Work Text:
When Hokuto turns seven, there is a boy that climbs the tall stone walls surrounding the Hidaka property and says he can capture the stars.
Hokuto doesn’t believe him, because even for a seven-year-old he’s very sensible (Papa and Mama and all his tutors say so, after all, and why would they lie to him?) and knows that one can’t simply capture the stars , of all things, so like a sensible and mature seven-year-old Hokuto plants his hands on his hips and demands the boy show him how.
The boy grins, wide and white, and scrambles down the ivy that stretches from the base of the stone wall all the way up to where it meets the deep blue sky, until he stands in front of Hokuto and opens his eyes and Hokuto can see that they’re a bright, beautiful blue. Not like the sky is now — no, like the sky on the most cloudless of days, so bright that it almost hurts your eyes to look at, pure and unbroken and stretching on forever like a promise of a new frontier and adventure to come.
“My Papa said,” the boy says, and Hokuto likes his voice even more when he’s so close he can hear every part of its timbre, all sweet and high like the bells that chime in the morning to wake up the rest of the city, “that if you make a wish real hard when the stars fall from the sky, one will fall right into your hands while you sleep, and if you keep it safe for long enough then your wish will come true!”
“Your Papa is an idiot,” Hokuto informs the boy.
The boy looks so sad that Hokuto almost takes back his statement, even though he thinks it’s true. “No, he’s not,” the boy says, “Papa’s the best! In the whole wide world! And he’d never lie — he said he wished hard and carried the star around until I was born and that it worked when he tried it, so there!”
Hokuto frowns, because he can’t ask his own father right now to verify if it’s true or not (like a very smart and sensible seven-year-old, he snuck out into the back gardens when he woke up from the same dream that’s haunted him since he was old enough to know what dreams were, and his father is sound asleep and unaware of where Hokuto is), so all he can do is decide for himself if he believes this strange boy. “Maybe,” Hokuto says, because he knows magic is real, and that sounds like something magic could be. “But you can’t really capture the stars. You just make a wish and hope it falls for you.”
This time, it’s the strange boy’s turn to purse his lips and think. “I guess,” the boy says. He holds out a hand, like Hokuto proved himself somehow in his rebuttal of the boy’s stories of wishes and stars, and says, “My name’s Subaru! I live on the other side of that big wall!”
Hokuto shakes his hand, because that’s how you introduce yourself properly, and says, “I’m Hokuto. It’s nice to meet you, Subaru.”
Subaru smiles so wide and bright, eyes so huge in the silver moonlight that Hokuto can almost believe, for a moment, that maybe this boy really was born out of a wish made on a star.
-
It doesn’t take long for Subaru and Hokuto to become friends. Strangely, they never seem to run into one another in the actual circles of nobility that they must clearly both live in, if Subaru’s family is wealthy and prestigious enough to own the plots of land right next to Hokuto’s family, but that doesn’t stop Subaru from climbing over the wall bordering their two estates whenever he gets the whim. Some nights he goes as far as climbing up the walls of the Hidaka manor to sneak into Hokuto’s bedroom; other nights Hokuto is already waiting there in his pajamas and the evening breeze and the dew, sleepless yet again from a dream too strange for him to explain.
One night, when Hokuto is nine and Subaru is almost-ten, Subaru asks Hokuto — “Hokke, do you think you know what love is?”
Hokuto shakes his head ‘no’ before he can really think about it. Love is a grown-up thing, his father always tells him. Hokuto doesn’t know if that’s true, because some of the books he borrows from the library seem to have people only a few years older than Hokuto falling in love, but Hokuto also knows from the way his father looks at his mother and his mother looks at his father that he’s still too young to understand exactly what it is about each other that makes them feel love.
“I think I do,” Subaru says, leaning back in the grass until he’s lying flat on his back, eyes wide and bright as he stares up at the star-filled sky. And that’s all he says, until he gets up and bids Hokuto a cheerful farewell and reminds Hokuto that his birthday is tomorrow, so he better be outside in the gardens when Subaru sneaks over after the party his Papa is throwing him!
-
The next day, Hokuto’s father gets an important piece of mail right before dinner. He comes out of his study with a worried look, talking in hushed tones with Hokuto’s mother. They do this, sometimes, so Hokuto doesn’t think it’s anything he has to worry about.
-
That night, Hokuto waits in the garden for Subaru until he can’t keep his eyes open, and one of the gardeners finds him fast asleep amidst a bed of marigolds.
-
Subaru doesn’t visit Hokuto again. Hokuto turns ten, and then eleven, and then twelve-thirteen-fourteen-fifteen, and then Hokuto turns sixteen and his father sits him down in his grand, musty study filled with dark red curtains that seem to suck all the light out of the room, no matter how sunny it is and no matter how far back the curtains are pulled, and begins to talk to him about betrothal.
“We do quite well for ourselves,” Seiya tells Hokuto, “but there’s a difference in this kingdom between wealth and between prestige and between power. And unfortunately, sometimes marriage is the only way to get some of these things without causing a war. You understand, son, don’t you?”
Hokuto, for some strange reason, is reminded of a boy with the stars in his eyes asking him if he knows what love is.
“Am I getting married soon?” Hokuto asks, because he always has a penchant for asking the most important questions in the least tactful of ways (not that he knows this).
“No, no,” Seiya says between laughs, “not at all. But I’ve been in talks recently with a few of the kingdom’s older families, the ones that could use some of the wealth and land our family has, and the ones that can offer us the prestige we don’t have as much of. Of course, anything that would even be a possibility would go past you first, Hokuto.”
“Of course,” Hokuto repeats, but there is a strange sinking feeling in his stomach that tells him that might not really be the case.
-
There are a few proposals, from a few families. It turns out wealth is more desirable than Hokuto thought, in a city where many of the old regime are being slowly pushed out by families like Hokuto’s. Hokuto goes through them all with a careful eye, looking at pages upon pages of information about each potential suitor, reading letter after letter from hopeful betrothed-to-be.
He falls asleep at his desk. When he wakes up, the moon is high in the sky, and Hokuto doesn’t hesitate before making his way into the back gardens.
Hokuto sits on one of the benches scattered about for all of five minutes before he hears a rustling sound, and then a gasp, and then a familiar voice shouting “Hokke~!” loud enough that it startles a nearby bird out of its rest.
Hokuto turns towards the voice, and the dark figure it’s attached to hastily makes its way down the same thick ivy before sprinting across the grass, tackling Hokuto into a hug that smells like sweat and dew and flowers.
“Subaru—?”
Subaru pulls back just long enough that Hokuto can see him smile, that star-filled grin. “You’re here!”
“This is my house,” Hokuto says, baffled.
“I missed you,” Subaru says. “I would have sent you a letter, except our mail has been getting intercepted ever since my dad was arrested for treason—”
“Your dad was what ?” Hokuto remembers the letter his father received all those years ago, the hushed whispers and concerned looks. Maybe he should have bothered to ask about the important adult business.
“Anyways, how have you been?” Subaru asks.
Hokuto takes a step back (figuratively. Literally, Subaru is practically on top of Hokuto, and he can’t exactly go anywhere. He doesn’t really mind, he finds) and looks at Subaru, really looks. He seems thinner — granted, they were a lot younger the last Hokuto saw of him, but Hokuto knows what the proportions of a healthy sixteen year old boy should be, and Subaru doesn’t meet those. And there are bags underneath Subaru’s eyes, dark enough that Subaru’s effusive cheer can’t get rid of them entirely. He seems — tired, obviously, but like the cheer he used to bring everywhere like it was second nature is a bit different now. Not fake — but more that Subaru has spent too long using it to hide something darker and tired and scared underneath, and its shine has become tarnished.
“I’ve been okay,” Hokuto says instead of pointing out any of that. His tutors have worked hard to instill him with a sense of tact in social situations. “My father has been working hard to get me betrothed.”
“Betrothed?” Subaru seems taken aback, just the tiniest bit.
“For practical purposes,” Hokuto explains, like that will make things better. It doesn’t exactly change the surprised and confused expression on Subaru’s face, so he supposes it doesn’t make anything better.
Subaru’s expression gets pensive. “If that’s what you want,” Subaru says slowly, “then I guess it’s okay.”
“I don’t know,” Hokuto answers honestly. His parents told him he would be lucky to marry for love, like they did, but that in this world it typically isn’t the case. He still isn’t sure if he knows what love is, anyways.
Subaru pauses for a moment. He pulls something out of his pocket, something bright. “I wanted to show you this,” Subaru says.
Hokuto holds out his hand, and Subaru passes whatever-it-is into his outstretched palm. It’s warm — Hokuto can’t help but notice that first, the comforting warmth that seeps into his hand as soon as he curls his fingers around it. It’s a small bit of rock that seems to glow from within, a silvery light that doesn’t seem to waver or flicker no matter how long Hokuto looks at it. “What is it?” Hokuto asks.
“A star,” Subaru tells him, and suddenly Hokuto is seven again, telling Subaru that it’s impossible to capture a star.
“What did you wish for?” Hokuto asks, voice quieter, just above a whisper. He doesn’t doubt now, holding the fragments of a star in his palm, whether or not Subaru’s father was right.
“A lot of things,” Subaru answers, so truthfully that Hokuto can tell he’s almost embarrassed about it. “I don’t know which one the stars wanted to come true, though.”
Hokuto turns the star around in his palm. It whispers to him, so he holds it up to his ear.
The voices of the star sound like silver-thin threads, like how the sea looks on a quiet morning with mist stretching all the way from the still-grey sky down to the hushing waves. There is magic in the star, Hokuto is sure.
Before Hokuto can do anything more, the star fragment twinkles and chimes, the warmth in Hokuto’s hand rising and rising until it’s almost unbearable. He pulls his hand away from his head, stretching it out towards the sky, squinting as the light grows brighter and brighter.
There’s a sharp cracking noise, like what Hokuto imagines lightning would sound like if it wasn’t attached to the drumbeats of thunder, and the light and the warmth both disappear.
When Hokuto opens his eyes, it’s to the startled face of Subaru staring back at him. Subaru practically pounces on Hokuto before he can get a word out, examining Hokuto’s hand (which is blissfully and mercifully unharmed) before tugging at Hokuto’s face and staring deep into Hokuto’s eyes.
“Stars…” Subaru whispers breathlessly, gaze undeniably fixed on Hokuto’s. “There’s stars in your eyes, Hokke…”
Hokuto doesn’t feel much different. Except maybe he does — there’s a heat thrumming just beneath his skin. He remembers being seven, and he remembers being nine, and he remembers years spent waiting for Subaru to crawl back over the wall to the gardens. He remembers a longing so thick it nearly chokes him, a patience as steady as the ivy crawling further and further up the garden wall. He remembers tales of the stars and the magic held inside, and now there are stars in Hokuto’s eyes and under his skin and dancing along the strands of his hair and living inside of him.
“I think I’ve known what love is all along,” Hokuto tells Subaru, and the realization feels like the first deep breath taken after diving in a lake.
He kisses Subaru before Subaru can get a word out in response. Subaru tastes exactly like how Hokuto has always thought he would — warm, and sweet, and a little like the stars.
Subaru stares at him with something like awe in his eyes when Hokuto pulls away. “I think that answers my question about what wish the stars wanted for me,” Subaru says unsteadily, like he isn’t quite sure everything around him is real.
Hokuto smiles. “I think I’m going to tell my father to not bother with a betrothal,” Hokuto says, and the grin that Subaru gives him, ear-to-ear and white as the moon, is worth every earful he’s going to get from his father in the morning.