Title: Marshmallow Run
Rated: G
Pairing: SpannerShouichi (4851)
Summary: Written for kubinashi who asked for “4851 - pocky”. Pointless natterings with only a cameo by said pocky. I am good at being useless. >_>;;

–

On days when Irie Shouichi isn’t the A rank captain of the Millefiore’s White Spell 2nd Rose Squad, he is simply a twenty two year old man with a quirky best friend and an eccentric if brilliant boss.

Research projects are never in short supply and Shouichi has learned that being a part of the Millefiore family isn’t work so much as it is a lifestyle. The family has become his life and there are few days when he does not feel that fact in his cramped fingers and strained eyes.

But there are some days, such as this one, when Byakuran will flicker onto his screen with a jovial ‘Good morning, Shou-chan!’ and order him to take the day off. The catch, of course, is that Shouichi is always sent on some inane errand that Byakuran’s assistant could just as easily do, like picking up Byakuran’s dry cleaning or his favorite dessert from the local creamery.

Today, it’s a marshmallow run. Which is why Shouichi stands now in the bakery aisle of some chain grocery store and stares blankly at the wall of marshmallow brands.

“Fifteen minutes.” Spanner is glancing at his watch, his lips minutely puckered around the stick of his lollipop.

Shouichi gives him an exasperated look. Spanner’s brow hitches just a fraction, enough to convey that Shouichi get on with it since he’d calculated the amount of time he could take out of his busy day, with a five-minute padding, to accompany Shouichi and Shouichi was wasting that time by not being productive.

“Hmmm… Byakuran-sama doesn’t prefer any particular brands, I don’t think.” He’s never actually seen any of the bags Byakuran’s marshmallows come from so he isn’t certain and using the family communicator to contact Byakuran for the sole purpose of asking what his marshmallow brand is doesn’t seem like a very effective use of their resources.

Then again, nothing about a marshmallow run is a very effective use of their resources.

Sighing, he grabs several bags at random. He nods to Spanner who is frowning at Shouichi’s choices but shrugs all the same. He has a schedule to keep. He turns and heads for the check out before his eye is caught by a stand neatly lined with boxes of pocky and he pauses.

“I haven’t had those since I was a kid,” Shouichi says. “They taste like chalk.”

Spanner ignores him, grabs five cartons, and tosses them on top of Shouichi’s stack of marshmallows. Despite that the man is an obsessed mechanic and can be timed like clockwork, he can also be surprisingly unpredictable at times.

“I like them. They don’t last as long as a lollipop though,” Spanner says, his lips quirked into a smile around that damn lollipop. “Come to my workroom later; I’ll show you what I’ve been working on.”

“Don’t you have a deadline?”

“I can spare a few hours,” he says, looking thoughtful, as if he hadn’t planned, all along, to say this. “It won’t delay my deadline. I’m actually ahead of schedule.”

Shouichi finds himself returning Spanner’s smile because, on any other day, he would have declined Spanner’s offer. Spanner would just as likely not have made the offer at all, on any other day. But today, for now, Shouichi is just a man spending time with his best friend and buying marshmallows for his boss, both of whom have an oral fixation, and he says, “Yeah, I’ll bring down my game system so we can play too.”

And Spanner gets that gleam in his eyes—eyes that are otherwise clinically cool and shrewdly distant. He removes the lollipop from his mouth, licks lips sticky with residue, and says, “Loser has to eat a box of pocky in one minute.”