Winter Birthday
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Notes:
Weiss Kreuz is property of Koyasu Takehito, Kyoko Tsuchiya, Marine Entertainment, and Project Weiss.

Originally published on December 23, in honor of Ken's birthday.

- White Kiss [formerly Rina Garet]
03/15/02, 2:56 pm

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It was December 23, and it felt every bit of it.

Ken shivered as he woke, brushing odd strands of sleep-mussed hair from his eyes, teeth chattering as soon as he was away from the warm sanctuary of his blankets. For a moment, he almost shunned meeting a new day for the languid warmth of bed and blankets and sleep for a few more hours, but Hidaka Ken was not about to waste the day in bed.

It was his birthday.

With a bouncy cheerfulness that some people seem to possess on their birthdays, no matter what their age, Ken hopped into a thick, warm winter sweater, jeans, and two pairs of socks, all the while humming the 'Happy Birthday' song underneath his breath. God, was it freezing this morning! He couldn't have a day of summer in the middle of December as a birthday present, could he?

He looked out the window and found something even better. Fresh snow.

Oh, was Omi going to get SO decked, later. Ken laughed to himself. Whenever it snowed a great deal, he took absolutely wonderful delight in snowball fights with Omi. Omi was the only other one of them that would bother and indulge one of Ken's simple little desires to be normal, and mess around in the snow like playful teenager might in the winter. He was likely to be maimed for even trying such a thing with Aya, and perish the thought of Kudou Youji being seen by *gasp* members of the female persuasion while wrestling in the snow with one Hidaka Ken. It was a 'threat to his masculinity' or something like that. Yeah, that definitely fit Youji.

So that's what Ken was looking forward to: a huge, wet, cold, messy snow fight with Omi on his birthday, after a trough of oatmeal with maple syrup mixed in. He could hear his stomach growling already, but he waited a few minutes before going to the kitchen, staring out the window at the city streets in winter.

He smiled to himself as he looked through sheets of white, sparkling in the morning sunlight, disturbed here or there by a childlike footprint or mitten-dent where some exuberant youngster had decided to play in the fresh snow. People in the streets bustled by about their normal, everyday business. Some were headed to work, some were going shopping, and some were merely sightseeing.

Grinning, Ken turned from the window. If he were five, he might have skipped downstairs. As it was, there was bounce in his step. He entered the kitchen with a flourish.

"Goooooood Morninnggggggg!" He drawled, receiving a very strange look from the only other person in the kitchen, which just happened to be the Scrooge of the Holiday Season himself, Fujimiya Aya.

After a stiff glare that spoke for itself, Aya turned back to evenly buttering the piece of toast he'd been working on.

"Good Morning, Ken," he said quietly, without ornament, or flourish, or any acknowledgment that this day was any different from any other day.

Ken shifted from one foot to the other impatiently. Aya calmly finished buttering his toast, and took a bite while stirring half a teaspoon of sugar into the cup of herbal tea beside him on the counter.

"Well ?" Ken said, after a moment of awkward silence.

Aya finished chewing his toast, took a sip of his tea, and gave Ken a questioning look. "Well, what, Hidaka?"

Ken frowned, a childish pout covering his features. "Don't you even KNOW what today is?"

Aya looked puzzled.

"Tuesday?"

"Aaagh!" Ken grunted in frustration. Leave it to Aya to put a damper on any occasion. "It's my birthday!"

"Oh." Aya was unruffled. He picked up his plain white plate with the toast on it, and balanced the small white teacup in the other hand. "Congratulations," he said with an unenthusiastic nod, as though Ken had somehow simply qualified for another year of life, and wandered into the other room to have his breakfast by the window.

As he pulled the container of oats down from a shelf, Ken grumbled to himself about how Aya was going to receive the gift of a snowball down the back of his pants one of these days when he wasn't looking.

The mental image of Aya's face after receiving such a gift cheered him considerably. In fact, he had a huge, mischievous grin on his lips when Omi made his way into the kitchen with half a glass of orange juice.

"Morning, Kenkun!" he called cheerily as he pulled the container of juice from the refrigerator to refill his glass. Ken was in the middle of boiling water, still seeing an image of how he thought 'I don't react' Aya would react to having ice dropped down his shorts.

"Hey, Omi!" he chimed back, taking one last mental look, and grinning wider.

"Oi, you seem happy this morning," Omi noted, taking a sip of his juice.

"Today's a special day," Ken hinted, wondering if Omi was going to pick up on it.

"Tuesday?" Omi asked, seeming just as puzzled as Aya.

Wielding his oatmeal spoon like a deadly weapon, Ken advanced on Omi.

"You! Don't tell me you don't know either! Aya I could understand but "

Omi blushed, and looked rather embarrassed. "Gomen, Kenkun, but what is today?"

Now wielding the aforementioned spoon like a king might a scepter, Ken wailed. "It's my BIRTHDAY! I wrote it on the calendar!" He sounded like a dejected child.

"Aaaah " Omi murmured apologetically. "I only look at the calendar on my computer, Kenkun Happy Birthday!"

Ken sighed. It wasn't the same.

Ken sighed and turned back to cooking breakfast. "That's alright, Omi. Arigatou." He would definitely get him later. He chuckled to himself, thinking of the snow fight they'd have that afternoon. Yep, Omi was going to get decked, good. Really good. REALLY good.

An innocent and oblivious Omi finished his juice, and left the kitchen.

Ken went along that line of thinking until something dawned on him.

Still holding that ever-present, multipurpose spoon, he walked into the other room, leaving his oatmeal cooking on low heat. Tromping ominously over to Aya, who was finished with his toast and now sipping tea over a newspaper quietly, Ken struck a demanding pose.

"Aya! I wrote my birthday on the calendar! Don't you ever check it?" He accused.

Aya didn't speak, simply looked up from his paper, blinking at Ken through a pair of reading glasses. Ken swore he almost saw a smirk on Aya's lips. The redhead stood up a bit, reaching into the back pocket of his pants, and pulled out a small rectangular item.

Ken read the lettering on the front.

"Personal organizer "

Aya flipped open the cover to reveal a small calendar with his tiny, neat handwriting scrawled in the day boxes.

"Arrrrrrrgh!" Ken screeched. That time he KNEW he saw a smirk on Aya's lips, as he silently replaced the organizer in his pocket and picked up his newspaper again.

"You people are impossible " Ken grunted underneath his breath. He wandered back to the kitchen to tend his oatmeal.

Ken glanced at the calendar next to the refrigerator, on the wall. In big, black letters, in bold permanent marker, he'd gone and written, "MY BIRTHDAY - KEN!" on the day for December 23, and even drawn a tiny little lopsided present.

"Why do we even HAVE that calendar? " he grumbled as he scraped oatmeal out of the pan, and into a bowl.

Dumping the pan into the sink, Ken began a routine search of the kitchen cabinets for the ever-elusive bottle of syrup. Where was that damned thing?

After a fifteen-minute search of the cabinets that the Special Forces Drug Search Team might have been impressed with in its thoroughness, Ken sunk against the kitchen counter, and wailed.

"WHERE THE HELL IS THE SYRUP?"

Youji sauntered into the kitchen, yawning and rubbing always-sleepy eyes. "Yo, Ken, why all the fuss?" He asked, smoothing back neatly brushed hair while reaching for a coffee mug.

Ken whimpered like a kicked puppy. "No one remembered it's my birthday, and there's no damned syrup for my oatmeal!"

Pouring a full glass of coffee into his mug and raising it to his lips, Youji looked surprised. "Why didn't you write it on the calen " He murmured, and just before coffee touched lips, he noticed the huge black print on the calendar, hanging on the wall.

"Oops " he grinned, sipping the coffee, and promptly spitting it out in the sink. "Omi made the coffee this morning " he grimaced, forcing down another sip. The kid couldn't make coffee to save his life.

Ken promptly slapped Youji with his new best friend, his oatmeal spoon.

"Itai, baka!"

Ken grinned, smugly. He felt much better.

"Okay, jeez, Happy Birthday. How old are you, fifteen, sixteen?" Youji blatantly teased.

Ken poked him with the spoon. "Twenty, you asshole."

Youji crushed him in a mock-affectionate, painful hug. "Aaah the birthday boy is getting old, is he? Our little Kenken growing up "

Ken grunted. Youji would make a lousy actor. "Don't quit your day job " he muttered under his breath, and Youji grinned, giving Ken an invigorating noogie. He laughed, and made his way back upstairs to do whatever Ken could figure Youji managed to waste most of his time on.

Ken proceeded to sulkily eat his bland oatmeal.

"Happy Birthday to me " he murmured softly.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

The snowball fight had been great.

Ken was dripping wet, and he couldn't feel his arms OR his legs, but he was grinning like the cat that ate the canary. Man, had he NAILED Omi. Of course, he'd gotten it just as good, but hell, that didn't matter.

Their snow fights were always great. They dove into the freezing white stuff outside the Koneko, decking each other over and over again, making a general mess outside, and sometimes whacking any nosy passers by that stopped to watch for a few minutes. Purely on accident, of course.

Ken would tackle Omi and shove his face in the snow bank, waiting for the kid to come up, all red-faced and wet, sputtering out snow. The classic Omi retaliation tactic was to smack Ken between the eyes with a snowball while he was laughing too hard at Omi to defend himself.

Why mess with the classics?

Ken had had fun. It had been a great way to cheer up from the early morning dejection of everyone having forgotten his birthday. He'd tried to cheer himself up by justifying it. After all, they all had more important things on their minds, usually, than simple things like birthdays.

Ken bent over the tub in the bathroom, shaking snow out of his hair and clothes. He'd let Omi go in first. The poor kid had been a living snowman. The bathroom was full of steam from Omi's hot shower, and snow was melting all over Ken as he tried to get it all out of his clothing before throwing it all in the washing machine.

And then it was time for a nice, long, hot, hot shower. Half an hour, at least. Hell, Youji used up all the water enough times, today was Ken's turn.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"I still feel bad about it " Youji complained.

He, Aya, and Omi were all sitting at the table in the closed-up flower shop, talking about Ken's birthday.

"This will make it up to him, though, Youjikun," Omi assured him. "Just wait until he comes down here."

Aya sat quietly, drumming his fingers on the table lightly, impatiently.

"He sure is taking a long time in there " Youji grinned suggestively, and Omi punched him on the shoulder.

"Hentai!" Omi accused.

Youji simply gave a smug grin in return, and Omi's cheeks pinked.

"He'd better be down soon, or it'll be his 21st birthday " Aya muttered.

"It should be any minute now " Omi assured.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Ken had pulled on a set of warm, dry clothes, a welcome relief after all that freezing snow, even if it had been fun. He was ready to go have a nice, hot bowl of soup or something for dinner, and then crawl into bed early. He was exhausted.

Even if everyone had forgotten, it had still been a nice birthday.

He yawned and wandered into the kitchen, looking for any signs of the other guys. The house was empty. Where were they all?

He checked the downstairs rooms with no luck. They weren't in their bedrooms, or the bathrooms. He rubbed his chin, at a loss for anywhere else to look. They hadn't said they were going out, had they? Not that he remembered. He sighed and was about to give up when he though he heard the inside door to the flower shop open and close.

He was curious. The shop had been closed today.

Putting on his best Sam Spade expression, he went to investigate. Sure enough, the door to the Koneko was slightly ajar. Rather than simply closing it, Ken peeked in, to see if someone was actually inside. After all, if one of the guys had gone in for a sudden check on something, he didn't want to lock them in there all night.

Or maybe he did. They HAD forgotten his birthday Stupid calendar

Walking in and flicking on the light, Ken heard shuffling noises. Spanning the room, he saw the grinning faces of his teammates looking at him expectantly. Well, the grinning faces of Youji and Omi. Aya was scowling, as par usual.

Ken was puzzled.

His eyes went from face to face, and then rested on the table that they were all sitting at.

A prepackaged cupcake had one candle stuck into its center, and Youji was striking a match, just then.

Ken blinked.

"Happy birthday, idiot." Youji grinned. "Now blow this thing out before your jaw falls off your face, will you?"

Ken walked over to the table, suddenly quite happy and nearly laughing at the silliness of it.

"At least you took the plastic off it first!" he joked, and Omi laughed. Aya looked rather bored, but Aya always looked that way.

Ken blew the puny candle out and grabbed the cupcake, ripping off a piece and popping it into his mouth.

"Thanks guys," he grinned through a mouthful of cupcake.

Youji shifted. "Omi HAD planned to make you a real cake, but, ah "

"Youji ruined it," Omi stated bluntly.

"I only peeked in the oven at it " Youji was indignant.

"You can't open an oven door while a cake is baking! The entire thing fell!" Omi chided.

"Hey, Aya thought it was fine " Youji noted.

"I said it tasted fine. It looked terrible." Aya finally chimed in.

Ken laughed.

"Hey guys, no problem. Thanks." He grinned sheepishly. "You didn't really forget, did you?"

"How the hell COULD we, it was staring us in the face every time any of us went to the refrigerator! You could use some art skills though, Kenken " Youji teased. "That present was a little scraggly looking."

Ken smiled, and punched Youji in the shoulder.

Happy Birthday, indeed.