CLAMP Gakuen Tanteidan "Shiroi Bara" (White Roses) by Kristin Huntsman released 12/25/97 Nokoru snuck out of the mansion quietly, not wanting to get caught. Suoh probably suspected he did this, Akira would have no clue, and at the moment Nokoru had a house full of guests he didn't particularly want to find out. He stopped finally at the rose gardens, a place he often came to when like this. It was deserted at this late hour and he had privacy. He settled gracefully back onto one of the marble benches, conscious of his moves as he seldom was otherwise. The silk and lace of full skirts brushed around his ankles and the wig he used to extend the length of his own short blond hair draped over his shoulders and down to his waist, hair flowing over the curves hidden beneath the white dress. It wouldn't do, he thought wryly, to let the public know that the brilliant, dignified young Chairman of CLAMP Campus had as many quirks as the rest of his family. Fortunately money bought privacy, and when it couldn't, it bought silence. In the moonlight that turned the white roses around him silver, Nokoru closed his eyes and pretended to be what he would look like to any observer: a beautiful young woman enjoying the night air. He didn't get anything sexual out of this, no sense of turn-on... just a sense of freedom, of release. He didn't have to be "Nokoru Imonoyama, Chairman of CLAMP Campus, youngest son of the Imonoyama Financial Group"... didn't have to *be* anybody or anything. Like this, he lost some of the social weights and pressures that were his to bear from waking to sleep. he thought wistfully. Beyond that, he *liked* pretty things, liked wearing nice things, looking and feeling good. And somehow that extended to women's clothing as well as men's. he thought, tilting his face up to the air. He shivered then a little; the night air was chill. "Are you cold, miss?" a soft voice asked. Nokoru's eyes snapped open in surprise. Subaru Sumeragi stood before him, his usual empty expression remaining empty... or was that a trace of emotion there? Nokoru couldn't be quite sure, not in this light. He'd thought Subaru had been in the mansion with the other Dragons... apparently he'd felt the need for solitude the way Nokoru had. The white rose garden was a very good place for silence, and the onmyouji would likely have remembered that from when he'd attended CLAMP Campus. At least his former classmate hadn't seen through the guise and guessed who Nokoru was. Subaru had always been so innocent in some things.... "A little," Nokoru admitted, his voice sounding soft and delicate as he played the part he had written for himself. Sumeragi removed his trenchcoat and draped it around "her" bare shoulders. "May I join you?" he asked. Nokoru nodded assent. The onmyouji sat down on the bench next to Nokoru, with an appropriate amount of space between them. There was a silence as each viewed the garden. "Might I have your name?" Subaru asked, voice soft but still empty. He was making polite conversation. "Nokori," Nokoru replied, using a feminine derivative of his own name, a name he'd formulated before. "Nokori Kireisa. What is your name?" "... Subaru Sumeragi," the young man replied. Nokoru pondered, then ventured a question he had. "Are you here for heartbreak?" Subaru looked at him, startled. "This garden is good for heartbreak, so they say," Kireisa-san said quietly, waving a hand at the flowers around them. "What could be better for sorrow than to drown it in white roses?" Subaru gave an uncomfortable laugh that sounded like an admission to his own ears. "That's true enough, I suppose." He fell silent again for a while, watching the silvered roses sway in the slight evening breeze. They were beautiful... Hokuto would have liked them. She had, once.... "Did it hurt?" the girl in white silk asked softly. Subaru looked at Nokori from the corner of his eye, not moving his head. She sat with impeccable posture, hands folded in her lap, looking into the distance. "Everything that was warm in me, he killed," Subaru replied, feeling somehow that he could trust this girl. She was no Dragon or psychic... just a lonely girl who had also sought this garden of heartbreak. There was something comfortingly familiar about her that he could not name, something he was not sure he wanted to expose to the harsh light of discovery. "'He'?" she inquired. "'He,'" Subaru confirmed. "Ah. I see." Kireisa-san's eyes did not leave whatever distance she was looking into. Subaru half-wondered what she was thinking. "He killed my sister," he added, looking down at his own hands. "I did nothing...." "Could you have?" the gentle voice asked, as if from far away. It was outside of himself, so she was so very far away.... "No," he choked, voice short and bitter. "Then why do you blame yourself?" Nokori had turned to look at him now, and he could feel one delicate hand on his shoulder, almost intrusive but meaning well, offering support that he could not - would not - take. "Because I should have--" His voice broke and he didn't finish the sentence, fighting to control it. Subaru wouldn't cry. He *wouldn't* cry. Seishirou-san wouldn't cry.... Nokoru looked at the onmyouji sitting beside him. He'd known intellectually what had happened to Subaru. It was a different thing to see the pain, its effects, than to contemplate it from the black words on white paper he'd been given, though. He wanted to help, if he could.... "Some people say that things are all our own choice, that we act of our free will," Nokoru said softly, thinking back to his lessons in philosophy. "Others believe that our responses are determined by the way we were raised and the conditions that have affected us prior. Still others think that a combination of the two ideas is correct." He turned his face up to the stars, to the wisps of cloud that trailed across the virgin-dark sky. "Do you honestly believe that you could have acted other than as you did, Sumeragi-san?" He paused, then added more quietly, "Being who you are and being the way you are, did you choose your own actions - or were they chosen for you?" The Sumeragi stiffened slightly at that, then relaxed by millimeters. Nokoru waited. "Choose your own actions, Sumeragi-san," he said quietly, and kissed the other young man. Shortly thereafter, he left the garden. Nokoru looked up at the branches of the wisteria tree where Suoh had first met Nagisa. His eyes closed and he bowed his head. That thought burned in him. To quit school.... Subaru had been the second best student in the class, always barely half a point behind Nokoru himself. Subaru's love of learning had been just as great as Nokoru's; when he had withdrawn from the school it had been nothing less than a shock. Nokoru reminded himself. He sighed silently and leaned against the tree. Tragedy wasn't something he was accustomed to; the life of an Imonoyama seldom had room for such a thing. And there was that sense of odd attraction to the Sumeragi... the need and utter loneliness, far beyond anything Nokoru had ever felt himself, that had been visible in the thin (too thin) frame... a pained grace that made him feel longing. A longing to touch, to heal, to be touched in turn.... It sickened Nokoru to think that he was so similar to Sakurazukamori that he could find someone's pain attractive. But... the kiss had been very nice. Subaru had a soft mouth and had reacted, instinct perhaps... in any case, it had been pleasant. Nokoru shook his head to clear it of the reverie. He started walking back to the mansion, suddenly no longer in the mood to be happy. Depression set in as he thought about how he had kissed Suoh once, and how he had stolen a kiss from Akira, and now how he had kissed the head of the Sumeragi, and how all were destined for others. It was very lonely to be different, to be an Imonoyama. It was very lonely to subsist on stolen kisses. Nokoru tried to bite back the tears that senselessly filled his eyes, to no avail. Was there never to be anyone for him to keep? Never to be anyone to love who was his? To be alone forever.... That last thought was more than he could bear and he broke into a run, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of one glove as he cried, denying fiercely that he was crying even as the hot salt water spilled on his cheeks. /Never to have anyone to love./ He ran into someone at the veranda of the mansion and bounced back off of the hard chest, almost falling before his wrist was caught, balancing him. He looked up into Suoh's face. "Suoh..." he managed to say, then crumpled against his friend, helplessly giving his sobs into Suoh's shoulder. "Nokoru-san..." Suoh said soothingly, one hand holding Nokoru against him, the other gently stroking his hair and back. Suoh knew. Suoh had always known. Nokoru gave in all the way to his tears, knowing his best friend understood. Suoh set the two cups of tea on the low table without looking at Nokoru. He sat down on the other side of the table from his friend, who appeared for all the world to be a beautiful young lady. It was so like Nokoru that his appearance was perfect after crying so violently. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, shrugging off his wool blazer. The right-hand side of it, over his heart, was damp from Nokoru's tears still. "I just felt very lonely," Nokoru murmured, not raising his blue eyes from where they were fixed on the edge of the table. "Like I'll never have anyone to love... before the End." "... Does it have anything to do with the way you're dressed?" Suoh asked. Nokoru didn't answer. "I've known about your... 'other wardrobe'... since we were children, Nokoru-san." "... And Akira?" "Ijyuin?" Suoh considered, then shook his head. "I don't think Ijyuin even knows that such a thing as cross-dressing exists." "You may find it hard to believe, Suoh, but I'm not nearly the strangest one in my family." Nokoru said this with a slight laugh, but still he did not look up. "It seems that brilliance and eccentricity come together in the Imonoyama gene... or environment. Whichever you care to believe." "Kaichou," Suoh implored softly, using the old name from school, "will you look at me?" Nokoru slowly looked up until Suoh's eyes were able to catch and hold his friend's. "Do you think I'm going to stop being your friend because of your peculiarities, Kaichou?" Suoh asked, his voice very quiet. Nokoru's stillness and depression suddenly shifted into motion and recklessness, as if the thought and eye contact had been enough to push him into responding. "Oh, hell, why not, Suoh?" he asked, standing, gesturing with one hand that, incongruous to his violent movements, looked delicate in its glove. "It's not just wearing women's clothing - it's my entire life! Do you know, I've never once been attracted to a girl? It's always been something wrong with me; I seem to have no other purpose in life except to aid members of the female sex when they're in distress, but I can't manage to fall in love with one! I'm probably not only a transvestite but homosexual as well! Why shouldn't you change your attitude about me now that you know what I've hidden about myself?" "Because," Suoh said simply, picking up his teacup, "I already knew." Nokoru stopped short and stared at him. Suoh took a sip of his tea. "Nokoru-san," he asked as he set the cup back down, "did it never occur to you that I might have figured some things out? And that other things - the gaps in the facts - I might have guessed at?" Suoh smiled. "I haven't been one of the CLAMP Campus Detectives with you for all these years for nothing, after all." "Suoh," Nokoru said, dumbfounded. "Then why did you let me kiss you, that once?" he asked, as it was the first thing that sprang to mind. Suoh shrugged easily. "Because you wanted to kiss me." He made it sound really that simple. "And you don't find me strange?" Suoh gave him one of those glances in return. "Nokoru-san, I've *always* found you strange. It doesn't stop me from liking you and being your friend." "Then why...?" Suoh shrugged again. "From the beginning," he said, picking up his cup of tea again, "I've always just figured 'Kaichou wa Kaichou dakara'... 'because you're you'." Nokoru sat back down and picked up his cup of tea as well with one gloved hand. This was definitely the strangest conversation that ever he'd had with Suoh. For some reason, it was also one of the most reassuring. --- Author's notes: I realize this is a strange subject. However, it also has a basis: in episode 17 ("Pretty Woman") of the CCD anime Nokoru dresses as a girl in order to get back Miyuki-chan's pet ferret (Yoshie-san), who hates guys. Nokoru not only looks *startlingly* natural as a girl, but after that Yoshie-san develops an attachment to Nokoru. After finding out about this, it was inevitable that I write this story. :) I've taken enough classes in Human Sexuality to understand a little of how cross-dressers feel in general; Nokoru is some of that, but also a whole lot of other things in this story. After all, he is in a position of enormous social pressure and an escapist by nature. This fic therefore has more of a feeling of "reality" to it than my fanfics usually do, and is likely the first one in a series of three or four....