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butterflydreaming) wrote2004-09-21 03:57 pm
songfic, with nicer formatting
3,783 words... whew!
An almost humorous prose songfic featuring Yue and Ruby Moon
Lyrics are highlighted in blue.
DISCLAIMER: CLAMP owns
everything CCS.
WARNING: cross-dressing. childish behavior. Ruby Moon’s voice.
THE SONG is “Anything You Can
Do”, from the musical Annie, Get Your Gun
“Anything Yue Can Do”
Kaho was
at her school, and Eriol had stepped out for a few minutes, leaving Spinel Sun and
Ruby Moon alone and unsupervised with their visitor from Tomoeda. Yue, and Eriol’s Sun Guardian, were each
settled into comfortable spots in the solarium, Spinel reclined on the
Victorian couch and Yue in an armchair with his knees tucked up, both of them
focused on their respective books, when Ruby Moon popped into the room. “Ugh,” she complained while rolling her
eyes. “I can’t believe how boring
both of you are. Don’t you ever want to
do anything else?” Her hands came up to
her hips at the complete lack of reaction to her words. Ruby Moon wasn’t going to let them ignore
her, so she sauntered up to the easier target; with a serpentine stretch, she
spilled herself over the padded armrest and back of the chair that Yue was in. “Maybe the reason you never do
anything,” she purred, “is because, as the older model, you’re tired and
worn out. Obsolete, even,” she added
with an acid smile.
A frown
wrinkle between Yue’s eyebrows creased slightly.
Ruby’s
smile broadened. “You know, Yue…” she
mused. “Anything
you can do, I can do better.” She
leaned into his ear and whispered, “I can do anything
better than you.” She waited for
a response, but Sakura’s Moon Guardian stayed unmoving, his eyes locked on the
page in front of him. Ruby, tossing her
hair, jumped up with a pout on her brightly painted lips and went to sulk at a
window.
A few
moments later, a soft voice muttered, “No, you can't.”
“Yes, I can,” Ruby Moon snapped back.
Yue only
moved his lashes slightly, casting a narrow look Ruby’s way. “No, you can't.”
Spinel
flipped a page, and carefully warned, “I suggest that you don’t get drawn in,
Yue.”
Ruby Moon turned gleefully and almost
danced her way back to her opponent’s chair, where she bracketed Yue into his
seat with a hand on each of the chair’s arms.
“Yes, I can.”
“No,” Yue contradicted. He unfolded his legs, placing his bare feet
onto the floor. He closed his book, and
raised an eyebrow at Ruby Moon’s unflinching proximity. “You can't,”
he said.
“Yes. I. Can.” insisted Eriol’s Moon Guardian
in a sibilant whisper. Yue sighed,
rustling his wings. Ruby Moon giggled.
“I
warned you,” murmured Spinel Sun.
“Yes, I can!” said Ruby Moon yet again. “I’ve already defeated you once. Anything you can be,
I can be greater. I have waaay
more power than you do. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to accept
it.” She stood up straight, and
continued, “Suppi,” she pointed, “is greater than Kero, and I'm greater than you.”
Yue
glared at his opposite number. “You
might like to think so, but no, you're not,” he
said in cold tones. He began to say
more, but Ruby cut off his speech.
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you're not,” reiterated Yue. “If we were to –”
Ruby
Moon interrupted again, aggravatingly. “Yes, I am!”
Yue’s
eyes opened widely. “No, you're NOT!” he retorted in a loud voice. Then, embarrassed at his outburst, he quickly
regained his composure. He stood up and
pushed past Ruby Moon to leave the room.
After passing through the doorway, he headed toward the open spaces of
the rose garden.
Ruby
Moon followed after, skipping. “Yes I am. Yes, I am!”
she sing-songed lightly. She left Spinel
with a parting wink. She caught up to
Yue where he stood, with crossed arms, in between the rows of roses. “Aw, come on Oniichan,” she said
patronizingly. “Don’t go off in a huff
like that.”
“If we
were to compete fairly,” said Yue with measured patience, “I believe that we
would be..” he glanced back at Ruby Moon, who was blissfully sniffing at a
half-blown flower. He turned completely,
and relaxed his arms, if not his posture.
“…of equal ability,” he finished.
Ruby
Moon slid her eyes to him without straightening up. “Compete?” she asked slyly. “There’s a sharp-shooting competition on
Saturday; I saw it on the telly. I bet I can shoot down a partridge
with a single bullet – or shell or cartridge,
whatever that’s called. If I wanted to
kill one, that is. They’re really cute
though, did you know? Have you ever seen
one?”
“Do you
like birds?” asked Yue measuringly. “I can get a sparrow to eat from my hand,” he said, as
if revealing a secret, with a shade of smugness.
“I’d
like to see that,” said Ruby.
Yue put
a finger to his lips for silence, then gestured for Ruby Moon to stay in place
while he walked over to the quince tree, where small birds were
twittering. On the way, he detoured to
the birdfeeder, where he shook out a teaspoon-sized hill of millet; he lifted
out his hand and stood quietly by the quince with the grain in his palm. In less than a minute, the little birds were
watching him from the branches. Shortly
after, one brave sparrow flitted onto Yue’s fingers, snatched a beakful of
seed, and darted off again.
“How
very Snow White,” observed Ruby Moon loudly. Her voice and approach frightened the
sparrows out of the tree and into flight over the garden wall. With sudden
speed, she formed a bow and arrow of light and
tracked the escaping birds as they flew away, but she never let the arrow fly
to a target. Instead, she turned her
weapon, and with a brief pause on Yue, redirected its aim to the apple
tree. A breath after the bowstring
sprung back into a tense straight line, a ripe apple fell to the grass with the
arrow’s burn mark in its golden skin. “No
one ever picks them,” stated the butterfly-winged Guardian.
Yue
almost smiled. “Only the ripe ones,” he
challenged. He drew his own light-bow
and took down two slightly-wrinkled fruit with one shot. They tumbled across the green like
guillotined heads.
Bright-eyed,
Ruby Moon tossed back her vibrant hair.
Three shafts flew in succession from her bow.
The
apples fell in quickly. Their thumps
sounded like a heavy rainfall, and soon the foot of the apple tree was thick
with ripe and overripe Braeburns.
. . .
Eriol held
the front door for Kaho, and helped her out of her coat once they were both
inside. “But we have nothing but bread
and cheese,” the red head explained.
“The cupboards are empty of everything but a few cans of peas and an
open packet of digestives.”
“I can live on bread and cheese,” placated Eriol. “There’s no need for you to go back out again
to get preparations for dinner.” Kaho
dropped a warm kiss onto his cheek and headed upstairs to freshen herself. Taking off his own coat, Eriol peeked into the
solarium. “If I’m hearing correctly,” he
said to Spinel, “Ruby Moon and Yue are keeping each other company outside?”
“Yes,”
answered Spinel dryly. “I believe that
they have found something on which they both agree.”
“Really?”
asked a pleased Eriol.
“That
someone else should pick up the apples that they’ve shot down,” finished
Spinel.
“And only on that?” queried Eriol.
“Yes.”
The
young man sighed with a smile. “Well,”
he said. “It’s a start.” Curiously, he headed out to the rear of his
house, where the pair of Moon Guardians were still squaring off verbally.
“I have
perfect night-vision,” Ruby Moon was saying as Eriol stepped out onto the brick
pathway. “I can see perfectly with no
light and no moon,” she declared.
“So can a rat,” answered Yue sarcastically. “And I think it goes without saying that I
also have perfect vision.”
“Hmm.
Tsukishiro wears glasses,” Ruby countered.
“And I heard that’s not just for the look.”
Yue was
taken aback. “From whom! Keroberos wouldn’t have said anything --” As Ruby began to snicker, Yue stopped
himself. Flushing around his ears, he
changed the subject. “I have heard that
you can’t sing,” he accused.
Ruby
rolled her eyes. “Don’t listen to
Suppi. He has no taste,” she complained.
“I heard
you,” said Yue, “when you were bathing.
I don’t think you should attempt Mariah Carey songs.”
Her
mouth drew open. “Hey!” Hands on hips again, she scowled. “Any note you
can reach I can go higher. I can sing
anything higher than you.”
Posed
challengingly, Yue leaned forward against the patio chair that was a barricade between
himself and his adversary. “No, you can't. I
think you would be surprized.”
“Yes, I can,” snorted Ruby Moon in disbelief. She opened her mouth and cast out a note.
Yue
stifled something that looked suspiciously like a smile. “No, you can't,”
he contradicted, then sang out a note just higher.
“Yes, I can,” returned Ruby Moon with
determination. With a deep breath, she
sang out a high G.
Yue hit
the A. “No, you
can't,” he stated afterward.
The Yes,
I can/ No you can’t/ Yes I can/ No, you can’t continued with escalating notes until Ruby Moon was almost
screeching and Yue was singing in a full falsetto. Dogs in their yards on the block began to
bark, and Eriol, who had been unobtrusively watching, burst out in loud
laughter. The two Guardians turned to
see their audience, Yue dismayed and Ruby already smiling. With a great inhalation, she sang out “Yes, I CAN!” in an spiraling note that caused the
neighbor’s garage door to open spontaneously.
. . .
Spinel, Kaho, and Eriol watched with
differing levels of amusement as the one-upsmanship continued. Ruby changed for dinner and put together a
tasty macaroni soufflé and salad of baby greens, and afterward was showing off
a new outfit to Kaho. “I found
everything at thrift stores and secondhand shops,” she stated proudly. “This sweater is actually Chanel.” She peeled the layer and showed off the
designer label. “Aren’t I a clever
shopper?”
“I managed our household,” goaded
Yue, strolling through the room as if he had no interest in Nakuru’s fashion
show, “for over a century.”
Nakuru jumped to the bait. “Anything you can
buy I can buy cheaper. I can buy
anything cheaper than you.” She
turned in place, flaring out her short skirt.
“Guess what I paid for this skirt.
And the sweater. And these cute
shoes!”
“Three dollars and fifty cents? Six
dollars and forty cents? Twelve dollars and thirty cents? ”
“Pounds, Yue,” hinted Kaho.
“Everything for –” Nakuru did the
conversion in her head, pausing, “—eighteen dollars and twenty cents!” she declared.
Yue continued strolling from the
living room. “I can tell,” he mocked as
he left.
“No, you
can't!” hissed Nakuru. In a fit
of fury, she picked up a fashion magazine and threw it after Yue, just missing
his head.
. . .
“Yes, I can; yes, I can!” the household heard, late
into the night.
“WILL
YOU PLEASE SHUT IT!” yelled Spinel in exasperation.
. . .
“Anything you can say I can say softer. I can say anything
softer than you,” whispered Ruby Moon as she crept behind Yue down the
hallway.
“No, you can't,” whispered Yue back, over his
shoulder.
“I’ll
bet you can’t stay up later than me,” said Ruby Moon in a hushed voice.
“Yes, I can,” quietly retorted Yue. “I can stay awake for several days.”
“Liar,”
accused Ruby Moon. “No, you can't.”
“Yes,
I can,” grumbled Yue.
“No, you can't.
You sleep whenever you’re in your false form.”
“You
can’t count that,” said Yue.
“Yes, I can, you cheater!”
“I know one thing
you cannot do,” said Yue with annoyance showing.
“What?”
whispered Ruby Moon, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“You
can’t leave me alone,” answered Yue meanly.
Ruby
Moon looked stricken. She bared her
teeth. “YES, I
CAN!” she shouted, then ran down the hallway to her room and slammed the
door.
. . .
“I can drink my liquor faster,” Nakuru declared. She watched Yue raise his beer glass. His response to her statement was little more
than a flicker of his eyes in her
direction. He sipped the amber brew
complacently. Yue’s new tactic was to
ignore that she was even present, let alone talking, and it was driving Nakuru
to desperation. “I can drink it quicker,” she repeated. She plucked the glass from Yue’s hand and
quaffed the lager in three heavy swallows.
After a moment, her face took on a green shadow, and she ran to the
hedges.
“And get
even sicker,” sighed Eriol.
. . .
Not only had they been forced to go
out and spend time together, but now Nakuru and Yukito were unable to get back
into the house. The front door was
locked, Nakuru couldn’t find her key, and Spinel wasn’t answering her repeated
rings of the doorbell. “Do you have a
hair pin?” Yukito asked politely.
“Why?”
“Yue says that he can pick the lock.”
“Well let’s see it, then,” huffed the
girl.
The wings appeared, wrapping around
Yukito and then opening again to reveal Yue, and then again disappeared as Yue
“put them away”. He took a flowered
French clip from Nakuru, pulled out a piece of metal, and bent down to the door
knob. “I can
open any lock or safe, ” boasted Yue
softly, “without lockpick tools.”
“And without
bein' caught?” Nakuru questioned.
Yue’s answer came distractedly. “Sure.” With a click, the door swung open. Yue handed back the twisted piece of metal.
Nakuru stepped briskly into the
house. “That's
what I thought, you crook!” she hissed, then closed the door again
before Yue could follow her through.
. . .
Yue was trying to remember a
particular Grieg piece on the piano. He
checked the sheet music, noted the fermata, and began the line again. Ruby Moon put her arm under the piano’s lid
and caught the hammer before it could touch the strings. “Any note you can
hold, I can hold longer,” she said.
“Vocally?” asked an exasperated Yue
with sarcastic notes in his voice.
“Duh,” answered Ruby Moon. “I can hold any note
longer than you.”
There was no other answer. “No, you can't.”
“Yes, I can.”
“No, you can't.”
“Yes, I can.”
“No, you can't,” Yue said, teeth grinding.
“Yes, I can,” said Ruby with gleeful mania. She opened her mouth and inhaled deeply. “Yes,
I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I –” she began.
Yue’s countermeasure was
immediate. “No,
you C-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-N'T” His
mouth closed on the nt. There was
no way to hold the t .
“--CA-A-A-A-N!” continued the butterfly-winged
creature.
Yue gave up. “Yes, you can,” he
yielded, hoping that she would go away.
Inexhaustably, Ruby Moon continued.
From the adjoining room, Spinel’s
voice called out in misery, “Will the singing never stop?!?”
. . .
Perhaps Eriol should not have taken
Spinel with him, thus leaving the two competing Moon Guardians alone in the
house. Then again, since he left Nakuru
in her Nakuru form, perhaps he did know what he was doing. A full-scale battle between Ruby Moon and Yue
might have leveled the entire residential block.
Their behavior had degenerated to
sitting at opposite corners of the room, watching each other like rival
vultures who were waiting for something to die.
“Why do you even dress that way?” Yue asked snidely.
“We aren’t human, so what does
it matter,” was Nakuru’s annoyed answer.
“I wasn’t referring to your wearing
of skirts, in general,” said Yue. “I was
referring to that skirt in particular. You don’t have the legs for a
mini-skirt.”
“You say,” huffed Nakuru.
Yue considered with a slight
toss-back of his long hair. “Anything you can wear I can wear better,” he mused.
Nakuru scoffed. “In what you
wear I'd look better than you.”
“In my coat?” laughed Yue, sitting up.
“In your
vest!” exclaimed Nakuru.
“You don’t have the legs for those
shoes, either,” remarked the feather-winged Yue.
“You want to try walking in my shoes?” asked Nakuru incredulously. “You go barefoot all the time. You couldn’t handle these heels!”
“And I’d look better in your hat,” Yue drawled.
“Why don’t you put on my clothes and
see!” shouted Nakuru.
“Make me!” Yue shouted back.
“I can make you!”
“No, you can't!”
“Yes, I can!” yelled Nakuru, leaping onto the other
Moon Guardian and pulling her furry, purple, crocheted hat over Yue’s ears. “Yes, I CAN!” she
insisted while she wrestled him for his shawl.
Yue drew the line at lipstick, but
Nakuru had to admit that he looked pretty fetching in her peacock blue,
sleeveless babydoll dress with silk daisies pinning up some of his hair. The vinyl stiletto boots were not a working
option, however, and Yue gave up trying to stand in them, let alone walk, and
remained in a heap where he fell. He
made choking noises, a sort of stifled giggling, and there was a mad glint to
the blue of his eyes. Nakuru, by Yue’s
adamant demand, had washed off all of her make-up.
She was wearing all of Yue’s outer
clothing. She looked quite smart, although
the coloring didn’t really suit her.
She tried to get Yue to compete with
her for how many marshmallows she could fit into her mouth, but he would not
take the challenge. How long each could
hold his or her breath was a moot point for both of them, since neither was required
to breath. “Anything
you say I can say faster,” she goaded.
“I can say
anything faster than you,” answered back Yue.
Nakuru finished buffing the nails on
one hand and picked up the other. Yue
squirmed as the orangewood stick pushed back his cuticles. Nakuru paused. “Noyoucan't,” she
said, quickly.
“YesIcan.” It was difficult to tell if Yue was
any faster.
“Noyoucant.”
“Yessaican.”
The words slurred together and over
each other.
“Noy’cnt!”
“Yess’c’n!”
They stared at each other. “Are you going to finish my manicure or
aren’t you?” asked Yue.
“I can ride,” revealed Yue while
Nakuru filed and buffed his toenails. “I can jump a horse over a
hurdle. I can do trick riding,
too,” he added. On the floor of Nakuru’s
bedroom, he lay on his back, freshly manicured hands resting on his
stomach. Nakuru had found him an androgynous
pair of shorts and a T-shirt didn’t have a Care Bear, Power Puff Girl, or the
word “princess” in glitter on it.
“Horses scare me,” said Nakuru. “Too big.”
She touched her face to see if her facial was dry enough to rinse off,
and then compared it to the green kaolin mud that coated Yue’s face. “I can wear pantyhose. I can wear a girdle. I can wear a corset, if I have
to.” She rung out a steamy towel and
started wiping away her facial. “I can
sew my own clothes. I made that hat.” She pointed at the purple one.
“I can knit a sweater.”
“But I can
fill it better!” countered Nakuru, sticking out her chest.
Yue lifted himself from the scattered
throw pillows and eyed her slight build with raised eyebrows. Her terry-cloth robe hid any possibility of
curves.
“I hate that you act like you’re Mr.
Perfect,” she scowled. She scrubbed at
his face with a little too much force.
“After living for… a lot longer than
you,” Yue started, “I can do most anything. It’s just a matter of time and
experience.”
“Can you bake a pie?”
“No.”
“Neither can I. I can’t get the pie crust right. Pie crust isn’t about experience. It’s about talent, and… I don’t know – love.”
“You have me on that,” replied Yue.
Nakuru started to sing, and Yue was
startled at how sad and sweet her voice sounded with the mournful tune. “Love,
look away,” she sang, “love, look away from me. No good am I for you. No good are you… for me…”.
“That was very pretty,” he said.
“Anything
you can sing,” Nakuru said with a gentle smile, “I can sing sweeter. I can sing
anything sweeter than you.”
The rivalry in Yue’s answering
contradiction was friendly. “No, you can't.” He
sat up completely and tucked his knees beneath him.
Nakuru grinned. “Yes, I can,” she
stated while standing up. “Baby cried
the day the circus came to town,” she sang in a mellifluous voice, “cuz
she didn’t want parades just passing by her…”.
“No, you can't.” Yue took a deep, slow breath.
“Don’t know why… there’re clouds up in the sky. Stormy weather… since my –” he stopped
suddenly, looking sad and regretful.
“Yes I can,”
said Nakuru quickly. “All
through the night I'll be standing over you, all through the night I'll be
watching over you…” she sang, leaning down slightly toward Yue with her
hands resting on her hips.
“I think I’ll wash the rest of this
off of my face,” said Yue, getting onto his feet, indicating the remnants of
facial, “and get dressed.”
“No! You can't!” yelped Nakuru, cutting off
her song. She grabbed onto Yue’s
arm. “You can’t! You’ll just turn back into stick-in-the-mud
Yue again!” Her fingernails dug into his
skin desperately. “We’ve been having
fun! Haven’t we! If you put on those clothes again,” she
predicted emphatically, pointing to Yue’s usual suit, which was draped over a
chair, “you’re going to go back to your same boring self! And you can’t do that!”
Yue pried her grip from his arm, his
expression grim. “Yes, I can,” he answered with shadowed eyes. He picked up his clothing on the way to the
restroom.
Nakuru chased after him and kicked at
the closed door. “No,” she howled, “you can't,
you can't, you can't!” Her unadorned face twisted into a
grimace as she started to cry. “You
can’t,” she screamed. “You have to be my
Oniichan,” she sobbed. “Otherwise you’ll
go home and I’ll become invisible again!”
She gave the door another angry kick before fleeing back into her room
and throwing herself onto her bed.
After a few minutes, Yue came in and
stood by her bed. “There is no way you
can ever be invisible,” he said.
“Yes, I can,”
sniffled Nakuru. “I can. I can.” She sat
up. “Yes, I
can. I am,” she said.
Yue looked at Nakuru. He sighed.
“I am not leaving, yet,” he said.
Nakuru blinked off a few tears and
speculatively eyed Yue. “When Eriol and
Kaho and Suppi get back,” she said with a crocodile smile, “I’m going to tell
them how you looked in my dress.”
Aghast, Yue took a step back, exclaiming,
“No… you CAN’T!”
. . .(and that’s enough of that). . .
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This was silly, though.
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England. Yue and Ruby Moon in a battle of the words. Eriol/Kaho fluff. England! Annoyed!Spinel. Songfic within a songfic. Bit of a sad truth at the end.
Oh my goodness, I throw rose petals at your feet. This was brilliant!
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I do know the song, but from The Nanny. Which means I've been "hearing" it with Fran Drescher's voice. Ouch.
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So did I >____
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"From the adjoining room, Spinel’s voice called out in misery, “Will the singing never stop?!?”"
Best line ever. That really made my day XD
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