ObDisclaimer: Characters are not quite mine (and not quite Naoko's either, 
this is an uber/alternateuniverse), and was written in answer to a 500-word 
story challenge. There is sexuality in this story but it is not hentai.


			Diplomacy


I had nicknamed our apartment the Japanese Embassy, because that's where 
the two other people who live here are from. Not that you'd know it to look
at Usagi. She's all blond-haired, blue-eyed innocence. Like a child, 
sometimes. When it rained, she'd dash outside to play in the puddles, 
pigtails streaming behind her - and then at the first sound of thunder, 
she'd scamper back to her bedroom like a frightened rabbit. Native Japanese, 
but nothing like the sober, dignified women Mamoru had told me he was 
escaping. She must have been a fascinating mix of the alien and the 
familiar to him from the very beginning.
 
He presses his cheek to my shoulder, lying against me. "I'm so sorry, 
Raye," he whispers.
 
He came halfway around the world for me, only for me. He left behind 
family and career for me., and I loved him with gladness and singleness 
of heart. But now he turns to her like a flower to the sun. My
roommate, my friend, my rival all unknowing, who can bind the heart of 
any man or woman with only a simple smile.
 
I shift positions, allowing myself the luxury of resting against him, 
running my hands over his smooth, hairless chest, and my tears melt hot 
as tallow. I want him, utterly and completely. I know that I have to 
release him, have to send him into her shy and girlish embrace, to be 
relegated to the role of the ambassador who brought them together. But I 
am selfish and needy and I will enjoy his body for as long as I can keep 
it beside me.
 
"I never wanted to hurt you," he whispers.
 
If either - oh, either! - of them loved me the way I need to be loved, with 
all the passion and longing that burn me inside out, would that ease this 
ache in my chest?
 
"I have to pursue this. I can't hide it from you."
 
He was my first, and I thought he was closer to me than any human being 
could ever be, but now it's only Tori that I hear singing in my
head. "You're right next to me, but I need an airplane..." 
 
"I'm so sorry," he repeats, and cries softly into my hair. 
 
Does he mean it, or is he just saying whatever he thinks will make this 
easier for me to accept? He is the son of a Japanese businessman. He has 
surely been trained in the art of diplomacy.
 
Again I move my hand across his skin, so smooth and warm, treasuring these 
last moments of pretending that he is mine and I am his. Blue- eyed child 
with the soul of an angel, I will give him to you, as I would give myself, 
if I dared. And I will lie like a politician, I will smile and say that 
it does not matter and you will never know how I hurt.
 
And you will never know I love you.