Birthday fics for botling: 2009 ♥ [1]
sadlkhg;khsdhgha THANK GOD I'M NOT LATE.
THE SKYTIDES is a pan-fandom RPG set in a world where skyships are the way to go. HIBARI KYOUYA and CHROME DUKURO are characters from KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN! - I swing Hibari over at the Skytides, and Shini was planning on swinging Chrome before she changed her mind.
This fic is something of their back story, and it will likely be built upon through future logs whenever Shini and I are in the mood. The titles used for the fic itself and the sections within it are all themes from 31_days.
The Skytides: Alternate Stories.
She keeps calling me back again.
Across the bridge.
Their master had found them both out in the rain, two years apart from each other: Hibari had been the wild-eyed brat he had kicked the shit out of in a back alley, and Chrome had been the human roadkill splattered unto one of the busiest trade roads in Kropmark. The man had raised them both separately, in separate fashions - he had indulged Chrome when he had treated Hibari like a soldier, and guided Chrome when he would have left Hibari to figure things out. There was talk on the issue, some nasty rumors about why their master insisted upon treating his almost-daughter a little too well. People who knew the man’s real preferences, however, were more amused at his interactions with his almost-son.
In their childhood, they crossed each other at times in the sprawling and spiraling corridors of the Guild: they knew that they were both marked by the same person without needing to ask because Chrome could read in Hibari’s eyes and Hibari had heard their master speak of Chrome only too often, so often that his imagined image of her was even more real than the actual thing. They barely ever spoke - a pause and a meaningful look was all they needed to give.
(Chrome was sometimes left to wonder, then, why she could feel Hibari’s gaze lingering upon her for longer than necessary, and why he was always the one who turned away first.)
You silver tongued, unreliable narrator.
“You will be married by next Amicus.”
The master never speaks of possibilities and theoretical situations, only truth and absolute certainties. This moment is apparently no exception. Chrome only looks up at him - or more correctly, his reflection in the mirror - before she continues what she is doing. She reaches for the small comb to her right.
“To who?”
“The other brat that I picked up off the street. Someone needs to keep him under control. He no longer listens to me.”
She is not a vain person, but the act of grooming one’s self is calming enough - it helps her focus on the tasks that always come next. The glamorous dates. The gory kills. The flying.
Chrome gathers her hair up into a careless bun. The comb flashes in the light of her room.
“You know him, don’t you? Kyouya.”
“I have seen him. I catch him looking at me at times.”
“He’s probably wondering why I picked someone like you up. I dare say that I didn’t know until now.”
She finds herself remembering that exchange on the night of the ceremony, when she and Hibari - the two students of the master - standing face-to-face, clasping each other’s hands between them as a priest binds their arms together with honeysuckle and ivy. They spend the rest of the evening side-by-side, talking to everyone but each other, watching the festivities with a similar, cool detachment of the sort of people who move through life rather than live it. It is only a few hours before dawn by the time the party breaks up, and they are allowed to withdraw to his rooms. Their rooms.
“Will you sleep?” she asks softly, watching him tear the ivy from his wrist, crush the honeysuckle and drop it to the floor.
“Not with you,” he replies, without so much as a glance in her direction. He disappears into the bathroom, and when he returns, he is wrapped in black silk and leather. Clothes for the Hunt. She does not move and does not speak, even as he abandons their wedding bed.
He returns in a week, after pursuing a mark of his choice.
This becomes their routine for half a year.
Let snow and silence mark the site of my unseemly appetite.
They are regular in not showing any sort of real affection for each other, regular in moving as a unit and operating as a unit without actually feeling like one - there is talk, of course, among those in the inner circle about their failure to tame the Skylark, but no one moves to correct the situation.
Chrome is content, for the most part, for the emptiness of their union: his silent, invisible presence just beyond her peripheral is enough, as is the quiet weight of him beside her in bed, never touching her, never speaking. It surprises her, then, the night it all changed.
In retrospect, it might have been the mission, their third together since the time they were married: what was supposed to have been a covert operation ended up becoming a blood bath with the two of them standing at the center. They had fought on the same killing field - her with her trident, him with his tonfa - weaving in and out of the chaos, destroying whatever stood in their way. They had found themselves staring at each other at the end of it, untouched by anything save the blood of others. There had been something, a particular look in his eyes; she had thought nothing of it until they were in their room, until she found herself pushed to the wall the moment they were both inside, the moment the door closed behind them.
“You and I are more alike than I would have thought,” he says to her later, after spreading her thin over the sheets and taking everything that she could have possibly offered to him.
She answers him by parting her lips against his own, letting him drink from her mouth.
I’d rather leave while I’m in love.
Because Chrome is so used to the long periods of absence between their coming together, it takes her a month to realize that he has left the Guild. What the inner circle had written off as an extended Hunt for another mark in his name was abandonment and escape.
She feels no bitterness over this, even as she sits in the midst of the arguments and heated words that people exchange over their heads, all of them colored by his work, his name. She had known, somehow, in spite of their dysfunctional closeness, that he would have taken no one and nothing with him if he had truly planned to go. Nothing she could have done would have made him stay.
She is also not surprised when she is the one they assign to track him down, with orders to either convince him to come back or to bring him back in a body bag of her choosing. She accepts her orders with grace, as she does with all things.
It is with that same grace that she decides to break them three years later, when she and her husband are separated by the metal frames of their planes and a whole lot of empty sky.
Theirs is an explosive reunion topped with angry sex the moment they are on the ground, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
My heart sways slowly, ever so slow.
“What do you think you’re-”
“Hush. No one’s here anyway.”
It amuses her, how Hibari Kyouya could be so particular about the strangest details. She would call him on it, but that would mean never having a chance to do anything again. He is always and ever so suspicious.
“It’s comfortable in here. And warm. Come inside already.”
He’s grumbling, even as he complies, even as he fumbles in, awkward in this even though he’s never awkward in battle, or up in the air. All limbs and flushed cheeks, and a look that tells her that he needs her, even now, even as he denies her.
She reaches out to guide him.
“This isn’t proper,” he says, as his hands push the hair away from her face.
“I know,” she evenly returns, as she skims the leather of his flight suit.
“We’re flying out early tomorrow,” he mutters, shifting his limbs against hers.
“It’s never too late for something like this,” she laughs, just under his jaw.
It isn’t exactly easy, working back to that old routine of arms and legs and leather and mouth and skin. She would never, however, think that he’s out of practice. Needy, maybe, in want of her taste after going on for far too long without it, but never out of practice. Ever smooth, even as he kisses her pulse, slips the nipple of her left breast into his mouth.
Soon after, she is wondering why she had the gall to think that it wasn’t easy, doing what they do best. They fit together, entwine and entangle, fighting off the chill of the hangar deck with the warmth of their bodies. He fights it a little, but she makes sure to pull him in, to show him that it’s useless to run, to hide anything from her.
She was made to be his mirror - to fit so perfectly to the angles and sharp edges of his personality - after all.
THE SKYTIDES is a pan-fandom RPG set in a world where skyships are the way to go. HIBARI KYOUYA and CHROME DUKURO are characters from KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN! - I swing Hibari over at the Skytides, and Shini was planning on swinging Chrome before she changed her mind.
This fic is something of their back story, and it will likely be built upon through future logs whenever Shini and I are in the mood. The titles used for the fic itself and the sections within it are all themes from 31_days.
The Skytides: Alternate Stories.
She keeps calling me back again.
Across the bridge.
Their master had found them both out in the rain, two years apart from each other: Hibari had been the wild-eyed brat he had kicked the shit out of in a back alley, and Chrome had been the human roadkill splattered unto one of the busiest trade roads in Kropmark. The man had raised them both separately, in separate fashions - he had indulged Chrome when he had treated Hibari like a soldier, and guided Chrome when he would have left Hibari to figure things out. There was talk on the issue, some nasty rumors about why their master insisted upon treating his almost-daughter a little too well. People who knew the man’s real preferences, however, were more amused at his interactions with his almost-son.
In their childhood, they crossed each other at times in the sprawling and spiraling corridors of the Guild: they knew that they were both marked by the same person without needing to ask because Chrome could read in Hibari’s eyes and Hibari had heard their master speak of Chrome only too often, so often that his imagined image of her was even more real than the actual thing. They barely ever spoke - a pause and a meaningful look was all they needed to give.
(Chrome was sometimes left to wonder, then, why she could feel Hibari’s gaze lingering upon her for longer than necessary, and why he was always the one who turned away first.)
You silver tongued, unreliable narrator.
“You will be married by next Amicus.”
The master never speaks of possibilities and theoretical situations, only truth and absolute certainties. This moment is apparently no exception. Chrome only looks up at him - or more correctly, his reflection in the mirror - before she continues what she is doing. She reaches for the small comb to her right.
“To who?”
“The other brat that I picked up off the street. Someone needs to keep him under control. He no longer listens to me.”
She is not a vain person, but the act of grooming one’s self is calming enough - it helps her focus on the tasks that always come next. The glamorous dates. The gory kills. The flying.
Chrome gathers her hair up into a careless bun. The comb flashes in the light of her room.
“You know him, don’t you? Kyouya.”
“I have seen him. I catch him looking at me at times.”
“He’s probably wondering why I picked someone like you up. I dare say that I didn’t know until now.”
She finds herself remembering that exchange on the night of the ceremony, when she and Hibari - the two students of the master - standing face-to-face, clasping each other’s hands between them as a priest binds their arms together with honeysuckle and ivy. They spend the rest of the evening side-by-side, talking to everyone but each other, watching the festivities with a similar, cool detachment of the sort of people who move through life rather than live it. It is only a few hours before dawn by the time the party breaks up, and they are allowed to withdraw to his rooms. Their rooms.
“Will you sleep?” she asks softly, watching him tear the ivy from his wrist, crush the honeysuckle and drop it to the floor.
“Not with you,” he replies, without so much as a glance in her direction. He disappears into the bathroom, and when he returns, he is wrapped in black silk and leather. Clothes for the Hunt. She does not move and does not speak, even as he abandons their wedding bed.
He returns in a week, after pursuing a mark of his choice.
This becomes their routine for half a year.
Let snow and silence mark the site of my unseemly appetite.
They are regular in not showing any sort of real affection for each other, regular in moving as a unit and operating as a unit without actually feeling like one - there is talk, of course, among those in the inner circle about their failure to tame the Skylark, but no one moves to correct the situation.
Chrome is content, for the most part, for the emptiness of their union: his silent, invisible presence just beyond her peripheral is enough, as is the quiet weight of him beside her in bed, never touching her, never speaking. It surprises her, then, the night it all changed.
In retrospect, it might have been the mission, their third together since the time they were married: what was supposed to have been a covert operation ended up becoming a blood bath with the two of them standing at the center. They had fought on the same killing field - her with her trident, him with his tonfa - weaving in and out of the chaos, destroying whatever stood in their way. They had found themselves staring at each other at the end of it, untouched by anything save the blood of others. There had been something, a particular look in his eyes; she had thought nothing of it until they were in their room, until she found herself pushed to the wall the moment they were both inside, the moment the door closed behind them.
“You and I are more alike than I would have thought,” he says to her later, after spreading her thin over the sheets and taking everything that she could have possibly offered to him.
She answers him by parting her lips against his own, letting him drink from her mouth.
I’d rather leave while I’m in love.
Because Chrome is so used to the long periods of absence between their coming together, it takes her a month to realize that he has left the Guild. What the inner circle had written off as an extended Hunt for another mark in his name was abandonment and escape.
She feels no bitterness over this, even as she sits in the midst of the arguments and heated words that people exchange over their heads, all of them colored by his work, his name. She had known, somehow, in spite of their dysfunctional closeness, that he would have taken no one and nothing with him if he had truly planned to go. Nothing she could have done would have made him stay.
She is also not surprised when she is the one they assign to track him down, with orders to either convince him to come back or to bring him back in a body bag of her choosing. She accepts her orders with grace, as she does with all things.
It is with that same grace that she decides to break them three years later, when she and her husband are separated by the metal frames of their planes and a whole lot of empty sky.
Theirs is an explosive reunion topped with angry sex the moment they are on the ground, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
My heart sways slowly, ever so slow.
“What do you think you’re-”
“Hush. No one’s here anyway.”
It amuses her, how Hibari Kyouya could be so particular about the strangest details. She would call him on it, but that would mean never having a chance to do anything again. He is always and ever so suspicious.
“It’s comfortable in here. And warm. Come inside already.”
He’s grumbling, even as he complies, even as he fumbles in, awkward in this even though he’s never awkward in battle, or up in the air. All limbs and flushed cheeks, and a look that tells her that he needs her, even now, even as he denies her.
She reaches out to guide him.
“This isn’t proper,” he says, as his hands push the hair away from her face.
“I know,” she evenly returns, as she skims the leather of his flight suit.
“We’re flying out early tomorrow,” he mutters, shifting his limbs against hers.
“It’s never too late for something like this,” she laughs, just under his jaw.
It isn’t exactly easy, working back to that old routine of arms and legs and leather and mouth and skin. She would never, however, think that he’s out of practice. Needy, maybe, in want of her taste after going on for far too long without it, but never out of practice. Ever smooth, even as he kisses her pulse, slips the nipple of her left breast into his mouth.
Soon after, she is wondering why she had the gall to think that it wasn’t easy, doing what they do best. They fit together, entwine and entangle, fighting off the chill of the hangar deck with the warmth of their bodies. He fights it a little, but she makes sure to pull him in, to show him that it’s useless to run, to hide anything from her.
She was made to be his mirror - to fit so perfectly to the angles and sharp edges of his personality - after all.