Chapter Text
What Rook doesn’t know, doesn’t see, is that far across the sea, on a separate land, in a separate room, alone, sits Vil Schoenheit.
“Call him,” Adela urges. “Ask him.”
Tell him.
Does she know of the way his chin tilts arrogantly towards her? Does she know of the slant of his eyes, the distrust in his features? Yes, she does.
But she does not know of the anxiety in the clutch of his hands, a choker around his phone. Holding the speaker so tightly to muffle it, as though it can muffle the rings of the phone on the other end. As though he could silence the notification of a ringtone in the island where the time is now past midnight, hours faster than he is.
And yet the phone does not ring more than thrice. Rook’s principles, speaking in Rook’s voice through Rook’s actions. Rook’s voice that echoes so loudly across the phone, but perhaps is so quiet in the hunter’s room. He hears the heartbeat across the phone slow — he hears it go from patient impatience, to suppressed excitement. Like a child.
He does not know if anyone else knows this — if anyone knows how he turns away from Adela, paper reports crushed in his fist that rests on his knees. No one else knows how deep his eyebags are, poor rest coming to haunt him beneath the layers of facades and make up.
And likewise, no one else knows how long Rook’s been awake.
Rook, whose hand mirrors the position of Vil’s, despite the miles of distance that separate them. Rook, who last spoke to Epel right before the curfew — “Rook-san, is Vil-san coming back tonight?”
Rook, whose heart has been racing out of control the whole night, who’d been pestered awake by an insistence on waiting for Vil to return, who’d had an odd sensation, a bad feeling, since Vil left for work the day before. Trey had once been disconcerted by his ability to control his heartbeat, but it works wonders when he picks up the phone, crouched on the bay window, admiring the chosen night scene for tonight in Pomefiore. A waning crescent.
“Roi du Poison?” He asks, but all he hears is Vil’s quiet breaths across the phone, equally suppressed as his own. A suffocating choice of words to speak and not to speak, the qualities of a phone call that omits all the telling features from face-to-face confrontations, yet preserves the emotion in the tonality of voice. He hears footsteps, light as they move, farther from another tense set of breathing in the room. He listens, as the extra breaths wane like the moon, and the footfalls ring clearer, louder, echoed like in a long, deserted aisle. A walkway of sorts, a corridor that they progress together, down into the depths of Vil’s heart. A door clicks again, then a lock sliding into place.
They’re in Vil’s office now, in the compartment of Vil’s heart, where emotions are sorted like logic, and logic rules all errant emotions that struggle for a breath of fresh air. They’re in a place where Vil has all his drawers locked, and Rook has the keys that he fishes out tentatively, keys that don’t jingle, and presses them into Vil’s hands. An opening. “Are we alone now, mon amour?”
Alone. He’s alone in Vil’s room for the night, where all his things are and all of Vil’s things are, and Vil’s alone in his actual office of his company, or that’s where Rook assumes has a corridor long enough for Vil to roam. Vil wouldn’t wander around a hotel corridor alone at night — it’s late where Vil is, too. But the wind breathes with them, the night breeze that breathes for Vil when the model still doesn’t speak. “Are you wearing a jacket, Vil? Is it cold there?”
Vil doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t press it. If he were any better with translocation, Vil’s favourite shawl would already be there, wrapped around Vil’s shoulders, snug and tight.
Then Vil speaks, quietly, and the world implodes for a moment.
“I’m pregnant.”
On a work trip?
Vil doesn’t breathe on the other end of the phone, and Rook tries to muster whatever breaths he has left, shallow as he takes them, and clutches his knees tightly.
Vil wouldn’t tell him that if Vil wasn’t already entirely sure.
Vil wouldn’t.
“How far?”
There must be a report somewhere, filed away in a clear plastic folder, in black and white. Vil would be so sure—
“Ten weeks.”
The winds have died down, and Vil’s back to breathing on the other end of the call, in the same rhythm that he is, in sync. In perfection. So perfected that he can’t tell what emotions are brewing in the drawers that Vil hasn’t opened. He can only suspect them on his own, through Vil’s voice, through this rectangular panel that offers only Vil’s voice.
“Are you feeling alright?”
Footsteps sound again, and something scrapes. Like a metal chair on uneven tiles, it’s screechy. Something hitches and Rook thinks it may have been the chair again, until Vil doesn’t answer immediately, and oh.
“Mon amour?”
A mental image appears, of Vil cradling himself, alone on a rooftop somewhere, his hair messed up by the night winds of some city hotel. So vividly that he reaches out, like he could hold Vil’s other hand, the one that doesn’t clasp Vil’s mouth, doesn’t shove back the drawers that threaten to open, threaten to spill all the unruly emotions one after another.
“Rook,” Vil calls, that voice reaching out to him in the privacy of this encrypted voice call. His housewarden, his lover, his beloved, his one and only Vil. “I don’t know.”
All the questions that ran through his mind and died on his tongue; all answered.
Do you want this?
Should I come over?
How are you?
Do you have plans?
What now?
“Will you come home tomorrow?” The word slips his lips, and he processes it in its wake. Home, but it’s the place of conception for this between them. A temporary host for them, a stage in life. A process; not a place of proper belonging, nor groundedness. “I’ll file for our absence tomorrow. D’accord?”
Vil isn’t crying. Yet. He knows the tears will fall when the call is over, where Vil has returned him the keys, if only to break down, if only to bury himself in the explosion of that office. Was Adela with him? Will Adela come to find him, when Vil’s so vulnerable like this? The winds are too harsh, and Vil will catch a cold.
“Rook,” Vil whispers again, but it ends there, like a half spoken sentiment, unfinished sentence.
“I’ll wait for you,” He promises, softly, like another half spoken sentiment, without the weight and burden.
The call ends with a click, and the tears will slide, one by one, a vicious scream internally that would have echoed in Rook’s shoulder, had he been there.
But Vil must have known, must have chosen this. Must have deliberated upon this. Must have intended it this way.
He slips downstairs into the laboratory, and brews a cold remedy.
The night slips away into morning.
Morning, when the sun is high and the students all go to class. They bid him goodbye for the day, he whose cheeks are flushed from fever, the cold remedy in his hands. The cup is barely sipped from, and Epel asks him why he doesn’t go to the infirmary. He chuckles — “Monsieur Crabapple, what would Vil say if he found out I went out hunting last night again, in the late and cold night?”
Vil would berate him with the cold remedy on the stove, caring for him in the breaks between lessons. Vil would care for him and nurse him for his carelessness, only if the world was not looking, and this was all in the past. His nose would be congested and his tongue numbed from the medicine, but the kiss would be soft and sweet, like a reward after the medicine, like a candy after a slap.
Vil, who slips into Pomefiore quietly, wearing a bodysuit of exhaustion. Vil, who abandons all his baggage at the entrance of their beloved dorm, who sits so straight and so still on the sofa, eyeing him as he walks over. Vil who observes, glares at the fresh calluses on his hands from when he burned himself with worry last night, on the rim of a too-big portion of remedy. Vil who tenses when said calluses touch his forehead, and Rook says nothing, but between them they know that Vil’s body temperature is too high, too warm, and that the cold remedy is no longer scalding when it reaches Vil’s lips.
The morning is cold. Quiet and still, as cold as the night before. His eyes dart down the model’s figure and he doesn’t say anything, Vil doesn’t say anything, but the cold remedy is downed and drained, and the drowsiness kicks in, Vil’s fever heavy in his arms, when he holds the model tightly, and Vil curls into his embrace.
“We’re not ready for this.” Vil whispers, and his shirt is skewed from Vil’s grip, painted with caking makeup. “I’m clueless, Rook.”
I’m scared, is what Vil doesn’t say, but Vil squeezes him tighter, and he leaves a kiss on Vil’s forehead the way he left a message at the tone last night: I’ll be with you. I promised.
“We don’t have to do this,” He returns, rubbing circles in the shirt that Vil wears, glamorous and thin, porous to the night winds that have swept through Vil’s hair. “I’ll be with you every step of the way, regardless what you choose, mon amour.”
Perhaps Vil fell asleep, he thought, when the model tosses in his lap, turns away from him for a moment, but it doesn’t stop him from caressing Vil’s cheek, stroking Vil’s hair. Like if he stopped at any moment, Vil would slip away from him, away from his touch, in entirety.
But Vil’s eyes are bright, with fever and yet with determination, and tears that sparkle under the Pomefiore chandelier. “You don’t have to.”
“But I will.” He bends down, and kisses Vil on the lips now, despite the noises of protest. So what if he catches it too? They have enough sick days for a small break. “Because I want to.”
Vil doesn’t answer again, more tears free falling onto his pyjamas pants, but he doesn’t mind. Vil tugs on his collar and the drowsiness is still there, but so is Vil’s determination, pulling himself back into a sitting position. Even if they both see the flinch, the disorientation, the offset of certainty that makes Vil’s head reel. Even if they both see the impending headache, in both the near and far future.
“I’m scared,” Vil exhales, at last. An emotion freed carefully from wrecked drawers long bolted in. “I’m afraid one day I will wake up to rubble around me, my downfall and the collapse of everything I hold dear. In a mountain of wreckage I brought upon myself. My efforts, my own undoing.”
For once, Rook doesn’t answer at once. Rook, whose thumb glides to the corner of Vil’s lips — smoothing out an imaginary wrinkle, a smile line to form someday in the future — and holds it there, and kisses Vil softly. He can’t promise it won’t happen, can’t promise the world won’t turn on them like a hostile animal forgetting all ties, but in this moment they live, and in this moment he holds Vil, like he promised, like he promises, as long as they live.
“Mon amour,” Bravery is them, in the moment, when they meet gazes and know that the truth has come for them anyway, a day too late and face-to-face. “Do you want this?”
But again comes the answer, when Vil tucks into him, so tightly that there isn’t space between them, but they’re still so far apart.
“I don’t know.”
So he kisses Vil’s forehead, and pretends that each breath isn’t accompanied with the heavy smog of flames, burning him up.
A mountain of diapers. Used. Unused. Unclear.
An unnatural caterwaul — a child, crying.
There’s a mirror in the distance, blurred with oily handprints. Barely clear, but enough. Enough for him to see — eyes faded with exhaustion, the ombre in his hair now mirrored under his eyes, dark eyebags and oily bangs, all unkempt.
The child cries again. The mirrored him glances down, and he follows its gaze, slowly watching as it transfers to the moving bundle of diapers making its way into his line of vision.
A newborn. An infant. Wailing louder than he can manage, a mess on the changing table. A diaper that’s stained — ditched in the corner while he struggles to change a new diaper. What is he doing? The baby won’t stop crying. His back is sore and the kettle is competing with the child in their screams, and the tin of formula sits askew, about to roll off the edge of the kitchen table. All of these, all in his mind’s eye.
His stomach hurts. A spasm, like a ball of stress settling in the space of hunger; he hasn’t eaten breakfast. It’s the crack of dawn. In the dim light of the mirror he can barely see his feet beyond the protrusion of his stomach, saggy skin and stretched muscle. He lifts his shirt, and in muted horror, too tired to feel beyond the basics, he traces the lines that cross his skin. Marring his body like scars of torture — are they no different? Silvery lines, light and dark, and he drops the sweatshirt, too tired to bother. The baby has stopped crying. The kettle has stopped whistling. The tin of formula is suddenly righted again.
“Mon amour,” Someone guides him to the chair, and the baby is in his arms, clothed with a new diaper, quiet and watching him. “Let me.”
Rook, with his green eyes and blond hair and his golden smile. Untainted by everything wrong in this house.
The baby has green eyes. Blond hair. It doesn’t smile, its gaze judging as he glances down at it, and the bundle in his arms grows heavier and heavier to hold.
“Neige LeBlanche,” The TV shouts, startling the baby, who cries again. Startling his sanity, killing the brakes, sending him speeding on the highway to hell for his nerves. “Has won an Award again!”
And here he is, holed up on a couch, his career ruined and his nerves wrecked. His figure wrecked, his efforts all flushed down a drain. His energy sucked out of him into the leeching thing that squirms in his arms, begging for his comfort.
“Why?” Perhaps a tear falls. He’s too exhausted. “Why do this to me?”
The Fairest Queen was prided for her tenacity, but look where it brought her anyway.
A flash snaps in his face.
“Mon amour,” Rook coos, and coaxes their baby from his arms. A camera replaces the bundle of Tiny Rook™, a camera of pictures, of him glancing down at their child, messier than ever. “You’re still so beautiful, mon amour.”
Is there something Rook sees that he doesn’t? How is he even—
“You’re too harsh on yourself, Vil.” Fingers touch his hair, brushing gently through the matted ends until his hair is tidied again — then do they take over the sleeping child, these gentle hands belonging to Rook, who sets their daughter in her tiny bassinet. “You’ve barely recovered from labour. There's no one else here—”
But he can't help it. It's already gotten into him, his thoughts messy and his voice coarse — “What did Neige win the award for?”
Maybe Rook knows — that’s why Rook doesn’t say a word. Or maybe Rook doesn’t know — that’s why Rook takes him into a warm embrace, that’s why Rook stands beside him and hugs him tightly, while he sags into Rook’s arms, and feels the tears start slipping down his cheeks.
“You don’t have to keep comparing yourself to Neige, mon amour.” Rook whispers. “Close your eyes for a moment — if you cannot yet see the beauty in yourself, then do not open them to witness the unnecessary cruelty you do to yourself. In this moment there is no one else but us — no one to criticise the way we are, no one to judge.”
“And yet I fear I no longer know how to take my eyes off these horrors.”
“Oh, Vil.” Rook sighs by his ear. “Oh, mon amour. If it is a break you require, I will be here for you to rest. If it is a recovery you need, I will be the one to help you heal. If you are lost in the mist of night, let me be the light that leads you back into the day. But do not wallow in misery any longer — it pains me to see you so.”
“And yet you will be here,” He clutches Rook’s forearm, clings to it tight. “Every step of the way; truly?”
“I always have.” Rook kisses his forehead lightly. “And I always will.”
He wakes up to dried tears clinging on his lashes, obscuring his vision as he gazes through the blurring warp of fresher tears. Rook is not in his arms — rather, a pillow is squashed in place of the hunter, a pillow wrapped with Rook’s pyjamas, the nightcap almost comically strewn on the empty side of the bed next to him. The wallpaper half-peeled and the decor of arrows tell him enough about where he’s been shifted to, but Rook is nowhere in sight, despite this being his room, after all.
He doesn’t question how he came to be in looser clothes, the pyjamas fished out from his duffel. He’s more curious when he was brought into Rook’s room rather than how, but to top the list of his confusions, the first question in his head at the moment is simply to know where Rook has gone.
The answer becomes apparent to him, when the corridors are dark and the lounge is dimly lit, where no one else remains but a singular person standing in the dormitory kitchen, boiling a small pot of tea. To go with dessert — it smells fragrant, when he leans over Rook’s shoulder, and a slice of tart sits in the corner of the stove, steaming warm. Only Rook would not flinch, would not be surprised, to find a chin resting on his shoulder. Only Rook would smile — and only he would know, the soft secretive smile that emerges, when the hunter frees a hand to clasp his.
“I wasn’t sure if you would feel sick when you woke up,” Rook says, and with his other hand Rook lifts the lid of the pot, releasing a billow of tea-flavoured steam that rises, warming the both of them at once. “I spent the day reading as much as I could, though I suppose it would be better if I consulted specialised books instead. I’ve asked to borrow Roi de Sa Chambre’s blast cycle, but it remains to be determined if I will be allowed into town to find more books on this expertise.”
He doesn’t interrupt Rook — few understand that unlike most people, there is a certain solace he seeks in the rambunctious words that spill out of Rook’s thoughts into speech, regardless of how crass they can be at times, overly blatant. This rambling is beloved; this rambling is his comfort, to listen to it such that his mind may mellow down to the rhythm of Rook’s thoughts.
But tonight perhaps Rook has too many thoughts in his head, because it cuts off abruptly, and Rook’s hand lightens on his, like the touch is fading away.
“That is,” Rook mutters softly, in a manner almost avoidant, but too direct to be evasive. “If you wish to have le bébé, mon amour.”
The short burst of energy he’d regained begins to slip from his limbs — the tears are still dry on his face, but Rook hasn’t seen them yet, hasn’t seen the remains of a restless sleep, restless dream.
“And?” He whispers, leaning deeper into Rook, his arms draped over the hunter’s shoulder, like Rook could support him upright, even if he’s taller than Rook. “If not?”
Muscles tense under his touch. Rigid. Stiff. An extent that makes him wonder — is it unforgiving? In Rook's eyes, is this a betrayal?
But Rook exhales quietly, and turns the stove off, letting the pot simmer while he draws Vil nearer, tugging the arms over his shoulder, tugging them closer.
“Then I imagine a paradise,” Rook murmurs, stroking the back of Vil’s hands. “Where there are only wine-coloured days and deep velvet nights. The sun shines so brightly that all will be warm, and the skies are strewn with clouds of everyone’s secrets. There will be stretches of land to run, to lay, to enjoy. To bask in happiness, and forget the woes of the world.”
He doesn’t know why Rook is saying all these — only that it chokes him, when he presses his face into Rook’s hair, and tries not to cry. Perhaps Rook hears the whimpers that emerge, the faint sounds of his restraint slipping into desperation; so Rook clutches his hands tighter, wraps him even tighter.
“Our bébé will enjoy it there, be loved there, until we are ready to give back the love that we owed when we made it.” Rook utters, so forthright that he gasps, he gasps so softly into Rook’s scalp and the hunter’s hands are still stroking his fingers, petting his arms, trying to soothe him in a way that fails. “D’accord, Vil?”
He’s choking. Truly choking now, on the tears that he can’t fight back. “Your euphemisms are terrible, Rook Hunt.”
Surprisingly — unsurprisingly — Rook laughs. “I am trying, mon amour.”
Surprisingly, so does he when the tears fall, fat droplets sucked into the collar of Rook’s shirt, but he laughs, and the bits of brokenness spread further, but heal as they do. The cracks outline themselves, but they glue themselves back again, in a forbidden cohesion, calm in chaos.
It’s late at night — and while no one responds to their laughter, their hysterics, they eventually calm down all the same, and he stands next to Rook, sampling the tart while Rook portions the tea into little brand new flasks stolen from their laboratory downstairs.
“Everything aside.” Rook holds his hand with one hand, and ladles the tea with the other. “You have a chest of drawers within you, Vil.”
He doesn’t quite understand, not immediately.
“I can hear it faintly, the scratch of rails that are too rusty because you don’t open them, these drawers that compartmentalise your emotions. Your chest of drawers rattles now — with the emotions that long should have come out, derailed the drawers and exploded from the pressure of suppression. And for every moment in rattles, you hurt even worse, but the keys are in your hands, and so rarely do you ever put them to good use.”
“Then open them for me.” Vil answers, after a moment’s pause. “Open them for me, will you?”
Rook smiles at him, warmly, and passes him one of the filled flasks. “Always.”
But he can’t find it in him to smile, brushing his fingers against Rook’s cheeks, and the nightmare still haunts him, part a dream and part a possibility, a glimpse into disrepair, into his future, by his own doing. So he frowns — “Stay with me?”
And Rook smiles again, so indulgently, so easily, as though it’s as simple as washing up for the night, and retiring into a room together, and being together just for a night. But in green eyes he knows: that Rook knows too, that the request is not only for tonight, that the request is not even as simple as a request, but a demand for a promise, a vow.
But Rook responds all the same, softly, gently, lovingly.
“Always.”
This morning is colder. A wet morning from the heavy rain — the fairies in charge of their dorm’s weather must have known they start late today, that it’s the perfect weather to sleep in a little more.
But the duvet is flipped open, and it takes him a few moments to realise that Vil’s been in the washroom for far too long.
“Mon amour?”
There are many ways to describe the sight he sees, the visage he’s greeted with. There are many ways to react, but he forcefully swallows his exclamations, instead reaching for a flask of last night’s brew.
“Water.” Vil rasps, and so he hands over a glass of water first, quietly studying how pale Vil has gotten, the clamminess of Vil’s hands when they brushed his fingers to grasp the glass.
Then he hands over the flask, swapping it for the glass. “The tea should help.”
Vil doesn’t answer, but the ensuing silence tells him enough, when he rubs circles on Vil’s back, and hears the subtle change in Vil’s breathing, reverting back to the normal calm, a shaky ease. “Better?”
Vil leans against him, eyes closed, and he doesn’t expect an answer, until they’re both back in bed, and a still-cold hand covers his. “Rook?”
“Oui?”
“You’re better at this than I am.” Vil isn’t looking at him, but Vil’s hand lifts his, and guides it somewhere, before coming to a stop. “Is there really a difference?”
Oh.
“I can’t tell.” He whispers, but his palm itches, aches with the migration of his heart into the centre of his hand, when it throbs and he holds it still, but his arm threatens to shake. “As yet.”
Vil doesn’t answer this time, not for a while, not until he’s come to terms with the fact that Vil, so typically averse to uncomfortable physical contact, has allowed him to—
“Then stay.” Vil cuts him off, and turns to him at last. His hand slips from Vil’s flat belly and slides, slides and curls to accommodate Vil’s waist, then they’re both lying on their sides and facing each other. He can see the hesitation tracing every blink and resisted-blink of Vil’s eyes — he can see the points of Vil’s teeth threatening to chew down on the model’s own lips.
He can see the very life in Vil’s eyes, the searing determination, bright against fear, firm amidst uncertainty.
“Stay and watch it change, will you?”
Finally, an answer. So tentative that it could fold on itself if he looked away in the slightest. Tears brim, but in Vil’s eyes he sees the mirror of his own; that while he reaches out to wipe away Vil’s forming tears, Vil reaches out to wipe away the tears that are already dancing their way down his face.
“It’s mortifying.” Vil confesses, quietly, his lower lip quivering and his lashes obscuring those beautiful eyes. “Last night I had a nightmare, and I’m no braver than I was in that dream. But I will choose it, and I will stay true to it, if you will stay by me, regardless of everything else in the world.”
“I will.” He responds, and pulls Vil towards him, despite the way his hands still tremble from an adrenaline spike, the excitement yet subsided from the simple touch and knowledge of a little life now sharing the space between them. The little life to leave an imprint upon their lives forever — to watch him fulfill his vow forever. “Till our ending days.”
“Till your wine-coloured days?” Vil teases, managing a smile. “And deep velvet nights?”
He smiles, too, the grin too deep to manage, when he holds Vil tight in his arms, laying against his chest, pressed up against his heart. “Bien sûr.”
And then for years to come, they will remain just as they are, in their own little world to themselves, for the way they meet with love so softly love.
And speak softly love.