Rating: PG-13
Warning: Shounen ai, mild swearing in Omake
Pairing: Ryousuke + Takumi

Kyuuhyaku Kyuujuu Kokonotsu Bara
( 999 Roses )

The bell rang, startling Takumi from his engrossing study of the school courtyard through the window next to his desk. Itsuki bounced over from clear across the room.

"Oi! Takumi!" He looked expectantly at his friend.

"Uh…" Takumi desperately wracked his brain, trying to think if there was some promise he’d forgotten about.

"This afternoon…" Itsuki prompted, hopping from one foot to the other in his excitement.

"Uh…" Takumi scratch his left cheek absently, while trying to maintain an interested expression.

"Aaah! Takumi!!! How could you forget?" Itsuki wailed, giving Takumi a light slap upside the head.

"Uh…" Takumi tried *really* hard to remember, but couldn’t for the life of him think of any plans he had made for today. "I’m sorry, Itsuki, but I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about."

Itsuki sighed: "It’s okay, I knew you’d forget."

Takumi had the decency to look embarrassed.

"You promised to drive me to the lake to meet Kazumi today," Itsuki explained.

The proverbial light bulb lit up above Takumi’s head. Last week, Kazumi had called to say she was going to be in Gunma and she thought she’d swing through Akina to see her favourite "little brother." Itsuki had been so excited that he missed the burn of being referred to as a "little brother," and he had promptly crashed his car while practicing some "cool" move he was hoping to show off. Therefore, he roped Takumi into chauffeur service for the day.

"Ah! Sou…" was Takumi’s response.

And off they went.

************************

"Hey, Takumi?" Itsuki, who had been remarkably silent during the trip, suddenly spoke up.

"Hn?" Takumi glanced over at his friend.

"Kazumi said I was like a younger brother to her…" Itsuki sounded sad but not resigned. "Do you think there’s something I could do to, you know, change her mind? Make her think of me as boyfriend material?"

Takumi paled. They were wandering into foreign territory here. After all, Takumi hadn’t needed to do anything and Natsuki had just fallen into his lap (AN-*jumped* is more like it… O_o;;).

"Um…flowers? Girls like flowers. A very traditional date gift," Takumi volunteered.

Itsuki nodded cheerfully in agreement and so they stopped at a flower shop to pick up a nice mixed bouquet before proceeding to the lake.

Once at the lake, Itsuki made Takumi walk with him to the place where he was supposed to meet Kazumi because "he was shy," he said, and he didn’t want to wait alone. However, upon approaching the bench, both boys could see that Kazumi was amazingly punctual and was in fact standing there, head cocked, watching them with a bemused expression on her face.

"Hi!" she waved and smiled as the boys approached. Nodding to the flowers in Itsuki’s hand, Kazumi grinned outright. "Aww! You bought him flowers! How sweet!" she gushed, addressing Takumi.

Takumi completely missed his next step and fell flat on his face.

"Wh…what?!?"

"Um, these are for you," Itsuki held the bouquet out awkwardly.

Kazumi blushed fiercely. "Oh! They’re lovely! I…I’m sorry…I thought… uh…" she lapsed into an embarrassed silence.

Takumi, upright once again, blushed and made odd choking noises. Itsuki glared at him and made discreet shooing gestures, trying to fight the rush of blood to his own face. Mumbling something about an appointment or a meeting or something, Takumi hurriedly turned tail and ran back to the parking lot.

************************

When Takumi returned to his car, he was shocked to find it covered with dark red roses. Looking in the windows, he could see that the hachiroku was also *filled* with roses.

"Sugoi…" he murmured as he cautiously ventured forward for a closer look.

The flower covered car looked like a parade float. It could be seen from a block away. Takumi’s first instinct had been to assume that he was heading to the wrong car, but as he happened to be approaching from the side, it was hard to mistake the characters proudly advertising "Fujiwara Tofu." A look of uncertainty crossed Takumi’s face as his eyes darted worriedly left and right. Seeing no immediate culprits, however, he slowly inched up to his car.

Now that he was up close, he saw that the roses were not strewn about randomly, but were gathered in huge bouquets. Taking one off the hood of his car, Takumi counted 27 large blooms. Then, he proceeded to count the bouquets: 3 on the driver seat, 3 on the passenger, 10 across the back seat, 6 on the roof, 4 on the hood, plus the one in his arms. Opening the door to the hachiroku, however, Takumi was shocked to find more bouquets wedged into the foot space (AN-cuz i dun know what that’s called… ^O^;;); two in the driver side, two in the passenger side, and, Takumi craned his neck, yup, six on the floor in the back.

Doing some rapid mental calculation, Takumi’s eyes widened.

"Th…thirty-seven… and assuming twenty-seven roses per bouquet… Nine…Hundred…Ninety…… Nine…" Takumi’s voice trailed off.

Suddenly he felt something velvety soft brush his cheek. With his mind still on the math, Takumi instinctively closed his eyes and leaned into the sweetly scented caress.

"And this," the deep voice slid smoothly into Takumi’s consciousness, reverberating in his mind, "makes one thousand."

Takumi’s eyes flew open and he found himself facing a single white rose. Flustered, he stammered a series of incoherent syllables, as his mind refused to accept the situation.

"Take it," the husky voice chuckled softly, "it’s de-thorned."

Takumi reached out one shaking hand to loosely clasp the last flower.

"Wh…what is this?" he finally managed to blurt out.

"A rose, Francis DuBreuil, I believe they’re called," the man was smiling openly now, amused at Takumi’s befuddlement.

"B…but," Takumi was still not over his stuttering problem. "W…well, you see… it’s not that I don’t want to… um…"

Now it was the man’s turn to look confused. He knit his eyebrows together in consternation. He was quite positive that he’d read the signs right. By his calculations, Takumi should be blushing and smiling sweetly/coyly up at him by now. After all, that’s how it’s always worked…

He leaned closer.

Takumi’s breath caught in his throat. His face paled and his eyes widened in fear.

"It…it’s not that I don’t want to! It’s just that I’m not allowed!" Takumi bellowed in his fright. "Um…" Takumi paused now, further confused by the other man’s expression. "Look, I’m not allowed to race until after finals, and while I wouldn’t mind racing you a bit on the sly in the mornings returning from my deliveries, if you need to deliver the challenge with a *thousand* roses, then obviously it must be a big deal, and, well, I just can’t afford to take the time or concentration away from my studies to practice as intensively as I would need to for such an important race…" Takumi was babbling frantically, hands gesturing wildly at the rose covered car.

Suddenly it all made became clear and Takumi was shocked at the outburst of throaty laughter issuing forth from the man who had come bearing roses.

"Baka," he murmured fondly as he reached out a hand to tousle Takumi’s hair. "A dozen roses are suitable to issue a challenge, but a *thousand*… a thousand roses mean something completely different…"

With that Takahashi Ryousuke leaned forward and kissed the flabbergasted Takumi. Carefully, he extracted the large bouquet from Takumi’s suddenly stiff arms and replaced it on the hood of the hachiroku. Moving even closer, Ryousuke pressed the entire length of his body against Takumi’s. The shorter boy unconsciously melted into the strong arms now looped around him, one around his waist, the other around his shoulders, long fingers burying themselves in his light brown hair. Ryousuke gently ran his tongue along Takumi’s lower lip and smiled when he felt a responsive tremor in the boy’s lean frame. After another sweet kiss, Ryousuke pulled back a little and leaned his forehead against Takumi’s.

"You got it now, tofu-boy?" he asked softly.

"Uh…" Takumi blushed fiercely, refusing to look Ryousuke in the eye.

"Okay," Ryousuke shrugged, and pulled further away. Taking the white rose from Takumi’s lax fingers, Ryousuke brushed the soft petals against Takumi’s lips before lifting it to his own. "I can take a hint. See you around then," Ryousuke whispered more to the rose than to anyone.

As he released his hold on Takumi and started to walk away, Ryousuke smiled secretly to himself. *This* ploy was one of the oldest in the book. Now all he had to do was make sure he didn’t walk away too fast, because let’s face it, while Takumi had excellent reflexes as a driver, outside the car he was like molasses.

Takumi, for his part, blown away by the intensity of the kiss, was further shocked to discover his own hand shooting out and grasping Ryousuke’s wrist, pulling the taller man back, nose to nose with himself. And, in a move that came as a complete surprise to both parties, Takumi continued to snake his arm around Ryousuke’s neck and pull his head down, kissing him forcefully and quite thoroughly.

Ryousuke’s eyebrows practically climbed into his hairline, but then he gave a mental shrug and just leaned in to enjoy the moment. Nine hundred ninety-nine roses to get their attention, rose number one thousand to get a kiss…works every time, he smiled.

THE END