have both cakes
repost, 2010
Title: Have both cakes
Pairing: Shuuji/Akira
Rating: PG
Summary: Akira wants to make Shuuji the happiest.
Kusano Akira was a man with a purpose.
That’s what he told Nobuta, anyway. He had mailed her a box with a cell phone in it last month. It was pink and cute and Akira had decided it was for Nobuta. Shuuji had said that you couldn’t mail people a cell phone which, Akira considered, showed just how much his best friend knew about the amazing Japanese postal service.
‘Not a whole lot!’ he announced in a squeaky voice and konned Shuuji’s nose.
‘But that’s okay,’ Akira had continued seriously, hugging Shuuji tightly and not planning to let go until Shuuji stopped looking annoyed, ‘because Shuuji knows a lot about other things.’ Akira didn’t like to see Shuuji annoyed. Even though it wasn’t his fault Shuuji didn’t know about the wonderful mailing possibilities.
(Later, Shuuji had claimed that he knew you could send cell phones in the mail but that he just thought it was really silly. Akira laughed his high-pitched giggle and told Shuuji that it was okay, he didn’t need to make excuses, Shuuji didn’t always have to know everything. It was just a good thing Akira was knowledgeable about these things. Shuuji had rolled his eyes but Akira had been too busy crowing happily to notice.)
Now Akira could talk on the phone with Nobuta as often as he wanted. They were long phone calls. It still took Nobuta a while to speak and Akira always wanted to tell her so much.
‘Akira is a man with a purpose,’ he told her one Saturday afternoon. It was raining too much to go to the beach with Shuuji that day and he’d already drank so much soy milk his stomach felt completely round.
‘What kind of purpose does AKIRA have?’ Nobuta mumbled from the other side.
‘I want to make Shuuji happy,’ he announced brightly.
‘… Isn’t Shuuji happy?’ Nobuta asked. Akira considered this, peering into his empty soy milk bottle like the answer was written at the bottom.
‘I think he is,’ he announced finally. ‘But he’s just normal happy. I want to make Shuuji THE HAPPIEST PERSON IN THE WORLD!’ On the other side, Nobuta made a face and held the phone a little farther from her ear. Sometimes, Akira’s enthusiasm was better appreciated from a distance, she thought. (Even from a distance of half Japan, Akira had amazing invasive qualities.)
‘How?’ Nobuta asked simply.
‘I don’t know,’ Akira admitted. ‘How?’
‘I will think about it,’ Nobuta promised.
Nobuta called Akira back on Monday evening, after school.
‘Maybe there’s a book,’ she said.
‘A book?’ Akira parroted, flapping his hand and pouting at it, what with Nobuta not being there to pout at.
‘A book on how you can make people the happiest,’ Nobuta elaborated. Nobuta had had fate in books ever since Delphine’s shop had saved her from Bando and her friends. Akira nodded and made happy noises, because Nobuta couldn’t see him nodding over the phone. And Akira liked making happy noises.
‘I think there’s a bookstore nearby,’ he told her.
‘Good,’ Nobuta said and hung up. Akira made faces at the phone for at least five more minutes, until it rang again, which startled him so much he flung it out the window.
It ended up hitting Shuuji in the head with amazing precision.
‘You idiot,’ Shuuji greeted him when Akira came bounding down the stairs, holding up Akira’s phone in one hand and rubbing his head with the other.
‘Shuu-uu-ji-kun!’ Akira beamed. He grabbed his friend’s arm and dragged him along to his room. Shuuji complained about it the entire time it took them to climb the two flights of stairs to Akira’s room (which wasn’t that long, actually, because Akira took the stairs three steps at a time and Shuuji had to move fast to keep up, which he did with considerable reluctance) but Akira wanted to make Shuuji the happiest person soon and while cake probably wouldn’t do the trick completely Akira deeply believed it might at least help a bit.
And just to be sure, he’d bought a whole lot of cake.
Akira started his epic quest of searching for the Book of Happiness two days later.
He would’ve gone the day before but Shuuji had cornered him into doing homework. Akira had pouted for the first fifteen minutes - because his plans had been foiled and also because homework always made Akira pout - but spending time with Shuuji always managed to restore Akira’s base happiness of one hundred percent pretty quickly. It also helped that he ignored the homework and focused on Shuuji instead. His mathematics book didn’t laugh when Akira did funny voices. Shuuji tried not to laugh either, but Akira knew better.
He wandered through the bookstore in his quest for the Book of Happiness for days, he reported to Nobuta later. Nobuta suspected this was probably an exaggeration, especially since Akira followed up with gleefully relating how he managed to beat the GIANT DINOSAURS and EVIL ROBOTS to get to the book, but you never knew. For all she knew, it was a really big bookstore.
‘You found the book of happiness?’ Nobuta asked, clutching the phone close to her ear.
‘I found it,’ Akira announced, grinning proudly. ‘It’s like a guide. There must be a hundred ways to become happy in here.’
‘Are you sure? ‘ Nobuta asked. It sounded too easy, she thought. Although, she admitted, the instructions might be very difficult.
‘Definitely,’ Akira assured her. ‘Everything ends with and they all lived happily ever after.’
‘… What’s the book called?’ Nobuta asked.
‘A Collection of European Fairytales,’ Akira answered promptly.
‘I see. Good luck,’ Nobuta said.
There were apparently, a lot of ways to attain perfect happiness for the rest of eternity. But Akira went to school for a reason. Mostly this reason was simply to keep him off the streets (and for Akira personally, to see Shuuji a lot) but he also picked up small chunks of knowledge now and then. (This mostly happened when not in mathematics class.) As such, he decided the best thing to do was to find the common factor of all the ways of attaining happiness.
Akira wondered where one could find a prince in Japan.
He tried kissing a frog.
‘UGH, IT WAS SO ICKY,’ he told Shuuji empathically when that failed to produce a prince. Shuuji stared and dragged Akira off to the doctor.
‘Frog-kun refused to become a prince,’ Akira reported to Nobuta that evening, after the doctors had decided he wouldn’t die a painful death. (‘What about other deaths?’ Akira had asked worriedly. The doctor had just laughed but Shuuji had assured Akira he wouldn’t die any other deaths either, for now, and Akira trusted Shuuji more than weird doctors anyway.)
‘Maybe the frog was a girl.’
‘WAAAH!’ Akira shrieked, falling off his bed from shock and desperately flailing around on the floor.
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he told Nobuta sadly when he’d recovered his phone. ‘But Shuuji said I should never kiss a frog again.’
‘Maybe AKIRA should be the prince,’ Nobuta suggested.
Akira thought that maybe he could pull a sword out of an anvil, but he couldn’t even get it in. Kissing a girl awake to confirm his princely status didn’t get him anything but a slap in the face, and his father refused to buy him a kingdom for his birthday. (And no, a small castle wasn’t an appropriately priced birthday gift either.)
‘I’ve had it,’ he announced to Shuuji after polishing off the plate of delicious dinner Shuuji had cooked. Shuuji raised an eyebrow and waited for Akira to explain. With someone like Akira, he’d figured out long ago, jumping to conclusions just wouldn’t do.
‘Shuu-uu-ji,’ Akira whined. ‘How do I become a prince?’ He hadn’t wanted to let on even the tiniest detail of his plan to Shuuji, but he had run out of ideas and in his experience Shuuji always had a solution.
‘I don’t know,’ Shuuji answered, wondering why the hell Akira wanted to become a prince. Not that he ever tried to figure out Akira’s logic anymore.
‘I’m a prince!’ Kouji piped up from where he was half-heartedly doing the dishes.
‘AAAH!’ Akira exclaimed, flailing around and turning big eyes to Shuuji. ‘You never told me that!’ he protested, pouting dangerously.
Shuuji sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘He’s just playing a prince in the school play.’
Akira nodded seriously and, as soon as Shuuji had left the room, fled into the kitchen to gather princely information.
Akira wasn’t sure that the princes in the Book of Happiness wore cardboard crowns and had to sew their own capes (the shape was rather… special, but on the blindingly bright side, it did have a lot of glitter) , but - and he ‘d checked twice - nowhere did it say that they didn’t.
‘Shuuji!’ he called out, running barefoot through the sand to greet his friend.
Shuuji blinked. ‘… What are you wearing?’ he asked, because Akira’s brand new outfit (and in particular the cloud of glitter that followed him) rather screamed for explanation.
Akira straightened his crown and drew himself up to full height. ‘I’m a prince,’ he announced.
‘ … Yes, yes I suppose you are,’ Shuuji admitted carefully.
Akira beamed, elated at the conformation that he would indeed do as a prince. (He’d called Nobuta about it in a panic in the middle of the night. She hadn’t quite been able to ease his worries.)
‘Why are you a prince, exactly?’ Shuuji asked carefully, although he wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to know the answer.
Akira grinned even wider. ‘So that you can live happily ever after!’ he announced happily and konned.
Shuuji pursed his lips as he considered this.
Then Akira took the advice of every story in the happiness manual and, leaning forward, kissed Shuuji square on the mouth. Shuuji was slightly scandalized and may or may not (as he would claim to Nobuta as Akira tried to relate the tale to her) have chased Akira screaming across the beach.
But, as Akira assured Nobuta cheerfully at the end of the call, they lived happily ever after.
‘… It’s only been two days,’ Nobuta said.
Akira pouted hard at the phone and was Not Very Impressed. Shuuji laughed and stole the rest of Akira’s cake.
And they lived happily ever after.
The End.
Title: Have both cakes
Pairing: Shuuji/Akira
Rating: PG
Summary: Akira wants to make Shuuji the happiest.
Kusano Akira was a man with a purpose.
That’s what he told Nobuta, anyway. He had mailed her a box with a cell phone in it last month. It was pink and cute and Akira had decided it was for Nobuta. Shuuji had said that you couldn’t mail people a cell phone which, Akira considered, showed just how much his best friend knew about the amazing Japanese postal service.
‘Not a whole lot!’ he announced in a squeaky voice and konned Shuuji’s nose.
‘But that’s okay,’ Akira had continued seriously, hugging Shuuji tightly and not planning to let go until Shuuji stopped looking annoyed, ‘because Shuuji knows a lot about other things.’ Akira didn’t like to see Shuuji annoyed. Even though it wasn’t his fault Shuuji didn’t know about the wonderful mailing possibilities.
(Later, Shuuji had claimed that he knew you could send cell phones in the mail but that he just thought it was really silly. Akira laughed his high-pitched giggle and told Shuuji that it was okay, he didn’t need to make excuses, Shuuji didn’t always have to know everything. It was just a good thing Akira was knowledgeable about these things. Shuuji had rolled his eyes but Akira had been too busy crowing happily to notice.)
Now Akira could talk on the phone with Nobuta as often as he wanted. They were long phone calls. It still took Nobuta a while to speak and Akira always wanted to tell her so much.
‘Akira is a man with a purpose,’ he told her one Saturday afternoon. It was raining too much to go to the beach with Shuuji that day and he’d already drank so much soy milk his stomach felt completely round.
‘What kind of purpose does AKIRA have?’ Nobuta mumbled from the other side.
‘I want to make Shuuji happy,’ he announced brightly.
‘… Isn’t Shuuji happy?’ Nobuta asked. Akira considered this, peering into his empty soy milk bottle like the answer was written at the bottom.
‘I think he is,’ he announced finally. ‘But he’s just normal happy. I want to make Shuuji THE HAPPIEST PERSON IN THE WORLD!’ On the other side, Nobuta made a face and held the phone a little farther from her ear. Sometimes, Akira’s enthusiasm was better appreciated from a distance, she thought. (Even from a distance of half Japan, Akira had amazing invasive qualities.)
‘How?’ Nobuta asked simply.
‘I don’t know,’ Akira admitted. ‘How?’
‘I will think about it,’ Nobuta promised.
Nobuta called Akira back on Monday evening, after school.
‘Maybe there’s a book,’ she said.
‘A book?’ Akira parroted, flapping his hand and pouting at it, what with Nobuta not being there to pout at.
‘A book on how you can make people the happiest,’ Nobuta elaborated. Nobuta had had fate in books ever since Delphine’s shop had saved her from Bando and her friends. Akira nodded and made happy noises, because Nobuta couldn’t see him nodding over the phone. And Akira liked making happy noises.
‘I think there’s a bookstore nearby,’ he told her.
‘Good,’ Nobuta said and hung up. Akira made faces at the phone for at least five more minutes, until it rang again, which startled him so much he flung it out the window.
It ended up hitting Shuuji in the head with amazing precision.
‘You idiot,’ Shuuji greeted him when Akira came bounding down the stairs, holding up Akira’s phone in one hand and rubbing his head with the other.
‘Shuu-uu-ji-kun!’ Akira beamed. He grabbed his friend’s arm and dragged him along to his room. Shuuji complained about it the entire time it took them to climb the two flights of stairs to Akira’s room (which wasn’t that long, actually, because Akira took the stairs three steps at a time and Shuuji had to move fast to keep up, which he did with considerable reluctance) but Akira wanted to make Shuuji the happiest person soon and while cake probably wouldn’t do the trick completely Akira deeply believed it might at least help a bit.
And just to be sure, he’d bought a whole lot of cake.
Akira started his epic quest of searching for the Book of Happiness two days later.
He would’ve gone the day before but Shuuji had cornered him into doing homework. Akira had pouted for the first fifteen minutes - because his plans had been foiled and also because homework always made Akira pout - but spending time with Shuuji always managed to restore Akira’s base happiness of one hundred percent pretty quickly. It also helped that he ignored the homework and focused on Shuuji instead. His mathematics book didn’t laugh when Akira did funny voices. Shuuji tried not to laugh either, but Akira knew better.
He wandered through the bookstore in his quest for the Book of Happiness for days, he reported to Nobuta later. Nobuta suspected this was probably an exaggeration, especially since Akira followed up with gleefully relating how he managed to beat the GIANT DINOSAURS and EVIL ROBOTS to get to the book, but you never knew. For all she knew, it was a really big bookstore.
‘You found the book of happiness?’ Nobuta asked, clutching the phone close to her ear.
‘I found it,’ Akira announced, grinning proudly. ‘It’s like a guide. There must be a hundred ways to become happy in here.’
‘Are you sure? ‘ Nobuta asked. It sounded too easy, she thought. Although, she admitted, the instructions might be very difficult.
‘Definitely,’ Akira assured her. ‘Everything ends with and they all lived happily ever after.’
‘… What’s the book called?’ Nobuta asked.
‘A Collection of European Fairytales,’ Akira answered promptly.
‘I see. Good luck,’ Nobuta said.
There were apparently, a lot of ways to attain perfect happiness for the rest of eternity. But Akira went to school for a reason. Mostly this reason was simply to keep him off the streets (and for Akira personally, to see Shuuji a lot) but he also picked up small chunks of knowledge now and then. (This mostly happened when not in mathematics class.) As such, he decided the best thing to do was to find the common factor of all the ways of attaining happiness.
Akira wondered where one could find a prince in Japan.
He tried kissing a frog.
‘UGH, IT WAS SO ICKY,’ he told Shuuji empathically when that failed to produce a prince. Shuuji stared and dragged Akira off to the doctor.
‘Frog-kun refused to become a prince,’ Akira reported to Nobuta that evening, after the doctors had decided he wouldn’t die a painful death. (‘What about other deaths?’ Akira had asked worriedly. The doctor had just laughed but Shuuji had assured Akira he wouldn’t die any other deaths either, for now, and Akira trusted Shuuji more than weird doctors anyway.)
‘Maybe the frog was a girl.’
‘WAAAH!’ Akira shrieked, falling off his bed from shock and desperately flailing around on the floor.
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he told Nobuta sadly when he’d recovered his phone. ‘But Shuuji said I should never kiss a frog again.’
‘Maybe AKIRA should be the prince,’ Nobuta suggested.
Akira thought that maybe he could pull a sword out of an anvil, but he couldn’t even get it in. Kissing a girl awake to confirm his princely status didn’t get him anything but a slap in the face, and his father refused to buy him a kingdom for his birthday. (And no, a small castle wasn’t an appropriately priced birthday gift either.)
‘I’ve had it,’ he announced to Shuuji after polishing off the plate of delicious dinner Shuuji had cooked. Shuuji raised an eyebrow and waited for Akira to explain. With someone like Akira, he’d figured out long ago, jumping to conclusions just wouldn’t do.
‘Shuu-uu-ji,’ Akira whined. ‘How do I become a prince?’ He hadn’t wanted to let on even the tiniest detail of his plan to Shuuji, but he had run out of ideas and in his experience Shuuji always had a solution.
‘I don’t know,’ Shuuji answered, wondering why the hell Akira wanted to become a prince. Not that he ever tried to figure out Akira’s logic anymore.
‘I’m a prince!’ Kouji piped up from where he was half-heartedly doing the dishes.
‘AAAH!’ Akira exclaimed, flailing around and turning big eyes to Shuuji. ‘You never told me that!’ he protested, pouting dangerously.
Shuuji sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘He’s just playing a prince in the school play.’
Akira nodded seriously and, as soon as Shuuji had left the room, fled into the kitchen to gather princely information.
Akira wasn’t sure that the princes in the Book of Happiness wore cardboard crowns and had to sew their own capes (the shape was rather… special, but on the blindingly bright side, it did have a lot of glitter) , but - and he ‘d checked twice - nowhere did it say that they didn’t.
‘Shuuji!’ he called out, running barefoot through the sand to greet his friend.
Shuuji blinked. ‘… What are you wearing?’ he asked, because Akira’s brand new outfit (and in particular the cloud of glitter that followed him) rather screamed for explanation.
Akira straightened his crown and drew himself up to full height. ‘I’m a prince,’ he announced.
‘ … Yes, yes I suppose you are,’ Shuuji admitted carefully.
Akira beamed, elated at the conformation that he would indeed do as a prince. (He’d called Nobuta about it in a panic in the middle of the night. She hadn’t quite been able to ease his worries.)
‘Why are you a prince, exactly?’ Shuuji asked carefully, although he wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to know the answer.
Akira grinned even wider. ‘So that you can live happily ever after!’ he announced happily and konned.
Shuuji pursed his lips as he considered this.
Then Akira took the advice of every story in the happiness manual and, leaning forward, kissed Shuuji square on the mouth. Shuuji was slightly scandalized and may or may not (as he would claim to Nobuta as Akira tried to relate the tale to her) have chased Akira screaming across the beach.
But, as Akira assured Nobuta cheerfully at the end of the call, they lived happily ever after.
‘… It’s only been two days,’ Nobuta said.
Akira pouted hard at the phone and was Not Very Impressed. Shuuji laughed and stole the rest of Akira’s cake.
And they lived happily ever after.
The End.