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The most notable thing Natsume had honed in on all night is the fact the air shimmered with music. Couples whirl and entwine with complete disregard for class or commonality. Those not of the reverie wield trays of dainty glasses, each one full to the brim with champagne; tangy bubbly liquid having everyone wrapped around its spell.
He scowls under his masquerade. The floor under his boots is sticky.
Natsume is no stranger to this kind of depravity, especially that with the attendance of the rich - he’s attended many birthday parties of the nobility over the years, after all; but even as long as he could remember under his belt had left him ill-prepared for the drunken revelry of this occasion. A crowning moment of the Prince on the eve of his twenty-first, being treated like the last day of his rather stuffy and wonderfully boring - in Natsume’s absolutely correct opinion - life.
Speaking of such, of this banal, irrelevant existence: across the ballroom, Hokuto Hidaka is a vision of celestial radiance.
Today, his silky black hair comes in shades of midnight, pinned to the sides of his skull with a sumptuous, silver diadem - belonging to his mother, or something or other like that. He wears a tunic light enough to be made of air, plunging low beneath his neckline. It clings to him as water, as does his cloak that hugs his shoulders, a glittering second skin to adorn his frame, yet firm enough to give him form. His leggings and boots do wonders to accentuate his legs, yet not take away from the apparent simplicity.
Ice-bright gemstones refract light from where they decorate his earlobes, his fingers, and his lovely neck. He is, perhaps, the sparkliest person in attendance tonight - an apparent adopter of the new phrase ‘more is more’ when it comes to jewellery, even if it is likely not of his own choice.
The fineries are all a waste, however, as the silvers of Hokuto’s own bare flesh on his shoulder is more elegant than any embellished cuff could ever aspire to be.
He holds court and his pride amidst the myriad limbs of partygoers.
Natsume watches as Hokuto passes from the arms of one guest to another, not as much an object to be coveted as he is a refined wildfire raging through the kindling of his partners’ bodies. With each new partner discarded, Hokuto appears to grow only more quietly exuberant, his pique for competition growing.
His expression scarcely changes, yet his cheeks are flushed and his chest heaves every so often with exertion.
Natsume’s throat feels dry witnessing him.
He tears through the crowd that beckons to share a dance with him, blurring them and the music alike from sight and mind. He twirls like the vivid moon casting aside the pallid night of chaos and drink; despite the activity and the wear, something seems to be across his features as if he’s at ease, or he has a terrifyingly convincing front of being such.
Natsume does not dance. He is as starchy as the collar of his own elegant adornments in red and black and his matching masquerade. His hands are pressed to his sides and his back is firmly against the wall.
Wataru, who brought him here to supposedly ‘fulfil the need in a script’ - is nowhere to be found, as always. There’s little solace to be found that the lack of his presence means nobody can point out Natsume’s line of sight and darkened cheeks. The decency ends there, as being dragged here in the first place wasn’t Natsume’s idea of a night. The man leaves himself entirely elusive, yet miraculously showering Natsume in rosy petals when Hokuto turns every so often in his direction.
There’s a lull in the music.
The panting dancers scurry in all directions, hoping to touch up their coiffures or to catch the waiters with their clinking champagne trays. Those surrounding the Prince make off to the safety of the wings, some reluctant as if pulling magnets off themselves, and others taking the bustle to brush against him much to his ignorance and slight bother.
And for a moment, he is left alone at the centre of the ballroom.
He is suspended by light; no more akin to light itself - a twinkling chandelier cast aglow in shades of delicate gold and blue. A strand of his hair sticks with sweat to his forehead.
The sight feels unreal, even if in the audience of the masses to attest to reality. Natsume sighs, before pursing his lips in frustration at the accursed and involuntary swoon - which he’d hate to call it that - that wedged itself out of his throat
He has no time to scold himself, regardless. Because in the next heartbeat, he makes eye contact with Hokuto from across the ballroom.
It’s difficult to say, with accuracy, whether or not the Prince’s face lights up when their gazes meet. He’s already keyed up from the sparks of dance, yet his usual expression of happiness is barely readable. It would be more accurate to say, perhaps, that his expression becomes focused - whatever Hokuto’s display of happiness happens to be is transformed from abstract to concrete in the stretch of a single second.
His face becomes sharp, warlike. He descends on Natsume like a hawk.
When he’s close enough to touch, Natsume ends up speaking first, “Good morniNG, Hokke.”
“Your Highness, to you. It’s also night.” Hokuto corrects without hesitation or a hint of humour. He has always been too much brevity, not enough wit. Yet, despite Hokuto’s insistence on formality he makes no real charge to force him.
At least as far as Natsume is concerned.
He continues on: “Have you just been hiding here, Sakasaki? Even I know what fun is. Have you tried it?”
“I hadn’t guessed you’d knOW. I’ve had a perfectly pleasant eveniNG, until noW. Thank you for your concERN.”
“Don’t give me that.” Hokuto waves one of his elegant hands. “You hate these things. You’ll just never turn the invitation down, a bit odd. Why don’t you, by the way?”
“Why don’t I do whAT, Hokke?”
He is near enough now that Natsume can hear him clearly when he clarifies: “Turn me down.” It is a matter-of-fact and a demand at once.
He finds he’s struck by it, no reason or rhyme to what he says. Natsume is biting his tongue and he hesitates to respond for just a moment too long.
The silence gives him away completely.
Hokuto amends it.
“Dance with me.” His expression can’t be called a smile, but it is as pointed as a rapier's blade.
“Just once, and I won’t ask you again.”
“And if I turn you doWN? You offer me nothING.”
Hokuto laughs. It’s not unkind or unbelieving; it’s the laugh of discovery, of a person who’s never been denied before for such a thing, and he’d love to know how it would feel. The laughter of the kind of person who thrives off the sensation of rejection to improve.
Natsume doesn’t gain any ground here, he can’t gain any ground here.
“You really would, wouldn’t you?”
It takes two swift movements for Hokuto to grasp Natsume’s hand, and the magician doesn't focus on either, engulfed by the intense sea before him. “But you still haven’t given me an answer. Yes, or no?”
And Natsume, though un-indulgent, cannot honestly claim to be unwilling.
Just this once, he lets himself be conquered. In trying to recover his grace after being stunned into silence twice, he siply utters, “Make it worth my while thEN, Your Highness.”
Without further delay, he steers them through the night and onto the dance floor.
The musicians anticipate their arrival, instruments raised like offhand weapons.
And in another act of war he doesn’t seem to notice, the Prince slides his arm rakishly about Natsume’s waist.
The magician is acutely aware of other couples falling into place around them, following their lead, but the majority of his brain has become preoccupied with the weight of Hokuto's hand at the small of his back. He can’t remember the last time he had stood so close to another person, barring a few times but let alone been so completely held by them. It’s all he can do to stop himself from shivering as he keeps up his farce that they are on the same page.
“Don’t worry, Sakasaki.” He says obligingly. “I’ll take the lead.”
Of that, Natsume had no doubt.
There is a beat of silence - the calm before an atmospheric storm, the fervent gleam about Hokuto’s ocean-hued stare, even if it never changed his expression - before the ballroom explodes in music.
The Prince pulls him closer. They begin to move.
Natsume cannot bear the thought of continuing eye-contact, now far closer to intense scrutiny with no means to escape; so he lets his stare explore. He thinks if he was a commoner in this scenario. Would he be bewitched by the sight of the protruding clavicle in his line of sight? – No, any commoner would be too swept off their feet in a fairytale to focus on such small details.
He thinks if he was an executioner instead, he might imagine the feel of that elegant bone, so tantalising before his eyes, barely contained under the luminous skin of the Prince’s shoulders. As an executioner he might indulge in the fantasy of how Hokuto’s skin could be made to bloom into bouquets of cardinal blossoms; to separate his pretty neck from shoulders.
His thoughts of morbidity to distract from their proximity are interrupted when Hokuto jolts him with a sudden offbeat back into reality. “Are you thinking something strange?” He speaks over the cacophony of the party.
“I wouldn’t dream of iT.”
Such thoughts remain irrelevant, in any case, because dancing like this requires shockingly little effort for the most part.
Natsume knows the steps, of course - been coming to all sorts of parties since he was seven years old, primed up in braids and frilly dresses. As the centre of attention, he had never missed a beat and never failed to charm.
What’s surprising here is the way Hokuto lets him forget those steps. Hands clasped together, hips pressed in promenade, the two of them burn circles into the marble floors.
The hand on his back is too low, technically, but he would be remiss to correct the Prince at his own game of waltz.
Hokuto isn’t clever enough to have this laid as bait, but a biting thought at the back of his mind supplies him as he’ll surely take it as an invitation for a contest if he mentions it.
Instead, he concentrates on his own offhand placement, and tries not to fixate on the feeling of being embraced.
It doesn’t work.
The trouble with Hokuto Hidaka is that he is an outlier. By all accounts, all notions of precedence to this act of noble prince. He should be lesser, upholding predictable traits of foolishness to the point of bravery and being idiotic enough to pass for determined. He should be like other royalty before him, to fade into the foreground as a nameless, pretty face. There’s no equation based in Natsume's reality that accounts for his unique charm, when there shouldn’t be anything special about him at all. He shouldn’t even be in this position, shouldn’t be close with Natsume’s existence as an unparalleled prodigy, destined for wicked magic.
And yet -
And yet, Natsume can feel Hokuto in his own hands. He is real, not shot out of a book or prophecy. As real as any person made from flesh and bone can hope to be.
Real. Resplendent. Ice cold and as fierce as wildfire all at once.
It’s all enough to make Natsume’s chest feel hot, as if being around such an improbability has sparked him alight too.
Almost unwittingly, and just as soon as it began, the song comes to an end.
The other couples dissolve into polite applause as the musicians incline themselves to cursory bows.
But Natsume is transfixed, he can’t recall the way to leave.
The moment drags on, even as the crowd disperses around them.
“I am sworn to my word, Sakasaki,” Hokuto says solemnly, a response to something Natsume hadn’t said. “Just once, and I won’t ask again.”
A polite platitude that would have followed automatically is interrupted.
“And if I ask you?”
“Pardon?”
His face burns. Hokuto can - very occasionally - catch the slightest things he says sometimes, and smash them with the subtly of a sledgehammer.
Howeve, he couldn’t catch that which was spat out in front of him.
There truly is no correct protocol for instigating … entanglements with royalty. Being in proximity to him must have had stupidity rub off on him, but he had rarely ever had the opportunity to be truly brave.
“What if I ask yOU?”
Hokuto colours splendidly, a faint blush across his cheeks. He is more than beautiful, then - he’s absolutely divine.
“You wouldn’t,” He reproaches, though not unkindly.
Natsume wants to protest, but he finds that he can’t do so in good conscience. He was unsure when he ever cared about such a thing, or when Hokuto had arrogantly presumed to know him well enough to know that he would never ask.
Yet, he can't say he's wrong. It’s grating to feel so known, even more horrifically at that by someone he wants to write off as clueless. The sensation feels like a woollen funeral shroud, or a shoe too tight in the toes. Natsume’s instinct is to kick it off, to uncover his face and fight through asphyxiation and then to finally run away.
It makes him feel silly, somehow, and unreasonably young.
Eventually, the moment passes them by.
The musicians pick up a much jauntier melody - quick, jovial, and entirely unsuitable for paired dancing. Where before Hokuto and Natsume might have been the centre of attention, now the party swirls around them indifferently. Like algae in shallow salt, they drift with the tides.
Natsume didn’t mean for it to be this way, and yet here they already are.
“I’m tired. This is enough for me tonight.” He speaks up, as concise as a knife. He does sound somewhat worn, “Would you see me to my room? There’s nothing good about walking alone.”
It’s a dare. The magician knows it’s a dare.
After all this time, Hokuto is still waiting for Natsume to turn him down.
But Natsume is nothing if not consistent, and the two of them have been playing this game for far too long. “Of courSE, Your Highness. ” Scathingly rolls off the tongue, and chivalrously offers the Prince his arm to save his fallen dignity, getting as much as an eye roll at the display.
They head out the way they came: together.
Just his luck, Natsume catches Wataru’s eyes before he and the Prince are safely ensconced from the ballroom. It’s for the best that he knows Natsume isn’t in any imminent danger, and that he knows Wataru is still present at the party. However, the way that enigma raises his champagne glass and sips from it significantly, Natsume is momentarily prepared to forget both facts.
At some point, he realises Hokuto is escorting him, rather than the other way around. He wonders how long it’s been since he stopped blushing.
Again, it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Once the grand, wooden doors are shut behind them, a heavy silence descends upon the pair.
The Prince seems almost disbelieving of his coup, in this scenario, like the cat who catches the mouse and acts confused once it stops squirming - or the cat who’s never been the cat. He keeps glancing at Natsume, characteristically quiet, as if unsure whether to eat him or to let him go; it seems like it's the most thought he’s put into anything before.
Natsume concentrates on the thrumming of their footsteps on the marble. Away from the glitz and glamour of the other partygoers, Hokuto is discordant in his finery; entirely out of context. Natsume feels the dissonance, and removes his own masquerade he had for the night covering his eyes, situating his mask on his belt.
Thankfully, the Prince’s bedroom is quickly approaching.
Natsume says, “GoodnigHT, Hokke.” At the same time that Hokuto starts, “Did you mean i–”
He pauses, bemused. Hokuto does look less pristine in the slight hallway lights, his makeup smudged and his hair pulling away in delicate wisps from his skull and diadem. With sweat-dried skin and wrinkled adornments from a night of dancing, he’s not so otherworldly as before. Rather than this being a deterrent, however, Natsume finds that it’s all incredibly endearing.
He motions for him to continue.
“...Did you mean it? You have a habit of pulling my leg.”
“Mean whAT?”
“That you’d ask me to dance.”
“It might not have beEN, it might haVE. Would it change your answER?”
“I accept, regardless.”
Natsume can only stare at him, entirely perplexed at such behaviour, until remembering how terribly earnest Hokuto is.
Without a second thought or denial, he finds his hands captured once more; he doesn’t even recall nodding - or his next words:
"ThEN, I’ll take the leAD. On my couNT," His words signal his agreement.
One step forward, one step back. They’ve defaulted into a quickstep.
It's undeniably odd from an outsider's perspective: two people asynchronously dancing without music, arms as far as they can stretch them out like they're acquaintances forced to pair up for a demonstration.
“What was with your change of heart to ask me?”
The rhythm shifts from quickstep to a waltz.
“It was time to try something new with our song and daNCE, nothing mORE.”
“To say I ‘offer you nothing’ to deciding that it was ‘new’.I can never understand you.”
Natsume’s boots almost scuff Hokuto’s.
“We’ll keep it that wAY.”
“It’s not like I have a choice.”
Hokuto swiftly takes control and pivots, he spins Natsume and he abides to balance on the tip of his shoe, stretching his arm to keep their hands linked.
“But, tonight, I think I’ve realised something.”
“Pray teLL? What could you have possibly realisED?” He drawls with sarcasm. They return to their positions, and there’s another one-two-three step of their movements. Natsume resumes his role as leader in the dance, hand firm on Hokuto’s back.
"That you've seen me. And I see you as well, as much as you try to hide yourself."
“Do you noW? The eyes are prone to lyiNG.”
Natsume tightens his grip with that statement despite his overtly clammy palms. They stay swaying in this position.
“If that’s true, let it prove itself.”
For someone to be read as open as any script - Hokuto has yet again surprised him.
He tilts on the heels of his boots, leans backwards and drops, as it was never about dancing truly.
"You idiOT!" He outstretches his arms and instantly his head is hovering mere inches from the floor. Hokuto feels hands tremble on the nape of his neck, on the small of his back, and molten eyes - unusually worried, horribly guilty - bear onto him. He feels a bit shaken; how strangely stable Natsume’s presence is, despite the shake of his arms, even with a fall so telegraphed. “You could have hurt yourseLF, you utter morON!" He admonishes.
“Then I’d get to see the broken insides of your empty skull on the flOOR!”
Hokuto is content with his sincerity.
He allows it to reverberate in his mind, and keeps it locked away.
“I just wanted to make sure I was right.”
One hand behind his neck, a hand on his shoulder, and he slowly guides him, rises both of them upright again, separated just enough so as to avoid his hammering heartbeat over Natsume’s. The shock in his face dissolves into a furious wonder, his mouth agape.
“Never pull a stunt like that agaIN. I won’t be there to catch yOU, and I’ll laugh at you with a broken hEAD. I hope you know thAT.” His threat causes Hokuto to obscure his jaw with his hand, beckoning a soft, stray laugh, all navy-blue shadows and moonlight highlights.
Natsume turns on his heel to leave with gritted teeth, unable to deal with the troublesome sight that stutters his heart anymore than he has.
However, he is promptly caught by the wrist, the small utterance of a ‘Wait.’ and he is spun once more, which he allows, as if they were to begin dancing again.
His right hand makes his way onto Natsume’s cheek and lips are pressed to his own.
It is soft, hot and dry. He smells like cardinal flowers, and he feels like fire and blood all at once.
It lasts but an instant, but feels like a lifetime. Natsume feels time slow, every second tingling on his lips.
He doesn’t realise his eyes are closed until he opens them to find Hokuto, looking beautiful - though he has never not looked beautiful - and far more mournful than Natsume feels to have just received his very first kiss.
He pulls away, fast enough that Natsume never gets the chance to turn him down. As he turns toward the bedroom door, he meets Natsume’s eyes for the last time with the kind of stare that’s confident on anyone else, but seems shy on him.
“I don’t know what came over me.” He breaks the endless time between them, palm on the door as he shuts this chapter closed to break the spell.
“I’m sorry, I just couldn’t risk it.”
Natsume forgets to reply, finally greeted by the closed door as the enchantment between them dissipates; worlds apart.
He feels the lonesome night weigh on him.
In any case, he knows how that feels.