Fic: Starlight Now (1)
Title: Starlight Now
Characters/Pairings: FaiYuui, some KuroFai, mild KuroYuui, mentions of other characters
Rating: T
Summary: Yuui writes for a living to convince people of his dreams, but cannot convince himself to stop loving his apparently oblivious twin.
A/N: part 1 of a secret santa gift for eijentu~ You wanted a modern AU and fluffy angst and I hope this goes some way to hitting some of your dreams. ;w; I’M SORRY IT’S WEIRD. (Next part will be up before New Year, I promise.)
*****
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet II.ii
[Yuui writes love songs sometimes, without music, scrawled out on absent napkins and torn-off sheets of notepaper, crammed along the edges of shopping lists and tucked away on bookmarks in forgotten books. Fai finds them from time to time, half-dreamt lyrics slipping into his lap, hidden away in shared bookshelves and under couch cushions, pinned to the fridge, folded to prop up the wobbly coffee table, under the rug. They’re a jumble of things, a jumble of past times, sunshine and autumn leaves and the noise of the rain in the gutters - this is loving, Yuui writes once, half a post-it stuck to the bottom of his Peter Rabbit coffee-mug, moons and stars and too many bubbles in the sink that spill out onto the floor. Quiet little deaths at the smiles you wear crinkled in the corners of your eyes.
It’s poetry? Fai asks, more than once. There are no notes with Yuui’s words, Fai knows, never ever, just sliding lines of his brother’s slanted writing; English, German, Italian, French. They’re twins; they understand their languages, but as they age they lose little bits of understanding about each other. People are difficult.
It’s music, Yuui always answers, presented with whichever lyrics Fai has most recently found, borne back and carried to his brother like the prize in an elaborate treasure hunt. Looks at old words over the edges of the glasses he wears when he’s working, over his mug, over a bowl or cushion or book - Yuui always seems to have something in his hands. It just hasn’t found its melody yet.]
Fai Fluorite loves his bed, and he loves it most of all first thing in the morning when he has to get out of it. It’s an emotionally abusive relationship. Fai heaps his adoration upon the memory foam mattress and cotton sheets, a nightly worship to the pillow gods as he wraps himself up in his duvet’s caterpillar cocoon, and the bed deliberately hurts his feelings by being its most comfortable when the dawn’s rude light barges in through the curtains he always forgets to draw, rousing Fai from slumber alongside his twin brother (and housemate)’s call to get up already if he wants any breakfast before work. Breakfast or bed - Yuui staunchly refuses breakfast in bed unless it’s a special occasion because he has a heart of pure unbreakable stone.
Fai chooses bed a good 80% of the time, curling up under his sheets and refusing to move until Yuui comes in and attempts to either drag him out the door by his foot or kill him; it’s cold out there in the winter, cold and cruel and still mostly dark, and Yuui is a horrible brother, an unfeeling brother, and what he does to his poor twin is a terrible social injustice and Fai will complain until he has a mug of something hot pushed into his hands and buttered toast shoved in his mouth. Yuui brushes away the crumbs at the corner of Fai’s mouth with his thumb as they fall and Fai mumbles what a wonderful sibling he has until Yuui hits him with the morning paper - because Yuui is always dressed already, brisk and pink with the morning cold he braved on the way to the newsagents, and there’s fresh milk in the fridge and sweets tucked in Fai’s coat pockets that he finds later, finally on the way to work, fire-red scarf tucked firmly around his neck and fingertips still slightly sticky with strawberry jam.
The day opens up like one of the storybooks Yuui writes for a living, edged with bright binding and loving hands. Amber streetlights flickering in half-frozen puddles as they go off for the day, and thoughtful sweetness dissolving Fai’s mouth into a smile. He wears that smile most of the day at the science museum where he works, catches sight of it in his reflection in the curved surface of a turbine engine. It’s a little like his brother, wherever Yuui is at that given moment in time, so Fai digs out his phone when his boss isn’t looking and takes a picture of whatever strikes his fancy at the moment, texts it to his twin to share that reflection with him.
Yuui doesn’t text back terribly often. When he does it’s usually to say something banal like Get back to work or do u want 2 get thai tonite? I’ll pay, but occasionally Yuui will text with a complaint about the next-door neighbour’s cat flouncing through his vegetable garden, or a query about if Fai knows what doorknobs looked like in the sixteenth century because the internet is currently being useless.
>“The internet is for porn,” Fai sings to his brother when he gets home, “not information.”
Yuui throws a cushion at him, and Fai laughs and ducks to let it harmlessly hit the wall. Goes over to kiss his frustrated brother on the cheek straight after regardless, presenting both the thwarted cushion and the box of Jaffa Cakes he’d stopped to buy on his way home. Just for Yuui.
“Love you~,” Fai says, and drops a kiss to Yuui’s hair.
His twin smacks him with the box of Jaffa Cakes, but sets them down to sigh and wrap his arms around Fai’s waist. “I don’t love you at all.”
The Fluorites are liars.
You promised me always, but even the stars are finite.
They’ve always been close. Always. The twins’ childhood was a tangle of sights and sounds across countries and continents - their parents had died when they had been very young in mysterious circumstances, and they’d ended up living with their grandparents, travelling from place to place as their grandfather’s job took them.
Icchan had been an odd, eclectic man - but a kind one. He brought them gifts when he had had the time to spare, let them test the toys he made and showed them how to deconstruct them, build them all up again. Played hide and seek in the garden for hours, and sneaked them cake when his wife wasn’t looking.
Identical, part-Asian and blond - Yuui and Fai had attracted looks wherever they’d went, waif-like in their youth and slim as they crept into adulthood. Fai had worn skirts and dresses for the three months they’d spent in Austria just to confuse their classmates, fell in love with the coffee there and demanded they take a good five kilos with them when they left the country for Germany, where he’d promptly forgotten about the coffee in favour of the beer. Yuui had learned how to make fireworks and noodles in Hong Kong; Fai had blown up a crate and almost himself, and then bought suits imported from London, tied Yuui’s tie for him and then stuck a plum blossom comb in his brother’s hair. Their worldwide adventure, the world and each other, their one true constant thing.
Chaotic but happy, that’s how Yuui describes their childhood, smiles as he pens a letter to his grandmother and Fai emails a letter asking for Belgian chocolates and stroopwafels when Icchan’s job takes him and his wife to the EU. Their grandparents are still so busy, still travelling, even though Yuui and Fai have long since parted ways from them, settled at last together in a home in West Europe where it rains and snows and the sun shines out from behind the clouds. England, because Yuui likes the sea and Fai likes imagining what lives beneath the waves, running down the streets throwing out random history and chattering to wide-eyed children who wander around the museum where he works and dog his footsteps like baby ducklings. Yuui writes him fairytales and publishes them, lounges around their home with his laptop in oversized jumpers with his longer hair scraped back in a messy ponytail. The kettle’s hot when Fai comes home with the evening, the TV’s on and seven times out of ten Yuui’s curled up sleeping on the sofa in front of the TV, lulled to sleep by the news with one knee drawn up to his chest. Fai brings him a blanket, makes himself a cup of tea and sits drinking it until Yuui wakes up again, the quietest moment in all Fai’s day.
“It’s so wonderful you get along with your brother,” the newsagent’s daughter tells Yuui in the school holidays, those mornings where she’s awake when Yuui goes to fetch the paper. Half the neighbourhood’s sweet on the girl in some way, the shop decorated with cards wishing her good luck with her GCSEs. “Mine keeps calling me a monster all the time -”
“You are a monster,” her brother tells her, stacking shelves at the other end of the shop and side-stepping the kick she aims at him.
Yuui leaves the newsagent’s to the sound of world war three behind him, and goes home to wake his own sleeping brother up - an amusing, if frustrating, task. His smile falls a little when the teenagers’ arguing fades out of hearing, Yuui burying his cold nose in his own scarf - blue, blue as forget-me-nots, matching his gloves. Their scarves are colour-coded for the world’s convenience; like lightsabers, Fai laughs, knots Yuui’s scarf up in a big looping bow. Blue, because Yuui is the good twin.
Yuui’s not good at all.
The knowledge jabs at him, in the silent hours before Fai’s stirred from his bed-nest, Yuui walking with the paper tucked under his arm and the morning buses trundling past in the streets beside, gold with lights and sleepy disgruntled people already on the way to work. The knowledge gnaws at Yuui, at his insides, a tight, hot little ball that expands through his belly and chest, an ache that wears away at his bones more than the late November wind could ever do.
Inside - inside Fai leaves traces of his eternal deterioration everywhere, boots in the hallway to trip over, keys in the kitchen, dirty plates, hairclips, glitter pens and dark eyeliner, a ‘kitty’ charm attached to his work bag. Half-finished books with half-bent spines, toothpaste splatters on the edge of the mirror in the bathroom, a long spool of purple ribbon unwound over the upstairs landing with no explanation for what it’s doing there. Yuui looks at it all, picks some of it up and tidies it away, but the house still breathes of Fai, and Fai breathes in his bedroom, steady-slow in sleep, hair fanned out around his pillow with the streetlights picking highlights in his hair.
Yuui stands at the foot of his brother’s bed, watches Fai sleep, and wants so very badly to muss up that already mussed blond hair, frame his brother’s cheeks with his cold hands and kiss Fai awake in a way no sibling should really want to.
The thought burns, and burns Yuui with it.
He takes Fai’s pillow and beats Fai around the head with it instead. Fai flails with a muffled yelp, and their lives continue on as they’ve always done, a steady beat.
[Who are they for? Fai asks of the love songs, building up a little collection of his brother’s lyrics in an old trinket box and rereading them when it grows dark outside and the mood takes him to be fanciful. He keeps them all, all the ones he finds, because Yuui just throws them all away, otherwise, and that’s a waste and a shame, because Fai always loves the things his brother creates, always. Worlds and dreams and creatures inside Yuui’s head.
No-one, Yuui replies, and ignores the prodding in his arm. Anyone. They’re just random bits of words I liked the sound of once, Fai, and wanted to get out of my head. They don’t matter.
Fai keeps the ones he finds, anyway. Hidden.
Yuui keeps throwing the ones he finds away.]
Cats should be concerned with practical things - dinner and pettings and bed. Let them be selfish, always, because the world should tremble if they think to cast their minds elsewhere.
There’s a man at the museum where Fai works, and if you ask anyone who sees them interact at all, they’ll tell you that Fai and him are a couple. How could they be anything else?
The man - his name is Kurogane, and, it’s widely agreed, he’s terribly handsome. He’s also a terrible ass. Tall, dark and grumpy Kuro-tan, Fai coos at him, stretches up on his tiptoes to tug at Kurogane’s short spiky hair and then darts away laughing when Kurogane snarls. They’re not at all reserved around each other - oh, Kurogane tries to be, born and raised in Japan for sixteen years of his precious life, prim and proper and respectful until someone (Fai, most of the time) irritates him into lashing out, snatching up the nearest lift-able piece of museum exhibit and chasing the idiot down three hallways and seven sets of stairs until Fai trips, windmills his arms, and finds himself suddenly caught by strong Japanese arms and a red, red glare.
My saviour, Fai croons, winding his arms around Kurogane’s neck and pecking the man on the cheek - and Kurogane splutters and goes red, dropping Fai rather abruptly on the floor.
“Kuro-chan,” Fai explains at the supermarket with his twin, hands on the trolley handle as he leans his weight over the bar, “is just terribly shy. Can we get peaches while we’re here? We haven’t had peaches for a while. I could make a melba.”
Yuui continues absently inspecting a cabbage. “The peaches are cheaper in the market. I’ll get you some tomorrow, if you promise to stop tormenting your co-workers. One day one of them is going to snap and beat you to death with a novelty souvenir, and they’ll charge me for your funeral.”
“I don’t torment,” Fai protests. “I’m doing my civic duty!”
“… ‘Duty.’”
Fai nods fervently, taking the cabbage from Yuui’s hands and putting it in the trolley. “I’m helping Kuro-pon develop and mature as a responsible member of society, blossoming like the beautiful butterfly he is deep inside.” His twin just looks at him. “…Deep, deep inside?”
“If he kills you the jury’ll pass it off as self-defence, you realise.” Yuui isn’t remotely convinced by his brother’s argument. “To his mental health, at the very least. Do you think we’ve got enough carrots to last us a few weeks at home already? I forgot to check before we came out.”
“Maybe get a small bag? And if we bought too much we could always buy a rabbit to feed them to -”
“No,” says Yuui firmly. “No pets.”
“But. The carrots -”
“You can barely look after yourself and your friends, let alone a small, dependent animal.”
Fai pouts. “But Yuui, friends are different. Kuro-rin is a big boy, you know; he’s fully capable of taking himself on walks and going to the toilet without adult supervision. He’s quite a clever doggy -”
Yuui sighs. “I thought he was a butterfly?”
“Yuui, you mustn’t be so obstructionist in this multi-faceted society we live and work in -”
“Do you want those peaches tomorrow or not?”
Fai shuts up.
Yuui writes about a world filled with strange talking rabbit-like animals incapable of keeping a story straight, totem poles standing tall amidst rainforest trees. Fai grins when he reads it over his brother’s shoulder, presses his chin to Yuui’s shoulder and hangs like a limp noodle over Yuui’s back - and Yuui doesn’t turn, doesn’t twist his head those scant few inches to press his lips to Fai’s curved mouth, hook his fingers into Fai’s button-up and utterly ruin the stiff collar, dig past the cloth to the pale skin beneath and cling.
Doesn’t. Desperately.
Swallow it, swallow you - I could devour you whole.
Sometimes, Yuui feels a little like a drowning man.
Fai brings Kurogane home for dinner - a broad black shadow in the doorway beside Fai’s bright light. Yuui eyes them both, but steps back and in, allows this stranger he knows so much about (Fai talks a lot, all the time, even when he doesn’t open his mouth. Because Fai is expressive, their grandmother had always said, tucking Yuui’s curls behind his ear with gentle hands. So are you, but you’re quieter about it) into their home.
“I’m Yuui,” Yuui offers eventually, extending his hand to Kurogane when Fai abandons his guest in the hallway, darting off to the kitchen for the promise of tea. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last, Mr. Kurogane. Fai talks of you often.”
“Brothers?” Kurogane asks, double-checks, shakes the hand briefly - he has a strong, sure grip, and intent eyes. Yuui nods, and doesn’t meet his gaze. “The idiot doesn’t talk about you much at all.”
So it goes, and the sting is felt, even after all these years.