So I wrote this piece of shit while I was meant to be doing work for my dissertation presentation in 2 days time. Fanfic.net won't load on my computer. So, um......surprise?

Enjoi.

Post

   You’re sweet.
Are you surprised? Yes, I’ll give you that one, you fool, faithful hypocrite, you’re sweet. But I never did have much of a sweet tooth. Black tea for me. Mirror, mirror, in my cup, who’s the one who’s most fucked up?
Were we back there, I would call the answer to the question ‘good pickings’. Right now the selection is a little more limited.
But yes. You are. And when you look up at me with those baby blues and tell me that you can’t really remember it anymore, something about a castle and a birdcage, a woman for a woman and a man for a man, I look straight back at you and smile and say nothing. 
Possibly I could pull that goddamned sword out of my sternum myself and plunge it right through the rose was, tickle that bleeding heart of yours, and keep smiling, as this is what I do.
Instead, I offer you tea.

I’m okay—but you don’t have to wait on me all the time, you know.
Yes, I know this.
Where are you going?
To do the dishes.
You’re pissed off.
Not really.

And then you break out in the gut-trembling laugh that always sends a shiver down my spine. Tenjou. Hilarity in E minor.  Like hearing a new key on the piano. Every time. Like that.

What?
Not really.

  You mock it and roll it around and it comes out feeling something like a reproach and a kiss. Sweet little mouth. It makes me ache. 
I give you a smile that freezes that face right off, turn away, and then tell you I have some groceries to get, and won’t you water the plant?
As I leave, there is a hot rolling prickle on my skin that tells me it will rain, that it will be heavy, and that I am….what is this?
Red. A red feeling.


--------------

 
By your standards, dinner is a success. Hands as clumsy as a man’s. (They may start out as a pianists or a painters, a man’s hands, but they all seem to end up the same way).
You conclude within half an hour of my normal face (which is to say, not the Ohtori version, but something slightly less polite and acceptable and ridden-in), that it is alright to resume normal operations. This involves being involved in a dispute about the television, which is conducted mainly through the raising of eyebrows.
  It is your turn to do the dishes. You manage not to wince until I look away.
And then….nothing. The usual nothing. I sit and enjoy my not-smile and you enjoy alternately the television, tea, peering out of the window, a fruitless search for an umbrella, cursing, waiting for a rebuke, then coming over, squatting before me in my chair, and looking at me with the eyes of a child.
Your head is light in my lap. Outside of that place, your hair is beginning to look more blonde than pink.
I remain as I ever am. A woman for a woman and a man for a man. Something about a castle and a birdcage.
Something about a sword through your ribcage.
  Your eyes meet mine with dismay. The red feeling is weighing at the base of my skull. You get up and stand over me and then on tiptoe, as if you need to work up your courage, be the girl reaching up far as she dares for that dark cheek, you bury a kiss on the top of my head and whisper my name, my name.
One of us pulls the other into the bedroom. We stay there a while.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  A hot, damp night, cut with bars of moonlight from behind the blinds. Your body stretches out next to me, long, virgin white. 

I’m…..sorry.
Why?
Because I don’t remember.

And I swallow because I, Rose Bride, doormat and convenience, am angry.
How could you? How could you be….so lucky? No rest for the wicked of course, I know this, amongst the many things I have come to know after being what I have been, but for you to forget…

I love you.

And I don’t smite you down with a million curses, burn us in this bed, because after all, you’re sweet.

I’ll tell you. But it’s a pathetic story.
You don’t—
Do you know how it feels to be fucked with a thousand swords?
 
  You jump as if I struck you and hover there above me, staring into my eyes, angry in preparation for this to be a joke, terrified in case it isn’t.
And then you say:

You’re sick, aren’t you, Anthy?
 
And I say,

Not really.