[AU crossover] I Want To Be Your Canary
Title: I Want To Be Your Canary
Pairing: Matsumoto Jun and Inoue Mao
Rating: G
Summary: “O, love is the sweetest joy and the wildest woe!” Set in the world of Final Fantasy IX.
A/N: Companion fic to Veniens Domus, though can be read as a standalone.
She remembers the first time she sees him: through the window next door, climbing up the stairs to the floor that houses the Thieves’ Guild headed by Sakurai Sho, presumably about to be inducted. He had looked outside and their eyes met. She was sixteen and a day. Her ideas of love came mostly from the wildly-popular, tragic plays of Lord Avon, and she thought she finally understood all of them when his gaze bored into hers. For a moment she forgot to breathe. Then she saw nothing but his boots-clad feet, and then he was gone.
Mao pressed a hand above her left breast, as if to assure herself that her heart was still there and Matsumoto Jun hadn’t succeeded in stealing it yet.
~*~
She’s twenty-five now and works in Ohno’s bakery down the street.
This Ohno is Satoshi, the son, for Ohno the father had retired early. It looked like Ohno the son had plans to do the same. He’d hired Mao in the hopes of apparently grooming her to be his successor. (Ohno-san, you’re only six years older than I am, she tells him one day, You’re too young to be looking for a replacement and I’m too young to replace you.) She does well enough, but sometimes she doesn’t, on purpose, only because the bread Ohno makes is always, always far more superior than hers will ever be. And so, for the most part, she’s assigned to the counter where she greets customers and chit-chats with them a little before they go on their way.
Sometimes she sketches, but she never lets Ohno know. She tucks her sketchpad away faster than you can say “Garnet til Alexandros the seventeenth” whenever he comes out of the kitchen, flour streaking his cheeks.
Sometimes she delivers bread to the Guild.
Sometimes, it’s Jun who opens the door. He gives her a cool nod, looks down at the bread basket and says, “If it’s melon bread, it’s for Nino,” before stepping aside to let her in. Mao always finds herself nodding back, avoiding his eyes and ducking under the arm he’d used to open the door. She climbs up the same stairs he first did years ago, collect payment from Nino, go back down, give Jun another nod and go on her way back to the bakery.
She only realizes she’d been holding her breath when she’s back on her perch by the counter, having to gasp for air.
The intensity of his gaze is still the same.
~*~
“Those good-for-nothing thieves,” her mother mutters sometimes while chopping vegetables in a savage way.
“Mama, what did they ever do to you?” she asks half-admonishingly from her usual seat by the same window where she’d first caught a glimpse of Jun. Her sketchpad is laid flat on her lap, the charcoal dancing across paper while Mao receives her mother’s usual bemoaning about how thieves are the bane of society and how she couldn’t understand why Queen Garnet wasn’t doing anything to abolish the Guild-why, it even looks like she supports it!-and Mao either hums sympathetically or shushes her mother if her voice gets too loud. They live right next to the Guild, after all.
But for all her mother’s wailing, Mao knows ‘those thieves’ afforded them a certain brand of safety that the other districts don’t have. Being the house next to theirs, especially, practically gives them an unnamed privilege.
Eventually Mao tunes her mother out as her sketch takes more form. The window that allows her to peek into the lives of their neighbors always shows a flurry of activity. She only catches glimpses of them: Sakurai, the leader. Ninomiya, widely known as Nino, the black mage. Aiba, the friendliest of them, who sometimes engages her in conversation until her mother would pull her away. Becky, the one who always bickers with Aiba and seems to be their maid of sorts but also more than that. Mao likes to think Becky is a thief, too; there is no reason why women shouldn’t. Sometimes, Marina, daughter of Lady Eiko (who is a very good friend of the Queen), would be there, too, disguised beneath a White Mage cloak, though everyone in the entire district knows it is her.
And then there’s Jun. Sometimes.
Mao draws them mostly in profile, sketching what she could remember of their features from the brief glimpses the window affords her.
“Your hands are dirty again,” her mother complains later. “Wash them and come help me cook supper.”
Her mother never really complains about her drawing most of the time, but Mao suspects she’d be forbidden from doing so if her mother learns that her sketchpad contained mostly drawings of “those thieves.”
~*~
Her masterpiece-or what she considers her masterpiece-is a work in progress.
It’s an oil painting of Jun on canvas. The canvas itself isn't large like the paintings she sees in big houses sometimes when she has to deliver bread there, perhaps only about a third of that length. She started it a few days ago, though the most she’d done so far was draw his outline and brushed on the underpaint.
On it, Jun is smiling; the corners of his lips turned up slightly as if he’s remembered something amusing but kept it to himself, his mirth seen more by the twinkling of his eyes.
She'd caught this particular expression on his face during one of her (frequently increasing) trips to the Guild for the bread (“Why couldn’t they just come here to buy, this shop is just on the same street,” she’d say sometimes-because it’s the truth-but Ohno is apparently a fan of the Guild, unlike her mother, so Ohno has no qualms sending her on her way). Jun had just opened the door for her-again-seen her, and then looked away, smiling that smile. For a moment she wondered if she should feel a bit insulted just in case it was her that he found apparently amusing, making her feel horribly self-conscious about the way she looked then, but the memory of that smile burned itself in her subconscious anyway.
Mao thinks it would be highly unlikely for her to see it again. Maybe that’s why she is painting it, for posterity.
She also thinks it’s ridiculous to feel so much for a person she does not really know, years after she’d long outgrown Lord Avon’s plays. The books are wrapped in cloth under her bed, bound by one of her hair ribbons. Paper, charcoal and paint replace the books in her hands instead.
The day she completes this painting, she thinks, would be high time for her to replace Matsumoto Jun as well.
~*~
She’s working on the painting when the person she’s putting to life on canvas actually bursts in through her window, in the flesh. Jun falls to the floor with an unceremonious thump, rolling over once before standing up the next second and pulling her against him, her back to his chest, and claps a gloved hand over her mouth. “Don’t move,” he whispers in her ear.
Mao couldn’t at all, brush still raised in mid-stroke, feeling as if she is frozen in place, space, and time. Matsumoto Jun in her bedroom. Matsumoto Jun holding her close (albeit with a hand over her mouth), so close that she could actually feel his heart beat thumping against her back. Matsumoto Jun’s voice in her ear.
Her eyes widen.
Matsumoto Jun standing in front of her painting.
He has to drop his hand from her mouth when she struggles against him, lowering it instead to clasp over one of her wrists. “I said don’t move,” he hisses, sounding annoyed.
“Let go of me,” she whispers-pleads-and it’s her “Please,” that undoes him, making him loosen his hold around her but it’s too late; he looks up and comes face-to-face with his image propped up on easel.
Mao feels her knees go weak and she slides to the floor unceremoniously, letting go of the brush and broken plate she’d been using as her palette to cover her face in complete and utter embarrassment.
As if this isn’t enough, footsteps come clattering up the stairs. “Mao?” her mother calls out. “What are you doing? You’re making an awful lot of noise up there.”
Mao’s head snaps up. She looks at Jun in horror. “Hide,” Mao hisses and he drops instantly on all fours to crawl under her bed. She pushes his head down roughly and makes a mental note to apologize later when he lets out a yelp in pain. There is no time for it now as her mother is already opening the door, and Mao has just placed the drop cloth back over the canvas in the blink of an eye. “Hullo.”
Her mother gives her a strange look. “Are you hurt?”
“No, Mama, it was-” Mao looks around, frantically searching for an idea to use as her excuse, when she catches a glimpse of a cat’s tail flicking lazily about just outside her window. “The cat!” she says cheerfully, pointing. “It was the cat. It jumped in and gave me a fright.”
She widens her smile just to ease her mother’s suspicions, but it doesn’t seem to be helping her case. “Don’t forget to wash the dishes before you sleep,” her mother says before going out the door again, “And your room is a mess!” before closing it.
Mao sighs and plops down on her bed in relief.
“Owww.”
“Gaia,” she gasps, jumping up in shock. She’d completely forgotten that Matsumoto Jun is currently under her bed. She kneels on the floor, looking at him. “I’m sorry. Were you hurt, earlier?” Then she remembers how it was he who just came barreling in her window, giving her a shock, invading her privacy- “I take it back,” she says the next moment, cheeks puffed out in anger. “What do you think you’re doing? Why are you here? I know the Guild’s just next door but don’t think you can just-”
“Why are you drawing me?” Jun asks, poking his head out from under her bed before shifting to lay on his back with an almost lazy air, on the floor, looking up at her.
“It…” The explanation dies on her lips, because there really is no explanation for it. “It’s… not a drawing,” she says finally, raising her chin a little. ”It’s a painting.”
Jun stands up, his full height somehow making her bedroom feel so much smaller than it actually is. He dusts off the front of his pants, then the back, gaze on her all the while. “Fine, then. Why are you painting me?”
“For practice,” she answers feebly, wishing she had a better answer.
“What?”
“Practice,” she repeats, raising her voice, then bites on her lower lip, remembering her mother.
“Why me?”
They've never really talked before, Mao realizes, except for the perfunctory conversations involving mostly bread and Nino during her deliveries. If asked then how she would imagine their talk would be, it certainly wouldn’t have crossed her mind that it would turn out like this: him in her room, standing too tall and too close. “You looked like a good subject.”
“A good subject,” he echoes, taking another step forward, and he’s smiling that half-smile and it’s directed at her and Mao is sure she must be close to palpitating by now.
“Your close proximity is invading my personal space and comfort zone,” she says, hoping her voice wouldn't sound as trembling as she currently felt.
He stops where he is, that same gaze from years before boring into hers, and it is all she can do not to swoon, because she still had pride after all. “Thief exercises,” he says randomly.
“What?”
“You asked why I was here.”
“Oh,” Mao says eloquently, blinking a bit in confusion, because that still doesn't explain why their so-called exercises must involve him bursting through her bedroom window.
“Matsumoto Jun.” He offers his hand.
She looks at it, then at him, trying to will her brain to keep up with his seemingly strange antics. She knows who he is, after all, and always assumed that he knows her as well. “Inoue Mao,” she finally says, stretching out a hand as well to curl her fingers briefly around his, shaking it once, then letting go as if she is scalded.
His lips quirk up again and in the next moment he’s jumped onto the window sill with the lithe grace of a cat. “Hey, Inoue-san?” he says, looking back at her.
“Yes?” Her heart skips several beats.
“You’re heavy.” And then he’s gone.
Mao never knew that it was possible to sleep while feeling both angry and happy at the same time.
~*~
She doesn't deliver bread to the Guild anymore, because for some reason, Jun comes around to everyday to “pick up Nino’s melon bread for him.”
“Can’t Ninomiya-san get it himself?” Mao asks suspiciously one day, though she avoids his gaze as she places said melon bread on a square piece of cloth that Jun brought with him. Neatly tying up the four corners of the cloth to keep the warmth of the bread in, she hands it to him, careful to avoid her fingers grazing against his own, but they do anyway.
“He’s busy.”
“And you’re not?”
“I have business here,” Jun says, and she makes the mistake of looking up and into his eyes. She wishes she knew what his half-smile meant. She also wishes she wouldn't be reduced to incoherence so often in front of him.
“Oh. Shall I… um. Get Ohno-san for you, then?”
“No,” he says, gaze still on hers, “it’s you I have business with.”
“Oh,” she says again, hating herself for saying this useless word one too many times in his presence. Business sounds extremely formal, so she automatically assumes he means actual business. “Well, then… carry on.”
“When will you be free?”
She gapes at the question, for a moment thinking wildly if he means free, like from slavery (or from the shackles of an unrequited love that’s burned for nearly a decade, her traitorous mind whispers)-and shakes her head to clear her thoughts. Glancing at the clock on the wall-a recent invention from Lindblum, said to be made by Regent Cid himself-Mao answers, “I usually leave when the clock strikes five in the afternoon.”
“Excellent,” Jun says, looking pleased, and Mao wants to know exactly just what is excellent, so she asks him so. He doesn’t really answer her question when he goes on, “I shall return for you later today.” He inclines his head slightly in farewell and walks out of sight, leaving her with her mouth still slightly gaping over what he could possibly mean.
“Going on a date with Jun-kun, Mao-chan?” Ohno is suddenly by her side, tray-full of freshly baked pastries occupying his arms. “That’s nice.”
“It’s not like that!” she bursts out, as if scorched; moments later she burns her fingers picking up a piping-hot bread to place on the shelves with her bare hand.
~*~
“Is your hand alright?” Jun asks later, when he does return like he’s said. Her hand is wrapped carefully and neatly in a bandage.
You could be a healer, she’d said in marvel, watching Ohno wrap up her hand methodically. Ohno-san, you could be anything, and he’d smiled, replying that he couldn’t do magic, hence the bandage.
“It’s fine,” Mao says, though her face twists in slight discomfort when a little boy bumps against her; the street is full of people going home for the day. Ohno had given her an earlier time off because of the burn, but she’d insisted on staying. When five o’clock neared, though, Mao began wishing she’d gone home after all: she had flour in her hair, a burn on her hand, and marks of charcoal beneath her fingernails. She tried to remedy this by tying her hair up with a ribbon, picking at her fingernails and pinching color to her cheeks, in that order-though when Jun arrived, she thought the cheek-pinching had been for naught; her cheeks had flushed red in an instant.
Without warning, Jun pulls her into an alley and for one moment Mao suddenly fears for her chastity. But all Jun does is take her hand in both of his, untying the knot of the bandage and unwrapping her hand, examining the burn. It left a faint red streak across her fingers. “I usually leave the magic to Nino and Becky,” he says, sounding almost apologetic. Mao doesn’t understand, not until he’s taken out a small jar. The ointment he lathers onto her skin feels soothing. Mao swallows, biting on her lower lip as she looks at him. For the longest time she’s wondered what it would feel like to have Jun’s undivided attention, and now she knows. It is nothing she could describe.
“Thank you,” she mumbles, but her gratitude is swallowed by the urgency of his gaze as Jun looks up at the skies. The capital is beginning to be washed in a soft, orange glow. “We’re going to be late,” he says, and then they’re running, his hand holding her uninjured one. Wait! she tries to say, but instead she laughs, and he joins in, breathless, exuberant. Her hair breaks loose as their feet pound on the cobblestones, the scarlet of her ribbon dancing in the wind.
I am a canary, Mao thinks, her hand in Jun’s, flying away.
~*~
“Where are we?” Mao asks, several windswept and lung-bursting minutes later, holding a hand to one side as she tries to catch her breath. Jun gives her a look that makes her say, almost defensively, “I couldn’t exactly see where we were going, mind you-”
She becomes aware of the fact that he is still holding her hand when he leads her forward, starting a little as the sound of metal crunches under their feet. The surface seems to be vibrating slightly, as if alive, and it reminds her of a purring cat. “We’re on an airship,” Jun answers, waiting for her patiently as she walks considerably slower after learning where they are. Mao wouldn’t say it, but her knees were beginning to shake. “The wing of an airship, to be exact.”
“Wing-?!” she nearly screeches. Unconsciously, she moves closer to Jun, an action he doesn’t protest against. “A-Are we very high up?” Mao asks, trying to mask her nervousness and horribly failing. She’d pull her hand away if he wasn’t holding it so tightly; she is sure her palms are beginning to sweat.
“No,” he tells her, and he’s laughing, and she’s distracted enough by his laughter because it sounds nice, never mind that he’s laughing at her. “I wanted-”
“Oh!” she interrupts him, pointing. There are no words to describe this, either: the multitude of colors that currently paint the sky into shades of red, orange, purple, yellow and blue while the sun is sinking fast over the horizon. Her fingers twitch against his, itching to somehow capture this moment right now, and she wishes she were skilled in painting because this is one image that charcoal could never capture. “It’s beautiful,” Mao breathes.
“Yes.”
They watch until the sun is but a red speck in the distance. When Mao finally turns to him, her smile is radiant. “Thank you,” she says-or tries to; once again she is interrupted as the airship suddenly lurches and she is forced to grip his arms out of sheer terror. “What-”
“Stay down,” Jun commands, even as he ducks down and takes her with him, pulling her against his body. He holds up a hand when Mao opens her mouth to ask, specifically, What on Gaia is going on?! and she closes it again, biting hard on her lower lip. His brows furrow, listening intently.
Then he curses, which makes Mao jump a little in surprise. She’s never heard or seen him lose his cool before. “Damn it. I thought this one was scheduled for maintenance.”
“What is that supposed to mean?!” She has to shout to be heard; the turbines have begun to whirl, the sound frighteningly close.
“It means-” His eyes lock on hers, and she feels nearly outraged to see him grinning. “It means we’re going to fly.”
Surely she’s heard him wrong. “…WHAT?!”
“Fly!”
“No!”
“Come on,” he yells, pulling her back inside, and just in time. The airship gives another lurch, and in the next few seconds Mao realizes they are actually airborne.
Jun laughs as the wind hits-smacks-their faces, cold and sharp. Mao wants to throttle him and she would, if she could. But she’s trembling almost violently now, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Her fingers curl tightly in his tunic. “Jun,” she bawls in his ear, formality and honorifics forgotten in the face of mortal peril. “I can’t do this.”
“It’s safe,” he insists. “There’s nothing to worry about-”
“Yes there is. I’m afraid of-” She trails off, making the mistake of sneaking a peek out the window to see just how high up they currently are. The action makes nausea rise from the pit of her stomach up to her throat.
He looks at her, and she feels a small amount of triumph at the uncertain expression on his face, unaware that her skin is now tinged green. “What’s wrong?”
Mao swallows, shutting her eyes tight as she feels the floor sway under her feet. “I’M AFRAID OF HEIGHTS!” she manages to let him know-
-before promptly spewing the contents of her lunch on his boots.
~*~
Mao opens her eyes blearily to the smell of bread and low murmurings of male voices, and she knows that she is back in Ohno’s bakery. The voices cease when she sits up, blanket falling to her lap and hair askew. “What happened?” she asks no one in particular.
“You fainted.” Jun swims into view after several blinks and eye-rubbing, sitting on a chair beside what is probably Ohno’s bed, sounding simultaneously worried and apologetic. “Mao-Inoue-san, I’m truly sorry. I had no idea-”
“I’ll go get her some stew,” Ohno cuts in to subtly excuse himself and leave the two alone. Mao bites on her lower lip and runs a hand through her hair, wincing a little as her hand comes across stubborn tangles. Jun hands her a tin cup full of water which she drinks steadily until it’s empty, handing it back to him without a word. She keeps her gaze lowered and concentrates on trying to unknot her locks of hair so much that she doesn't realize Jun has actually fallen silent until he speaks again.
“I want to be your canary.”
Mao looks up, blinking, unsure as to what he meant, exactly. “…Pardon?”
“I was making an allusion.”
“An allusion,” she echoes.
“It wasn't a very good one,” he admits now. “Canary, airship; the sunset was just an added touch. It would have gone as planned if-”
“-I hadn't freaked out, thrown up, and fainted?” Mao finishes, looking down miserably, drawing indiscernible patterns on Ohno’s blanket.
“If the airship had not flown,” Jun goes on as if she hadn’t spoken, letting amusement seep into his tone at her own conclusion. “Though, admittedly, I did not know about your fear of heights.”
Mao is still studiously avoiding his gaze, picking at an imaginary lint. “I don’t exactly make it known.”
“I should have.”
“It’s not your fault, really, it isn’t.”
“I’ve made it a point to know everything else there is to know about you.”
Her head snaps up. “What-”
“You loved reading Lord Avon’s plays. Your favorite line is-”
“O, love is the sweetest joy and the wildest woe,” they say in unison, Mao reciting the words automatically from memory.
“-I know because that page is well-thumbed and worn out. You hide your sketches from your mother. Actually, you hide them from everyone. You outgrew the tales of love and devotion and I wondered if…” he trails off, a small smile on his lips, the very same smile that she loves, and then he looks at her and she finds that she can’t look away. “If your feelings have perhaps also changed, but as I thought, they have not. You love me,” he states clearly. “And I feel the same.”
Her heart, quite plainly, feels like a canary in a cage with its wings beating wildly. “But you never said…”
“I was busy.”
“You don’t seem to be too busy to always open the door for me when I come to deliver Ninomiya-san’s melon bread,” Mao points out, mind still reeling.
“Small windows of opportunity the Guild affords me,” Jun admits, smile widening. “I frankly saw no reason to let you know. But recent events have made me realize…” His face clouds over for a moment, making her wonder just how many times his life has been put in danger, and her heart thumps all the more for all the unseen possibilities of losing him in her life. “That I no longer wish to let a day go by without you by my side.”
“My mother hates the Guild,” Mao says without thinking, even as her heart skips several beats when he reaches for her hand and holds it in his, callused thumb brushing over her skin.
“She doesn't exactly make that unknown,” Jun deadpans, moving to sit from the chair to the bed, ignoring the squeaking protest of the bed-springs. Then he’s leaning forward and cupping her cheek, his lips a breath away from hers as he rests his forehead against hers, closing his eyes.
“I fear I love thee more than I should,” she whispers, each word a near-kiss, her other hand coming up to rest on his chest, though to hold on or to push him away, she’s not entirely sure yet.
Jun laughs. “Then make me thy canary to keep forever in the cage of thy bosom,” he recites back in a whisper just before covering the distance between their lips.
(Ohno will come back at the very same moment, bearing the almost-forgotten stew. Jun will fall off the bed; that, or Mao had pushed him away, though she will vehemently deny doing so.
Unlike Lord Avon’s celebrated and well-loved tale, no one will elope, nor be captured, nor die. Jun and Mao will be wed within a month. The war that will erupt from their marriage is not between two countries; only between her and her mother, though her mother will soon concede, won over by Mao’s palpable happiness.
And they will live happily ever after.)
--
Full script of the play “I Want To Be Your Canary” as shown in Final Fantasy IX can be found here.
Many thanks to sinonymity for the beta, reiicharu for the semi-beta, frostbittenlove for the characterization help and tinyangl because je-whiteday that is all ♥
For Andie, april-0410; I wish you all the happiness in your marriage, and for novemberbaby because Jun/Mao duh that is all. ♥
Pairing: Matsumoto Jun and Inoue Mao
Rating: G
Summary: “O, love is the sweetest joy and the wildest woe!” Set in the world of Final Fantasy IX.
A/N: Companion fic to Veniens Domus, though can be read as a standalone.
She remembers the first time she sees him: through the window next door, climbing up the stairs to the floor that houses the Thieves’ Guild headed by Sakurai Sho, presumably about to be inducted. He had looked outside and their eyes met. She was sixteen and a day. Her ideas of love came mostly from the wildly-popular, tragic plays of Lord Avon, and she thought she finally understood all of them when his gaze bored into hers. For a moment she forgot to breathe. Then she saw nothing but his boots-clad feet, and then he was gone.
Mao pressed a hand above her left breast, as if to assure herself that her heart was still there and Matsumoto Jun hadn’t succeeded in stealing it yet.
~*~
She’s twenty-five now and works in Ohno’s bakery down the street.
This Ohno is Satoshi, the son, for Ohno the father had retired early. It looked like Ohno the son had plans to do the same. He’d hired Mao in the hopes of apparently grooming her to be his successor. (Ohno-san, you’re only six years older than I am, she tells him one day, You’re too young to be looking for a replacement and I’m too young to replace you.) She does well enough, but sometimes she doesn’t, on purpose, only because the bread Ohno makes is always, always far more superior than hers will ever be. And so, for the most part, she’s assigned to the counter where she greets customers and chit-chats with them a little before they go on their way.
Sometimes she sketches, but she never lets Ohno know. She tucks her sketchpad away faster than you can say “Garnet til Alexandros the seventeenth” whenever he comes out of the kitchen, flour streaking his cheeks.
Sometimes she delivers bread to the Guild.
Sometimes, it’s Jun who opens the door. He gives her a cool nod, looks down at the bread basket and says, “If it’s melon bread, it’s for Nino,” before stepping aside to let her in. Mao always finds herself nodding back, avoiding his eyes and ducking under the arm he’d used to open the door. She climbs up the same stairs he first did years ago, collect payment from Nino, go back down, give Jun another nod and go on her way back to the bakery.
She only realizes she’d been holding her breath when she’s back on her perch by the counter, having to gasp for air.
The intensity of his gaze is still the same.
~*~
“Those good-for-nothing thieves,” her mother mutters sometimes while chopping vegetables in a savage way.
“Mama, what did they ever do to you?” she asks half-admonishingly from her usual seat by the same window where she’d first caught a glimpse of Jun. Her sketchpad is laid flat on her lap, the charcoal dancing across paper while Mao receives her mother’s usual bemoaning about how thieves are the bane of society and how she couldn’t understand why Queen Garnet wasn’t doing anything to abolish the Guild-why, it even looks like she supports it!-and Mao either hums sympathetically or shushes her mother if her voice gets too loud. They live right next to the Guild, after all.
But for all her mother’s wailing, Mao knows ‘those thieves’ afforded them a certain brand of safety that the other districts don’t have. Being the house next to theirs, especially, practically gives them an unnamed privilege.
Eventually Mao tunes her mother out as her sketch takes more form. The window that allows her to peek into the lives of their neighbors always shows a flurry of activity. She only catches glimpses of them: Sakurai, the leader. Ninomiya, widely known as Nino, the black mage. Aiba, the friendliest of them, who sometimes engages her in conversation until her mother would pull her away. Becky, the one who always bickers with Aiba and seems to be their maid of sorts but also more than that. Mao likes to think Becky is a thief, too; there is no reason why women shouldn’t. Sometimes, Marina, daughter of Lady Eiko (who is a very good friend of the Queen), would be there, too, disguised beneath a White Mage cloak, though everyone in the entire district knows it is her.
And then there’s Jun. Sometimes.
Mao draws them mostly in profile, sketching what she could remember of their features from the brief glimpses the window affords her.
“Your hands are dirty again,” her mother complains later. “Wash them and come help me cook supper.”
Her mother never really complains about her drawing most of the time, but Mao suspects she’d be forbidden from doing so if her mother learns that her sketchpad contained mostly drawings of “those thieves.”
~*~
Her masterpiece-or what she considers her masterpiece-is a work in progress.
It’s an oil painting of Jun on canvas. The canvas itself isn't large like the paintings she sees in big houses sometimes when she has to deliver bread there, perhaps only about a third of that length. She started it a few days ago, though the most she’d done so far was draw his outline and brushed on the underpaint.
On it, Jun is smiling; the corners of his lips turned up slightly as if he’s remembered something amusing but kept it to himself, his mirth seen more by the twinkling of his eyes.
She'd caught this particular expression on his face during one of her (frequently increasing) trips to the Guild for the bread (“Why couldn’t they just come here to buy, this shop is just on the same street,” she’d say sometimes-because it’s the truth-but Ohno is apparently a fan of the Guild, unlike her mother, so Ohno has no qualms sending her on her way). Jun had just opened the door for her-again-seen her, and then looked away, smiling that smile. For a moment she wondered if she should feel a bit insulted just in case it was her that he found apparently amusing, making her feel horribly self-conscious about the way she looked then, but the memory of that smile burned itself in her subconscious anyway.
Mao thinks it would be highly unlikely for her to see it again. Maybe that’s why she is painting it, for posterity.
She also thinks it’s ridiculous to feel so much for a person she does not really know, years after she’d long outgrown Lord Avon’s plays. The books are wrapped in cloth under her bed, bound by one of her hair ribbons. Paper, charcoal and paint replace the books in her hands instead.
The day she completes this painting, she thinks, would be high time for her to replace Matsumoto Jun as well.
~*~
She’s working on the painting when the person she’s putting to life on canvas actually bursts in through her window, in the flesh. Jun falls to the floor with an unceremonious thump, rolling over once before standing up the next second and pulling her against him, her back to his chest, and claps a gloved hand over her mouth. “Don’t move,” he whispers in her ear.
Mao couldn’t at all, brush still raised in mid-stroke, feeling as if she is frozen in place, space, and time. Matsumoto Jun in her bedroom. Matsumoto Jun holding her close (albeit with a hand over her mouth), so close that she could actually feel his heart beat thumping against her back. Matsumoto Jun’s voice in her ear.
Her eyes widen.
Matsumoto Jun standing in front of her painting.
He has to drop his hand from her mouth when she struggles against him, lowering it instead to clasp over one of her wrists. “I said don’t move,” he hisses, sounding annoyed.
“Let go of me,” she whispers-pleads-and it’s her “Please,” that undoes him, making him loosen his hold around her but it’s too late; he looks up and comes face-to-face with his image propped up on easel.
Mao feels her knees go weak and she slides to the floor unceremoniously, letting go of the brush and broken plate she’d been using as her palette to cover her face in complete and utter embarrassment.
As if this isn’t enough, footsteps come clattering up the stairs. “Mao?” her mother calls out. “What are you doing? You’re making an awful lot of noise up there.”
Mao’s head snaps up. She looks at Jun in horror. “Hide,” Mao hisses and he drops instantly on all fours to crawl under her bed. She pushes his head down roughly and makes a mental note to apologize later when he lets out a yelp in pain. There is no time for it now as her mother is already opening the door, and Mao has just placed the drop cloth back over the canvas in the blink of an eye. “Hullo.”
Her mother gives her a strange look. “Are you hurt?”
“No, Mama, it was-” Mao looks around, frantically searching for an idea to use as her excuse, when she catches a glimpse of a cat’s tail flicking lazily about just outside her window. “The cat!” she says cheerfully, pointing. “It was the cat. It jumped in and gave me a fright.”
She widens her smile just to ease her mother’s suspicions, but it doesn’t seem to be helping her case. “Don’t forget to wash the dishes before you sleep,” her mother says before going out the door again, “And your room is a mess!” before closing it.
Mao sighs and plops down on her bed in relief.
“Owww.”
“Gaia,” she gasps, jumping up in shock. She’d completely forgotten that Matsumoto Jun is currently under her bed. She kneels on the floor, looking at him. “I’m sorry. Were you hurt, earlier?” Then she remembers how it was he who just came barreling in her window, giving her a shock, invading her privacy- “I take it back,” she says the next moment, cheeks puffed out in anger. “What do you think you’re doing? Why are you here? I know the Guild’s just next door but don’t think you can just-”
“Why are you drawing me?” Jun asks, poking his head out from under her bed before shifting to lay on his back with an almost lazy air, on the floor, looking up at her.
“It…” The explanation dies on her lips, because there really is no explanation for it. “It’s… not a drawing,” she says finally, raising her chin a little. ”It’s a painting.”
Jun stands up, his full height somehow making her bedroom feel so much smaller than it actually is. He dusts off the front of his pants, then the back, gaze on her all the while. “Fine, then. Why are you painting me?”
“For practice,” she answers feebly, wishing she had a better answer.
“What?”
“Practice,” she repeats, raising her voice, then bites on her lower lip, remembering her mother.
“Why me?”
They've never really talked before, Mao realizes, except for the perfunctory conversations involving mostly bread and Nino during her deliveries. If asked then how she would imagine their talk would be, it certainly wouldn’t have crossed her mind that it would turn out like this: him in her room, standing too tall and too close. “You looked like a good subject.”
“A good subject,” he echoes, taking another step forward, and he’s smiling that half-smile and it’s directed at her and Mao is sure she must be close to palpitating by now.
“Your close proximity is invading my personal space and comfort zone,” she says, hoping her voice wouldn't sound as trembling as she currently felt.
He stops where he is, that same gaze from years before boring into hers, and it is all she can do not to swoon, because she still had pride after all. “Thief exercises,” he says randomly.
“What?”
“You asked why I was here.”
“Oh,” Mao says eloquently, blinking a bit in confusion, because that still doesn't explain why their so-called exercises must involve him bursting through her bedroom window.
“Matsumoto Jun.” He offers his hand.
She looks at it, then at him, trying to will her brain to keep up with his seemingly strange antics. She knows who he is, after all, and always assumed that he knows her as well. “Inoue Mao,” she finally says, stretching out a hand as well to curl her fingers briefly around his, shaking it once, then letting go as if she is scalded.
His lips quirk up again and in the next moment he’s jumped onto the window sill with the lithe grace of a cat. “Hey, Inoue-san?” he says, looking back at her.
“Yes?” Her heart skips several beats.
“You’re heavy.” And then he’s gone.
Mao never knew that it was possible to sleep while feeling both angry and happy at the same time.
~*~
She doesn't deliver bread to the Guild anymore, because for some reason, Jun comes around to everyday to “pick up Nino’s melon bread for him.”
“Can’t Ninomiya-san get it himself?” Mao asks suspiciously one day, though she avoids his gaze as she places said melon bread on a square piece of cloth that Jun brought with him. Neatly tying up the four corners of the cloth to keep the warmth of the bread in, she hands it to him, careful to avoid her fingers grazing against his own, but they do anyway.
“He’s busy.”
“And you’re not?”
“I have business here,” Jun says, and she makes the mistake of looking up and into his eyes. She wishes she knew what his half-smile meant. She also wishes she wouldn't be reduced to incoherence so often in front of him.
“Oh. Shall I… um. Get Ohno-san for you, then?”
“No,” he says, gaze still on hers, “it’s you I have business with.”
“Oh,” she says again, hating herself for saying this useless word one too many times in his presence. Business sounds extremely formal, so she automatically assumes he means actual business. “Well, then… carry on.”
“When will you be free?”
She gapes at the question, for a moment thinking wildly if he means free, like from slavery (or from the shackles of an unrequited love that’s burned for nearly a decade, her traitorous mind whispers)-and shakes her head to clear her thoughts. Glancing at the clock on the wall-a recent invention from Lindblum, said to be made by Regent Cid himself-Mao answers, “I usually leave when the clock strikes five in the afternoon.”
“Excellent,” Jun says, looking pleased, and Mao wants to know exactly just what is excellent, so she asks him so. He doesn’t really answer her question when he goes on, “I shall return for you later today.” He inclines his head slightly in farewell and walks out of sight, leaving her with her mouth still slightly gaping over what he could possibly mean.
“Going on a date with Jun-kun, Mao-chan?” Ohno is suddenly by her side, tray-full of freshly baked pastries occupying his arms. “That’s nice.”
“It’s not like that!” she bursts out, as if scorched; moments later she burns her fingers picking up a piping-hot bread to place on the shelves with her bare hand.
~*~
“Is your hand alright?” Jun asks later, when he does return like he’s said. Her hand is wrapped carefully and neatly in a bandage.
You could be a healer, she’d said in marvel, watching Ohno wrap up her hand methodically. Ohno-san, you could be anything, and he’d smiled, replying that he couldn’t do magic, hence the bandage.
“It’s fine,” Mao says, though her face twists in slight discomfort when a little boy bumps against her; the street is full of people going home for the day. Ohno had given her an earlier time off because of the burn, but she’d insisted on staying. When five o’clock neared, though, Mao began wishing she’d gone home after all: she had flour in her hair, a burn on her hand, and marks of charcoal beneath her fingernails. She tried to remedy this by tying her hair up with a ribbon, picking at her fingernails and pinching color to her cheeks, in that order-though when Jun arrived, she thought the cheek-pinching had been for naught; her cheeks had flushed red in an instant.
Without warning, Jun pulls her into an alley and for one moment Mao suddenly fears for her chastity. But all Jun does is take her hand in both of his, untying the knot of the bandage and unwrapping her hand, examining the burn. It left a faint red streak across her fingers. “I usually leave the magic to Nino and Becky,” he says, sounding almost apologetic. Mao doesn’t understand, not until he’s taken out a small jar. The ointment he lathers onto her skin feels soothing. Mao swallows, biting on her lower lip as she looks at him. For the longest time she’s wondered what it would feel like to have Jun’s undivided attention, and now she knows. It is nothing she could describe.
“Thank you,” she mumbles, but her gratitude is swallowed by the urgency of his gaze as Jun looks up at the skies. The capital is beginning to be washed in a soft, orange glow. “We’re going to be late,” he says, and then they’re running, his hand holding her uninjured one. Wait! she tries to say, but instead she laughs, and he joins in, breathless, exuberant. Her hair breaks loose as their feet pound on the cobblestones, the scarlet of her ribbon dancing in the wind.
I am a canary, Mao thinks, her hand in Jun’s, flying away.
~*~
“Where are we?” Mao asks, several windswept and lung-bursting minutes later, holding a hand to one side as she tries to catch her breath. Jun gives her a look that makes her say, almost defensively, “I couldn’t exactly see where we were going, mind you-”
She becomes aware of the fact that he is still holding her hand when he leads her forward, starting a little as the sound of metal crunches under their feet. The surface seems to be vibrating slightly, as if alive, and it reminds her of a purring cat. “We’re on an airship,” Jun answers, waiting for her patiently as she walks considerably slower after learning where they are. Mao wouldn’t say it, but her knees were beginning to shake. “The wing of an airship, to be exact.”
“Wing-?!” she nearly screeches. Unconsciously, she moves closer to Jun, an action he doesn’t protest against. “A-Are we very high up?” Mao asks, trying to mask her nervousness and horribly failing. She’d pull her hand away if he wasn’t holding it so tightly; she is sure her palms are beginning to sweat.
“No,” he tells her, and he’s laughing, and she’s distracted enough by his laughter because it sounds nice, never mind that he’s laughing at her. “I wanted-”
“Oh!” she interrupts him, pointing. There are no words to describe this, either: the multitude of colors that currently paint the sky into shades of red, orange, purple, yellow and blue while the sun is sinking fast over the horizon. Her fingers twitch against his, itching to somehow capture this moment right now, and she wishes she were skilled in painting because this is one image that charcoal could never capture. “It’s beautiful,” Mao breathes.
“Yes.”
They watch until the sun is but a red speck in the distance. When Mao finally turns to him, her smile is radiant. “Thank you,” she says-or tries to; once again she is interrupted as the airship suddenly lurches and she is forced to grip his arms out of sheer terror. “What-”
“Stay down,” Jun commands, even as he ducks down and takes her with him, pulling her against his body. He holds up a hand when Mao opens her mouth to ask, specifically, What on Gaia is going on?! and she closes it again, biting hard on her lower lip. His brows furrow, listening intently.
Then he curses, which makes Mao jump a little in surprise. She’s never heard or seen him lose his cool before. “Damn it. I thought this one was scheduled for maintenance.”
“What is that supposed to mean?!” She has to shout to be heard; the turbines have begun to whirl, the sound frighteningly close.
“It means-” His eyes lock on hers, and she feels nearly outraged to see him grinning. “It means we’re going to fly.”
Surely she’s heard him wrong. “…WHAT?!”
“Fly!”
“No!”
“Come on,” he yells, pulling her back inside, and just in time. The airship gives another lurch, and in the next few seconds Mao realizes they are actually airborne.
Jun laughs as the wind hits-smacks-their faces, cold and sharp. Mao wants to throttle him and she would, if she could. But she’s trembling almost violently now, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Her fingers curl tightly in his tunic. “Jun,” she bawls in his ear, formality and honorifics forgotten in the face of mortal peril. “I can’t do this.”
“It’s safe,” he insists. “There’s nothing to worry about-”
“Yes there is. I’m afraid of-” She trails off, making the mistake of sneaking a peek out the window to see just how high up they currently are. The action makes nausea rise from the pit of her stomach up to her throat.
He looks at her, and she feels a small amount of triumph at the uncertain expression on his face, unaware that her skin is now tinged green. “What’s wrong?”
Mao swallows, shutting her eyes tight as she feels the floor sway under her feet. “I’M AFRAID OF HEIGHTS!” she manages to let him know-
-before promptly spewing the contents of her lunch on his boots.
~*~
Mao opens her eyes blearily to the smell of bread and low murmurings of male voices, and she knows that she is back in Ohno’s bakery. The voices cease when she sits up, blanket falling to her lap and hair askew. “What happened?” she asks no one in particular.
“You fainted.” Jun swims into view after several blinks and eye-rubbing, sitting on a chair beside what is probably Ohno’s bed, sounding simultaneously worried and apologetic. “Mao-Inoue-san, I’m truly sorry. I had no idea-”
“I’ll go get her some stew,” Ohno cuts in to subtly excuse himself and leave the two alone. Mao bites on her lower lip and runs a hand through her hair, wincing a little as her hand comes across stubborn tangles. Jun hands her a tin cup full of water which she drinks steadily until it’s empty, handing it back to him without a word. She keeps her gaze lowered and concentrates on trying to unknot her locks of hair so much that she doesn't realize Jun has actually fallen silent until he speaks again.
“I want to be your canary.”
Mao looks up, blinking, unsure as to what he meant, exactly. “…Pardon?”
“I was making an allusion.”
“An allusion,” she echoes.
“It wasn't a very good one,” he admits now. “Canary, airship; the sunset was just an added touch. It would have gone as planned if-”
“-I hadn't freaked out, thrown up, and fainted?” Mao finishes, looking down miserably, drawing indiscernible patterns on Ohno’s blanket.
“If the airship had not flown,” Jun goes on as if she hadn’t spoken, letting amusement seep into his tone at her own conclusion. “Though, admittedly, I did not know about your fear of heights.”
Mao is still studiously avoiding his gaze, picking at an imaginary lint. “I don’t exactly make it known.”
“I should have.”
“It’s not your fault, really, it isn’t.”
“I’ve made it a point to know everything else there is to know about you.”
Her head snaps up. “What-”
“You loved reading Lord Avon’s plays. Your favorite line is-”
“O, love is the sweetest joy and the wildest woe,” they say in unison, Mao reciting the words automatically from memory.
“-I know because that page is well-thumbed and worn out. You hide your sketches from your mother. Actually, you hide them from everyone. You outgrew the tales of love and devotion and I wondered if…” he trails off, a small smile on his lips, the very same smile that she loves, and then he looks at her and she finds that she can’t look away. “If your feelings have perhaps also changed, but as I thought, they have not. You love me,” he states clearly. “And I feel the same.”
Her heart, quite plainly, feels like a canary in a cage with its wings beating wildly. “But you never said…”
“I was busy.”
“You don’t seem to be too busy to always open the door for me when I come to deliver Ninomiya-san’s melon bread,” Mao points out, mind still reeling.
“Small windows of opportunity the Guild affords me,” Jun admits, smile widening. “I frankly saw no reason to let you know. But recent events have made me realize…” His face clouds over for a moment, making her wonder just how many times his life has been put in danger, and her heart thumps all the more for all the unseen possibilities of losing him in her life. “That I no longer wish to let a day go by without you by my side.”
“My mother hates the Guild,” Mao says without thinking, even as her heart skips several beats when he reaches for her hand and holds it in his, callused thumb brushing over her skin.
“She doesn't exactly make that unknown,” Jun deadpans, moving to sit from the chair to the bed, ignoring the squeaking protest of the bed-springs. Then he’s leaning forward and cupping her cheek, his lips a breath away from hers as he rests his forehead against hers, closing his eyes.
“I fear I love thee more than I should,” she whispers, each word a near-kiss, her other hand coming up to rest on his chest, though to hold on or to push him away, she’s not entirely sure yet.
Jun laughs. “Then make me thy canary to keep forever in the cage of thy bosom,” he recites back in a whisper just before covering the distance between their lips.
(Ohno will come back at the very same moment, bearing the almost-forgotten stew. Jun will fall off the bed; that, or Mao had pushed him away, though she will vehemently deny doing so.
Unlike Lord Avon’s celebrated and well-loved tale, no one will elope, nor be captured, nor die. Jun and Mao will be wed within a month. The war that will erupt from their marriage is not between two countries; only between her and her mother, though her mother will soon concede, won over by Mao’s palpable happiness.
And they will live happily ever after.)
--
Full script of the play “I Want To Be Your Canary” as shown in Final Fantasy IX can be found here.
Many thanks to sinonymity for the beta, reiicharu for the semi-beta, frostbittenlove for the characterization help and tinyangl because je-whiteday that is all ♥
For Andie, april-0410; I wish you all the happiness in your marriage, and for novemberbaby because Jun/Mao duh that is all. ♥