Fic: Sleight (2)
Title: Sleight
Characters/Pairings: KuroFai (meaning FxK and KxF, but ‘KuroFai’ is just so much easier to type and say)
Rating: M - sex, mild language (not a lot this chapter)
Summary: Modern AU. Fai’s a conjurer, a performer (magician), and Kurogane falls for his tricks.
Chapter: 2/4
A/N: In which Fai doesn’t do as magic as he probably ought to. (Oops.) ;;;
Part One
*****
The show goes on, and on and on, before the curtains fall, and before each entertainer takes their bows they’ve got to give their all. You must forgive my transgressions, dears, because I’ve always done my best - you may abhor my acting but you’ll all agree I’ve still got zest. Everything is for the performance: my props, my words, my cue. And if you scoff and point fingers - it’s fine. I lie to myself too.
#
Some equations for you:
Five months = almost twenty-two weeks = one hundred and fifty-three days = three thousand, six hundred and seventy-two hours = two hundred and twenty thousand, three hundred and twenty minutes = thirteen million, two hundred and nineteen thousand, and two hundred seconds.
Five months = eight phone-calls to someone who doesn’t answer = brooding = two concerned parents = more phone-calls = family get-togethers = three trips to the nightclub = seventy-two nights out = two dates with people met = a short relationship that lasts three weeks = an endless amount of swearing at life, the universe and everything = lots and lots of alcohol.
Five months = getting over it. There isn’t even an ‘it’ anymore.
…
All of this is approximate, of course.
#
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
- Leslie Poles Hartley
#
It’s a fact of life that the Daidoujis have a much bigger house than Kurogane does. Kendappa and Tomoyo and Souma might as well count too considering the amount of nights she stays with her girlfriend still live with their mother, Sonomi, Kurogane’s aunt, at the woman’s insistence - not that it can really count as living with her considering Sonomi’s out of town (or the country) on business more often than not -, and they have a big place between them, to match Sonomi and Kendappa’s interestingly-sized paycheques. Sonomi heads the company; Kendappa works for her mother high up in one of the departments; Tomoyo does freelance work now and then and Kurogane stays well, well out of it all because the last time his own mother had talked him into helping his aunt for one weekend he’d been stuck doing a mountain of paperwork. He’d dreamt about seas of fine print for months after that.
But yes. The Daidoujis have a bigger house - and as a result, a much bigger basement. That Kendappa had commandeered a long time ago, and turned into a personal gym, and sparring rooms. Both she and Souma use them frequently, and, knowing Kurogane, they’d offered him the place to use as he liked as well, with the condition that if he’s planning to spar with anyone, it had better be them.
Kurogane likes the Daidoujis’ basement.
Kurogane doesn’t quite like so much having to brave the Daidoujis’ corridor to get to the basement - the long, often Tomoyo-and-her-friend infested corridor.
“Good afternoon.”
Kurogane twitches, caught just on the threshold of the basement’s steps and freedom, and turns back to face his little cousin. Tomoyo smiles at him, innocent, and stirs the ice cubes in the drink she’s holding with a red straw. Kurogane swears the girl watches for him coming. “Tomoyo.”
“I thought I heard you come in, Kurogane,” she has servants, don’t they tell her these things? The ice cubes clink against the glass they’re in. “My sister’s not in from work yet.”
“I came to practise some kata beforehand.” Kurogane tries not to shift from foot to foot; he doesn’t quite know why, but Tomoyo reminds him far too much of his mother sometimes. It’s the look on her face, probably - the one that is somehow loving and exasperated and amused all at once, with just a dash of mischief at the corner of the mouth.
“Would you like some lemonade first?” She pads forward to lay a hand on his arm, smiling up at him with all the charm she can muster. It’s quite an accountable amount - both Kurogane and Kendappa have taken it upon themselves to deal with the string of admirers Tomoyo has gained at her school with various threat tactics when they occasionally pick her up. (It’s backfired on them both a little - some of the admirers have switched over to them and Tomoyo’s forbidden Kurogane from beating up the snot-nosed twit that decided to call him ‘pretty’ to his face.) “Sakura and I were making some before. Have you met Sakura yet?”
No. No, he hasn’t met Sakura he doesn’t want to, Tomoyo’s friends are almost as scary as she is and no, he doesn’t want lemonade, but Tomoyo’s not waiting for an answer from him, already tugging on his wrist to lead him through to the kitchen. And he could dig his heels in and refuse her, but…well…
“I don’t like sweet crap,” Kurogane grumbles, but Tomoyo isn’t listening as she pushes open the room’s door. “Tomoyo -”
There’s a girl already in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a drink matching the one Tomoyo’s still carrying, watching the television in the corner. She looks over when her friend comes in, and then up at Kurogane.
And up.
And up.
And up. Gods, she’s tiny.
And then quietly ‘eeps’.
Good. She’s an intelligent one.
“Kurogane, this is Sakura, my friend.” Tomoyo goes to stand beside the frozen girl at the table. ‘Sakura’ is like a gazelle: all long-limbed and slim, with chestnut hair and huge doe eyes of a startling green. It’s a pretty combination, but it only emphasises the deer-in-headlights look she’s adopted. “Sakura,” Tomoyo nods a head towards Kurogane, “that’s Kurogane, my cousin.”
Sakura quickly bows her head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Hn,” says Kurogane, and goes to the fridge to investigate what he can get to drink from there. He might as well, considering Tomoyo’s dragged him into the kitchen.
Tomoyo protests, of course - she’s offered him lemonade and he’s snubbing it, but Kurogane just grabs some water and heads back out of the room, again, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl on his way past. Tomoyo sighs behind him; Kurogane hears it before the door swings shut.
Kendappa arrives home about half an hour later and she goes down to spar in the basement with Kurogane - they fight for a while, and then call a ten minute break for her to get a drink of her own, and for Kurogane to refill her bottle. Sakura’s leaving as they go upstairs; her brother’s come to pick her up, dark-eyed and dark-haired, and Tomoyo’s waving profusely from the door. Kendappa snorts as she goes past, but continues on her way to the kitchen and hops up onto the counter, taking a long drink from the bottle she’s swiped from the fridge.
Kurogane looks at her.
“Tomoyo likes her,” is all Kendappa says, and it’s a tribute to how long Kurogane’s known his littlest cousin that it’s only half a beat before he winces.
#
There’s a street. It doesn’t matter where it really is (nowhere), but you see it in your dreams, haunted by the pretty one all in white (no angel, I assure you). He sneaks in like a sunbeam with a halo around his head, and smashes your precious watch (steals your time) before pulling it out again from under a cloth (red as blood) as good as new. There’s not a scratch on it and he’s proud - but the smile flickers (out like a light) when you lean in:
‘Do you fix broken hearts as well?’
#
We don’t do melodrama here.
#
Sakura becomes an almost permanent fixture at the Daidoujis’. Like a piece of the furniture, only squeakier, and more inclined to flail. Kurogane grows used to walking past her when he frequents his cousins’ home, and Sakura slowly becomes used to his presence. They don’t particularly speak to one another very much, but she smiles when she sees him and will offer him something to eat or drink if she’s making something for herself and Tomoyo, and says goodbye if he leaves the house before she does. Kurogane usually grunts something back at her Tomoyo glares if he doesn’t, and apparently that makes her happy, if the way her smile grows is any indication. She’s a good kid; Tomoyo likes her, and anything that distracts Tomoyo is good for Kurogane and the world at large. So, in his abstract way, Kurogane approves and likes Sakura.
Later, he’ll regret that.
“Kurogane,” Tomoyo calls down the stairs at him one day from the first floor, when his sparring for the day is done and he’s padding about towelling dry his hair. He’d had a shower in the basement bathroom and changed into the loose-fitting clothes he left at his cousins’ for that purpose. Kendappa’s busy following his example after swanning off to her bedroom on the upper levels; the water’s still running somewhere in the house. “Can you get the door? Sakura’s doing my hair and I can’t move.”
Kurogane grouches - he hadn’t even heard the front door from downstairs, and where the hell are the house servants? - but he goes upstairs as asked, Tomoyo smiles knowingly at him as he passes the room where Sakura’s laboriously putting her hair into hundreds of tiny braids hanging the towel around his neck and reaching to open the door with one hand.
There’s a man there on the other side - in jeans, jacket, dangling car keys absently from one finger as he looks off to the distance. He glances at Kurogane when he hears the door open - the car keys stop swinging, blue eyes widen, and lips half part oh god Kurogane can remember kissing those -
Fai stares. “Puppy?”
#
Déjà vu (n.)
1903, French, lit. "already seen." The phenomenon also is known as promnesia. Similar phenomena are déjà entendu "already heard" (of music, etc.), 1965; and déjà lu "already read."
#
Kurogane shuts the door in his face.
#
And today’s weather: strong winds and rain; likely to storm.
What the hell is he doing here?
Flood warnings for low-lying areas are in place.
No, really.
#
“You really do enjoy trying my patience, don’t you.”
“I think the fact Kuro-pui didn’t even have to phrase that as a true question really says it all, don’t you?”
#
It’s awkward. Of course it’s awkward, as Kurogane’s scowling and Fai’s standing and Tomoyo’s braids are falling out and Sakura just looks confused. Kendappa’s sitting, amused at the spectacle, on the stairs combing through her shower-wet hair, apparently having heard the front door’s slam from the depths of her own room. Not that Kurogane particularly cares - he brushes past and heads for the kitchen haven as Tomoyo attempts to apologise for her cousin’s bad behaviour, Fai the idiot smiling and trying to ease the flow and not look at Kurogane all at the same time. Of all things, he’d remembered ‘puppy.’
Kendappa trails Kurogane in, leans back against the nearest counter and reaches for the fruit. She finds a punnet of blueberries, opens them up to pick out a plump one on top. “You’ve always had such a way with people.” Kurogane growls at her. She laughs at him. “What’d he do - say ‘good afternoon’ a little too enthusiastically?”
“It’s none of your business,” Kurogane snaps back at her, and snatches the punnet away from his cousin’s fingertips when she smiles indulgently at him - although not before Kendappa’s got a few more berries in her hand. “Go away; you’re dripping on the floor.”
“Very well,” a push upright and Kendappa heads for the door, but she’s all but smirking as she glances back over her shoulder, “though you know, Kurogane, Tomoyo would sooner stop you coming here than upset the brother of her friend.”
She wouldn’t.
Wait.
“Brother.”
Kendappa looks blank. “…Yes?”
Kurogane frowns. “No.”
“Yes,” his cousin repeats a little more firmly.
“No,” Kurogane repeats, adamant. “I met her brother - he was taller, had dark hair, and was sane.”
Kendappa snorts somewhat inelegantly, and pops another (the last) blueberry into her mouth that she’s holding. “That’s the younger one. Amazingly enough, Kurogane, you know it’s not impossible to have more than one sibling?”
“I’d rather not know,” he retorts. God, why had no-one told him? “Cousins are bad enough.”
#
Why? Kurogane asks, holding fast to the other man’s arm. Why didn’t you call?
Oh, Fai replies, and blinks his eyes slowly, like he’s just waking up from a dream. I dropped my phone in a lake.
#
He’s like an infection, the plague, because it starts off with a meeting (it always does) and then he’s everywhere, and you hate it - you hate it, you do (liar) and it’s gagging on sugar all the way as he smiles and he laughs and you choke out civility (of a sort).
He stops you, because to a nowhere man five months is but a day and oh, you agree when he tugs you down to meet his kisses (the world can end tomorrow) and he whispers sweet nothings that wipe wounded egos away -
(No.)
He walks past you (hushabye honey) and you don’t know which of you is the invisible ghost.
#
Kurogane’s workmates like listening to the radio.
Cause every little thing he does is magic
Every thing he does just turns me on -
Kurogane does not.
Even though my life before was tragic
Now I know my love for him goes on…
Kurogane’s workmates look up at each other when Kurogane storms out of the room.
(“Do you think his girlfriend stopped sending him pictures?”
“…Get back to work.”)
#
‘Kuro-rin’ Fai calls him for the fourth time or the eight or the twentieth time in half an hour when he picks up Sakura and he’s swinging by the Daidoujis a lot more than Touya is now, and Kurogane’s noticed but doesn’t know what to think of it but he will not by chased out and Kurogane tunes out everything else that comes out of the idiot’s mouth, bristling up at the ridiculous nickname. Tomoyo thinks they’re cute; Sakura wavers every time her brother it’s confirmed, damn him comes out with one, but Kurogane thinks - Kurogane thinks -
(“Admit I’m charming yet, Kuro-sama?”)
It’s much easier to think about things from a roundabout perspective.
Sakura has two older brothers - Touya and Fai, the latter of whom is the eldest. Her last name is Kinomoto, but Fai’s is Fluorite - why, nobody asks; nobody explains, and Fai insists he be called ‘Fai’ anyway, so it doesn’t even come up in conversation. Her father is recently dead - it’s been three months, but ‘recent’ can be a long time for the grieving - and her mother died when she was very young. Sakura can’t remember her face, but she has photographs. Underage by a few years, she’s in Touya’s guardianship - again, why that is isn’t mentioned by any of the family - and Fai’s come back to the city; he’d lived far away, for his work. But since Touya works too, and both her siblings seem to have various complexes they’re infectious over her about a mile high, Fai’s moved back to an apartment closer by theirs, because everyone loves Sakura.
This is what Kurogane overhears Tomoyo telling her sister and Souma, and he never lets on about it, because he’s not going to ask. Tomoyo probably knows he’s overheard anyway - but that’s their secret, and they’re each stubborn in their own way. She just smiles whilst she’s digging her heels in, that’s all.
Fai smiles nearly all the time. It annoys Kurogane, because the smiles never seem to reach the idiot’s blue eyes, and the teasing that goes with them rings hollow when Fai attempts to flirt. He looks the same, generally, as he’d done that night in the bar, that one week Kurogane had known him five months ago, but there’s a sadness to it all that Kurogane just wishes the other would acknowledge. And then he can get out of Kurogane’s face.
‘Kuro-rin’ Fai calls him, once more, with that smile on his face as if nothing was changed or moved or wrecked by an empty hotel room one Tuesday morning five months ago.
So Kurogane grabs his arm and waylays him one late summer afternoon, as Tomoyo’s pulled outside by Sakura’s presence, happily talking by the idiot’s car. Out of sight, out of mind, and this is a conversation that’s been far too long in coming.
“Kuro-tan,” Fai says with his smile, and he tries to pull his arm away but Kurogane only tightens his grip. Fai’s expression flickers into a mild grimace, and he lowers his voice. But he still tries to pull. “Kuro-tan, let go.”
Kurogane yanks him back harder, and Fai’s arm feels slight in his grasp, warm skin and bone under the thin cloth of his shirt. He tightens his grip further until Fai finally takes the hint and falls still, but his gaze keeps sliding away from Kurogane’s face, just like it’s done since he stood on the doorstep, now weeks ago.
“Kuro-k-”
“You don’t have the right to call me that.”
It’s a calm cut-off of a reply - too calm for Kurogane -, and that’s what sticks the most, what makes Fai falter and the words fall dead between them, because it’s cold and clear and very concise. And Fai glances up, just for a breath, and meets a stony red gaze, and looks away again just as quickly, still stuttering in the quiet.
Outside, they can still hear Tomoyo and Sakura talking.
“My name is Kurogane.”
Inside, Kurogane is done.
He lets go of Fai.
#
Power (n.)
c.1300, from Anglo-Fr. pouair, O.Fr. povoir, noun use of the infinitive in O.Fr., "to be able," earlier podir (842), from V.L. *potere, from L. potis "powerful" (see potent). The verb meaning "to supply with power" is recorded from 1898. Phrase the powers that be is from Rom. xiii.1. As a statement wishing good luck, more power to (someone) is recorded from 1842.
#
“…I apologise. It won’t happen again.”
Now which of you feels smallest? Don’t look in a mirror, honey; it’s easy to get lost at three inches high.
#
The other one picks up the girl for a long time after that (chase the moonlight, he’s gone), younger and darker and more bitter to the missing mercury-man’s sweet. And oh, oh, oh, your heart beats so, and it’s needlepricked all over (this is guilt) for your convenience, pincushion dear.
You don’t feel anything about it.
You tell yourself you don’t feel anything about it.
You feel everything about it.
(Une, deux, trois, mon chou, quel est-ce?)
Silly boy.
#
It’s one thing to return general courtesy to someone who makes their home open to you. It’s quite another thing to open your front door and find that your little cousin is, unprompted, having a picnic on your front lawn with her best friend, her best friend’s older (oldest) brother, and a small crowd of her family’s black-clad servants/bodyguards so they do actually exist crowding around serving them cups of English tea and cucumber and ham sandwiches with the crusts sliced off.
Kurogane, quite rightly, stands in his doorway and stares at the scene. It’s so absurd - and so Tomoyo all at the same time - that he’s almost convinced himself it’s a hallucination, a mirage caused by the hot sun overhead beating down on his garden.
Tomoyo, of course, has to go and ruin it by noticing him all but gaping at the display, looking up at him from under her sunhat and smiling. The servants around her immediately stand to attention, turning on Kurogane with their trays of sandwiches, miniature pies, and - for the love of- are those cupcakes?
“Kurogane, would you like something to eat?” Tomoyo motions to one of the servants in particular, one of the ones bearing sandwiches, and the woman moves closer to Kurogane to show him the food. “I specifically asked for unbuttered bread for you, since I know how dairy disagrees with you.”
Kurogane waves the food away, and the servant obediently moves back to Tomoyo’s side, offering the tray to Fai and Sakura instead. “What are you doing here?”
“Having a picnic,” Tomoyo replies demurely, and picks up the teapot beside her to refill Sakura’s cup. “I should think it’s quite obvious.”
“Why are you having a picnic here?”
“Because Fai drove us over here.” Tomoyo offers the teapot to the blond in question sitting beside her - but Fai shakes his head minutely, his eyes hidden from the world by beetle-black sunglasses, as dark as the ones Tomoyo’s guards are sporting. As a mask, it’s terribly crude. Tomoyo fills up her own teacup instead. “He kindly offered to drive Sakura and I over here when he found out we were planning on coming over to take you out on your day off - it’s on his way to work. But of course, if Fai were to have left immediately after dropping us off he would have been terribly early for his job, and it would have been rude to be such an inconvenience after his kindness, so we decided to have lunch before setting off any further.”
“Lunch,” Kurogane says disbelievingly, looking at the elaborate set-up on his lawn. Trust Tomoyo to go overboard even with the simplest of things.
“Yes,” his cousin repeats, “lunch. Are you sure you don’t want a sandwich, Kurogane? I ordered them to be brought over from home.”
“They’re very nice,” Sakura pipes up helpfully, clutching her teacup to her a little more closely than necessary, a physical shield against the scowl Kurogane is sporting. Her brother is unusually silent.
“…I might have one later.” Kurogane tries to ignore the way Sakura brightens a little at his comment, the way Fai tips his head slightly to the side, and instead focuses on his cousin. “I’ve got some errands to run.”
“Is it anything we can help you with?”
Kurogane shakes his head at the offer from Tomoyo. He could be done in five minutes if she’d set her servants to do his tasks - but he prefers to do it himself, to know it’s done. Besides, if he let the servants do it he’d have to hang back in the garden, and deal with all the issues there. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
He leaves, and goes to do his tasks, and when he returns it’s at least an hour later and Fai’s preparing to go he’s in no hurry to get to his job, is he?, the two girls flanking him at the gate. They haven’t seen Kurogane - though Tomoyo’s bodyguards have and if they haven’t Kurogane would have their jobs - so he hangs back, watching the smiling trio.
Fai’s sunglasses are finally off, tucked over the collar of his shirt, and the man himself is teasing his sister, showing Sakura and Tomoyo a magic trick. He shares out four coins between the girls, two each, but every time they close their hands around them Tomoyo somehow ends up with only one, and Sakura three. Sakura keeps apologising - as if it’s her fault! - and her two companions laugh as she goes pink.
“Mr. Kurogane!” It’s in-between her frantic ‘sorry!’s that Sakura notices Kurogane standing watching them, flailing somewhat at having someone else to watch her embarrassment. Tomoyo and Fai swivel around to look at him as well. “You’re back!”
“…I should be going.” Sakura pauses in her greeting of the slowly approaching Kurogane when her brother speaks, glancing curiously back over his shoulder at Fai’s somewhat more-solemn tone. He smiles for her though, brilliantly bright. Another lie. “I have to get to the hospital, remember?”
“I’m sure they’ll love your show.” Tomoyo’s words to the blond are confident as Sakura hugs the man goodbye, Fai smiling his thanks and bowing his head to the other girl courteously in reply.
There’s a pause as Fai moves to go out the garden gate and Kurogane to go in - they meet eyes for a second and then Fai steps back, breaking the lock. It’s Kurogane’s home, after all.
Kurogane goes in, nods his head curtly in acknowledgement of the other’s concession - but then Fai mimics him, and adds a quietly flat ‘Kurogane’ onto the end of it. Kurogane turns around to look at the blond, but Fai is already out the gate and waving a smiling goodbye to his sister and Tomoyo, and whatever mood the idiot is in is well hidden behind his usual liar’s façade.
#
Kurogane’s workmates like listening to the radio.
Cold as ice
You know that you are
Kurogane does not.
(“Switch that damn thing off!”
“Kurogane…?”)
Cold as ice
(“I can’t think. Switch it off or I’m throwing it out of the window.”
“But -”
“Switch it off.”)
You’re as cold
As ice to me…
*click*
(“There, it’s off. Jeez…”)
#
For my will is as strong as yours, my kingdom as great… You have no power over me.
- Labyrinth
#
Denial (n.)
1520s; see deny + -al (2). Replaced earlier denyance (mid-15c.). Meaning "unconscious suppression of painful or embarrassing feelings" first attested 1914 in A.A. Brill's translation of Freud's "Psychopathology of Everyday Life"; phrase in denial popularized 1980s.
#
Nosy, aren’t we Kurogane? Fai leans against the kitchen table lazily, using it as a barrier against the man standing like a dark storm cloud on the other side. Fai can almost see the lightning flickering; Kurogane has it hovering around him perpetually. Especially for someone who enjoys brushing past me more often than not. I guess puppies really do bear grudges.
Kurogane glares at him. The sound of his own name still sounds strange from Fai’s lips.
Fai continues, breezy. You know, I knew you for a week. That’s a very long time for a one night stand.
Do you give ridiculous nicknames to all the people you sleep with? Kurogane moves a step closer to the table.
Fai’s lips thin, taking the jab, and the smile is wiped off of his face. Kurogane is glad, though it looks like Fai’s about to snap something back at him - but the blond only breathes out, breathes in, and keeps a civil politeness.
I’m a Scorpio, Fai says, clipped and clear. I was born in Cannes, and raised in Augsburg. I don’t know my blood type, and I hate snakes.
Kurogane looks at him. That’s the exact opposite of most of the stuff you told me when we first met.
Fai looks back at him. And smiles.
#
It’s Tomoyo as ever who ‘volunteers’ Kurogane for grunt-work, helping Fai bring the last of his furniture into his apartment. She mentions he’s helping in the middle of a conversation with Sakura, and before Kurogane can protest Sakura’s already thanking him profusely, smiling, and it’s just -
It’s just easier to go along with things. Tomoyo will get her comeuppance one day.
And so it is, a few days later, he’s hauling boxes up to Fai’s new home from the back of Touya Kinomoto’s van apparently, it’s been borrowed from work, Souma at his side. The apartment’s on the floor second from the top, and the lift’s currently broke, so they’re taking the stairs - Kurogane with clanking and complaints, laden down with a box of kitchenware, Souma somewhat more stoic and armed with a box marked ‘random.’ Kurogane tries not to think what could be considered random by Fai’s asinine standards and listens to Souma talking instead - and then has to quell an irrational flare of resentful pique inside of him when she starts talking about how Fai is seemingly leasing the apartment from a good friend of his. How the hell Souma knows more about the situation than Kurogane does is something Kurogane sees fit to inwardly grumble about , but -
Kendappa is, as expected, nowhere to be found that day. Kurogane eventually reaches the apartment and dumps down the box he’s carrying for Tomoyo and Sakura to help Fai sort through, passing a remark to that effect. Of course, Kendappa will be working, so -
“Actually,” Tomoyo absently interrupts, “no. She’s gone to pick mother up from the airport.”
“…She’s back?” Oh God - Sonomi.
Tomoyo smiles - sweet, as though she has no idea that she knows her cousin’s recoiling at the mention of his aunt returning to harass him. “That’s right.”
Kurogane has even more to whine about from that point onwards. Fai, thankfully, stays mostly of his way, putting things away, making tea, coffee -
“I don’t know why you keep this thing.” Touya makes sure to get a few good grumbles in of his own when he hefts a black coffee percolator up the stairs to his brother’s apartment, gratefully relieving himself of his burden in the kitchen. “You don’t even drink coffee.”
“But my guests quite often do,” Fai reminds him - it sounds like an old argument so Kurogane lets the two siblings talk, heading back to get another load from the van.
There’s plenty more trotting up and down to do - the mound in the van seems never-ending how could one person accumulate so much junk?, so it’s with great surprise Kurogane is eventually handed a light box to haul up the stairs, blinking a little dumbfoundedly when Touya remarks that there isn’t much left. This, like the others, he takes upstairs to inquire of Tomoyo where he should put it, only to get the special look she has reserved for him when she thinks he’s being ‘silly.’ Far too many members of his family have their own take of that look. It’s somewhat insulting.
“It’s marked ‘bedroom,’ Kurogane.”
Kurogane frowns at his cousin, and defends his questioning. “You’ve made me dump other ‘bedroom’ boxes through here.”
“No,” Tomoyo corrects him, and goes back to neatly arranging crockery in the box in front of her. “Those said bedroom wardrobe.”
“…Right.” Kurogane gives in and leaves the girl to whatever she’s doing, taking his box through the door to the apartment’s sole bedroom. (There’s another room that could have been a bedroom, but Fai’s crammed it full of ‘magical’ junk and the one time Kurogane had carried a box through there he’d been poked in the face by a floppy wand. Souma or Touya had carried the rest of the boxes through there, after that.)
Fai’s bedroom is, surprisingly, possibly the neatest room in the whole apartment - probably because the man had needed most of his personal things sorted before his other furniture. There aren’t a great many boxes about the place - but still Kurogane manages to find one in an inconvenient place after he sets his load down, stumbling slightly over a smaller tub of photographs lying on the floor. Kurogane rights himself but the tub topples, and all the photographs spill out in a colourful mess, past memories and glossy faces.
Kurogane crouches down, to put the photographs away again, but couldn’t help but look at the images in his hands as he did so. Fai’s face was evident in a few of them, younger than he was now, his hair a little shorter, his smile a little brighter. Beside him sat, danced and drank strangers, unknown entities laughing as Fai draped himself on them, holding the man close, making silly faces beside him. Sakura flashed up quite a few times, sometimes blushing, sometimes yelling, sometimes not even noticing the camera at all, too busy stomping on Touya’s foot to care about a camera flash. In some of the photos she’s a little green-eyed girl tinier than she is already, blowing out four candles on a birthday cake while Touya lounges in the background trying to hide the fond look in his eyes.
There aren’t any photos of Fai as a little boy, and there aren’t any baby photos of any of the siblings. It almost seems surprising, judging by the apparently sentimental nature of the collection; Fai had struck Kurogane as the sort of idiot who’d take pictures of their newborn siblings and post up photos everywhere, coating them in glitter and pointing to them with neon arrows proclaiming: ‘my new little sister!!!’
…So maybe the blond hadn’t been born an idiot. Maybe.
Fai’s life may have been spilled out on the floor for all to see, but it doesn’t mean Kurogane can understand any of it. The last few photographs Kurogane picks up to put away are a mystery. The first - a smiling brown-haired man with glasses, looking up from a book. The second - two boys, both dark-haired, one in glasses and one stoic, holding baby rabbits, one white and one black. The third - a pyramid of glass, all the panes gleaming in the afternoon sunlight, with a beautiful red-haired woman standing before it waving at the camera. The fourth - the same woman again, this time with a blonde at her side, both of them wearing figure-hugging dresses and glancing back over their shoulders at the camera. There are stars in the background and the glow of a building’s lights on their skin and faces, caught leaving a building on a night out.
It takes Kurogane a minute or two to realise that the blonde woman in the photograph is actually Fai.
The surprise is a dull, creeping thing Fai might not have been born an idiot but he’s certainly cultivated his talents well over the years, and Kurogane idly studies the picture in his hands as he works the idea through, wondering, once more, about the sanity of the magician. The dress the idiot had been wearing was slinky and backless and shouldn’t have looked half as good on a man as it did on Fai, but somehow the cloth had clung in the right places in the half-light and the shimmer-black-blue colour looked gorgeous with Fai’s snow-white skin. Kurogane wonders, for a moment, whether the idiot had padded the front as well - and then mentally smacks himself, dropping that thought before its craziness can carry him any further. (The photograph can’t answer him, anyway. It tells him a lot of things and a lot of nothing all at once.)
“That’s Karen and me,” a voice says over Kurogane’s shoulder, and Kurogane only just resists the temptation to jump and yell about goddamned idiots sneaking up on him from behind it would reflect badly on him, anyway. He settles, instead, for slowly turning his head so he can glare at Fai, who’s half-bent behind him and looking at the picture in Kurogane’s hands. “On our trip to Paris.”
“Hn,” Kurogane says noncommittally, and dumps the picture back in its tub, quickly standing. He dislikes being towered over, too used to his own height.
“She used to be my assistant,” Fai ventures, and straightens as well. He moves around Kurogane and picks the tub up off of the floor, holding it to his chest, his unreadable heart in his hands. “There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want it.” And he walks off, taking his photographs with him.
#
One day, a man named Youou walks back-stage to see a magician called Yuui. Yuui’s busy back there of course, but he looks up to see Youou standing in the doorway of his dressing room.
“Can I help you?”
Youou considers for a moment. “…No,” he says eventually. And then he walks away.
#
“We’re always bumping into one another, Kuro-chan. It must be fate~!”
“No.”
“No?”
“It’s hell.”
#
You’d like to think he’s easy to forget, because he’s just another face (nowhere man) in the crowded racetrack, ballroom, battle that’s your life. Your last stand, the last push, the break for the finish line when really you know (oh, how you know) that you’re standing hiding behind the vase in the corner afraid he’ll glance in your direction too long, come over and pull you out into the fray (confusion) once more with his hand and his smile and (forget-me-not) gaze. And then - and then - and then -
You dream about him, in the darkness behind your eyes, and you don’t lie to yourself there. (What’s even better - there, he doesn’t lie to you too.)
#
Why did he wear that dress? Kurogane asks Touya in the future one day, when they’re mellow, and waiting on Sakura once more.
Touya shrugs, eloquent. He said he lost a bet.
#
“Fai’s always been magic,” Sakura says, one day, standing on the doorstep of Tomoyo’s home and waving as Fai pulls away down the driveway, heading for work. Kurogane, who had opened the door to her, only grunts, but the girl takes this as encouragement to elaborate. “He knew all these tricks, even before I first met him, and he’d show me them again and again and again when I asked. He gives all his magic away, because he says he likes making people smile. I just wish -” Sakura falters, and Kurogane glances at her, one eyebrow raised. Sakura raises her chin, almost defiantly, and makes her declaration. “I wish he’d keep some magic for himself.”
#
(Didn’t you know? Didn’t you know? Oh, didn’t you know?)
((Know what? Oh, I know nothing.))
(That’s because you live under a rock. And you lie to yourself.)
((So we’re hypocrites. This isn’t anything new.))
#
A long, long time ago there was a beautiful princess who slept an enchanted sleep in a castle surrounded by a forest of thorns. She’d been dreaming for a very, very long time, waiting for the brave prince to come rescue her, and wake her with True Love’s Kiss, as had been foretold.
(…You’ve got to be kidding me.)
Shush. Now, the prince rode by one day, and saw the forest. Not knowing what lay within it, however, he did the very sensible thing, and rode around the forest so as to avoid getting caught in the thorns. He was a busy man, and had no time for fairytales.
A few years later, he settled down with a sweet princess from a distant land that his parents arranged for him to wed, and had his children by her. He grew older with her, inheriting the throne from his parents and becoming King. When he died, many years later, he left the crown to his own eldest child. He never did even wonder about the forest of thorns ever again.
The princess asleep in the castle never woke up.
(…)
…
(…Are you going to continue, or do I have to hit you?)
…But, Kurogane, aren’t you the one who’s always telling me to shut i-ow!
(Idiot. Then again, it works. An idiot, telling an idiot’s tale.)
Kur-
(Shut up. It is an idiot’s tale, full of stupidity. What kind of ruler leaves so much potentially arable land choked up by fucking weeds? If he’s a kingdom to rule he’s wasting a portion of it - he’s got no business sense -, and if he doesn’t care to know what’s in every corner of his kingdom to begin with he’s got no other type of sense, either. Anything can hide in a forest, whether it’s made up of thorns or not.)
A man is not obligated to poke at every scrap of anything that waltzes under his nose, Kurogane. Haven’t you heard that curiosity killed the cat? Not everyone is as adventurous as you.
(Some are - and that’s enough. Maybe the idiot king doesn’t cut down the weeds; maybe nobody cuts down those weeds for years and years and years, but eventually someone’s going to need all that wasted land - to stick a farm on, a village, a business empire even. It doesn’t matter. Someone’s going to look at that land and realise they can use it, wonder if there’d anything worth using in all those weeds - because, if nothing else, everybody’s a little curious, a little adventurous -, and they’ll come along, and they’ll cut them down, and they’ll find that stupid castle, comatose princess included.)
…
(…So there’ll be a wait, yeah. Big deal. There are plenty of idiots out there in the world - you’re a pretty good example for that. Someone with a brain in their head’ll come along eventually, and somebody’s dragging that princess out of her dreams, and right back into reality.)
But -
(Shut up.)
That’s not -
(I said shut up.)
But Kurog-
(Shut. Up. You’re not allowed to tell stories anymore.)
#
[…]
- Youou, it’s been a while since we saw you last. Is it so terrible to ask to see our only child once every few months?
- You did see me.
- Once. For your father’s birthday.
- But you did see me.
- Youou… I swear Sonomi sees more of you than I do, and she’s out of the country more often than not.
- Have you seen how many weapons she has in her basement? Father would love it.
- So offer to do some training with him some time. I’m sure your father would love that too.
- …I’ll ask.
- Just don’t kill each other.
- Yes, mother.
A/N: Dictionary definitions are adapted from the Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php). The songs used in this chapter are Every Little Thing (He Does Is Magic) by M.Y.M.P, and Cold as Ice, by M.O.P. The ‘fairytale’ criticised is a sort-of-Sleeping-Beauty. Authors of direct quotes are named in the narrative.