Disclaimer: I don't own CLAMP or any of the derivations thereof.
Author's Note: A little one-sided Meilin/Li ficlet in time for Valentine's Day. (Implied Li/Sakura.) Involves a lot of if's and maybe's. Typed up in twenty-seven minutes exactly.
Note: Characters may be slightly out of character.
A Gift Ungiven
She is staring down at her homework, lips tilted into a smile.
Amused.
Not really.
Dark hair streams past her shoulders, waterfalling, rivering down her back, black and depthless; immeasurable. It connotes a mystery that she does not possess; a mystery that the bright translucent garnet of her eyes dispel in an instant with how easily they are read. They are the fragile pages of a musty book of love poems, and the one to whom they are dedicated will never read them.
Slender fingers swing her pencil vaguely through the air as she stares down at her math sums, realizes that she's been drawing hearts over it for the past hour, sighs.
Valentine's Day.
Somehow the pink holiday has swarmed over from America and attacked Japan with an unusual viciousness; everywhere she goes since first she learned of its existence (hearing Sakura brightly inform Tomoyo in a charming voice that never truly drops to a whisper), she's seen it.
Vaguely, she wonders if Li likes pink.
-
He's late again.
She's tapping at the dinner table, composing her features into an air of calm, saying nothing, biting her tongue, fighting the image of the harridan that she's made for herself in Japan.
Wu says nothing. He never does.
Finally she gives up, stands, striding past the old man with bright, smiling eyes and lips thinner than the edge of a razor.
-
She is waiting in a chair set reproachfully to the side of the door when he comes home, exhausted from another day of training.
Without glancing up she can see the sweat beading on his brow, the two slashes of his brows curving downwards in an anger unexpressed, a frustration unformed.
She does not need to look up to see him grasp the steaming cup that she's set out for him (warmed every five minutes), the unseeing way he gulps its steaming contents down, sets the cup back, and leaves the room. Everything is invisible except for the bed in his room, including the tense figure still at the side of the door, and the way her eyes shine with something a little more corporeal than anger.
He just doesn't understand. She tells herself resolutely. He just doesn't see me. If I could make him see me, he would understand well enough, he would, he would…
Her mouth wavers. Grimly, she fastens delicately porcelain fingers to the cup and leaves the room, shattered.
-
The heat is stifling in the kitchen, but then, she's never truly confessed herself to be good at cooking. Particularly not this kind of cooking, which involves sticky things and other sticky things to be blended together, bounced, and then rolled.
This, she decides, would make a good exercise routine for those who want to lose weight. And then, in order to gain it back, they could eat the results of their labor.
Her failed efforts are scattered far and wide around the kitchen, ignored as everything flawed in her life is. Wu stands at the doorway, a patient, hovering shadow, forcing her shoulders to stiffen and her brows to draw into an angry V. Even his silence is a reproach: this is not ladylike, this madness, this impatience.
The timer sounds – she rushes to check upon her results, and beams.
A certain number of homemade chocolates are sitting upon the iron platter before her; one for each of the years that they've known each other.
Symbolism and taste combined in an unmistakable gesture of love – he cannot miss it. And then, perhaps, he may understand.
-
They are delicately placed into a rice paper fold, each of those packages deposited into a garishly pink basket that she has woven herself for this date. She studies it a moment, cautious, careful, cupid's bow mouth uncertain for a moment, then resolute again. It is beautiful. He will understand.
She is first home, always is, always will be, and so has time to arrange its patterns, fluffing the colored tissues so that they flare vibrantly, delicate wing-membranes ready to let her dreams soar. She bends to their arrangement so attentively that she barely misses the beginning of the footsteps on the stairs, the sound that she always waits for, and now listens for more attentively than ever.
Patience has never been her strong suit. Even as the smooth, boyish hand pushes the doorknob open, already she's smiling joyously, crying, "Li!" Offering up the fruition of her work.
He is not quite as filthy today as he was in previous days; his hair is only slightly mussed, though his cheeks are flushed with something beyond exertion, though she does not see it. What she does see is the tiny package in his left hand, half-hidden behind his leg; a diminutive, rosy package whose tag brightly reads "FROM SAKURA."
He stares at the object between her palms, and sees only a weedy little thing with half-hidden contents that might have been purchased at any second-hand store. Mild disconcertion and revulsion for the color flood his features before being abruptly concealed, though not quite. Li has never been one for subtlety.
"Is there something special today?" Hawk's eyes already drifting past her, the question an idly thrown thing that bears no meaning.
Trembling finely, suppressing all the words she wants to say into a well-schooled lady's silence, she says, sweetly, "No, nothing." But keeps the basket clasped between her hands.
-
She creeps silently out of the apartment that night, hands clenched tight-white over the sunset-pink basket. It takes only a few seconds and a perfect, arcing throw (the throw she remembers having perfected in order to show him that she could do it) into the dumpster to rid herself of its imperfection.
As the stars come out of their alcoves, she stands, cheekbones prominent in that tiny visage, staring at the dumpster for a few moments longer. Then, as the first wispy clouds drift across the night sky, she turns upon her heel, shoes snapping against the wet pavement, and takes the beginning of the steps back to the apartment.
Author's Note: This came from a series of random scenes that were running around inside my head and wouldn't let me get on with life until I'd written them down. I'm not sure I did them justice, but this is probably about as close as I'll come.
Feedback is appreciated. Read and review, as they say?