Brotherly Love

A Sailor Moon Fanfiction

By My Birthday Cake

A/N: I know that I've done this before, and by being the forgetful spaz that I always am, I forgot the password to my previous account due to the fact that I haven't touched my account in a year. Sue me. But I am making it up to you by continuing on with this story.

Summary: They say that if you spent enough with someone, you would eventually fall in love. She felt that they lied to her, especially since the man she loved since she was four at Happy Tots Nursery was gay.

I dedicate this to my dear little pet monkey named Deedle. She has given me years of entertainment just by eating her dandruff.

Part Two : Mr. Black Book

Darien was working today at the library, leaving me alone in our apartment. I woke up this morning, tucked neatly in bed with a bad case of morning breath. I prepared my own breakfast, Lucky Charms with milk, by myself. I would make a lousy wife; while I make Darien's meals, I never said that my cooking was good. In actuality, my cooking stunk. I once sent Darien to the hospital due to undercooked chicken. Half of the time, I'm suspecting he's eating my food, so I won't fling his favorite thong out the window.

It was nearly Christmas time in San Francisco; every busybody was bustling around, buying toasters and slippers for their other half.

Here I was, sitting Indian style on salmon-colored floors, cutting out paper snowflakes.

It was a tradition that I had started since we were 13.

A childish tradition that Darien declared as "virginally endearing."

Bah. Hum-bug.

It was almost 11:30, and I was planning to surprise Darien with lunch made by me. I got to making cold, deli sandwiches and bought a white chocolate and macadamia cookie from the bakery across the street. I rushed to the bus stop and finally reached my destination: the San Francisco Public Library.

I loved the library.

The steps were so grand, compared to the smaller local library we had back home. They made me feel so small, and I took an even breath when I passed through the doors. Marshall, the security guard, inquired what Darien had to eat today, and I responded with "my home-made cooking." His face made a look of mock-disgust with a hint of pity, and I threw a can of Dr. Pepper at him, which he caught with a chuckle.

I climbed the monochrome stairway to the children's section of the library. Leaning against the entrance, I watched as Darien read Roald Dahl's "Matilda" to a group of children. He was wearing a pink princess hat, and behind the children were a hoard of love-struck mothers, sighing constantly. There were three times more mothers than children; I suspected most of them didn't even have kids there. I recognized Ann Morgan, his weekly, College stalker. She couldn't miss "Storytime with Homosexual Hunk." It was the only highlight of her day.

I unconsciously laughed at my inside joke. Darien stopped reading and searched for me. I spotted where I stood and pinned me with such a smoldering look. It was intense, and these were the times that I forget Darien was anything but a man, and I was truly a woman.

Of course, the so-called "mothers" were glaring menacingly at me, so I backed off, waved good-bye, and ran into a life-size card-board figure of Harry Potter, which fell to my dismay. The children were laughing at me in the distance, and I could hear Darien's rich laughter joining in with them.

Okay, so I wasn't the most graceful of people.

I decided to amuse myself in the section which had more adult literature.

I was strolling through Edgar Allen Poe's works when I found a little black book placed on top of the shelf, lost.

It had no title, no author. It was discreetly void of any writing.

Just black.

I languidly stroked the cover, and there was a familiar feel to it. I was acquainted with this book once.

I skimmed through the ivory-colored pages with hand-written words. It was someone's precious journal. While I knew it would be an invasion of privacy to read what was inside, I knew that my morals and curiosity would battle, and curiosity would win. I tucked myself in an inconspicuous, little corner, so no one would witness me committing this sin.

I opened to the first page.

November 17, 2002

There she is, laughing with a man I cannot recognize, and I envy that man. He can be in her presence, desiring her, wanting to lock her up, keep her inside, make her his, without bearing some guilt or having this feeling that he is committing taboo. He can love her without it being a sin. I'm watching her though the windowpane of Starbucks, hoping she won't look this way and recognize the way my eyes never leave her. I'm clenching my fist with such vigor that when I open them, blood is in my fingernails. I simply wipe it away with a napkin.

God. I'm cursed.

I am in love with my sister.

She doesn't know I am her brother; that naïve, beautiful girl brushes through my life as though I'm not tormented by how sweet she is and how much I want to kiss her. It started with my cursed father and his uncontrollable passion for women. My mother just wasn't enough to keep him tied to one woman, and one night, just after my birth, he screwed with a married woman, the wife of my father's business partner at the firm. That bastard fucked with his best friend's wife, and karma punishes me instead.

I grew up with her; even as a child, I was fiercely protective of her. I didn't want anybody to touch her, not a curious, little boy or a grubby, wailing girl. She was mine, and at times, I find that I hate her for being so blind to ignore me.

Maybe, she was too accustomed to my presence. I was her second skin, and she was the girl I was never meant to have. I didn't know of my father's infidelity until I was thirteen, on my own birthday; she was twelve still, looking sweet with her waist-long hair curving her round behind. Even then I was hungry for her. I meant to tell her of my love on my birthday. No, instead I caught my father and her mother in an angry verbal war.

"She is your child." She said.

I collapsed, my knees gave out, and I cried silent tears. I clutched my hair, wanting desperately to pull it out. Her mother stormed out the room; Father, so very poised, left the room without a word, elegant and cold and deceitful like he always was. In their own anger, they didn't see me, crouched, head hung in defeat, with tears that refused to stop.

She doesn't belong to me. I could never have her.

She was my half-sister; my blood ran through her veins. My love for her would only remain in the confines of this book, and she would never know of it.

Still in the hallway, small hands covered my eyes, and her faint, restrained laughter could be heard from behind me. This was the beginning of a habit that would never stop: my fingernails dug into my palm, as my fist clenched tighter.

She asked me if I knew who she was, and I almost laughed at the stupidity of her question. If I was a blind man, I could still sense her even without her voice or the touch of her hand. She was very much a part of me.

It took all my strength for me not to embrace her, even as she laughed, as she talked nonsensically about little things that didn't matter, as she tempted me to commit sin.

I wanted nothing more to grab her, lock her in a cage, and keep her mine.

I wanted nothing more than to claim her as mine.

My own sister.

Dirty, little me.

"Serena!" Darien's distant shout broke me away from this literal reverie. As if I was caught doing something wrong, I slid the black book in my carrier bag.

I was doing something wrong. I was intruding into a man's greatest passion, his illicit thoughts about the woman he loved. I was intruding in a forbidden love affair, and despite my guilt, I could not stop after the first page, after the first sentence written. I couldn't close the book because I was enthralled by it all.

I was captivated by this complex man that barely existed.

I looked up from my position on the floor. There was Darien, flushed from looking for me, his reading glasses on the tip of his nose, looking more dashing than ever. I sighed. Why could I be in love with a less attractive homosexual?

"Darien! Aren't you supposed to be reading fairytales to a bunch of 30-something single women?"

He shot me an "I'm-not-amused-by-your-wry-comments" look and kissed me on the cheek.

"So where's my lunch?"

Even after years of being an adult, Darien could be such a baby, an adorable, sexy, sweet baby. I handed him his sandwiches and gourmet cookie, and we sat at the café inside the library. It was our routine everyday, sitting here, talking about useless, small things, and I enjoying his company while he rather be sitting next to that attractive College student four tables from us. Yet, today, my thoughts were preoccupied by the man in the little black book. Darien seemed to notice.

"Darling, is something wrong? You're more . . . distant today."

I murmured, "I'm thinking of a man."

I could sense his body tensing, and he set his sandwich down, half-eaten, now forgotten. I looked at him briefly, from his grave expression to the coldness of his stare. He wasn't smiling, but maybe Darien was shocked from all my years of celibacy. I've never dated another man, nor publicized any interest in one. All the years it was only Darien.

"A man?"

His voice was gruff, laced with suppressed anger.

"Never mind. It really isn't a big deal."

Then he shot up from his mono-chrome chair, causing a boisterous sound of metal against tiles. A few heads were looking at us and then turned back to their meals, dismissing it all as a lover's spat. O', the irony of it all.

"Never mind? It isn't a big deal? Serena, we've been soulmates since we barely knew how to talk! You are my closest confidant; I tell you everything. This one time you have a secret you won't tell me. I start to doubt our friendship now."

He gathered his things, discarded the sandwich and cookie I made for him. Darien Shields left the café, even the library, ditching his job for the first time in his life.

Marshall was concerned as Darien passed him and angrily erupted outside the library. He mouthed a "What happened?" from across the library entrance.

I could only look, behind the window, as he disappeared, leaving behind a distressed, wounded me.

"I don't really know."

I could recall an incident that reminded me of the sweetness of Darien.

We were sixteen, and it was the morning of his birthday. I slyly crept from my house to his, to make him pancakes for breakfast. My pancakes weren't the best, but Darien never said a word of complaint, just emptied his plate dry. He made me feel appreciated, one of his many talents that I have come to adore. His parents weren't living with him. They divorced when he was fourteen, on his birthday even. He never said a word to me, but I comforted him nonetheless. He neither wanted to live with his father whom he loathed for unknown reasons, or his mother who wanted nothing to do with him. They allowed him to live in his own house, while they traveled and invested in lovers who barely knew their names.

He never seemed bitter about them. Darien could never hate another person.

"That's why I love him so much." I laughed to myself.

"Love who?" I turned around in surprise to find Darien in his (pardon the pun) birthday suit.

"Ahhhh!" I screamed from the top of my lungs, panicking, looking for something to cover him with, while stealing glances at his physique. Well-toned, glossy pecs with lean biceps, and my eyes wandered lower, his family jewels.

This was my first glance at a naked man, a naked, queer man.

I covered my eyes with one hand, however my fingers kept slipping, and I saw more than I could handle through the holes. I threw my apron at his grinning, cocky face.

"Here. Cover yourself up, Darien." Once clothed, I took a look at my own face with the mirror hanging on the dining room wall. I looked like an overly excited five-year-old: pigtails mused from sleep, flour on the right cheek, and my face was a very, flushed scarlet color.

Damn that boy. He's going to kill me one day with his impulsive behavior.

"I felt like dressing myself appropriately for my birthday."

"I don't know why I bother to make you your birthday breakfast, you ingrate." He gathered me in his arms, bridal style, my clothes and his apron the only thing between us. I blushed from the intimacy.

"Oh sweet, sweet Serena, what would I do without you?" He followed his question with a kiss on the cheek.

Always a brotherly kiss on the cheek, and I live for those warm kisses, even if they meant nothing to him.

"You would die." I retorted.

Buried against my hair, he murmured something I didn't catch, but they almost sounded like a "Yes, I would."

My dear, dear Darien.

There was only one public swing set in all of San Francisco.

It was rusty, old thing that only accommodated two, and it was on a small patch of dry earth. It wasn't elegant, or extravagant, but it was sacred to the both of us.

We would swing for hours on there, not minding the strange looks we got from dog walkers or neighborhood kids. We would talk, sometimes we wouldn't, but we would swing without inhibitions.

It was sunset, and as I saw his silhouette, contrasting against the mandarin orange of the sun, I felt like I was home again.

I needed to apologize to him, or at least, put his mind at ease. Darien was so precious to me, and no man could replace his role in my life. I walked quietly, but I knew Darien sensed me. He always had that special power. I covered his eyes with my hands, and I whispered "Guess who?" in his ear. I loved his ears; they were so soft and friendly, and I wanted to plant a kiss on the shell of his ear. I refrained however. He caught one hand in his own and planted a gently kiss on my palm.

"Sweet Serena, how could I hurt you? How could I say one mean word against you?"

"Darien, I deserved it. I didn't confide you like I should. You deserved better than my mistreatment."

He weaved his hand with mine, and for a moment, I was astonished by how big his hand was compared to my own. I felt encased in his brotherly love.

"Don't try to redeem me as a good man. I acted like a barbarian. Honestly, I was jealous. I was the only man who preoccupied your thoughts, and you were the only factor I could rely on that would never change. How foolish am I to think you would never take off your rose-colored glasses and find yourself tied down. How selfish am I to keep you as mine."

I embraced him as tight as I could. My arms wound against him. I feared that one day he would leave me, marry a nice, faithful husband that I would come to adore, much to my dismay, and dismiss me as another person he merely knew. I pressed my face against his neck, savoring his earthy, romantic scent.

"I forgive you, Darien. I forgive you. Don't hate me, please."

He laughed which started out as a constrained rumble that I could felt underneath my fingers, and then flew out his throat in a blissful song. Darien threw his head back and laughed without the weight of the world. I could only watch, enraptured in the beauty of Darien. With his hand still holding mine, he swung me around until I was face to face with him. He settled me in between his legs and hugged me. I stared at the top of his head in surprise. His face was buried in my chest, and every time he spoke, I felt a tingle flirt with my spine.

"I could never hate you, my darling bunny. My foolish, naïve bunny. Mine."

He looked up and kissed the tip of my nose. I giggled in response. His hand traveled lazily up my back, brushing against the skin of my neck, and reached from the hair clip that kept everything in order. One click, and the nearly-silver locks fell loose.

"There you go, beautiful. Let's swing away." I gathered my skirt and set myself on the swing next to Darien.

As the sun fell across the horizon of San Francisco's buildings, we swung higher and higher than we ever did, watching as our worries slipped away. Even if I didn't reach the sky, Darien made everything all right.

He marveled at her natural beauty, as her hair flew with the wind. It settled gently against her back as she swung away. Her amused chortles made the wordless silence seem like music. With one look, she enthralled him, making his feet hinder his swings, allowing him to stop and simply look. He stopped breathing, and he hoped she didn't notice the remorseful look in his eyes.

"I love you." She says to him.

He didn't say anything, but then again, he didn't need to.