butterflydreaming (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
butterflydreaming) wrote2005-09-21 09:50 pm
butterflydreaming) wrote2005-09-21 09:50 pm
Entry tags:
"Is your place in heaven worth giving up these kisses?" she asked.
Fanfiction for this serial. I don't think it's necessary to know the canon, but I've been enjoying the read. Spoilers for the whole thing, some angel angst. As is typical for me, all about minor characters, some of whom are already dead according to the canon.
Length: a bunch of words (around 1.6K)
Genre: 100% romance
Rating: PG
I joked that I was going to write them a classically painful songfic, but after Ch 21 I changed my mind. The newly introduced character, Kikuu, is my Guest Appearance... and she dies in a couple of paragraphs. "Cooling" has always been one of my favorite songs, and this fic gets the honor of its use, but not with the inserted lines of songfic style. You don't have to be familiar with the song, yet I think that it has the kind of pure/sad/wistful/beautiful that enhances the story.
Online lyrics for "Cooling" have 2 extra stanzas and have the end sigh as "hey, yes", but I'm working off of the Venus & Back recording where I'm sure that Tori sings it as "say yes" -- therefore, the title.
In Japanese, the word/phrase "suki" can mean "like" or "love" depending on context. An underclassman (school) would address an upperclassman as "sempai". Boys will usually address girls by [last name]-san unless they are very, very close; use of first name without an honorific is *extremely* intimate; even married people will use [first name]-san.
N's full name isn't given in canon, but since most angel names end in "-el", I've taken the liberty of thinking of him as Nathaniel, which means "God has given". Seems fitting.
~Say, Yes~
There was too much fire in his blue eyes, and too much emerald spark in hers, and once again they argued. Separately, they were normally calm. Kikuu was the kind of girl who wrote gentle nature haiku for the poetry club. She was respectful to her teachers and classmates. N was cool and rational. An angel living among mortals, passing for an ordinary high school exchange student, had to be. They were alone on the roof of the school, which was a good thing because even if their voices never rose above a politely conversational level, their words flew at each other like tiny, shining daggers. Kikuu's petite figure was rigid with tension. She was nearly in tears.
If N's wings had been visible, they would have been extended in agitation. "You know how I feel," he offered as a plea for truce.
"I've heard every word that you have said," the girl retorted. "And none of them..." she hesitated, caught her breath, her fire cooling with the water spilling over her pale cheeks, "...why won't you say it?"
N sighed. He wanted to gather Kikuu into the embrace of his arms, but holding her was a dangerous thing to do. "You're a good girl, Watanabe-san," he said. The formal address was difficult to go back to when he had already slipped once by murmuring her first name, past her loose brown hair, into her ear while she whispered back, "your name is like an angel's name... I love saying it."
"You're a good girl," he repeated awkwardly. "And you know.. the way that I feel for you... it's a pure thing."
"This is pure," she contradicted. "Like the driven snow." A sniffle preceded her next words. Automatically, N offered her his handkerchief. She took it and stared at its crazy pattern of tiny penguins. "I know you don't like me much..." she started to say. Maybe she meant "like", maybe she meant "love" -- N's own feelings were too muddled to read the mortal girl's emotions clearly.
He stopped her from saying the rest with a touch of his fingertips to her lips. She wrapped her hand around his and held it, pressing her warm lips against his fingers to turn the silencing touch into a forlorn kiss. Quietly, she held his hand for a minute longer before speaking again. "Is your place in heaven worth giving up these kisses?" she cajoled gently.
"Yes," answered N as gently, but firmly. Then he did pull her to him; he held her carefully while she did not cry against his chest. He squeezed her a little more tightly and then let her go. With a crooked smile, he said, "Willyougotothedancewithme?"
Kikuu's face lit up brilliantly with her answering smile. "I thought that you would ask someone from your own year. Sempai..." she added, sighing.
"I've been practicing for two weeks to ask you!" N said: an attempt to lighten the mood.
"Well..." Kikuu teased. She watched the boy's expression change from hope to worry. "I haven't... yet..." -- she grinned --"...finished sewing my dress," she concluded with delayed mercy. "Pick me up at seven?"
* * *
On the day of the dance, when N came to escort Kikuu, the girl couldn't take her eyes off of her date. Not a date, she corrected herself. We're going to a dance together. But we're not dating. She couldn't even focus on the red rose that he had brought as a corsage. He was radiant, she thought. His shining blond hair almost glowed against a neat white suit; he wore a twilight-indigo silky tie that made his eyes look like facets of heaven. When he hesitated to affix the corsage anywhere on the closely tailored bodice of her green dress, she plucked it from his hands and tucked it behind one ear. He offered her a hand as they stepped from the stairs in front of her apartment building and onto the sidewalk. As they walked to the school, they lingered holding hands.
A few times during the evening, at breaks between songs, some of N's friends came over to hint that N and Kikuu dance with other people. The girl didn't mind, especially since one of the three was in her poetry club. It was strange to see that she still had her signature art tube with her, even when she was wearing a fairy-like blue gown instead of the school's fuku. One of the things that Kikuu liked best about school dances was seeing her schoolmates transformed. The only person in the room who didn't look very different from every day, despite the wearing of a lacey confection of a dress, was that popular transfer student from America. Rica-san always looked stunning.
The night progressed, but N didn't get the hints, and Kikuu kept thinking that she would give the next dance over to the shy girl with the wistful look. Yet when the next song would start, she found she couldn't bear to leave the cozy circle of N's company. All the slow dancing began to erode Kikuu's resolve to respect N's wishes. She felt a strong desire to knot her grip into his soft hair and pull his face to hers. She had to stop looking into his eyes -- losing herself in them -- so she turned her look away and glanced around the room. A reflection of her feelings appeared to be rippling across the dance floor. She leaned her head against her dance partner's shoulder. "I want to...". She felt the back of his hand stroke tendrils of her wayward hair away from her cheek. "I want to know you... more and more," she sighed.
Suddenly someone was yelling, then someone was screaming, and Kikuu and N were jolted out of their close contact.
---
N felt a twinge of disappointment when Kikuu hid her gaze from him, but not when she shifted in his arms to lean her head against his shoulder. She was such a young mortal, alive with a blazing free will and years of choices ahead of her. He didn't know why she had chosen him. He couldn't give her the answer that she wanted, because he didn't get to choose. He was in the service of One other than himself; N had his duty.
That didn't stop him from caressing the hair that fell against Kikuu's cheek with the back of his hand. The crimson in her cheek was like a stain from the flower tucked behind her ear.
"I want to..." he heard her sigh. "I want to know you... more and more."
He smelled the briny odor a second before someone began screaming. He jolted away from Kikuu, scanning to catch the eye of his champions. Steel Pixie's elven sword gleamed too brightly to be reflecting the glow of paper lanterns and strings of tiny fairy lights that decorated the gymnasium. A shine of battle excitement sparkled in Kick's expression. The two girls had already jumped into action.
Then suddenly, horribly, it was Kikuu that was screaming. The pincers of the monstrous crab that had invaded the room splattered ocean water in a salty rain across the polished floor. One of them was crushing the girl as the obake lifted her toward its wet black eyes to inspect her. It quickly lost interest, and dropped Kikuu as it quested for someone or something new. Kikuu had a long way to fall.
N watched it all helplessly. He felt frozen, and then, after he realized that she had hit the floor from three-quarters of the way up toward the high ceiling, he felt cold. He ran to her and fell to his knees, digging in the mass of tulle and green satin to feel the reality of her. Her dress was wet, but it was only seawater. He saw her smile at him. She would be okay. She was a good girl, and He would not take someone so young.
"I will see you again, won't I?"
N realized that he was wrong.
---
Kikuu was dying. She smiled, seeing N at last for what he was. "I will see you again," she heard herself ask; it was as if her voice was coming from someone else far away. "Won't I?"
Oh, he was beautiful. The most beautiful thing that she had ever seen. Everything about him was light and fire. "Yes. Of course."
"I'll see you in Heaven." She couldn't look at him anymore; he was too bright. She closed her eyes almost completely, veiling the sight of the angel with her lashes. Nathaniel. It had always sounded like an angel's name when she whispered it in her prayers. He was bending close to her. "Say... yes," she breathed.
---
With the fighting going on around him, he shouldn't have been able to hear her, but he did. "The answer was always yes," he said with his lips against hers.
He destroyed the crab-yokai with wrath that was not Heaven's, only his own.
Then he went back to Kikuu and held her while her body cooled. He knew that her soul was gone from it, but still, he held her.
* * *
Length: a bunch of words (around 1.6K)
Genre: 100% romance
Rating: PG
I joked that I was going to write them a classically painful songfic, but after Ch 21 I changed my mind. The newly introduced character, Kikuu, is my Guest Appearance... and she dies in a couple of paragraphs. "Cooling" has always been one of my favorite songs, and this fic gets the honor of its use, but not with the inserted lines of songfic style. You don't have to be familiar with the song, yet I think that it has the kind of pure/sad/wistful/beautiful that enhances the story.
Online lyrics for "Cooling" have 2 extra stanzas and have the end sigh as "hey, yes", but I'm working off of the Venus & Back recording where I'm sure that Tori sings it as "say yes" -- therefore, the title.
In Japanese, the word/phrase "suki" can mean "like" or "love" depending on context. An underclassman (school) would address an upperclassman as "sempai". Boys will usually address girls by [last name]-san unless they are very, very close; use of first name without an honorific is *extremely* intimate; even married people will use [first name]-san.
N's full name isn't given in canon, but since most angel names end in "-el", I've taken the liberty of thinking of him as Nathaniel, which means "God has given". Seems fitting.
~Say, Yes~
There was too much fire in his blue eyes, and too much emerald spark in hers, and once again they argued. Separately, they were normally calm. Kikuu was the kind of girl who wrote gentle nature haiku for the poetry club. She was respectful to her teachers and classmates. N was cool and rational. An angel living among mortals, passing for an ordinary high school exchange student, had to be. They were alone on the roof of the school, which was a good thing because even if their voices never rose above a politely conversational level, their words flew at each other like tiny, shining daggers. Kikuu's petite figure was rigid with tension. She was nearly in tears.
If N's wings had been visible, they would have been extended in agitation. "You know how I feel," he offered as a plea for truce.
"I've heard every word that you have said," the girl retorted. "And none of them..." she hesitated, caught her breath, her fire cooling with the water spilling over her pale cheeks, "...why won't you say it?"
N sighed. He wanted to gather Kikuu into the embrace of his arms, but holding her was a dangerous thing to do. "You're a good girl, Watanabe-san," he said. The formal address was difficult to go back to when he had already slipped once by murmuring her first name, past her loose brown hair, into her ear while she whispered back, "your name is like an angel's name... I love saying it."
"You're a good girl," he repeated awkwardly. "And you know.. the way that I feel for you... it's a pure thing."
"This is pure," she contradicted. "Like the driven snow." A sniffle preceded her next words. Automatically, N offered her his handkerchief. She took it and stared at its crazy pattern of tiny penguins. "I know you don't like me much..." she started to say. Maybe she meant "like", maybe she meant "love" -- N's own feelings were too muddled to read the mortal girl's emotions clearly.
He stopped her from saying the rest with a touch of his fingertips to her lips. She wrapped her hand around his and held it, pressing her warm lips against his fingers to turn the silencing touch into a forlorn kiss. Quietly, she held his hand for a minute longer before speaking again. "Is your place in heaven worth giving up these kisses?" she cajoled gently.
"Yes," answered N as gently, but firmly. Then he did pull her to him; he held her carefully while she did not cry against his chest. He squeezed her a little more tightly and then let her go. With a crooked smile, he said, "Willyougotothedancewithme?"
Kikuu's face lit up brilliantly with her answering smile. "I thought that you would ask someone from your own year. Sempai..." she added, sighing.
"I've been practicing for two weeks to ask you!" N said: an attempt to lighten the mood.
"Well..." Kikuu teased. She watched the boy's expression change from hope to worry. "I haven't... yet..." -- she grinned --"...finished sewing my dress," she concluded with delayed mercy. "Pick me up at seven?"
On the day of the dance, when N came to escort Kikuu, the girl couldn't take her eyes off of her date. Not a date, she corrected herself. We're going to a dance together. But we're not dating. She couldn't even focus on the red rose that he had brought as a corsage. He was radiant, she thought. His shining blond hair almost glowed against a neat white suit; he wore a twilight-indigo silky tie that made his eyes look like facets of heaven. When he hesitated to affix the corsage anywhere on the closely tailored bodice of her green dress, she plucked it from his hands and tucked it behind one ear. He offered her a hand as they stepped from the stairs in front of her apartment building and onto the sidewalk. As they walked to the school, they lingered holding hands.
A few times during the evening, at breaks between songs, some of N's friends came over to hint that N and Kikuu dance with other people. The girl didn't mind, especially since one of the three was in her poetry club. It was strange to see that she still had her signature art tube with her, even when she was wearing a fairy-like blue gown instead of the school's fuku. One of the things that Kikuu liked best about school dances was seeing her schoolmates transformed. The only person in the room who didn't look very different from every day, despite the wearing of a lacey confection of a dress, was that popular transfer student from America. Rica-san always looked stunning.
The night progressed, but N didn't get the hints, and Kikuu kept thinking that she would give the next dance over to the shy girl with the wistful look. Yet when the next song would start, she found she couldn't bear to leave the cozy circle of N's company. All the slow dancing began to erode Kikuu's resolve to respect N's wishes. She felt a strong desire to knot her grip into his soft hair and pull his face to hers. She had to stop looking into his eyes -- losing herself in them -- so she turned her look away and glanced around the room. A reflection of her feelings appeared to be rippling across the dance floor. She leaned her head against her dance partner's shoulder. "I want to...". She felt the back of his hand stroke tendrils of her wayward hair away from her cheek. "I want to know you... more and more," she sighed.
Suddenly someone was yelling, then someone was screaming, and Kikuu and N were jolted out of their close contact.
---
N felt a twinge of disappointment when Kikuu hid her gaze from him, but not when she shifted in his arms to lean her head against his shoulder. She was such a young mortal, alive with a blazing free will and years of choices ahead of her. He didn't know why she had chosen him. He couldn't give her the answer that she wanted, because he didn't get to choose. He was in the service of One other than himself; N had his duty.
That didn't stop him from caressing the hair that fell against Kikuu's cheek with the back of his hand. The crimson in her cheek was like a stain from the flower tucked behind her ear.
"I want to..." he heard her sigh. "I want to know you... more and more."
He smelled the briny odor a second before someone began screaming. He jolted away from Kikuu, scanning to catch the eye of his champions. Steel Pixie's elven sword gleamed too brightly to be reflecting the glow of paper lanterns and strings of tiny fairy lights that decorated the gymnasium. A shine of battle excitement sparkled in Kick's expression. The two girls had already jumped into action.
Then suddenly, horribly, it was Kikuu that was screaming. The pincers of the monstrous crab that had invaded the room splattered ocean water in a salty rain across the polished floor. One of them was crushing the girl as the obake lifted her toward its wet black eyes to inspect her. It quickly lost interest, and dropped Kikuu as it quested for someone or something new. Kikuu had a long way to fall.
N watched it all helplessly. He felt frozen, and then, after he realized that she had hit the floor from three-quarters of the way up toward the high ceiling, he felt cold. He ran to her and fell to his knees, digging in the mass of tulle and green satin to feel the reality of her. Her dress was wet, but it was only seawater. He saw her smile at him. She would be okay. She was a good girl, and He would not take someone so young.
"I will see you again, won't I?"
N realized that he was wrong.
---
Kikuu was dying. She smiled, seeing N at last for what he was. "I will see you again," she heard herself ask; it was as if her voice was coming from someone else far away. "Won't I?"
Oh, he was beautiful. The most beautiful thing that she had ever seen. Everything about him was light and fire. "Yes. Of course."
"I'll see you in Heaven." She couldn't look at him anymore; he was too bright. She closed her eyes almost completely, veiling the sight of the angel with her lashes. Nathaniel. It had always sounded like an angel's name when she whispered it in her prayers. He was bending close to her. "Say... yes," she breathed.
---
With the fighting going on around him, he shouldn't have been able to hear her, but he did. "The answer was always yes," he said with his lips against hers.
He destroyed the crab-yokai with wrath that was not Heaven's, only his own.
Then he went back to Kikuu and held her while her body cooled. He knew that her soul was gone from it, but still, he held her.