Work Text:
Shu’s arm is shaking.
The theater erupts with applause, claps and cheers echoing against each other in the wide space. Crowds of cyalumes wave passionately in the audience, shining in greens and pinks and reds, and Shu’s arm is still shaking.
This never happened before.
A dance instructor from his youth once told him what a beauty it is to behold the ballet; a dance so intense in its passion but so soft in its grace that its audience would go utterly silent in awe. The ballet dancer performs with elegance, but they also dance with everything they have. It is a labor of love, to pour one’s soul so deeply into an art.
Shu has never experienced that vulnerability in his dances, not once. He seeks art, and grace, and majesty, but in his journey to reach those things he gravitated towards the magnificence and away from the vehemence, the fervor, the life.
But now, his arm trembles from where it beholds Mika’s figure. It takes everything to keep his chest from heaving in exertion. His legs wobble under his weight beneath the fabrics of his outfit. His hair, short as it is, sticks to his skin, and the long sleeves of their clothes feel uncomfortably warm.
Shu is as far from perfection as he has ever been.
And yet—and yet.
Mika watches him with such raw affection, his eyes bright with something that might be tears, and never before has Shu felt so unworthy to perform with someone so beautiful.
As the curtains draw closed on the stage, the rich velvet muting the cheering crowd outside, Mika’s knees buckle and he crumples.
“Mi—Kagehira!” Shu drops his arm and tries to catch his partner before he falls, but as he takes a step forward his own limbs threaten to give way beneath him. He stumbles in his efforts to catch himself.
“Ahaha… sorry, oshi-san,” Mika says from the floor, a mess of white ruffles and flowing beads around him. He reaches up to push his sweat-sticky hair out of his face, only to wince as the strands catch on his rings.
Shu huffs, but the sound softens around the edges, warm with an unfamiliar affection. “What am I to do with you,” he mutters.
Mika laughs, bubbly and tired. Shu kneels in front of Mika, carefully adjusting his own clothes so as to prevent wrinkles, and takes Mika’s hand in one of his own so he can carefully untangle the dark strands with his other.
“What have I told you about unit outfits? We must change out of them before anything else, lest we damage them in some form,” Shu reminds Mika as he unwinds the other’s hair strands.
Mika brings his hand up to Shu’s wrist, swiping his thumb across the silky fabric. The gesture feels so utterly gentle that it unfurls— something in Shu’s chest. “Mm,” Mika hums. “‘M sorry. I won’ do it again, promise.”
Shu untangles the last of Mika’s hair, bringing the freed arm down so he can press a soft kiss to the ring around Mika’s finger. Fake tourmaline sparkles in the band, winking at the spotlights above. “I shall hold you to it,” he vows, shifting Mika’s hand so he can kiss his knuckles as well.
Mika looks a mess, his fringe turning frizzy and cheeks awash with pink. “Uh—this isn’t… like you, oshi-san.” He stumbles over the words, clearly flustered.
No, it isn’t, Shu agrees. He knows himself better than others would like to think. Distant to some, snappish to others, callous even to those he treasures; these are the parts of himself he shares, because hate is safe. Love simply hurts, and hurts, and hurts.
Gods do not feel. They rule their domains with an iron fist and no worldly attachments, embracing their wondrous divinity with open arms. Arts created by such sacred hands bear no emotion, and thus bear no flaw. Disconnected and cruel but lovely all the same.
Oh, how lonely that had been, Shu muses.
Shu releases Mika’s hand and reaches towards the rose lapel fastened over his chest, tracing the gold borders with his fingers. Just underneath that, Mika’s heart beats steadily, a burst of vitality that makes Shu want to pull him into his arms and hold him close forever.
“My words were no lie, Kagehira,” Shu says.
Mika suddenly grips his outstretched arm like a vice, his fingers digging into the fabric. Those lovely, lovely eyes of his glimmer with what must be gold and stardust, for what else could describe the shower of sparkles twinkling there?
Shu closes his eyes and breathes as—as everything leaves him. The tension, the exhaustion, the hurt, the fear, the anger, all of it.
He does not want to be one of the divine. Not anymore.
His eyelids flutter open and he meets Mika in all of his honesty. “You have grown into one of the loveliest humans I have come across on this earth, Mika. You have been, always will be—you’ve become everything. You are my family, you—”
“Oshi-san,” Mika rushes out, his voice shaky with emotion.
It is a strange thing, to force the words out of the well of his heart like this. They are vulnerabilities he never wanted and still does not wish to share. But this is Mika, who guided him through the mess he was at seventeen, trusted him when he made France his next step at graduation, and fights to stay with him even now.
This is Mika. This is everything.
“You are my partner,” Shu asserts, holding fast as Mika starts to tremble underneath his palm. “Let us continue this journey together, as Valkyrie. As humans.”
Mika’s breath hitches. He loosens his grasp around Shu’s forearm to leap forward on his heels and crush Shu in a trembling embrace, tucking his face into the other’s collar. Shu wraps his arms around him and forces back the warmth blooming behind his eyes.
The ballet is a dance of both enchantment and spirit. An ode to humanity and all the love that comes with it.
Shu tucks a kiss into Mika’s crown, a tender thing.
May we continue this song of love as we step into the throes of the world beyond.