[LOG] Frozen roses
Characters: Atobe Keigo & Fuji Shuusuke
Location: Flower garden
Time: Monday morning
Rating: G
Summary: Fuji runs into Atobe early one morning. Some roses get it.
The sun eased out from a gap in the mountains to hit the school walls, turning them a rich golden brown. Fuji, camera ready, had been there since the sky turned a pale grey, ready to immortalise the start of this day. Turning the corner by the flower beds, he found to his mild surprise that he was not the only student up so early.
Having a lie in equated to wasting the day in Atobe’s opinion. Even if the weather meant most of his early mornings were spent inside, he rarely skipped out on making the most of the daylight hours. This morning was no exception, only the clemency of the weather had allowed him the simple luxury of being able to wander through the mansion’s immaculate gardens.
As Fuji approached, he’d notice that Atobe was crouched beside a spill of perfumed roses growing in one of the middle beds. A faint smile touched the corners of his lips as he admired the blossom resting lightly between his fingers.
It was an unusual sight. Fuji had rarely seen Atobe look so at ease, taking honest pleasure in the flowers around him. Of course, he might shortly be informing them that he’d have them killed, but for now... Fuji lifted the camera.
The camera he was using today was not the one with the silent shutter. The click-snick sound announced his presence to his oblivious companion.
Atobe’s reverie didn’t have enough of a command over him that he remained ignorant to the sound of a shutter going off. At first he thought it might’ve been another love-struck first year nursing a crush upon him, or someone looking to score a photo for the papers. When he saw it was merely Fuji, he got to his feet and came striding over, “I should charge you for candids.”
Fuji stayed where he was, looking at the result of his shot on the small camera screen. “You got in the way of my roses,” he told Atobe, looking up with his usual smile as the other teen drew close. “But, I won’t charge you for that.”
Atobe was perceptive enough to recognize the calculating mind that lurked behind those benign smiles of Fuji’s. It pleased him to find others who were even close to him intellectually, even if Fuji’s unruffled nature could be somewhat irritating at times, “Still stuck on taking photos of roses, ahn? What a lack of creativity you’re displaying lately.”
“Do you think so?” Fuji turned from Atobe to examine the rose garden. The season was close to ending for the flowers and their petals were turning a myriad of different shades of red through to black. “Each one of the flowers is different while you....” He turned back to scan Atobe’s usual immaculate turnout. “Do your utmost to look the same each and every day.” He lifted the camera again and took an angled shot. “One photo suffices.”
“Hm, it’s hard to improve upon perfection.” Keigo tossed him a wink, but there was a faint crackle of frost gathering upon the surface of the drooping blooms surrounding them. There was some truth in Fuji’s statement - Atobe wore designer labels like they were a uniform and some of the younger students still seemed convinced that he never looked less than immaculate. Only a precious few members of the student body (and a certain teacher) had ever seen his less groomed nature. Now he simply did his best to get in the way of Fuji’s lens, “Isn’t a talented photographer able to draw interest out of any subject?”
“Didn’t you just say I lacked creativity for continually photographing flowers?” Fuji’s eyes had slid back to the roses which now sparkled with their new ice coating. “If I am to be labelled dull for focusing on such changeable creations, what could you possibly offer me?” He stepped around Atobe to kneel beside a frozen bloom, focussing on its new pearlescent shine. After snapping the shutter, he glanced back at Atobe who was looking displeased. He would likely deliver a lordly death sentence at any moment. “If you appear only in the same mode, you can please only one person, Atobe-kun.”
“I think you’ll find that pleasing other people isn’t exactly worthy of my time.” With a single glance out towards the surrounding flower beds the blossoms spilling out of their confines froze into perfect crystalised statues. It was rare to see Atobe using his ‘gifts’ - even during mandatory training sessions for elementary manipulation he often told the tutors that he wasn’t in the mood.
However, far from ruining Fuji’s shots, the beauty of the ice-spun blooms only made the whole garden seem somehow ethereal and otherworldly. In the midst of such elegance Atobe still managed to stand out somehow, even if the chill in the air was causing his shoulders to quiver faintly.
Fuji slowly lowered his camera. He gazed around the beds that now seemed to grow crystals, not flowers in silent wonder. He supposed he should feel sorry for the plants whose sudden freezing was unlikely to have been the ending they were planning but it was hard to feel anything but awe. Besides, winter was coming.
“Your actions belie your words, Atobe,” he said as he straightened. “Your gift is a beautiful one. I cannot do this justice on film.” He returned to the diva, making no comment on the perceptible trembling of the man’s slender frame. As they stood side by side, Fuji made illusionary snow fall over the enchanted scene.
It was almost imperceptible, but a faint up-turn at the corners of Atobe’s lips betrayed his appreciation for the scene they’d created together. Whilst he claimed to despise both extremes of temperature. Whether the frozen depths of Winter, or the baking height of Summer he at least had more of an affinity for controlling the former. Somehow its embrace suited him more with his pale coloring and frosty gaze than Summer ever would. (When he’d be most likely passed out upon him bed under the sweeping gusts of a few separate fans.)
The spiraling flakes, which fabricated looked just as beautiful as they would’ve were they real. Keigo reached out without thinking to try and catch a sprinkling of them upon his palm, “Perhaps you just need a better camera.” The retort was half-hearted whilst his attention had been so completely stolen by watching the slow descent of the snow as it cascaded down over the banks of sparkling, icy blooms.
“No,” Fuji replied. “Some things are meant to be experienced, not captured.” Also, his camera could no longer photograph the whole visage since the snow was visible only in their minds. Fuji watched in amused pleasure as Atobe attempted to catch the flakes. It was nice to see one’s work appreciated. “That won’t work,” he extended his own hand and covered Atobe’s chill fingers with his own, showing them pass through the falling snow. “It is only us that can see this scene.”
Atobe’s hand twitched, stiffening as if he had just about managed to stop himself from snatching it away. The feeling was accompanied by a sharp intake of breath that stung his proud self as he heard it pass between them. However, the warmth of Fuji’s palm upon his frozen skin was welcome enough that he allowed it to remain for the time being. The idea of being subjected to what was essentially a hallucination perturbed him, but at the same time he found the effects of the other man’s powers to be quite astounding. Anyone could’ve been forgiven for believing that the tiny fragments trickling through the sky around them were as real as they themselves.
“I would hate this weather just a little more were it not so beautiful.” His murmured observation almost seemed as if it had never meant to escape the confines of the silver-haired youth’s mind.
Despite the perceptible tremor, exactly how cold Atobe’s skin was came as a surprise to Fuji. It struck him as ironic that someone who could create an ice garden in one breath would not be immune to its effects themselves. He almost drew his own hand back at the same instant the other man’s fingers twitched but stopped, examining the pale skin beneath his own. “You feel the cold intently, Atobe.” Cerulean flashed as Fuji opened his eyes to look at Atobe properly. “You never say.” He moved his hand from palm to chest, resting the palm lightly on the ice king’s sternum. “Is it just the hands or everywhere?”
Lately, and much to his chagrin, Atobe had been less aware of lapses in that iron-fisted control he’d exerted over the side-effects of his abilities for so long. It had become second nature, or so he’d believed, to restrain the ever present quivering which beset his body if the weather dipped below what it considered to lukewarm. Whilst his natural reaction to heat was that of someone who could not tolerate it, low temperatures still had their own manner in which to dig their icy claws into him.
Musing that this might’ve been one of the only times he’d ever seen the true hue of Fuji’s eyes left Atobe open to being less guarded over his personal space that he might’ve been were his thoughts not otherwise occupied. That, and the hand which now rested delicately across a small square of skin left exposed where his shirt buttons were undone spread warmth throughout the rest of his upper body in soothing waves, “From head to toe, but I have certain strategies......for coping that is.”
Fuji scanned Atobe’s attire. Suave, elegant, not warm. Evidently sweatshirts was not one of the strategies. “By letting no one know there is a problem,” he pointed out. “There are those who would say that was a poor strategy.”
Fuji had to admit the solution was not immediately obvious. Kaidoh had not found a foolproof way of dealing with being cold blooded and Atobe’s problem was similar, if less severe. “If you truly did not care what people think, you would wear warmer clothes,” Fuji told him, briefly imagining Atobe in a thick knitted sweater with a picture of a reindeer on it. The image was somewhat cute. “Perhaps the true issue is you care too much.”
It was his latent ability to read moods which caught up on Fuji’s mild amusement more than anything else. Where he would’ve shot the other a sour look and used words to tear him a new one in the past for now he merely frowned, “Or perhaps I wasn’t anticipating having such analytical company at this hour.” Beneath Fuji’s delicate palm Atobe was shivering more intensely than ever. He tore himself away first, wandering down the line of the shimmering flower bed and melting the blossoms back to their original (if now dew stained) forms, “Do you dissect your friends like this, ahn?”
Fuji made no move to stop Atobe as he wrenched away to sulk with the roses. His question back to him --while accusatory-- did suggest he was not being given a lordly dismissal, however, so he lifted his camera and took a couple of shots. “That was not dissecting you,” he told the shivering teen. “There is no point unless there is something below the surface worth finding.” He took a different path through the flowers that intercepted Atobe in the middle of the beds. The shutter snapped. It sounded like a question.
Looking more irritated by the second, Keigo turned his back upon the photographer standing before him. Still, his voice broke the reverent silence of the morning once again. Somehow he’d always found it easier to speak about more personal matters if he didn’t have to remind himself that anyone else was present to hear them, “Looking to dish up dirt, or have you other motivations, Fuji-kun?”
Whilst turned away his annoyance died down somewhat, and he stole out his fingertips to freeze the droplets trickling off of a bowed cluster of roses. They looked like gems hanging suspended by the thinnest of iced threads.
Pain and beauty. That summed up Atobe rather well. Fuji made a mental note to use that as a title if the photographs became display-worthy. He followed Atobe down the path to take a closer look at the frozen droplets. “My motivation is curiosity,” he replied as he raised his camera to the frozen droplets. “And I like your company when you are not on a defensive high.”
“Treasure it whilst it lasts. I have been most......out of sorts lately.” By this he was clearly implying that the aftermath of whatever had been happening which had led him to be absent for the greater part of a week had somehow made him soft in the head. The grass beneath his heels crackled with a frost which followed each step, and in an act of rare kindness (and maybe just a little admiration towards what little of Fuji’s photographic work that he’d seen), Atobe froze leaves in mid flight, and cast a gleaming layer of ice throughout the fountain gracing the center of the garden. Jets of water found themselves trapped in motion, rendered beautiful even whilst static and glimmering in the promise of sunlight.
Keigo settled himself upon the stone edge of the sculptured circle, hugging an arm around his waist against the chill of being so close to his own handiwork. A wry smile aimed at no one in particular spoke of how aware of his own softness he’d become. Any more of this behavior and he’d be making friends or some other dreadful connection to the school which had become his home.
Atobe’s new internal thoughtfulness had not gone amiss on Fuji. Frankly, he preferred the old Atobe and was disappointed that he had not been sentenced to an untimely assassination during their encounter. Something was on the diva’s mind.
The plus point was that he had become a walking side-kick to Fuji’s greatest photographic aspirations. With his camera in hand, Fuji held the shutter down in a continual sequence of fast clicks that captured the leaf’s procession to a frozen life. Joining Atobe on the stone, he leaned his back against him, sharing his own warmth as he changed the lens and focused on the fountain. “No all change is bad,” he commented, as he lined up the freshly frozen scene. “As you are demonstrating.”
The illusions cast in ice and snow by his abilities all came crashing down simultaneously, and left the garden drenched in moisture which would take hours in the sun to evaporate. That guarded, haughty expression had been plastered back onto Atobe’s beautiful features - rendering them far harsher and far closer to his old self than he seemed to be aware of. He stood in a single fluid movement, and whilst turning upon his heel muttered, “I hope the photos look awful.”
That was slightly surprising. Fuji saved himself just in time from falling straight into the fountain, camera and all. He watched Atobe go, curious as to why one of his least innocuous comments had produced quite such an exciting effect. When the man was almost out of earshot, he replied, “Running doesn’t suit you, Keigo.”
Location: Flower garden
Time: Monday morning
Rating: G
Summary: Fuji runs into Atobe early one morning. Some roses get it.
The sun eased out from a gap in the mountains to hit the school walls, turning them a rich golden brown. Fuji, camera ready, had been there since the sky turned a pale grey, ready to immortalise the start of this day. Turning the corner by the flower beds, he found to his mild surprise that he was not the only student up so early.
Having a lie in equated to wasting the day in Atobe’s opinion. Even if the weather meant most of his early mornings were spent inside, he rarely skipped out on making the most of the daylight hours. This morning was no exception, only the clemency of the weather had allowed him the simple luxury of being able to wander through the mansion’s immaculate gardens.
As Fuji approached, he’d notice that Atobe was crouched beside a spill of perfumed roses growing in one of the middle beds. A faint smile touched the corners of his lips as he admired the blossom resting lightly between his fingers.
It was an unusual sight. Fuji had rarely seen Atobe look so at ease, taking honest pleasure in the flowers around him. Of course, he might shortly be informing them that he’d have them killed, but for now... Fuji lifted the camera.
The camera he was using today was not the one with the silent shutter. The click-snick sound announced his presence to his oblivious companion.
Atobe’s reverie didn’t have enough of a command over him that he remained ignorant to the sound of a shutter going off. At first he thought it might’ve been another love-struck first year nursing a crush upon him, or someone looking to score a photo for the papers. When he saw it was merely Fuji, he got to his feet and came striding over, “I should charge you for candids.”
Fuji stayed where he was, looking at the result of his shot on the small camera screen. “You got in the way of my roses,” he told Atobe, looking up with his usual smile as the other teen drew close. “But, I won’t charge you for that.”
Atobe was perceptive enough to recognize the calculating mind that lurked behind those benign smiles of Fuji’s. It pleased him to find others who were even close to him intellectually, even if Fuji’s unruffled nature could be somewhat irritating at times, “Still stuck on taking photos of roses, ahn? What a lack of creativity you’re displaying lately.”
“Do you think so?” Fuji turned from Atobe to examine the rose garden. The season was close to ending for the flowers and their petals were turning a myriad of different shades of red through to black. “Each one of the flowers is different while you....” He turned back to scan Atobe’s usual immaculate turnout. “Do your utmost to look the same each and every day.” He lifted the camera again and took an angled shot. “One photo suffices.”
“Hm, it’s hard to improve upon perfection.” Keigo tossed him a wink, but there was a faint crackle of frost gathering upon the surface of the drooping blooms surrounding them. There was some truth in Fuji’s statement - Atobe wore designer labels like they were a uniform and some of the younger students still seemed convinced that he never looked less than immaculate. Only a precious few members of the student body (and a certain teacher) had ever seen his less groomed nature. Now he simply did his best to get in the way of Fuji’s lens, “Isn’t a talented photographer able to draw interest out of any subject?”
“Didn’t you just say I lacked creativity for continually photographing flowers?” Fuji’s eyes had slid back to the roses which now sparkled with their new ice coating. “If I am to be labelled dull for focusing on such changeable creations, what could you possibly offer me?” He stepped around Atobe to kneel beside a frozen bloom, focussing on its new pearlescent shine. After snapping the shutter, he glanced back at Atobe who was looking displeased. He would likely deliver a lordly death sentence at any moment. “If you appear only in the same mode, you can please only one person, Atobe-kun.”
“I think you’ll find that pleasing other people isn’t exactly worthy of my time.” With a single glance out towards the surrounding flower beds the blossoms spilling out of their confines froze into perfect crystalised statues. It was rare to see Atobe using his ‘gifts’ - even during mandatory training sessions for elementary manipulation he often told the tutors that he wasn’t in the mood.
However, far from ruining Fuji’s shots, the beauty of the ice-spun blooms only made the whole garden seem somehow ethereal and otherworldly. In the midst of such elegance Atobe still managed to stand out somehow, even if the chill in the air was causing his shoulders to quiver faintly.
Fuji slowly lowered his camera. He gazed around the beds that now seemed to grow crystals, not flowers in silent wonder. He supposed he should feel sorry for the plants whose sudden freezing was unlikely to have been the ending they were planning but it was hard to feel anything but awe. Besides, winter was coming.
“Your actions belie your words, Atobe,” he said as he straightened. “Your gift is a beautiful one. I cannot do this justice on film.” He returned to the diva, making no comment on the perceptible trembling of the man’s slender frame. As they stood side by side, Fuji made illusionary snow fall over the enchanted scene.
It was almost imperceptible, but a faint up-turn at the corners of Atobe’s lips betrayed his appreciation for the scene they’d created together. Whilst he claimed to despise both extremes of temperature. Whether the frozen depths of Winter, or the baking height of Summer he at least had more of an affinity for controlling the former. Somehow its embrace suited him more with his pale coloring and frosty gaze than Summer ever would. (When he’d be most likely passed out upon him bed under the sweeping gusts of a few separate fans.)
The spiraling flakes, which fabricated looked just as beautiful as they would’ve were they real. Keigo reached out without thinking to try and catch a sprinkling of them upon his palm, “Perhaps you just need a better camera.” The retort was half-hearted whilst his attention had been so completely stolen by watching the slow descent of the snow as it cascaded down over the banks of sparkling, icy blooms.
“No,” Fuji replied. “Some things are meant to be experienced, not captured.” Also, his camera could no longer photograph the whole visage since the snow was visible only in their minds. Fuji watched in amused pleasure as Atobe attempted to catch the flakes. It was nice to see one’s work appreciated. “That won’t work,” he extended his own hand and covered Atobe’s chill fingers with his own, showing them pass through the falling snow. “It is only us that can see this scene.”
Atobe’s hand twitched, stiffening as if he had just about managed to stop himself from snatching it away. The feeling was accompanied by a sharp intake of breath that stung his proud self as he heard it pass between them. However, the warmth of Fuji’s palm upon his frozen skin was welcome enough that he allowed it to remain for the time being. The idea of being subjected to what was essentially a hallucination perturbed him, but at the same time he found the effects of the other man’s powers to be quite astounding. Anyone could’ve been forgiven for believing that the tiny fragments trickling through the sky around them were as real as they themselves.
“I would hate this weather just a little more were it not so beautiful.” His murmured observation almost seemed as if it had never meant to escape the confines of the silver-haired youth’s mind.
Despite the perceptible tremor, exactly how cold Atobe’s skin was came as a surprise to Fuji. It struck him as ironic that someone who could create an ice garden in one breath would not be immune to its effects themselves. He almost drew his own hand back at the same instant the other man’s fingers twitched but stopped, examining the pale skin beneath his own. “You feel the cold intently, Atobe.” Cerulean flashed as Fuji opened his eyes to look at Atobe properly. “You never say.” He moved his hand from palm to chest, resting the palm lightly on the ice king’s sternum. “Is it just the hands or everywhere?”
Lately, and much to his chagrin, Atobe had been less aware of lapses in that iron-fisted control he’d exerted over the side-effects of his abilities for so long. It had become second nature, or so he’d believed, to restrain the ever present quivering which beset his body if the weather dipped below what it considered to lukewarm. Whilst his natural reaction to heat was that of someone who could not tolerate it, low temperatures still had their own manner in which to dig their icy claws into him.
Musing that this might’ve been one of the only times he’d ever seen the true hue of Fuji’s eyes left Atobe open to being less guarded over his personal space that he might’ve been were his thoughts not otherwise occupied. That, and the hand which now rested delicately across a small square of skin left exposed where his shirt buttons were undone spread warmth throughout the rest of his upper body in soothing waves, “From head to toe, but I have certain strategies......for coping that is.”
Fuji scanned Atobe’s attire. Suave, elegant, not warm. Evidently sweatshirts was not one of the strategies. “By letting no one know there is a problem,” he pointed out. “There are those who would say that was a poor strategy.”
Fuji had to admit the solution was not immediately obvious. Kaidoh had not found a foolproof way of dealing with being cold blooded and Atobe’s problem was similar, if less severe. “If you truly did not care what people think, you would wear warmer clothes,” Fuji told him, briefly imagining Atobe in a thick knitted sweater with a picture of a reindeer on it. The image was somewhat cute. “Perhaps the true issue is you care too much.”
It was his latent ability to read moods which caught up on Fuji’s mild amusement more than anything else. Where he would’ve shot the other a sour look and used words to tear him a new one in the past for now he merely frowned, “Or perhaps I wasn’t anticipating having such analytical company at this hour.” Beneath Fuji’s delicate palm Atobe was shivering more intensely than ever. He tore himself away first, wandering down the line of the shimmering flower bed and melting the blossoms back to their original (if now dew stained) forms, “Do you dissect your friends like this, ahn?”
Fuji made no move to stop Atobe as he wrenched away to sulk with the roses. His question back to him --while accusatory-- did suggest he was not being given a lordly dismissal, however, so he lifted his camera and took a couple of shots. “That was not dissecting you,” he told the shivering teen. “There is no point unless there is something below the surface worth finding.” He took a different path through the flowers that intercepted Atobe in the middle of the beds. The shutter snapped. It sounded like a question.
Looking more irritated by the second, Keigo turned his back upon the photographer standing before him. Still, his voice broke the reverent silence of the morning once again. Somehow he’d always found it easier to speak about more personal matters if he didn’t have to remind himself that anyone else was present to hear them, “Looking to dish up dirt, or have you other motivations, Fuji-kun?”
Whilst turned away his annoyance died down somewhat, and he stole out his fingertips to freeze the droplets trickling off of a bowed cluster of roses. They looked like gems hanging suspended by the thinnest of iced threads.
Pain and beauty. That summed up Atobe rather well. Fuji made a mental note to use that as a title if the photographs became display-worthy. He followed Atobe down the path to take a closer look at the frozen droplets. “My motivation is curiosity,” he replied as he raised his camera to the frozen droplets. “And I like your company when you are not on a defensive high.”
“Treasure it whilst it lasts. I have been most......out of sorts lately.” By this he was clearly implying that the aftermath of whatever had been happening which had led him to be absent for the greater part of a week had somehow made him soft in the head. The grass beneath his heels crackled with a frost which followed each step, and in an act of rare kindness (and maybe just a little admiration towards what little of Fuji’s photographic work that he’d seen), Atobe froze leaves in mid flight, and cast a gleaming layer of ice throughout the fountain gracing the center of the garden. Jets of water found themselves trapped in motion, rendered beautiful even whilst static and glimmering in the promise of sunlight.
Keigo settled himself upon the stone edge of the sculptured circle, hugging an arm around his waist against the chill of being so close to his own handiwork. A wry smile aimed at no one in particular spoke of how aware of his own softness he’d become. Any more of this behavior and he’d be making friends or some other dreadful connection to the school which had become his home.
Atobe’s new internal thoughtfulness had not gone amiss on Fuji. Frankly, he preferred the old Atobe and was disappointed that he had not been sentenced to an untimely assassination during their encounter. Something was on the diva’s mind.
The plus point was that he had become a walking side-kick to Fuji’s greatest photographic aspirations. With his camera in hand, Fuji held the shutter down in a continual sequence of fast clicks that captured the leaf’s procession to a frozen life. Joining Atobe on the stone, he leaned his back against him, sharing his own warmth as he changed the lens and focused on the fountain. “No all change is bad,” he commented, as he lined up the freshly frozen scene. “As you are demonstrating.”
The illusions cast in ice and snow by his abilities all came crashing down simultaneously, and left the garden drenched in moisture which would take hours in the sun to evaporate. That guarded, haughty expression had been plastered back onto Atobe’s beautiful features - rendering them far harsher and far closer to his old self than he seemed to be aware of. He stood in a single fluid movement, and whilst turning upon his heel muttered, “I hope the photos look awful.”
That was slightly surprising. Fuji saved himself just in time from falling straight into the fountain, camera and all. He watched Atobe go, curious as to why one of his least innocuous comments had produced quite such an exciting effect. When the man was almost out of earshot, he replied, “Running doesn’t suit you, Keigo.”