Give Way
Title: Give WayFandom: Kuroshitsuji AU: Mafia.
Author:
write_rewrite
Rating: PG-13.
Pairings: Grell/the Undertaker (Joseph).
Warnings: None.
Notes: For naoki_hime as a birthday present. Happy birthday!
Summary: The memories were changing.
In his youth, he remembered playing tricks with coins and paper planes and wasting his time rambling among the flower-populated fields of the countryside. Hot summer days floated past in a cloud of soft buzzing and blooming flowers and screen doors perpetually half open, and the winters brought firelight to the grate and heavy, velvet curtains.
The house had no fire now, and the curtains were skeletons of their former selves, but Joseph saw it as it had been when he had still marked his height in the doorjamb to the kitchen and hidden in the spacious closet beneath the rickety, mahogany staircase.
He stared at the dust lining the mantlepiece like paint and the dead bugs in their graveyard on the windowsill, and saw himself as a child, opening presents - the tree had been in the nook at the back of the living room, in front of a window that had never been, to his rememberance, free of chrysantemums. Wrapping paper on the floor - not floorboards, as it was now, but a thick, Persian rug that you sank into - and his father would play the piano as the paper tore. Always 'Good King Wencelas'. He'd known no other song.
Joseph smiled, and pulled away from the windowsill to lay his hand heavily on the uncovered keys - they were stained yellow with old age, and hard to press. Sound dribbled whisperingly from the casement, too soft and wilted to stir his memories. He ran his hand over the round, leather top of the piano stool, and heard the springs creak as he moved it like a drawn-out chord.
Pulling it out, he sat at the piano and positioned his fingers over the keys; when he had been young, his feet hadn't been able to touch the ground, and now they pressed to the pedals without difficulty, and his fingers, elongated and thin from years of practice, reached the notes naturally. He pressed an A, a B flat, a C, and they hummed in the air like forgotten ghosts.
If his mother had been around, she'd poke her head around the door to the kitchen and ask him to play Claire de Lune.
The piano didn't sound so nice, but he played the first few opening notes thoughtfully, and then stood up.
Grell came down from upstairs, and the past bent around him; suddenly, there was no more room for memories of 'gone by', no more room for anything that had happened long ago. There was only the redhead's vivid smile, and his long, slender legs, and that way he had of coming out on top. There was only the future, and the present, and the recent present. The past belonged in peace.
"So this is where you grew up," Grell said. He touched the frays of a curtain that had once been floral - and was now gray - and moved it like a breeze.
Joseph nodded. "I bought the old place when my parents died. Figured I'd re-do it all and rent it out. Though, now I think I'll just re-do it and give it to Lissy as a birthday present."
Grell laughed, tugging the curtain aside to open up the window. Paint chips fell on his hands.
The garden was an overgrown square, more brown than green, run wild with narcissus and dandelions and roses that had grown one on top of the other. A cluster of wild flowers peeked out from underneath thorns and around cracks in the gravel pathway. There was a fountain slowly crumbling to dust in the middle, dry as bone. It was an ornament of a mermaid, pouring out invisible water from a jug.
"She'll love it," Grell closed the window again and turned to look at him - age hadn't slowed the redhead down any. There were no streaks in his hair, and the lines around his mouth and his eyes were too faint to matter. Eyeliner darkened the circles beneath his eyes.
Joseph shifted closer and kissed his forehead. "Angie will kill us both. We're aiding and abetting her in moving out."
"Oh, it'll be fine." Carelessly, Grell locked his arms around Joseph's neck and leaned up on tip toe, pressing his mouth to the corner of JOseph's; that slim mouth smiled at the kiss, "we'll just need to hide in the basement for a few days and pray that William comes around to take the brunt of her ire. He does have a habit for showing up when my wife is in a murderous rage. Saved my arse more than once."
"He would," Joseph's voice sounded slightly sour. Pinching the spy's hips, he pulled him closer into a hug and buried his face in the top of Grell's hair. All the ash and dust of memories turned to flowers and perfume, and the present and the future were bright and clear and perfect.