The insane musings of the authoress: Heh. Heh heh. Heh. :ducks for cover: Hello there? Meep.
Yeah, I know it's been an unforgivably long time. Truth is, whatever little passion I once held for this project has mostly dissipated. That - along with the fact that school is kicking me and I do actually have a life – is the core of the problem. (Having too many other projects on the go probably isn't helping either. I appear to be stupidly determined to make myself explode from overwork.)
That said, I will finish, I promise! I haven't begun an endeavour as large as this and ploughed on for so long, collecting so many readers along the way, to stop now. Oh no. This baby, my friends, is getting its conclusion.
Disclaimer: I do not own CCS or its characters. I like to take them and cause them untold amounts of metal anguish, but I always put them back afterwards. I swear.
Also, this chapter is in honour of my third anniversary of being a writer here at FF. Net! Yes, on Oct 20th three years ago, a naïve little eleven-year-old version of me signed up here. I've come such a long way since then. Thank you to everyone who has read my fics, reviewed them – both the positive and negative comments – emailed me, poked me during my sometimes all too frequent absences, kicked me on my LJ, pretended to beta (thanks, Lily!) or was just plainly a cheerleader (thanks, Sylphie!). I owe you all so much. Here's to many more anniversaries after this one!
Butterflies: In Spring
Chapter Ten
Christmas
(Sub-heading 1 – Christmas Eve)
"You know, the surprising thing is that this actually seemed like a good idea when I started," Syaoran said absently to Sakura as he used a formidable-looking kitchen utensil to prod uncertainly at the big chicken roasting away in the newly repaired oven.
In the next room Sakura frowned at the piece of tinsel that she had hung around her neck, like a sparkling blue snake.
"I'm sure it's going fine," she said, sounding just as absent as her husband had, eyes now flicking between the large, lusciously green tree and the fluffy, brand-new tinsel. "You're bound to be doing a better job at the chicken than I am at this," she added under her breath.
"What was that last part, dear?" Syaoran called into his wife. She shook her head before she remembered that he couldn't actually see her and so then said, "nothing."
She thought she'd spoken so quietly that there was absolutely no way he could have heard her, but apparently she was mistaken.
"How's it going in there?" he called as he finally closed the door of the oven again and vowed not to poke at it again for at least the next ten minutes.
Sakura groaned audibly.
"Not too good," she conceded.
"Oh," he said as he got up from his crouched position on the floor, "anything I can help you with?"
"But the chicken…" she protested weakly ((PLEASE come help me, I beg of you, take mercy on a poor young woman wrestling with the absurd thing that is tinsel!))
"Not a problem," he said breezily as he walked into the room where she was, "I promised myself I'd actually leave it alone to cook by itself without interruption for a little while, so I could actually do with the distraction."
He smiled brightly and lifted another plush piece of tinsel from the pile before draping it – effortlessly and ever-so-artistically – over one of the branches of the tree. Sakura gaped at him.
"I hate you, just a little," she said, smiling nonetheless.
"I try," he beamed, and they looked at each for a moment before laughing.
…
"The house smells like Christmas," Sakura observed as she delicately placed a silver bauble on the end of a fragrant, startlingly green branch.
Syaoran laughed softly.
"Good. I'm glad you like it. But I must admit that the whole house just stinks of chicken to me," he said with a small shrug. Sakura laughed.
"But oh, Syaoran, the pine needles! …And the chicken. Am I weird for loving the fact that the whole house smells like poultry?" she pondered, and Syaoran laughed at the thoughtful look that crossed her face.
He flicked the end of her nose without realising what he was doing and her eyes crossed to focus on his finger.
"Maybe a little," he said, lips twitching in a smile he wasn't about to let them get away with, and she let loose a smile so bright it surprised him.
…
"Syaoran, you do know they say a watched pot never boils, and all that…" Sakura said timidly when she ventured into the kitchen an hour later to find Syaoran glaring at his innocently cooking chicken and wearing a pair of (her) oven gloves.
"Yes, but an unwatched chicken burns itself to a crisp," he responded under his breath.
Sakura thought it most sensible to back away…
…slowly.
…
Sakura jolted awake with a start when she heard someone cross the threshold of the living room.
"I'm not lying under the Christmas tree!" she insisted blearily as she shot backwards quickly along the floor and stood up. There was a twig in her hair, and Syaoran laughed fondly.
"Yes, you were," he pointed out, "you were smelling the tree, weren't you?"
She colored rather guiltily.
"Maybe," she admitted. "Anyway, the chicken?"
"Done," he said, and managed to convey so much relief in the one word that Sakura felt a corresponding weight lift from her shoulders.
"Wonderful," she said sincerely. "And I trust it turned out okay?"
"Lovely," he said, "if I do say so myself. Well, I mean, it looks okay, I don't know how it'll taste… But I didn't really want to cut a bit off to taste it – would have kind of wrecked the look of it for tomorrow."
He paused for a second, Sakura looking at him with a fond eyebrow raised, and he blushed.
"Okay, watch me stop rambling now," he said sheepishly, and Sakura laughed.
…
"Do these presents really require all this ribbon?" Syaoran asked Sakura in disbelief.
"But it's fun!" she replied cheerily. "It's all sparkly and curly and why are you laughing?"
He'd been trying to smother the bubble of laughter that accompanied her descent into transports of delight.
"You've been living with Tomoyo-san far too long," he explained succinctly. Sakura pouted, then felt stupid for pouting, and settled for pouting harder.
"Pass me that ribbon," she said in what she hoped was a commanding tone. Syaoran did so.
"Now, just for that comment, your punishment is to hold down this bit of wrapping paper WHICH WILL NOT STAY PUT, DAMMIT while I attack it with liberal amounts of sticky tape. Okay?" she asked sweetly, and Syaoran nodded.
They wrapped presents (mostly) peacefully for the next hour – Sakura contorted herself into various deeply painful looking positions in order to hold down all the little, damn annoying flaps of sparkly wrapping paper at once. She had not yet resorted to utilising her tongue, but Syaoran wouldn't bet against the possibility of it happening sometime very soon.
"The devil invented wrapping paper," she proclaimed in a rather scary voice as she struggled to wrap a very strangely-shaped box (Syaoran mused that it looked like she was one step away from actually wrestling with it.) He agreed hurriedly with her as he put the last bit of sticky tape onto the present he was effortlessly wrapping.
With a huff, Sakura finally finished wrapping her present and surveyed it critically. It looked a little lumpy, but it would suffice.
"Look, Syaoran!" she said proudly as she waved the present in his face. Syaoran looked up from the present he was squinting at as he attempted to artfully attach a piece of ribbon and smiled at her.
"Well done," he complimented her, and Sakura almost glowed… Until she caught sight of the present he had just finished.
"That," she said, pausing for dramatic effect as she pointed a finger at the offending object (Syaoran winced and would have cowered, had it not been such a powerfully unmanly thing to do), "is a work of art. And it only makes me hate you more."
A silence blanketed the pair of them; a silence in which neither of them spoke, and they barely breathed (or at least, Syaoran felt as though he didn't) and then Syaoran volunteered timidly, "I'm sorry?"
Sakura collapsed into giggles and fell softly against him, a pale hand resting gently against his skin; long, delicate fingers curving along the natural circumference of his arm.
He thought about how easy it would be to sweep the soft wave of honey-colored hair from her ear and whisper the little truth that weighed heavy on his heart, but instead; when she looked at up at him with wide eyes the color of sweet spring grass and asked him if something was wrong, he shook his head, wordless.
She smiled at him then and looked at the fire burning merrily in the grate, an action which sent scarlet skittering and dancing across her irises. Syaoran felt something near his heart thud, but it wasn't painful.
"Syaoran," Sakura said finally, turning to him as she spoke, but he held up a hand and shook his head gently.
"Don't," he said softly, imploringly, "don't say anything. You'll spoil it."
…
She fell asleep over wrapping one of the presents, a clump of scarlet ribbon tangled through her hair and her face smushed into the carpet. He chuckled over the sight, softly, and debated whether or not he should move her.
He decided after a few moment's consideration that he couldn't possibly leave her with her face into the carpet like that, and so he moved her back gently, a hand on her shoulder guiding her in her gentle, slow collapse into his waiting arms. He shifted her weight in his arms when he stood up and she lolled a little, like a little girl's doll, soft and warm in that special, fuzzy-and-blurred-around-the-edges way that sleeping people seemed to have. Sleeping women.
Or maybe just Sakura, when she slept. He wasn't sure.
He didn't want to move her all the way to her bedroom, afraid that the continued motion would wake her, so instead he deposited her as lightly as he could upon the couch. He paused to smooth away a strand of hair that slashed brilliantly across the pale slope of her forehead, glinting gold.
He considered finding a blanket for her, and then decided that that was unnecessary, given the crackling fire.
So he left her, slumbering peacefully and muttering unintelligible things in her sleep, and went back to wrapping presents on the floor next to the couch.
…
He finished at two AM, and fell asleep with his upper body draped across the couch (and Sakura). He'd been watching her sleep.
In the midst of his dreams, he whispered, I love you, but neither of them heard.
…
When Syaoran awoke the next morning, Sakura had already got up off the couch. He rubbed his eyes futilely, grinding useless knuckles in before rubbing his hand through his hair vigorously to try to wake himself up.
He heaved himself up from the makeshift bed with an effort and stumbled, his gait and general demeanour bear-like in their sleepiness, into the kitchen, his eyes squinted irritably against the terrible onslaught of the early-morning sunlight.
Sakura smiled brightly at him as he came in and turned over the eggs she was frying in the pan.
"Oh, you're up. That's good, I was just about to go get –" she was cut off as Syaoran ambled over to her and pulled her gently into his arms. He laid his sleep-warm cheek against her own, and his breath played against the skin of her ear.
"Syaoran?" she began, brows drawn together, but stopped when she realised that his hold on her had suddenly become more lax; and the breath against her ear much deeper and more even.
He'd fallen asleep. Standing up.
She laughed softly as he slumped against her.
"You silly man," she chided fondly. She knew why he was tired – he must have completed that huge pile of presents that needed wrapping. He had easily done half, all on his own, after she had fallen asleep.
She really did love him, sometimes.
"Merry Christmas, Syaoran," she said, and pressed a feather-light kiss to his cheek.
…
(Sub-heading Two: Christmas Day)
…
She was wearing the dress he'd bought her, scarlet lipstick (which he'd never seen on her before, and suited her almost entirely too much) and a look of fidgety anticipation mixed with abject harassment that shouldn't have looked as adorable on her as it did.
When she walked (or, rather, bustled frantically) past him, the fragrance of the perfume that had also been part of his present to her wafted around her in a cloud, turning the very air to flowers and strawberries and the scent of freshly-washed sheets drying on the line (but a big part of him was certain that that was as much her own doing as the perfume's).
If not more.
She was alternately smoothing down her dress over her knees (all the while muttering, "oh God, please don't let me drop anything down this" in a way that was too sweet for words) and not-quite-running around in a way that suggested she was anxious that nothing should be going wrong, but that she almost wished it would so that she could be doing something with her hands.
He had to bite down a laugh.
"Everything will go fine," he tried to assure her, but she whirled on him in a way that suggested he hadn't succeeded with a certain wildness in her eyes that made him certain of the fact and bit out, "that's easy for you to say!"
"All you have to do is get the damn chicken out on time and oh my GOD I think I just heard a car pull up outside! For God's sake don't let the vegetables burn while I open the door!" she said quickly and rushed to the door.
"You're cute when you panic!" he called after her, grinning at the thought of her irritated face.
"ARGH!" was her quick response just before she wrenched the door open with a savage kind of desperation and plastered on a quick 'Look at me, I'm such a good hostess and yes, my husband is laughing his head off in the kitchen and no, that is not a tic jumping underneath my eye' smile.
On the doorstep, Tomoyo blinked. Eriol just smiled in a bemused sort of fashion.
"Um," Tomoyo began uncertainly, and looked as though she was prepared to throw her hands over her head and duck for cover any moment, should the need for such actions arise, "we brought Christmas cake?"
She gingerly held out the box.
"Oh my God I love you guys because I forgot to pick up the cake oh my God I'm so stupid Syaoran why did you let me forget to pick up the cake and I'm SO HAPPY YOU'RE HERE why don't you come in and sit down," she said in one breathless rush.
Tomoyo looked afraid.
"Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you!" she demanded, as any sane person might.
"I think I'm going to faint," Sakura said miserably. Tomoyo made a small huffing noise of disapproval that made her sound so much like Sonomi that Eriol stifled a giggle.
"Probably from lack of air, you idiot," she scolded, and immediately propped Sakura up with an arm slung around her slim waist. "Come on, you need to sit down," she said firmly, and steered Sakura into the living room.
Tomoyo shoved the box of Christmas cake into Eriol's arms and continued on her way into the living room. Eriol looked at it for a second before taking the logical course of action and taking it with him into the kitchen.
…
Syaoran was prodding expertly at a pot of simmering vegetables when Eriol walked in.
"I come bearing Christmas cake," he said.
Then, upon sniffing the air, he followed it up with, "mmm, something smells good."
"You had better be talking about my chicken," Syaoran said darkly, "after all the effort that went into that bird."
Eriol blinked.
"Okay," he said slowly, and put the box down on the table.
"Is there something in the air in this house?" he asked a second later as he pulled out a chair from the table and straddled it, looking questioningly at Syaoran. Syaoran blinked.
"Not that I know of?" he volunteered, and Eriol's brow creased.
"It's just that Sakura's freaking out-" he began.
Syaoran smiled more than a little fondly.
"Oh, Sakura's just all scared over making this perfect," he explained as he hastily turned the heat down on one of his pots of vegetables – it was bubbling a little too violently to be safe, and spitting out the occasional jet of scalding water in a vaguely grumpy manner.
"It's her first Christmas not at home or with Tomoyo-san, and she wants to make it just as wonderful as any they ever had together," he said as he donned a pair of oven gloves again and checked on his chicken. "It's almost like she's trying to prove her worth, you know? It's actually a little as if she was trying to prove to an ex that she doesn't need him."
Syaoran closed the oven door again and smiled at Eriol.
"Okay," he said, "crappy comparison, but you know what I'm getting at."
Eriol nodded.
"I do," he said, and the doorbell rang as he spoke.
…
Sakura had planned the seating, and it was decidedly strategic. The seven of them were seated comfortably around the Lis' oblong dining table, two lines along the two longest sides with nobody out on their own at either end. Sakura had sat Eriol first on one side, then put Tomoyo beside him. She then placed Touya in between Tomoyo and Yukito. On the other side, Syaoran was directly opposite Eriol, Fujitaka faced Tomoyo and Sakura faced her older brother.
Really, the whole thing was like a military operation; and the objective was to keep Touya away from Syaoran; and also keep him with Tomoyo and Sakura, ensuring that he couldn't get too close to Eriol for too long a time, because that tended to make Touya ask inappropriate questions, such as when was Eriol finally going to make an honest woman of his dear Tomoyo?
Dinner passed without anything going wrong and Sakura relaxed more and more as the night wore on (but that may have had something to do with the way Syaoran kept on filling her glass with sake. Eriol raised his eyebrow once at him, but Syaoran shrugged helplessly in a way that said clearly my defence is that this is making her loosen up and I don't think you want her to stay as tightly wound as she is, either. Besides, I'm not going to get her drunkwhat kind of husband do you take me for?)
Syaoran's chicken was simply magnificent, and everyone told him so without even being prompted, which made Syaoran's night. Tomoyo and Sakura kept Touya engaged in conversation so as to avoid absolutely anything happening between him and Syaoran, or indeed, Eriol; and Syaoran got to know his father-in-law. He turned out to be a most kindly man with fascinating anecdotes about his time as an archaeology professor.
They had Tomoyo and Eriol's day-saving Christmas cake for dessert and pulled western-style crackers, a first for many of them (Fujitaka had brought them as a sort-of joke).
There then came the gift exchange in the evening, a while after dinner. They all sat in the living room and admired the tree while an unidentifiable song played softly in the background. Tomoyo and Sakura finally got to swap the various sparkly items they had bought each other (much to the mutual despair of their other halves) and exclaimed giddily over them.
They all sat and talked, played various silly games like charades and pictionary ("Come on, Yuki, you know what this is!" Touya growled as he stabbed his drawing with an annoyed finger. Poor Yuki looked genuinely confused as to what he should be seeing but anxious that he should be seeing something. "To-ya, er, is it a bird? A plane!" he attempted, and Syaoran snickered softly as he finished off with, "no, it's superman!" in a voice that only Sakura could hear. She smiled at him) and polished off the bottles of wine and sake that Yukito, Touya and Fujitaka had brought as a thank-you for dinner.
Christmas ended too fast for Sakura as she stood with Syaoran at their front door and waved goodnight to all her guests. As they walked away with their breath turning rapidly to little clouds of frost in the fresh, frigid air, Sakura had to fight a sudden unreasonable impulse to cry.
She stared after them into the darkness for what seemed like only a few minutes, however she discovered that it had been much longer when Syaoran tapped her on the shoulder and murmured, "Sakura, dear, you'll catch a chill standing there like that."
She nodded; snapped suddenly out of her reverie, and closed the door softly. When she turned to Syaoran she saw that he had gone to the kitchen and fetched two glasses of water in the time that had lapsed. He handed one to her. He looked troubled.
"To counteract the alcohol," he explained, and she nodded before taking a sip. It was clear and cold and almost stung her throat after the lazy, soothing numbness induced by the alcohol.
A silence settled around them like a blanket laying itself over their shoulders, and while it wasn't unpleasant, each wanted to break it but didn't know how.
"Well, that went… er… well, didn't it?" Syaoran asked.
Sakura turned to him and favored him easily with a brilliant beam of a smile.
"It did, didn't it?" she asked, sounding slightly surprised but unfailingly pleased at the same time as she snapped out of whatever thought had beckoned her into a slightly dazed state of complete contemplation.
Syaoran blinked and found himself smiling helplessly back at her after a moment – her smile was contagious; it pulled the corners of his mouth up without even his consent.
"Thank you so much for cooking such a wonderful dinner," Sakura said sincerely to him. "You really helped and just concentrated while I was busy falling apart and –"
That smile lifted her whole face again even as she tried to stop the wayward twitching of her lips. She grinned hopelessly at him.
"And it really did go so well, didn't it?" she asked, and she looked so absolutely and unstoppably full of joy and relief that it radiated out from her like sunrays. Syaoran could practically feel the warmth of them.
"Onii-chan didn't even kill you!" she continued cheerfully.
Behind her, it began to snow.
"Sakura," Syaoran murmured, and pointed behind her when he managed to successfully attract her attention. She cocked an eyebrow in a silent question and turned around slowly. She let out a cry of delight when she saw the snowflakes drifting down from the sky at a calm, leisurely pace. Snowdrifts. The garden would be covered in the morning.
"Oh, Syaoran, isn't this wonderful? A white Christmas, wow!" she whispered, sounding awed as she looked over her shoulder at him. Her face was flushed, either with the cold, the alcohol or sweet triumph, he wasn't sure. But he knew it was beautiful on her (everything was beautiful on her.)
"We'll be able to make snowmen in the morning," she said.
It occurred to him as they stood there in the doorway of their house, peering out into the night and watching the first gentle falls of snow, that this would be the perfect opportunity to tell her.
'Sakura, I have a confession to make…'
His hand came to rest gently, tentatively, on her shoulder. She made a little noise, but didn't turn to face him. He got together all his courage and steeled himself to let loose this most important secret…
…but Sakura spoke first.
"Merry Christmas, Syaoran," she said softly.
Syaoran closed his mouth and smiled wearily.
"Merry Christmas, Sakura," he told the back of her head.
Sakura began to sing a carol and when Syaoran whispered his most important secret into her hair, she didn't hear.
…
AN: I think, out of everything I've ever written, this is the longest amount of time a single chapter of ANYTHING has taken to write. (Of course, that said, this chapter probably only took about ten hours of actual solid labour in the end – it was the agonising and procrastinating and deleting and re-writing I did in-between that made it take… Er… .:checks:. Almost exactly four months! Wow, that was a long time, but I did imagine it was more like six or seven…
Anyway, I'll try to be prompter next time, but no promises .:winces:. It should have another chapter in time for its second (SECOND! Wow!) birthday on Jan 1st. I do still love you all.
Shattered Midnight Dreams…zzz…
Because life's like that sometimes …