Title: Pathetic

By: AtobeLover

Summary: You love your sister too much to break her like this, and she loves me too much for me to betray her like this. Actually, it's a pity you don't love me more and she doesn't love me less.

Rated: T

Disclaimer: I really wish I owned CCS, because then I'd hook up Touya with every single guy in there, but as you can see, I'm on this site, and I don't own it at all, and BLAH. In a nutshell, I don't own CCS, I don't own Touya, Sakura, Syaoran, et alia.

Note: This was supposed to be poetry, but then it became a fic. Huh. My mind's weird. If you like it, review, because there are too few TouSya fics on this site. Oh, and the perspectives change, and so watch out, but you'll know when they change. I made it pretty obvious. If you think this fic is worth it, please review. If you don't want to, it's fine. But I hope you liked it.

I don't know if you need help, but I could do with a bottle of aspirin and a half-glass of water.

What did we get ourselves into?

It was never fated to work out. You love your sister too much to break her like this, and she loves me too much for me to betray her like this. Actually, it's a pity you don't love me more and she doesn't love me less.

Pathetic, that's what this is, for actually believing in something that I knew was wrong in about a hundred ways and one more.

I'm in love with the wrong person, Touya, and your fingertips can't rub that off my lips and eyelids.

You're unfamiliar to me now, as if it's the first time I'm getting introduced to my girlfriend's brother. (The girlfriend, who I loved with my heart before I came across her brother, by the way.)

You look at me across the coffee table between us, and neither of our feet nudging the other under it, and say, "What do you want to watch?"

The goddamn TV. I should've known that's all I am to you now, just someone in your sister's life, that she's going to forget the moment she enters college and experiences all its joys.

"ESPN's great, thanks."

And all you're to me now is just someone, an annoying brother to a girl I now find really annoying, too. But I can't leave her because she loves me too much for me to be this immoral by just walking out of her life.

(Or maybe I don't want to let go of the moments where we can sit like this and remember each hard and soft and wet and chaste and dirty kiss. The exhilaration of being able to run hands through each other's hair, and the affection brought up in each coherent—and otherwise—word. The thrill of doing this when she's in the next room, thinking we're watching football videos on your computer.)

I sigh, and you get that across the table, you look at me and raise an eyebrow, and my girlfriend beside me doesn't even notice.

"I need to go now."

Maybe I'll be immoral, after all. I'm going to break up with her at the doorstep in just two minutes, and you're going to be there to watch the choice that I've made.

I was a part of your family, her family, and I broke one member of it (feel familiar?), and now I'll be breaking another.

I get up, and walk toward the door, and she walks with me, her last few steps, as someone who she thinks was loved by me.

I turn to her as soon as I'm on the porch. "I need to talk to you, Sakura."

She says, "Okay, talk, Li." She gives me this smile that I don't bother returning, because what's the use? She won't be smiling in a few seconds, anyway.

You come and lean against the wall, staring at me, an action so reminiscent of when you used to open the door when I rang the bell, and we used to talk our mouths off, remember? Then we used to kiss them off. And then she'd come down and I'd pull away just before she showed up, looking like an angel I used to wish you could righteously be (but you're the fallen angel in this drama), and we'd leave for the dinner-and-a-movie commonplace date, which she loves.

You're watching me, and even if I wanted it before, I don't want it anymore. Don't want you to watch. But I pay you no conscious attention. She deserves that much out of me.

"Sakura, I..."

Her eyes light up and she thinks it's a love confession, I can see it in her eyes, oh, Touya's here to see how much Li loves me, Li's confessing, ha, showed Touya that people love me too. Touya. You're at the center of every fucking thing.

"Yes, Li?" she gently puts forward a hand and touches mine. I jerk away involuntarily, and some of the hope in her eyes is extinguished, and I wish it could've been every piece of it, because I can't douse it again and again. You smirk slightly from behind Sakura, and there's an emotion in your eyes that I can't quite put my finger on. Jealousy? Relief? Satisfaction? Or maybe cruelty.

"I..." I'm gaping at her, no words slipping out of my mouth slickly, like I'd imagined it during the coffee table scene earlier, and I could've turned away from her then and there and said I'll see you tomorrow and gone home like a wuss, and dreamt about I'll break up with her tomorrow and it's going to play out like this, but I stand there, and I tell her.

"I need to break up with you," I say, and the world falls down around me.

Sakura can't believe what she just heard, what did she do wrong, what did she say, what did she not say or do, and I hasten to convince her, "It's not your fault, Sakura. I'm the fucked up bastard; I can't do this to you anymore. I don't love you."

Something's twisting my heart and maybe it's your piercing stare. I meet your eyes for one second, and that one second tells you everything I've ever felt for you and for her and shows you which feelings I valued more and you shuffle a bit, realizing you're the more important one in my life, but also realizing that you're going to lose me, and your eyes widen, but you still don't say anything.

Sakura stands quietly for a long time, and I need to hear what she has to say before I can go home like a selfish jerk.

"It's okay, Li-kun," she says. "I understand. Can we still be friends?"

"Of course," I trip myself up in a hurry to answer her question. "We still are."

"I'll see you soon, Li-kun, good night." She closes the door on me, trying not to be curt and the last thing I see is your wide-eyed stare.

You broke up with my sister in front of me, and she's crying softly as she turns around after closing the door, and I'm bothered that I didn't kiss you then and there. I'm going to hell for this, because I should be the big brother and comfort her, but I just want to go after you and wrap you in my arms. I'm a new level of fucked up, and I don't really care.

Sakura's thinking I'm going to make some cold comment about her erstwhile relationship with you, but instead I mutter, "I'm going to go murder the brat," and walk out the door, going after you. Maybe she'll have a higher opinion of me now, oh, look, my big brother's protecting me. If only she knew.

It's cold, out. I don't envy you, having to break her like this and then face this sort of weather.

You've covered a farther distance than I thought you would've, and are you running away from everything, just like I am?

I call out your name, and you don't turn around, and I think, maybe you are trying to escape. I won't let you.

I call out your name, and you don't turn around, and I become angry.

"You pretty little bitch!" I shout. You finally look at me, and there's no anger in your eyes, and so the anger in mine intensifies in direct proportion, trying to make up for you. "You... how could you?"

"What? Break up with her? I didn't love her. I didn't deserve her. She was too pure for me, and I'd broken her heart enough." You're expressionless, but even if there's no anger in your eyes, there's this self-hate which I don't want to see in you. You shouldn't be hating yourself.

"You shouldn't have."

"Why?" Raw pain scratches away at your voice, and I say, "Because I don't have an excuse to see you anymore," and now I hate myself for being this bad of a sap, and that I just told him that he should've gone on using her like a cheap whore.

You sigh, and I step closer, and you step closer, and then our lips are touching, and you say, "I can't. I can't be associated with you anymore."

I kiss you once, hard and bitter and loving, and then I move away. "Is it okay if I tell her I beat you to a pulp?"

You give a dry laugh and say, "Tell her what you want. She won't be seeing much of me anyway."

You mean me. I laugh, too, and I turn around, trying to stop the tears in my eyes from falling. You grew up.