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and you laugh.
loudly–
head tipping back.
and while your eyes
are on the ceiling,
i am mouthing
something too heavy even
for this steady night to shoulder.
‘this is not a joke.’ i mouth.
‘love me. love me.’
– Letters from Medea, Salma Deera
Kurogane cannot stand the cider in Clow country. The desert apples are far too sweet, fermenting into a golden honey fizz that doesn’t burn quite harshly enough in his throat. He needs something to ease him, not build sickly sugar on his tongue. The fruity bubbling nectar is hardly enough for a buzz anyhow, bloating in his stomach more than anything. A bottle of well-matured sake would do him some good while holed up to heal in this stuffy palace.
Not that Kurogane is ungrateful for the unconditional accommodations of the King, or the exceptional efforts of the High Priestess Queen and her healers. He’s always felt out of place when stationary. He needs to be doing something. Fighting something. Moving forward. These days, after far too many hours of rest and the occasional medicinal prodding of a Clow acolyte, the most interesting part of his routine is when a particular mage insists on pestering him.
Fai brought the cider, of course, knowing that despite Kurogane’s apprehension to the saccharine flavor, he’d never let Fai drink alone. So, countless bottles down, and Fai is giggling up a storm at Kurogane’s bedside. Not from the weak excuse for booze. Being Fai alone is enough to set him off.
Kurogane has seen Fai smile many times since Celes was destroyed. He’ll never forget that first genuine grin; the crooked way his teeth gleamed as his lip twitched involuntarily, askew and brilliant in the moonlight. It takes him out every time he sees it. New and strange at first, now blazing with sheer unbridled confidence.
Even when sitting together at eye level, Kurogane feels as if Fai towers above him when he cackles, his spirit soaring somewhere high in the cloudless sky beyond the domed clay tile roof above them. Fai has always been an enigma to Kurogane. Even now, after so many years traveling at each other’s side, and so many gallons of blood spilled in reckless dedication; in all of Fai’s bone-deep familiarity, Kurogane still feels lost in the galaxy of his presence.
After everything they’ve been through, Fai still has so much life in him, and Kurogane can never quite fully wrap his head around that dazzling glow.
Then again, it could be the alcohol. (Ha.)
“You should’ve seen the look on his face when I told him,” Fai manages through a joyous heave of breath. “Oh! Hello! We’re but humble travelers who’ve been on a time-bending multidimensional nearly-reality-ending journey with the clones of your sister and her boyfriend. Do you want to know which part of that sentence the Crown Prince took offense to?”
Fai sets his bottle on Kurogane’s nightstand, giving his hands the freedom to eagerly prop his chin on his knees, leaning forward with a beckoning glint in his now-blue eyes.
Not yet entirely blue. There’s still flecks of gold in one, if you’re looking close enough.
Close enough to feel puffs of apple tart sweetness tickle your nose.
“Which part?” Kurogane echoes back, and if his eyes are focused on Fai’s lips, it’s only because he finds the anticipatory flutter of laughter behind them a little fascinating.
“The boyfriend part,” Fai says with a wheeze, and can hardly parse together the rest of his story. “He wa—he was so mad! Absolute strangers from an alternate dimension? Sure, that’s fine by him. Buh—but Sakura-chan’s boyfriend?”
Fai inflates his pecs and plants his hands on his hips in a mockery of Prince Touya, forcing his elation into a fake scowl, shoulders still rumbling through the motion.
“You better not be talking about the brat! ” he stops to titter again, feigned glower breaking almost immediately. “I told—I told him, ‘Well, I didn’t say any names. Who did you have in mind?’ Then he—then he changed the subject. He was so mad! You should have seen him! Completely red, head to toe. Just like you, when Tomoyo-chan makes fun of you!”
Kurogane clicks his tongue and cuts his glance away, which only sends Fai further skyward with delight.
“You’re doing it right now! Oh, you are so easy to rile up, Kuro-puu, I can’t—”
In that moment, Kurogane shifts his gaze back to Fai, and will never regret doing so for the rest of his life.
Fai’s head is thrown back in a full body laugh, loosely tied corn silk ponytail trailing in the arc of motion. Tears prickle beneath eyelashes that flitter like windswept daffodil petals. His torso undulates in a ripple, shirt nearly untucking in the vibration that rolls through his belly. His cheeks flush with peach pink that blossoms down past his neck to his peaking collar bone.
Kurogane aches to kiss every inch of this ridiculous man.
“It’s not me. You’re the one with that annoying effect,” he deflects instead, drowning the words in another swig of—oh fuck he forgot he was drinking this syrupy shit. There has to be some sort of dry variety he can shake down the local merchants for. Actually, fuck cider. Clow country must have some kind of wine or hard liquor he could—
“Oh, I affect you, do I?” Fai derides smoothly, returning to a full forward tilt, nearly on his hands and knees as he looms in Kurogane’s periphery.
The flush has turned a shade darker beneath Fai’s bold half-lidded gaze, and Kurogane can’t breathe.
“You better be careful of what you say, Kuro-sama. The walls have ears, you know,” Fai continues his tease in a buttery lilt.
“Yeah? Why the hell should I care?” Kuorgane counters. He sets his own bottle to the side, turning to fully face Fai’s giddy stare down.
Another chortle sparks dimples, and Fai answers, “All sorts of rumors could spread, if the healers knew how much I affect you.”
Kurogane finds himself leaning back as Fai motions closer, sinking into the waiting stack of pillows behind him. He can’t help but idly wonder if Fai’s vampire blood is truly, completely gone. If any part of him remains a predator. Tempted by his game. Drawn to the blood pumping eagerly beneath Kurogane’s skin. If he were to turn his head and expose his neck, would those remaining flecks of gold bleed across his irises, canines extending, mouth hot and demanding on his—
“What sort of rumors?” he blurts out.
Kurogane has never once cared for rumors.
He may, however, be searching to know every detail of what Fai is thinking.
The eyes are still blue, yet warm into fond puddles that melt Kurogane to his core anyhow. Fai’s tongue darts out, wetting his lips before his voice hitches in its sudden softness, “They might start to think you’re madly in love with me.”
Kurogane is, and he can no longer stand the fact that he hasn’t done a damn thing about it.
“That’s hardly a rumor, you idiot,” he exhales, surging forward to capture Fai’s gasp as it escapes from his mouth.
Only for his unmet kiss to linger in empty air as Fai keels over into a heap of blankets with another crackling roar of laughter.
The hell?
Fai clutches at his stomach, chin tilted to the ceiling, bangs flared out in a canary feather halo atop the sheets. He jolts from the lack of breath, shoulders rolling back in an attempt to quell the chaotic rhythm in his lungs.
An old frustration echoes in the recesses of Kurogane’s mind, twisting in his gut.
The possibility that the reflexive barrier of Fai’s humor has yet to die.
“It’s not a joke,” he snaps, seizing the muscles in his torso to lift himself up with one arm, the other’s replacement taking way too damn long in Fuuma’s tow. If that bespectacled bastard would just hurry up already, he could balance himself as he reaches out to Fai, grabbing him by that obscenely unbuttoned collar, carving the weight of his meaning into that gaping jaw.
All he can do is hold his core steady as he gazes over this snickering mess, waiting for the significance of his words to do something, to see any hint of Fai recognizing the cosmic scale of this inexorable push and pull between them.
Then again, Kurogane has long understood Fai to be an emotionally unwitting fool, and perhaps he hasn’t said enough.
“Why the fuck would I’ve given all I have for a dumbass like you, if I wasn’t in love?”
Fai’s hands rise to his face, encasing his eyes and mouth in his palms. The quake changes tempo from another shudder of joy to a breaching sob.
“I’m so—I’m sorry,” he chokes out, the next inhale rasping through his fingers. “I can’t—I can’t understand it.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Kurogane rumbles in disbelief. The desert sunset casts amber shadows in the dips of fabric over the bedspread, darkening the umbra over Fai’s expression. Kurogane wants to tug those stubborn wrists away and proclaim every love-laden vow with direct certainty, any surviving doubt sent straight to hell. “How many more ways can I say it? Everything I’ve done is to keep you alive, to keep you with me.”
“That’s exactly it,” Fai chuckles with a bittersweet edge. A tear overflows past the heel of his palm, pooling salty at his bottom lip. “I’m supposed to be dead. I’m not supposed to be this happy.”
The sandstone walls are thick, muffling any outside bustle of castle activity. All Kurogane can hear is the shallow quiver of Fai’s breathing, and their hearts thundering through the length of their silence.
Fai unfolds his arms, wiping puffy red eyes with his sleeve. When he looks at Kurogane, elation and pain swim through him in even measures. He’s still floating somewhere unknown, the yearning gravity that swells in his gaze the only tether he can begin to name.
“I wanted what I couldn’t have for so long. I can’t understand what to do with myself,” Fai whispers, and that habitual sheepish grin that barely reaches his eyes curls up, reigniting the wick of rage within Kurogane to an indignant flame.
“What you couldn’t have,” he repeats through a seethe, replanting his arm in a hop-like movement so he now hovers directly over Fai, fingers brushed to a fray of platinum locks. “Dammit mage, I’ve been here.”
“I know,” Fai sighs, and his hand is at Kurogane’s cheek, thumb tracing tenderly across his temple. Licks of goldenrod flicker in Fai’s irises, catching on specks of yellow as the sun dips lower beneath the opposing window frame. He’s as mystifying as he is reverent when his fingertips glide from Kurogane’s jaw to his soft tawny brown lips.
Kurogane presses back against those scarred pads on instinct, eyelids falling close beneath a pinched brow, an unspoken promise seared into Fai’s skin. Kurogane can hear a startled pant beneath him, then burns the kiss in full to the center of Fai’s palm, refusing to let that thrilled awareness slip away.
“Even when I pushed you away, you’ve always been here,” Fai hushes with awe, stare fixed on the warrior’s devoted mouth. “I tried so hard to hate you for it, but it was never any use.”
Kurogane’s eyes snap open, and he sees a man so hopeless and adoring and unyielding all at once, as he’s always known him to be.
“I can only love you.”
Fai’s confession does not stir a single grain of surprise in Kurogane, but the moment still brands in his memory with all the magnitude of his long awaited return to something he can call home.
Kurogane drags his mouth to the inside of Fai’s wrist and feels the pulse stutter under his tongue. Fingernails scrape just above his ear, grazing through soot-black bristles. The stability in Kurogane’s elbow begins to falter, so he braces his ab muscles to lower himself gradually. The warmth of Fai’s stomach pressed to his own sends a current of fervor and comfort through his veins, flooding into utter contentment when his weight sinks in full, chest to chest. Kurogane’s knees embrace the sides of Fai’s hips, eliciting a broken, quiet sigh from the back of Fai’s throat. Kurogane can feel the delicate breeze of it, and intends to chase it down.
“Then have this,” Kurogane speaks in an outline of a kiss to Fai's whimper. “If you want this, then have it all.”
“Yes,” Fai relinquishes, filling in the gap. “Yes.”