Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There were three things driving Sakura absolutely insane.

First, of all the places in the world to set a story… someone had chosen Forks, Washington? Just because it was cloudy?!

Second, the name was really… is “in bad taste” the best way to put it? Seriously though, “Forks”? For a place with vampires and werewolves?

And third: if she didn’t become an angst-filled, depressed, and utterly socially awkward lovesick teenager, blood would be spilled. Whose blood that may be, she wasn’t quite sure yet. But it would be, like, really bad.

And… wait, was that three already? Oh, one more then. Fourth, she had to choose with whom to spend the rest of her life. Bachelor number one: a blood-sucking, sparkly vampire. Bachelor number two: a werewolf that was in great need of anger management classes. Who would get the rose? Apparently, only fangirls held the power to decide… and they would probably be the ones spilling the blood, in case you were wondering.

Chapter Text

“Ah, I slept in late!”

Sakura raced down the stairs, tripping over the pair of blue jeans she had randomly torn from its hanger in her closet.  It was her first day in a new school—being late would not be a good first impression.

“Don’t say I didn’t try to wake you, Monster.”  A young man was sitting at the breakfast table eating the pancakes he had prepared.

Sakura smashed her foot on her brother’s with as much force as she could.  Touya was such a pain!  Ignoring her fiendish brother’s cries and moans, she grabbed a cold slice of toast and slathered grape jelly on one side before all but stuffing it down her throat.  She grabbed her backpack and the keys.  “I’m leaving!  Have a good day at work!”

She heard Touya calling out to her as she climbed into the old Chevy pickup.  “Try not to act like yourself!  Maybe you’ll meet some friends!”

Muttering some choice words to herself, she started the ignition and shifted into reverse; the Chevy gave a nasty yet somehow comforting lurch as it backed out.  Narrowly avoiding the cruiser, she made her way into the street, shifted to overdrive (yes, it was that old), and made her way through the insanely green landscape.

Perhaps some back-story is in order?  Let’s see… introduction of main character: check.  Vague and corny prologue: check.  No real plot elements encountered: check.  Yup, seems now’s the time.

Sakura Kinomoto: sixteen years old, high school junior, and impossibly cheery.  Until just yesterday, she had lived and attended school in her wonderfully beautiful desert world—Arizona.  She had loved everything there: the people, the landscape and the heat from the summer sun that never seemed to scorch her pale complexion.

So… why the hell would she go to Forks, Washington, which had to be the absolute most gray, rainy, cold, and utterly depressing town in the entire world?

Well, earlier in the year Touya had moved all the way to the dismal city to be some lousy police officer.  To be completely honest, Sakura thought it was ridiculous.  Why he couldn’t just search for an open slot for the job someplace in Arizona or maybe even Nevada, she would never know.  At the time, however, she had considered it a blessing.  No more annoying brother griping at her or threatening to beat her boyfriends to a pulp.  With him gone, the house would be left to just her and her father, Fujitaka. 

Her feelings toward the subject changed a few months after Touya up and left.  See, Sakura’s mother Nadeshiko had passed away quite a while ago, when Sakura was only three years old.  Sakura refused to be one of those angst-ridden teens just because a parent had passed away, so suddenly wishing for a female presence in the house wasn’t the problem.  Actually, Fujitaka was all that she really needed, seeing as he was the absolute best father in the entire world.  After all, how could she really miss something she couldn’t remember?

The problem was, without Touya there, Fujitaka was devoting his time to making sure Sakura was perfectly fine.  And that was definitely not fine with Sakura.  He had too much to worry about as it was with his job at the University.  When he was called to help with an archeological dig, she made her mind up—she was going to go live with Touya.

After all, she’d be out of the house in less than two years anyway.  Of course he’d been shocked.  But after many long discussions and mighty tempting offers from Fujitaka, she made her decision final.

Then her brother had been so… nice as to get Sakura a car for when she arrived.  Turns out it was an extremely old and decrepit ’53 Chevy pickup truck that she had suspected he had only gotten because it was free and was sure to make her mad.  To his chagrin, she loved it.  Something about it just seemed… right.  Plus, it was better to love it and annoy the hell out of Touya than to mope and complain, giving Touya complete satisfaction.

That’s the basic story.  Not too terribly exciting.  But of course, that’s without super-powerful vampires and werewolves chewing up the furniture.

A few miles away from the house, the rain started pouring down like she’d never seen in Arizona.  Careening out of control and hydroplaning a couple of times, she finally slowed to a measly ten miles per hour.  Great, now she’d be late for sure.

Within hardly any time at all, though, she saw the sign for the high school, with SPARTANS on it in big red letters.  

It didn’t take long to find a parking spot.  How could it, with only 358 people in the entire school?  The attendant in the office gave and explained Sakura’s schedule to her before she headed off, just a little late, to her first period class.

First period was a piece of cake, seeing as she had studied most of the topics already.  The only problems were the stares from the other students.  Since the town was so small, the news that Officer Touya’s younger sister was coming to Forks was probably the hottest gossip.  Ah well, it would pass in a few days at time, so Sakura returned the smiles and acted as friendly as possible.

The bell rang.  As she packed away her new textbook and the notes she had been taking, the girl in the desk next to her approached.  She had long black hair that curled and waved at the ends and she had a very modest way of dressing, with lots of lace and ribbons.  She smiled pleasantly at Sakura.  “Are you the newest celebrity, Sakura Kinomoto?”

“Well, I’m not exactly a celebrity,” she replied sheepishly.

The girl extended a hand.  “My name is Tomoyo Daidouji.  I have to say, Sakura, you’re most assuredly the cutest person I’ve ever met!”

Sakura could feel the blood rush to her face.  She’d been told she was cute before, with her cropped windswept hair and large green eyes, but not by someone she’d just met.

“What class do you have next?”

“Um…”  Sakura checked the schedule.  “Trigonometry.”  She made a face.  Math had to be the absolute worst subject in the entire world.  No matter how nice the teacher was she would still hold a grudge.

Tomoyo’s face lit up.  “That’s my next class as well!  Actually…”  She glanced over at Sakura’s schedule.  “We have all but fourth and fifth period together.  How about we walk together to class?”

Sakura blinked stupidly for a second before smiling warmly.  “Sure!”

It turned out Tomoyo’s mother was the head of a large company in Seattle.  When Sakura was asked about her parents on the way to class, she told about her father’s job at the university teaching archeology.  When inquired about her mother, she told the truth.

First mistake.

“Oh, that must be terrible!  To not know one’s own mother….”  She shook her head in disbelief.  “You must be so depressed!”

She often got this when she mentioned her mother.  So Sakura just shook her head.  “No, I’m really not.  I got tons of love from my father, so I never felt neglected.”

Tomoyo seemed to go suddenly hard of hearing.  “Poor thing… hiding your deep, torturous angst with a warm smile.  It’s so mature and depressing, Sakura.  I bet you had many gentleman callers back in Arizona.”

“No, really I…. wait, huh?”

“Guys seem to go for the angst-ridden teenagers, especially the rather beautiful men.”  She said it as though it were the most obvious, logical thing in the world.

Before Sakura could express her confusion any further, they reached the Trigonometry class.  As Sakura expected, it was an hour of complete torture.  Spanish wasn’t so bad, though seeing as the class was already halfway through the semester, she feared she was a little behind.  Once that was done and over with, she and Tomoyo walked together to lunch.  They sat down with a group of Tomoyo’s friends, most of whom Sakura forgot the names of as soon as they were introduced.

Before long, the conversation turned (with lots of help from Tomoyo) to Sakura’s late mother.

“Isn’t it just terrible?” she asked the group, though she wore a large smile and a blush.

“I think I’d be knee-deep in depression!” one of Tomoyo’s friends answered.

“And if I wasn’t, I could always use it as a valid excuse to act depressed,” another replied with a sly grin.  “I’m soo jealous of you, Sakura!  You must have guys drooling all over you!”

She gave them a half-baked smile.  Why was everyone so set on her being depressed?  She guessed they’d realize soon enough that she wasn’t, but… was everyone in Forks like this?  And she’d never noticed a correlation between hot guys and angsty girls before.

Tomoyo leaned over to whisper to Sakura, “I bet you’re wondering who they are, aren’t you?”  She motioned with her eyes over to a table by the window, where only two people were sitting.

Sakura had to admit they were beautiful.  And… completely alike.  As in, they were identical twins.  Both had windswept blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and lanky figures.

“Actually, I wasn’t wondering that at all…”

“The one on the left talking to that red-head, that’s Yuui.  Unfortunately, he’s already taken.  And no, that’s not her.”

“Um, okay.”  She wasn’t really sure why Tomoyo was so determined to tell all of this to her.  Sure, those two twins were nice to look at, but Sakura wasn’t really interested in a relationship right now.

All of a sudden, Sakura noticed that Tomoyo’s constant talking had stopped buzzing in her ear.  She turned away from the twins, confused to see Tomoyo back to eating her lunch silently.

Her brow furrowed.  What had just happened?  She suppressed a “Hoe,” something she’d been doing since entering high school.  “Uh, Tomoyo?”

“Hmm?” she asked through a mouthful of rather disgusting looking school pizza.  For the daughter of a corporate head, you’d think she wouldn’t eat something as dangerous as cafeteria food.

“You just stopped talking.”

“Oh.  Well, I figured it must not have been very interesting.  Plus, how could I stay away from the delicious meal those wonderful ladies prepared for us?”  She slipped the last part in as one of the said “wonderful ladies” traipsed by.

Ha-ha.  How very tricky.  Insert a tidbit of information, then stop suddenly, leaving the poor listener somewhat interested in whatever wasn’t said.  Problem is… it worked.  It seemed she was going to have to ask it.

“Who’s he?”  Sakura pointed to the other twin.  He was watching Yuui with a strange expression; perhaps rueful?  His mouth was set in a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which were nearly concealed behind blonde bangs.

Tomoyo didn’t even try to hide the smile playing on her lips.  Sakura had obviously said the magic words.  She dropped the pizza slice onto her paper tray and stared meaningfully at Sakura.    The effect was pretty dramatic.  “That is Fai D. Flourite.”

Chapter Text

“… Is the dramatic silence over yet?”

Tomoyo thought for a second. “Not quite yet… hold on… Alright, that should be enough pausing for dramatic effect, don’t you think?”

It took her a moment to gather her thoughts again. Fai, huh? Sakura had to admit, from his name it sounded like he had popped right out of a fantasy RPG. Thanks to her very imaginative nature, a brief image of him with a broadsword in hand flashed before her mind, but she shook her head. No, he was definitely more the staff type.

“Can’t take your eyes off?” Tomoyo purred. Was it just Sakura, or did it seem like her newest friend was up to something…? As she stuttered out nonsense in reply, Tomoyo simply smiled. “He’s looking at you, Sakura.”

“H… Eh?” She stopped herself from “hoe”-ing again. It would not be good if she let that slip.

Sure enough, he was staring right over at them—right over at her, to be exact. She felt embarrassed; did he know they had been talking about him? From the look in his eyes, it sure as heck seemed like he did. Sakura could feel her face getting redder by the minute.

And then he did the unimaginable: he waved with a carefree smile plastered on his face.

Feeling like an idiot, she waved back, and then quickly turned around to stare at the oh-so-interesting speck of God-knows-what on her pizza slice.

Well, that was awkward.

“Ohoho, your face is beat red, Sakura!”

She sat in silence for the rest of lunch as everyone thought it was necessary to comment on Sakura’s sudden resemblance to a tomato.

The second-to-last class was Biology, which seemed to be the only class none of her lunch-mates seemed to have with her. The classroom was pretty jam-packed, and there was only one empty seat in sight. Of course, that was the seat that she was assigned to. And of course, that seat just happened to be next to Mr. Flourite.

Face already heating up from the ever-so-awkward scene from lunch, she dropped her book bag with a heavy thud (it was about to explode from the textbooks she’d gotten along with the notebooks she’d bought) and sat at the table.

Was it just her, or was there a total tense air between her and the boy next to her? She glanced at him while the teacher was busy writing things she was sure she was supposed to be taking notes on. He was staring straight ahead with a clenched jaw. He seemed like he was in pain or something…

“Are you okay?” The words slipped out before she could stop herself. Gosh darn it.

He turned toward her, eyebrows raised, then smiled. “Actually… you dropped your book bag on my foot.”

“Oh! I-I’m sorry!” she whispered back, moving her ten-ton bag. Well, that was brilliant! Just drop your crap on a stranger’s foot. Yup, that’s the best and easiest way to make a friend.

Fai gave a sigh of relief. “Hyuu~! That’s one heavy pack. Haven’t they assigned you a locker yet?”

…

“‘Hyuu~?’” She’d heard a lot of weird sayings before, but that was definitely a new one.

“Kinomoto.” She jumped at the teacher’s voice and felt the blood drain from her face. Oh no, she couldn’t be in trouble the first day! She would be labeled the entire year by the teacher as ‘the one who can’t keep her mouth shut’! Luckily, that didn’t seem to be the teacher’s intention. “What part of a cell is this?” He pointed to a diagram on the board.

“That’s the mitochondria.” Thank goodness her class in Arizona had studied this just two weeks earlier.

He nodded, pleased. “Good. Over here we have…” He turned his back on the class and continued with the lesson.

“So, you’re Sakura then?” Fai asked. He rested his chin on his palm and stared at her with, you guessed it, a smile plastered on his face.

“Yes.” She had no idea why everyone at lunch seemed to think he was so aloof and antisocial. He seemed perfectly friendly! She started to actually copy down what was on the board. “And you’re Fai, right?”

“Mm-hm! You and Tomoyo were talking about me during lunch,” he said lightly.

Her pencil skittered across the table and onto the floor. “Oh, uh, we weren’t really—she was just filling me in on everyone. Y’know, to give me the lay-of-the-land and everything!” Would the embarrassment end?! Somebody in Forks had to hate her.

Her teacher obviously wasn’t that person. He ended their horrible conversation by moving on to the next activity. He passed out a classroom set of microscopes and slides. Each table (two sat at each table) got a worksheet that they had to fill out before class ended.

Pro: She got to do group work, which was always better than boring individual work. Con: She had to do it with Fai after the blush-fest she’d been providing for the last half hour.

Once again, thank goodness she hadn’t moved two weeks earlier. She and Fai actually whizzed right through the sheet. Fai seemed to be pretty good at biology, since he was able to name them after looking only a fraction of a second through the microscope. Biology wasn’t really Sakura’s favorite, but she was pretty speedy as well.

For the rest of the class period (everyone else took quite a while to finish), she and Fai chatted it up. Mostly he asked her questions, like what it was like in Arizona and stuff like that. The conversation carried pretty well, which was surprising, since most “nice to meet you” conversations turn really awkward within the first couple of minutes. Fai seemed like a really nice guy!

But something was off.

The first problem was his face. Okay, that probably came off meaner than it was supposed to. What she meant was, even though he smiled a lot, it never reached his eyes. They were always vacant, and Sakura easily recognized it as sadness.

He also just gave off this weird… aura? Maybe it was just a feeling, but he seemed different than everyone else. And no, it was not because he was blonde. Though it did seem nearly everyone else had darker hair… was hair dye that popular nowadays?

Class ended. Everyone handed the worksheets to the teacher and packed their bags up, which looked like they were about to explode and send papers flying everywhere. Fai and Sakura got up to leave as well.

“See you—um, hasta manana?” Sakura corrected. She really was behind in Spanish and needed to practice the little she did know.

“Actually, it’s ‘hasta mañana,’ with the tilde over the first ‘n.’” Fai was a senior, so it was to be assumed he had already taken Spanish. “Don’t worry; you’ll get the hang of it. I’ve always preferred French, though.”

“Oh, um, right…” She wasn’t quite sure how he knew she hadn’t put the tilde over the first ‘n’ when she spoke it though, since she had said it exactly like he had. She beamed at him anyway though. It was always nice to make a new friend, and Fai seemed like a very nice person.

They walked out together, ready to go their separate ways, when their arms brushed. Fai walked away, but Sakura paused just outside the biology room. His skin had been ice cold.

The very last period of the day just happened to be Sakura’s favorite: Phys Ed. It had been her favorite since elementary school (just as math had been her most hated), and she’d always been pretty good at it. She had been on a number of school athletic teams throughout all of her school years.

It seemed this week’s focus was on one sport in particular: volleyball. Sakura wished they could have gone outside to play, but Forks was a lot cooler than Arizona. Even though it was only early October, the thermometers all read around a cool forty degrees—and that was the high. How in the world would she survive here?

Instead of the sandy volleyball pit outside, they were stuck inside the musty, humid and altogether disgustingly hot gymnasium. Okay, it wasn’t that bad. But it was damp, courtesy of leaky patches in the roof. And it smelled, but all gyms did.

“Sakura!”

Tomoyo waved at her from the top bleacher. When they had been changing at the start of the class period, Sakura had asked if Tomoyo had forgotten her change of clothes. It turned out that Tomoyo had a doctor’s note that said she wouldn’t be able to participate in gym for the entire semester. Of course, Sakura was horrified. What could be so terribly wrong with her friend? Tomoyo wouldn’t give out any other information.

The dark-haired girl smiled at her. “Sakura, you look lovely in your sports wear!”

She blushed. “Tomoyo, I think the match is starting…!” she said, trying to change the subject. As she spoke, a girl on her team served the ball over the net.

“Good luck! Oh, I almost forgot….”

Sakura didn’t wait to see what Tomoyo had almost forgotten; the ball was already being volleyed over back to her side. So, she did what came naturally; rocked the socks of every one of her teammates! It seemed they had been worried about her (her cuteness was deceiving, or so she’d been told), but they had no need to worry at all. She bunted the ball like it was no one’s business over to the other side, where it landed right on the back line.

The rest of her team cheered; the guys (their class was co-ed) even gave her high fives. They were delighted when they won their first set, many of their points thanks to Sakura.

It wasn’t until halfway through the second set that she noticed it. Tomoyo had cheered in the stands after Sakura had scored another point, so naturally, Sakura turned to thank her. She wasn’t really expecting something to reflect back into her eye.

“T-Tomoyo,” she started warily. “Is that a… camcorder?”

“Of course!” Why did Tomoyo make unordinary things seem like they were completely normal? “I have to capture your volleyball prowess for the yearbook committee!”

“But don’t you need a regular camera for yearbook photos?”

She was, as ever, unfazed. “Oh, I already took enough of those. These are for me!”

Sakura didn’t get a chance to question further; her thoughts were interrupted by several people shouting her name. As she turned she saw the blurry form of the volleyball headed straight for her. Okay, so it wouldn’t kill her, but it would still hurt like hell! Not to mention all the taunts from Touya later….

The pain never came. Another form, coming from her right, flew right in front of her. The girls around her screamed in surprise as Sakura looked down to see a boy on the gym floor, hugging the volleyball that he had snatched out of the air.

Though she was shocked as well, she couldn’t help but think how majorly epic that was. Still, she knelt beside him, stuttering again (what was with her speech impediment today?). “A-Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

The boy sat up and rubbed his shoulder with his free hand. His brown hair was tousled from the fall (or maybe it was always like that?). “Yes… I am fine.” He offered her the ball. Sakura couldn’t help but notice he had beautiful amber eyes. Did everyone have amazing eyes in Forks or what? “I think it is your serve.”

“Thanks…” She took the ball and the boy seemed to get up with no problem. He grabbed the book bag he had abandoned on the sideline and walked up to the front of the gym, where he handed the coach a note. He then headed into the boys’ locker room and out of sight.

Luckily, it hadn’t just been her that was watching him. The entire class seemed mesmerized. The silence was only broken when Tomoyo started clapping.

“Well, that was rather dashing, wasn’t it?”