Two drabbles from the challenge posted originally on the utenadrabble community at livejournal. The challenge was to write an unconventional pairing…these are the two my mind came up with.
when i grow up, rated pg. saionji/nanami (unconventional pairing
challenge). post-series. 568 words.
Nanami is a terrible cook, not that she has ever needed to know how to do such a thing in the first place. Despite this, every so often she will wake up early on a Sunday morning, leaving only a warm, empty spot for him to touch when he drifts out of his own sleep.
He will go down to the kitchen in that early-morning silence – barefoot in the
summer, slippered in the winter – and he will find her with her blonde hair
swept high upon her head, standing before the stove. The way she frowns with
total concentration at the toaster, at the skillet and the egg held in her
hand…it makes one think she is about to undertake the creation of an artistic
masterpiece. But she isn't doing any such thing. All she is doing is cooking eggs
for breakfast, although sometimes Saionji wonders if there is more to it than
that.
No, Nanami is not a good cook, but sometimes she cooks eggs for breakfast and
brings them to the kitchen table while he reads the Sunday paper. Even though
at breakfast they usually talk about their day, their week, their work and
their lives – or Nanami talks, and Saionji listens – these Sunday mornings are
silent. Saionji reads his paper and eats his eggs in silence, while Nanami eats
her eggs and stares out the window. In summer the duck pond is filled with
sound and colour; in winter it is white and as a mirror.
They have been together for years, and these Sunday mornings come and go
without any pattern. Neither one remembers how it began; neither one knows why
Nanami would suddenly decide to cook when they have a woman who does all such
tasks for them. It is certainly not as if Nanami has shown any interest in
learning how to cook anything, let alone eggs; her degree is in fine arts and
her career is in graphic design. Saionji is a better cook than she and yet he
never makes eggs on any of these odd Sunday mornings.
Sometimes Nanami
watches the clock and wonders where the years have gone, the years since she
asked Touga to give her Saionji's phone number. She was doing the same degree
at the same university as he had done before her – though majoring in design
rather than photography – and she had wanted some course advice from her
brother's best friend. Somehow it hadn't stopped at advice. Somehow they had
ended up where they were now, and yet none of that seems the slightest bit odd
in comparison to these Sunday mornings with the eggs cooked by a girl who can
barely boil water for a tea ceremony.
They never talk
about it. They never say how odd it is, how wrong it is – for both of them know
that they dwell on something when they sit in this silence. What that something
is, they do not know – but they both know that it hurts.
Their lives move
forward every other day, but these Sunday mornings seem to stand still – and
sometimes seem to slip backwards. Neither one knows where they are going, or
why they feel an intense feeling of loss as they eat their breakfast without
saying a word. Nanami is always the first to leave the table.
Saionji always wants to buy white roses after such breakfasts. Sometimes, Nanami lets him.
*****
the replacements, rated pg. anthy/nemuro (unconventional pairing challenge). post-series. 502 words.
To this day he can't say why he went into that store when he did. It makes no sense, especially considering the fact that he had walked past it most days for nearly a year before the day he had walked into the store and asked to buy white roses.
She had recognised him, but he didn't know that because she had told him. The
entire transaction had been impersonal and like any other she might do on a
normal day, and Nemuro still thinks that it could have ended there and then. He
could have paid for the flowers, walked out of the store with them, and stood
on the street wondering what to do with a dozen white roses. It could have
ended there.
But it didn't.
He had asked her if she knew where the former prince was. She had blinked her
eyes at him, less vague than they had once been but bland enough to remind him
achingly of the shadow of a boy long dead. He had been on the verge of walking
out, taking his white roses, when she had leaned over the counter and placed
one coffee-coloured hand over his own. He hadn't even realised it had been
shaking until that moment.
"Stay, Professor." Her voice had been low, her words laced with pity and with
sorrow. "Have some tea with me."
They had had tea. They spoke about many things – her job in the little corner
florist, his work at the university with its campus just down the road, the
weather, books they had both read, what was in the news – but they didn't speak
about the girl-prince. Anthy answered his original question by not answering it
at all and he wondered then why it hurt this much to know that not even the
bride knew what had happened to the prince.
They have met for tea so many times since. Now they have tea together in the
little apartment that they share, halfway between the florist and the
university. They can't explain the genesis of their relationship to themselves,
much less curious outsiders. They live together and drink tea together and know
without even saying it that they are only poor replacements for those that are
lost to them.
Anthy may be free, but she still needs her prince. Nemuro may have graduated,
but he still needs his bride. Sometimes, while they are drinking their tea,
Nemuro wonders if he should be jealous of Anthy because her prince is still out
in the real world, looking for her, wanting to stand by her side, wanting to
hold her hand.
Nemuro's bride was only an illusion and he can never have it back. Still,
drinking tea with Anthy in the early evening while watching the cherry-blossom
leaves fall outside their apartment, he reminds himself that illusions are best
cherished before they are broken, and best pondered over when they are
shattered.
He hopes that this illusion will stay for just a little while longer.