Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was like a splinter under the skin. Once you knew it was there, you could no longer ignore it. But that was how it had to be, wasn’t it?
A crack in a vessel. A stain on a shirt. It didn’t destroy anything, but it was there, it was there, and sometimes yes, it was enough to destroy everything. Enough to trash the cracked mug, enough to change a shirt with another.
You didn’t cut away a finger because of a splinter. But if you didn’t take it away, it would stay there, and keep hurting, until one day you got used to that, and didn’t feel the pain anymore

People usually thought they’d been friends for a long time before becoming something more, but it had never been true. Years later Marui still couldn't tell what did it take to be friends with Niou, and if it was even possible at all.
They’d been a lot of things. Classmates. Teammates. Never rivals, never enemies, never friends. Being a friend with Niou would’ve meant crack the surface and see below, would’ve meant enter the rooms as they were, and not as he arranged them for guests. But that was him, and his half-smiles and hidden secrets had never been a big deal from Marui, in that span of time that passed between not caring at all and caring too much.
It was fun and terrible at the same time how you could fall in love with someone for the same things you later learned to hate to the point that they made you sick.

Secrets never stayed the same, Marui realized, but they always grew. Sometimes because they created a web of lies and omissions that ended up to fill all the space, leaving no more room to breathe, to move, to live. Sometimes because they grew step by step with something else, and the more Marui fell in love, the more he sank deep in that lake, the more he needed to know, the more he wanted to take away all the veils Niou had draped around him as a Prince’s dress, or as a shroud.
Marui didn’t want Niou to tell everything to him; he just wanted him to want to do that.
He just wanted him to stay the same, and to change his nature at the same time. He wanted him to stay the same to the world, but not to him

Marui learnt to love Niou by following him in the void. Marui had had girlfriends before, and never questioned about love, or sex, or anything related. He never questioned his feelings before Niou put them on the edge, before he pulled him on a land without signs or safe harbors, where he was his only anchor. He tore Marui away from the shore and made him float with the waves, until he got lost, until he loved to be lost.
And he followed the tide and found the answers to his question and founded who he was; he was in love, and it wasn’t weird, or wrong, or terrifying anymore.
And Niou was in love with him, and Marui could never doubt that when he kissed him like a starving men looking from shelter, when he looked at him in a way that made Marui want to push him against the wall and tear all his clothes off his body

And it was all Marui’s fault in the end. And Niou’s fault at the same time. Marui for being Marui, and Niou for being Niou, because the more you’re loved, the more love you need, and the more you learn to know someone, the more you’re trying to change them.
And the fact that Marui needed more than Niou could give him could only open a crack, and crack were like secrets; they grew and grew until they became a chasm, a black hole that swallowed everything that was good, all the love, the complicity, all the red strands that still kept them close despite all the differences, despite the fights, despite the pain.
And once a black hole was born, nothing could stop it.

But things never disappear, they only became something else. Love became hate, happiness pain, the bond became a chasm, and what once was close, was then put asunder.
Marui’s island, reached after wandering the sea, was now only ruins and wiped out trees, and silence.
Niou was a summer breeze, warm and fresh at the same time, and in one minute it could become a typhoon. The instant Marui closed his eyes and relaxed, the rain was hitting him so hard he couldn’t believe it wasn’t leaving scars on his skin, because it hurt, it hurt.

And it stayed, like a splinter under the skin, like a hitch that never really went away and it was filling his head with regrets and ‘what-ifs’ and a full new set of bad decisions. Nothing good could grow from that kind of regret, from the incapacity to understand how there could be still walls when you loved someone that much, how could exists in the world something stronger than a love that made you sick to the point you couldn’t even look at things, smell the air or just breath, without feeling like throwing up, without a physical need of pain to chase that heartache away.