Archive of Our Own

しろふげん：Breathing Water (A xxxHolic/J-Rock crossover)
Pairing: Hiroto/Iv ; Tora/Saga; Shou/Uruha
Bands: Alice Nine, ViViD, The Gazette
Rating: Gen
Beta Reader: hunt4me thank you for taking the patience with this series! (As always, all remaining mistakes are mine)
Summary:
All important things are supposed to hurt. Hiroto knows this more than anybody
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything including the story idea. I also don’t own xxxHolic. That’s all CLAMP’s.

Title is read as ‘shirofugen’.

Hiroto’s day that morning started in quite the usual fashion, with his phone beeping insistently. He reached out to the bedside table and peered at the display: 7.30. He’s got a class in half an hour, plenty of time to sleep some—

The little envelop icon at the top corner piqued his interest. Somebody must’ve mailed him really late last night after he’d gone to bed. When he slid it open and saw the sender’s name, though, he couldn’t help sitting up straight.

Hey Hiroto, said the mail. We’ve heard your demo. Me and the guys think you should definitely audition for us. You better kill it. And then in the end Hiroto the name of the band’s leader, Tatsurou.

Karasu wanted him to audition for them! Hiroto couldn’t help the smile on his face. He’s got a good feeling about this one. He believed this one could actually be it.

Dreaming of being a professional musician always sounded juvenile, even when he’s not saying it out loud. His parents certainly thought so. Even at his part-time job, the starving artists and the wannabe actors that made up most of his co-workers would look on in pity when he said ‘yeah, what I really wanna do is play music for a living.’

Hiroto is aware of this, and he’s okay with that. Because it is extremely hard to make it big out there, he knows this because he’s been in one too many bands that had little to no chance of making it. It’s supposed to be hard, he thought. All important things are.

When Hiroto arrived at the shop later that day, a young woman was just about to step out of the door. She was wearing the biggest smile Hiroto ever saw on a human face while constantly looking at the hand mirror in her hand. Tora was standing on the raised corridor floor waving at her with a blank face. ‘Thank you for your patronage,’ he said in a monotone. The woman wasn’t listening to him though, she even almost ran straight into Hiroto if the boy hadn’t side-stepped immediately at the last second.

‘What was that about?’`

‘You don’t wanna know,’ Tora answered, still with a straight face, as he motioned at Hiroto to enter. Hiroto leaned his guitar case against the wall as he took off his shoes before slinging it over his shoulder again. Tora stared at the case.

‘You play?’

‘Yeah.’ His eyes brightened at that. ‘You?’

‘A little. I’m not good at it or anything.’

‘Oh, I’ve been playing since junior high.’

‘You must be good then.’

‘Well, maybe kind of. I’m still nowhere near as good as I want to be though. There’s this band—’ but Tora never knew what was up with said band because they’ve arrived at the sunroom while the boy was mid-sentence, and as soon as he saw the twins there his face brightened even more. ‘Hey Iv, here’s the other guitar I’ve been telling you about yesterday!’ he waved.

Tora watched him carefully extract the guitar from its case and started strumming it in front of an enraptured-looking Iv.

The melody he played sounded a bit mellow, a contrast to what Tora had perceived his personality to be, although from where he stood he could only hear snippets of Hiroto’s voice as he hummed his song to Iv’s ear.

Ko-ki slithered to his side after a little while and said, ‘Play with me, Tora-chan?’

‘Actually, I’m about to make dinner, so I can’t. Sorry, kid,’

‘Then I’ll help,’ Ko-ki said with conviction. Tora raised an eyebrow.

‘Don’t you want to stay here with Iv?’

Ko-ki glanced at the two figures still sitting in the corner of the room; Hiroto doubling over his guitar and Iv leaning as close as he physically can, listening in rapture to the song the boy was playing.

‘They’ll be doing that forever. They did that yesterday too.’ He shrugged.

‘Did they?’

‘Uh-huh. And the day before that. And the day before that too.’ Ko-ki was clearly developing a pout now. ‘I was so bored yesterday and they ignored me Tora-chan~!’ he whined.

Tora patted his head. ‘Okay, fine, you can help me in the kitchen.’ He got a radiant smile from the guardian fay at that.

Hiroto wasn’t really paying attention when his fingers brought him chord after chord into that song that he always seemed to unconsciously be drawn to play. Forget about how he can’t even sing half the lyrics without choking up.

And that’s what he did right then. He had to fake a cough to mask how his voice had started trembling slightly.

How pathetic.

Hiroto doesn’t like looking—or even feeling—pathetic. Especially not in front of people he wanted to impress. He braved a glance at Iv’s face, but the fay was still looking at him with the same expression. Gauging whether or not a non-human was unimpressed by him was not something Hiroto’s good at.

Iv raised his hand and Hiroto stared, spellbound, as the fay touched a corner of Hiroto’s eyes with his fingertips. There’s bit of moisture there as Iv pulled his hand back, tears Hiroto didn’t realize already pooling at his lashes.

Iv placed the finger against his mouth and a pink tongue darted out to lick the moisture away. Hiroto found himself staring.

‘These are tears, right?’ he asked. ‘Are you sad? Uruha always tasted this salty when he was sad.’

Hiroto rubbed at his eyes. ‘Nah. Just- that was a song I wrote for somebody who’s far away now. It’s a bit hard to play that.’ He tried smiling at Iv’s puzzled face. ‘Sorry about that, yeah? I bet I’m just confusing you.’

Iv still looked vaguely worried, so Hiroto ruffled his hair and tried to change the mood. ‘Listen, Iv. You remember the band that I told you about that’s looking for a guitarist? They’ve they listened to my demo tape and said I could go audition for them tomorrow. Isn’t that great? I just hope I can play well for them.’

Iv sat up straighter at that, looking mildly affronted. ‘But Hiroto always plays well!’ he stressed.

Hiroto laughed at that. ‘I’m glad you think so.’

The laughter died in his throat as Iv leaned closer and gave him a soft peck on the lips.

‘A kiss for good luck.’ The fay smiled.

Hiroto blinked.

‘Uh. Okay.’ He scratched his head.

‘Yeah. Wow. This is such a bad idea.’ Was what he mumbled to himself as he leaned forward and captured Iv’s lips, sneaking his tongue passed soft lips that parted in surprise.

A lot of kisses for a whole lot of good luck.

Shou instantly felt the glitch in the shop’s barrier as clear as the lightning in the sky. He didn’t feel anything threatening the shop from the outside, but the dimension bended slightly nonetheless. A vase beside him burst into little colorful pieces that suspended in mid-air.

He reached within his bond with the shop and found the guardians. Ko-ki seemed stable enough, his mind curious as to what’s happening and Shou mentally calmed him. As for Iv…

Iv seemed to be just slightly out of reach for him. He knew he’s right there, he could feel his presence, and yet something seemed to be obscuring him. Like a fog. Something that felt too much like…

Lust.

Shou frowned. Where did that came from?

Something that sounded like a gasp floated into the forefront of his mind. And another object in Shou’s vicinity shattered into pieces. The dimension bended even slightly further.

Something clicked into place inside Hiroto’s chest. The eyes with the dilated pupils looking up into his felt like an entrance beckoning him into a place where he could lose himself. Their breaths suffused with each other’s, like they’re both drowning in this.

Drowning didn’t sound like a good idea, but he’s still filled with so much want. So much that his chest hurt.

He could feel something pulling him by his guts. He had to close his eyes from the pain of something lodging at his windpipe. He felt disoriented as his surrounding seemed to spin around him.

When he opened his eyes again he was outside of the shop, its red gates looking imposing in front of him.

Beyond said gates, Shou stood at the front yard, bowing slightly.

‘Welcome, customer. Come in, there must be something you want in here.’

When he stepped back into the shop something felt different. The air was clouded by serpentine smokes sliding through the corridors. It smelled spicy like the incense Shou would sometimes burn and something else, sweeter, more enticing to smell. He tried smelling it out, but couldn’t figure out what it was.

Soft sounds of a song were permeating the air along with the intriguing scent, its tinkling notes echoing along the hall, giving a sense of serenity.

A shamisen?

His puzzlement must’ve shown on his face, because Tora who had walked beside him said ‘it’s the shamisen, Uruha’s drug of choice,’

Uruha??

He’d only ever heard snippets of talks here and there about Uruha, the elusive owner of the shop. Tora himself knew very little of the wizard and Shou rarely talked about him –if at all.

‘Ah yes. We’ve talked of your situation, Uruha and I, especially concerning Iv.’ Shou was still smiling, but the glance he sent Hiroto felt sharper. ‘And considering the recent…development, we thought it might be best to discuss everything in the open. Uruha agreed to when I told him about it.’

What? When??

He tried remembering what happened, but he could be sure that it had only been a few minutes ago that he was transported outside of the shop. When did Uruha eve—

‘It’s dimension wizardry, don’t even bother trying to figure it out,’ Tora deadpanned. And looking at Shou’s frighteningly neutral smile, the heady scent in the air and Uruha’s permeating music, Hiroto realized that it might be for the best after all

Shou knew what a nerve-wrecking thing it can be, to meet real dimension wizards like Uruha. Hiroto, sitting in a seiza position in front of the wizard certainly looked like he was more than a bit unnerved. Uruha isn’t like other elemental artist: he never needed mediums to connect with anything he wishes to, and especially not when he’s inside the shop.

So it was only with a little tilt of his head that he took a look at Hiroto’s face and Shou knew he’d Seen everything.

‘So,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I know what you Want, and how much you should pay for it.’

Unwittingly, the hairs on the back of Shou’s neck stood up. It sounded too much like déjà vu.

The difference this time around, is the fact that this boy in front of them is as human as they can get. His veins flushed with healthy blood that didn’t even attract spiritual beings. He’s as different to Shou’s old self as night and day.

But the eyes that rose to meet Uruha’s said he’d figured out his Want, too. After a while the boy looked away, whispering, ‘it’s him, isn’t it?’ he asked with a small smile on his lips. ‘I kind of felt it. Everything just suddenly…makes sense.’

Uruha was still studying the boy’s face when he said ‘yes, it is Iv. But you couldn’t have chosen a more difficult Want as that.’

And as Hiroto’s gaze turned sharply, Shou knew Uruha was right.

He had seen it himself, as he came into the inheritance of the shop, how the mechanics work in here. They’re neither in this universe or the next, suspended between-dimensions by centuries-old elemental art.

The current owner of the shop changed the connection the shop has in-between dimensions into a physical representation. Or in this case, two physical representations of the balance in dimensions in the form of the twins Ko-ki and Iv. Shou had seen the emptiness within them where in a human, a soul should reside. But neither of them are human and neither of them possessed a soul, and the world out there is a not a place for soulless creatures.

What this boy hoped to possess, with his idealistic heart (bless him) was to bring the world into such soulless creature.

Shou himself wasn’t even sure how much capacity of emotion the twins do possess, but he did see the looks shared between Iv and Hiroto, the quiet moments existing between their conflicting existence.

‘And unfortunately, I can’t grant you your Want.’ Uruha said, his face clouding over.

Hiroto’s eyes widened. ‘I— what? That can’t be true.’ He shook his head in disbelieve. ‘You have to be able to. Isn’t that why I could see the shop? Isn’t that why Nao-san said my fate threads are a tangled mess?’

‘You don’t know that,’

‘I do know that! This is it, I can feel it. I’m willing to pay the price.’ Hiroto’s face hardened as he said that.

‘Iv is… that child has no soul inside of him. Exposing him to the world would do more harm to him than anything else. That’s also what bounds him to this shop. He’ll need a soul, even a fragment of one, to be able to leave here.’

‘A soul?’

‘If you are willing to give him half of yours, he’ll be able to leave this shop.’

Even Shou was dumbfounded at Uruha’s words. He couldn’t begin to imagine what Hiroto must be feeling when his eyes widened like that.

Silence seemed to be feeding on the air within the room, until it felt too repressing and much too sharp, like the feeling of papercuts on your skin.

‘I’ll pay that price.’

Uruha shook his head. ‘You can’t afford that price.’

‘Will losing half of my soul kill me?’

Uruha shook his head again.

‘Then that settled it. I— I don’t mind if he’d see the world and lose interest in me, but he needs to experience all of that. He needs to see and to listen to all things beautiful.’

Uruha closed his eyes for a few moments. When he opened them again there were gleams of an eerie glow within them. He held out an open palm to Shou. ‘May I have a thread?’

Surprised though he was at Uruha’s request, Shou complied. The spider web pattern bloomed on the side of his face as he pulled out a shimmering string of web from the tip of a finger and gave it to Uruha.

Uruha let the thread pooled on his palm before it spun into a tight sphere there. The wizard picked it up and gave it to Hiroto. ‘Swallow this.’ He instructed.

His eyes unblinkingly staring at the sphere, Hiroto reached out a hand and took it from Uruha. He closed his eyes as the sphere went pass his lips.

Uruha said he could leave the shop now, and he’s smiling at Iv as he said that, as if it was a completely normal thing to say to a guardian fay. But he was no longer the guardian fay, not when he has this thing called a ‘soul’ inside him. He only has half of one because it used to belong as a whole to Hiroto.

Iv blinked a few times as the wizard’s words settled into his mind. It felt wonderful to know that the half of a soul that now resides in his chest, that’s giving him a warm fuzzy feeling, used to belong to Hiroto. But as he looked at Ko-ki’s vaguely concerned look and Shou’s frown, and the way the shop no longer echoing words and feelings into his ears made him worry.

‘Do you… not want me here anymore, Uru-chan?’ he asked. Uruha’s eyes softened and he shook his head.

‘It’s not that, dearest. It would never be that.’ Uruha’s yukata-covered arms went to hold him and Iv melted into the hug, inhaling the sweet scent that would always be Uruha’s.

But he’s still free to leave the shop.

It’s a curious thing, Iv sometimes would wonder what kind of a world the customers go home to when they left the shop. But somehow standing on the threshold and being told he could step out of it was the scariest thing.

Iv looked back at the silent figure of Hiroto standing to the side. ‘Aren’t you going to come with me, then?’

‘He can’t,’ Uruha said. ‘Soulless creatures cannot leave the shop or else they’ll get hurt.’

The frown in Shou’s face deepened and Iv kind of wanted to frown along with him. He wasn’t really sure what Uruha meant, and looking at Hiroto’s face didn’t give him any clue.

With a big intake of breath, Iv stepped out of the shop.

His first thought of the outside world was that it’s huge. Streets rolled out seemingly all the way to the horizon and tall buildings lined up side by side. He couldn’t see the end at all.

There were lots of human. Walking and eating and talking and laughing.

Nobody was talking to him.

He came back to the shop after the day went dark. For some reason his legs felt heavy.

He told Shou that and the man patted his head and told him now that he’s both physically and mentally within this world, there are limits to what his body could do now. It just meant his legs were tired.

Iv poked experimentally at his legs. He smiled when he saw Hiroto entering the room. The blond smiled back, matching the smile coming out of Ko-ki beside him.

There’s something that wasn’t right with that but Iv couldn’t put a finger at it.

Time was a peculiar thing out there in the real world. It seemed to zoom pass him in a dizzying rush of people and streets and buildings. And he couldn’t do anything to control it. Actually, there wasn’t much that was under his control here. Not the people nor time nor the sky.

the sky was pouring sheets of rain yesterday, and no matter how long he stood under the drench, looking at the clouds willing it to stop, it just didn’t listen to him.

Today, the sakura trees lining one of the streets bloomed again. Iv counted in his head how many times had he seen that. How many springs had passed? He wanted to touch the trees like he always did and to tell them that he felt lost in time, could their age and wisdom please guide him, but they never answered back.

None of the trees out there ever talked back to him.

So he came back to the shop and sometimes he’d try to make the shop talk to him again, but the shop also wouldn’t talk back. So he’d get Ko-ki or Hiroto to talk to the shop for him, that way he could still tell it how his day went.

Usually they would comply with a smile.

Yesterday (Maybe? Or was it last week? Or last month?) Iv found a man playing a guitar in the middle of the park with all the sakura trees. His music reverberated through the canopy of branches above their heads. His voice sounded high and clear and Iv found himself listening with rapt.

‘What was the song about?’ he asked as the man finished singing.

For once, this human talked back.

‘I lost somebody precious once.’ The man’s smile was different to Hiroto’s and Ko-ki’s. It looked a bit sad. ‘When I’m singing about her, it felt like I could reach her,’ He continued. There’s a wistfulness in his honesty and for some reason Iv could understand that.

‘I think I can understand that.’ he answered. The man smiled slightly wider at him.

‘It’s always the lonely ones that would ask about that song.’

Iv wondered if it’s true, if it was what the man called loneliness making it hurt somewhere in his chest.

Iv clutched at his chest. It used to never hurt there, back when he didn’t have a soul. He wasn’t sure he liked the feeling.

The guitar playing man looked a bit like his inside hurt too as he looked at Iv with his hand over his chest. The man reached out behind him into a big black bag and pulled out another guitar.

‘Here you go.’ He said, thrusting it at Iv. ‘You looked like you need this.’

Iv’s eyes widened. You don’t ever receive anything without Payment. That was what Uruha always told him. ‘I can’t take this.’

The man’s calloused fingers reached out and patted his head. ‘Of course you can, kiddo. We all need music, most times. Besides, that’s just a cheap old guitar. I can get it anywhere.’

Iv thought of Uruha and his shamisen, of how it’ll tinkle softly when he’s smiling or how it’ll thrum heavy when he’s upset of the Old Man. When he smiled as he received it, the man thought of how honest the kid’s smile was, how it reached his eyes as he bowed a thank you.

The smile disappeared completely when he came home to the shop and showed Hiroto the guitar.

Still smiling, the blond asked what he’d like him to do with it, looking slightly puzzled.

Iv’s chest hurt again.

He asked Hiroto if he didn’t remember how he used to sing for him, his voice as soft as the strum of his guitar.

The blond patted his hair and asked if he wasn’t just dreaming that. How would Hiroto ever know how to play the guitar? His whole life, he only ever knew the inside of this shop.

Something hot was prickling the corners of his eyes as he looked at Hiroto’s and realized he almost couldn’t remember how he looked like back then. And it appeared that Hiroto had forgotten everything all together.

His chest was really hurting then. He wondered if it’ll ever stop.

Hiroto reached out a hand and carefully touched the corner of Iv’s eyes, his finger coming back moist. He licked at the tears gathering at the tip of his finger.

‘Are these tears?’ Hiroto asked, baffled.

Iv looked helplessly at the boy he barely knew. It hurts too much to breath that he doubled over on the tatami floor. He could feel Hiroto scooting closer to him, could still feel his curious gaze at him.

‘Ne, Hiroto?’

‘Hm?’

‘I don’t think I want to have a soul anymore. This hurts too much.’ He raised his face to find Hiroto’s face inches from him.

With slightly trembling fingers he reached for the boy’s face and pulled him closer for a kiss. The tears running down his cheeks ended up wetting Hiroto’s face too when he pulled away. ‘I love having your soul in me, but this hurts too much…’ he whispered.

Something that felt rather like a lightning bolt striking through his bones made Hiroto jerked back.

‘I’m sorry…’ he whispered back, and he wasn’t smiling that time.

When Uruha pulled the spider thread back from inside Hiroto’s mouth, the boy finally woke up, doubling over as he coughed and gasped for breath.

Shou winced in sympathy. It was a rather abrupt way of pulling someone out of the dreamscape.

The wizard, though, stood up and stroke the boy’s still shuddering back as he handed him the gyokurou tea. It would soothe him in minutes, Uruha steeped it himself. ‘Recover yourself,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll talk when you’ve rested.’

They let Hiroto use one of the rooms to lay down. A futon and a grey yukata were prepared for him. When he laid his head on the pillow he felt like he could sleep forever; he was so exhausted.

But the image of Iv’s crying face remained at the forefront of his mind.

Uruha knocked on the doorframe and walked into the room a few hours later and wouldn’t even let him sit up. He insisted Hiroto should stay rested as he sat carefully on the floor.

Hiroto noticed how his voice has a soothing quality to it as he first apologized for submerging Hiroto into the dreamscape without telling.

‘The payment for him to be able to exist outside of the shop is half of your soul. But splitting souls in of itself is already the most terrible thing anybody—human or not—could ever do. And the only thing that would be a worthy payment of such impertinence was the other half of your soul.’

Hiroto remained silent as he listened on.

‘Once I broke your soul in two, the shop won’t let you leave anymore. That’s why I asked you to reconsider. Because it’s down to your freedom or his. And unlike him, you have things out there in the world that you hold dear. Everything Iv holds dear is right here. You felt it in the dream, didn’t you?’

Still silent, Hiroto nodded.

The silence stretched, but it was a comfortable one as Uruha burned a few sweet-smelling incenses around the room.

‘When I’m old and grey would he still remember me?’ Hiroto asked after a while.

‘His memory isn’t an injected one like if you become a guardian fay, so yes, he has an excellent memory as he is now.’

‘Good. I’d hate to blur into all the other people that’s been here.’

Uruha smiled and extended a delicate finger to raise the boy’s gaze so their eyes would meet.

‘That won’t happen. He’ll always remember. But you…’ he trailed.

‘Nao-san said your tangled fate thread is probably our fault, you know.’ The wizard continued. ‘We’re a fork on the road. It was because your path brought you to this non-existent shop that your threads are like that. One day they’ll take you away from here. And then you’ll realized you couldn’t see the shop anymore.’

Hiroto swallowed at the thought.

‘I— I don’t know if I’d want that…’

‘You’re a good human, child. There is dream fulfillment in your fate, I can Sense it. And when you’re content, you’ve no use for a shop like this.’ Uruha whispered, carding gentle fingers through the boy’s fair hair.

‘But for as long as you can see the shop, you’re welcomed here.’

His hunched shoulders said he’s trying his hardest to be strong, so Uruha left the room so the boy could freely fall apart.

He seemed to have fallen asleep again in exhaustion, because when he woke up he found Iv was sitting next to his futon.

‘You were crying in your sleep,’ the fay said, concern in his eyes. Hiroto hurriedly rubbed at his eyes.

‘Does it hurt here? Sometimes Uruha and Tora and Shou would cry when this hurts.’

He placed a hand over Hiroto’s heart.

‘Yeah.’ The blond nodded, trying to smile to lift the worry in Iv’s face. He wasn’t sure how successful it was.

‘It kinda hurts a lot.’

Iv looked sadder. It reminded him too much of the crying boy in his dream, so he’s quick to put a reassuring arm around his shoulders. Iv leaned his head against Hiroto’s beating heart.

‘Hey, Iv?’

‘Hm?’

‘Does it ever hurt for you? Right here?’ He placed a hand on the boy’s left chest.

He could feel the fay smiling against his chest and as he shook his head.

‘No. Iv is really healthy.’

Hiroto could felt the corners of his eyes burning, but he’ll be damned if he openly cries in front of this boy.

‘I’m glad,’ and he tried his hardest to smile.

‘I’m glad this never hurts you’

Stop.