Nocturne

By Ekai Ungson

DISCLAIMER: Card Captor Sakura copyright CLAMP and other related enterprises.

Notes: Welcome to where a plot actually begins! We get… Eriol with a concussion! Tomoyo with a day job! A rather funny story involving a flight of stairs! And other such madness. ^-^

It wasn't his damned fault, really.

But that morning Eriol woke up entwined with a pile of bodies still in the pier warehouse. Everyone present, which was still a substantial number of people, had been knocked out and were in various positions draped over the seats, or tables, and some were lying on the floor.

He blinked a few times, found his cell phone, his car keys, and left the place. His head was pounding, but he managed to get to his condominium building with eliciting very little fear from innocent civilians.

In a fit of temporary insanity that he blamed the alcohol on, he didn't take the elevator and took his chances on the flight of stairs. Which would be good, had his unit not been on the fourteenth floor and was not that very long a way, and had he not been under the stupor of the worst hangover of his partying life.

And so, while walking up the stairs, studying each step on the way, he found himself entranced with one particular landing and—

Promptly fell asleep in the middle of the goddamn stairway, and as a result, fallen down five flights.

And now, he was in the hospital.

Eriol began cursing foully.

Quatro: Spirit

Normally, people found that Harley-Davidson motorcycles belonged to burly, tattooed men with full beards and leather outfits, with grease on their gloves and on their faces.

Normally, they found nurses to be kind-faced young women who talked in soft voices and wore immaculate white outfits.

Daidouji Tomoyo was a nocturnal party animal, who rode a Harley-Davidson, wore a leather jacket, and had a quip to every comment.

She was also one of the most capable nurses in the largest private hospitals in Tokyo.

Which only went to show how much people knew about normal. She parked the motorcycle and went to the nurses' locker room to change from jeans and shirt to her nurse's uniform, and had barely hung her coat up when the head nurse handed her a clipboard and said, "Patient, room 1021. The medication's in the basket."

Tomoyo went as instructed, picking up the wire basket containing some—whoa, pretty potent painkillers we've got here! Then she opened the door to 1021.

She was greeted with what could be classified as one of the bigger shocks of her life.

"… You?!"

~~~~

Eriol sat up and stared at the nurse that had just entered his room. Black hair, dark eyes, yep, it was her! He could barely believe it but it was definitely her. He recovered in a split-second.

"Our paths cross again," he quipped. Then he stared at her. "You're not happy to see me."

"Do I have reason to be?" Tomoyo returned as she approached the bed.

"Lots of women have enough reason to be happy. My face is enough reason," Eriol said.

Tomoyo rolled her eyes. "Somehow, I believe seeing you as you are now would somehow dampen their crazed lust for you." She looked at him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Eriol flinched. "Those are harsh words for the disabled," he wailed mournfully.

She picked up the medical file. "… Hiiragizawa Eriol. Slight concussion, and a broken leg. A broken leg? Ouch."

"Thanks a lot for relating," he said dryly.

"I'm just saying," she replied. "Let me guess. You fell off a flight of stairs going up to your apartment because you were so damned drunk and refused to admit it. How correct am I?"

"Very," he intoned. "How do you know?"

"This isn't the first time I see a file like this," she shrugged. "Drunk much?"

"Can we not talk about this?"

She shrugged again and reached for the clipboard. "Standard questions—when was the last time you had yourself checked out?"

He grinned. "All the time."

She glanced at him sidelong. "I meant medically."

His face fell. "Oh… I don't remember."

She turned back to the clipboard. "You take alcohol—duh, of course you do, because if you don't you wouldn't be here in the first place," and at that Eriol made a derisive little noise, and Tomoyo smiled sweetly at him.

"Do you do drugs? The illegal stuff?"

"No."

She turned to him, clearly doubtful.

"I really don't; stuff's revolting if you ask me," he said in a toneless voice.

She stared at him a few more seconds then reached for the wire basket. She selected a plump bottle and placed it on his bedside table. "Take one now and every eight hours. I'll check."

Then she wrote something down on the clipboard and turned to go.

"Later, Little Boy Blue."

Eriol's eyes narrowed. Little Boy Blue?

~~~tsuzuku