Title: All That He Needed
Pairing: Fubuki x Manjoume
Timeline: Set sometime in late fourth season, hypothetically after all the adventures are done but before they leave Duel Academia. I'm sure canon will make that flub somehow, but until it does, I'm happy placing it like that.
Notes: I wrote this for the 15pairings challenge on Livejournal. I will be writing ten other fanfics, each a different romance, for that challenge.
His life was not a fairy tale. That fact was getting driven home to Manjoume with every day that passed. It resembled one on certain levels. He was the youngest of three brothers, and his two older siblings certainly didn't think anything of him. He wouldn't have been surprised if they thought he was a complete idiot. He was, in fact, certain that they did, even after all that he'd done over the three years he'd been at the Academy.
He'd even went on a magical mysterious journey that had ended up with him learning a great deal about himself and gaining new tools to achieve his ambitions. As if that wasn't enough, he'd also been involved with the forces of evil, and had recovered and grown stronger from that.
Yes. On the surface, his life was that of a fairy tale hero. He even had his own beautiful princess to worship and adore. And there had even been a few moments when he'd thought she'd looked on him with a bit more favor than anyone else. Every one of those was seared into his mind, and he was certain that he would be able to remember them a hundred years from now, if he were alive to do so.
But there was where it all stopped. Because in fairy tales, the prince and the princess, or the humble hero and the princess, were in love at first sight and never had to actually work for anything. Fairy tales were hollow, when you thought about it long enough. The characters had no interests outside of each other, and some things that he held dear weren't even mentioned.
Last, but certainly not least, was the fact that he was no prince, much less not a humble hero. He was a filthy, stained creature, the dark phoenix who had risen from the fires of hell itself, and for all the glory he had earned, he was still not a prince. Which meant there would be no princess for him.
Asuka certainly deserved to be one, though. She was the finest female duelist in Obelisk Blue, and one of the finest in the entire school itself. He was certain that whatever she did in the future, she was going to be great at it. But that just meant that as much as he loved her, they would never be together. She had no real eyes for anything that wasn't her career.
He didn't know if he could just give her up, though. She'd been the focus of every affectionate thought that he'd had for years. It was entirely possible he'd loved her before even realizing that he had.
And all of it was for nothing. Even if she were kind enough to like him a bit more than any other, she would never love him. Not that way.
Manjoume hated not having any idea of what to do about something. And right now, he was completely clueless about what to do. Give up? Stay the course? The confusion and the slowly growing emptiness was worse than he could stand. If he just knew what to do, it would be all right. But as things stood now…well, he didn't.
"So, what's got you so down?" Manjoume was not that surprised to hear Fubuki's voice. The showman duelist had a knack for showing up any time when someone needed cheering up. It didn't matter if he could or couldn't pull it off. If it was needed, then Fubuki was there.
"Nothing," Manjoume grumped briefly and moved aside so Fubuki had a place to sit. He really should've thought that Fubuki would be there sooner or later anyway. He had come to the lighthouse, to that special place where he liked to think every now and then. With how much Fubuki loved the ocean and everything to do with it, it really would have been just a matter of time before he showed up.
Not that Manjoume cared if Fubuki was there or not. He was always fun to be around, even when Manjoume didn't want to be having fun. Being around Fubuki just made him feel better, and he dully thought that he could use a bit of that right now.
"You're looking that down and it's nothing? You've got to be joking!" Fubuki was wearing one of his Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and had his ukulele in one hand. His eyes gleamed with all passion and zest for life that he'd had for as long as Manjoume had known him, and as the waves washed up near them, Manjoume thought that they appeared to caress him with a special sort of touch.
I've got to be going crazy. It wasn't the first time he'd had the occasional thought like that about Fubuki, and he suspected it wouldn't be the last. There was a very intense difference in the way he thought about Asuka and the way he thought about her brother. He had no words to put it to, but they both owned a different part of his heart. If a Tenjoin sibling wanted it, then Manjoume would see to it that they had it, if it were at all within his power.
Fubuki poked at him with one slender finger. "Come on. Snap out of it. Tell me what's going on." There was a slightly different look in his eyes, one that Manjoume had never seen before, and he'd thought that he'd seen every kind of look Fubuki had over the years. This was sort of like his 'worried' expression, but a little different at the same time.
"I'm not living in a fairy tale." The minute the words crossed his lips, Manjoume wanted to smack himself. That sounded so much like something Juudai would have said once! Not what he wanted to say! Even if that was how he'd been thinking of things only a few moments earlier.
Fubuki blinked a few times and Manjoume launched into his explanation, wanting to get this out of the way as quickly as he could so any reactions that Fubuki wanted to have would be done. Then he could go have a duel with someone and get all of this out of his system once and for all.
When he was finally done, Fubuki had his eyes closed, his head tilted back, and for all Manjoume could tell, he was listening more to the sound of the waves and the seagulls crying than to anything he himself had been saying.
"I guess I'm boring you too much." Manjoume could not help the sharp stab in his heart at the thought of actually boring Fubuki. That was unforgivable in his opinion. He would've been the first person yelling at someone else who did it. He started to get up, ready to go do anything that wasn't waste Fubuki's time.
"Who said your life needed to be a fairy tale? You're going to be going into the Pro Leagues. You've got Edo Phoenix for a guide." Fubuki shocked him into staying with what he said. "You've helped save the world a few times."
"Yeah, about that. Did you notice at least part of the time, I get swept out of the way into some weirdo prison or cult so Juudai can save the day?" He couldn't help but be a bit grumpy about that, too. Fubuki just shrugged.
"So? Your life is your life, not someone else's. You've made it a good one. You're going to do more and be more than anyone ever expected of you." Fubuki opened his eyes and looked at him, and Manjoume was positive that he'd never seen that look turned on him before, that look that was so caring and intense. It reminded him of how he looked at Asuka or how Juudai and Johan stared at each other when they thought no one else was looking.
Manjoume pushed that aside for the moment. He wanted to figure out just what it was that Fubuki was trying to tell him. He knew that he didn't have to have a perfect ending to everything. He wasn't going to get it anyway. No one he knew had everything perfect. So why should he be that different?
"Endings aren't all that great, anyway," Fubuki kept on talking, and there was a lilt to his voice that said he might or might not have actually been paying attention to what he was saying. Manjoume drank in every word. "For that matter, does anything ever really end?"
Okay, that was getting a little more philosophical than Manjoume was ready to deal with right now. But he'd seen what he needed to anyway.
"I guess it doesn't." Manjoume shook his head and wondered how some things could escape him and yet land perfectly inside of Fubuki's head. Not that Fubuki didn't have a lot of great qualities, but keeping himself down to Earth wasn't one of them, and probably never would be.
He was suddenly struck with the need to do something. Just what he wanted to do, he didn't know. But it had to be something, and it had to be active, and it had to be with Fubuki. Enough words had been said.
"So, do you want to surf, swim, scuba-dive, or just take a walk on the beach?" Fubuki's question came as if they'd already talked about doing something together, and took Manjoume as much by surprise as anything else had in the last twenty minutes.
Surfing wasn't really something he was that good at, really. He'd tried a few times, but he usually wound up wiping out. He really preferred watching Fubuki do it. He'd lost track of how many times he'd watched him sailing along on his board, clad in that tight-fitting purple and black wetsuit, showing off for all that he was worth.
Scuba-diving was about the same thing. He was slightly better at that, but it really wasn't what he wanted to do. Swimming he could do, since he'd been doing that since about the same time he could toddle, but it still wasn't it.
That left one option from what Fubuki had listed, and he couldn't really think of any others at the moment. There was dueling, but that wasn't what he wanted to do, now that he thought about it. He'd be doing that regularly once he was in the Pro Leagues. It was fun and it was business at the same time. He still wanted to do something else right now. And the last did sound as if that were what he really wanted to do.
"Walk." He pointed firmly up the beach, away from where most of the students frequented. Manjoume did not want this to be interfered with, no matter what. This was their time, and he wasn't going to let anyone else interfere with it.
Fubuki leaped easily to his feet and flashed a smile that sent a wash of pleasure all through the black-clad duelist. "Then let's get going. The sun's going to be down shortly, you know."
Manjoume hadn't known that, mainly because he hadn't been paying that much attention to what time it was. When you were moping and being annoyed because you weren't getting something that couldn't exist, didn't exist, and didn't really want in the first place, time ceased to make that much of a difference.
Instead of mentioning that, he started to walk, and Fubuki fell into step a second later, chattering about a dozen things in the span of a minute or two, and strumming his ukulele as he did so, giving them a musical accompaniment. Manjoume wanted to wince and hope that the sound wouldn't warn any of Fubuki's fan girls that they were around. The last thing he really wanted was to be interrupted by them right now. This was his time with Fubuki! Who even knew how long it would until they saw each other again after they left the Academy?
That was another event that he chose not to think about right now. Instead, he just kept on walking, occasionally commenting on something that Fubuki said, and enjoyed being with him with every step they took and every moment that passed.
The fairy tales never talked about what happened if the wrong sort of people fell… He cut the thought off abruptly and looked over just in time to see that the sun was setting in a glorious swirl of colors.
"Ever think of living happily ever after?" he asked Fubuki suddenly. Fubuki strummed a few chords on his ukulele and shrugged calmly.
"Not really. I just try to live happily."
Yeah. Manjoume smiled. That was it. He took another few steps, then put his hand out, not thinking and not needing to. It was met by Fubuki's hand, and both of them exchanged a smile that said more than words ever could.