A/N: This vignette takes place some time after the last one about messes. For the sake of the vignette, let's pretend that sunburn begins to peel very soon after one gets it.
Also: thank you so much for everyone's responses to the series! I'm glad you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Not even a funny disclaimer!
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"No – ow, ow, ow – Darien, please – "
"Would you stop wiggling around already?"
"But it hurts – "
"If you want me to stop, just say so!"
"No, don't – " She gasped and arched. "Oh!"
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Several hours earlier:
Darien had hoped that his tendency to wake up at the crack of dawn would take a break during their vacation. Much as he appreciated his ability to function as his own alarm clock (a useful skill considering Serena's own uncanny ability to throw her arms out in her sleep and silence the alarm clock the very instant it began ringing, without him being any the wiser that it had gone off) when he had to worry about getting to work on time, being up early when he was on vacation was more of a curse than a blessing.
If he had something to do, it might be a little different.
But there weren't any youma at the beach. (There probably weren't any back in Tokyo, either, although Lita and the others had promised they would sleep with one eye open just in case.)
And the nephrology books that he had packed to study while he was here had, he discovered last night, been snuck out of his suitcase and replaced with flower-covered swimming trunks and an absolutely fluorescent Hawaiian shirt. He had assured Serena that he wouldn't wear them even if it meant wearing his tuxedo on the beach. She had responded with pouting lips and pulled his favorite navy blue swimming trunks out of her own suitcase.
Darien rolled over now onto his back, using his bare feet to push the sheets off his legs.
The room was already warm – they had left the balcony doors open last night, letting in the balmy, salt-tangy breeze from the water – and Serena beside him radiated warmth, more like a miniature sun than a moon. But she'd always been like that, really, he reflected briefly, and he rather thought he liked it better that way.
Turning onto his side, he turned his studying eyes to his wife.
She was curled up on her side, facing him, bundled up in the thin white sheet like an infant wrapped against the cold, only her face peeking out. It was pink, a faint sheen of perspiration gluing her curled golden bangs to her cheeks in tiny curlicues.
Darien frowned. Serena only slept curled up like that when she had had a nightmare. Usually she slept stretched out, her limbs flung out like sunbursts, her hand in his face and her legs across his as often as not.
She seemed to be sleeping easily enough now, though. Her face was smooth and peaceful despite its flush.
Darien pushed the sheet back from her face a little, letting more air in, before he slid out of the bed, careful not to jar the mattress and wake her.
When they had first married, he had found himself wishing that she didn't sleep so late all the time. He had known of her sleeping habits before, of course – how many times had he teased her about them, after all? – but it was different when they were living together day after day. He had found himself slightly annoyed as he moved through his morning rituals, scooping out his coffee grinds, putting his bagel in the toaster, reading the newspaper, all very carefully and quietly so that he wouldn't wake her. He knew that few people on the planet, much less Serena, woke up as early as he did, but there had still been something grating about being awake while she still slept, unperturbed.
Then one day, Serena had kicked him out of the house to spend a "Guys' Night" with Motoki and Asanuma.
As they slid into a booth at a pizza joint – Motoki had refused to go to anywhere that served burgers, stating that he could eat as many as he wanted for free at the arcade – Darien had been surprised by how enthusiastic his two friends had been about being there. Asanuma was practically hugging Motoki, he seemed so happy to be out of the house, and Motoki was practically letting him, he seemed so happy about the same thing.
"Well, not that I don't love her," said Asanuma when Darien noted this with a lifted brow, "but I feel like I haven't seen anyone but Rei in forever! It's going to drive me insane!"
Motoki had nodded vigorously in agreement as he gulped from his margarita. Darien's eyebrow had twitched even further up.
"Sometimes it seems like Lita's always there," Motoki said, sighing. "In the afternoon, at night, in the morning… I think if there was just one little break in the day when I just had some space to myself, it would be okay."
"Right?" exclaimed Asanuma, slapping down his empty beer bottle in vigorous agreement. He motioned to the bartender for another one.
Darien, listening to all this with growing alarm – more because of the realization that he was listening to his friends vent as though they were a group of female friends in a chick flick than by any fear that Motoki and Asanuma's relationships were in actual jeopardy – came to an epiphany that was as unexpected and humbling as his realization that he was as much to blame in the house's mess as Serena was had been.
When he got home after their "Guys' Night," Serena had been sprawled out on the living room floor, sketchbook beneath her chin and girly pop music blaring from the stereo in the dining room.
He recognized from how far she was in her sketchbook (which had been brand-new and empty the day before), and from the sparkling eyes she lifted up at him as he shut the front door behind him, that she had been very productive while he was gone.
"Did you have fun?" she asked brightly, rolling on her stomach to grab the remote and turn down the music.
"Asanuma and Motoki are both drunk" was his answer.
"Wow. That much fun, huh?" She rolled over again, grinning up at him as he plopped down on the ottoman beside her. "And here I am working on a Saturday night. It's like we've switched personas from who we were when we met!"
"And vocabularies, too," he said, nudging her foot with his. "Persona's an SAT word." He leaned over to see her sketchbook. "Wow, you really got a lot of designs done tonight."
"Well, you know," she said modestly. "Alone Time can be very inspiring."
Darien had looked at her.
"Yeah," he'd said slowly. "I've noticed."
He'd paused then, massaging the arch of her foot with his toes. Then, "What time do you really wake up, Serena?"
She had blinked up at him. She'd opened her mouth…then closed it again. "And here I thought I kept the TV so low you wouldn't hear it."
"I didn't, really," he said. "Only once or twice. I thought they were isolated incidents when you'd woken up a little early. But Motoki and Asanuma were talking today about how being with Lita and Rei all the time was driving them insane, and I couldn't really empathize with them."
"So you figured it was because I pretend to sleep in at morning and give you time to yourself instead of just because I'm so adorable and wonderful that you could never get sick of me?"
She had batted her eyelashes, and he had laughed.
He had also never resented her for sleeping in again, even when she really was sleeping in and not just faking to give him time to himself.
His reminiscing done, Darien went to the kitchenette to make coffee. When it finished brewing a few minutes later, he stepped quietly out onto the balcony rail itself, as he had often done at his old apartment, and sipped from his mug. He watched the hazy morning light seep across the waves and sparkle on the sand.
Vaguely, he contemplated going downstairs for a newspaper, but he wanted to be able to hear if Serena had another nightmare.
It seemed strange to him that she would have had a nightmare, he thought as he swung his legs over the railing, sitting there with his legs swinging over the pool and the shoreline stretching out three stories beneath him.
She'd only had a handful of real nightmares (by real, he meant concerning anything more menacing than discovering that their pantry had run out of cookies) since their wedding last summer. For her to have one now, on the first day of their beach trip, seemed odd. She had been completely fine yesterday, splashing around in the waves, devising various plots to get sand in his hair, building castles with a random group of middle school kids who mistook her for one of them on their summer school trip to the beach.
"Don't jump!"
The gasped words behind him startled Darien nearly out of his skin. Only his fists, clenching in shocked reflex around the metal railing, kept him from toppling off the railing and splashing into the pool several stories below.
Serena, behind him, burst into a fountain of laughter. "Your face – "
" – wasn't funny," he finished in a grumble, prying his fingers from the metal. He eyed the hand-shaped dent his grip had left behind.
Then he pushed himself up, drawing his legs out from where they had dangled in empty space to fold them beneath him, and flipped neatly backward off the rail to land in front of her, face ascowl.
She grinned back at his glower, as she usually did, and reached up to tousle his hair.
"I'm glad you decided life was still worth living," she said primly.
Then she frowned a little, brushing her fingers across his scalp. "Darien!" Now she was laughing again. "There's STILL sand in here!"
"Thanks to you," he said, blinking as a bit of sand showered past his face to spatter on the floor. "You dumped so much sand on me yesterday that it's probably entered my bloodstream by now. My cerebrospinal fluid, even."
"A big brain like yours can take a little sand now and then." Serena grabbed his hand with the mug in it and took a sip.
Her face blanched. "ICK! Coffee? Why didn't you warn me?"
"What did you think it was?" he said, amused.
"Orange juice!"
"In a mug?" But she was still spluttering, and he took pity on her. He cupped his hand in the air, summoning vapor from the ocean-drenched air to collect in his palm, then held it to her mouth.
She sipped cautiously, holding his wrist steady with her fingers, then grimaced.
"Salty," she explained at his arched brow.
"Well, aren't you just Miss Picky this morning."
"Mrs. Picky," she corrected, making another little face and taking another sip from his hand.
Her correction, and the feeling and sight of her delicately holding his hand to her lips was just a little too much; he took away his hand and replaced it with his lips.
Serena hummed happily, leaning into him.
After a minute, she broke away just enough to say, "We still have a no kissing after coffee rule, just so you know. The only reason I'm kissing you right now is because you made me drink icky coffee and saltwater. You don't taste any worse than my mouth already does."
"Rats, you discovered my evil plan," said Darien with mock disappointment, trapping her against the balcony railing.
Serena smiled against his chin, leaning away to say something else – then cried out.
"What?" Darien shot to immediate alertness, grabbing her by the shoulders in case she was about to fall backward.
But she cried out again, a little keening breath, and hunched her shoulders beneath his hands, pushing them off.
" – hurts," she hissed between her teeth. She twisted her head, looking back over her shoulder.
He gently turned her by the waist, pulling up the back of the light, baggy shirt that she had worn to sleep.
What he saw made him hiss as well. Serena's back was an angry, angry pink red, as though she had lain in a bath of red dye.
He pushed up her shirt higher, certain that the sunburn had to end somewhere, that Serena had just forgotten to put sun block on her lower back. But the angry red continued up, up, up, not even stopping at her hair. He could see the pink of her scalp beneath her thick braids.
"Odango," he said, his voice part sympathy, part exasperation, and mostly disbelief. "Did you put any sun block on?"
She winced. The movement shifted her angry skin against his fingertips, and although the friction was nearly nonexistent, she winced again.
"Ow," she whispered sheepishly. "Um, my face lotion had some in it, but – "
"Serena!" He was slightly angry with himself as well; he should have noticed her burning yesterday. The fact that he'd worn sunglasses all day and that they hadn't turned any lights on when they finally came back up to the suite after watching the sunset last night didn't excuse him. No wonder she'd had a nightmare last night; she'd probably been feverish from the sunburn.
He huffed out an annoyed sigh again, kneading his forehead with his knuckles. With one hand, he let her shirt back down again, careful lest it touch her skin, and with the other, he reached for her Subspace pocket.
She leaned her forehead against his shoulder, sighing as his fingers began to search through her pocket. "I haven't needed since I became a Senshi. Whenever we went to the beach, a youma always ended up attacking, so any sunburn I got always healed while I was transformed…"
"Hmm…" Darien was only slightly mollified by her explanation. His forehead began to crease as he swept his fingers again through her Subspace pocket, across what felt like a cell phone, granola bars, and bottles of water. Where was it…? The crease between his eyes began to dig deeper.
At last, he paused, his hand still in the pocket. "Odango, when did you last see your brooch?"
Her chin moved against his shoulder as she spoke. "I took it out when I was cleaning out my Subspace pocket so I could put food in it for in case we got plane-wrecked…oh."
Darien sighed.
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Presently:
"If you want me to stop, just say so!"
"No, don't – " She gasped and arched. "Oh!"
"Oh my God," Darien muttered, wincing as he looked at the piece of flaky, sun burnt skin that he had just peeled from her back. "Save those words for a different context, please, Odango."
Serena twisted around to scowl at him, then cried out and flinched as the movement pulled at her sunburned skin again. "I can't help it!" she wailed, sounding remarkably like the middle school who had thrown a test paper at him years ago. "You're peeling my skin off!"
"Because you told me to," retorted Darien. He looked at the curls of flaky skin lying in the small garbage can beside him, his stomach – which was unaffected even when he cut into patients with a scalpel for surgery – flip-flopping. "I can't believe I'm doing this… Please, Serena, don't make me do this anymore."
Serena was also looking at the skin in his hand with nausea in her expression, but she swallowed. "Darien Shields, when I was giving birth to your children, drowning in waves of pain, did I say, Darien, please don't make me do this anymore?'"
"We haven't had children yet!" He cut her off as she began to say something. "Rini doesn't count."
She craned her neck around from where she sat on the hotel bed to give him a look that clearly said his argument was irrelevant. "I've seen my future self, and I know just from the fact that she lets your future self wear that ridiculous purple tuxedo that she wouldn't say any such a thing, because she loves you very much and would do anything for you!"
Serena stomped her foot repeatedly throughout this last part to give it emphasis. "So you just finish peeling my back so we can go back outside!"
Darien tried one more time. "Serena, sweetheart, I do love you, but you're not supposed to peel sunburned skin – "
"DARIEEEEN!" Serena wailed. "I want to go back out to the beach! I don't wanna stay in here all vacation! Just finish peeling it so I can go outside today without my back looking like I've got skin dandruff, and when we get home, I'll use the crystal to heal it up as good as new!"
This was definitely against Darien's better judgment. He was a doctor, for God's sake. But Serena was glaring at him so fiercely that he was afraid he might get sunburn, so he sighed.
"Fine. But next time we go on a trip, we're writing a checklist of things that we need to bring along." Darien began to peel away another piece of Serena's skin. "And the Silver Crystal will be at the top of the list."
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They went out and spent the day on the beach – although Darien wouldn't let Serena out from under the umbrella. Still, she had fun "accidentally" getting sand in his hair again as she made sand castles in the shade.
"How does your back feel?" he asked he as they trooped up to the room that evening after eating dinner.
"Great!" she said stubbornly, determined not to complain lest he make fun of her again for leaving the silver crystal behind (as he had done already at least twenty times that day).
"Are you sure?" Darien arched a brow. "Because if the skin's still very tender, it would probably be best if you didn't wear anything over it…"
He trailed off.
Serena stopped abruptly in the bedroom doorway and cast him a glance over her shoulder. "You're just full of evil plans this vacation, aren't you?"
Darien just grinned.
And the next morning, they both slept in.
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A/N: It occurred to me that this is the only place ANYWHERE that you will read the line "Darien began to peel away another piece of Serena's skin." (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) Also, please tell me what you think. And remember, if anyone has vignettes ideas they would like to see written, please feel free to send them to eightsword(at)gmail(dot)com.