A/N: More oldfics. Of course, I had to write for the most beloved pairing in the fandom. Although you'll have to squint real hard to see the romance... (or maybe my concept of romance is just really skewed)
Warning: Spoilers spoilers spoilers.
we were kings in our own right
fushimi saruhiko watches his best friend sling his schoolbag over a shoulder and push his chair under the desk with a dry kick.
"you comin'?" misaki growls, his sour mood a crown of grey clouds overhead, and the tension is borderline tangible, static raising the hackles on the back of saru's neck. the curt inquiry is punctuated by a barely audible crack as the lollipop in the redhead's mouth splits into fragments. before saru can vocalize his suspicions, misaki is out the door and speeding down the empty hallway.
saru mutters a brief, half-hearted apology towards the slack-jawed math teacher who looks on, powerless or boneless or both, while two of his most troublesome students exit the premises under the awed gazes of their classmates.
misaki enjoys making a scene. saru doesn't mind doing damage control for him.
saru watches misaki proudly show off the new skate move he supposedly mastered yesterday after they parted ways—supposedly because if the claim were true, there wouldn't be a purplish bruise blooming across his best friend's bare knee. had misaki at least worn pants that covered his calves (he's had no luck defending the virtue of guards and pads and a helmet), saru wouldn't need to carry disinfectant and bandages next to his keys and bus pass. then maybe the lack of clothes without holes in his wardrobe would cause enough alarm for misaki to compromise.
albeit pretty and mesmerizing, the scratches, nicks and dents on the redhead's immaculate skin, multiply at such a rate that saru feels relief rather than disappointment once they begin to diminish, once his friend has tamed every handrail, every sharp corner and the curb of every sidewalk in shizume city.
saru watches his friend's smile drop off his face the time it takes him to blink. he asks, words tripping over one another in the haste to escape, "what's the matter?"
"my name's not there," misaki says, his shame masked by the overgrown bangs that sweep down to hide his eyes. he spins on a heel and stomps away, fists shoved as far as they can go in his baggy shorts' pockets.
saru doesn't bother to hesitate or turn back when he goes after his friend, leaving behind the crowded bulletin boards where the entrance exam results are tacked, and manages to catch misaki by the elbow before he can hop on his skateboard and disappear.
"then we don't need to go," saru says simply, interrupting whatever nonsense the redhead has opened his mouth to spout.
it takes a second for the non sequitur to register, and misaki is smacking saru on his head but his eyes are smiling. "just because i didn't get in doesn't mean you shouldn't go."
saru stares at him, unabashed and honest and open, and says, "if you can't go, then we don't need to go."
misaki snorts and flips his skateboard up so he can catch it. "suit yourself."
saru watches as a stranger, much too old to taunt high school students skipping class, drives misaki up the proverbial wall, and he feels an unexplainable anger spike in the pit of his stomach. since he's always been passive by nature, he bites down the urge to deal blow for blow and lets his best friend do the indignant shouting and name-calling. somebody has to counterbalance misaki's hotheadedness and think both their ways out of the problematic situations said hotheadedness lands them.
he isn't particularly ambitious, but the prospect of unfathomable power is tempting and misaki is the blind kind of naïve, so when suoh mikoto's right-hand man flings the offer in their general direction, saru tells himself, just so i can keep an eye on misaki, whilst his partner latches onto it like a lifeline. (he should have known, he should have read the signs.) although there's more to it than the simple desire to protect what is his: the draw he feels towards the red flame that flares around the king—hisking like a materialized aura, the ominous click of pandora's box as it unlocks, the thirst that claws up his insides, unquenchable and loud and alive in his throat, keeps him awake at night and restless during the day.
and misaki is too busy forging friendships and playing house to notice the madness creeping into saru's eyes with each turn of the clock's largest hand; the power that consumes him until his grin is crooked and his laughter an eerie nightmare-song, the tattoo under his shoulder a pulse to match his blackened heart, his sanity a hazy memory, long, long gone.
fushimi watches with mouth-watering delight as confusion, then worry, then hurt and finally rage flicker across misaki's face, like a personal parade for his enjoyment. he watches as his childhood friend's eyes, pupils blown in disbelief, dart back and forth between the charred skin and the face of the stranger who replaced his beloved saru while he wasn't looking, the scent of burnt flesh a declaration of war hanging in the air.
and fushimi feels deeply, deeply disappointed when the only words misaki can find to hold him back are mikoto this and mikoto that. so he leaves.
(he refuses to acknowledge the silly sense of betrayal whatever's left of his heart deems appropriate to feel, because trust is a disease and love is a cancer, and saruhiko is tired of being sick.)
fushimi watches without batting an eye when vice-captain awashima plays the incriminating video during a debrief on the unfortunate murder of tatara totsuka. the captain doesn't even bother to pause in the middle of his jigsaw puzzle, idly placing piece after piece in their rightful positions as the nighttime view of the capital from atop tokyo tower spans across his desk. fushimi sighs and redirects his attention on the colorless king's grand self-presentation, catches him at the very moment a maniacal laugh tears from his chest, and it sends a shiver down fushimi's spine, a chill through every vein.
because it's a frightening experience, seeing yourself in someone else, like a dysfunctional mirror that can't decide which ugly side of you it wants to show.
fushimi can't really blame his metaphoric reflective surface for fearing the depths of his fucked up psyche—with him, there is no lesser evil, just different shades of horror and brokenness. as they say, pick your poison.
fushimi watches misaki's cheerful façade contort into hatred and resentment when he pinpoints the blue uniform in his field of vision. fushimi draws his sword, breaks formation and selects not to hear his vice-captain's barked orders to stand down.
he doesn't chant scepter4's civilized version of a battle cry either, because really, that would just be a lie, he's never ready to face the misaki who still thinks him as saru.
fushimi watches as an unknown homra lackey (joined up after his departure, otherwise he'd recognize him—then again, the red clan has grown in numbers to the point it can't very well be called a family anymore) flashes a slasher smile before burrowing a knife into the captain's side. later, he'll catch wind of the fact the colorless king can apparently jump bodies, and he'll drop the amused comment that if he were to be possessed, nobody would be able to tell. he can see the scepter4 members within earshot stiffen and he scoffs them openly, his trademark 'tsk' the only sound as they desert the battlegrounds.
fushimi watches as the red king's sword of damocles disintegrates in a shower of glowing embers and white ash and magic. he watches as his captain trudges through the smog, fingers coated in the blood of the only person he's ever tried to save, and fushimi feels a certain, irrational guilt for not warning his superior beforehand against the dangers of being attached to something perpetually out of reach.
the day suoh mikoto dies, one man stops living and one boy learns to live, and fushimi, well, he's somewhere in between, like when morning is still a blur of lightness behind his eyelids and misaki's name a phantom on his lips.
fushimi saruhiko, vice-captain of scepter4 (he revels little in the heavier mantel his shiny new title implies, he'd rather get away with slacking off and acting immature), watches as shizume city continues to breathe and move, without pattern, never twice in the same direction, but always with a motive, an end to its means.
watches as the dust settles and misaki returns to his disjointed family. watches as the golden king mourns the passing of an old, old friend. watches, wordless, as young and reckless kings dig their claws into the oversized footsteps of their predecessors, havoc written in the ambition they pioneer, like how he watched time and supressed grief chip away at his ex-captain until he was nothing save a pool of much-missed red on the floor. watches as the world spins on its axis and castles fall and regimes crumble and heartbreak mends itself.
and life goes on.
"they look stupid," misaki explains when saru voices his concern regarding helmets and knee guards for the umpteenth time.
"a cast and a neck brace would look cool, then?" he scoffs.
"don't disrespect your elders."
"i'll hold my tongue when you can look me in the eye and not the nostril."
"why you—"
saru scrambles the hell out of range and watches misaki give chase, watches red hair tangle in the wind and vivid eyes snap wide open, watches the sun catch on misaki's lashes and kiss his skin and drown the world in a beautiful gold, watches as he always has, always will, watches the only person he can't tear away from.
and it's all a charade, he knows, because they're still boys, saruhiko himself has barely outgrown the body of a child, and one day, they'll stop being boys. one day, they'll wish they'd lingered behind, just a while longer, in that time they still ran and laughed and lived at the same tempo, to the same song.
but for now, they are invincible—they are immortal the way only children can be, and they are kings.
in the end, we are just orphans, failures at flight.