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Scaramouche was about ready to bash his head into the wall.
It was Christmas time, clumps of snowflakes plummeting from the heavy tufts of clouds that shrouded the city in the winter months. String lights glittered along Inazuma’s streets and small evergreen trees were posed on every corner of the sidewalk. Scaramouche was going to start suing the city; their obnoxious form hindered his vision when he went to cross the street.
The nature of the Christmas season was nauseating: cinnamon and peppermint clung to his clothing when he returned home, the strong scents bleeding into a migraine, and the earworms of identical songs didn’t help to ease the pounding in his skull.
Which just happened to have been the notorious straw that broke the camel’s back.
It was almost predictable enough, occurring so often it began to take on a pattern, that Scaramouche let out a groan before the footsteps on the other side of the wall even stopped. Scaramouche could hear clearly as a speaker turned on, the little boop signalling the start of his torture, and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas flooded his apartment.
It was the second week in a row that his neighbor played the same playlist in the same order.
Scaramouche grumbled to himself, kicking his heel into the back of the couch and stomping toward his door. He pulled a scarf and hat on angrily when he began to hear his neighbor sing along to the slow tune, his hand shaking with anger as he wound the knit yarn tight around his throat. He was unknowingly tying the proverbial noose around his own neck.
Mind you, he didn’t actually think his neighbor’s voice was bad--it was quite the contrary. It was just that no amount of earplugs or pillows could muffle the music, and no safe amount of aspirin could atone for the pain the music sent shooting through his head. So, no matter how smooth the other man’s voice was, Scaramouche didn’t think it was worth losing nights of sleep with the catchy lyrics replaying in his restless brain.
Being five feet and four inches and just under a hundred and fifteen pounds, he didn’t think it was wise to pump six shots of caffeine into his body each morning.
Scaramouche took a deep breath to steady the racing anger in his veins and lifted his hand to knock on his neighbor’s door. Adrenaline pulsed through his body when the voice on the other side halted, the lone sound of the staticky track filling the silence between Scaramouche, the door, and his neighbor.
The music stopped altogether and Scaramouche nearly fell with gratitude to his knees when a soft thud sounded from the apartment. He furrowed his eyebrows and the door swung open before him.
Scaramouche couldn’t help but stare.
The man in front of him was leaning forward, focusing on tugging his slippers on, and he raked a hand through his white hair to stop it from falling in front of his face. He looked up from where he fiddled with his house slippers, his eyes, like burnt sienna, dripping with mousiness as he peered at Scaramouche.
“Oh,” the white haired boy said, like he hadn’t known there’d be anyone at the door once he opened it. “May I help you?” His voice was small, its soft tenor reminiscent of the soft hums that drifted from one side of the wall across to Scaramouche’s.
Scaramouche faltered, eyeing where freckles scattered across the man’s cheekbones. They were like spilt turbinado sugar, small and scattered, and Scaramouche wondered if they’d taste so sweet. He swallowed, a blush rising high over his neck.
“Uh, yeah,” he said dumbly, his tongue thick in his mouth, and the blonde tilted his head. Scaramouche couldn’t help but feel guilty and he swallowed down the pained feeling in his chest. “Could you maybe stop blasting Christmas music? The walls are really quite thin and I’ve heard more than enough of the same carols as it is…” Scaramouche’s nasally voice trailed off. The annoyance he’d previously been drenched in had drifted away from his tone, dissolving completely at the sight of scarlet that slipped through his neighbor’s hair.
It was strange--normally Scaramouche felt no shame in the constant flooding of petulant anger through him. He’d been called a scrooge by Childe more than enough times for the ginger to learn that it would result in pain on his part, but he’d never been able to care less about how he was perceived.
So when the white-haired man flinched, Scaramouche was appalled by the amount of regret that flooded him.
“You mean?” the man started, his soft voice rising up an octave. It was still lower than Scaramouche’s, but the feathery feel of his tone was gentler, combatting how Scaramouche’s own voice was pitched thin. “You can hear me?”
Scaramouche lifted an eyebrow reflexively. “You can hear people walk two steps in these apartments.”
Again, the blonde flinched and Scaramouche bit his lip. His eyes narrowed at his own emotions, the guilt that slipped like hydrochloric acid through him making his stomach burn with its corrosive acidity.
Scaramouche noticed that, even as the man’s melodic voice seemed to take on air after air of different emotions, drifting through octaves like bird song, his features themselves didn’t seem to move. He was stoic, little lifts in his eyebrows the only shift in demeanor that accompanied his vocal cues.
“I’m so sorry,” the white-haired man mumbled, turning his head to the side as though to avoid Scaramouche’s eyes’ inquiry. He let out a soft laugh, the corners of his lips tilting slightly with the rush of air, and lifted a dainty hand to cover his forehead. “How embarrassing.”
His hands were small and pale, the fingers slightly plump, like the hand you’d see on a small child, and Scaramouche couldn’t help but admire just how cute that made him seem. Scaramouche himself didn’t have much room to talk--being a small angry man just gave way to others’ perceptions of him as being like a toddler--but he could feel attraction sink in his gut.
“Sorry,” Scaramouche said, rushing over the word that tasted foreign in his mouth, “I haven’t asked your name.”
The man looked up, his amber eyes slipping impossibly larger a fraction. “Oh,” he whispered, “me neither.” Scaramouche watched his mouth form a small “o” and fisted his hands at his side.
“It’s Kazuha, and yours?”
-
Needless to say, the caroling stopped.
The humming, however, didn't. And for that Scaramouche could almost say he was grateful. It made him feel a little light-headed, to say the least. It was like he’d had too little air and too much of the cheap glitter spread around stores during December. At twenty-eight, foolish with caramel colored freckles, Scaramouche shouldn’t have been infatuated with a bashful, baby-handed, beautiful boy, but he didn’t really mind it.
It’s Kazuha, and yours? Kazuha, yours? It’s Kazuha. Ka-zu-ha. Scaramouche liked the way the name sounded in his head, the beat of its syllables situated at the front of the boy’s pretty pink mouth. The high pitch of one syllable before it dropped to the other two. One high, two low. Anapestic and poetic.
Scaramouche could appreciate a pretty name; he liked how its repetition dripped down his spine each time he heard an inkling of the others’ life from the other side of the wall. He felt like he’d taken something from him–taken the rhythm of the tip of tongue behind his teeth hissing the z from his mouth.
When Scaramouche returned to the door to his apartment and met the boy once more, his hair standing on end with static electricity as he tugged his knit hat from his head, the name ricocheted in his head once more. The white strands of his hair haloed his head like cresting snowfall, and he looked painfully boyish: His body was swallowed in a thick puffer coat, and the only skin that peaked through were his plump little fingers.
Scaramouche wanted to tug them–poise them like flowers.
Kazuha.
He was taller than Scaramouche then, his feet clad in winter boots, and he peered down the curved slope of his nose at Scaramouche. His eyes were doe-y and lovely and Scaramouche wanted to believe he wasn’t a particular wreck in that moment.
“Hello,” Kazuha spoke quietly.
Scaramouche grunted. Kazuha. It was nearing the end of the week and even he had begun to feel a little worn down, strung out like he’d overdosed on life–like he’d never truly get out of a low again. But Kazuha was looking at him with a shade of red he wasn’t sick of yet and the color of his skin was warmer in the hall lights.
“Back from work?” Kazuha asked.
Scaramouche blinked down at his clothes, the button-up shirt stress wrinkled.
“No, I was actually getting ready for bed,” Scaramouche drawled humorlessly. Kazuha lifted a brow, pale like stardust and winter snowflakes.
Scaramouche thought he’d like the soft curve of light hair to be the center of his universe.
“Peculiar attire,” Kazuha bantered back, but his melodious voice lacked the irony one would’ve normally found there. Instead, he sounded kind, soft and sea nymph-like in the chilly winter hall.
Scaramouche tilted his head, blinking as he watched Kazuha’s little fingers fiddle with his keys. The siren was watching Scaramouche unsurely as he moved to open his door, nervous eyes scampering over his figure like little birds. He got his door open and propped it with a converse-clad foot before turning to address Scaramouche, his hands picking at the yarn in his scarf.
“Do you like hot chocolate?” Kazuha asked.
Scaramouche did not in fact like hot chocolate. Which was why he was taken aback when his mouth poured forth from it a pleading “yes.” But then he got his answer instantaneously when Kazuha’s mouth split into a smile and he pushed his down open further. This siren’s call was truly undeniable, like sinking his body into a vat of oils, slipping easily into relaxation.
“Would you like to come in and have some?” Kazuha asked. Scaramouche thought his head had inflated with adrenaline.
“Yeah, sure,” he drawled. Kazuha's soft smile continued and he held the door open for Scaramouche.
His apartment smelled like cinnamon and peppermint.
-
Kazuha’s small body was warm against his, his pudgy fingers fisted in the fabric of Scaramouche's sweatshirt. He clung to his like a kitten, and the sharp curve of his eyes as he stared up at him made the image stick. Like a domestic animal, sleepy and clingy and filled with the lovely emotions of home.
Maybe Scaramouche wanted to vomit at that thought. Maybe that was okay.
The film continued to play out on the television, flashing light painting their curled forms in sepia. Like they’d been captured in an old photograph, the curvature of their bodies around each other, like they had morphed into gentle hands interlaced for life.
Kazuha nuzzled his nose into Scaramouche’s neck and he wanted to hiss because the appendage was cold. Its chill bit into his skin and Scaramouche was too far gone to care. Snow was muffling the window, snuffing out the noise of traffic just below, and Scaramouche and Kazuha had become encased in a vitrine, cradled by the solitude of a winter’s night. He tugged the blanket tighter around them and turned back to the film.
“Scara,” Kazuha whispered. Scaramouche grunted in response. “What time is it?”
Scaramouche turned his head to glance at the clock mounted on the wall beside them. “It’s twelve twenty-one.”
Kazuha shot up, whipping his head to check for himself. “Already? How’d we miss midnight?”
Scaramouche chuckled dryly. The snowy sheet of Kazuha’s hair was rumpled, peaking over his head in small bumps like snow-capped peaks. A piece hung over his forehead, caught in the willowy, spider-web white lashes coating his amber eyes. Scaramouche reached out and slipped his index and middle finger around it, pushing it back over the crown of his head. Kazuha turned to meet his stare.
“It’s not like it’s New Years,” Scaramouche batted.
“No, it’s not–it’s Christmas day,” Kazuha said plainly, like he thought catching the clock turn was the most important part of the holiday. And perhaps it was, but Scaramouche had never really cared for the season and he didn’t know why he wasn’t asleep already.
“That’s how the hours work, yes.”
“Merry Christmas, Scaramouche,” he whispered. Scaramouche cocked an eyebrow. He watched as Kazuha unwound himself from Scaramouche’s hold, padding across the living room to the opposite side. He crouched by the wall beside the TV, ignoring the film as it played out. Scaramouche went to stand, pressing the palm of his hand into the couch cushion, but Scaramouche looked over his shoulder and grinned. “I’m glad I met you.”
Those freckles were like constellations, marring his starry face with their asteroid glow. Scaramouche wanted to see them closer then, he wanted to trace their paths with the pads of his thumbs. The desire burned low in his stomach, heating it until the blanket felt too warm around his thighs. Those freckles were chocolate shaving; Scaramouche wanted to melt them on the heat of his tongue.
Kazuha turned back around and suddenly that horrid Christmas song was playing soft in the air and Kazuha was swaying his hips. He was Scaramouche’s dilemma walking on two legs, pretty muscles tensing as he flitted with slow steps around the living room.
Scaramouche liked how he looked comfortable, his beige sweater drooping off his shoulder. He spoke before he could register and he gained an odd satisfaction from how his subconscious thought made red heat bloom over Kazuha’s cheeks. Over those sugary, starry freckles.
“You’re beautiful.”
Kazuha stopped dancing. He stood in the center of the living room, staring down at Scaramouche. His chest was heaving, like he’d exerted too much effort into making himself look undeniable, desirous. Scaramouche wanted to press his ear against its rise and fall and listen to the sound of his heart racing alongside its heave.
“You think so?” Kazuha asked.
In the middle of an overplayed Christmas song, the lights of Kazuha’s Christmas tree burning a headache into the back of his forehead, Scaramouche thanked whatever gods there were for Kazuha. He wanted to cherish him, ruin him, hoard him, gorge himself on him. He wanted to feast in his company.
“No,” Scaramouche bit sarcastically, because he liked to ruin the moment. Because he was burning up in this boy. Kazuha grinned, wolfish and childish at once, and fell across Scaramouche’s lap. Like a gift or a mess, he breathed heat into Scaramouche’s simmering gut and filled his chest with air.
Kazuha planted his lips on Scaramouche’s.