in after him, grumbling under his breath and kicking off the snow on his heels on the mat just inside the entrance. He saw a familiar blond head flitting about the shelves in distraction quite easily, before seeing Fai go to the counter and actually stay put for a few minutes to watch one of the shopkeepers construct some form of tooth-rotting confectionary there. Fai struck up a conversation with the confectioner and Kurogane sighed and leaned back against the wall out of the way of the other customers in the shop, knowing he was going to be there for a while.
“Ne, Kuro-rin,” half an hour later - and that was quite good for Fai in a sweet shop on a new world -, they were walking back down the street again, Fai with a decent-sized paper packet in his hands (and at least one more in each of his pockets), plucking up the sweets he’d bought to study in the chequered light gifted to them by the window-panes they passed, admiring the shapes they’d been moulded into with a dreamer’s eye. “Do you think it would hurt to be a snowman?”
Kurogane’s boots crunched into the crystals beneath his feet, unforgiving. “Snow can’t feel.”
“But if it could?” Fai sounded wistful, so Kurogane granted him the grace of not looking at him, knowing the expression that would linger in mismatched, ever-changing eyes. Both of Fai’s home worlds had been cold ones, and the people in them colder. Still, he’d loved some of them all the same. “If you could really make a person out of snow, and let it breathe and move and love? Would that hurt?”
“Probably every day.” Kurogane was honest, knowing of cold hearts, and he heard Fai breathe in, the clench of ungloved fingers in paper. “Snowmen are only around in winter, after all.” It would be living with endless loss. “But they make kids happy, when they’re around. I suppose if I were a snowman, I’d be glad of that.”
“Kuro-chan was always a daddy at heart, hm?” That sounded a little brighter so Kurogane glanced over, seeing Fai examining one of the confectionary snowmen he’d bought in the shop, white sugar decorated with coloured icing glittering in the light. It certainly smelled sweet, a vague scent Kurogane recognised floating through the air. Fai saw the other’s attention, and smiled, presenting one to Kurogane. “The man behind the counter said it was flavoured with menthe, whatever that is. It smells good though, don’t you think?”
“It’s mint.” Peppermint - they had it in Nihon as an import, but Kurogane had never heard of it being used as a sweet. It was a plant used primarily by the healers, to cool and to soothe.
Fai broke off a little of the snowman and put it into his mouth - he seemed pleased almost immediately, eyes brighter, humming a little as he savoured the strange taste. “It’s wonderful.” The sweets were hard to touch but quickly melted in the mouth, turning into a soft, sweet cream that was easy to swallow.
“…Right.” Kurogane watched as Fai quickly demolished the first treat in its entirety, rummaging through his little packet for another snowman as soon as the first one was gone. Fai apparently liked the flavour, the fresh scent lingering on his hands, on his smile, in the air as they headed home, all around the mage as he presented the packet to a then-dry Syaoran and Mokona with a triumphant flourish.
Syaoran peered inside the packet, before smiling slightly. “Fai-san, you brought us mint creams?”
“Is that what they’re called?” Fai leaned on the back of the couch as Mokona dived upon the sweets with a cheer, Kurogane too busy stamping the snow off of his boots at the door - and grousing that Fai should have taken his own thigh-high boots off at the entrance instead of trekking snow over the carpet. (Fai ignored him as usual. “Kuro-sama, you’re so strict on mommy~!”)
“Has Fai not had them before?” Mokona looked up from rummaging in the packet to ask her question, the blue earring jingling on her ear.
“He ate a whole packet by himself coming home.” Kurogane grumbled as he padded through into the room in his holly-patterned socks (Fai and Mokona had bought them), having ‘lost’ his slippers a few days beforehand (Syaoran had yet to summon up the courage to explain to his mentor that he’d seen Fai and Mokona using them to decorate the snowman in the back garden).
“And Fai liked them, yes? Yes~?” Mokona hopped from side to side, clearly hoping the answer was in the positive. Fai nodded and the white creature cheered again, Kurogane taking a seat and covering his ears. “Now Fai will make us mint hot chocolate and mint cakes!”
Kurogane didn’t look happy at the thought. “More sweet crap?”
Fai held out his palms, and Mokona hopped into them. “Mokona will have to tell me the recipes!”
Mokona nodded. “Mokona will help, and Fai will make lots of tasty treats!” The meatbun was evil. And greedy. Kurogane was undecided as to which was the more prevalent trait.
Syaoran carefully offered out the packet he’d been holding. “Kurogane-san, would you like one?” Kurogane looked at the boy. Syaoran returned the packet to his lap - Mokona took the opportunity to dive-bomb out of Fai’s hold and straight into the bag head-first, happily stuffing her face with what was inside.
Kurogane stomped over, and yanked Mokona up by the feet. “Those were for the kid, manjuu.”
Mokona hung upside-down, and flailed her little arms. “Wah, daddy is mean and picks favourites!”
“You ate half the bag already!”
“Mean - mean!” Mokona wriggled free and bounced to safety - Kurogane dived after her almost immediately, and Mokona took flight with a squeal. Syaoran watched as they ran out of the room’s door, Mokona still wailing about neglect, and Kurogane roaring at her to shut up.
Fai laid a hand on Syaoran’s shoulder. “You should try one of the creams, now it’s quiet.” There was a loud crash from upstairs. (“Silly daddy broke the vase!” “Who broke it?!!”) “Quieter, anyway,” Fai amended, rueful, and then disappeared into the kitchen to most likely put the kettle on.
Hearing the distinctive thump-thump of Mokona’s body bounding back down the stairs - and Kurogane’s stomp after it - Syaoran decided the kitchen seemed like a very good idea, and quickly vanished after Fai. (He took the packet of mint snowmen with him.)
A/N: I noticed that my Nihon fics seem to have this tendency to run more to a descriptive side of things and tried to keep that same voice here…I think I got it, but I’m a terrible judge of my own writing.
This piece is from a world without Christmas, as I can’t really see it as being feasible for everywhere the group lands to have that holiday, but it’s still about the same time of year, heading towards Midwinter. There might not be a holiday for the occasion, exactly, but I think some feelings would be the same from world to world, regardless.
…Incidentally, I love mint creams. Especially decorated ones. ^^ But then again, I’m a sugar-fiend.
*****
Princess Princess
Tomoyo-hime meets Tomoyo Daidouji - for SJ
Tomoyo-hime, the Tsukoyomi of Shirasagi castle, the younger sister of Amaterasu - Imperial Empress of all Nihon -, dreamseer and maintainer of the wards that defended the country from invasion by monsters, was ten when she first had a dream about a version of herself from another world. The other Tomoyo was twelve, taller, and had a cute hat, so Tomoyo-hime told Kurogane about it in the morning over breakfast, daintily picking her way through a bowl of rice. (Kurogane was politely unimpressed - Tomoyo strongly doubted he was listening -, and disappeared to the training yard as soon as she’d finished eating to go slaughter a target-dummy.)
Tomoyo dreamed again, and once more found herself looking into a mirror of her own violet eyes, another face framed by dark, curling hair. The other Tomoyo seemed a little brighter, a little preoccupied, and, instead of expressing curiosity about why it was she was dreaming about a younger version of herself dressed in elaborate court robes that were better suited for the fifteenth century than modern Japan, distractedly inquired of the slightly smaller girl whether she might know a good colour that would go with magenta pink other than canary yellow? Only, that had been Sakura-chan’s colour scheme the month before, and Tomoyo did hate to repeat herself. Sakura-chan deserved something beautiful and unique, every time-!
Tomoyo-hime told the older girl that of course, the complimenting colour for the pink would very much depend upon the complexion of the one that was wearing it, and so the other Tomoyo proceeded to go into great depth about the particular, intangible green of her Sakura-chan’s eyes, her skin tone, her hair and blush and smile. She was unaffected by the fact she was only wearing her school’s winter uniform and was therefore probably quite underdressed for the company she was in - she was a Tomoyo, after all, and confident in herself -, though she did offer a brief apology as she took a seat beside the princess in the dream, and introduced herself: Daidouji Tomoyo, of Tomoeda, Japan. Again, Tomoyo-hime recounted this over breakfast the following morning to Kurogane - he was staring out of the window at some impossibly distant assumed threat so she didn’t think he heard her, so Souma hit him over the back of his head with her shoe and scolded him for his bad manners. (It was a little impossible to tell anything after that, as the two descended into yelling.)
The next time she slept Tomoyo dreamed of a pretty brunette. She was dressed in the same sort of clothes as Daidouji Tomoyo, and had green eyes and a brilliant smile. Sakura-chan. It was only a vision of the other girl - Tomoyo-hime couldn’t interact with her, only watch, see the brunette dash through a shower of cherry blossoms in some other world’s spring. When the other Tomoyo arrived Tomoyo-hime asked if that was the Sakura that belonged to her - and Daidouji’s smile was sweet, so sweet, but so terribly sad. That was the Sakura-chan she knew and loved, she explained, but Sakura-chan ‘belonged’ to someone else. He was called Li-kun, and Daidouji was so very glad Sakura-chan was happy. Tomoyo-hime tried to explain this to Souma in the morning, thinking she’d understand, but they were interrupted by four assassins and Kurogane. (Naturally, the assassins were dealt with, but it was Kurogane who broke the room’s antique table and flower-patterned screen.)
Tomoyo-hime didn’t dream of the other world’s version of herself for a long while after that. She saw Sakura-chan, though, and then she saw another Sakura, and another and another, all from different worlds, all with the same smile and warmth and radiating loveliness. And then one day Tomoyo dreamed of a certain special Sakura - though they all, were of course, special in their own way, this one… She was a princess, Sakura-hime, and she was about Tomoyo’s age, dressed in pink and white and laughing as she played in the sands of her desert country. And Tomoyo tried her very hardest to dream of that Sakura often, because she couldn’t quite bring herself to look away, her senses called to this child around which so very much revolved. She watched the girl’s life before it had even happened; saw laughter and strangeness, and then tears and pain and heartbreak. Sakura-hime and Sakura-hime, one and the same and two and different, each with a ‘Li-kun’, a Syaoran, a -
She saw Kurogane, older, grouchier, and colder, and another male beside him, thin and fair in a way Nihon men weren’t. Kurogane yelled at him a lot but Kurogane defended him - Kurogane looked after Sakura-hime too, and the boy that every Sakura seemed to have a version of, so that the boy would come into himself, and could defend Sakura himself.
Tomoyo-hime didn’t try to explain what she saw to either Souma or Kurogane the following day. Souma looked at her inquiringly but Tomoyo only drank her tea, listening to Kurogane go through some people that had been causing a ruckus in the courtyard outside her window. (Souma ran to said window after some time after there was a loud splash - apparently Kurogane had pushed some people into the sacred koi pond. Souma scolded and Kurogane yelled, and the two bickered for half an hour.)
Daidouji appeared in Tomoyo-hime’s dreams again a few nights later. The princess didn’t tell the schoolgirl how very lucky the older girl was - not every Tomoyo was lucky enough to be with a Sakura, after all; she’d seen countless Sakuras and so few Tomoyos beside them. Daidouji had a bunch of different flowers on her lap - flowers in red and pink and purple and yellow. She was holding them up against a bolt of white cloth, seeing how they matched the shifting hues there as the light played over them.
Tomoyo-hime approached, her own clothes rustling slightly, giving her away. She knelt down beside the other girl, taking a purple flower to hold in her own hands, smelling its sweet scent. “For Sakura-chan?”
“For Sakura-chan,” Daidouji Tomoyo confirmed with a nod, smiling a welcome.
Tomoyo-hime could do nothing but smile back, and dream of a hundred thousand different girls, most of whom she’d never meet. “How can I help?”
A/N: I must admit I got stuck with this prompt. I thought it would be rather sparkly nonsense at first, with the Tomoyos comparing dress notes, but then it wandered off into this odd direction. Most of it is in reported speech as, in TRC canon, most of what we hear of Piffle!Tomoyo and Tomoyo-hime saying to one another comes to us through reported speech.
I see Kurogane being about seventeen/eighteen in this? Souma’s a little older.
*****
Aisle Number Eight
Kurogane and Fai meet in the supermarket, AU - for batzypan
Kurogane had never been a great believer in destiny and fate; he didn’t really care all that much for them, never mind how his batty landlady and her two impossible cats harangued him about it. Ideas like that were best left for dreamers and people with time to waste - Kurogane was Kurogane, and he had better things to do than stand around and contemplate the possible many meanings in life.
Sadly (or perhaps very luckily, depending upon one’s opinion of the matter), those ‘better things to do’ often took Kurogane into some form of mental dire straits or other: Kurogane may not have had much time for the heavens, but the celestial bodies certainly made sure they set aside a regular amount of time for making sure their favourite chewtoy was thoroughly and ritually subjected to some kind of wonderful grievance. That day’s schedule consisted of blond hair, blue eyes, and sinfully long legs dashing down a row of dead bound-up octopi in the supermarket.
The collision was swift, startling, and enough to send Kurogane back three steps, arms full of the thing, straight into an uncomfortably cold seat on the edge of the open freezer along the wall. Shock - both at being so suddenly ran into and having his behind planted firmly among the fish fingers - blanked Kurogane’s mind for a few seconds, before he very quickly shoved at the thing sprawled across his lap, sending it onto the supermarket floor, and hastily removing himself from the freezer because hell, that thing was cold.
There was a groan from the floor. “Ow…”
“What do you mean, ‘ow’?!” Kurogane wasn’t in the mood to be especially forgiving, roughly trying to pat himself down of ice crystals so they wouldn’t melt on his butt and leave a wet patch for when he walked home. “You ran into me!” The idiot on the floor had nothing to gripe about - it had been Kurogane who’d acted as a cushion in the collision, and Kurogane who’d ended up sitting amongst the frozen produce. He looked down, annoyed, and caught sight of blond hair, a skinny frame picking itself up from the ground. Some foreign idiot - wonderful.
“My apologies,” the stranger had an accent in their soft voice - Kurogane puzzled over the gender for a second before flicking his gaze down the other once. The stranger’s jumper was clinging and the chest seemed noticeably flat - he was male, then. “But did you really have to shove me onto the floor?”
“You were sitting on my lap.” Kurogane’s voice was flat.
A teasing lilt, “With that sort of reaction I guess Mr. Black doesn’t pick up dates very often then, huh?”
“I - what does that have to do with anything?!” A few of the shoppers around jumped at the sound of Kurogane’s yell, before hastily scurrying back to their own business when the man glared at them.
“I’m Fai,” the stranger extended a hand, all smiles. Kurogane ignored it. “Fai D. Fluorite.”
“I’m busy.” Kurogane made to stalk past the twit - but paused when a hand caught at his arm. He looked back over his shoulder, meeting a far too-bright gaze, and snarled. “What?”
“That wasn’t very polite.” ‘Fai’ chided him. “When someone introduces themselves, Mr. Black, it’s customary to introduce yourself back. Let’s try again, hm? I’m Fai D. Fluorite; it’s nice to meet you.”
“My name isn’t ‘Mr. Black’.”
Fai sighed at him. “That’s a start, but it still needs a little polishing. Once more, then. I’m -”
“Kurogane.” Kurogane yanked his arm out of the idiot’s grasp, wondering just what it was he’d done to be landed with perpetual stupidity.
“…I beg your pardon?” The idiot tilted his head, questioning, and Kurogane hated how he noted the way that blond hair slithered to the side, a shimmering mess.
“My name,” Kurogane growled, wondering just why he was humouring this Fai, “is Kurogane.”
There was a delicate pause.
“Well,” Fai said consideringly, “that’s not very cute, is it?”
“It’s not supposed to be ‘cute’!!”
“Do you like ‘Kuro-chan’?” Fai ignored his companion. “Or ‘Kuro-pon’? Kuro-chan’s just got that sort of air about it, but Kuro-pon rolls off the tongue much more easily -”
“Idiot, my name is Kurogane.” Kurogane’s hands tightened into fists at his side - if he loosened them in any way he knew he was going to wrap them around this fluffy-brained stranger’s neck and throttle him.
“Kuro-rin?” Fai continued on, oblivious, finger tapping his chin in thought. “But then there’s Kuro-pyu and Kuro-chii and Kuro-mu and Kuro-tan -”
Oh hell no.
“IT’S KUROGANE!”
“Kuro-chuu,” Fai said chidingly into the quiet that followed the taller man’s exclamation, tugging the other into a nearby corner away from the baleful eyes of the other shoppers. Stunned at the blond’s audacity, Kurogane unthinkingly went. “You shouldn’t yell like that in public. It’s very inconsiderate.”
Kurogane was inconsiderate?!
“Listen here, idiot,” Fai clasped his hands together and looked up at Kurogane with the attention of a rapt student, and if the sparkly thing he was doing made him look stupidly pretty Kurogane was not noticing it, forcing his words out through gritted teeth with what he thought was admirable calm. “My name is Ku-ro-ga-ne. Kurogane. Not Kuro-rin, not Kuro-pyu, and most certainly not Kuro-tan.”
There was another pause.
“Kuro-mii,” said Fai simply, “I think I’m in love.”
“What?!” Kurogane’s voice echoed throughout the supermarket, about an octave higher than it should’ve been. A baby near the tills woke up at the sound, and began to cry. “Like hell you are - we just met!!”
“That’s why it’s called love at first sight, Kuro-pii!” Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle. Some village - no, some country - was missing its idiot. “Clearly, this is destiny at work, uniting two chosen souls in the fish-food aisle of their local supermarket -”
“This isn’t my local supermarket.”
“Exactly why this is destiny!” Fai wagged a finger in his face; Kurogane was tempted to grab it and test whether idiocy could persist under finger-bending torture. “Could we have met on any other day but today?”
“I was here last Tuesday.”
Fai looked at him blankly. “…Why?”
“My landlady wanted a specific kind of toilet roll.”
“…You buy toilet roll for your landlady?”
“…Once you’ve met the witch, you’ll learn buying her anything she asks for is worth it as long as she shuts up.”
“I’d love to meet her!” Fai all but sparkled. Again. “Will you be at home Thursday evening? I can do Thursday.”
“That wasn’t an invite!!”
“Of course, I’ll need your address -”
“No. Do you hear me? No, no way in hell -”
“Thursday’s a bad day? Oh well,” Fai moved closer, and looped his arm through Kurogane’s, clinging to it even as the other began to immediately try and detach him, “you’ll just have to take me out for a drink now, then.” Kurogane tried to protest, he really did. “It’s the least you could do after dumping me on the floor.”
“You pushed me into a freezer!”
“It doesn’t seem to have had any effect on Kuro-tama then.” Fai was somehow related to a limpet, Kurogane was positive of it. All the prying he was doing at his arm couldn’t get the idiot to budge an inch. “He seems just as hot-tempered as when he first stalked in here.”
“…You were watching me?” So the collision hadn’t been -
Blue eyes slid evasively away and Kurogane was about to comment on it, but suddenly there was something cold and hard shoved into his free hand - a bottle of milk - and Fai was smiling again.
“Kuro-rinta will help me with my shopping, won’t he?”
“Do I look like somebody’s housewife?!”
Fai smirked and tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear - Kurogane’s stomach plummeted to somewhere about ankle-height. “I wasn’t the one shopping for toilet roll for my landlady, Kuro-kun.”
Kurogane chose to reply to that with a choice set of expletives that made some passing old ladies tut, a few reproving mothers cover their wide-eyed children’s ears, and a bunch of teenagers look at Kurogane with a whole new level of respect. He didn’t, however, drop the milk he’d been given, or even try and shove it back into Fai’s grasp.
“…Kuro-myu,” Fai said thoughtfully after Kurogane’s tirade had finally come to an end, the taller male slightly out of breath, “I don’t think those last three suggestions of yours were even anatomically possible.”
“You -”
“Muffins!” Fai finally let go of Kurogane’s arm, dashing away to a nearby shelf that had caught his attention, plucking up a packet of sweet-smelling sugary goodness - blueberry muffins, as the packet proclaimed them - and returning to hand them to Kurogane to carry, pulling at the other man again to get him to follow Fai down the next aisle. “Do you like muffins, Kuro-chirp?”
“Kurogane - and no.” Kurogane found himself saddled with some fruit as well as the muffins and milk, a loaf of bread, some butter - “I don’t like sweet things.”
Fai looked as if someone had stabbed him. “That’s terrible!” he frowned, thinking, and shoved a pack of toothbrushes on the rapidly-growing pile in Kurogane’s arms. “We’ll just have to try a few things on you - I bet I could find something Kuro-sama would like.”
And some shampoo. “I’m not your goddamned pet.”
“Of course not!” A bottle of red wine. “Kuro-wan-wan is a grouchy puppy; he needs training before he can be anyone’s pet.”
“What?!” Kurogane’s head hurt.
“This way, Kuro-ti~!” Fai pulled him off to the tills, taking the shopping off of him to put on the conveyor belt - it was only as the stuff left him Kurogane realised just how much he’d been lugging around the supermarket.
“You -”
Fai patted him on the arm. “Doesn’t Kuro-pup have some toilet roll he needs to fetch? We wouldn’t want to disappoint your landlady after all, especially not after you came all this way.”
Kurogane growled, but stomped off to get the toilet roll. Fai was waiting for him when he came back, his own shopping already paid for. Somehow or other, after he’d paid for the rolls, Kurogane ended up carrying Fai’s shopping back to the blond’s car for him (the supermarket was glad to see them both go), Fai taking his arm and dragging him to a nearby café to get something to eat and drink as, as Fai reliably informed him as they took a seat, ‘it would be terrible to drink alcohol and drive, so some hot chocolate and cake would have to do!’ Kurogane ordered black coffee and Fai pouted at him and ordered hot chocolate and some sticky…cake…thing, spearing a chunk on his fork when it arrived and shoving it in Kurogane’s mouth when the other wasn’t paying attention. After chewing and swallowing Kurogane yelled at him again, but his ire was only met with more of Fai’s laughter. The blond was impossible.
(Somehow, somehow, Fai weaselled Kurogane’s phone number and address out of the other in that meeting, and vanished back off to his car about an hour later with a wave and a smile and an irritatingly distracting sashay. He promptly called later that evening, and again, somehow, Kurogane ended up going out for a proper drink with him, much to his landlady’s voyeuristic delight when the idiot walked him home afterwards and demanded a kiss goodnight.)
It was only much, much later that Kurogane discovered just why it was Fai had been running in the supermarket that first day anyway, dragging a half-hearted confession out of the idiot weeks later that had something to do with nasty dead octopi, rather bad arranging of the seafood on the shelves, Fai’s oh-so-delicate stomach and Kurogane’s much more appealing ass. Deciding his sanity - already much abused - would be all the better for not inquiring about the details Kurogane left it at that, and went back to happily occupying his mouth with a more-than-willing idiot’s - it was a much more satisfying enterprise, after all.
A/N: I really had too much fun with this one. X3 Er…the situation really sprang up when, when trying to think of ideas, I asked SJ what the weirdest thing was she’d ever seen in a Japanese supermarket. When she described the dead octopi on the shelves that looked at you I couldn’t help but imagine sushi-hating Fai’s reaction - and thus came this, with Fai doing a runner away from the stinky seafood to the siren call of Kurogane’s butt.
…Kurogane should just accept the fact he’s been domesticated, and live with it.
(…The supermarket near my university’s halls has a bunch of weird things in its eighth aisle - it changes with the season/week/day. And it seems to have no organisation to it, either…)