30shards | Takemaru, Theme #7

Title: Place-holder
Claimed Character: Takemaru
Theme: # 7 - Longing
Squicks: none
Genre: General
Rating: PG
Word Count: 220
Summary: Beauty is skin deep. There’s nothing wrong with being ugly.

“Do you love me?” he’d ask, early and often, and she’d snort and tuck silvery strands behind her ear.

“Of course not.”

“Ah,” he’d say. “Good.”

-

Takemaru would call them lovers, or conspirators. She would call them neither because, she’d say with a scowl, they were nothing.

“We’re together,” he’d say.

“We are not,” she’d counter coolly, turning away.

“Tell me,” he’d plead, “your name.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it wouldn’t be that you say her name in sleep - it would be that you don’t say mine.”

-

Sometimes she, an inu youkai, would be catty.

“She’ll never have you,” she’d taunt, “now that she’s had him.”

“But you’ve had him, and you’d have me,” he’d argue.

Her tone would turn chilly. “I have not and I will not.”

At which point Takemaru would scowl and: “He won’t have you now that he has her.”

“Shut up,” she’d say, and slap him, and it’d burn. He’d grab her wrist and she’d seethe, and he’d be reminded that her beauty barely brushed the surface, that she was a snarling dog underneath.

“She may be better than me,” she’d say, and struggle to regain composure, “but I’m better for him.”

-

“I don’t want you,” she’d say, and he’d say: “Neither do I.”

She’d sigh.

“I suppose we can’t always have what we want.”