Syaoran stood under his umbrella in front of the front door of the house, cursing as his cold fingers fumbled with his keys.

"It's got to be in here…" Syaoran growled under his breath as he searched for the key that would let him into the house. "Come on…" He shook the key bunch desperately. No luck. No sign of brand new key that Sakura had had copied for him just that past weekend…And, therefore, no identifiable way for him to get into the house.

"Dammit!" Syaoran shoved the useless ring of keys back into the pocket of his jacket and groaned, dragging his free hand down his face in frustration. He ran the possibilities through his head, striking each one down as it came to him.

I could ask the neighbors for the key…

No; both the neighbors were out of town for the week. He had come home early for the very purpose of feeding their stupid cats.

I could call Sakura…

But she was working on call at the hospital. She couldn't just come home to bail his ass out of a situation as simple, trivial and stupid as this…and dammit, a man had to have some pride! He couldn't just call his wife for help with every little…

Syaoran heard a loud noise, like two flat pieces of wood colliding, and looked up in the direction from which he had heard it. He spotted the source of the noise; the shutters of one of the windows on the second floor of the house were snapping back and forth in the brisk wind, alternately hitting the windowsill to produce the noise he had heard.

Sakura must have left the bedroom window open again… Syaoran's eyebrows shot up and he realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach that he had discovered just about the only way he was going to get into the house. He sighed. Damn my luck, he thought, trying to figure out how he was going to get up to the second floor in the first place. The rain was beginning to fall hard, and the wind was picking up, making the more supple branches of the tree that leaned over the house flail dangerously.

The tree…

How do I get myself into these situations? Syaoran wondered as he put the final touches on his plan to get into the house. He shrugged, propped his umbrella up behind a plant next to the door (which mostly hid the umbrella from view) and descended the steps from the front door, jogging over to the thick base of the tree that was going to serve as his ladder. Apprehensively, he looked up the trunk off the tree, mapping his leafy route to the bedroom window. Grasping a sturdy branch with his hands, Syaoran fluidly pulled himself up into the tree. The ground was suddenly far below him. He stood on the branch for a moment; it rocking slightly beneath him. Syaoran grasped the main trunk as he maneuvered to another branch. The sky was a bruised purple-black color and rain pelted him, soaking him and his clothes.

"Well," he chuckled as he climbed, "here goes nothing…"

Five minutes later, Syaoran pulled himself, panting, in through the open window and lowered himself over the windowsill and into the room. The window had deposited him next to the closet, diagonally across the room from the bed. His shoes left muddy prints on the wooden floor and water from his clothes immediately began to drip off of him and onto the brand new paneling. He looked down at his feet and grimaced.

"Sakura's gonna kill me," he said to himself as he stepped out of his shoes and picked them up in his hands. Shivering, he walked to the adjacent bathroom and dumped his sodden sneakers into the sink before stripping off his clothes, which he tossed into the shower to prevent the tiled floor from getting wetter than it already was. His soggy socks left wide foot prints wherever he stepped and Syaoran peeled them off, throwing them into the shower to join the rest of his clothes. Reaching for his towel, Syaoran quickly dried himself off, rubbing roughly at his hair to stop the water from trickling down his face and neck. As he was combing stray strands off of his face, the phone began to ring. Syaoran wrapped the towel around his waist and strode half naked into the bedroom. He searched the room for the phone, and then realized it wasn't there. Swearing, Syaoran ran down the hallway, quickly descended the stairs that led into the kitchen, and skidded to a halt next to the counter. The phone wasn't there either. It rang a third time, and Syaoran sprinted down the set of steps leading to the basement floor, where he finally spotted the receiver on the sofa in front of the TV. He made a mad leap for it and managed to pick it up and put it to his ear just as it was about to go to the answering machine.

"Hello?" He panted as he tried to catch his breath. There was a pause on the line before the caller spoke.

"Hey, Syaoran. It's me."

"Oh, hey, Eriol. What's up?" Eriol paused as Syaoran struggled to slow his breathing.

"You okay, Syaoran? You sound a little…outta breath." Syaoran cleared his throat and shook his head.

"No, stupid, I'm fine. Sakura just…misplaced the phone again, so I was running around trying to find it." Eriol laughed.

"You have a phone in practically every room. Don't tell me that you two have 'misplaced' them all, Syaoran." Syaoran chuckled and wedged the phone in the space between his ear and his shoulder, leaning his neck to the side to hold the phone in place. Clutching the towel around his waist, he walked over to the refrigerator and opened it, pulling out a soda, then sat down on the couch.

"Well, Eriol, it's Sakura. And you know that anything can happen at that point." He took a swig of the soda and sighed in satisfaction. "Mmm…that's good." Syaoran turned his attention from the soda to his friend. "So to what do I owe the pleasure of your call, Eriol?" Eriol laughed shortly.

"Tomoyo and I wanted to invite you and your lovely spouse over for dinner tomorrow night. Got any plans?" Syaoran put down the soda can and lay down on the couch.

"I dunno, Eriol. Sakura's on call all week. Let's make it a maybe…you never know when she's going to get called in."

"Hm. Okay, I'll tell Tomoyo." He paused for a moment. "Make sure you actually ask Sakura this time, Syaoran. Last time we invited you over, you said yes and promptly forgot to tell her. Tomoyo was devastated. She made her rice balls just for you and you didn't even show." He faked a pathetically effeminate sniffle which made Syaoran snort in amusement. Eriol suddenly yelped in pain.

"What happened?" Syaoran sat up in surprise at the sound.

"Tomoyo smacked me with a spatula," Eriol grumbled. Syaoran tried hard not to laugh at Eriol. He could hear Tomoyo muttering in the background and just barely managed to catch, "I'll get Sakura to castrate you if you're not careful…" Eriol groaned.

"Don't worry. First of all, Sakura can't operate to rob you of your lineage. Remember, she's in cardiology. And second, I won't forget this time. I'll even write myself a note. What time tomorrow?"

"Let's try …8:30? Tomoyo doesn't get out of her meeting until 5:00, and then takes forever to get things just the way she wants them…so yeah. 8:30." Syaoran shook his head.

"Eriol, how did we manage to marry such busy women?"

"Hey, you're the one who's married. Me'n Tomoyo are still pending on the whole 'tying the knot' thing. So I could just go and find a less busy…Ow!" Syaoran heard a noise that sounded painfully like metal on skin. He winced.

"Tomoyo hit you with the spatula again?" Syaoran asked, attempting to sound sympathetic.

"Uh-huh." Syaoran could imagine Tomoyo's playfully annoyed rant that would follow the telephone conversation.

"Well, I'll leave you to the angry to-be Hiiragizawa," Syaoran said cheerily. "I'll make sure to call you back about tomorrow."

"Gee, thanks a lot, Syaoran," Eriol replied dryly. He sighed in a resigned sort of way. "Well, I guess I'd better go. Tomoyo's looking for the meat cleaver. Bye."

"Bye." Just as he was about to hang up, Syaoran heard Tomoyo shout indignantly, "I am not looking for the meat cleaver, Eriol!"

The line clicked and Syaoran put down the receiver, then gathered the towel around his waist again and got up from the couch. He picked up the soda can, dropping it in a trash can that was next to the door, and proceeded up the stairs and into the kitchen. His eyes landed on the fridge and he paused as a large growl from his stomach reminded him that he had forgotten to eat lunch. Syaoran considered for a moment, then walked over to the fridge and pulled open the door. The leftovers from last night's dinner greeted him from small white Chinese take-out cartons that Sakura bought by the hundreds and used in lieu of troublesome Tupperware. Syaoran extracted a few choice-looking cartons from the fridge and set them on the counter one by one as he searched for some soy sauce to eat with what he presumed were the dumplings that he and Sakura had made for dinner the night before. Finally finding the soy sauce behind the coffee machine next to the kitchen sink (Sakura had put it there, no doubt), Syaoran pulled the first carton towards him and opened it. As he pulled the flaps open, his hand slipped and he ended up with all of his fingers buried in something that definitely wasn't a dumpling.

Syaoran extracted his hand from the pink-yellow-white mass and licked his index finger carefully.

"F…frosting…?" he said incredulously as he examined the carton. He sucked it off his fingertips and opened the next carton. Again, the same pinkish-looking frosting peeked gooey-ly out from the box. Syaoran opened another carton, and another, and another.

"I can't believe this," he muttered as he rooted around rooted around in the fridge for any other cartons that might contain a semblance of something edible. Nothing. Zilch. Zippo. All there was left was about 8 paper cartons full of cake. Syaoran sighed.

"Sakura, you sure have a strange sense of humor," he grumbled, and resigned himself to the fact that cake was the only thing on the menu for lunch, especially since he wasn't feeling up to making something himself at the moment. Grabbing a spoon and one of the many cartons he had spread across the counter, Syaoran made himself comfortable in a chair and propped his feet up on the dining table. He took a spoonful of the cake and put it in his mouth. The sugary-sweetness exploded across his tongue and Syaoran swallowed hungrily, digging another bit of the cake out of the carton. Here goes nothing, Syaoran thought to himself as he devoured the cake, and hoped that he would subsequently get something decent to eat for dinner. After all, cake would only sustain a man for so long.

Outside, Sakura hadn't noticed the umbrella behind the potted plant next to the front door, nor the fact that there was a shutter that was open on the second floor of the house. Shivering, soaked, and clutching an equally-soggy purse, Sakura pushed her key into the lock and turned, grateful that she would soon be taking a warm shower, getting out of her wet clothes, and settling down for a quiet evening with Syaoran. Little did she realize that her evening would be anything but quiet.

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Author's Note:

Well it's been quite a while since the first chapter was posted and I really am sorry. So much crap has come up, most of you wouldn't even believe. My 6 year old computer (really high time for a new one, I think) crashed, taking with it much of my data...so it took quite a while to retrieve my files (a very good friend of mine does such business for a living, as it were). Then, my sister-in-law gave birth to her first child a few weeks ago (a healthy, gorgeous baby girl. I ended up booking a ticket to the UK so I could fly out and see them! Quite exciting.).

Anyway, between all of that, plus work, plus my life, giving an update has been difficult. I also sort of decided to completely change the way the rest of the story happens, so...I am still in the process of rewriting the whole bloody story. Have patience, friends. An update will come soon enough...

Ebony