Imagine there's a throne room. Imagine a throne room in a place unimaginable, but a place existing. Try and imagine. A throne room, huge, polished, regal, but only two occupants in it. A man with a black crown and simple clothes. Another with a white crown and the same. The way they sit, entwined, on the single, grand throne suggests intimacy, familiarity. The one with the white crown speaks.
"How hot is it down here, usually?"
"Less hotter than when you're here," Atobe Keigo replies, smirking.
Ryoma rolls his eyes. "How've you been doing?"
"Oh, excellent," Atobe sings. "I seem to be having a population influx, now that the world's gone to the dogs - then come to me."
Ryoma says, "Well, it's more peaceful in Heaven, anyway. I managed to get a lot of good souls to play tennis with me. They all sucked." Atobe snorts at that. "I'm just waiting for a couple of saintly tennis players on Earth to kick the bucket so that these rubbish players can all have new coaches."
"How long do you think you'll have to wait?"
Ryoma glares at Atobe. "The sudden increase in evildoers isn't a good thing, Monkey King."
"I'm sorry, but my title is King of Hell now."
"And you know mine, but do you bother calling me anything except brat?"
Atobe sighs. "Of course I do; heavenly brat."
Ryoma doesn't want to laugh at that. But he laughs at it despite himself.
Atobe smiles. It's been a year since he's seen one of the loves of his life. Peace, contentment, and happiness have only made him more beautiful - even if his stubborn attitude and biting sarcasm haven't gone away.
As if Ryoma read his mind, his smile slips away. Atobe, looking at him, realizes he's thinking about the other person - the other love of their lives.
"How do you think he's doing?" Ryoma murmurs.
Atobe sighs again. "I don't know. I didn't think of checking."
"Me neither."
They grow silent with the guilt that overtakes them. They make no excuses.
"Do you think we could check now?" Atobe murmurs.
Ryoma snaps his fingers.
The two disappear from the throne room.
Inchoate thoughts circle a despondent man's head. He raises a hand to shield his eyes from a sudden flash of white light that illuminates the room but brings nothing into existence - or so he thinks.
"What the fuck," he mutters. "Gone fucking insane after all."
He wants to take his shirt off. It sticks to him, because he hasn't changed it for a week. He hasn't gone out of his house for a month.
Shiraishi Kuranosuke is curled up with his back to the wall. He is shivering, because it is winter outside, full of white snow that would've made Ryoma happy, and Keigo happier, full of chilly air that would've made kissing in it feel much better than this current tsunami of unreal bullshit like flashes of light and Hikaru Zaizen asleep in the next room. But wait, Hikaru's real, he's just gone to college right now. He was real the last time Shiraishi went into his room to suck him off. He also won't let Hikaru take care of him. Thus his unclean state of existence.
Hikaru tries anyway, because he's a good boy, a good boy in love with someone who is too depressed to get up from the floor. Figuratively. It's all right. Life is shit. Shiraishi figures that some day, something's going to happen that'll make him get up. Figuratively. That day hasn't come yet. He won't go in search of it. Let him mourn his love for some more time.
His eyes are burning. He thinks he's cried too much - and now there's nothing left. He feels so lonely.
Hikaru's here. Shiraishi reminds himself of that on an hourly basis but there's only so much you can do to a person who loves you and the twisted mess you make of yourself and everything you do.
He bites his lip. He wants to suck Hikaru's cock. There's some kind of peace of mind he gets in that. The way he has to focus on nothing but making Hikaru feel like Shiraishi's mouth on his dick is... transcendent.
When was the last time he did it?
Ah.
This morning. Zaizen pushed him away, though. Has Shiraishi reached his limit already. Who knows. Zaizen may come searching for his lips this evening, but he's too much of a decent guy to try.
If the house is clean, it's because Zaizen cleaned it. If Shiraishi took a bath last week, it's because Zaizen seduced him into doing it. If Shiraishi is
alive -
He thought there were no tears. But some run down his cheeks anyway.
He senses something cool on his face. This coolness flits around on his skin - his forehead, his nose, his eyelids, his lips, his jaw. They feel like kisses.
Damn it.
Ryoma's scream of horror at the sight of a destroyed man - his destroyed man - isn't audible to Shiraishi but maybe he perceives the kisses Ryoma is raining on him, judging by the way he touches his face in wonder and despair.
Atobe stands. Just stands there. The sight of Kuranosuke Shiraishi is overwhelming. A dirty shirt is all he has on, with some underpants. That's it. That's... it.
He turns away, not willing to see this side of Shiraishi - not willing to see utter grief now, despite seeing it every day on other, unfamiliar faces.
He instead chooses to walk through his old home.
Ryoma throws his arms around Shiraishi and clings to him, wishing he could see him. But there are rules. There are so many rules once you become God. Who made those rules? Who knows. The God who made him God?
"Kuranosuke," he moans, sobbing. "Kuranosuke."
The sky outside darkens. A freezing wind starts to blow.
It's Atobe's doing. He doesn't know he's doing it. His pain manifests itself like that.
Rain starts falling outside, in the middle of winter. It hasn't even solidified into snowflakes or ice chunks.
Shiraishi sits there. Blank. It scares Ryoma.
But the door suddenly opens, and there's an angel. The light emanating from this angel would've blinded any other heavenly (or otherwise) being - but Ryoma's a god, after all. So he stares in surprise at this human being he once knew, whose light shines through his skin.
The way Zaizen (soaking wet, freezing cold) just picks him up and kisses him like a madman starving stirs Shiraishi. "You okay?" he mumbles in between kisses.
Zaizen laughs. "I should be the one asking you that. Can you believe it's raining outside?"
"Nope," Shiraishi says, forcing a smile. Zaizen says, "You have a choice - either take a hot shower with me, now, or a cold one when I push you outside."
"I think I'll take the hot shower."
He doesn't know where he's gotten the strength. It's just - after that flash of light in his room, something changed. Things became... warmer. Better.
Magic? Divinity. Witchcraft and wizardry. Fucking hell. Just bathe and forget about it. Shiraishi is too numb to do anything. Zaizen happily leads him to the bathroom, taking his clothes off, humming a song that Shiraishi's heard before. Shiraishi helps Zaizen undress, too.
The water's cold in the beginning, but heats up soon. Shiraishi scrubs his body with a strange vigour. Zaizen grabs his face and kisses him again. He's ecstatic. He's so happy. He wants to take his heart out of his chest and give it to Shiraishi in a gift box.
"So, what have you done all day?" Zaizen murmurs, washing Shiraishi's back slowly, prolonging their time under the hot water.
"Nothing."
Zaizen doesn't reply. He knows what nothing means.
"Kuranosuke," he says. Shiraishi turns his head. Zaizen simply drops a kiss to his shoulder. "I love you," he says.
Shiraishi says nothing. Zaizen really, really knows what nothing means.
"If they were here - " Shiraishi's eyelids droop (not in sleep but in sadness) - "do you think they'd love you like I do?"
Oh, that's not fair. That's not fair. Shiraishi won't say anything this time, either. Who can compare? What are the parameters for measuring love? Zaizen, this is an unreasonable question.
"I think the question should be if I'll love you like I love them," Shiraishi says, wording his sentence carefully.
Zaizen then tells Shiraishi, "Actually, the question should be if you'll love me at all."
No. What is he supposed to say to that? What is he supposed to think of that -
Ryoma and Atobe stand outside the bathroom, holding hands, too dignified to go in. There are precious tears running down Ryoma's face, tears that turn into small diamonds as soon as they lose the touch of his skin, diamonds that will turn to graphite years and years later, diamonds, upon seeing which Shiraishi and Zaizen will say what the fuck.
Atobe is trembling. There are no tears for him - he is - he's - he's simply in pain, and that's the thing about being King of Hell - no weaknesses. Rule your world with cruel mercy. That's all. That's why you got the black crown. Wear it with your pride.
The accident which killed Ryoma and Atobe made the papers and left them. A car in the middle of winter last year, skidding across too-smooth, iced-over roads, skidding straight into another car, Atobe's chauffeur dead on the spot, Keigo and Ryoma dead two hours later.
Shiraishi. Waiting and waiting and waiting in the living room, gift in hand. But nobody came home, until midnight, the doorbell rang and surprise, it wasn't the two persons he'd been waiting for. It was the poor man who had to be the bearer of bad news in the first few minutes of Ryoma's never-to-happen-again birthday.
Fate. Ryoma understands why this had to happen, when he wakes up in Heaven and is omniscient - understands why he has to meet his lover only once a year, understands everything - but Atobe, Atobe doesn't get why. Atobe is also omniscient, but denial isn't just a river in Egypt.
They miss Shiraishi more than anything else. They miss Shiraishi. They would overturn Heaven and Hell if they could, to be reunited with Shiraishi - but they can't.
And you know what? It sucks.
But they can't see him suffer. If they can't get back together - they sure as hell (Atobe would laugh at that) won't let him suffer.
So Atobe and Ryoma vanish, vanish from the house. They take his suffering in a black bag, to burn. They'll return to him. One day. But they'll take his suffering away.
Shiraishi kisses Zaizen.
"I will. I will love you. I don't want to love you because you keep me clean and sane. But I will love you for you, one day."
Zaizen says, "It doesn't matter. I'm not doing this out of selfishness."
"Yeah, you're an angel," Shiraishi mutters.
"That I am," Zaizen says.
Shiraishi feels so strange. He feels - like smiling.
It shouldn't really be strange, that strange. But it is. False ecstasy.
But genuine, too.
They come out of the bathroom and gawk at the diamonds. Shiraishi is filled with a strange weightlessness upon the sight.
He feels like getting up. Figuratively.
He feels like crying.
He feels like his search is over; it didn't even begin.
He mutters their names once. The joy that courses through him doesn't feel like a lie.
He doesn't know what this is.
The rain outside stops.
The sun shines brightly.
What the fuck just happened.
Shiraishi feels like getting up.