storypaint | Giving In (Eriol/Tomoyo)

Comm: 10hugs
Words: 2082
Title: Giving In
Series: Cardcaptor Sakura
Character/Pairing: Hiiragizawa Eriol/Daidouji Tomoyo
Set: #2
Theme: #3, starlight
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2082
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.

Excerpt: She could even tell that he was a little hurt, but Daidouji Tomoyo was stubborn. He had earned her trust once, and betrayed it; he wouldn't get another chance.

When she learned the truth, Daidouji Tomoyo hated Hiiragizawa Eriol. She'd been willing enough to say the words and smile and pretend that she could forgive him for the "benevolent" danger he had placed her Sakura in, but none of that was real. From the way he studied her sometimes she could tell he knew. She could even tell that he was a little hurt, but Daidouji Tomoyo was stubborn. He had earned her trust once, and betrayed it; he wouldn't get another chance.

In his irritating way (oh, that magician!) he decided Tomoyo was a challenge. Day after day slipped away as he tried to get her to be friendly with him, to say more than a good morning, a good afternoon, and answer a direct question. After a while people caught on. Eriol was courting Tomoyo, everyone said. Rumors spread and reasons for Tomoyo's rebuttals were speculated. When they began to fall too close to the truth (did Tomoyo really like her best friend's boyfriend instead?), Syaoran had a talk with the Clow reincarnate.

"You don't need to seem so desperate," he said bluntly. It took a lot of courage for him to have the conversation. He'd grown up so conditioned to respect Clow's name that it felt wrong to give advice to his reincarnate; not only that, but he'd never quite been comfortable with Hiiragizawa in the first place.

"Oh?" Eriol said, pretending he didn't understand. Syaoran knew that under that smile Eriol comprehended everything, and it angered him that the magician was playing games. Was there ever a time when Eriol wasn't playing a game with someone? If he was just like Clow, then Clow had been perverse and annoying.

"It's pathetic," Syaoran said. "Daidouji-san obviously wants nothing to do with you, and you have a girlfriend already."

"Ah, yes," Eriol said faintly, as though he were just remembering Kaho. "Actually, that's become quite complicated."

"What, did she leave you?"

Syaoran regretted his words immediately when he saw the look on Eriol's face, which lasted only for a moment; nonetheless, he had looked like a kicked dog. Syaoran felt uncomfortable. Well, more uncomfortable, because he'd never been quite comfortable with the whole idea of this talk. He wondered if he should pat Eriol on the back or something, but he didn't really want to.

"Yes, well, like I said, it's complicated. In any case, I would just like to know before I left Japan that Daidouji-san didn't hate me for what I did. Sakura was never in any severe danger--"

Syaoran growled under his breath and left Eriol where he was standing. Just because Sakura could feel bad for Eriol didn't mean that Syaoran had to. Let the "all-knowing" Clow reincarnate figure things out himself.

He wrote a song especially for her, but she always had a weak throat when he wanted her to sing it. He wrote her poetry; she corrected his Japanese and gave it back to him. He brought her lunch, but she was always full. In other words, Daidouji Tomoyo was not interested.

Eriol began to wonder how desperate he seemed, and how much this was really worth it. Sure, the "Hiiragizawa Eriol! Hot Foreign Student!" Fanclub had disbanded in despair, but Daidouji Tomoyo hated him all the same.

For a while he backed off and just watched. And whether he would admit it or not, his careful observations turned to gazes of longing. He was a man who at one point had anything he could ever want in the world. Now he couldn't even get a twelve-year-old girl to smile at him. Well, smile and mean it; Tomoyo was the master of the fake smile.

Syaoran and Sakura became a couple, to no one's surprise except their own, and the fake smiles grew more frequent until Eriol was uncertain if she could be honest with herself anymore at all. How hard it would be to want someone just barely out of reach, he thought, barely noticing the irony.

He observed her and wrote poems about her inner strength. He sketched her from as many angles as he could--quick sketches on notepaper between classes, careful ones during lunch when he would climb a tree to think, like Syaoran used to before he had a girlfriend with whom to eat lunch.

Eriol stopped his obvious courting after a while, and simply remained; naturally he became the fourth to their little group. Sakura didn't want to exclude Tomoyo now that she had a boyfriend, but she didn't want her friend to feel out of place. She saw Eriol as the easy solution to the problem and often enacted clumsy schemes to get them together, ignoring Tomoyo's protests of dislike. After all, Syao-chan hadn't liked her right from the start, had he?

They went to the movies together, all four of them, and to dinner, and Eriol absolutely refused to let Tomoyo pay for anything herself. "Let's pretend we are dating," he would say with that stupid smile that she hated, knowing that Sakura would back him up, and after a while she stopped protesting. However, she did keep a record of what he had spent on her, intending to force the money on him someday when he gave up trying to date her.

For two years, Eriol tried as hard as he could to get Tomoyo to like him, and didn't get very far at all. He started to wonder if it might be best if he went back to England. He picked up the phone to order plane tickets, but found that he couldn't. Instead he sat down at the table and put his head in his hands.

He couldn't go back to England. He'd fallen for her.

It was easy enough to be friendly with her. She was a very friendly person; she simply kept most people at arm's length. It was easy enough to praise her beauty, because that was a very real beauty and no one could deny it. But how exactly had he fallen for the ice queen?

He saw the way she looked at Sakura, her absolute devotion, and perhaps that was it. He wanted love like that--who wouldn't? But it wasn't for him, it wasn't. She was dedicated to Sakura alone.

Eriol hit his head on the desk a couple times, but he couldn't knock any sense into his brain. He would just have to continue courting her like before. Never mind that now each rejection hurt more. Into each life falls a little rain, right?

Eriol cussed a little.

She didn't know why he was pursuing her so vigilantly. All she knew is that she didn't want anything to do with him. He had committed the unforgivable sin, after all--attempting to harm Sakura.

Her body was making a valiant effort to betray her, however. Stupid hormones, she thought sourly every time he brushed her hand and her face blushed just a little. It's a shame I'm not gay.

It was in fact strange to know that she could be attracted to boys--well, one boy, and that was Hiiragizawa Eriol, that irritating magician--the boy with the good manners, whom her mother liked, that held doors for her and smiled in a way that drove her crazy.

Tomoyo was much more receptive to Eriol than he thought. That was perhaps a credit to her, that he who was a practiced deceiver missed the signs of her deception.

For two years, she resisted him, and made no sign that there could be anything between them. But starlight bares the hearts of those who would rather keep them hidden.

The summer night was clear and they walked out on the worst movie any of them had ever seen (except, of course, for Eriol, who claimed to have seen the beginning of theater, and it that hadn't been pretty). It was a quiet Friday night in the middle of summer break, not too hot, and so they had simply elected to walk around the park and look at the stars.

Sakura and Syaoran were trailing Tomoyo and Eriol, holding hands and speaking to each other in low tones. Sakura laughed, and then leaned over to kiss Syaoran's cheek. Glancing over her shoulder at the giggle, Tomoyo saw the affection. She turned back around quickly. A pained look passed over her face, but it was gone as quickly as it came.

"Nice night, isn't it?" Eriol said. He hadn't missed the subtext, and she knew he hadn't, and he could feel her anger.

"Wonderful," Tomoyo said in a dry tone. She swung her arm up and he caught her hand. She stared at him in distaste as a blush spread across her face.

"Keep walking or they will bump into us," Eriol said casually, tucking his fingers around her small fist. She let him have her hand and her mind wandered over to the time when he had kissed Sakura's hand and how nice that might feel, and then carefully wandered past that back into her familiar anger.

"Why didn't you ever go back home?" she said in a low tone, not expecting an answer, but he smiled and said, "This is home to me now. Home is where you are."

"Why don't you give in?" she said desperately. The starlight wasn't being kind to her pale face and showed the wrinkles in her forehead and dark under-eye circles that came from unrequited love and attempted hatred. She was suddenly so tired of this...

Sakura and Syaoran found a bench to sit on, his lips on her neck, and they wouldn't notice Tomoyo and Eriol for a while, in the way of young lovers. They kept walking, her fist shaking in his calm hand. He started to wonder if she was going to hit him. She was as tense as a large cat and seemed to prowl down the sidewalk in a way that both excited and worried him. When she judged them far enough away to be alone, she stopped and turned toward him, wresting her fist from his grip.

"You knew I didn't care, but you stayed. You stayed and I hate you for it, because before I knew it--" she began, and then looked mortified. She had said more than she wanted to, and from the look on his face Eriol had clearly filled in the blank.

Because before I knew it, I fell for you, she finished in her head, and the thought made her angry still, and scared. Because before she knew it, before she could find any kind of control, she was caught.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her to him and kissed her gently, and she responded for a moment. Then she tried to pull away, pushing her hands into his chest, but he simply caught her wrists together, pulled her close, and kissed her again.

"This-- I can't do this--" she gasped when they came apart and his eyes met hers in such an intense way that she was frightened by his devotion.

This can't be how I look at Sakura.

It wasn't. It was something deeper and more feral and distinctly masculine. She could feel her breathing quicken and he kissed her again. This time when he let her go she stepped out of his arms and started walking away.

This isn't how it's supposed to be, she thought, and when she felt the tears start she desperately tried to wipe them away, but they came too fast and after a while she began to walk faster, as though she could flee this confusion.

He caught up to her easily with those long legs he'd recently developed. He was taller than Syaoran now, which was a point of contention with his descendant, who willed himself to grow much as Sakura had wanted to grow taller than Touya--so that he could kick the other's butt.

"Do you forgive me for falling for you?" he muttered in her ear, and his lips near her neck made her shiver. She tried to push him away again, but he took her hand and she let him lace their fingers together.

"I don't know if I should hit you or kiss you," she said finally.

"I do," he said. "That's an easy question."

The look on his face made her hit him in the arm, but then she tried the other answer and liked it better.