Natsukashii
This is the death of summer nights spent on rooftops - d.b.s.

Disclaimer: Not my characters - that's what makes it "FAN" fic.

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Chapter Two

Love in the New Millenium

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A dizzy, heady feeling. Sakura breathes in and tastes the freshness of night air. Cool leather under her skin, leaning back. She is in the passenger seat. Sitting with the car window down, not moving, breathing night air. She is outside and inside, edging closer to the end of springtime.

"Here. Drink some more of this."

A cool hand brushes her skin, offering chilled, bottled water. Her face is so warm.

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm sorry..." She falters. Rubs her forehead, still so dizzy.

"It's okay, just drink." The coolness of night air and water is fragrant, such a heady feeling.

Syaoran ruffles his hair, fidgets in place. Nervous, he leans over the steering wheel. "Damn, I don't even know what you think of me right now. Bringing you out here…" Where are they? Sakura holds her head. "You know…" His eyes are lowered, but shifting in anxiety. "It might be selfish to say this right now, but... it's really good to see you." Biting his lip now, looking away out the window. "I mean, really good. I've thought about this…"

Sakura feels her chest swell and tighten, temples pounding. A red flush creeps over her face and she exhales breathlessly... that dizzy heady feeling. Her thoughts and feelings are cross-firing, richoceting around her throbbing head. There is so much to say...

Her lips move tentatively. "Syaoran..."

"God, I've thought about you so much..." He slams a hand down suddenly on the steering wheel and turns to her, with eyes flashing firey. There is a velvet haze moving before Sakura's eyes.

In a moment she is in his arms. He is in her arms. She is tugging at his lip with her teeth, he moves forcefully, struggling together, the stick shift pressing into his thigh. Sakura inhales sharply as he moves his lips on her neck, halting breath, and the smell of him so clean and comforting and long-ago... a velvet haze… she is drowning.

Somewhere, at 3am, a teenaged boy and girl fumble on a cheaply upholstered couch. Their young skin glows blue in the tv set glow, furiously grasping at each other with the overwhelming, unbreathable passion of the new. Furiously grasping, frantically frenetically...

"Stop..." Her hands are under his shirt, nails pressing lightly into a hard, muscular back. He is pulling away from her. "Stop it, Sakura... we shouldn't do this." As he jerks back into his seat, a lightly stubbled jaw scratches past Sakura's cheek. A gasp of sober air, and her eyes begin to focus. Air. She is no longer sixteen, by the light of the tv, holding and holding and pressing against a lanky, excited teenaged body. She is a woman, with a heady-dizzy feeling in her brain, looking into the fierce, passionate eyes of a fully grown man... A grown man in an expensive, new car, with the smell of leather pungent and the seabreeze light through an open window...

He reaches a hand toward her face, gently, eyes softening. "I... I just... care about you so much." Voice strained with emotion, "I think... I just think that..." Welling and welling… the emptiness comes sliding back in like a chill.

"You shouldn't have come back here!" She snaps, batting his hand away and turning, one bare foot placed down on the concrete and now stumbling out of the car. She fumbles with her purse, only one shoe on.

"Sakura!" Hobbling, another shoe on now... the dizziness is overwhelming even in the blast of night coolness, a strong breeze off the nearby water not enough to clear the air of its sickly fragrance - the too-sweet smell of fallen petals, tired petals returning to the ground. Have to get away have to get away have to get clear... have to get clear and run. She is driven by the meaningless, visceral urge to be free of this place, this car, this man. To be away. So she runs.

"Sakura!" Watching her slender back recede, under the tangerine lights and into the darkness, Syaoran exhales and slams a fist into the dashboard. "Sakura..." He swallows roughly. Whispering. "I... I'm still in love with you."

Across the parking lot, down concrete steps, running. Tears stream down her flushed cheeks, running further and further away until her breath is hot and metallic and tiny flecks of blood form in her lungs. Breathing hard, running and running until her feet sink deeply into sand.

She drops, crumbling and doll-like, into the sand with her knees at her chest. Why is it always like this? What is he doing here right now? Why am I always like this? Why… Sakura sniffles and wipes her cheeks with cold palms. Nothing but the sound of the waves. Car horns from far away, why...

Why keep sleeping when nobody's dreaming… In her mind there is an echo, and it resonates through her like the ripples of the tide. No more dreams – is this what we have left for us, now that we're older? Now that you're gone? She asks these questions of herself so often that the words become meaningless, and the walls rise and the scars thicken until all feeling is numbed. When we were younger… Sakura digs her toes into cold sand, breathing in deeply. Why did things have to change?

Sex complicates. Bodies are not as simple as impulse promises them to be.

Money complicates. Having it, not having it, earning it. Syaoran's money never mattered to two children's hearts in an endless summer, stretching out tanned limbs on a sun-warmed rooftop. Sakura used to write everything down, channelling rivers of words and song through a pen and paper into those long summer evenings – before money began to weigh on her heart and constrain her river into a stream, then a narrow trickle, and then… nothing?

Now she wars with and against herself, every day behind her walls – going through the motions, heartlessly. She lives each day from 9 to 5, deep inside where nobody else can see. Watching the clock and struggling to keep breathing, she knows this.

Sex, money, choices… so their childish bond stutters, a little, in its transition to adulthood – did they jump the tracks, perhaps? Stuttering, faltering, and making naive mistakes. She remembers the taste of her own tears on the day that he left. Clenched fists, and then… nothing? An ellipsis. She remembers the taste of her tears and thinking is this how things end? Does that have to be everything? He leaves, and up go the walls, the doors, the curtains and the closets. Boarded up for all time.

Does that really have to be everything?

A pencil line of molten gold begins to inch its way across the curvature of the sea as Sakura gazes on. City lights pale across the harbour, and the breeze picks up. This is an early summer sunrise with the scent and taste of spring. She puzzles. Why? There is no reason.

No reason… In her bones, Sakura feels young. Breathing a sober, sweet breath, she is conscious of the limber energy and potential in her small body – barely twenty years old. She closes her eyes and digs her hands into the sand, absorbing this sense of power. The sky glows enormously pink gold, and it is a new day.