A Man, A Dog, and A Plan Gone Bye-bye | 1/1 | AoiXRuki
Title: A Man, A Dog, and A Plan Gone Bye-bye
Chapter: 1/1
Author: akichuu
Fandom: the GazettE
Pairings: AoiXRuki
Rating: PG-15
Genre: fluff, humor
Warnings: Unbeta-ed mistakes.
Disclaimers: I only own the story, period.
Summary: Aoi vs Koron.
Comments: OMG I'm back! Long story short, it's been a hectic life lately, but I'm happy to be here now :) I bring you a one-shot for now, hope you enjoy it. (The summary, if you think it's too short, really has effectively summed up the whole story XD)
A Man, A Dog, and A Plan Gone Bye-bye
At first, Aoi thought it was a good idea-a brilliant one, even; the best that he had come up with after a while.
As soon as Ruki walked out the door-going for a shopping spree; buying more clothes and sunglasses than his whole apartment could contain, most likely-Aoi went straightly to work. He took out the stuffs he had bought last night that he had stashed inside the cabinet under the dishwasher; it happened to be the one place in the whole apartment that Ruki would never look into, not to mention to sneak in and find what Aoi was hiding in there.
He placed the whole bag on top of the kitchen table, some stuffs that were contained in it clanked against the surface. From his pocket he retrieved a piece of paper and his cell phone; the piece of paper was also placed on top of the table, while the phone he picked up to dial a number. Setting the loudspeaker on, he put the phone adjoining the rest of the things he had already put on the table.
The tune that indicated he had gone through to the number he had dialed was short, and soon enough, a chirpy voice greeted him good morning.
“I take it that everything is set?” asked the chirpy voice.
Aoi mumbled his answer. “Yes, Kai, I bought everything you’ve written on the list.”
“Good,” Kai replied-Aoi swore he could hear the faint-but-definitely-there laughter in his voice. “Now let’s begin. You’ve got to wash your hands first. We won’t want you poisoning our dear vocalist with the germs you have on your hands now, would we?”
Grumbling, Aoi approved, and went to do just what Kai told him to do. It was inevitable that he felt like a kid being approached by his parents because he wouldn’t do what he was told, and for certain, Aoi hated feeling this way. If only he hadn’t remembered that he needed Kai desperately for guidance, he would have told the drummer to shut his sugar fairy sweet mouth up and let Aoi be. Such a tempting thought it was, in the early hours in the morning nonetheless, hours which Aoi would prefer to spend patching up the lack of sleep he suffered from.
But as they all told him: he should look to the future and set his eyes on his goal. Bearing that in mind, Aoi returned to his current situation and his consultation session with Kai.
“So what’s first?” he asked, peering into the bag and immediately feeling lost. Those were some very alien objects in there he had never touched before last night.
“We are going to melt the chocolate chips first, okay?” said Kai. “I lent you two pans, didn’t I? Now fill in the bigger one with water.”
Aoi ducked once again under the dishwasher to retrieve the pans he had borrowed from Kai. “The bigger one, right?” he asked, and took the bigger of the two and was just about to flick the tap, but paused. “How full do I have to fill it?”
“Not too full, one third is enough. We’ll only need it to boil the chips.”
Not knowing what kind of method with which Kai wanted him to boil the chips, Aoi complied and, very carefully, filled the pan until a third of it was filled with water.
“Done,” Aoi informed Kai, while placing the water filled pan on the kitchen table. “What’s next?”
“Now pour the whole bag of chips into the smaller pan,” Kai said. “And put the smaller pan inside the water filled pan, and then put both of them on the stove. Start to boil them with low heat.”
“Slow down, will you?” Aoi grumbled, but did as he was told anyways.
To be honest he had never heard nor seen a method such as this one Kai was telling him to do; why bother so much if only to boil some chocolate chips? He thought boiling only required a pan full of water, and the stuff that he needed to boil thrown altogether into the pan. But who was the better cook again? Aoi wasn’t going to argue with Kai, recalling the fruitful years when Kai had been a staff in a restaurant. The guy must have seen more pans and egg beaters within those years than Aoi had throughout his entire life.
“Remember: low heat!” Kai reproached.
“I know, I know!” Aoi placed the pans on the stove not-very-gracefully. “But how low is low, anyways?”
Kai giggled. “Set the pointer to below the yellow line.”
Aoi truly wished Kai wouldn’t be so audibly amused about this situation here. He had defied his own pride by even thinking about doing something like this; the least that people could do was not to laugh at him. Of course, he couldn’t deny that, if he had been the one looking at himself, he would’ve laughed as well. Probably he should’ve listened to himself when he thought ordering a cake from the bakery would’ve been faster, easier and definitely would have saved him the embarrassment.
But then he recalled again what date it was and why exactly he had ever come up with such an idea in the first place. Everything might just pay off in the end. The thought somehow strengthened his already wavering ambition and rebuilt his focus.
"Alright, what's next?" Aoi asked, after making sure that the fire on the stove was burning with low heat just like Kai had told him.
"Next is... Are you sure you don't want me to just come over and help you with that?"
Aoi tried very hard not to think of Kai's words as an insult. "I am sure, Kai. Now what's next?"
After all, what was 'home made cookies' without him home making them himself? It would make what he had meant as a surprise less surprising, and then it wouldn't be special anymore.
"Very well," Kai relented. "You need to remember to mix the melting chocolate intermittently, otherwise it's going to stick to the pan's surface. But while we wait until the chocolate has perfectly melted, we can move on and make the krispy balls' dough."
Kai's next instruction was for Aoi to prepare the rest of the ingredients he had bought, which included butter, a whole carton of milk, a box of Rice Krispies, a can of peanut butter, a bag of nuts, vanilla and a pack of sugar. Aoi measured each ingredient and poured them into a bowl, exactly like Kai told him word by word to do. It all seemed to be going so smoothly, easy even, up until the moment Aoi had to roll the dough to make small, bite-size balls out of it.
There was no telling as to what had started the whole mayhem; it could very well be all the noises Aoi was making while he was in the kitchen, or the smell of melting chocolate that evaporated and traveled through the air and eventually filled the whole apartment. Anyhow, the inevitable finally happened.
It must've been with a speed of light that the little spawn of demon moved, that Aoi could never have seen it coming, full force ahead with the direction of the bowl that Aoi was busying himself with. A loud noise was all that he could perceive before he saw the bowl and everything in it-the dough that he had so hard been working on-rolling on the floor, a furry black head hovered above it. From the sounds of it, it was obvious that Aoi’s supposedly dough had now become Koron’s breakfast.
"Koron!!" Aoi screamed, outraged. "Get off from my dough, you little beast!"
Kai's high pitched voice on the phone repeatedly asked Aoi what was going on, but Aoi could barely give him an ounce of attention. He was busy chasing the evil culprit that had glomped more than half of what was supposed to be his home made Chocolate Krispy Balls.
From the hopeful, shiny path that had been his future goal, it went all the way downhill, where Ruki's little demon ruined Aoi's meticulously laid out plan. It was like watching his worst nightmare coming true; and Aoi couldn't do anything to stop it since he didn't have four equally swift legs to chase the dog. Within seconds, there was nothing left of his surprise gift but some sad looking crumbs scattering about on top of the kitchen table, and some chunk inside the bowl, which he was certain could not make a decent snack, since Koron's drool and paw print were already all over it.
Defeated (in a rather painful way), Aoi crouched beside the crime scene, where the victim of the violence-the bowl and what was left inside it-was neglected by the crook who seemed to have lost interest over the destroyed dough, and was currently sitting with its tail shaking sideways, as if he was mocking Aoi for the bad luck he was currently suffering. Aoi lowered his head as he felt it starting to hurt, and moreover his chest seemed like exploding. Unable to restrain it, he shouted.
"Damn it, I'll send you back down to hell if I can help it, you ugly little devil in disguise!!"
Koron made a small, frightened noise, and ran off leaving Aoi in the kitchen.
That was probably better, before Aoi became tempted to make dough out of the Chihuahua instead. After all, Koron had ruined all the ingredients he had bought; there really was nothing left to make new dough. His plan was completely unsalvageable now.
"And by the ugly little devil in disguise, you were referring to whom exactly?"
Shocked, absolutely not expecting to hear that voice, Aoi lifted his head from staring at the floor. Before him now stood Ruki, and inside Ruki's hold was hiding a quivering Koron.
***
Aoi thought he had had enough humiliation to endure in one lifetime, but it turned out that he was wrong. That afternoon, as he sat-or more like, curled-on the sofa, hiding his face between his knees, he tried to swallow his urge to make a very quick escape from the apartment and hide, probably, somewhere dark and untraceable for the rest of his miserable life. He truly wished, from the bottom of his heart and with injured pride, that the man who was sitting next to him would stop giggling. And also, he wished desperately, for the little black demon would stay away from him and go bother someone else... someone who lived more preferably in Africa, so Aoi would be saved from the sight of it for a little while.
God, he hated the creature, he seriously did. And he hated it more that he couldn't say that out loud, for fear of the owner’s wrath. It’s pathetic but sometimes Aoi couldn’t help but to reconsider which of the two-Aoi or Koron-that Ruki’s favoritism lay upon.
"So, Koron," Ruki spoke, "you woke up this morning to find our lovely Aoi here busying himself in the kitchen. And what exactly was he doing there? Since God knows I've been doing the logistics for as long as we live here together..."
Very annoyingly, Koron barked, as if it understood what its master had just said and was answering with its own opinion. Odd, though he didn't know the language of dogs, somehow Aoi had the idea that it was speaking bad about him; like a kid lying in front of his parents saying that it was his friend who had broken the vase on the living room, while it was truly him. Koron wouldn't take responsibility for the mess he had created back in the kitchen and was now placing the whole blame upon Aoi.
It really was the spawn of hell, Aoi thought. If only he could tell Ruki what monster he kept as a pet.
"Seeing from what evidence is left in my... usually pristine clean kitchen..." Ruki continued; the hint of amusement was disturbingly obvious even in his dripping-with-sarcasm words. "We can only assume-since our main suspect here seems to refuse to speak-that he was planning to cook something. Now isn't that a surprise, Koron-chan? We don't get to see Aoi cook very often, do we?"
Koron barked again. Aoi wished he could shut the creature's mouth with cement so it would stop acting like such a snob.
"The only question is..." Ruki lowered his voice, "what exactly had he been cooking?"
Deeming that it felt more comfortable to hide, Aoi sank his face even deeper between his knees.
The thing about an amused Ruki was that he would never stop mentioning (or laughing) about what had made him amused in the first place for a very long time. He would only stop when something else-something far more amusing-distracted him from the prior, but even then he would still mention the details of nearly everything that he could remember at every chance he got. This evil side of Ruki annoyed Aoi often, and it made Aoi think, sometimes, about why on earth he had fallen for the vocalist, and had decided to move in with him along with the consequence of having to deal with the little demon named Koron for nearly 7 days a week, with the exception only when he had to stay over at the studio.
"Aoi, just tell me."
It didn’t seem to matter when Ruki softened his tone and got rid of that annoying giggle off his voice, Aoi still refused to lift his head. He knew that, even if Ruki didn't sound like it, he would definitely look amused; Aoi simply didn't think his pride could handle further embarrassment caused by what he would see on his lover's face.
"Aoi, come on, sweetie..."
Aoi didn't budge.
"Oh fine," Ruki huffed, "it doesn't really matter if you won't speak up. I have found someone who will-have spoken, actually. It's quite a coincidence that I found a neglected means of communication back in the kitchen while I was cleaning it up. Someone must've forgotten and left it there, and didn't even remember to turn the connection off when there was still a-should I say-noisily chirping drummer on the line..."
At that, involuntarily, Aoi finally lifted his head in panic. He had completely forgotten about that! Being all too humiliated, he hadn't thought about the phone that he had left lying about on the kitchen table, not to mention the guy he had been talking to through the line.
Ruki was brightly smiling when Aoi looked at him.
"Kai already told you, didn't he?" Aoi asked; funny how his voice sounded so much like a rat desperately stuck between the back of a closet and the wall.
With the same bright smile, Ruki nodded. "Every single detail of your plan... which was a bit more than I needed to know, to be honest."
Aoi groaned. Their sweet faced drummer should learn how to keep his mouth shut sometimes sooner or later, or Aoi swore he would never-not ever-entrust any of his secrets or confidential favors to him anymore.
Embarrassed even further and enraged now, Aoi had the urge to hide again in the nearest place he could find at the moment, which happened to be between his own knees. But before he had the chance to, though, Ruki's hands touched his arm, stopping him from wallowing in his unfathomable misery.
"Hey, there's no need to be so upset about it," Ruki murmured. "For your information, I think what you were trying to do was awfully sweet. Oh, no pun intended, honest. You know, the chocolate snack you wanted to make for me..."
Aoi groaned again. "Now you're making the pun intentional, Ru..."
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," Ruki giggled, tightening his hold around Aoi. "But I mean it: I think it was awfully sweet. And sweeter even the fact that you actually remember what day it is today."
Uncomfortably, Aoi felt his cheeks heating up. At this rate, he knew his face would soon look like roasted lobster. Wishing it could do any good, he rubbed his hands over his cheeks.
Quite horribly, it only made Ruki giggle more. "You're just going to make them redder if you do that," he said. "Come here, I'll make them feel better."
Aoi didn't have a minute to figure out how on earth Ruki knew what he had tried to do, because then, softly, Ruki pulled Aoi closer to him and landed a kiss on first his left cheek, and then after he gently coaxed Aoi to turn his face, another on his right cheek.
Something warmer but oddly comforting crawled under the skin of Aoi's cheeks that Ruki had just kissed, spreading quickly to his whole body like an electric shock-only this kind of shock didn't hurt as much. Call him cheesy, but Aoi thought, however awful he felt, he could always turn to Ruki and ask him to perform one of his magical recovery methods. It worked better than any medicine he had ever taken.
Of course, one could always leave it to Koron to ruin the situation.
Aoi hadn't been aware (and he was certain Ruki hadn't been as well) of what the dog was doing or even its whereabouts (although the whole time Koron had been sitting upon Ruki's lap), but just like the cooking experiment gone chaotic earlier today, Koron seemed to have the similar idea of ruining yet another rare moment in which Aoi felt the slightest bit happy.
The little demon suddenly barked, jumping off from Ruki's lap and landed fair and square on Aoi's face.
All of a sudden Aoi’s world was complete darkness and a specific stench that could only be the smell of dog’s fur (and not very helping the fact that the last time Koron was bathed was five days ago-so much for Ruki being a clean-freak). The shock could only be compared with how one would feel when one was being catapulted all the way from heaven and landed, oh so very ironically, in hell.
“Koron!!” Aoi shouted; his hands erratically tried to pull the manic little monster off his face, but unfortunately his effort was of no use.
Aoi could only hear it, vaguely, that Ruki-instead of giving him a hand and rescue him from the torture of a dog sticking to his face-was laughing. He couldn’t do a thing about it, though, not even say a word to tell his lover what a thoughtless person he was.
Just minutes before Aoi lost his breath completely, Ruki yelled out an order-could have been “Koron, sit!” or “Koron, get off of Aoi’s face!”; Aoi wasn’t certain. At the moment he did have a face full of a black, long coat Chihuahua which paws were effectively plugging his ears and stopping him from hearing anything clearly. But with that seemingly simple order, the little beast got off of Aoi’s face, and then Ruki took it where Aoi didn’t bother to look or check. He was too busy sucking in fresh air; the feeling was exactly like he had been freed from being choked alive-on second thought, he had been freed from being choked alive, by a little dog nonetheless.
Aoi had no idea how he could reach the bathroom, running as haphazardly as he did, and when he got there he probably used up the whole content of his facial wash and scrubbed his face raw. It didn’t seem to work too effectively, though, because he could still smell Koron all over him.
“Stupid little monster!” he grumbled softly while drying his face with a towel (which he threw into the dirty clothes basket right after he was done with it). “You’re lucky Ruki likes you so much, otherwise I would already lock you outside. See how you would like freezing to death there…”
“I don’t think he would like it much, Honey.”
A string of curses left Aoi’s mouth unrestrainedly at seeing the suddenly appearing guy, who was now leaning casually on the door frame.
“While you’re at it, wash that foul mouth of yours as well before we go to bed,” Ruki laughed.
As a response, Aoi merely groaned and went back to the wash basin and brushed his teeth. He saw through the mirror before him that Ruki was approaching, wearing a solidly amused smile on his face. Funny, but even as Aoi was gathering up his strength of will to remain resolutely stubborn (for the sake of his already horribly maimed pride), he found that he was melting as Ruki circled his arms around him and hugged him from behind.
It was these small but terribly rare gestures that Ruki did, Aoi thought, that had kept him hooked all along-despite one furry demon that kept screwing up his love life at every chance it could get.
“I’ve already locked Koron in the guest bedroom,” Ruki reported. “He’s with his little chewing toy, so I think he’ll soon fall asleep.”
“Good for him,” Aoi huffed, trying not to sound so obviously envious of how Ruki kept insisting of calling the dog “him”; as if it were human.
Then, although muffled, Ruki giggled. “You can’t still be angry now, Aoi-chan…”
Something crackled inside Aoi at hearing the suffix Ruki had just used to call him with. Bitterly he thought about how Ruki had become such an expert in manipulating Aoi’s emotion. Not two minutes ago he was still fuming with fury, thanks to Koron and the atrocity it had done to him, but now his anger easily dissipated-and that’s weird, remembering what kind of temper Aoi had.
It seemed a bit unacceptable, how things had turned out to be as they were now. But then if he gave it a longer, deeper thinking, Aoi supposed he had already seen it coming. After all, he was here now, wasn’t he? Still standing on the spot beside Ruki even after a year had gone by-he’d like to think it was a world record.
“I was thinking…” Ruki suddenly mumbled, cutting off Aoi’s flow of thoughts; and by the way his lithe fingers danced across Aoi’s stomach-very lightly, very sexily-Aoi could easily guess where this was heading.
After a moment, Ruki hadn’t continued. Well, it was one of those games.
“You were thinking…?” Aoi played along. He felt that soft, pleasant laughter rumbling against his shoulder, upon which Ruki’s mouth was plastered.
“Well, I was thinking,” Ruki continued, “since I haven’t prepared any present for you in our anniversary today, while you have gone through so much trouble making the… what were they called again?”
“Chocolate Krispy Balls.”
“Right, Chocolate Krispy Balls. How could I even forget that? Anyhow, I haven’t prepared anything for you-although I’m pretty certain that nothing, as in not a thing, could ever compete against your Chocolate Krispy Balls, which would’ve become my favorite snack had they not…”
“Stop that,” Aoi cut off, sourly.
Ruki laughed again. “Sorry, sorry. Yes, well, as I was saying… I really don’t have anything to give you… in the form of a thing or item. But there is something else in mind that I’d like to give you-only if you don’t mind, of course.”
Without being able to control it, a smirk grew on Aoi’s lips. He softly squeezed Ruki’s hand that lay upon his chest. “And what might this ‘something’ be, if I may ask?” he asked.
“Hmm… I’d rather show you than tell you…”
“Then show me.”
“Are you sure you want me to?”
“Positive.”
As the night continued, Aoi didn’t give Koron another thought-his thoughts were much too preoccupied with ‘something’ more appropriately important. No one could say the same about Koron, though, as it sat inside the guest bedroom, probably quietly plotting another scheme to jeopardize Aoi’s future wellbeing…
=== END ===
Notes:
OMG I’M BAAACK!!! (>___<) And I’m so very happy to be back, honest! It took me a while to finish this one-shot, due to… a lot of reasons, basically. An interesting fact about this story is that, almost 80% of it was written using my cellphone XDD So… how was it? I hope my brain hasn’t gone rusty from being unused for quite a while…
The recipe for the Chocolate Krispy Balls was taken from here. I only changed the name a bit. Never tried it before, honest.
By the way, I heard a sad news about Ruki-san, about him suffering from gastroenteritis (horrible disease, believe me, I know!). The band’s lives are being delayed due to this condition. I’m awfully worried (;___;)
Get well soon, Ruki-san. My prayers are always with you…
My fanfic list goes ==> here
Chapter: 1/1
Author: akichuu
Fandom: the GazettE
Pairings: AoiXRuki
Rating: PG-15
Genre: fluff, humor
Warnings: Unbeta-ed mistakes.
Disclaimers: I only own the story, period.
Summary: Aoi vs Koron.
Comments: OMG I'm back! Long story short, it's been a hectic life lately, but I'm happy to be here now :) I bring you a one-shot for now, hope you enjoy it. (The summary, if you think it's too short, really has effectively summed up the whole story XD)
A Man, A Dog, and A Plan Gone Bye-bye
At first, Aoi thought it was a good idea-a brilliant one, even; the best that he had come up with after a while.
As soon as Ruki walked out the door-going for a shopping spree; buying more clothes and sunglasses than his whole apartment could contain, most likely-Aoi went straightly to work. He took out the stuffs he had bought last night that he had stashed inside the cabinet under the dishwasher; it happened to be the one place in the whole apartment that Ruki would never look into, not to mention to sneak in and find what Aoi was hiding in there.
He placed the whole bag on top of the kitchen table, some stuffs that were contained in it clanked against the surface. From his pocket he retrieved a piece of paper and his cell phone; the piece of paper was also placed on top of the table, while the phone he picked up to dial a number. Setting the loudspeaker on, he put the phone adjoining the rest of the things he had already put on the table.
The tune that indicated he had gone through to the number he had dialed was short, and soon enough, a chirpy voice greeted him good morning.
“I take it that everything is set?” asked the chirpy voice.
Aoi mumbled his answer. “Yes, Kai, I bought everything you’ve written on the list.”
“Good,” Kai replied-Aoi swore he could hear the faint-but-definitely-there laughter in his voice. “Now let’s begin. You’ve got to wash your hands first. We won’t want you poisoning our dear vocalist with the germs you have on your hands now, would we?”
Grumbling, Aoi approved, and went to do just what Kai told him to do. It was inevitable that he felt like a kid being approached by his parents because he wouldn’t do what he was told, and for certain, Aoi hated feeling this way. If only he hadn’t remembered that he needed Kai desperately for guidance, he would have told the drummer to shut his sugar fairy sweet mouth up and let Aoi be. Such a tempting thought it was, in the early hours in the morning nonetheless, hours which Aoi would prefer to spend patching up the lack of sleep he suffered from.
But as they all told him: he should look to the future and set his eyes on his goal. Bearing that in mind, Aoi returned to his current situation and his consultation session with Kai.
“So what’s first?” he asked, peering into the bag and immediately feeling lost. Those were some very alien objects in there he had never touched before last night.
“We are going to melt the chocolate chips first, okay?” said Kai. “I lent you two pans, didn’t I? Now fill in the bigger one with water.”
Aoi ducked once again under the dishwasher to retrieve the pans he had borrowed from Kai. “The bigger one, right?” he asked, and took the bigger of the two and was just about to flick the tap, but paused. “How full do I have to fill it?”
“Not too full, one third is enough. We’ll only need it to boil the chips.”
Not knowing what kind of method with which Kai wanted him to boil the chips, Aoi complied and, very carefully, filled the pan until a third of it was filled with water.
“Done,” Aoi informed Kai, while placing the water filled pan on the kitchen table. “What’s next?”
“Now pour the whole bag of chips into the smaller pan,” Kai said. “And put the smaller pan inside the water filled pan, and then put both of them on the stove. Start to boil them with low heat.”
“Slow down, will you?” Aoi grumbled, but did as he was told anyways.
To be honest he had never heard nor seen a method such as this one Kai was telling him to do; why bother so much if only to boil some chocolate chips? He thought boiling only required a pan full of water, and the stuff that he needed to boil thrown altogether into the pan. But who was the better cook again? Aoi wasn’t going to argue with Kai, recalling the fruitful years when Kai had been a staff in a restaurant. The guy must have seen more pans and egg beaters within those years than Aoi had throughout his entire life.
“Remember: low heat!” Kai reproached.
“I know, I know!” Aoi placed the pans on the stove not-very-gracefully. “But how low is low, anyways?”
Kai giggled. “Set the pointer to below the yellow line.”
Aoi truly wished Kai wouldn’t be so audibly amused about this situation here. He had defied his own pride by even thinking about doing something like this; the least that people could do was not to laugh at him. Of course, he couldn’t deny that, if he had been the one looking at himself, he would’ve laughed as well. Probably he should’ve listened to himself when he thought ordering a cake from the bakery would’ve been faster, easier and definitely would have saved him the embarrassment.
But then he recalled again what date it was and why exactly he had ever come up with such an idea in the first place. Everything might just pay off in the end. The thought somehow strengthened his already wavering ambition and rebuilt his focus.
"Alright, what's next?" Aoi asked, after making sure that the fire on the stove was burning with low heat just like Kai had told him.
"Next is... Are you sure you don't want me to just come over and help you with that?"
Aoi tried very hard not to think of Kai's words as an insult. "I am sure, Kai. Now what's next?"
After all, what was 'home made cookies' without him home making them himself? It would make what he had meant as a surprise less surprising, and then it wouldn't be special anymore.
"Very well," Kai relented. "You need to remember to mix the melting chocolate intermittently, otherwise it's going to stick to the pan's surface. But while we wait until the chocolate has perfectly melted, we can move on and make the krispy balls' dough."
Kai's next instruction was for Aoi to prepare the rest of the ingredients he had bought, which included butter, a whole carton of milk, a box of Rice Krispies, a can of peanut butter, a bag of nuts, vanilla and a pack of sugar. Aoi measured each ingredient and poured them into a bowl, exactly like Kai told him word by word to do. It all seemed to be going so smoothly, easy even, up until the moment Aoi had to roll the dough to make small, bite-size balls out of it.
There was no telling as to what had started the whole mayhem; it could very well be all the noises Aoi was making while he was in the kitchen, or the smell of melting chocolate that evaporated and traveled through the air and eventually filled the whole apartment. Anyhow, the inevitable finally happened.
It must've been with a speed of light that the little spawn of demon moved, that Aoi could never have seen it coming, full force ahead with the direction of the bowl that Aoi was busying himself with. A loud noise was all that he could perceive before he saw the bowl and everything in it-the dough that he had so hard been working on-rolling on the floor, a furry black head hovered above it. From the sounds of it, it was obvious that Aoi’s supposedly dough had now become Koron’s breakfast.
"Koron!!" Aoi screamed, outraged. "Get off from my dough, you little beast!"
Kai's high pitched voice on the phone repeatedly asked Aoi what was going on, but Aoi could barely give him an ounce of attention. He was busy chasing the evil culprit that had glomped more than half of what was supposed to be his home made Chocolate Krispy Balls.
From the hopeful, shiny path that had been his future goal, it went all the way downhill, where Ruki's little demon ruined Aoi's meticulously laid out plan. It was like watching his worst nightmare coming true; and Aoi couldn't do anything to stop it since he didn't have four equally swift legs to chase the dog. Within seconds, there was nothing left of his surprise gift but some sad looking crumbs scattering about on top of the kitchen table, and some chunk inside the bowl, which he was certain could not make a decent snack, since Koron's drool and paw print were already all over it.
Defeated (in a rather painful way), Aoi crouched beside the crime scene, where the victim of the violence-the bowl and what was left inside it-was neglected by the crook who seemed to have lost interest over the destroyed dough, and was currently sitting with its tail shaking sideways, as if he was mocking Aoi for the bad luck he was currently suffering. Aoi lowered his head as he felt it starting to hurt, and moreover his chest seemed like exploding. Unable to restrain it, he shouted.
"Damn it, I'll send you back down to hell if I can help it, you ugly little devil in disguise!!"
Koron made a small, frightened noise, and ran off leaving Aoi in the kitchen.
That was probably better, before Aoi became tempted to make dough out of the Chihuahua instead. After all, Koron had ruined all the ingredients he had bought; there really was nothing left to make new dough. His plan was completely unsalvageable now.
"And by the ugly little devil in disguise, you were referring to whom exactly?"
Shocked, absolutely not expecting to hear that voice, Aoi lifted his head from staring at the floor. Before him now stood Ruki, and inside Ruki's hold was hiding a quivering Koron.
***
Aoi thought he had had enough humiliation to endure in one lifetime, but it turned out that he was wrong. That afternoon, as he sat-or more like, curled-on the sofa, hiding his face between his knees, he tried to swallow his urge to make a very quick escape from the apartment and hide, probably, somewhere dark and untraceable for the rest of his miserable life. He truly wished, from the bottom of his heart and with injured pride, that the man who was sitting next to him would stop giggling. And also, he wished desperately, for the little black demon would stay away from him and go bother someone else... someone who lived more preferably in Africa, so Aoi would be saved from the sight of it for a little while.
God, he hated the creature, he seriously did. And he hated it more that he couldn't say that out loud, for fear of the owner’s wrath. It’s pathetic but sometimes Aoi couldn’t help but to reconsider which of the two-Aoi or Koron-that Ruki’s favoritism lay upon.
"So, Koron," Ruki spoke, "you woke up this morning to find our lovely Aoi here busying himself in the kitchen. And what exactly was he doing there? Since God knows I've been doing the logistics for as long as we live here together..."
Very annoyingly, Koron barked, as if it understood what its master had just said and was answering with its own opinion. Odd, though he didn't know the language of dogs, somehow Aoi had the idea that it was speaking bad about him; like a kid lying in front of his parents saying that it was his friend who had broken the vase on the living room, while it was truly him. Koron wouldn't take responsibility for the mess he had created back in the kitchen and was now placing the whole blame upon Aoi.
It really was the spawn of hell, Aoi thought. If only he could tell Ruki what monster he kept as a pet.
"Seeing from what evidence is left in my... usually pristine clean kitchen..." Ruki continued; the hint of amusement was disturbingly obvious even in his dripping-with-sarcasm words. "We can only assume-since our main suspect here seems to refuse to speak-that he was planning to cook something. Now isn't that a surprise, Koron-chan? We don't get to see Aoi cook very often, do we?"
Koron barked again. Aoi wished he could shut the creature's mouth with cement so it would stop acting like such a snob.
"The only question is..." Ruki lowered his voice, "what exactly had he been cooking?"
Deeming that it felt more comfortable to hide, Aoi sank his face even deeper between his knees.
The thing about an amused Ruki was that he would never stop mentioning (or laughing) about what had made him amused in the first place for a very long time. He would only stop when something else-something far more amusing-distracted him from the prior, but even then he would still mention the details of nearly everything that he could remember at every chance he got. This evil side of Ruki annoyed Aoi often, and it made Aoi think, sometimes, about why on earth he had fallen for the vocalist, and had decided to move in with him along with the consequence of having to deal with the little demon named Koron for nearly 7 days a week, with the exception only when he had to stay over at the studio.
"Aoi, just tell me."
It didn’t seem to matter when Ruki softened his tone and got rid of that annoying giggle off his voice, Aoi still refused to lift his head. He knew that, even if Ruki didn't sound like it, he would definitely look amused; Aoi simply didn't think his pride could handle further embarrassment caused by what he would see on his lover's face.
"Aoi, come on, sweetie..."
Aoi didn't budge.
"Oh fine," Ruki huffed, "it doesn't really matter if you won't speak up. I have found someone who will-have spoken, actually. It's quite a coincidence that I found a neglected means of communication back in the kitchen while I was cleaning it up. Someone must've forgotten and left it there, and didn't even remember to turn the connection off when there was still a-should I say-noisily chirping drummer on the line..."
At that, involuntarily, Aoi finally lifted his head in panic. He had completely forgotten about that! Being all too humiliated, he hadn't thought about the phone that he had left lying about on the kitchen table, not to mention the guy he had been talking to through the line.
Ruki was brightly smiling when Aoi looked at him.
"Kai already told you, didn't he?" Aoi asked; funny how his voice sounded so much like a rat desperately stuck between the back of a closet and the wall.
With the same bright smile, Ruki nodded. "Every single detail of your plan... which was a bit more than I needed to know, to be honest."
Aoi groaned. Their sweet faced drummer should learn how to keep his mouth shut sometimes sooner or later, or Aoi swore he would never-not ever-entrust any of his secrets or confidential favors to him anymore.
Embarrassed even further and enraged now, Aoi had the urge to hide again in the nearest place he could find at the moment, which happened to be between his own knees. But before he had the chance to, though, Ruki's hands touched his arm, stopping him from wallowing in his unfathomable misery.
"Hey, there's no need to be so upset about it," Ruki murmured. "For your information, I think what you were trying to do was awfully sweet. Oh, no pun intended, honest. You know, the chocolate snack you wanted to make for me..."
Aoi groaned again. "Now you're making the pun intentional, Ru..."
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," Ruki giggled, tightening his hold around Aoi. "But I mean it: I think it was awfully sweet. And sweeter even the fact that you actually remember what day it is today."
Uncomfortably, Aoi felt his cheeks heating up. At this rate, he knew his face would soon look like roasted lobster. Wishing it could do any good, he rubbed his hands over his cheeks.
Quite horribly, it only made Ruki giggle more. "You're just going to make them redder if you do that," he said. "Come here, I'll make them feel better."
Aoi didn't have a minute to figure out how on earth Ruki knew what he had tried to do, because then, softly, Ruki pulled Aoi closer to him and landed a kiss on first his left cheek, and then after he gently coaxed Aoi to turn his face, another on his right cheek.
Something warmer but oddly comforting crawled under the skin of Aoi's cheeks that Ruki had just kissed, spreading quickly to his whole body like an electric shock-only this kind of shock didn't hurt as much. Call him cheesy, but Aoi thought, however awful he felt, he could always turn to Ruki and ask him to perform one of his magical recovery methods. It worked better than any medicine he had ever taken.
Of course, one could always leave it to Koron to ruin the situation.
Aoi hadn't been aware (and he was certain Ruki hadn't been as well) of what the dog was doing or even its whereabouts (although the whole time Koron had been sitting upon Ruki's lap), but just like the cooking experiment gone chaotic earlier today, Koron seemed to have the similar idea of ruining yet another rare moment in which Aoi felt the slightest bit happy.
The little demon suddenly barked, jumping off from Ruki's lap and landed fair and square on Aoi's face.
All of a sudden Aoi’s world was complete darkness and a specific stench that could only be the smell of dog’s fur (and not very helping the fact that the last time Koron was bathed was five days ago-so much for Ruki being a clean-freak). The shock could only be compared with how one would feel when one was being catapulted all the way from heaven and landed, oh so very ironically, in hell.
“Koron!!” Aoi shouted; his hands erratically tried to pull the manic little monster off his face, but unfortunately his effort was of no use.
Aoi could only hear it, vaguely, that Ruki-instead of giving him a hand and rescue him from the torture of a dog sticking to his face-was laughing. He couldn’t do a thing about it, though, not even say a word to tell his lover what a thoughtless person he was.
Just minutes before Aoi lost his breath completely, Ruki yelled out an order-could have been “Koron, sit!” or “Koron, get off of Aoi’s face!”; Aoi wasn’t certain. At the moment he did have a face full of a black, long coat Chihuahua which paws were effectively plugging his ears and stopping him from hearing anything clearly. But with that seemingly simple order, the little beast got off of Aoi’s face, and then Ruki took it where Aoi didn’t bother to look or check. He was too busy sucking in fresh air; the feeling was exactly like he had been freed from being choked alive-on second thought, he had been freed from being choked alive, by a little dog nonetheless.
Aoi had no idea how he could reach the bathroom, running as haphazardly as he did, and when he got there he probably used up the whole content of his facial wash and scrubbed his face raw. It didn’t seem to work too effectively, though, because he could still smell Koron all over him.
“Stupid little monster!” he grumbled softly while drying his face with a towel (which he threw into the dirty clothes basket right after he was done with it). “You’re lucky Ruki likes you so much, otherwise I would already lock you outside. See how you would like freezing to death there…”
“I don’t think he would like it much, Honey.”
A string of curses left Aoi’s mouth unrestrainedly at seeing the suddenly appearing guy, who was now leaning casually on the door frame.
“While you’re at it, wash that foul mouth of yours as well before we go to bed,” Ruki laughed.
As a response, Aoi merely groaned and went back to the wash basin and brushed his teeth. He saw through the mirror before him that Ruki was approaching, wearing a solidly amused smile on his face. Funny, but even as Aoi was gathering up his strength of will to remain resolutely stubborn (for the sake of his already horribly maimed pride), he found that he was melting as Ruki circled his arms around him and hugged him from behind.
It was these small but terribly rare gestures that Ruki did, Aoi thought, that had kept him hooked all along-despite one furry demon that kept screwing up his love life at every chance it could get.
“I’ve already locked Koron in the guest bedroom,” Ruki reported. “He’s with his little chewing toy, so I think he’ll soon fall asleep.”
“Good for him,” Aoi huffed, trying not to sound so obviously envious of how Ruki kept insisting of calling the dog “him”; as if it were human.
Then, although muffled, Ruki giggled. “You can’t still be angry now, Aoi-chan…”
Something crackled inside Aoi at hearing the suffix Ruki had just used to call him with. Bitterly he thought about how Ruki had become such an expert in manipulating Aoi’s emotion. Not two minutes ago he was still fuming with fury, thanks to Koron and the atrocity it had done to him, but now his anger easily dissipated-and that’s weird, remembering what kind of temper Aoi had.
It seemed a bit unacceptable, how things had turned out to be as they were now. But then if he gave it a longer, deeper thinking, Aoi supposed he had already seen it coming. After all, he was here now, wasn’t he? Still standing on the spot beside Ruki even after a year had gone by-he’d like to think it was a world record.
“I was thinking…” Ruki suddenly mumbled, cutting off Aoi’s flow of thoughts; and by the way his lithe fingers danced across Aoi’s stomach-very lightly, very sexily-Aoi could easily guess where this was heading.
After a moment, Ruki hadn’t continued. Well, it was one of those games.
“You were thinking…?” Aoi played along. He felt that soft, pleasant laughter rumbling against his shoulder, upon which Ruki’s mouth was plastered.
“Well, I was thinking,” Ruki continued, “since I haven’t prepared any present for you in our anniversary today, while you have gone through so much trouble making the… what were they called again?”
“Chocolate Krispy Balls.”
“Right, Chocolate Krispy Balls. How could I even forget that? Anyhow, I haven’t prepared anything for you-although I’m pretty certain that nothing, as in not a thing, could ever compete against your Chocolate Krispy Balls, which would’ve become my favorite snack had they not…”
“Stop that,” Aoi cut off, sourly.
Ruki laughed again. “Sorry, sorry. Yes, well, as I was saying… I really don’t have anything to give you… in the form of a thing or item. But there is something else in mind that I’d like to give you-only if you don’t mind, of course.”
Without being able to control it, a smirk grew on Aoi’s lips. He softly squeezed Ruki’s hand that lay upon his chest. “And what might this ‘something’ be, if I may ask?” he asked.
“Hmm… I’d rather show you than tell you…”
“Then show me.”
“Are you sure you want me to?”
“Positive.”
As the night continued, Aoi didn’t give Koron another thought-his thoughts were much too preoccupied with ‘something’ more appropriately important. No one could say the same about Koron, though, as it sat inside the guest bedroom, probably quietly plotting another scheme to jeopardize Aoi’s future wellbeing…
=== END ===
Notes:
OMG I’M BAAACK!!! (>___<) And I’m so very happy to be back, honest! It took me a while to finish this one-shot, due to… a lot of reasons, basically. An interesting fact about this story is that, almost 80% of it was written using my cellphone XDD So… how was it? I hope my brain hasn’t gone rusty from being unused for quite a while…
The recipe for the Chocolate Krispy Balls was taken from here. I only changed the name a bit. Never tried it before, honest.
By the way, I heard a sad news about Ruki-san, about him suffering from gastroenteritis (horrible disease, believe me, I know!). The band’s lives are being delayed due to this condition. I’m awfully worried (;___;)
Get well soon, Ruki-san. My prayers are always with you…
My fanfic list goes ==> here