Title: Heart's Beat
Warnings: Sakura, Eriol, Syaoran, Mei Ling, Tomoyo, Touya, Relationships
Disclaimer: CLAMP owns 'em.
Notes: Brushed it up a bit, and I guess fair warning should be issued; I'm listing this as complete, because each part can stand alone, and my life is busy enough that I know that I can't promise regular updates. I do love the idea behind this, though, and I'll keep at it (even if it takes me years) until it feels like it's actually done.


The beat of the club pulses through her veins and carries her away. Her emotions sail so high that everything is almost transcendal bliss, except that it's not, and even though she has had more partners than she can count, she dances alone.

She is almost a legend in Tokyo's nightlife: the intangible dancer who frequents Shibuya and Roppongi. Rumor has it that she is a sex goddess, fire personified, and anyone who recognizes her realizes that the rumors hardly do her justice. She is more than just sex personified—she is lust and anger and need and seduction and more emotions than one could name rolled into one; every movement is attuned to detail.

Unfortunately for those who actively seek her, she is almost impossible to find. Her appearances in the more popular clubs—such as Liquidroom—are rare. Her favorite areas to appear are the underground clubs; the ones few people know off. Clubs where everyone, everything, is accepted for fact, and prejudice is rare.

They are clubs with a solid core of regulars whom she mingles with and drifts among with hardly a thought or care. They accept her as she accepts them. They all come for the same reason, after all, to forget; to live as themselves, and be selfish for once. There are restrictions to the people allowed in, of course, because no questions are allowed to be asked. Lovers become strangers, and strangers lovers—and so the only restriction to such clubs is that one be clean. Sex is an acceptable outlet that most everyone dabbles in.

Except her.

She is a tease, with her sinuous movements, her parody of sex on the floor and her dark, lust-filled eyes. Her partners dance with her, yes, but she is untouchable; she belongs to no one but herself, and she is never truly there. So they leave her to find someone else; thinking, as they engage themselves in the acts of forgetting, of flashing jade eyes and the smile and the kiss that would never be theirs.

That is life; the status quo which everyone in the club Jacobin was acquainted with. And, though stories are almost never allowed, a story they share-a warning to newcomers.

"Don't bother," The bespectacled boy tilts his head back to raise a questioning eyebrow. "She's intangible."

The bartender smiles at the boy's nonplussed look and offers him a vodka tonic. The kid is barely nineteen, if even that, Jade is just as young. In fact, there are few patrons older than twenty, but such is life.

"Eriol," The boy whispers, breaking a rule older than just the club. "A name, but you don't need to know that."

The teen downs the drink and passes the empty cup to the tender.

"Besides, she's not mine to take.