Promises to Keep, chapter 2
"Fishnet stockings by the chimney"
(more random fluff from Risu-chan ^_^)
Sakura blinked her way back to consciousness a couple of hours later, hearing snippets of soft conversation.
"...more comfortable to sleep in her own bed..."
"...don't want to disturb her..."
"Yue could carry her..."
Sakura put a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn that threatened to crack her jaw, and scrubbed at her eyes. "Hmm...?"
"The monster wakes!" Touya declaimed, and then sharply bent over his assaulted ribcage. "...Ow! You been sharpening your elbows or something...?"
"Hmph!" Sakura struggled again to coax her awkward bulk out of the sofa, which was deep and comfortable but assumed an ability to bend forward which was rather impaired by the roundness and fullness of her middle. "I should clean up, since you brought dinner..."
"Already taken care of," Yukito said, smiling; she blinked at the sparkling-clean table.
"How long was I asleep?"
"As long as you needed to be," Yukito replied, and got up to take a plate off the kitchen counter to hand to her. "You're hungry again by now, aren't you."
Sakura opened her mouth to ask why she would be, and then realized how good the food smelled, even cooled to room temperature; she managed a quick "Thanks!" before she dove in.
Touya made a show of backing away. "Careful, Yuki. Looks like this one bites. Better stay out of reach or she might start eating us too..."
Around a mouthful of rice, Sakura mumbled, "O-nii-chan!"
"It takes a lot of food to get that fat!" Touya said, and then swore vehemently as she kicked him in the ankles hard.
"You... you... you're so mean...!" She gulped down the last of the food on the plate and looked up at Yukito pleadingly. "Am I really that fat...?"
"You're not fat at all," he said, sitting on his heels to smile up at her. "You've grown, of course; as the baby develops, you're blossoming with it. And you're not at all overweight; you're simply ripening. Smile, so that our blossoming Sakura-flower will be a happy one." He reached up and set a fingertip under her chin, and smiled for her, because he knew that she still couldn't resist his smiles; her cheeks pinked again, and she made a soft dazed sound that sounded something like 'hanyaaaan.'
Yukito looked up at her smirking brother, and said, "One of the two of us is sleeping on the sofa tonight if you don't apologize and start behaving yourself."
"I can't help it if she looks like a whale!" Touya said.
"...ONIICHAN!!"
"What?" he asked. "I'm sure whales get pregnant too..."
"Oniichan no baka!" Both hands fisted, blinking at tears, she started thumping on him vigorously; laughing a little, and yelping a little too, Touya tried to fend her off without much success until Yukito gathered her into his arms and rested his cheek against the crown of her head.
"Sakura-chan," he murmured, "I made a promise to Shaoran-kun. I promised him you'd be safe and protected here this week, and that you'd rest comfortably, and wouldn't need to be upset. So any time you feel like being upset, tell me and I'll be upset for you instead, all right?"
Sakura nodded against his chest, with tears of frustration trickling down her cheeks. "He's such an idiot...!" she choked. "Even if... if I do look like a whale... he doesn't have to say it like that..."
Touya made a small sound of shock, and said, "Monster, are you really crying...?"
"Touya, be quiet for a minute," Yukito said, smoothing Sakura's hair gently.
"I didn't mean--" He stopped, and looked away. "Aw, hell..."
"Sakura-chan, your brother loves you very, very much," Yukito murmured, "so much that it frightens him sometimes. Because he also loved your mother very, very much, and she died. And he's clumsy when he's frightened. And sometimes he's clumsy whether or not he's frightened; and sometimes he's just impossible because he wants to be. He's not comfortable being that unguarded; it makes him feel vulnerable to be gentle without teasing you. But he's going to learn this week." Yukito looked up at him over Sakura's head, and added, "Because one of us is definitely going to be sleeping on the sofa until he does."
"Hey!" Touya reached toward Yukito; calmly, Yukito pushed his hand away.
"I have promises to keep, To-ya," he replied. "Both to Sakura-chan and to Shaoran-kun -- and to you yourself, if you recall. You asked Yue to protect Sakura-chan for you, when you gave me your power; I intend to keep that promise too. When she's feeling strong and energetic, the two of you can tease each other all you like; but right now she's not that strong. Her strength is going for her baby. I know you love her; she knows you love her too; but you're going to be gentler with her this week, because she doesn't need to have to be strong enough to fight back against you too. Understood?"
Touya looked back and forth between his sniffling sister and his surprisingly stern-faced lover, and he ran a hand through his hair. "I was kidding," he said, rather lamely.
"And you're not going to do it again. No more teasing that you can see is upsetting to her. Not this week. --Promise me, To-ya." Over the years, Yukito had learned from Yue's unswerving resolution; he rarely used that stern resolve, but when he did, he was adamant, however quietly and gently he spoke.
Touya knew it, too. "I promise, Yuki."
"Now apologize to Sakura-chan."
"Yuki..."
Yukito looked at him, steadily, unflinching, and Touya looked away first; he stood up and sighed, and dug both hands through his hair, and then sat on the edge of the coffee table and reached over to touch his sister's knee gently.
"Hey, monster," he said gruffly. "I'm sorry. You're always going to be my monster, you know; I can't help that part. But I... um... I didn't mean to make you cry..." He shrugged a little, helplessly. "Yuki's right, I'm a clumsy jerk sometimes. I'll try to be more careful. Baby monsters are more fragile, after all... I... um... I'm really sorry. Forgive me...?"
Sakura scrubbed at her cheeks and nodded a little, still not looking at him. In a very tiny voice, she said, "It's okay... I know I've gotten... big around. You don't have to remind me... I don't forget..."
Touya groaned, and looked up at Yukito, and said, "I feel like the world's most insensitive asshole right now. What do I do?"
Yukito didn't reply directly, still gently smoothing Sakura's hair. "I think he should work a little to make it up to you, don't you, Sakura-chan? Something completely indulgent and pampering. Say, breakfast in bed. Fresh pancakes with strawberries, and orange juice. Does that sound good?"
Still huddled around her shame, Sakura murmured, "Never mind... it's all right..."
"Crepes with chocolate chips, then," Yukito said. "and ice cream. And he cleans your room for you this week. We'll need to get Tomoyo-chan to make him a maid's outfit."
A little alarmed, Sakura blinked up at him. "No, really, Yukito-san... it's... it's not..."
"Better the first time?" he asked, a fingertip to his lips. "You're right; you do need to think of nuitrition, after all. So, To-ya, pancakes tomorrow morning. And strawberries, and juice. In a maid's outfit. I'm sure there's a store that rents them. Black silk, with a tulle skirt, and a lace apron. And black fishnet stockings..."
"Yukito-san!" Sakura yelped, beating Touya to it only because her brother was choking and wheezing and thumping one fist weakly on the floor.
"Pancakes!" Touya gasped. "Pancakes and strawberries and juice, tomorrow morning, fine, but no fishnet stockings anywhere..."
"No fishnet stockings," Sakura agreed faintly. "Er. No. Definitely not."
Yukito turned his most beatific smile on them both. "You see, I knew we could work this out!"
Brother and sister traded an identical look of bemusement; then Sakura started to giggle, and Touya said, "Remind me never to ask him what his definition of 'not working it out' is."
As they closed the drapes and turned down the lights and prepared for bed, though, Sakura hesitated in the middle of the living room, hugging her pajamas to herself with her cheeks pinked again.
"What is it?" Touya asked, coming back from locking the kitchen door.
"I... can I ask..." She gulped a little, and bent her face into the pajama fabric, and said all in a rush, "CanIaskYuesanforhelpwithsomething?"
Touya and Yukito blinked at each other. "Something you can't ask of either of us?" Yukito said, a little wistfully.
"It's just... embarrassing... and Yue-san doesn't laugh very much, so I hope he wouldn't laugh at me..." She gulped again, and said in a very small voice, "I'm getting... so clumsy, lately -- I mean, I'm always getting... rounder, and heavier, it's difficult to adjust... and... I don't want to slip and fall on the wet tiles in the bathroom... Shaoran insisted I shouldn't be in a bath alone, and I know he's overprotective but it makes sense, I don't want the baby to get overheated and I don't want to slip, but it's too embarrasing to ask one of you -- I'd almost rather ask Kero-chan because he's not human at all, but it made much more sense to send him in Shaoran's carry-on, and I'm not supposed to use the cards unless it's an emergency, and even if I could, the Mirror card would look just like me right now, which would be twice as awkward, and... I'm babbling, aren't I...? I'm sorry..."
Touya and Yukito looked at each other; then Touya took a step forward and hugged his sister close, despite her bulge, and said, "You know I changed your diapers when you were small enough to carry in one arm. And if Yukito had existed then, I'm sure he'd have helped."
"But that's why I can't ask you," Sakura said, fiercely blushing. "I'm embarrassed enough as it is!"
The moon-hued brilliance of Yue's power poured through the room for a moment, and he furled his wings behind himself. "I won't laugh at you," he said soberly. "Neither would Yukito, but he's been teasing you both this evening, so we understand your concern."
Touya and Sakura both looked at Yue -- his pale and slender elegance, the robes that brushed the floor when he put his feet on the ground, the long silver-white hair that trailed the ground behind him -- and then they looked at each other, and Touya chuckled.
"If nothing else, we're going to have to pin all that hair up, or it'll get soaked and he'll be dripping like a wet rat all evening!"
"I would never look like a wet rat," Yue replied, just a bit miffed beneath the perpetual calm.
Sakura glowered up at her big brother, and said, "I think you owe Yue-san strawberry pancakes for breakfast too. Whales and wet rats; you're so rude!"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Touya grinned evilly at the tall angel. "Just your luck that the only hair-clips in the house are left from when Sakura was in grade school. You're going to be completely adorable with pink plastic Hello Kitty bows all over your head."
Yue tried his best to put on a quelling glare. It didn't work when the porcelain of his complexion was ever so faintly stained with pink.
Sakura elbowed her brother in the ribs again. "Oniichan! You just got done promising Yukito-san you'd stop upsetting people!"
"Nope. I got done promising Yukito I'd stop upsetting you. This guy's fair game; if he's got issues, he can gripe at Yukito for not getting a good enough promise out of me!"
"Oniichan..."
"He tried to get me into a black silk maid outfit with fishnets and you expect me not to take any chance for vengeance I can get?" Touya asked with a rhetorical flourish at the ceiling. "Where's the justice in that?"
Sakura thought about it for a minute and sighed. "But that was Yukito-san. Yue-san would never try something like that."
"You sure about that? They've got more in common than they let on."
That pink tinge to Yue's face was brightening a bit; somehow he kept his face straight as he murmured, "I assure you I have no intentions of putting anyone in fishnets."
"Oh, I know that," Touya said. "But Yukito would just laugh if I went at him with the Hello Kitty hairclips; it's no fun picking on someone unless they get bothered! Come on, you've got some pink and frillly humiliations to suffer."
Sakura blinked at her big brother, who was chortling to himself as he pulled a double handful of hair clips and ribbons out of a box in the top of the linen closet. In a low voice, Yue said, "Mistress, is this completely necessary...?"
"Let's see how fast we can braid your hair," Sakura suggested. "Maybe if we can get it out of temptation's range fast enough...?"
Despite their best efforts, Yue had a lot of hair to be dealt with; while he and Sakura braided, Touya entertained himself by reaching over and sticking clips and bows and ribbons in completely at random. When they were finished, it took Sakura all the willpower she had not to laugh at her poor longsuffering guardian; Touya had no such mercy, unrepentantly cracking up every time he looked at Yue's head. The hastily-done braids were wound around the top of his head like a somewhat lopsided daisy-crown, and Touya had thrown enough random pink bits of preteen plastic cuteness into the tangle that Yue's hair looked distressingly like a vanilla-frosted cupcake dipped in bright sprinkles.
"I am and will eternally be grateful for his gift, but there are times I utterly despair of my other self's taste," Yue murmured. "To have chosen someone with a personality like that..."
Sakura reached up on tiptoe to try to smooth out a couple of wild white ends that were sticking out at random, then bit her lip when Touya guffawed again; she took Yue's hands between her own and said, "Let's go. He can laugh by himself for a while."
Yue followed her toward the bathroom stiffly, his shoulders squared against the sound of Touya's enthusiastic hilarity. One of the more precariously-placed hairclips fell out and bounced down the stairs; Yue hesitated, and Sakura tugged on his hand again. "Come on," she said, almost begging. "I'm so sorry, Yue-san. Tomorrow we'll figure out something better to do with your hair. And no Hello Kitty, on my honor..."
"Or fishnets?" Touya wheezed, leaning on the edge of the stairwell.
"No fishnets at all, anywhere, on anybody," Sakura said firmly, and stuck out her tongue at him before she closed the bathroom door behind the still utterly-miserable Yue.
They could both hear Touya laughing in the hallway; Sakura murmured, "I'm really, really sorry, Yue-san..." She brushed a hand over his feathers lightly; they always ruffled up when he was feeling wary or cornered or upset, and likely he was feeling all three right now. "I'll try to be really quick, okay?"
Yue breathed a soft sigh, and shook his head. "Don't rush or you will slip, Mistress." A flicker of something else crossed his face for a moment; it looked almost like pain, and Yue touched his fingertips to his temples gingerly. In a too-neutral voice, he said, "Yukito insists that I ask you for a mirror. He wants to see why Touya was laughing so much."
"He isn't watching, is he?" Sakura wailed.
"He'll respect your privacy," Yue replied, still looking pained. "Mine, however, seems to be far more negotiable."
Sakura bit her lip hard, caught between concern and the tug of those treacherous giggles. "Poor, poor Yue-san... here." She opened the cabinet and took out a hand-mirror to give to him, then turned away in an awkward attempt to try to give Yue something resembling privacy to suffer his embarrassment in.
Sakura heard the rustle of his wings, and suspected he was bristling even more at the sound of Yukito's laughter in his mind. Although he'd learned both joy and laughter from Yukito, outright teasing was something that the solemn and reserved angel still struggled with -- which, of course, made him a prime target for both her elder brother and Yue's own mischievous other self, not to mention the eternally irrepressible Kero-chan. Sakura felt very much on Yue's side in the ongoing teasing-battles, because she still struggled with her brother's teasing too.
The mirror clicked against the shelf when Yue put it down, and he murmured aloud, "I said you can laugh at me with your boyfriend later. My mistress is in need of assistance. Go to sleep."
With her hands hesitating on the buttons of her maternity gown, Sakura said rather fiercely, "Oniichan really is an idiot, isn't he? This is embarrassing enough for me; he didn't have to go out of his way to make you miserable too!"
Yue paused, and tilted his head a bit to one side, and said, "That's why he did it, then, isn't it."
"Of course it is!" Sakura said, her hands shaking with frustration. "Whenever he can torture even more people..."
"No, that's not what I mean." Quietly, Yue took the task of unfastening the buttons from her. "It puts us in balance," he murmured. "I don't understand why you find your need embarrassing, but right now I understand the fact of embarrassment all too well; and you can't cripple yourself with self-consciousness when you need only take one look at me to realize that some things are far more humiliating than the simple awkwardness of your pregnancy. So we can understand each other a bit more easily, like this."
Still blushing, Sakura said, "And we can think up what we're going to do to pay him back, too."
"Oh, most definitely," Yue agreed, steadying her as she stepped over the sill into the shower area.
"There has to be something worse than fishnets out there!"
Yue blinked, realizing yet again the hidden depths of determination within this deceptively sweet-and-gentle-looking young woman. A bit weakly, he said, "Worse than fishnets, Mistress?"
"I'm sure you'd have found fishnets less torturous than those old Hello Kitty hairpins, Yue-san," Sakura said, scrubbing shampoo into her hair. "You wear leggings all the time. ...So we have to think of something that's even awfuller than pink plastic grade-school girl hairclips to put on him!"
"...Remind me never, ever to make you angry with me, Mistress."
Downstairs, looking through the refrigerator to see whether he had the ingredients he'd need for the next morning's pancakes, Touya sneezed. Then he looked up towards the bathroom with a rogue's grin. "Yeah, whatever..."
