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No one is born pretty.
Fai thinks this as he lays on his back, lazy Sunday morning light creeping across the ceiling of their LA apartment, washing the white walls in shades of gold and orange. A broad hand sits heavy on the center of his chest, Kurogane, still sleeping, attached to it at his side.
And he thinks, correcting himself, no one is born pretty enough.
A thousand years ago, maybe.
Before ring lights and concealer and photoshop. Before stylists and personal trainers.
But even then there were portraits. Women with no eyebrows and shaved foreheads. The rich and idealized captured in oil paint. Frescos of soft angels to live up to, painted in times of famine and rotting plague.
It’s a lie humanity can’t seem to shake, but Fai is so good at telling it.
He turns his head, looking at Kurogane’s brow that furrows, then eases in response to his movement. Kurogane snores softly. His open mouth drools a little. It is subjectively ugly and Fai adores it.
He remembers that moment of disappointment. Kurogane had one, because sooner or later they all do. That moment when he realized Fai wasn’t the creature he saw in the pictures. That it wasn’t all raw emotion and seduction by numbers. That there were days of quiet, of exhaustion, of anger, of rest. Days of sweatpants and bangs a little too greasy. Intoxication that was neither fun nor lighthearted. Hangovers that were more vomit and aggression than they were tousled hair and sunglasses.
He feels a pull in his blood at the thought. A longing for things he’s not supposed to want anymore now that he’s ‘clean’.
He doesn’t feel clean. He feels like morning breath and the slight sweat from a hot night and he knows if he moves too much Kurogane will wake up and kiss him and call him beautiful anyway.
There’s an ache in his chest and a pained smile as he holds back the urge to wrap himself around this strange man who insists on loving him when he knows he doesn’t deserve it.
And Kurogane calles him an idiot.
Instead he touches the back of the hand on his chest gently.
As always, Kurogane startles awake, but Fai is there with a soft shush and the back of his knuckles caressing the curve of Kurogane’s temple. The panic is gone from red eyes within seconds, replaced by a groggy, half-lidded inventory of Fai’s features. Kurogane pulls him closer and Fai rolls on top, straddling his waist and cuddling to his chest.
“Ohayo,” Fai murmurs.
And Kurogane groans, strong hands running up his back, gentle against thin ribs. “Your pronunciation gets worse everyday.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not,” he nuzzles into Fai’s neck, planting warm kisses that he helpfully stretches long for. “It’s just true.”
Fai sits up to yawn and reach his arms toward the ceiling. The room is plenty warm as the beach air has been hot all night, but Kurogane still protests reflexively as the blankets are caught up around Fai’s hips and pulled from his chest.
Or maybe, Fai thinks, you can be born pretty. Or handsome. Whatever.
It’s just that he himself wasn’t.
His eyes trace over Kurogane’s physique. Abs and chest and broad shoulders all under smooth, warm skin. There is a slight tan line around his biceps but if Kurogane just went shirtless a little more often as Fai sometimes suggests, that would fade right out.
Can this be considered natural, too? When it has nothing to do with the desk job Kurogane actually works to survive?
Or is it a return to all the things they’re supposed to be?
Kurogane blinks up at him, scowling with grogginess, and even that works in a brooding bad boy type of way.
Utterly unfair.
Infuriating.
Fai leans down to kiss him again.