Okies...story #2 :)

I just love the Akito and Yuki relationship! I hope you guys enjoy! Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far. Please keep them coming!

It was a hot day at the Sohma house. In an extremely rare gesture, Akito had opened the doors to his room, allowing what was rest of the early summer breeze to flow through the chamber where he and Yuki were playing.

The cousins were building model structures out of recycled Popsicle sticks. The self-proclaimed "Three Musketeers" Shigure, Ayame, and Hatori had been saving the sticks from their frozen treats and giving them to the god and rat to play with.

Considering the two cousins had never received much in the way of toys, the sticks were like an extravagant gift.

Akito had busied himself with creating a model of the only structure with which he was terribly familiar: the main house. Akito wasn't very artistic and so Yuki had to squint to see the resemblance between the pile of sticks and the structure they were sitting in. Of course, he would never tell Akito that.

Yuki, himself, was making a model of his elementary school. Although it was better than Akito's project, Yuki couldn't deny that his work of art was far from a masterpiece. The rat wasn't particuarly talented at, well, anything. His brother Ayame had gotten their mother's artistic genes. Yuki wished so badly that he could be creative...that he could send his mother a picture that she would hang on the refrigerator...like so many of nii-san's.

Glancing over his collapsing building, Akito stared at Yuki's project. "What is it?"

"My school. Do you like it?"

The minute Yuki said those words, he wished he could take them back. He was asking for a stinging remark like, 'It's so ugly! Can't you do anything? You're so...mediocre'. That word was the one Yuki's mother always used to hurt him. Mediocre. The young rat would rather be sub-par than mediocre. Akito spoke quite like his mother. Yuki could never tell whether he was trying to sting personally, or whether she simply had a sarcastic sense of humor, like Hatori, and was taking it too far.

That's why Yuki was surprised by his cousin's answer. The child's eyes lowered and he softly whispered, almost mournfully, "I...I'd like to see the real thing".

Yuki's eyes shot up and for a moment, it looked like Akito's eyes were becoming misty. The moment passed quickly and the god tossed his head proudly and returned to building.

Yuki had barely just reached for his next stick when they heard the sound...

Dum-dum-dah-dah-dah, dum-dum-dum-dah-dah-dah-dah...

"Ice cream!" Akito immediately jumped up and clapped his hands gleefully at the wonderful sound. Yuki, himself, sighed in relief and wiped the sweat from his brow. It had been starting to get hot in there, despite the open doors!

After hurridly opening and closing a drawer, Akito stuffed several yen into Yuki's hot hand. "Go! Go quick!" Not even giving Yuki a chance to respond, Akito pushed him out the doors toward the carnival-like sound.

A hot and sweaty Hatori was sitting down at his desk, getting a start on his summer homework. He'd heard that in other countries, kids didn't have have schoolwork to do over summer vacations. Lucky Americans...

His arithmatic was interrupted by a loud scream from Akito's room. The scream was recognizably Yuki's. Hatori's stomach started churning immediately. Yuki screaming from Akito's room was never a good thing.

Running to Akito's room, Hatori saw that the doors were thrown wide open. That's strange...Hatori thought. Akito never did any of her "displays" in public. Jumping through the suspiciously open doorway, Hatori looked in quickly.

What he saw was, to say the least, completely unexpected.

Yuki was standing by the outside door, holding two mint chocolate-chip ice cream cones in his hands. The young boy's mouth was open and his violet eyes were shaking in fear.

Akito, on the other hand, lay groaning on the floor, curled up into a small ball with airs clutching her stomach and chest. Sweat was rolling down the little girl's forehead in buckets.

Suddenly seeing his older cousin standing at the doorway, Yuki looked up with tear-filled eyes and started stammering, "I...I only left for a minute and...and when I came back...oh no...Akito-san!"

Acting quickly, Hatori went straight to Akito and sat her up against his chest. Her air was coming in quick, short breaths. She probably got overheated...thought the dragon quickly. "Yuki! We need to get Akito into his bed."

Hatori gently lifted and lowered Akito onto her sleeping pallet as Yuki smoothed out the wrinkles, straightened the pillow, and pulled back the blankets. Akito gave a few moans during the process, but no other noise escaped her. She had already given herself away to the darkness.

And so Yuki stood there, frozen in place and unable to move, while Hatori tended to their cousin, with sticky ice cream running down his fingers.

When Akito finally woke up, Yuki started to panic. Not only was the ice cream all melted, but it had left a wet, sticky puddle all over the floor. Akito, the obligatory neat-freak was not going to be happy.

To the rat's surprise, Akito mearly stretched his had toward Yuki and smiled, motioning for him to come closer. Yuki's tears of fear started all over again. "I...I'm so sorry Akito-san!" Coming closer, he saw Akito eying the two soggy cones in his hands. Trembling fingers reaching out, Akito took the cone and started to lick it.

"Mint chocolate-chip?" Yuki nodded sadly, hiccuping.

"It's the best ice cream I've ever had," Akito smiled. "The best part is, you waited to share it with me...Yuki. You're my best friend." The tears of fear immediately turned into ones of relief. Yuki climbed into the bed beside his sick cousin, and they finished their cones together.

Kinda short, but I'm in a hurry to get off to college. I already know what the next one will be...and it's gonna be S-A-D!