Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ Black & White Heart ❯ Laughter Is The Key ( Chapter 16 )

Chapter 16: Laughter Is the Key

"Okay, well, how about we start with something simple? Why don't we try to make the Vegetable soup I had made Haru again?"

"Okay."

Now this…this was going to be amusing. Shigure stood in the doorway to the kitchen leaning on the doorframe about to witness what should be a very entertaining part of history in the Sohma household.

"First we have to chop up the vegetables." Said Tohru, tying an apron back around her waist.

Yuki knew very well what Shigure was thinking and shook his head at him. "I am not wearing an apron." He whispered across at him, as Shigure simply grinned and tried not to laugh as Tohru suddenly passed something to Yuki.

"Here Yuki."

Now Shigure did laugh.

"Umm…" Yuki wavered, a sweatdrop forming on the back on his head as he stared and tried to think of an excuse to wearing the pink and white apron being passed to him.

"You don't want to get your clothes dirty." She smiled at him innocently.

"Err, no I…I guess not." Yuki said reluctantly, slowly taking the apron from the joyful Tohru and glaring angrily at a lost in hysterics Shigure.

"What are you laughing at?" came a voice from the living room, as Kyo walked next to Shigure munching on an apple.

Yuki froze on doing the apron up at the back and Kyo stared at him, and with the look on Kyo's face made Shigure burst into another laughter fit. Making no sound at all, Kyo simply turned around.

"No, no, I will not say a thing, I have run out of things to say, there is nothing, nothing left, my mind is blank, it is staying blank, I am leaving, I am not thinking any thoughts…" as he continued out the front door and out of any sound range, an image of Yuki in a pink apron holding a wooden cooking spoon with a backdrop of leeks flashing across his mind.

There and then deciding that really would be his worst nightmare.

As Shigure watched him go, still grinning and desperately trying to swallow his giggles, he turned back to Yuki. The look on his face told Shigure to quietly back out the room, so he decided to watch from afar and sit in the Living Room reading a newspaper, while he kept an amused eye on what was to come.

"I leave him in your lovely hands Tohru." He smiled as he quickly walked out the door before Yuki could throw anything dangerous at him.

-----

Now he had woken up his fever had crept back, and although his skin was burning, Haru felt freezing. He lay under the covers in Yuki's bed, huddling them close and pulling the extra blanket right up over his nose. He lay there with eyes half closed, peering through the window into the blackness of the night. There were no stars tonight; the sky was still covered by a thick blanket of snow-filled clouds, so he just stared into the darkness, feeling useless and pathetic. Still, if he was going to be ill, and if he had to lie somewhere, he was glad it was here. He turned over on his side and buried his face into Yuki's pillow, breathing deeply in a contented sigh as the scent of his special person which just made him grin.

Before sneezing.

-----

"Ouch!" Yuki exclaimed, as the carrot peeler slipped and cut his finger.

"WAHHH YUKI ARE YOU ALRIGHT!?"

-----

Haru groaned in annoyance at his own illness and turned back over on his other side to face the door. He could tell that now he was entering the stage of 'tossing and turning, no matter where you lay you're incredibly uncomfortable' stage of a fever.

-----

Shigure ducked his head to one side, not taking his eyes of the newspaper he was reading, as a half peeled potato came flying through the kitchen doorway straight through the paper doors like a rocket.

-----

Haru closed his eyes in an attempt to go back to sleep, but despite how tired he was, every cell in his body was awake trying to fight this thing, so he ended up just lying half on his front, one arm hanging over the side of the bed, staring at the light coming from crack underneath the door.

-----

"Wait Yuki! You have to put the top on the blender or--!!"

Shigure ducked behind his newspaper as a spray of half blended vegetables came flying through the Kitchen doorway.

-----

Haru slowly opened one eye at the ominous shouts and strange sounds coming from the Kitchen and raised one curious and worried eyebrow, grabbing the covers and pulling them over his head to block out the a formidable disaster that was bound to happen.

-----

Shigure looked up from his now dripping wet newspaper (which he was still reading) and sniffed.

"Is something burning?"

A yelp from Tohru suddenly emanated from the Kitchen, "Yuki!! That was only supposed to boil for 20 minutes!" she panicked, as she grabbed the saucepan off the cooker with a hand cloth and peered inside, "It's boiled dry."

-----

Now there were some very, err, 'interesting' smells making their way upstairs, and Haru poked his head out from under the covers. The burnt, mangled vegetables smell reached his nose, and almost as if a black cloud fell over his head, Haru practically dived back under the sheets.

-----

Shigure jumped in shock and his head shot up towards the kitchen, "What was that?" he asked, mildly concerned for his poor Kitchen with the very loud clank of metal against metal that suddenly sounded.

Tohru's head poked round the corner looking very nervous, "Oh that? That…ohh, err, Yuki's just, errr…!" she smiled, not covering up her story very well.

"I can't get it off." Yuki's voice came from behind her, as she laughed nervously and looked back towards him.

Shigure wondered what was going on until a saucepan shot out from the kitchen making another large hole in the paper doors. Yuki walked out having the decency to look a little guilty as he stood there holding a metal spatula and the handle to what should have belonged to the saucepan. Shigure didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the devastation.

"I was only trying to pry the boiled dry vegetables off the pan." He said to explain himself, before heading back into the kitchen, leaving Shigure to wonder what kind of a state Yuki's cooking really was if a saucepan broke only trying to scrap food off of it.

-----

As Haru lay underneath the covers, he suddenly had a thought. Slowly climbing out of the bed, he walked over to the corner of the room to his duffle bag that he brought originally. Unzipping the bag, and unzipping a separate section inside, he brought out a certain object.

-----

Finding it was now getting rather cold in here, Shigure dumped his soaking newspaper in a bin and walked towards the paper doors, supplies in hand intent on fixing the two gaping holes in his property.

"Wahahaa! Shigure watch out!"

"Hmm?" Shigure turned around to Tohru's frantic cries and found a soup covered teacloth flung on his face.

-----

Pulling the covers back over himself, Haru lay the object on his pillow and gazed at it. He grinned sleepily, IfYuki ever found out about this…

-----

Shigure, having washed what had soup on it, returned to kneeling by the paper doors to fix them. But just as he leant forward to place the next piece of paper, Kyo decided to open them causing Shigure to fall forwards out into the snow. Kyo, ignoring the splayed out Shigure in the snow, stepped over him and headed towards the kitchen. Shigure's snow covered head shot up from the ground and turned around to shout out to Kyo.

"Don't go in the-"

But it was to late, as Kyo took one step inside the Kitchen and slipped on spilt patch of soup, causing him to career forward with an '"ARRRGH!" straight into Yuki, who happened to be holding what could just about pass as correctly made homemade soup in a saucepan, only looking up just in time to see the stupid cat flying towards him. So, in a mass of fast movements and tangled limbs, as Kyo came crashing into the pink apron-clad Yuki, the saucepan of soup went hurtling out of his hands.

"Ah, wait you-" Shigure started as he ran to the Kitchen doorway, only to stop mid sentence once again, as a very hot saucepan of soup landed on his head.

………….

…………..

"HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTT!"

"Not again!" Yuki and Kyo chorused, as Shigure raced out of the kitchen and jumped into the snow outside head first.

-----

He didn't know how long he had been holding the item, but Haru noticed that all the strange noises from downstairs had stopped, which probably meant Yuki had finished cooking.

Haru nerves got back up again.

Suddenly there was a creak from outside his door and a shadow in the light seeping from under it. Haru quickly shoved the item under the pillow and slowed his breathing, pretending to be asleep.

"Haru, are you awake?" came Yuki's soft voice into the quiet air.

Haru cracked one eye open, dreading what he was going to see on the tray of food Yuki had brought him. Instead however, as Haru's eyes widened slightly, he saw Yuki holding a flat white and red box.

"A Pizza?"

Yuki looked away, embarrassed, and sighed, "I gave up on the cooking."

Haru stared at him for a moment, looked back at the Pizza, back up at Yuki, and laughed.

"Don't laugh at me!!" Yuki glared, but Haru couldn't stop.

"I'm not….I'm not laughing at you, it's just….I dunno….it's funny." He said in between laughs, and soon found he couldn't stop himself.

As Yuki looked at Haru still covered snugly under the bed covers, his face smiling and laughing despite his fever, Yuki felt his lips tug slightly upwards. As he looked down at the Pizza he had ordered instead for cooking, he suddenly felt a strange bubbling feeling coming up from inside and a small giggle escaped. If he wasn't laughing so hard, Haru may just has well have stared in shock at the smile that was on Yuki's face, as he began to laugh almost hesitantly as he'd never done it before.

To Haru, it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard.

-----

"Jeez why do I have to clean it up?" Kyo moaned in annoyance, as he moped up the kitchen floor, being careful to maneuver around Tohru who was cleaning the mush of half blended vegetables off the cupboards.

"Just be thankful he gave up," came Shigure's voice from the Living Room, where he was finishing off repairing the paper doors, "After all if he succeeded in cooking, at least as humanely possible for Yuki to succeed in cooking," he added quietly, "he would only cook more often."

"Argh…" Kyo mumbled at the thought, as he picked up a mangled looking leek from the floor and chucked into the bin in disgust.

With the clunks and running water sounds from the Kitchen, Shigure was the only one to hear the faint laughter coming from upstairs. He smiled to himself as he cello-taped the final bit of paper to the door and stood up, looking towards the staircase where the laughter drifted down from.

It seems things were going to be even easier than he thought this weekend.

-----

Kane walked through the dark town having just finished his Thursday evening part time job. Yawning widely, he ignored a group of guys walking down the other side of the road completely drunk and singing loudly. Shoving his hands into his coat pocket to keep out the winter chill, he continued walking through the trodden snow when he stopped. Turning to his right he looked through a shop window. In the light of a street lamp he could see a certain little purple and pink maid's dress on a manikin. He recognised it as the one Yuki's apparent brother brought in that day and he stood back to read the name of the store.

Ayame's

Kane grinned.

He had just been paid.

-----

Yuki sat at the edge of his bed watching a now yet again sleeping Haru. Haru didn't have the stomach to eat the whole Pizza because of his fever, so they finished it up together. Now Haru had eaten something, sleep took over him once again and Yuki had spent the last few minutes just sitting there looking at him. The faint sound of the television could be heard downstairs, but other than that, nothing. Yuki watched the rising and fallening of Haru's chest as he breathed, cheeks still softly red from the fever.

He had laughed.

He had never laughed like that.

Well, he had laughed around Tohru a couple of times, but nothing like that. The feeling, it was like he couldn't stop, like Haru had released a part of him that had been locked away for years. It was the first time he had felt truly happy, laughing with him that like. He had never really heard himself laugh before; it was quite strange at first. But now it had happened, Yuki found it rather nice to laugh. It's not possible to feel sad or alone when you laugh, because laughter is the key to being happy! It locks away those other feelings so joy is the only thing that shines through when you laugh.

He liked it, and as he continued to watch Haru, he found himself smiling once again.

To Be Continued…