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storypaint) wrote2007-07-24 01:29 pm
City of Lights (Nakuru/Touya)
Another 5sentences fic. This time all of the prompts tell a story together (and most of them could stand alone as well, as per 5sentences rules).
Title: City of Lights
Author: rhap_chan
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Pairing: Kinomoto Touya/Akizuki Nakuru, past Kinomoto Touya/Tsukihiro Yukito
Table/Theme: #2, all themes
Rating: PG13 for implied sex
Word Count: 2789
Warnings: implied sex
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP. This fanfic is a derivative of canon material that is not my property. I do not profit from these writings. The opinions and actions expressed in these stories are not necessarily the views and beliefs of the original author or me.
Dedication: This fic is dedicated to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lady_stargazer. When I was poking around for good fic a couple days ago, I found her incredible Nakuru/Touya fic I Will Bury You in Time and couldn't resist rereading it. It made me think that Nakuru belonged in Paris. Anyway, we may never have spoken, but this is dedicated to her for reminding us that Nakuru doesn't have to be a two-dimensional character.
Excerpt: "Let's keep it simple," she says, still smiling, as she leads him out of the dim museum into Parisian sunlight. "Just for today, just for Paris, love me a little."
01. Impressionist
Touya hasn't seen Nakuru in God knows how many years but here she is at the Impressionist exhibit, peering at the carefully painted dots that somehow become flowers. Her hair is long and she's wearing a tight black turtleneck, like she belongs here in Paris, drinking coffee and laughing and tossing back those copper-red strands.
He gasps; "Touya!" she says, looking up as the sound reaches her ears. She smiles widely and those amber eyes spark.
He wonders how he never saw this beauty in her before.
02. Cat on a hot tin roof
Everything is moving too fast. She grabs his arm and leads him along the passageway, talking a mile a minute. Without hesitation she slips her hands into his, and his skin tingles, burns in a way that Yuki never made him feel (Yuki's touch was cool and sweet but he can't think about that anymore, not anymore).
"I missed you, Touya," she says, full of happiness, sunshine, light, some sort of indescribable beauty that he can't help but love.
"I missed you too," he says before thinking, but he doesn't regret it, all the same.
03. Keeping it simple
"Let's keep it simple," she says, still smiling, as she leads him out of the dim museum into Parisian sunlight. "Just for today, just for Paris, love me a little."
He wants to say something but instead he nods and treats her to lunch at her favorite cafe. She speaks French like a native and he would wonder how long she's lived here if he wasn't trying to drink in her beauty.
She catches him staring and teases him, but they keep it simple.
04. One sock
At the end of the day they go back to her apartment, and he takes off a sock and throws it at her; it makes her laugh a little too hard-- perhaps they have drunk too much today. She pulls off her shirt and throws it at him. He spends a long moment drinking in creamy white skin, half-wondering but not caring why she had no breasts. Nakuru was all woman anyway.
"For Paris, love me a little," she says, and it sounds like whining. They're both drunk and it might be stupid but he unzips her skirt anyway.
05. Actions speak louder
He wakes up before her in the morning, his nose pressed into the sweet sweatiness of Nakuru's skin, and he just breathes. He has a terrible hangover and he's positive he was wearing more clothes last night but--
He doesn't want to end this dream, this insanity. He breathes again, thinking that she smells like Paris, like old paint and coffee and lilies. Then he goes back to sleep.
06. Saved by the bell
When he wakes up, the bells at Notre Dame are ringing, so loudly that he thinks his ears might burst. The bed is cold and Nakuru is nowhere to be seen. For a moment he imagines that she has burned down like a flame (for isn't that her personality, a warm flare in the dark) and that he won't see her again.
But she comes out of the bathroom wearing a towel and she walks over to the window, leaning out to hear the bells better. Her legs are long and tan and he wants to put his lips on them again, but instead they listen to the bells.
07. Love is
On the fifth day he spends in Paris ("Just for today," she said the first day, but he knew then it wouldn't be just one), they are walking down the street hand in hand and she says to him, "What do you think love is?"
And he thinks about the years they've compressed into days and how somehow they've known each other forever (and for a moment he thinks, just like me and Yuki, but it's gone).
"Love is what you make it," Touya answers cheerfully. Nakuru giggles, pulling him down the tiny Parisian lane. He knows there are surprises around the corner and for once he doesn't mind.
08. Man's best friend
He's never liked dogs, but on Fridays Nakuru always goes to the dog park and plays with any animal that will let her.
"I miss Spinel sometimes," she says, looking sad for a moment until a huge German Shepherd jumps on her chest, slobbering and happy.
"Why don't you go home?" he says, looking sternly at a small yappy thing that's threatening to pee on his shoe. His glare is successful and the dog runs back to his master, chastened.
"I was waiting for something," Nakuru says thoughtfully, meeting his eyes, and she doesn't say that it was him and she doesn't say that it wasn't.
09. Check's in the mail
She spends money like it's water and Touya supposes that Eriol doesn't mind paying for anything she needs to make her happy. But his trip is the result of long savings and a powerful desire to see the Eiffel Tower just once, and time is running out. He doesn't tell her, even as he realizes this is an echo of what Kaho did to him and he hated it. He just can't bear to waste any of the minutes they've got left, but the check is in the mail, the check is in the mail. His plane takes off in three days.
10. Naked
She likes to see him naked, comparing him to Greek gods and movie stars. She runs her hands over his work-sculpted shoulders, his flat stomach, his furry calves, like she's trying to convince herself that he is real, that this is real. But what is real in Paris, anyway?
They tend to lounge around in bed for hours in the morning, rising with the dawn but lying in bed until noon or later. She always has her hands on him, but he doesn't really mind. Her fingers are long and fine, her nails bitten down to the quick; they are full of life and just like her and he likes her gentle touches.
11. Breakfast at Denny's (caveat)
They never eat fast food, not here in Paris, Nakuru tells him. Instead the two of them spend all afternoon on one meal, in a cafe where you have to speak too loud to hear yourself, in a cafe that is yet so intimate that the waitress knows your name and will know it when you come back a second time.
He remembers all the hurried breakfasts at home, the toast half-eaten, the gulped orange juice, and he tells her again how much he loves Paris. She smiles; he puts his hand on top of hers, nudges her knee as he scoots closer, and opens his mouth.
"I'm going home tomorrow," he says quietly, and it's the loudest thing in the cafe.
12. Only one life
Her smile falters for just a minute, and then she reaches across the table and somehow manages to pull him to his feet. He stands awkwardly, trying to keep his gangly limbs from brushing the other patrons accidentally.
"I want to dance," she says, using her best pout, and he looks confused, so she repeats herself. "Let's go somewhere we can dance, Touya-- I want to dance with you."
She pulls him out the door on another adventure, but the whole time they dance she wonders if he ever took her seriously.
13. Swords to plowshares
It isn't as hard as he thinks it should be to say goodbye-- a strangely chaste kiss on the cheek, a wave, and he is gone. It is almost as if these few weeks haven't happened, as if Nakuru has never in fact invaded his space with a desire for love and time and touch.
But she has, and Touya finds it hard to forget, hard to beat his sword into a plowshare and return to boring, boring, boring life. Sakura worries that he's depressed. He won't say that he's in love.
14. Deadman's hand
When Nakuru wakes on the night that Touya left, her double bed feels much too empty. She finds herself reaching out for a hand she'll never find, and in frustration she puts a pillow over her head and tries to go back to sleep.
She knows what she said when she saw him-- "give me one day, just one." She doesn't regret what they had. She feels guilty and greedy wishing for more, but the bed is lonely and she wonders if he's wishing he stayed.
15. Getting along
Just because he's gone it doesn't mean she can't get along in Paris. Her friends quit asking about the handsome Japanese man and she spends a lot of time in her favorite cafe.
She gets along just fine, but Paris isn't hers anymore, it's hers and his, together, and apart it's not the same.
"Are you doing okay?" Eriol asks gently in his weekly call.
"I think I'm going to come home for a while," she replies, not realizing how much she's missed him too until she jumps into his arms and smells his paternal smell.
16. Photographs and memories
There is only one picture of the two of them together in Paris that Nakuru keeps-- the rest she throws out her window with abandon, like she's trying to throw away memories. It's not that; it's that she can remember perfectly well without physical evidence. She doesn't need to be tied down.
Touya has no pictures of them together at all, barring one from the year she spent in Japan: it is a picture of him and Yukito actually, with Nakuru sponsoring his sudden pained face with her weight on his neck.
He puts it on his nightstand when he finds it, honestly surprised that Yuki is in the photo too-- he hadn't remembered.
17. Redeye
Nakuru's flight home is a redeye, but they are all waiting for her at the airport, three a.m. Kaho is half-asleep and Spinel is regulated to the insides of her handbag, but Nakuru squeals when she disembarks and runs to meet them.
No one gives them odd looks anymore, now that Eriol has grown into his true age and a ring glitters on Kaho's hand. Well, they won't if Nakuru doesn't break into Japanese in her excitement (of course she does, but no one minds the spectacle).
Kaho looks at her in a piercing sort of way and Nakuru wonders if she sees something, smells a hint of Touya that the boy has left behind, but there's no time for all that, because they're going home.
18. Footprints in the sand
Touya doesn't talk about his trip that much at all, though Sakura does find out that he met Nakuru in Paris. The thought is terribly exciting, because she misses seeing Eriol and the gang, but a press for details is rebuffed.
One day they go to the beach-- Syaoran and Sakura and Touya, because he still thinks they shouldn't be alone ever-- and Touya makes footprints in the sand and wonders what color Nakuru's bathing suit would be. He thinks about inviting her to visit.
But Japan isn't Paris and he isn't sure he's ready for this step, so he watches his footprints fade and Sakura teases Syaoran and Touya is silent.
19. Reap what you sow
Kaho is the first one Nakuru tells, and she listens quietly and sees the trace of her story in there that Touya must have seen too. She nods and doesn't say the hurtful things that she's heard from people-- you reap what you sow, you get what you give-- because she knows that Nakuru gave everything, just like she did once. And Touya always gives his entire being to the person that he loves. It is a quirk of boyish charm she hopes he never outgrows.
"It sounds wonderful," Kaho says, and Nakuru grins.
"I knew you'd understand," she replies, giving the former priestess a hug, and then dashes off to regale her long-neglected English friends with tales of France.
20. The morning after
Touya's bed is too big and when he presses his nose to the mattress he can still smell Yukito in it a little. They lived together for four years and Touya still finds things that remind him of their time together, before the stony silences and misunderstandings and final loss.
The scent of Paris still lingers in his nostrils and perhaps this is why the morning after his trip he gets up and goes looking for loft apartments. He tries not to think about the reason he wants to live somewhere mimicking Nakuru's cheerful abode. Perhaps it's because he wants a part of her here, though she's half the world away.
21. Batman and Superman were lovers
Touya has a dream on the first night in his new apartment, a dream he chalks up to the stress of moving and the takeout he ate before resting himself on a mattress on the floor. And Syaoran offered to help him move, out of the goodness of his heart, and Touya can't help but think that it's something a brother-in-law would do. Is is any wonder that he has a nightmare?
There Nakuru is, poised with one foot on the windowsill of her apartment and the other foot left to taste the breeze. She doesn't have her wings and he opens his mouth to caution her before she jumps but she does and--
He has no wings either, but they fly when he catches her, and he feels like Superman.
22. Flying blind
She and Spinel sometimes go flying at night, out of the way of curious eyes, and she likes to shut her eyes and fly blind into the darkness. He doesn't ask her about her time in Paris, and he won't; it isn't that he isn't interested, but he knows that she'll choose the best nuggets of the trip and feed him stories about museums and music and art. He is the best brother ever, she thinks fondly.
When she tires, the pair of them settle in a tree and she begins to tell him about Touya. He listens all the way through, thoughtfully, and tells her that it sounds like true Paris romance.
He is the best brother ever, but he doesn't understand that she wants something more than whirlwind romance from the Cardmistress's brother, and that's okay with Nakuru, because Spinel is just the person that he is and she loves him for it.
23. On the line
She's never wanted to write a poem before but she knows that Touya's birthday is coming up and she wants to make it special. She wants to let him know somehow that she hasn't meant to lose touch, she just keeps going and going, and she wants to tell him that she spent six months in Germany but it was nothing like Paris, nothing at all.
She writes four lines about the color of his eyes and knows that this will not do, not at all, because she can't say all the thing she wants to say in person, and who's to say he would listen? It's been four years since he went back to Japan and the distance between them seems much too large to address with a letter.
In the end she signs her name on the card with everyone else, knowing he won't be able to read between the lines, even if she presses on the pen really hard.
24. Ordinary man
Touya goes on to be an ordinary man, touched with just a spark of divine. Perhaps the fact that he believes in magic shines in his eyes; there's certainly something that draws all these men and women to him. Though he sometimes dates the redheads, they can't be Nakuru for him, and he knows it.
Sometimes he thinks about calling, writing, visiting, but he doesn't know where she lives anymore and he's just an ordinary man. Why would he dare pursue her magic?
25. Rule of thumb
He's standing there (it's been so many years), pretending not to look for her (he can't help it), and he doesn't see the paintings, not at all. He turns too fast when he sees a shock of copper hair, but it's not her, and his cane folds under him wrong and he spills onto the floor, just another lonely old man, alone alone alone.
But there's a girl helping him up, and she's wearing a black turtleneck and looks positively like she belongs in Paris. He smells coffee and he smiles and when she smacks him, he doesn't mind too much.
"Just today, for Paris, love me a little," he says, and she's crying but she says yes.
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"Just today, for Paris, love me a little," he says, and she's crying but she says yes.
Guh.
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I thought it would be nice to connect the ending to the beginning. I wrote the last prompt when I was only about a quarter of the way through the others. ^^
Thanks for the comment!