Title: Wildcard
Author: Elf Asato
Written: July 4, 2005
Summary: Karen and Yuuto's first meeting wasn't at the Yamanote Line. Yuuto/Karen. Spoilers for X13?
Disclaimer: You're talking crazy.
Notes: What I was getting at with this was difficult to put in writing because it's just a feeling I have about Yuuto. He hasn't really played any major role in X so far, and the few battles he's been in, he's so diplomatic about it so that it's just like it's a skirmish, really. So, with my belief that there's definitely more to him than what has been presented so far (it's come in vaguish behavioral hints), Yuuto's kind of like a wildcard. Like the latest thing with Kanoe...I think that was Yuuto, personally. Which is what I was trying to get at with this, sort of. Well...that and I just like the idea of Yuuto/Karen XD OH, and TWO fics without Subaru. Take THAT! ...Okay, I shut up now.
By Elf Asato
She had slept with him once before, she remembered.
He wasn't a difficult man to remember: his eyes sparkled when he laughed, his hair always smelled like vanilla or cinnamon, and he was always charming. Always. So when they fought opposite each other near the Yamanote Line, she instantly knew it was him.
There was no forgetting Kigai Yuuto.
Karen first met him in a cafe on her lunch break with a friend from work. The perfect gentleman, he had been, a true flirt, paying both women equal and ardent attention as he bought them a light lunch. He had been so charming that the entire walk back to work the two women could talk of nothing else. But it was Karen he ended up meeting accidentally later that same day on her way home.
It may not have been so accidental, though that hardly mattered.
Unlike other men, who pushed or intimidated others to get their way, Yuuto was the sort of man who could get it naturally and effortlessly, just by being himself. Karen was never ashamed to admit how easily he had gotten her into bed because even without doing a single thing, he already had half the battle won.
When she saw him pick up Nataku near the Yamanote Line, though she had recognized him, she never expected him to remember her. She knew what kind of guy he was: the playboy, the charmer, the seducer of women. Many, many women she supposed, and she didn't figure there was anything remarkable about her that would trigger his memory. So she wasn't surprised when he gave no hint at remembering her.
Though she spent quite some hours talking to and getting to know him that day they had met in the past, she realized that she had left his apartment the following morning without knowing a thing about him. That was one of the things Karen would never forget about Yuuto: how he could tell you everything about himself and you'd still never know him.
But she sensed that there was something underneath that charming exterior brimming with social grace, something darker and raw, that seemed to throw his whole existence into a chaotic balance. So while she didn't expect him to reveal himself as a Dragon of Earth at the Yamanote Line, she wasn't at all surprised by it.
She had caught a glimpse of this darker nature of his deep down when she slept with him. He was good, she'd never deny, and experienced. Undeniably kinky, but in a way that corresponded with his scent: vanilla. However, the way in which he carried out his performance was the other: cinnamon. Karen felt she had just been imagining it, but her intuition was confirmed that day at the Yamanote Line.
There was some chaotic imbalance in this ungodly, charming man:
Something like a wildcard.