Um... it's probably about time I got this finished up. Maybe. Seeing as how my last update was, y'know... almost a year ago... orz

I'm sorryyyyyy

Kyo went up the stairs slowly, counting them as he went, concentrating on each one. Maybe if he was in the right state of mind he wouldn't lose his temper on seeing those stupid orange gloves again - because they were definitely there, waiting for him in his room. He just had to reach a state of neutrality, then keep himself there long enough to dispose of them without breaking anything.

As he took a few calming breaths, he thought okay, I can do this, right before opening his door.

And then he saw that no, he really couldn't.

Jaw clenching, Kyo stood rigidly in his doorway and said slowly, "Get. Out."

"I just want to talk," Yuki said lightly, as if he wasn't a stupid, nosy, rat bastard sitting on his bed like he owned the place.

"I don't," Kyo's eyes, narrowed, were already dangerously catlike.

Not that Yuki seemed intimidated - only exasperated. "Look, these," he slid the dreaded orange gloves into view. "Are yours. Stop being stubborn and just accept them."

"No they're not!" Kyo snapped. "I don't want them!

"Why not? Would it kill you to come to the garden once and-"

"Why the hell do you even want me there? I already told you - I don't care about plants or gardening or any of it! So don't act like you want to spend time with me, because we both know that's not true, damn rat!" He held his fists at his sides, wanting so badly to use them. Yuki still sat there, calmly regarding him, as if the jerk thought he could act all innocent.

"Not necessarily," Yuki said quietly.

"What?"

Yuki shrugged a shoulder nonchalantly. "I'm not against spending time with you, Kyo," he said, a curious look on his face. To which Kyo didn't have anything to say. He stared at the other in bewilderment - enraged bewilderment, of course, but bewilderment nonetheless. He wasn't against spending time with him? What the hell was that supposed to mean? He opened his mouth, meaning to say something indignant, angry, something, but found that the words weren't yet formed in his head, so he closed it again. Yuki was looking him in the eyes, and Kyo found it a struggle to look away.

Until Yuki ruined the moment by adding; "Providing you come to the garden, of course."

Kyo didn't know what it was. The way Yuki said it, maybe, with a strange lilting quality to his voice, one that suggested a grin that hadn't yet formed on his face. Then again, it was probably the way he looked at him - like he could persuade him with a teasing tip of his head, hands spreading passively over his bed cover as he leant forward to look at him up through his eyelashes.

Whatever it was, Kyo snapped and found his voice again.

"Go to hell!" He shouted, starting towards the rat angrily. But before he could touch him -

"Is something the matter?"

Yuki smiled pleasantly as Kyo turned with stiff shoulders to look at Tohru, standing uncertainly in the doorway. She took one look at Kyo's enraged face and, suspicions confirmed, grew even more worried.

"What's going on in here?"

"Nothing at all, Honda-san," Yuki said lightly, gracefully pushing himself up off Kyo's bed. As he passed Kyo, he reached up to the boy's loose collar and tucked the orange gloves into his shirt - not shoving them down the way Kyo had done, but letting them rest on top of Kyo's shoulder. Kyo, spluttering and scrambling to grab them, was the one who knocked them down his own shirt.

By the time the red-head had fished them out, Yuki had slid past Tohru and down the hall, and Kyo was left there furiously clutching them in his hand. When Tohru saw them, her face lit up, and Kyo cringed before the girl had even taken a breath.

"We'll probably be going to pick some fresh onions soon!" She told him happily.

Kyo opened and closed his mouth at her like a fish out of water - again - desperately trying to think of something to say, anything that would crush all of Tohru's hopes and dreams about him and Yuki without actually crushing them, maybe just folding them up neatly and tucking them away somewhere where Tohru could fantasize about them idly but certainly not think they were possible. Anger was still writhing in him, though, and was crashing headlong into Tohru's infectious smile, and before he could find a proper way to placate either, Shigure's voice sounded down below and the girl left him.

He staggered to the door and thudded his head on the doorframe, groaning.

Time for his own plan B, then.

TBC