Hello again! I now have for you a very…interesting…offering, based on my own challenge. The challenge was:
One False Pairing
Fluff, G-PG13, either canon or not, 2000 words or fewer.
Write the pairing you swore to all the gods you'd never touch. Also, quote at least one line of poetry. But that's not important. The pairing is important.
Well, if you know me, you also know what the only CCS pairing is that has ever reduced me to ranting. I blame L-chan. It's all her fault, I tell you!
Disclaimer: The challenge is mine. The fic is mine. The characters are not. There's no one around to collect copyright for the poetry, but that's not mine either.
Warnings: My least favorite pairing, wordiness, maple-tree-in-spring sap.
A Summer's Day
The summer sun glittered over the still water like tinsel on a liquid Christmas tree. It was a hot and sleepy day; even the movements of the light-dappled spots caused by idle sunbeams glancing through the leaves were languid, as if they simply couldn't be bothered to bestir themselves more than need be. Only the barest whisper of a wind disturbed the stillness, meandering in a lackluster way through the branches of the trees.
A young man sat curled up like a dozing cat on a convenient branch of one such tree, reading a fat, paper-backed book with no particular diligence, by turns leafing through it and regarding his companion, who was seated primly on the grass below. Said companion was a girl of no more than fourteen, but whose form and bearing marked her unmistakably as a young lady. She was sketching, a charming pastel image of the flower-ringed pagoda opposite. She and the young man were so similar in appearance, having both dark hair and dark blue eyes. With, moreover, a very similar expression on their not dissimilar faces, they might have been taken for brother and sister. They were, in fact, no more closely related than second cousins, which kinship was close enough to account for the likeness, yet far enough that the admiring gaze of the young man had not to be explained in more than the simplest of terms. His name was Touya Kinomoto and hers was Tomoyo Daidouji, which names were not familiar, undoubtedly, to the greater part of the world, but which served the purposes of their owners nicely.
Not a sound broke the silence between and around the pair; even the birds were unusually still. The breeze, slight as it had been, had died, and the whole air was heavy like the lid of a trunk that had not been opened for years. They and all near them were waiting bound for the indefinable change that must inevitably come to free them from the heat-enforced silence.
Touya, being less fixed upon his amusement than Tomoyo was on hers, was the first to notice the clouds which had been piling into a thunderhead above them. He made a small noise of interest and started to return to earth, but in that moment the rain began. There was no quiet prelude, no forewarning 'drip, drip,' but a sudden, complete downpour that left everyone and everything breathless. Tomoyo started to her feet with a small cry at the same instant as the soles of Touya's sneakers hit the ground, and together they dashed, helter-skelter, for the shelter of the gazebo Tomoyo had so recently been drawing. Under its protection they stood, hand in hand, and watched the rain pour down. Without preamble, Touya began to speak, as if carrying on a briefly interrupted conversation.
" 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'" he quoted. " 'Thou art more lovely and more temperate.'" With a certain sly humor, he placed just enough emphasis on the last word that Tomoyo caught the joke, and laughed merrily along with him.
"I see," she said, "that there is something to be learned in English Literature besides how to sleep with one's eyes open." Touya snorted.
"Something, but not much. This stuff we're doing now makes no sense to anyone, even the English. And there's no earthly use for it, either."
"Oh?" Tomoyo smiled, some expression in her eyes that would not be easy for another eye to read. "Not even for passing the time in paying your girlfriend such a number of compliments that she quite forgets you are in a public place and kisses you?"
"Well," said Touya, a look in his eye to match that in Tomoyo's, "I confess it had not occurred to me. Is it my lady's pleasure that I do so?" he asked with a courtly bow.
"It is your lady's very great pleasure."
With a grin, Touya swung himself onto the low wall and began to read,
" 'When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's heart and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings!'"
He finished the poem on one knee at Tomoyo's feet, his hands clasping hers and a light in both their eyes that seemed to burn like a bonfire, each reaching out to the other. In another minute they were in each other's arms, laughing even as they kissed with all the ardor of lovers long parted.
When at last they separated, if only to a hand's length, they looked out to discover that the summer storm was over and the sun smiling cheerfully, albeit wetly, into their flushed faces. Swaying as if drunk, their arms still wrapped around each other, the couple left their brief shelter and wended a way across the path towards their homes. They parted tenderly with more kisses, and one last remark from Touya that kept Tomoyo chuckling happily all the way home,
"Lovelier, more temperate, and none so damp either!"
The End
…Of one of the most hopeless bits of unrepentant sap that ever I produced. I claim that I wrote under the influence of Jane Austen and Shakespearean sonnets.
All the poetry quoted is from Shakespeare; the first being the first two lines of sonnet 18, and the second being the entirety of sonnet 29. Yay nerdiness!
Concrit would be appreciated. I would be more specific, but I have to go throw up now. Sugar overdose.