Sehnsucht

A fic in the Lemon Tree Series

So, first, thank you to my beta, Uglygreenjacket, I know you had a rough weekend, and I SO appreciate you beta-ing for me anyway!

"Sehnsucht" is an untranslatable german word that describes the yearning for something far away, a high, recurring, intense, often painful desire for something out of reach. It's the agony that comes with longing. Literally translated it means 'Yearn-addiction'.

So.. I've been asked over and over in my ask box if I can write a crystal tokyo future lemon story, and they always asked me the same: To please write a lemon about keeping the sexual spark alive in a long long-term relationship.

And I absolutely understand why you would want this. Because it's one of the realest struggles in a sexual relationship.

And that's why I'm saying no to one part of the request: this will not be Crystal Tokyo. Because it would be so easy to grasp for magic and glamour and that (for most people) very unrealistic lifestyle for a solution: Instead, I want to give you a real-life story for a real solution to a real problem. And this is why this story is set in the future, in long term commitment, but instead of Crystal Tokyo, I'm using Naoko's Parallel!verse, which is supposed to be set in a world where they live a normal life, something similar to ours.

Anyway, I wrote this to a german song called "Flash Mich" by Mark Forster (for all you guys who can somewhat understand my native tongue), and this fic has been planned forever but I didn't write it while writing Confetti, so here you have it now as a small interlude between Confetti and its epilogue ;) Let me know what you think!

Both the International Child Neurology Congress and the Annual Clinical Neurosurgery Conference were held in Europe this year, and so Mamoru found himself on trains that were slower and louder than he was used to, driving through scenery that was greener and thicker of trees than he was used to, and speaking in several symposia and holding a few poster presentations where he could in a language he was fluent in, even when it didn't flow off the tongue as easily as he would hope.

And while the prospect of being in Europe for a little while, with the congresses being a little more than a week apart, had seemed thrilling at first, and he always enjoyed the insight into different cultures that these congresses allowed him, he'd quickly realized what it meant.

Two or three-day trips away from home were normal for him. But two weeks? He couldn't remember the last time he had not seen his family for this long a time. Maybe ever.

So, by the time the Annual Clinical Neurosurgery Conference in Paris had ended in its closing ceremony, and the stress and nervousness that came whenever he had to stand in front of a lectern and relate scientific findings in a language that was not his mother tongue finally fell off him, and he found himself in a bistro overlooking the Seine with a view of the Eiffel Tower that felt as if it might have come straight out of a painting depicting the Belle Epoque, he'd missed Usagi so much he felt like weeping.

He hadn't, of course, and when she'd called that day, he'd laughed and related every detail of those chocolate croissants in minute detail for her. And when his children poked their pink heads into the line of her phone camera and spoke of their school day in annoyed tones while the sun was still high where he was, but gone where they were, he was all smiles and hushed, but controlled 'I miss you's. But when he hung up, knowing she was in bed with the side next to her empty, hugging the phone, and he was sitting in this chair in this much too big hotel room overlooking a scenery he was dying to share with her, his throat constricted, and a lump formed that he hadn't felt in quite some time.

They'd had children for 15 years now, had been married for 16, together for more than half his life. They'd gone through a lot together, literally the end of the world several times. They'd fought and annoyed and worshipped each other, and sometimes marital life could be tedious and tiring and infuriating. Sometimes he forgot how precious this life was, in the routine of things between washing machines and insurance. Sometimes, he forgot that the peck that was their kiss good night, and the annoyed eye roll of his teenage daughter, and the sheepish 'oops' of his youngest when she broke something valuable again, was what they had fought for so hard, was the most precious thing in the world.

He didn't forget it, now. Now, he missed it all so hard he could barely contain the homesickness, could barely keep it down, could barely appreciate the fact that he sat in a building that was hundreds of years old in a city that had passed the test of time and had so much to show him.

He couldn't enjoy it.

Whenever he was two or three days gone from her, and couldn't see her face as the first and last thing of the day, it suddenly became the most important thing in the world, once more, and absolute agony to be away from. And every time, he vowed to not forget it again – to not ignore it – once routine and night shifts and spilled milkshakes on homework had him back, and yet every time he did.

It seemed, even knowing full well what it meant to have no family didn't prevent him from forgetting to not take his happiness for granted, sometimes.

He tended to forget how special Kousagi was with her crash-landing cartwheels, and her too loud, off-key singing and her happy, giant hugs and that smile and purity that was so absolutely Usagi that it took his breath away. He forgot how special Chibi-Usa was with her nose in her books, her quietly judging huffs, and the way she cared so deeply, even when she didn't always say it that was so uniquely him that it scared him. He forgot how special his marriage was, with a wife that still looked at him the same way she did when he was 17 whenever he managed to make her angry; with a wife that was the princess from his dreams and now the queen of his world.

He'd gotten up, then, spent his remaining days in Paris exploring the vast museums and sat in a lecture or two at the Sorbonne. Things he enjoyed. Things Usagi wouldn't enjoy. Things that didn't remind him of her absence. He absolutely avoided the food, the riverside, the things that gave Paris its reputation.

He continued the trend once he'd arrived in Amsterdam, disembarked the crammed train and found himself in a city with even smaller, even more romantic riversides, and browsed the halls of Renaissance art instead.

He'd been so absolutely relieved when the Congress had started, and he could once again spend his days sitting in stuffed rooms full of people in suits with scrutiny in their eyes and stale coffee in their cups, as he fumbled with the unfamiliar language and the uncomfortable situation. He'd stayed late for discussions and get-togethers that bored him, but kept his mind away from home, and the current distance between him and it. Between him and her.

Sometimes, when life was being stressful, and his shoulders tense and his head aching, he would sit and wish for a day of quiet – wish for an afternoon with just his book and some silence. Now, as he sat in the quiet of his hotel room, not ready to go to bed, unable to even call her and hear her voice because it would be 6 in the morning for her and she'd thump him one if he did, he wished so hard for just a second of the constant noise that was the soundtrack of his life, that were his girls. There was no ounce of desire left in him to even touch the book he'd laid out that night. Instead he lay down, closed his eyes tight, and imagined the pillow he was hugging was his wife.

It didn't really work that much. The pillow didn't kick him in his sleep.

"Good morning, Dr. Tsukino!"

Mamoru lifted his eyes, greeted the awfully cheerful and awfully tall man that had been working the reception of his hotel all of the previous days he'd been here, and accepted the paper cup that had already been prepared for him gratefully. Mamoru guessed he must be predictable, if the man knew his routine after only 4 days.

He butchered the only Dutch word he knew, 'Thank you', and the heavily bearded guy in the red checkered flannel and what his daughter would call a 'man-bun,' gifted him with a bright sincere smile and nod.

But when he walked the short distance from the hotel to the congress hall along the tidy, narrow, cobbled streets and the charming gabled canal houses with the high windows, colorful floor tiles and steep staircases that housed quaint cafés and delightful owner-runs shops, it hit him so hard he was contemplating to just take the next tram to Amsterdam Centraal, the next train to the airport from there, and fly home, instead of stepping foot into these halls another day.

He didn't, of course. Instead, he stood next to his poster in his allotted time-slot and answered any question directed at him.

That day, he didn't stay for the stuffy discussions after the main keynotes, he basically ran back to his hotel, got nearly run over by several cyclist two times over, because, again, he looked into the wrong direction when crossing the street without consciously reminding himself of the lack of left-hand traffic.

He felt the lump form back in his throat when the screen flickered and Kousagi sat there in her overtly fluffy, overtly pink full-body pajamas, bouncing on his and Usagi's bed, with Usagi trying to hold her phone in a way that he could see all three of them, even when Chibi-Usa had her face buried in her own phone.

"You'll be good for Aunt Setsuna, Haruka and Michiru?" Mamoru asked dutifully, his voice carrying more emotion than he had intended.

Kousagi nodded enthusiastically, even when Chibi-Usa rolled her eyes, lamenting her disagreement.

"I don't understand the fuss," Chibi-Usa whined. "I could stay here, you know? I could look after Kousagi and myself, you know that, right?" Accompanied with the biggest eye roll yet, that he quickly mirrored.

Usagi had the phone last. "I'll see you tomorrow," she'd whispered into the phone with that sweet look in her eyes, and he'd nodded breathlessly and hugged the phone when she'd hung up.

It had been ages since he'd been away from his family even remotely as long as now. It had been even longer since he'd had her just to himself for just a few, precious days.

Since he was scheduled to speak at a symposium later in the day, just before the closing ceremony, he couldn't pick Usagi up from the airport. And she'd assured him – she'd saved the world, she could manage making her way from an airport to a hotel, even if it was in a country she didn't speak the language of.

But, when he returned, heart beating as if he was meeting her for a third or fourth date, having skipped the closing ceremony altogether, she hadn't arrived yet. And when he tried her phone it was switched off. And no matter how much he told himself she'd probably just forgotten to turn off flight mode, he'd started to pace the room, checked down with reception over and over, kept trying to call her, and finally, ran down the steep, steep stairs two at a time in order to get to the airport.

But there she was, and he halted at the bottom of the stairs, just off the large reception hall.

Golden, almost glowing hair moving with her gesticulations, speaking Japanese and broken English in that loud way people raised their voices when their opponent didn't understand them, as if volume made it better, waving her hands, clutching a trolley.

He snorted in reflex, and deflated, relieved, so, so relieved, and caught the handrail as he caught his breath. He watched her, just a moment, and felt that sharp jab of his heart pounding against his chest – the kind he'd forgotten, too, the kind he used to have all the time, in the beginning, whenever he saw her.

He blinked, remained chained to the handrail, watched. The cute way she scrunched up her nose as she couldn't make herself be understood, and the way that blue dress hugged her curves, flowed around those creamy legs and dimpled knees, and had they always been this long?...And the way that bearded flannel coffee guy smiled at her that was both amused and enamored and helpless, and – Mamoru's eyebrows lowered into a glare – definitely checked her out, however subtly.

He shook out of it, at least partly, at least the bit that kept him chained even if not the part that couldn't help but ogle his wife's legs as if he'd never seen them, and started forward, walked up to her, stopped just behind her.

He bent, just slightly, just barely, touched his lips against the shell of her ear, and she jumped as he whispered into it, and he winked at Flannel Guy while he spoke, in a way that must have taken the guy so aback, that was so different from the man the guy had seen these past few, lonely days.

She spun her head up and around, caught his eyes wide-eyed, and he smirked that cocky half smile she so hated, or maybe she didn't, because she blushed in a way she hadn't in a long, long time when he took her hand in his, her trolley in the other, and basically dragged her up the stairs.

She giggled, that high, beautiful sound. Giggled again when he chucked her trolley into a corner of the room, almost blindly, and whirled around and back towards her and had his tongue in her mouth and his hands around her thighs before she could speak another word.

It was silly, almost, the thrill. As if he hadn't seen her in years, not days. As if he didn't know the dress he peeled her out of, didn't know the flush that covered her chest in excitement, didn't know the thin, meshed, see-through lace with the seam that ran right across her nipple that was her fancy underwear, the one she only wore for special occasions, the one that made him hard from 0 to 100 as if he hadn't already been the moment he laid eyes on her tonight.

Instead, he pushed her up into his arms and up against the wall and delighted in the way her squeals turned into moans under his lips, the way she wriggled underneath him and her hands pulled at his tie and pushed at the crisp white fabric of his shirt to get it off as if this was the last time she could ever do it.

"Mamo-chan…" she breathed against his cheek as he pressed his lips and teeth against her neck, the way she liked, the way that made her claw her fingers into his shirt and forget she wanted to push it off.

It was the sweetest sound in the world. It was home. Even 9,282 km away from home. And it drove him wild and even harder, and this time, when she opened her mouth and granted him access, he kissed her so hard she mewled beneath him and bucked her hips against him, and all he could do was push at her skin and her breast clad in this flimsy, sexy piece of barely anything, and her soft, thick bum – the feeling of which beneath the pads of his fingers made him harder still.

And so, when she pushed at his shoulders and he fell backwards on the bed, shirt and tie and still fully clothed as he was against her bra and panties, and her hands slipped into his hair and against his scalp in this way that she knew possessed the power to make him shudder all over, and pressed her lips back to his and her thighs around his middle, pinning him beneath her, he came undone under her, dug his hands into her flesh and opened his mouth to be devoured.

He cried out in hisses and moans and his face contorted, grimacing from the intense longing, that need he hadn't felt in so, so long, yet all of last week, and squeezed the soft flesh at her hips in reflex when she sat up, retreated, just barely, her hands against the bulge in his pants, kneading, slipping to his zipper, but he couldn't have it, and so, with one, strong movement he flipped her around on her back even as she squealed and then shuddered, when his mouth and teeth latched around one puckered nipple under thin, see-through material, and he knew to recognize the way her hands clawed into his shoulders, the way her knees twitched and would have clamped together in her desire had he not wedged one leg between both of hers, and she moved up on it instead, rubbing herself and her panties against the fabric that covered his thigh in a way that made him twitch in his pants and his eyes roll back into his head.

"Mamo-chan…" she mewled again, hips off the bed, and he didn't speak and didn't stop again before he had her chanting that name with her thighs around his shoulders, and first his mouth against the lace and later his tongue against her slit.

And because this wasn't his home, and this weren't his neighbors next door, and their kids were half a world away, he half groaned- half gurgled in protest against her clit when she turned her face away and bit into his pillow to keep from calling out too loudly, because he wanted it all. And when she came, toes curling, head thrashing, back arching and hips pushing off the bed under his lips, and he finally found himself moving in her, moments later, after he had stumbled out of his clothes and fallen over his pants and back into her, and moved, pushed, keened, frantic and fast and out of breath, and she held his face between her hands and whispered, "I missed you, too," he came so hard, and so way too quickly, and howled into her neck as he shuddered it all out.

She giggled, then. That lighthearted sound she'd made so often when they were younger, laid in bed like this without needing to lock the door, and suddenly, Amsterdam was the best place in the world.

Suddenly, he couldn't wait.

He pushed off the bed, slipped the condom off and trashed it, and pulled at her hands and arms to get her up.

"Mamo-chan, what—"

"C'mon," he whispered, a gleam in his eyes, and a shared shower later that felt like the kind he remembered from their late teenage years, he pushed her bra back up her arms, kissed her shoulder as he fasted the clasp, and practically jumped back into his black jeans, grabbed blindly at his array of dress shirts he'd stacked on the dresser, watched transfixed as she lifted those creamy arms and pushed her head back through her dress, still so very bewildered.

"C'mon," he whispered again, and reached for her hand, wrapping his long fingers around her soft, gentle, strong, softer ones, gold band beneath his fingertips.

Suddenly, he couldn't wait to see this city, couldn't wait for the shine in her eyes when she saw this city.

Because suddenly, this city was this magical place where summer nights were not humid but warm and pleasant, where the lights coming from bricked garbled houses and ornate, black, iron street lamps shone across arched little bridges and shimmered, glimmering, glowing, in the water of the canals. Where laughing couples rode bikes across narrow lanes by the endless, sparkling riversides lined with small, picturesque boats.

He held her hand, grasped it tightly as she took it all in, eyes wide in wonder and delight, and they strolled along the moonlit canals with the light dancing in the shimmering, moving water, and bought cheap wine from an overpriced convenience store because she insisted, and a loaf of cheese because these were the Netherlands and she would have protested otherwise, which she later bit into as if it were a sandwich, and it made him snort so hard she glared at him, when they sat down by the water with their feet dangling down into the canal, the play of the light in the water reflecting off their skin, and it felt as if they were ten, twenty years younger and the world was at their fingertips.

And because he was in a country where people didn't give a damn about public displays of affection, and didn't look at you twice if you sat at the canals with your wife buried in a block of cheese, and because he would only have this for three more days, he grabbed what was left of her loaf and threw it into the canal under her loud protests, before he replaced it with his lips and her fingers slipped once more against his scalp in the way that made him shiver so very hard.

He'd forgotten what it felt like to miss her.

A few words on why this problem is so, so real: (and it is!) This thrill of the first few months that some of us mourn for the rest of the relationship and ask where it's gone? It made way for comfort, content, emotional stability. The comfortable, deep love that replaces the begging thrill. And it's good it's gone, really - you'd literally suffer from brain damage if that hormonal cocktail held your brain captive like that for a lot longer than it did in that almost manic, first few days, sometimes weeks, maybe even months. But, that being said- that thrill isn't completely lost. We can remind ourselves of it, from time to time. The question at the root of this problem is – how can we want what we already have?

The struggle is in the debate between known and unknown, routine and exciting, old and new. Thrilling is the new, the spontaneous, the unexpected. Exhilarated laughter together, new challenges, new thrills, a road together that isn't 100% planned out.

If you look for the old thrill in the same routine for years and years with the same monday night sex where you know what will happen immediately, it's hard to find - not impossible, but harder - and that is very, very normal, and not at all bad. It's beautiful, being so comfortable with another person you know their every move. Nothing is more comforting than that if times are hard for you otherwise, for one.

But the thrill, it comes when you take it through the mixer and try out something new, you know, once in a while, when you need it. When you give each other time to see each other again in that thrilling way. Be it because you didn't see each other in a little while, or because you see your partner in their element from afar and they are confident and competent and you get to remind yourself that this amazing person over there is yours and yours alone.

So yes, this is where this is set. In reminding ourselves what we have, reminding what it was like to fall in love for the first time, and what it's like to miss what he have to want it all the more.

(And yes, you do see a parallel between this sex scene and the make out session in Chapter 13 of Confetti. This is the way that scene would have ended had I finished telling it there ; ) )

Let me know what you thought, please! (And yes, totally know that commenting on smut is still weird, and you're totally welcome to review anonymously, of course!)