Archive of Our Own ^beta

For just a brief second, Polnareff harmonized perfectly with the hum of the motorbike engine. 

Kakyoin held onto him tightly enough to feel the sound resonating through his broad chest; a wide smile was spread cleanly across his face.

The sun was wide awake now and shining brightly over Parisians going about their morning routines. Nobody paid much mind to the couple winding through narrow backroads on a secondhand bike, but Kakyoin was studying his boyfriend as much as he was the scenery. It all would serve as art inspiration later.

“Oh, I love this song!” Polnareff’s cheery manner interrupted Kakyoin’s train of thought. Before long he began to sing along. “Oh oh, Sherry, oui, jem too suh cuh to fay!”

It would’ve helped if Kakyoin spoke any French past the absolute minimum. Good thing it was cute either way.

Once Polnareff’s performance was over, Kakyoin leaned onto his shoulder and smiled. “Are you singing about your sister?”

“Yes! Well, kind of.” The sunlight in his eyes painted them even bluer than normal. “This album was one of my mom’s favorites. That’s what my dad always said anyway. We ended up keeping all of her records, so sometimes I’d play this one and sing to Sherry. And obviously she thought the song was about her.” He laughed at the memory. “I made sure she never saw the album sleeve, but she figured it out on her own as she got older.”

Every time Polnareff recounted stories of Sherry, they felt like ancient folktales, and Kakyoin was sure he could just sit and listen to them for hours. “I mean, it’s about a girl with the same name, right? I can see why she’d get confused.”

“What?” Polnareff cast a glance back at him confusedly. “No, it’s… it’s Sherry, not Sherry. ”

Kakyoin was just as confused.

“It’s not a name, it’s a word. Like c-h-e- accent aigu -r-i. Chéri. It just sounds the same as her name.”

And suddenly the fog was clearing, and Kakyoin felt incredibly embarrassed for his mistake. “Oh… okay… Uh, what does it mean?”

“How much French do you know?”

The question seemed to come out of nowhere.

Kakyoin answered slowly; he felt like he was being interrogated. “Well, I know a few things… I know how to say hello, and-”

“Can you form a sentence for me? Anything, it doesn’t matter.”

“Ah…” Kakyoin was sweating now. “ Je m’appelle…” He cringed a bit at how clear his accent was. “ ...Noriaki Kakyoin ?”

Polnareff chuckled a bit. “Good job! But is that it?”

Kakyoin resigned to his fate; Polnareff was going to figure out sooner or later if he kept asking. “Alright, you caught me.” He sighed. “I really don’t know French… at all.”

They were nearing their destination now; Polnareff looked disgruntled. “How?! You’re attending a French university and you don’t know French?!”

“In school I focused on English, so… I don’t know, they gave the tour in English, so I figured at least the university staff would know it...” He buried his face into Polnareff’s shoulder as a small comfort.

“Well duh! The tour guides speak English because they’re trying to recruit new students, but you can’t expect everyone to!” He shook his head. “I should’ve known when you asked to split my plate at breakfast instead of ordering your own.”

“Okay, I get it!” Kakyoin’s face was stained red. “I’m sure I’ll just learn it by being here long enough. They say immersion is the best way to learn a language.”

“Yeah, that sounds like bullshit. I learned absolutely no Arabic the entire time we were in Egypt.”

“Well that sounds like a personal problem to me.” A little mischief played a tune on Kakyoin’s mouth; teasing Polnareff always helped him feel better. “I learned plenty; apparently you were too busy worrying about other things to appreciate the culture.”

“Of course I was! The ‘other things’ had names, and stands, and were trying to kill us!”

He couldn’t argue much with that point.

“Whatever. I’m teaching you French. I’m not having you fail your classes because you don’t know the word for ‘paintbrush.’”

“But don’t you have work and such to worry about?!” It felt like he was superimposing himself onto the life Polnareff had reconstructed for himself, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. 

“Yeah, I guess. But it won’t take too long; you’re a mega-genius anyway.” He drifted to a stop; Kakyoin realized that they’d somehow arrived in front of the university’s auditorium during their petty squabble. “Your first lesson starts tomorrow. I’ll be in front of your dorm at 10 to pick you up.” There really wasn’t much use fighting with Polnareff when he got like this. Kakyoin stepped off the bike and unscrewed the canister on the side to retrieve his cane. “It’s le pinceau, by the way.”

Kakyoin shook his head, but a smile was already creeping across his face. With a quick kiss planted on Polnareff’s cheek, he started towards the auditorium.

A few seconds later, shouting erupted from the street. “ Hey! ” Kakyoin turned around quickly—well, as quickly as he could. Polnareff was waving. “ Good luck with orientation! You’ll do great! ” The other students were staring; it didn’t seem like Polnareff even noticed, but Kakyoin absolutely felt their gazes on his back. He nodded sheepishly and then turned towards the building once more.

Kakyoin’s cane lightly clicked against the pavement as he approached the curb and then stopped, looking around. A few cars were parked nearby, but the silver-haired spot of sunshine was nowhere to be found. He glanced at his watch: 9:58. It would likely be another ten minutes before Polnareff arrived, considering he seemed to operate on his own timescale entirely. No matter; the weather was warm and a breeze blew through Kakyoin’s hair.

This scene reminded him of another, months prior on a rainy, desperate night.

Kakyoin had been soaked to the bone from the moment he’d stepped back outside. The receptionist at the hostel had stared out the window at him concernedly, but he’d paid her no mind. He had been fairly certain—no, entirely certain—that the man he’d loved so long ago would come back for him.

When he was first considering coming to Paris for art school, he’d always known there was a possibility that they’d meet again. Time and time over he’d brushed those thoughts aside, trying to move on, live his own life. If Polnareff had been interested in keeping in contact, he surely would have called at least once in the year since they’d overcome Dio. But he hadn’t, and Kakyoin had slowly hardened his heart, as if he’d lost his first love in that battle. It had certainly felt that way.

But then he’d stepped inside a taxi cab on a stormy night, and he’d seen those shining eyes that had sparkled in his dreams now pointed at him through the rearview mirror, and suddenly he had known that the string of fate tied around his finger had been real—it had glowed bright red in the darkness of the cabin.

It’d been almost comical that Polnareff had thought he wouldn’t be recognized, as if Kakyoin’s subconscious hadn’t been flooded with memories of their time together every morning after waking up. Still, he had sat and listened to those confessions that he’d dreamed about for ages, carefully composing himself all the while so as to not give the ruse away. 

And then, after Polnareff had begun to cry, he had left a simple note and exited the car, waiting for the moment when his chauffeur’s sadness would turn to desperation and then, finally, a kiss that had seemed to linger for decades longer than the time they had been apart.

Here he was once more, waiting on a sidewalk in the same city for the same man on the same bike, but the world around them had changed so radically that he hardly recognized the scene himself.

Somewhere during Kakyoin’s daydreams the sound of an engine had begun to creep closer, until Polnareff was practically about to run him over and he was thrown back into the here and now.

Polnareff came to a stop right in front of him and then leaned forward to plant a kiss on Kakyoin’s cheek. He seemed completely oblivious to the striking cinematic parallels taking place. “Hey, I got you a present! Ah, but it wouldn't fit on the bike, so it’s back at my place…” Kakyoin neatly folded his cane up and placed it in the canister on the side. “Sorry, I guess I probably should’ve waited to tell you, then.”

“It’s fine.” He shrugged and swung a leg over the seat. “It gives me something to look forward to.”

“My lessons weren’t enough to look forward to?” Polnareff’s expression was sour.

“No, not really.” Kakyoin was glad his boyfriend couldn’t see the sly smile that had taken over his face.

Polnareff conjured a fake sniffle as they started down the avenue. “You’re so mean…”

And then Kakyoin laughed, a solid, hearty thing, and it felt like everything was right for the first time in his life.

The breeze spun Kakyoin’s hair up into little coils. It wasn’t long before Polnareff was singing along with the music he was playing. “ Oh oh, chéri, oui, jem too suh cuh to fay! ” As he sang, he turned back to wink at Kakyoin.

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

But there wasn’t much time to worry about that—the bike was attempting to veer into oncoming traffic. “Polnareff, the road! Watch the road! ”

He swiveled around and shouted what must have been some sort of French expletive after assessing the situation, but steered them back in the right direction at the last second. Luckily, the only damage had been his ego and a few stray car horns from the other lane.

Kakyoin could finally feel his lungs again, but spent his first breath chastising the driver. “Where the hell did you learn to drive?! Isn’t the first thing they teach you ‘don’t take your eyes off the road?!’ I thought we were going to die!”

“Shit, I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to almost kill you…” His gaze was laser-focused in front of him, finally. “I just wanted to see your pretty face while I sang to you…”

“The-” Kakyoin felt a blush creeping up his neck. “The flattery will get you nowhere!”

“Yeah, okay…” There was a wide smile painted on his face that Kakyoin could just barely see. “...I don’t have to turn around to know that it worked.”

He huffed and fell further into Polnareff’s shoulder.

It turned out that Polnareff’s apartment wasn’t too far from campus. As they stepped off the bike to head inside, Kakyoin wondered how many times he’d be back here in the coming semester. 

He also wondered if he’d have to listen to the same album every time.

“Do you have any other tapes, by the way? Or do you just really like that one?” 

Polnareff was next to him with a hand on his back to help him up the stairs. “Ah, well…” He chuckled a bit. “See, I do have other tapes, but… I, uh, left the bike out without a cover once, and it rained, and now the eject button doesn’t work…”

“Then why don’t you just use the radio?” They were already halfway up the narrow staircase, despite having to travel one step at a time. Taking the stairs with someone helping like this wasn’t too much of a hassle, but alone… it was a good thing the university had elevators in most of the buildings.

“Oh, the radio has never worked. I bought the bike secondhand for a discount because the radio didn’t work anymore. I figured…” He laughed again. “I figured it would be fine because I had plenty of tapes.”

At the top of the stairs, Polnareff’s apartment was just a few doors down. When they reached the entrance, he paused for a second and then began to fumble with his keys much more than should’ve been necessary.

Kakyoin cocked an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s just…” The keys floated around aimlessly in his hands. “...Well, I realized that this is the first time you’ll be in my apartment… I-I don’t know…”

“Oh.” Kakyoin’s face threatened to light up again. There was a certain intimacy to seeing someone’s living space, plus it would be the first time they’d be truly alone since they had begun to date... “I suppose it is. But, I mean, it’s not as if we’re planning on doing anything… you know…” And then came the blush.

“Right, right!” Polnareff finally seemed to find the right key, but had a hard time getting it into the lock. “I wasn’t trying to imply that sort of thing…”

“Me neither!” His throat was burning. “So we’re on the same page then!”

“Yup!” Polnareff’s voice cracked at the height of the word, but he managed to get the door open at last. “Well, ah, come in…”

It was, as expected, a modest one-bedroom apartment. The door opened into a narrow kitchen with red tile floors. A tall, squarish box sat plainly among some clutter on the counter. There was a coat rack nestled in the closest corner; Polnareff swung around to help Kakyoin remove his jacket.

They walked through the kitchen into the main area, a combination dining/living room. The dining room table (or maybe it was a living room table?) was directly in front of them when they entered, and on it sat numerous bottles of styling products, combs, and brushes, in addition to a mannequin head with platinum-blonde locks that hung off the table’s edge. Various empty bags and boxes littered the leftmost wall. Off to the right, a small couch, end table, and TV composed the “living room” section of the space. The inner wall was punctuated by two doors, and from the little sliver that each was open Kakyoin could tell they were a bathroom and bedroom, respectively. At the far end of the room was a stereo system and a heavy wooden chest.

Polnareff rushed up to the table and fruitlessly attempted to organize. “Sorry about the mess. I passed out pretty much as soon as I got off of work yesterday…” He ended up shoving everything in a cardboard box, carrying it off to his bedroom, and then coming back to do the same to the styling head. He returned with a huff and motioned to the chair closest to Kakyoin. “Sit! I have to get your present.”

He did as instructed, and Polnareff disappeared briefly into the kitchen. It was incredibly charming to see him in his own space like this, Kakyoin thought. The hustle and bustle of daily life, the clutter, the way the small space was used to its fullest… he’d never been enamored by the domesticities of anyone before. But as he sat with a tiny smile on his face, Kakyoin found himself wanting to be wrapped up tight in the simple joys of his boyfriend’s life, a life he hoped they’d ultimately share.

Soon enough, Polnareff emerged and set the tall box Kakyoin had spotted earlier down in front of him. There was an eager grin on his face, the kind that always seemed to catch Kakyoin and twist his brain into a knot.

“Open it! I wanna see what you think!” Polnareff’s voice startled him out of the heart palpitations he’d been having. With a quick nod, Kakyoin carefully unboxed the gift.

Inside was a brand-new motorcycle helmet, the same type that Polnareff had, but colored a matte forest green as opposed to his white one. Kakyoin looked up to see the same little grin. “I thought you might want one, since I’ll probably be driving you around all the time… and now we match!”

It was impossible not to smile. He slid the helmet over his head to check the fit. “You know, this would’ve been better fifteen minutes ago when you nearly spilled my brains on the pavement…”

“Can’t you just forget that happened?! I apologized…” Polnareff was cute even when he pouted.

Kakyoin laughed as he removed the helmet and readjusted his hair. “Fine, fine… but it better not happen again, or I’m getting a motorcycle license myself.” He inspected just how perfectly untouched the helmet was, how professional the finish on the paint appeared. “...How much did you pay for this…?”

“Well-” Polnareff skittered to the other side of the table. “...I mean, isn’t that a bit rude to ask? ‘Don’t look a gift mule in the mouth,’ right?”

“It’s ‘gift horse.’” Kakyoin set the helmet back in the box. “And I’m just asking to make sure you didn’t bankrupt yourself to buy me this.”

“...I’ll be fine! You can’t just let me treat you from time to time? You’re finally here!”

Polnareff had a point, he realized. He had first come to Paris on that rainy night to tour the art school he ended up choosing to attend, but had left a few days after. They had talked on the phone plenty of times, of course, even solidifying their relationship, but he hadn’t seen Polnareff in almost six months until a few days ago, when he’d “happened” to be at work, “happened” to pull up to the exact gate Kakyoin was leaving, and “happened” to forget to ask for payment after dropping him off at his dorm. Perhaps the first time it had been coincidence, but this time seemed deliberate.

Kakyoin sighed and closed the lid of the box. “Alright, but just this once.” Ultimately he was worried about Polnareff’s budget, but he appreciated the gift and the amount of effort clearly put into it.

“ Merci !” He leaned down to kiss Kakyoin’s cheek sweetly, then moved the box off of the table for the time being. “Lesson one has started! Merci means thank you!”

“I knew that one already, but merci. ” Polnareff had swung the other chair around so that they were next to each other.

“But you’re saying it all wrong! You’re kind of…” He considered his words. “Repeat it again for me?” 

Kakyoin said the word a few more times, feeling the texture.

“Ah! Okay, you’re making it longer than it is. You keep saying me-ru-ci instead of mer-ci. Try doing it in two sounds.”

“Do we have to worry about pronunciation right away?!” He chewed on the inside of his lip, feeling his face heat up. Having his accent pointed out felt like a form of ultimate shame.

“But it’s important! People need to be able to understand you when you speak.” Polnareff deliberated a bit. “...I think on this one, you’re okay, though. I get what you’re saying.”

“Good.” Kakyoin unzipped his bag and slid out a notebook and a few pens. “Now, can we start for real?”

“ Bien syure ! ” Polnareff flipped open the notebook to the first page. “You know that one too, I assume.”

He shook his head.

“Alright, then we have a lot of work to do!” In the top margin he wrote ‘LESSON 1’ in big letters, followed by the date on the right: ‘ 2 septembre 1990. ’ With the pen, he pointed at this second part: “This is how you write the date. You can also do it like”—Above the longer date, he wrote ‘2/9/90’—“this. Either way, you say it like deux septembre meal nuf sant catre van dees. ”

“That seems like a lot of words to say one thing…” Kakyoin had no clue how he could even try to remember what was just said.

“It’s just the year. Here, let me…” 

After a brief excursion to talk about the strange intricacies of the French numeral system, Polnareff was looking to move on. He began a section called ‘ Phrases :’ “Just like in English, sentences—or, well, we call them phrases —have a sujet , verbe , and objet .” He came up with a few example sentences.

‘Je visite mon copain = I visit my boyfriend’

‘Tu peins un tableau = You paint a picture’

‘Attention ! Il a un stand ! = Look out! He has a stand!’

“I guess I’ll start with sujets. There aren’t that many, so they should be easy to remember. You already know that je is ‘I’...”

The next few minutes were taken up by the creation of a table and subsequent explanation. There were multiple sujets that seemed to refer to the same thing, but were used differently. The word on was particularly hard to understand, as it seemed to mean ‘you,’ ‘someone,’ and ‘we,’ all at the same time. Polnareff, perhaps sensing the confusion, scribbled it out on the table and instructed Kakyoin to use the word nous for ‘we,’ at least for the time being. 

The air had dampened significantly due to the cloud of confusion. Polnareff chuckled, then fixed his gaze on a faraway point. “I never really thought about how complicated all of this was…”

“Of course you didn’t.” He turned his attention to the way sunlight came through the window and bounced off of stray hairs hanging in front of freckled brow. “Learning your first language is always easy, no matter what it is. People say Japanese is much too complicated, but to me it seems natural. Just because I don’t understand everything you’re trying to teach me at first doesn’t mean I won’t get it eventually.”

“You’re right.” He nodded, seeming to refocus.

Kakyoin winked. “I always am.”

“That is not true!” Polnareff turned towards him indignantly. “You thought you could just learn French by existing here!”

He looked away so as not to be caught with a stupid grin on his face. “I probably would’ve done it eventually. But I’m glad to have such a sexy home tutor to assist me.”

“Will you shut up!” He had folded his arms across his chest. “I’m trying to help you, so please don’t tease me…” There was a whine to his voice.

Kakyoin couldn’t deny the small amount of color on his own face. “...Alright, then why don’t you teach me about verbes? ”

“Okay…” Polnareff was forced to reset himself in order to start up again. “There are three kinds of verbes: ones that end in -er, ones that end in -ir, and ones that end in -re.” He was writing notes as he was speaking. “I’m not counting all the irregular verbes. Those we will have to learn separate. For now, I want to focus on the -er verbes, because they are the most common...” 

If the sujets were confusing, the verbes were utterly labyrinthian. Each sujet had a different form of the same verbe, but to make matters worse, even though many of them looked like they would be pronounced differently, they all sounded identical. It was utterly baffling to Kakyoin that half of the letters in ils parlent —‘they speak’—were left unpronounced, rendering it phonetically indistinguishable from il parle —’he speaks.’ At some point, Polnareff began to explain a concept called liaison, in which words were blended into each other, but the thousand-yard stare he received in return stopped him dead in his tracks.

He scratched at the back of his neck. “...I’m sorry that this doesn’t make a lot of sense. I guess I’m not really a great teacher.”

Kakyoin shook himself out of the funk he was caught in. “It’s not your fault you speak a language with a lot of unnecessary, strange rules.” He rolled his eyes, but a smile was still firmly planted on his chin. “...People call French the language of love and such, but nobody really makes an effort to learn it… I think I’m starting to see why.”

“Okay, like Japanese is any better! The words are all jumbled around, and you write using those weird characters, and then you have to be careful how you refer to people…”

“Oh?” He perched his chin on his palm. “And how do you know all this? Have you been learning Japanese on the side?”

Polnareff’s eyes went wide and then turned away; he’d been caught. “...Just what Jotaro has been willing to teach me over the phone…”

“Alright, so what do you know?” Oh, how the tables had turned.

“Not too much…” He was still avoiding eye contact. “But I’m not planning on going to Japan, so it should be fine…”

“No, no, you went to all this effort. I’d love to hear what you have to say.” The little devil on Kakyoin’s shoulder had long since inhabited his body.

“Well… there is something I want to say, but it’s not something Jotaro taught me… I had to buy a French-Japanese dictionary, because he wouldn’t tell me…”

“Well now my interest is piqued.” He folded his hands across his lap. “Go ahead, then.”

“I hope I’m saying this right…” Polnareff sighed, steeled himself, and then looked directly at Kakyoin, still shaking a bit. “ Dai...suki. ”

And at once Kakyoin melted into a quivering puddle. He’d never once thought he would hear that word uttered to him. But here he was, half a world away from home with a man who hardly spoke the language he was trying to use, who surely felt the weight and texture of those syllables on his foreign tongue, who had so freely opened his heart to Kakyoin and was now trying to express it in the best way he knew how.

There was nothing so powerful as hearing I love you in your mother tongue.

But Kakyoin realized entirely too late that he had no way to repay the favor.

Silently cursing himself, he tried his best to recover. “...You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“What…?” There was a clear hurt in Polnareff’s eyes. “But you asked… and it’s true.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like…” He shook his head. “...I just didn’t expect it. You surprised me.” There was no doubt that his face was still cherry-colored. “Let’s just move on to objets.” 

“If you say so…” He tried to busy himself writing; Kakyoin prayed he wasn’t too hurt. “With objets, if you directly mention it, the order is just like in English.” He copied a sentence from earlier, ‘Tu peins un tableau.’ “...But if you use a pronom as your objet, you put it before the verbe. Like this: ‘Je te vois.’ It means ‘I see you.’”

“Huh.” The mood was returning to normal. “Well that makes sense.”

Polnareff was making a table of the pronoms. “...Really?”

“Japanese is like that. The objet comes before the verbe. So to me, it makes more sense like this than the other way around.”

“That’s convenient.” He had just finished the table, and was beginning an explanation. “Some of these are self explanatory. Me is ‘me,’ that one is easy. Te is ‘you,’ just like tu…”

This section was the easiest of the three, and it wasn’t much longer until Polnareff was standing up to stretch, his spine creaking in a few places. “Mmm… well, I think that’s enough for today. We went over a lot.” With a smile, he looked down at Kakyoin. “I’d like if you stayed over a bit longer, though. If not, that’s fine too.”

It was easy to trace his outline against the sunny window behind him. “I’ll stay for a while. Why not?”

“Good! I really wasn’t sure what I was gonna do if you said no.” The clock on the wall read 11:22. Polnareff eyed the bathroom door. “I’ll be right back, chéri.” He crossed the small room and then closed the door behind him.

That word again… it reminded Kakyoin of the cryptic wink he had been given earlier. That song was for Sherry, right? So why had Polnareff looked at him while he sang?

But looking at the record player across the room, he suddenly knew exactly how to figure it out.

Kakyoin tucked the notebook under his arm, grabbed his cane, and shuffled over to the heavy chest on the far wall. As he’d expected, it was full of records, old and new alike.

He knew what he was looking for: An older album, with a jacket that was likely worn. He picked each record up, flipped it over to briefly check the lyrics on the back, and then set it aside.

Luckily, it didn’t take too long to find the right album, the same one that was stuck in the stereo of a used motorbike, albeit in a different format: A well-loved jacket showcasing a young woman holding an umbrella. Kakyoin carefully carried the album to the couch and sat down, treating it as the precious artifact it was.

The track that interested him was the fourth, simply titled ‘Oh oh chéri.’ He pulled out his notebook and began to transfer the lyric in question from the back of the jacket to the front of the page.

The bathroom door swung open. “Sorry about the wait-” Polnareff realized halfway through his thought that Kakyoin was no longer in the same place. After scanning the room, his eyes settled on the couch. “What are you doing over there?”

Kakyoin simply flipped the notebook around so he could see. “Will you help me translate this?”

He came across the room to read the note at the bottom of the page.

‘Oh oh chéri, oui, j’aime tout ce que tu fais.’

Polnareff’s freckles began to blend with the color his skin was turning. “...So you want to know about that…”

“Yes, I do.” Kakyoin was trying to keep his face even.

“Okay, well…” He sat down on the couch, uncomfortable but apparently not enough so to prevent him from trying to assist. “...Why don’t you translate the parts you understand and I’ll help with the rest?”

With a nod, Kakyoin began:

‘Oh oh… yes, I… you…”

“I’m assuming the ‘j’ in j’aime is je ?” He looked to Polnareff for confirmation.

“Mhm. If a verbe starts with a voyelle, some sujets and objets will be shortened like this.” He smiled hesitantly. His arms were wrapped around his chest. “...You really are a fast learner.”

“Merci. Now, are you going to cower like that, or are you going to help me?”

Polnareff swallowed and reached for his courage. His precious song was not a secret so easily given up. It must have taken a miracle for Kakyoin to pry it out of him. “Okay, let’s start…” With a smile meant only to reassure himself, he began. “ Aimer is ‘to love’ here; j’aime is ‘I love.’ Tout means ‘everything.’ Ce que is a bit weird to translate, but let’s say it is like ‘that.’ And faire is ‘to do,’ so tu fais is ‘you do.’”

But something had been deliberately left out. “...And chéri? ”

“Well, chéri is…” He looked down at his hands. “You are my chéri …”

A tear nearly sprang to Kakyoin’s eye from how softly those words were spoken, how tenderly. You are my chéri. There was no need for a direct translation; the amount of love that poured from that single word spoke louder than any he’d heard before.

And now, he realized, he was looking directly at a full translation of the lyric, written in piecemeal segments below the original.

‘Oh oh dear, yes, I love everything that you do.’

He turned toward Polnareff with mist in his eyes. “Is this correct?”

A nod was the only response. He was too embarrassed to give anything more.

There was just one thing left to say, and with a sort of childlike giddiness and a pit in his stomach he recognized that he finally had the words to say it. 

He tilted Polnareff’s face towards his own and whispered something into the space between their mouths.

“Je t’aime, chéri.”