Title: Frankly, My Dear, I Don't Give a Damn
Show: Maid Sama!
Pairing: Usui/Misaki
Summary: One week. One Hotel. One chance by a series of post-it notes, dog-eared pages, sarcastic remarks and wilting hopes. They're just two more people in the world searching for something beyond the sex and glamour of their youth. Usui/Misaki. Slightly AU.
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Part I
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He obtained the book from his brother, who had given it to him for his nineteenth birthday as a sort of humourless joke. The party was in full swing, and his apartment smelt of smoke and candle wax as the guests hummed in vibration with the throbbing music. His brother had made the journey by aeroplane to the event, and waltzed toward him with a satirical smirk, a bottle of wine in one hand, a shabbily wrapped package in the other.
"Here," he had smirked, thrusting the package into unwilling hands. The thin wrapping crinkled in protest. An overly zealous dancer fell against his back. Lights flickered. "Happy birthday, loser." Brother then strode eagerly away, disappearing into the teenage crowd.
Usui would have preferred the wine.
Later, when the crowds had vanished into the night, Gerard had taken his flight back to England, and the ghost of the throbbing music was still faintly beating against the inside of his skull like a bad joke, Usui tore open the gift and found the book inside, with a hastily scrawled message penned inside the back cover.
Usui,
There are two types of Mr. Darcys. There's the fictional kind, and there's your kind. Fictional ones get the girl; guys like you scare them away and wallow in your own crappy existence afterward.
Happy Birthday!
G. Walker
A personally written message was more than he had expected from him. On that account, he was pleasantly off-kilter. The words were ignored. Nineteen years hadn't taught him much, but they had taught him enough. Love was seasonal, at best. At times, it was probably nothing more than mislaid hopes.
He had stopped hoping years ago.
He hid the book under his bed. He had no intention of reading it, let alone looking at its proud cover. The message had already been made clear; its purpose had been served.
Idly, he wondered if Gerard and Faye were happy.
Idly, he wondered if that happiness should have been his.
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Part II
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Four years had given him the opportunity to read it eight times thus far. That's twice a year. Once every six months. A little under two pages a day.
He hated the cover. Supposedly it represented the heroine, a sixteenth century portrait of a young, plump woman with smooth pale skin and vivid dark eyes. She wore pearls. Her hair was evenly crimped. The suggestion of plump, ready breasts was depicted under her fine attire, sensually bold under her satin and silk. She looked upon him scornfully, yet was neither a lover nor an enemy. The femme fatale. He hated it. Oh, how he hated it.
The outline of the pages had weakened under severe use. He read vivaciously, made annotations along the side margins, underlined in thin, blue pen quotes he admired, quotes he hated, quotes he found amoral, quotes he recalled from some distant, far-off place – perhaps a melting memory. He employed the same thin white ribbon as a bookmark as the first time he read it. To dog-ear a page was blasphemy. He kept the pages straight, crisp, as if he could fool himself into believing he had never lay eyes on the words before in his life when he sought to start the story again.
He had torn out the philosopher-masters graduate-scholar-godly mind's introduction. Words, words. Once, in his naivety, he had attempted to read it. The introduction made his mind fog up and his teeth twinge. Jane Austen this, Jane Austen that. The social implications at the time, the great achievement this was for women. Did the author mention he was a graduate of Yale? Why yes, yes, as a matter of fact he is. Majoring in just about anything you could think of…He tore it out. Words, words, words. He tore it out. Words. He wanted to feel, and all they could do was feed him words.
At twenty-three, he was living limbo. He stood in the entrance of the Grand Hotel at five o'clock in the morning, suitcases at his feet, polished marble floors beneath his toes like a promising reverie. He wore his white Armani suit. He felt like a pillar in it. The woman with thin-framed glasses and red curly hair guided him to his room on the top floor, clipboard hanging ominously from her left hand. She swung her hips at him in her black, well-cut business suit. He frowned. She simpered.
"Usui Takumi. Floor thirty-six. Room twelve." She opened the door for him and lingered by the frame, unabashedly hopeful. She flicked a red curl from her eyes.
"That's all, thank you."
There was a pregnant pause that smelt distinctly of bitterness. She left resignedly.
For one week he would call this room home. He wondered if he should even bother unpacking.
With some trepidation – for a reason he couldn't quite identify – he took out his four-year-old, English copy of Pride and Prejudice and set it back to page one. With his white ribbon bookmark at the ready, he began to read again.
And so it began again.
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Part III
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Truthfully, he made his swimming look effortless. Arms that cut through the cool, blue glass with speed and grace. He swam low and deep, listening to the sounds above him deepen and drown in the blissful oblivion of the thick, intoxicating deep. Here, the lanes were not restrictions, but guidance to his way. Energy was exerted. Blood reached his head and enveloped his mind. He hauled himself away from the water and chlorine and managed to walk to his towel without the slightest misstep.
In the change rooms, however, he clasped his sides painfully as he panted into his knees.
Morning routine. As would always be.
-x-x-x-
He swam every morning from seven till eight. Which proved useful, as Usui discovered, since it was during that hour that the maid would let herself in every morning for the hotels usual clean up. The morning of his arrival at the Grand Hotel, Usui returned from his swim with a damp towel draped around his neck.
His room was much the same as he had left it, only his bed was touched up in areas he had scruffed up and a vacuum had most obliviously been liberally applied. His suitcases were as he left them that morning, unpacked and solemn, lying dejectedly by the bed. The single item he had unpacked rested just as it did on the bedside table.
The day passed just as any other.
Morning arrived. The sun broke out giddily, escaping through the curtains and making its way to the corners of the room, tangling itself in hidden cobwebs. The time read 5:53am. Usui sat upright, reached for his book, and began to read.
But something was amiss.
A few pages before where his bookmark was jammed, the top right-hand corner of the page was lightly dog-eared. A thin, straight bend folded over the number 06 with conspicuous certainty.
He never dog-eared his pages.
Trying in vain to erase the mark, Usui ultimately gave up and resumed his own reading, eyes following the letters but not quite comprehending. He found the word 'assurance.'
And so it began.
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He had his suspicions.
Returning from his swim that very same morning, he immediately closed himself in his room and headed for the book. The carpet felt, again, freshly vacuumed, and the bed was correctly made.
And now, a fold over page 16. Page 16 dog-eared.
Usui frowned lightly and skimmed the page. Two years before, after a somewhat bitter recollection of his mother's departure had plagued him, he had made a small annotation beside a certain passage on page 16.
…though Bingley and Jane meet tolerably often, it is never for many hours together; and as they always see each other in large mixed parties, it is impossible that every moment should be employed in conversing together. Jane should therefore make the most of every half hour in which she can command his attention…
And there, in his own blue-inked, prejudicial yet elegant scrawl:
What's the rush?
But on closer inspection, there, underneath his own satirical ramblings, a finer annotation in grey lead that had never been there before:
Not everyone has the luxury of time.
It was then he knew for sure.
His maid was reading his book.
And apparently, she had a few opinions of her own.
Wonderful, Usui grimaced.
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Wondering at a certain annotation, Usui sat at the desk of his hotel room and stared at the book that was lying in front of him.
His blue handwriting was always recognisable.
This is what women want. Tall, dark, handsome with no social skills. Add a splash of bitterness, lust, arrogance and pride and you've created the perfect man. What would have been the result if Darcy had behaved differently on their first meeting? Isn't the fact that he's an enigma the only thing retaining her interest?
Beneath, her own light, straight-forward lettering.
You're missing the point. It's the men. Look at Mr Hurst. Bingley, even. He only visits Mr. Bennet for the first time in hopes he might get a chance to check out the daughters. God only knows he was probably imagining the female Bennet household as his own personal brothel. You're judging women for being attracted to the superficial, but look at your heroes. Look at your men. Dirty, filthy good-for-nothing morons who think with their pants and lure with their wallets.
Over the next page, she had underlined one word in the text.
petticoat
Beside it, she wrote gain. He could almost imagine her smirk leaking onto the page.
See? One thing on their minds.
He sat contemplating this. Contemplating her. He knew an Aunt who was a man-hater. He pictured a short, middle-aged woman with grey streaks hanging over her ears, chewing the inside of her cheeks as she went about her duties, pitter-pattering around his room until she spied the book , writing cheeky notes beneath his, reprimanding his short-sightedness with her own prejudiced opinions. It amused him as it repulsed him.
Any woman over thirty-five mentioning the word 'brothel' was a turn-off.
For another twenty minutes he sat, wondering how to respond to this blatant – indirect, but nonetheless blatant – insult.
Eventually he smirked and uncapped his blue pen.
-x-x-x-
You know, if you keep up that hatred of men, they'll start acting hostile toward you too.
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The fourth day came with her reply.
I'll take my chances.
-x-x-x-
The fifth day came. Usui looked back at the material they had covered, astounded that there was barely any room left in the margins at all. Blue and grey clouded the emptiness.
They had fought – over everything and anything. He could no longer see her as some withered old woman. There was too much fire in her retorts, too much passion on the subject of young love for it not to be close to her own heart or situation. He knew her handwriting, and it felt like knowing her body. He knew the curves and the dips and the marks and the pauses. He imagined the tenor of her voice as she wrote with more force, more anger, the grey lead becoming darker, embossing the backside of each page.
It wasn't till now he could understand how intimate an experience fighting was. And she loved to fight. Nothing she wrote wasn't formed from dynamite and gunpowder.
He was embarrassed as he was beguiled. Embarrassed should he be charmed by a prejudicial old bat, beguiled by the phantom-like existence she claimed in his life.
On the sixth day, one day before his departure, he didn't go swimming.
He waited for seven o'clock to come. He waited in bed. When seven-thirty came, he waited in a secluded corner by his desk, drawing the curtains in the hope he might observe unnoticed.
And then, with a proficient sweep of the door knob and pushing of the door, she was there.
And he understood how Captain Cook must have felt standing before the thundering, blood-red rock masses of South Australia for the first time, towering over life itself like the archaic gods of old.
And he understood how Mozart must have felt while composing his twelfth symphony in the dead of the night, hearing the sounds of the dead intertwine with his own haunting melody as his fingers moved as if possessed.
And he understood how Monet must have felt while standing before his completed Waterlilies, the canvas circling around his person, larger than the room itself, more intensely, more devastatingly beautiful than mother nature herself.
And he understood how he must have felt, watching her walk into his own private sanctum with her maid costume, neatly ironed and crisp, one slither of light hitting her full in the face in one gold ray of liquid light.
She headed for his book, back to him, blissfully unaware of her future and fate. Reading easily, she didn't bother to sit. Three pages, and she was done. A small scribble later, a straightening of his bed sheets, and she was gone. Gone, and oblivious to her future and her fate.
He unsteadily made his way to the book, finding his was to the page she finished on with cold fingers.
I see you there.
He couldn't help the smirk that came over him. It was born with the only intent of springing to his face.
Pervert.
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Part IV
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Misaki Ayuzawa had worked as a maid since she was sixteen years old. A dignified position? Perhaps not to her idea of the definition, no. But needed? Absolutely. The lower end of a commoner's living barely left room for the luxury of choice when it came to employment.
She had never intended the notes to go this far. They were an outlet – just one way to release some pent up aggression and dissatisfaction. Satisfaction gained through fighting with yet another man. Yet when she first saw the owner of the romantic classic, she almost killed herself laughing.
Tall, handsome – perhaps not dark, per se – but arrogant and indifferent, for certain. It could be read as soon as you saw him. The way he stood. The way he spoke. Right down to the way he blinked – heavy, disbelieving and apathetic in one slight eyelid movement. And here he was - her master; rich, handsome, and currently brooding over the source of women's happiness and girlish fantasies for the past one hundred and fifty years.
She remembered, without some embarrassment, her witty – and perhaps even flirtatious – response to one of his notes shortly after she found out his true identity.
I'll take my chances.
Stupid Misaki, she had berated herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
So, he was handsome. Big deal. In the end, weren't they all just a bunch of perverted aliens?
Yet there was still that one line she had written. Goodness only knows she had never tried to flirt in her life, not even in high school with the ready eagerness of Hinata at her disposal. She was too strict, too down-the-line, too demon-president-from-hell-like. And now here she was, having attempted her first act of flirting with a man who didn't even know who she was. And by god, it had been unconsciously done.
Stupid Misaki. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She had seen him the day before just leaving his room, a gym bag slung over his shoulder, an apathetic heaviness to his eyes. Eager to avoid any embarrassment that usually occurred when a patron met with their maid, she waited in the wings of the corridors till he was safely in the elevator.
And he was beautiful.
Not that it mattered.
And so she saw him. She saw him in the lobby. She saw him returning from his swim. She saw him talking softly to that darn stray cat no one could manage to chase from the hotel premises. She saw him. She wished she could stop seeing him.
Her uniform always felt too tight, too revealing when he was near. She tugged at the hem of her skirt every morning before she entered his room, glad to the high heavens he wouldn't be there.
Until one day, that sixth day, he was.
And to have him there, have him watching her calves from the shadows, have him watch her fingers touch his book made her feel a calm she hadn't felt in years.
It was in bravery, she decided, not flirtatiousness, that she wrote what she did that day.
No more avoiding. No more tugging at her dress self-consciously. No more prying her eyes away.
I see you there.
She saw him there.
The seventh day came, that last day came, and she found herself skipping ahead till she eventually flipped to the back cover where a sloppily written note was written. She didn't recognise the handwriting. She didn't recognise the vile, jealous bitterness of it.
Usui,
There are two types of Mr. Darcys. There's the fictional kind, and there's your kind. Fictional ones get the girl; guys like you scare them away and wallow in your own crappy existence afterward.
Happy Birthday!
G. Walker
And she wrote her last note beneath.
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You don't scare me.
-x-x-x-
Later that day, a black limousine pulled up and a blonde head disappeared into it, luggage by his side. He looked odd stepping into it, as if he were a cat returning home to a fish bowl. The wind blew.
Later that day, Misaki tiredly made her way to her locker. She looked odd returning to it, as if she were a girl working in a maid café, secretly despising the men she served. The wind blew.
She wasn't overly surprised to find it there, standing upright ceremoniously in her locker. She always knew a flirt when she saw one. Briefly wondering how on earth he managed to get it in there, she pulled it out unsteadily.
Attached to the cover was a post-it-note, written in his elegant hand.
Dinner. 8:30pm. Refusing is strictly prohibited.
Usui Takumi.
(p.s. Were they drawers?)
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End.
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A/N: I wasn't sure about writing Usui's character pre-Misaki era. I haven't read the manga, only wiki'd his background, so I assume he probably wasn't the life of the party. I kind of missed his usual light-hearted perverseness. Sigh.
lol, bee-tee-dubs, did anyone else ADORE how Usui walks like some mega gangsta with attitude in the first episode at the beach, when all the random girls are trying to get some of that gorgeous blonde head of his? His hips are a shakin' and he's all hippy with it. The highlight, for sure. :P
Adieu.
x Schnook.