Brotherly Love
A Sailor Moon Fanfiction
By Doughnuts of Miroku
A/U: Wow, I haven't written in a long time. Actually, this chapter is not the fabrication of something I written recently. This was a chapter that was not posted when I wrote it nearly three years ago. Well, here it is. I have even the beginnings of the fifth chapter somewhere. Somehow, my ex-boyfriend reminded me recently that these still exist in my desktop. He was an avid fan.
Part Four : Peter Pan
We always had this fascination for Peter Pan.
Every year since we first watched the 1954 adaptation with Mary Martin, we hosted the annual "Peter Pan Movie Night" in which we became the only two participants in our entire block and Nester, the one seventh grader in P.S. 118 who hasn't stopped wetting his bed. Two year ago, we were the only two in a dirty, empty movie theatre, watching the trailers before P.J. Hogan's Peter Pan. It was our least and most favorite version of Peter Pan because, as the movie reviewers said, Wendy Darling and Peter Pan were playing two sexed up teenagers in a pornographic stage of infinite places to have orgies. Putting comedy aside, it was the reality of the relationship that touched both of us.
I was Wendy Darling, the uptight heroine that just needed a reason to fly far, far, far away from the Desperate Housewives kind of lifestyle her parents were living. He was Peter Pan, the one boy that never really grew up because he was afraid of the disappointment of adulthood. We lived the life of a Lost Boy. We played reckless games and neglected the entire experience of growing up together. Despite our constant companionship, we would never seriously admit that we needed each other. We were children who lived one day at a time, but we were more like adults in the sense that we were the other's life source.
And in the end, Peter let Wendy return to the ordinary life. She became a woman and married, had a few kids, lived a small, domestic legacy, and most likely died. How about Peter? Well, Peter was eternally young, eternally foolish, and undeniably lonely.
That's why P.J. Hogan's Peter Pan is our least and most favorite version of Peter Pan because it was all TOO real.
Love wasn't enough to make Peter want to become a man for Wendy. It was too close to home.
I dreamed of a wet street corner and a park bench in our favorite place in the world: home, sweet, nostalgic home. There were two children: a fragile girl with wispy, soft butter-golden hair and a coltish boy with graceful angles.
"They forgot about me again." It was the boy who spoke through the haziness of a dream. He hiccupped a few times and inserted a sob occasionally. She kneeled on the park bench just to reach his face and took two cupped palms to cover his swimming eyes.
"Close your eyes." Little fingers graced over closed lids to "just make sure." She stood on the bench and danced silly, made beautiful monster faces, and put a wad of spit on his favorite sneakers. Yet, he sat still like an aged mountain range. She settled down and placed a birthday hat on his head and hers.
She held a small, pink cupcake with one unlit candle. She apologized for not being old enough to light the candle and make his birthday cake authentic.
"Happy Birthday!"
She tried to feed him with frosting on her finger and met his nose instead. He was unforgiving and smeared the entire cupcake top in her hair. They played pink cupcake aliens the whole afternoon, basking in their birthday fun and the setting sun. Even, their shadows kissed once. He quieted her by taking her hand and leading her to a park Aspen. She thought they were playing another game, but his face spoke otherwise.
"Don't ever forget me. Don't you dare! Because if you do, I'll push you in the dirt like this." He pushes her with as much force as a six-year-old can muster. She lands pitifully in the grass but doesn't cry. She's only five, but she knows he just needs a little love.
He's being embraced by the girl who only comes up to his chest, and he doesn't understand why his chest feels tight and warm like an asthma attack. He stares down at the halo that graces the top of her head, and when she lifts her head to smile at him, his heart is heavy.
His feelings are making his arms itch. Maybe he has chicken pox?
She breaks the hug and drifts off towards the sea of grass. It's beginning to get dark, but he can tell where she is because she gives off a pure golden light he never noticed before.
"I love you." She turns around and stares at him quizzically. He repeats himself, this time more confidently.
"I've never heard my parents say things like that, but my grandpa does. My grandpa likes to tell Grandma when they think they're alone, but it's silly because they're never alone. But he says it every day, more than once. Grandma is my grandpa's best friend. They need each other." He stumbles towards her, but he manages to reach her side.
"It's like that with me. I need to see you every day, so don't forget me."
"Pinky promise. I don't like dirt anyway. It sort of hurts." She's so sweet, not like birthday frosting that can't be eaten everyday, but like bedtime milk, the kind that you take to make you strong.
He brings his thoughts to a halt when he spots her styling her frosted hair to stick up into two ears.
"Look! I'm a bunny." She hops away, and he follows down the bunny trail.
There was something forlorn and romantic about a man whose heart bleeds so profusely that it spills out of the pages and into the lap of a lonely reader.
Darien was absent, and the apartment seemed much bigger when empty. I sat on an unkempt bed, plagued by this nagging emotion inside of me. The little black book was all that could distract me.
December 26, 1989
Her room was littered with discarded gift wrap and empty glasses of apple cider. Her tiny Christmas tree waited patiently in the corner to be taken down in July. She treaded in Rudolph wrapping paper as she made her way towards my direction. Her cheeks were slightly pink, and her breath strongly foul. Nothing beats a little (or a lot) Christmas booze and I cast an amused glance at the overwhelming yellow bow on the top of her head. Not even a wasted fifteen-year-old girl with a heart too big for her body.
She swung both arms around me and hung like a Charlie Brown Christmas ornament. I feel weak in the knees, and hormones have nothing to do with it. My arms are itching again, and they wrap around her Grecian hips slowly, tasting and memorizing. My skin burns a smoldering fire, and my breathing becomes uneven.
"Santa hates me. I'm obviously on his notorious Naughty List. What other reason could there be for why I never get what I've wanted since I was a little, little, little, little, little.. ant." She falls on her queen-sized bed and begins to make snow angels out of her linen. Her stomach peeks from her shifting sweater. I turn away from her midriff to recompose myself.
"Ants are funny things. They're so small, and no one cares if they end up dead in your lemonade. Then, you find one on the table, and you toy with their lives until you end it with the blunt end of your fork. It's doesn't really matter to anyone if they die. They're much too small to be alive." She curls up on her bedside—the left side—and lies there like a corpse.
"I just want to be loved by someone. Someone who needs me like water or air or God."
I need her. Can you hear my thoughts? I need YOU. I curl up next to her and kiss her neck in greeting. She'll never remember anything of tonight. I'm free to love her the way I've always wanted to. She turns over and holds herself slightly above me; hair toying on the surface of my cheek. I stare at the hair grazing my face. I bring it to my nose and take the clean smell of her baby shampoo in. I skim the strand over my eyes and to my lips.
I will always remember this perfect minute until the day I die without her.
"Never leave me. You're all I've got. Don't hurt my heart." Her whispers didn't evade my hearing, and I nurse the back of her neck and bring her head down towards mine. Her body sinks perfectly into mine, aligning like the last piece of a puzzle. There was no kissing. I press the side of my face into the crook of her shoulder and sighed.
There would be no kissing because she was asleep. I smile to myself and kiss her milky shoulder. Okay, maybe, just one little kiss.
Merry Christmas.
BANG! BANG! The sound of fist colliding with the door interrupted my train of thought. I could not shake off the familiarity of this entry or the brief flashbacks of the warmest skin and the scent of pine. Darien forfeits his previous attempts at etiquette and prances his way on my distraught bed. He smiles knowingly and reaches over to hold my right hand.
"Someone got a little midnight snack with a gorgeous man last night, and darling, I'm sure it wasn't me for the first time. I'm so happy for you, and relieved actually. You now have someone to take care of you, and I won't have to worry about leaving anymore." My stomach churned in anticipation. I barely mute him out as I concentrate on his facial expression.
His mouth, tense in shape and wrinkled in false hilarity. His eyes, the color of a tempest, of heartbreak. I wanted to smooth out the disturbed nerve above his right eyebrow, but I allowed him to continue his little charade until he said,
"I'm moving to New York in a month. I've accepted a prominent job with Esquire magazine. It's not Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but it's enough to get by. I can't live on donations forever, love."
My face spoke volumes of heartbreak, and no matter how many attempts of "big-girl-bravery" I tried to enforce upon the situation, I just wanted to break down, cry angrily, stomp, bring down the roof, curl into a corner, and weep maudlin tears. No more cartwheel tournaments at the beach, food poisoning treatment in the ER, jukebox dancing after hours, overwhelming jealousy, bittersweet bliss. No more joie de vie in our little apartment by the bay. For the first time, we were being separated, by an entire country nonetheless.
"I'm so… happy for you." I could barely choke out the words, and even then, the tears in my mouth made the words taste bitter. My whole body was quaking, but the earth was not shaking. With my eyes downcast, I could see his fists clenching powerfully, released for a moment to grasp some stability, then closed again in fury and tension. He must be angry with me.
He must think I'm envious of his success. He must be glad that he's moving a million miles from where I am, sick of my immaturity and dependency. I'm only envious of his capability to not love me; it makes his movement towards lone gay bachelor status a lot easier to take in. Unlike my vulnerable, love-sick heart which collapses every time it does one miserable emotional push-up.
"I'm leaving in a month to tie in loose ends and pack my life in a tiny U-Haul box."
He leaves with an angry sound of wooden door meeting diabolical collision with the doorway. His temporary departure stretches a tiny gap in my heart, and the sadness and the pain that collected throughout the years just seeped through and found their way to a soaked pillow.
I held the pillow as if I was hanging off the edge of the world. The hurt didn't subside, but sleep pitied me and I forgot for a few hours what it felt like to lose your heart.
The way she sways her hips when she dances in a dim room and isn't aware I'm sitting not too far from her, drunk as hell and pretending to care what the blonde next to me is saying.
It's the way she bites her lip when she hesitates on an impulsive thought and it makes me want to bite her lip and make the decision for her.
It's the tiny ways she expresses her gratitude by making little "thank you so much for the waffle" notes when we eat breakfast at the same diner every Sunday because we must keep holy the Sabbath even though I'm never religious and she's much too sweet to have someone dictating to her how to be a good person when she is the epitome of it.
The way she nurtures me when I've got a winter cold when all I'm really doing is pretending to be ill just so she can keep my warm on the sofa.
It's the tiny little dimple on the corner of her smile that makes her face charming and sunny and bright.
It's how her favorite color is yellow because it reminds her to be optimistic every single minute of her life.
The way she leaves the toothpaste cap on the floor because she believes it cuts into her life just to unscrew the "damn little cap that no one cares for."
The way her socks never match even though she has all the pairs.
It's the way her hair smells after she showers and how hours later she still smells fresh like laundry or clean linen or the Snuggles bear.
The way her hips have a tiny seductive sway because she's a woman and she's doesn't even know it.
It's how she never snores in her sleep but I can always see the little drool spot on her bed right before breakfast.
The way she looks at me in a crowded room and make silly faces like I was a child, but in reality, she just wants me to laugh and be myself around other people.
The way she makes watching television on the sofa enjoyable in silence and in witty commentary.
It's the way she loves me in a quiet acceptance and in a cheerful disposition, but there's something broken in her eyes.
It's the way I look at her sometimes, when I'm not aware I'm being too honest with my face, and I let her see how much I hunger for her and how much it hurts me whenever our elbows touch and I can't pull her aside and whisper that I adore her.
The way she looks at me after like a deer caught at gunpoint, and God damn, she still doesn't know that I would sell my soul for one honest kiss.
It's the way I know that I want to wake up to her sweet face every morning of my life until the day I won't wake up to see another morning.
The reasons why I love her, an uncompleted, unsatisfactory list, by a man of desperate want and need and hunger.
I found it, ripped out and crumpled into a ball at least twice and flattened out more times than it can remember, wedged between two pages in the little black book. My fingers skimmed through every crease and tear stain like a prayer.
Wow. He knows how it is to love, love, love until you have your heart cut up in little distorted shapes and left out to dry.
I need to get out of here, the confining walls, the apartment and the memories, his post-it endearments on the fridge, the sofa pillows he sewed together out of our old baby sweaters, the soft words whispered to my ear when I'm half-asleep, and that inviting smile when he's just happy.
I pick up a discarded napkin and dial an unfamiliar number.
"Hello?"
"Can I see you again?" A pause, a thought being formed.
"I'm free on Saturday."
"No, right now. At the diner, please." No pause this time.
"I understand." Click. Dial tone. End of conversation. I sprung up to the coats' closet and grabbed my red peacoat. Every action was based on instinct and emotion, and I ran like a game of tag with Sadness. The wind felt cool against a face of wet tears, and I hugged my coat closer, still cold.
The sound of the bell against the top of the door warmly invited me in the diner, but my eyes only sought for his face. He was sitting at our table. I climbed on the table top and embraced him with both arms, desperately and madly.
"He's leaving me. I knew this day would come eventually, but I thought 'eventually' meant 'never.' Please, make the pain go away. Please. I'm not ready."
He lost himself in the crook of my neck and held me close. Comfort. He took my hair in his hands, clutching and caressing, and held our foreheads together. His eyes stared at mine, and I knew I could forget for a minute, just one blessed moment. I closed my eyes and felt his lips capture all the tears that had fallen to my chin, my cheekbones, my temples, and …
… a soft brushing against my lips.
I wanted to run away from the person who I ran to, and I knew that if I did I would find myself back to square one and into the mercy of the one who keeps me awake at night. So, I settled into his arms and watched the traffic of people outside the diner window.
My gaze walked into the indifferent face of Darien Shields, cold, expressionless, as he stood mannequin-stiff with his hands in his pockets.
Wrapped around his wrist was the string attached to a red balloon.
I closed my eyes, willing myself to not feel an ounce of regret, but I gave in and bled internally. I blinked once, twice, and Darien was gone.
The balloon ascended into the flighty clouds and the iridescent blue sky like the holy mother.
It was an irrelevant speck of red marker on the divine masterpiece sky, but it was mine and now it's God's.
I lost him.