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The time was nearing eleven o’clock, Pure Vanilla notes idly, inching closer and closer to when it would be deemed socially acceptable for him to retire to his bedroom. Tick-tick-tick.
It isn’t that he’s not enjoying himself. Hollyberry’s parties were famed for being one of the few that actually were semi-entertaining and not filled with thinly veiled attempts at political alliances. The ballroom is full of joyous laughter and twirling skirts and a vibrant orchestra playing spirited songs that filled every inch of the room, and he’s enjoying it. Really, he is.
It’s funny though, in an ironic way— even amidst the commotion, Pure Vanilla is an apparition, a mere observer, glimpsing into the evening like a film. Detached and distant, close yet untouchable.
It’s not for a lack of effort on his part. He had attempted to get drawn into the sway of the party early into the night, giving the expected greetings and indulging conversations, but somewhere between the sloshing glasses of berry juice and inside jokes that he isn’t privy to, he fades away into the background, drifting into the corner where he has resided for the past three hours.
He admits it is a nice break in the rhythm of past galas, where he wakes up with a sore throat and legs, exhausted by the countless dances and chats.
But at least then, Pure Vanilla thinks, a touch sardonic as he nurses his glass, he hadn’t felt like some vengeful spirit, futilely remaining in the ballroom for the slightest chance that someone would accompany him. For not the first time tonight, he wishes his friends were there.
Dark Cacao had not appeared early in the day when he, White Lily, and Golden Cheese had arrived, so Pure Vanilla does not have high hopes of him swooping in like some sort of noble knight to rescue him from his loneliness. Though the mental image makes him smile a bit, Dark Cacao was growing ever more reclusive these days, hardly straying outside of the citadel walls, save for their occasional gatherings with all five of them. It doesn’t stop him from holding onto that small glimmer of hope that he will show up regardless.
White Lily was never one for social niceties, so she had stayed for the first half-hour, greeting whoever was brave enough—or arrogant enough— to talk to her with a bland smile. She slipped away the second that her quota of interactions was met, and even their years of friendship and what may be construed as begging from Pure Vanilla did nothing to change her mind.
“You’ll have the others with you.”
He frowned. “It’s not the same without you though.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” her cheeks slightly flushed as she rolls her eyes. “I need to check on the progress of my samples, and you and I both know that I dislike these gatherings.”
He had heaved a great, pretend sigh, bemoaning his abandonment, and sent her off with his blessings. He should’ve joined her, honestly. It was always exciting to see what she was working on, though her mouth had stayed firmly sealed on her recent set of experiments.
Hollyberry, being the host, remained constantly moving throughout the sea of guests, ensuring the enjoyment of everyone and keeping spirits high. And wherever she went, Golden Cheese was sure to be close. The pair had made a few checkups on him as they made their rounds across the room.
“Pure Vanilla?!” Hollyberry shouted over the din of drunken cookies. “Why are you still here in this dusty corner?”
He smiles a bit helplessly. “I suppose I’m just not in the mood.” It was true to some degree; he hadn’t had the urge to go out and mingle, though it was admittedly lonesome and boring in his little corner.
Golden Cheese snorts. “You’re getting old, grandpa.”
He gasps, feigning offense, “You should have more respect for your elders, Golde-” She whisks away Hollyberry with a cackle and they get swallowed up once more into the crowd. And there he stayed until the current moment, counting down the seconds until he could leave and forget this party ever happened. Tick-tick-tick.
A gloved hand lands on his shoulder and Pure Vanilla stiffens out of instinct, his cape flaring out as he jerks around.
“Dark Cacao?” His face splits into its first genuine smile that evening, something breathlessly warm and soft settling in his chest. “It’s good to see you.”
Dark Cacao bows his head a bit, “Apologies, Pure Vanilla. I did not intend to frighten you.”
“No need, my friend!” He takes in Dark Cacao’s appearance as his heartbeat settles down from the scare, but it defiantly picks back up immediately after. Dark Cacao is out of his usual outfit, with twinkling, twilight robes swirling around his ankles, and a matching cape, dark like the moonless night save for the constellations embroidered on. He’s still wearing his typical armor on top however, with the Chocoblade strapped to his waist. Pure Vanilla should not find his stubbornness nearly this endearing. He wrenches his eyes from Dark Cacao’s clothing up to his face, which does nothing to calm his disobedient heart. There’s a new scar across his eyebrow, he notes, a bit frantic and desperate. His fists tighten on his staff.
“From Hollyberry I take it?” Pure Vanilla manages to say, “You look—” Terribly handsome like always. Like you did in my dreams. Perfect. Nothing can really encapsulate how much Dark Cacao makes him ache with yearning, something he had thought he had tamped down years ago. Perhaps absence really does make the heart grow fonder, he thinks wryly. “Good,” he finishes.
“You as well.” It’s a conventional, completely common response, but somehow Pure Vanilla’s cheeks grow warm anyways. What an embarrassing, miserable, selfish thing infatuation is, attempting to ruin one of his most beloved friendships for the fruitless pursuit of something completely out of reach.
“I wasn’t expecting you here tonight,” he says in an attempt to distract himself.
Dark Cacao rolls his shoulders, powerful and elegant. Pure Vanilla’s breath stutters a bit. “There was a snowstorm on the way. I thought it best to wait until the worst passed over. I am sorry if I troubled you or Hollyberry.”
“Honestly, no trouble at all for me! I can’t say for Hollyberry though,” he grins, light and teasing. Dark Cacao huffs a bit in response and stares out at the colorful sea of chiffon and silk before him. A familiar silence rests between them, to be expected between Dark Cacao, who preferred fewer words when possible, and Pure Vanilla, who always found it vastly more comforting when his conversation partner did not expect him to talk the entire time.
“I could say the same for you.”
“Hmm?”
Pure Vanilla glances back at Dark Cacao, his gaze still fixed on the crowd.
“I am surprised you are not out there.”
“I wanted to try something different tonight?” he tries. Dark Cacao blinks at him, slow and with a tinge of disbelief.
It’s Pure Vanilla’s turn now to look over at the crowd, Dark Cacao’s heavy stare boring into the side of his head.
“I’m surprised too,” he finally admits. “I’m not sure myself why I wasn’t there. Especially when,” he swallows, the confession seeming a bit too open now, but he can’t take it back. “Especially if I was so…I don’t know, alone.” He can hear Dark Cacao step a bit closer, but he doesn’t dare to look at him.
“You cannot go join them now?”
Pure Vanilla hums, thoughtful and soft. “Oh, I suppose I could. But it’s alright, I’m not lonely anymore,” he smiles, “the company here is quite nice.”
A sharp, barely noticeable inhale of air and Dark Cacao steps even closer, the atmosphere charged with something electrifying.
“You would prefer to spend your time here instead of with the actual party?” he asks, quiet. The with me? goes unspoken, but Pure Vanilla picks it up anyhow.
“I’d prefer your company over most things on Earthbread,” he confesses, a little breathless, horribly obvious affection weaving through despite himself.
“Pure Vanilla.” There’s a soft edge to it, as close to begging as Dark Cacao would ever get.
When Pure Vanilla turns around, a gloved hand is held out to him. His gaze flickers up to Dark Cacao’s face and oh , for once, it’s open with the barest glimpse of starry, glimmering vulnerability seeping out of his cracked facade.
“Dance with me?” Dark Cacao murmurs.
Pure Vanilla’s traitorous heart jumps to his throat and he can’t reign it in before he’s responding, “I would never refuse you.”
Dark Cacao’s eyes crinkle just-so at the corners, the last dredges of a shooting star marking their final resting place there. It’s sickening and awful how it makes Pure Vanilla’s stomach twist as the chandelier lights sway above them.
He places his hand in Dark Cacao’s with a shaky breath and allows his other to rest on his shoulder. Dark Cacao’s left hand settles on his back, frigid, yet searing through the layers of fabric. The orchestra queues up another song, still bright, but with a slightly melancholy undertone. Unconventional for a waltz, but Pure Vanilla finds that he doesn’t particularly care. And slowly, Dark Cacao begins to move, Pure Vanilla following his steps.
This close, he can make out the few streaks of grey beginning to show in his midnight-dark hair, a few strands peppered near his temples, scarcely different from the milky-cream, but this close , the difference is all too obvious. Pure Vanilla had never really imagined they would be able to age, what with the Souljam, but it makes Dark Cacao look so, so handsome. It’s enough, just being in his life, however long it may be. So many wish for forever, but Pure Vanilla thinks he could be equally happy with a temporary, fleeting sort of existence, so long as he had the chance to exist with Dark Cacao.
Pure Vanilla is sorry all the same for burdening him with the unspoken, unsightly weight of his love.
They stay in the corner, hidden behind the ivy-covered pillar, and continue their little back and forth, pushing and pulling.
He gasps a bit when Dark Cacao tugs him forward without warning, almost stumbling over his own feet and knocking his head into Dark Cacao’s chestplate, which would have very likely resulted in a concussion and his subsequent crumbling out of humiliation. Pure Vanilla may be a tad idiotic and lovesick right now, but he can’t deny he has absolutely no clue what Dark Cacao is doing. His footwork is frankly, atrocious and he has no sense of rhythm. Pure Vanilla narrowly misses his foot being stepped on for the fourth time in five minutes. Honestly, he’s starting to suspect—
“Cacao, do you…do you know how to dance?”
He can feel Dark Cacao stiffen under his fingers and his right hand tightening its grip on Pure Vanilla’s hand. Whatever comes next out of Dark Cacao’s mouth will definitely be unpleasant and mortifying for the both of them.
Pure Vanilla decides to save him the trouble and embarrassment. He leans down a bit, lips almost brushing against Dark Cacao’s ear. Pure Vanilla hopes he can’t feel his thrumming pulse where their hands connect, threatening to pound out with the proximity.
“Let me lead?” he whispers.
He pulls back to a safer distance and watches a flash of something shutter over Dark Cacao’s face before he eventually responds with a stiff nod. Pure Vanilla can feel a small smile creeping across his face as they adjust their positions, his hand shifting to Dark Cacao’s back after a moment of hesitation.
“Trust me, alright? Follow my steps.”
He takes a step back and Dark Cacao follows, the two of them eventually settling into a rhythm. Dark Cacao had always been a quick learner; it came with the territory of needing to keep a vigilant eye at all times. It’s something that Pure Vanilla likes about him— so silently observant that he would forget until Dark Cacao would ask him about something he mentioned weeks ago.
The music swells into a trembling crescendo. A step back, right, a step forwards, left, and back again in a box, ebbing and flowing like the tides of the ocean and the moon’s gravitational pull. Dark Cacao would certainly make a fitting moon: celestially pretty, comfortingly constant even when out of sight, and distantly out of reach.
“...I do, by the way,” Dark Cacao says suddenly.
“Pardon?”
Dark Cacao hesitates then, the antithesis of the usual, unrelenting him in the fervor of battle. It makes him seem more real, easier to touch without the fear of cutting himself on his jagged edges. Affection swells inside Pure Vanilla, and he can’t help but feel a little sickened by the tenderness, the longing that fills him. I’m sorry for being so selfish.
“Trust you.” Dark Cacao’s mouth flattens and he glances away.
“Oh,” Pure Vanilla laughs, slipping out and incandescently, brilliantly happy. There’s a sort of weight behind his words, some sort of meaning that Pure Vanilla is sure that he’s missing, but he can’t quite piece it together, some part still eluding him. He finds that he can’t particularly find it in himself to figure it out anyhow, with how exhilarated he feels at Dark Cacao’s confession.
“‘Oh’?” Dark Cacao’s eyebrows furrow and his voice is tinged with derisiveness, but Pure Vanilla can see the amused uptick in the corners of his lips anyways. He’s so awfully, overwhelmingly pretty.
“I- Well- Thank you,” he says, stumbling over his words in a babbling, still idiotically happy rush. “I…I trust you, too.”
“Are you nervous, Pure Vanilla?”
“No.” It’s true somehow. His heartbeat had long slowed, even this close to Dark Cacao. He always made it easy being around him. Perhaps that’s what drew Pure Vanilla to him in the first place—the lack of judgment or scrutiny, in spite of how terribly awkward he was— is , even when he wasn’t pathetically in love.
“Good. That- I am glad,” Dark Cacao murmurs.
The song draws to a close. Pure Vanilla sighs, mournfully etching the memory of how Dark Cacao’s hand fit into his, and begins drawing away.
“Wait.” He pauses and blinks at Dark Cacao.
“…Will you do me the honor of accompanying me for another dance?” At this, Dark Cacao actually does smile, albeit small and fleeting. Faintly, Pure Vanilla wonders if the world is ending, as it certainly feels like it is with the crystalline chandeliers casting a divine light behind them, illuminating Dark Cacao in a delicate, gentle halo. It emphasizes his devastatingly unguarded expression, blooming like a jonquil during the winter solstice. Directed towards Pure Vanilla.
Oh.
Oh.
Pure Vanilla thinks he may understand now.
“Always, Dark Cacao.”
The next song queues up. Dark Cacao takes his hand again and he brushes an ephemeral, reverent kiss to his knuckles before setting it on his shoulder.
“Allow me to lead the next song?”
Pure Vanilla smiles, soft and open— he allows his fondness, his love to wind through his words for once, dripping honey-sweet affection. “Promise not to step on me this time?”
Dark Cacao huffs, a hint of laughter and self-consciousness bleeding through; he’s only this uninhibited in front of Pure Vanilla.
“I would not dare. I…care for you too much for that.” Dark Cacao’s words come out in a staggering, tentative cascade. And Pure Vanilla can’t help his endearment, the seemingly indifferent statement from anyone else in that tone of voice is nothing but unadulterated trust and warmth from Dark Cacao.
Perhaps in the coming morning, Pure Vanilla will regret it all, and perhaps Dark Cacao will take his words back, and perhaps everything will be ruined— but tonight in their hidden corner from the rest of the world, with something nascent and fragile and sweet blooming between them, Pure Vanilla allows himself to indulge in Dark Cacao’s firm, steady grasp and the easy, celestial orbit of their intertwined bodies, slow and unwavering in their own isolated galaxy.
The clock chimes midnight.