Oooooooookay. UsakoMamoru (livejournal community: link on my bio page, also the home of the drabble challenge) has started a new songfic challenge! And you all know how I loooooovveee songfics. Except, as ff dot net doesn't allow lyrics anymore, this version is not QUITE the original. If you'd like to read the original, go check out UsakoMamoru. I think it probably makes a lot more sense... especially the poem.

Otherwise, while each "chapter" is going to be a completely separate story, I'm going to post them all under one title, kind of like the drabbles challenge. I think there are going to be 12 in all, assuming I'm able to complete each of them.

Now then, about this story:

This story went from conception to completion in under twelve hours! Record! It was completed in the middle of the night on lots of coffee, and I'm proud to say I think it shows. I think this is the first time I literally cracked myself up while writing something. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Accidentally in Love
Alicia Blade

I didn't mean for this to happen. It all kind of snuck up on me, really. I'm the innocent victim in all of this. I mean, my entire life has been nothing but disappointment after disappointment. Loss after loss. Heartbreak after heartbreak. From losing my parents when I was six, to my best friend, Fiore, not long after that, to the mysterious, untouchable girl in my dreams that brings me more misery and anguish than any sense of fulfillment.

But I got over it, really. I just figured that I wasn't cut out for this.

For… love. Even the word feels foreign and unusual and surreal.

It didn't even bother me. We all have things we're good at. I'm good at math and science. Other people are good at love. It's a balance thing. And I was okay with that.

But that was before I met her. Before I knew her.

You see, she's one of those girls who is good at love. Really good at it. So good at it that everyone who meets her falls madly, desperately in love with her. Of course, for most, that's more of a mad, desperate, platonic sort of love.

Not for me. No… I took one look at her incessant smile and listened to her carefree laughing and watched how she fluttered through life on invisible gossamer wings and I was a lost man.

It was horrible.

It was painful.

It was love.

And I tried to ignore it—don't think I didn't. I tried to push her away. I tried to pretend the feelings weren't there. But alas, even I, the king of cool exteriors, the sultan of haughty arrogance, the prince of couldn't-care-less, couldn't forget about her. And that love I felt burned deeper and deeper until one day (yesterday, to be exact), I felt that I had suffered long enough.

I mean, I'm a superhero for god's sake! And a cute one at that! I can handle this. I can win her heart. I can earn her love.

I just needed a plan.

And so that's what I did. I concocted a plan. Of course, by that time it was three o'clock in the morning and I maybe didn't have all my brain cells working properly, but it seemed like a really good idea at the time and who am I to go against initial inspiration?

So today I'm putting the plan into action. Mark my words: Tsukino Usagi will be mine.

---

Plan A: Knight in Shining Armor
Objective: Sweep Usagi (codename: Damsel in Distress) off her feet.
Possible reward: kiss
Props: shield, sword, heavy armor, helmet
Plan to commence at 7:57 a.m. at corner of Sakura Ave. and E. 11th St.

I clomped down the sidewalk in the armor I'd picked up from the costume shop (lucky for me, it was October and the costume shop was on holiday hours). My head was spinning with promising ideas. Every girl dreams about a real knight in shining armor, right? I briefly wondered if maybe I should have rented a white steed, too, but knew it was too late as she was bound to come charging around the corner on her way to school at any moment.

This was going to be perfect. I could snatch her away from the horror of school and whisk her away on some romantic rendezvous. She'd be so mesmerized by my strength and masculinity and heroic persona that she'd think I was a dream come to life.

It was beginning to feel really hot beneath the metal and the chain mail tunic was pinching beneath the breastplate and the helmet smelled a little funky, but I found my discomfort easy to ignore with fantasies of rescuing the fair maiden and wooing her with Shakespearean sonnets (I'd memorized six) and maybe if I was lucky some thug would try to steal her purse and I could whap him a few times with my sword and…

"Aaaah!"

A scream penetrated the muffled world inside the helmet and I felt something crash into me, sending me sprawling backward and landing with a loud clang on the sidewalk. The dull pain of landing on thirty pounds of metal spread up through my back and neck and legs and head. Whatever happened to this stuff protecting you?

"Ow…" Usagi groaned and I looked up to see her sitting on top of me and noticed that my visor had come up with the fall. The girl sat up on my torso and rubbed her head, before looking down at me.

"Dude," she muttered, seemingly unimpressed. "What on earth are you doing wearing that getup? I feel like I just crashed into a ton of bricks!"

She feels like she just crashed into a ton of bricks?

"What's your problem, mister?" she asked, leaning forward to peer through the small gap of the helmet. Then, her blue eyes squinted curiously, before widening in surprise. "Mamoru, is that you?"

Why is this suddenly feeling like a really bad idea?

"Um… don't worry, Odango, I'll save you," I muttered, but the aching in my head took away a lot of the enthusiasm.

Her eyebrow quirked, her jaw falling open, before a loud guffaw escaped her lips and she collapsed limply over me, clutching her stomach and laughing so hard I thought she might pass out from asphyxiation. And I couldn't help but think it was just my luck—her being this close to me and I can't even feel her through the armor.

Then, as quickly as it had started, her laughter stopped and her eyes went wide. "Oh, I'm so late!" She looked into my eyes one last time and brushed some tears off her cheeks, shaking her head. "Should I let Guinevere know I found you?" she asked, before jumping up with a cackle and racing toward the school.

It wasn't until she was long gone that I realized… I have no idea how to stand up in this thing.

---

Okay, so that maybe wasn't exactly how the plan was supposed to go. But I think I made some progress, don't you?

So it was off to Plan B.

Except I hadn't really concocted a Plan B, so after I clomped my way back to the costume shop and returned the armor (having to pay extra because evidently I'd dented it, though I think that mark had been there before), then gone home and taken a shower as that costume had left me feeling kind of sweaty and gross, I headed for the arcade, to Tokyo's burbling spring of good advice: Motoki.

He was wiping the counter, which was his usual late-morning activity as all his best customers didn't get out of school until after 3:00. He was daydreaming about something and didn't notice me as I walked in and took a stool in front of him and calmly said, "I'm in love with Usagi."

His gaze swept over to meet mine and he blinked silently for a moment, his hand pausing in its administrations, before he finally responded, "I know."

"You know?"

"Yeah. You're pretty obvious about it."

"Oh." Unexpected occurrence of the day number two. "So… what should I do about it?"

He looked away ponderously for a moment. "Well, you could tell her."

"How?"

His eyes squinted and his lips pursed together and for a moment I was worried he would say something like "Just pull her aside and tell her" but Tokyo's burbling spring of good advice did not let me down.

"You could try serenading her."

Ah… that Motoki. Always the genius.

---

I set up shop right beneath her window. The grass was moist beneath my feet it took awhile to find adequate dry seating for the string quartet I'd hired to accompany me (two stolen lawn chairs from the neighbors, a dry stump, and a really big rock proved adequate enough) and finally, by 11:00, we were ready to go.

I cleared my throat and loosened my bowtie.

"C Minor," I whispered to the cellist and immediately the night was filled with a beautiful, uplifting melody.

Nervously picking up the karaoke microphone, I took a deep breath, stepped toward her window, and sang, "Qui c'e il buio fuori di me, ed anche un po dentro di me... che assurdita questa citta senza persone!"

A light came on in the window and my breath caught but I gulped and forced myself to keep singing. The curtains shifted. I caught a glimpse of blonde hair.

"Io non so spiegar neanche come, ma non e questa la mia dimensione, e la mia mente non e mai in pace, e sempre altrove."

The window opened. A pale hand appeared on the sill.

"Tu dove sei? La tua voce dov'e? Senza di te, senza il tuo aiuto che sara di me?"

Pink lips. Blue eyes.

"Mamoru, is that you?"

The world stopped. My heart plummeted.

Not.

Usagi.

My jaw dropped. Could this be a bad dream?

Minako was blinking down on me in shock. "Mamoru-san?" she asked again.

Shaking my head, I turned to the quartet and waved my hands at them to stop, before turning back to a smirking Minako.

"Minako, what are you doing here?" I hissed.

Laughing, she put her elbow on the windowsill and leaned forward, cradling her chin. "Sleeping. But if I'd known that a cute boy was going to come sing Italian to me, I would have worn my pretty pajamas."

"But where's Usagi?"

"Uh… probably at her house. Sleeping," she answered, her eyes dancing mirthfully.

I felt suddenly sick. "You mean this isn't…?"

Shaking her head, Minako lightly tsked at me. "Gee, Mamoru, way to get a girl's hopes up then smash them to pieces."

"But Motoki told me this was her address!"

"He must have been confused. She lives over on Kaeru Street."

I groaned, my head falling.

"Don't feel bad! This is probably a good thing."

"How is this a good thing?"

"Well… her dad keeps a shotgun next to his bed. And it isn't for burglars, if you know what I mean."

I could hear the quartet shuffling uncomfortably behind me. "Thanks for the warning," I mumbled half-heartedly, turning to leave, before a strange realization hit me and I turned back to see Minako watching me with a sad smile. "Hey, aren't you curious as to why I would be serenading Usagi?"

"Naw," she said, airily waving her hand. "You love her. It's really obvious."

"Oh."

"But hey, Mamoru?"

"Yeah?"

"We're all going to an amateur poetry reading tomorrow night. I always found poetry to be very romantic," she said, winking, before shutting the window.

My optimism returning, I turned to face the instrumentalists.

"Uh… we're still getting paid for this, right?" the violinist asked.

---

Now, I am all about poetry. Seriously. You remember those Shakespeare sonnets? Piece of cake. Yeats, Dickinson, Longfellow, Frost, Pope? I've got them covered. You wanna hear "Oh Captain! My Captain!"? I know that one. "The Wasteland"? No problem. "The Raven"? Oh, don't get me started!

But when it comes to writing my own, well… one might say we run into some difficulties. It isn't that I'm not a good writer—when it comes to essays and term papers and BS-ing my way through short answer quizzes. It's just that I'm not really… well, open to the idea of sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings. It might have something to do with that whole "not being good at love" thing.

But if Minako thought that Usagi could be won over with a heartfelt poem, then a heartfelt poem she would receive.

So all the next day I made a date with a thesaurus and a book happily titled "The 101 Greatest Love Poems of All Time" and I wrote my first love poem.

By 8:00 that night I was beginning to feel like maybe this whole "bearing your soul to others through the written word" wasn't such a horrible thing after all. Show time.

Motoki met me at the little café not far from the university and we proceeded inside and found a little table near the back. It wasn't long until the girls showed up and claimed a booth near the stage. I clutched the poem nervously in my pocket as I watched Usagi chattering with her friends. From that distance I couldn't quite make out what she was saying, but I thought I heard something about "armor" and "knight" punctuated my insane amounts of giggling. I squirmed uncomfortably and was grateful when the emcee took the stage and announced the first poet.

I was pretty far down on the list and braced myself for an evening of painful amateur poetry.

Forty-five minutes and two cappuccinos later, my name was finally called. Usagi whipped her head around as I approached the stage, her jaw falling slack. I wanted to smile or wink or do something endearing, but couldn't even bring myself to look at her. Instead, I pulled my lead feet onto the stage and took my little poem out of my pocket.

Reminding myself to breathe, I stole up to the microphone and unfolded the poem and began to read.

"Baby carrots, eggs, strawberry ice cream…eh? Oh! Sorry, wrong list, er… poem…" As I felt a blush creeping over my cheeks and heard snickering from the audience, I hastily shoved my grocery list back into my pocket and fumblingly searched the other. My hand quickly grasped another piece of paper. Relief. Sigh. Breathe.

I licked my lips and opened the poem.

I am a crystallized sphere of compacted cold—running
Running into your seasonal spurt of warmth that approaches
All this painful, horrible emotion I endure
That turns from solid to liquid beneath light beams bent by the ozone layer
Singing the atmospheric glow of a burning acidic star
Glittering emotion called love.

I give in
To your berry-flavored frozen dairy goodness
Eternal, infinite emotion
Well, I tell you it was an accident!
Because I cannot get away from your hormonally charged sensation.

Yup. That was it. That was exactly what I wanted to say. There was my heart—hanging out there on the line between me and Usagi. The crowd was silent. I felt naked beneath their watchful stares. I couldn't bring myself to look at her. How obvious I must be! Was she appalled? Flattered?

The silence was suddenly broken by quiet clapping, which steadily grew. Ah, they understood! They felt the emotion I had poured into every word, line, stanza! I felt a bond with the audience like none I had ever felt before. Their encouragement gave me strength and I finally found the courage to look over at the recipient of the poem, seated in that booth not very far away.

Our eyes met. I held my breath and analyzed her expression. I couldn't quite place the look she was giving me. Was it joy? Devotion? Elation at knowing how madly, desperately, painfully in love with her I was? No.

It was…

It was…

Perplexity. Yes… she just looked really, really confused.

Slowly, she turned to Ami and I heard her say, "I don't get it."

Ami just shrugged.

---

I sulked into my apartment and dropped the crumpled-up poem carelessly onto the floor before collapsing onto my couch.

How could she not have gotten it? Hadn't I been clear? I mean, did I have to spell it out for her? Did I have to get up on that stage and scream at the top of my lungs, "I LOVE YOU USAGI!"

Come to think of it, that might have worked.

Ah, but too late now. I suppose I need a Plan D. Whoever would have thought this wooing business would be so draining? Shouldn't she be mine by now? I could barely contain my simple desire to hold her close and bury my face in her hair and kiss her dimpled cheeks and thick eyelashes. Would this burning love ever find release? Didn't she have any idea how much I needed her?

Well, obviously not, because she didn't get it.

Sigh. Pout. What else could I do?

I wonder how she would feel about a billboard…

Just as I was pondering a thirty-foot tall declaration of profound and eternal love, a flash of light lit up my living room, soon followed by the rolling vibrato of thunder. I jumped a little at the sudden storm and it wasn't long before the sound of rain came pelting against my window.

I cringed, imagining my little bunny curled up beneath her covers at home—terrified. She hated storms. I wasn't sure why. I'd always found them to be astonishing reminders of the ever-present power of Mother Nature. But then… perhaps that was exactly what frightened her.

I gasped and sat up, my heart drumming against my ribs.

Shotgun or no shotgun, I knew what I had to do.

---

I was utterly drenched by the time I got to her house. I'd had to check over twenty mailboxes on Kaeru Street before I finally came across a Tsukino household, but the pink polka-dotted curtains on the second story confirmed that I'd found the place. And lucky for me, there was a tall oak just outside the window, which I wasted no time in climbing up.

Whisking my wet hair off of my forehead, I took a calming breath, steadied myself on the tree branch, and knocked gingerly on the window.

I had to knock twice more before finally the curtains were brushed aside and Usagi appeared on the other side of the glass, pale-faced with golf club in hand.

Her eyes widened when she saw me and the golf club fell to the floor. She said something, but the words were drowned out by the tides of rain. I blinked at her uncertainly until she opened the window.

"Mamoru, what are you doing here?"

"I heard you were afraid of storms."

My words were punctuated by a streak of lightning and a clap of thunder. She jumped and squealed, before reaching forward, grabbing me by the collar, and pulling me harshly into her bedroom. "Get out of that tree before you get electrocuted, you idiot!" she hissed and shut the window with a shudder.

"Usagi, I…"

"Keep your voice down!" she said (not very quietly herself, I might add), grabbing a blanket from her bed and draping it over my shoulders. "My dad keeps a shotgun by his bed, and it isn't for burglars, if you know what I mean."

I held the blanket around my shoulders, realizing for the first time how cold I was, and watched her threading her arms through the sleeves of a bathrobe and cinching the belt around her waste. "Usagi," I whispered, "I heard you were afraid of storms."

"Yeah, you said that already. But what does that have to do with you climbing a tree outside my window in the middle of the night?"

"I brought you something." Reaching into my jacket, I pulled out the gift I'd brought and held it toward her.

She stared down at it for a long moment before slowly reaching forward and taking it into her palm.

"Mamoru, I… I don't know what to say."

I didn't either, I realized, so the room was suddenly filled with the un-silence of a persistent rainstorm.

Finally, she stated, quite curiously, "You climbed up a tree in the middle of a lightning storm to give me… a stuffed cockroach?"

Pause.

"Yeah…" I murmured, teetering from foot to foot. "I thought maybe it would help."

Removing her eyes from the gift, she squinted up at me, as if trying to discern if she were really dreaming this whole thing up.

"Not to sound ungrateful… but how, exactly, is this supposed to help?"

"Well… uh… you see... cockroaches, even though they're so small and seemingly helpless, are actually really difficult to kill. In fact, they're one of the few living things that can survive the explosion from a nuclear bomb."

"That's great, Mamoru, but I'm not really following…"

I sighed, raking a hand through my hair and beginning to feel a little silly and nervous. "Well, I thought maybe the reason you were so scared of thunder storms is because… they seem so big and… I don't know… explosive, and you're so little in comparison. But when you think of the how the cockroach can survive the nuclear bomb, then maybe it's easier to see how you can survive the lightning storm, and… well, I guess it's not that great of a comparison, but…" Shuffling my feet, I focused my gaze on the carpet, losing my voice to inane rambling, until a little giggle prompted me to look up at her again.

"You're comparing me to a cockroach?"

"No, I didn't mean it like that!"

But rather than looking offended, Usagi's lips were turned in a sassy grin and her eyes were dancing gleefully as they looked into mine. "Thank you. This was… sweet of you. In a really… strange and awkward kind of way."

I felt a blush coming on and quickly looked down again.

"You know, you've been acting very strange the last couple of days, Mamoru."

I gulped, tightening my grip on the blanket.

"Between the armor and the poem, and Minako-chan mentioned something about a string quartet…"

Groan. Cowering beneath the blanket.

"And now the stuffed cockroach… Are you trying to tell me something?"

So remember all that courage and determination I'd had at the poetry reading, just a few hours ago? Yeah, gone. All gone. The knowledge of this fact was punctuated clearly by more uncomfortable shuffling of the feet and hanging of the head. "N…no. Nothing. I mean, what would I be trying to say with… with a cockroach?"

"I don't know…" Usagi hummed. "I just thought that if there was something you wanted to say, now might be a good time to say it."

I gulped and raised my eyes to look at her. She was cradling the cockroach almost lovingly against her stomach and I felt my heart flutter. And a bit, just a little bit, of the courage returned.

"I…I'm normally a very logical guy." It was stuttered, but it was a start.

"Oh?"

"Yes. Very logical. And rational and… scientific. Down to earth. Uh… grounded. You know what I mean?" She nodded. "Well… it's just… I'm… lately, I…." Sigh. "Usagi, you make me do stupid things."

"Stupid things?"

"Yes. Stupid things. Like climbing trees during lightning storms," (that really had been pretty dumb, huh?), "and reading horrible poetry in front of a bunch of strangers and renting full body armor and hiring a string quartet and… I mean, this is not me. I don't normally do stuff like this."

"Mamoru… is that a compliment?"

I inhaled a long breath. "No. It's a confession."

A becoming blush tinted her cheeks and I felt my hopes rising.

"Oh," she murmured through a growing, shy kind of smile.

"I like you," I continued. "And I want you to like me too."

A little chiming laugh escaped her and her lashes fluttered. "You know, you could have just said so."

Of course, I didn't know, so I just shrugged embarrassedly. "I'm not really very good at this whole…" I waved my hand in a great encompassing gesture. "…thing."

"What…" She imitated the gesture. "…thing?"

"You know this whole…" Cough. Blush. Murmur. "…love thing."

Her grin brightened until she had to look away, but then she stepped toward me and tied her arms unexpectedly around my waist. My breath snagged and I found myself panicking, having no clue how to react. Instinctively, I lifted my arms and wrapped the blanket around us both, holding her against me and closing my eyes and breathing a long sigh of contentment.

"I don't know," she said tenderly. "You don't seem so bad at it to me."

...I'm in love...

---

Crazy enough for you? Happy Monday!

Accidentally in Love by Counting Crows
Alla Luce del Sole by Josh Groban