Fic: Starlight Now (4)
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 4 of the secret santa gift for Jo. Still ongoing, certain readers have lost their minds, and I think I’ve lost mine with them. I’m not missing much.
Still no kissing. Kissing next time. Promise. <3
*****
While on these lovely looks I gaze
To see a wretch pursuing,
In raptures of a blest amaze,
His pleasing, happy ruin,
‘Tis not for pity that I move:
His fate is too aspiring
Whose heart, broke with a load of love,
Dies wishing and admiring.
- John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Song
[It’s a beautiful instrument, the violin. In general, and in the specific - Fai’s violin, smooth maple and ebony wood and fine polish, a good weight, a rich sound. The violin’s fitted to Fai and so it’s fitted to Yuui, now, as he tests it in an empty house; his fingers curl comfortably around the smooth scroll, slide back, when he crooks his elbow just so, to press them lightly against the strings at the neck. (It digs between his shoulder and collarbone somewhat; he doesn’t know how to fit the guard.)
You won’t ever, Fai had said, held his violin like he’d once held Yuui’s hand in church choir, together, together, matching palm to palm and voices, higher and lower even though they could mimic each other perfectly, looks and sounds and smiles. Their few arguments - Yuui, why won’t you ever-
There’s a song in Yuui’s mind, bluebirds and cold starshine, spools of dim gold and morning, mourning grey. He writes these things, about these things, for these things, all the time - but it’s not enough anymore, is it? So many love songs made of so many words he’d rather throw away (they’re all wrong), and the melodies are impossible to write down because they’re kept away from him by the one that demands them the most. Fai isn’t stupid, has never been stupid for all he can put on and wear the prettiest of vacant stupid smiles like theatre make-up; how can Fai not know-?
The earth forever turns around the sun - but the sun is a star in a solar system in a cluster of systems like it, in a galaxy amongst galaxies; they’re people, tiny people, and these are such little things in such a big, big existence, and their world, this one they know of, turns on even littler moments. And you will be my star, and I’ll guide my way about you, and
It’s pathetic, in the grand scheme of things, in the grand ever-turning universe, that one person can so unconsciously fill up your world and make it sting.
Yuui tries his hand and plays at mimicry - he’s good at it, he and Fai were always good at it, play a tune, any tune, and call it a song -, raises his brother’s horse-hair and cherrywood bow and draws it slowly across the A.
The violin sings in the quiet house, the string holding the note. It’s too loud. It’s the wrong sound.
Yuui puts Fai’s violin away.]
Karen wants a cigarette. She doesn’t say so, but she twirls the plastic stirrer she’d used to mix cream into her coffee between two fingers, distractedly taps the tabletop beneath with pale green-painted nails. (They match her clothes. She’s gorgeous today, not that she ever isn’t, green shirt and leggy brown boots, Eden in November. Yuui watches a few men eye her and then eye him with something like envy out of the corner of his eye, hiding his amused smile behind his own unfinished drink because if he’s noticed their audience Karen has too, and she probably gives so much less of a damn. Hell of a woman.)
It’s illegal to smoke indoors in public and it’s cold outside; the café’s outside heaters are crap. Some brave souls huddle out there all the same to get their nicotine fix, and Karen taps her fingers as she glances at them, one, two, three, and Yuui serenely tells her that he’s going to include magical purple unicorns in the next chapter of his book just to see if she’s still paying attention to him.
“What?” She is.
So Yuui apologises, and she flicks his hand - she’s a friend for all she’s his editor, knows enough to advise him on most things even though they’ll never reach that point where they’ll spill out their hearts to each other (not outside of glue and paper bindings, never). Admits to her that instead of writing about magical purple unicorns he’s actually stuck.
“Stuck?” Karen asks, stops tapping. “You have writer’s block?”
Yuui nods, and sets down his drink. “I have writer’s block. I can write little snatches here and there, but nothing truly coherent, not for the main story.”
“…Wouldn’t it have been easier to look over what you have done at your home, then, instead of here?”
“The block is worse when I’m at home.”
Karen regards him thoughtfully - why couldn’t Yuui have given his heart to someone like her? She reads his words better than he writes them and picks up the threads he leaves dangling at the seams of his stories and himself. “You always joked that you found your muse at home.”
“It went away.”
“Have you tried looking for it somewhere else?”
Yuui spreads one hand, a loose, languid gesture at everything around him, sloppy-smooth and made to encompass the world in the way that says one’s given up. “We’re not at my home now, are we?”
“Close enough to it, though,” Karen points out, same city, same November, for it’s just out of town, down the roads, on the pavement, around the corner, to the street where Yuui lives. With Fai, and Fai’s endless earnest attention, trying to make up to his twin for something he never did. Yuui would scold him for it, has tried to, but finds his mouth dry and his tongue heavy and useless at Fai’s smile and gentle hands - Yuui doesn’t lean in anymore when his brother hugs him, but finds he doesn’t have the strength within himself anymore to pull himself away.
“I like it here,” Yuui says softly.
Karen taps her fingernails again.
You don’t like yourself; I know, I know; so I shall like you for you. That’s two lots of liking in one little heart, one head, so forgive me if it spills out sometimes, because I’m so small, so very small inside, and my selfish flesh and bones won’t let me get any bigger. Balloons are sad because they always explode, and when they don’t they whine to nothing. Helium makes people sick.
Their grandparents call from America one evening and Yuui answers the phone; Fai comes in a few minutes into the call smelling of clothes softener and their detergent, laundry time, summer breeze and something abrasive. He rests his hand on Yuui’s hip as he makes a grab for the handset - Yuui finds himself laughing, halfway through a sentence to their grandmother, holding it out of reach. Fai follows after him, leaning all his weight on his twin’s torso and trying a beautifully flailing grab -
Yuui breathes in, a startled rush of air that chokes his laughing, and Fai, triumphant, snatches the phone from his brother’s suddenly lax grip.
“America’s so far away,” Fai whines into the phone, but pulls a face and playfully tugs at Yuui’s ponytail when his brother just stares at him. “Will you be there long? Until New Year? Grandmama -”
“America’s quite large,” Yuui finds himself defending their grandparents, being so far away from them for so long, around the holiday season.
“Stop being sensible,” Fai tells him with a pout, half-covering the receiver. He drops his hand again after tucking the handset between his shoulder and chin, heaving a heavy, heavy sigh. “Grandmama, Yuui is being sensible at me again; it’s dreadful. He’s going to get a wrinkly forehead from wrinkly thoughts and all the girls will cry - no, Grandpapa knows I think his wrinkles are very distinguished. Grandpapa is always terribly distinguished - yes, I know what ‘distinguished’ means. Yuui, won’t you tell Grandmama that I know what ‘distinguished’ means?”
Yuui opens his mouth.
“Yuui says I know what ‘distinguished’ means,” Fai says, and only grins when his brother whaps him around the back of the head. “And Yuui knows words and stuff -”
“‘And stuff?’”
“And he makes sure I eat all my vegetables and he still hides the sugar when he thinks I’m not looking -” Yuui takes a turn in making a grab for the phone - Fai just grins again and dances out of reach, waggling his fingers at the twin stalking his heels. “He’s the best baby brother in the whole wide world - no, Grandmama, I am not tormenting my baby brother on the other end of the phone line; how could you possibly think such a th-well, yeeeeessss, but I got taller and older and Yuui’s punches hurt more now; he’s really mean.”
A pause.
“No, Grandmama, of course we’re not fighting; because that would be terrible and awful and as I said Yuui’s punches hurt lots and I don’t want him to punch me because I am a beautiful, delicate flower and wilt in the harsh hot climates of abusive love -” Yuui snorts - Fai’s told him enough stories of his days at work and he’s met Kurogane - and Fai looks at him, big blue eyes and bitten lip, all a sudden. “Yuui and me are very happy here, Grandmama. Aren’t we?”
Yuui looks back at him, rather hating that Fai phrases that as a question - and a question not to their grandmother, but to him. He holds his hand out for the phone - and Fai gives it to him, still curiously solemn.
“We’re happy,” Yuui says to the phone, and deliberately stops looking at his twin. “Grandmama, did Fai tell you he has a new boyfriend?”
Fai yelps, and dives for the handset again.
“Of course he’s your boyfriend - you came back wearing his shirt -”
[They argue the day Fai comes home to find Yuui’s found half of Fai’s collection of Yuui’s songs - and Yuui has put them through the paper shredder, the ones he could, and shoved the sorry remains out in the recycle bin. It’s summer then, sticky summer, and the sun watches as they row until their cheeks are high with red and pink and their faces look like they’re made up of so many angry slashes of colour.
They’re my words, Yuui hisses, angry about this, furious about this, and Fai has to understand - They’re my words; it’s up to me what I do with them!
You threw them away! Fai snaps back at him, gathers up what Yuui hasn’t destroyed and holds them close, close, close. He doesn’t even know what any of those stupid words mean, and he loves them like you would a baby. Why can’t I have them, since you so clearly don’t want them? They’re just words, Yuui! You say they’re just meaningless words; what harm can it do to let me have them when they mean nothing to you? I’ve never shared them - I wouldn’t ever, Yuui, never ever - is it that you think I’ll show them to people? Don’t you trust me?
They’re not - Yuui falters, wavers, at a loss. Words are easier to write down, to hold permanent that way rather than as just thoughts fleeting his mind before they can touch upon his mouth. He trusts his brother with everything, always, and yet nothing at all. Fai, why must everything be about you?
Fai doesn’t understand. It’s not -
(It is, though. That’s the problem.)
They don’t talk about that day again.]
Once there was a fish, who met another fish, and they had lots of fish-children. Most of the fish-children got eaten before they grew up to became fish - about a third survived to grow up, and they might’ve been very sad, but the fish of their kind had very short memories and nobody really remembered that there had been lots more fish-children to become fish begin with. The fish-children who became fish however, became fish together, and because they had such short memories it felt to them as though they had spent their whole lives together. And they were very happy, because even if one of their fish siblings accidentally swam away and got eaten none of them remembered they were missing anything at all - and so they lived, most of them, eternally and ignorantly content.