my lover's box, rated pg-13. nemuro/utena (garbage challenge). post-series. 739 words.
(i'm afraid i'll never get to heaven so send me an angel)
She found the box under his side of the bed late one afternoon not long before he was due home from work. She didn't make it a habit to snoop through the things he kept tidied away so neatly in their half-ordered, half-disordered apartment, but then she didn't make it a habit to clean up what he regarded to be her "messes" either. That day she had felt like cleaning, and given it happened so rarely she felt she should run with her instinct.
The box was a simple thing, made of a wood she couldn't identify and carved with little roses that almost made her drop it. She had hated roses for such a long time that she couldn't remember ever liking their heavy petals and heavier scent, but she held on to the box for one reason only. From the beginning she knew he hated roses as much as she did, so why has she found this box under their bed?
It was filled with odd little pieces of memorabilia, she found as she carefully sifted through the contents. Sitting cross-legged on the floor beside their bed (his side made, her side looking like a herd of elephants had struck in the dead of night) she removed movie ticket stubs, dinner receipts, concert tickets (most classical, but a few are pop concerts she talked him into), old wine corks, pieces of ribbon from gifts, dried flowers, old diaries and calendars…and photographs. Prints, Polaroids, negatives, framed portraits. Some she recognised, while others…she had no idea at the time they'd ever been taken at all.
What struck her the most, however, was the fairytale book. It was very old, she could see that; she wondered if it had belonged to someone much earlier in his family history. It was the date in there that made her think, it part of an inscription.
To Mamiya: happy fifth birthday! Love from your big sister, 1952.
It wasn't just that odd faded script that made her wonder, though – it was more the way her partner has gone through the pages and replaced the head of every prince in every fairytale with a picture of her face.
"What are you doing?"
He has always moved silently, but after five years together she was no longer surprised by his sudden cat-like appearances. Instead she just craned her head, tilted the box in his direction as he came to kneel at her side.
"What is this?"
He pinked slightly, reached up one hand to adjust his spectacles. "It's just…stuff."
"I can see that." She sifted a hand through the contents again, her expression belying her surprise. "I just…never thought you would keep this kind of…stuff."
"I know you don't think me very sentimental, but even I have my moments." He was usually so calm, and it felt deeply odd to see him so vulnerable as she inclined the open pages of the fairytale book to him. "I just…"
"Who is Mamiya?"
"I don't know," and somehow the blunt confusion in his voice assured her he was speaking the truth. "I just…I've always had that book. Like all of these things, I can't let it go."
"Why did you put me in it?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
"Sometimes I'm afraid you'll ride away one day," he said quietly, a hand not quite touching the face pasted over the fairytale prince's. "And I need you to stay. I need you to be with me so very much."
She reached over, placed an arm around his slumped shoulders. "You don't need to make a million memories of me to keep in a box under your bed, you know," she whispered into his ear. "You don't need to make me into a prince in a fairytale so I can always save you…because I'll always be right here."
He nodded, was quiet as she guided them both to their feet to where she was only attempting to make them dinner in the kitchen. He was a much better cook than she, after all. Still, three weeks later when she looked under the bed, the box was still there. She didn't open that time, leaving it under his bed with a sigh. If he wanted to keep a piece of her in a box forever, who was she to complain?
After all, princes know better than anyone that their lives are never truly their own, anyway.