Warm Colors, Warm Things
I do not own Fai, Kurogane, Oto, or Tsubasa. So there.
This is for a contest on DeviantArt, so I would absolutely adore constructive criticism!
It was a golden morning. A translucent morning with long blue shadows and amber arabesques of light. The door was half-open, slid open on the whispering rails, and a breeze gamboled about the front room, remarking on the tiles.
Kurogane stood silhouetted in the doorframe against the luminous morning mist, a solid dark shape casting a shadow across the length of the room; Fai came down the stairs like the breeze, light and tripping and noiseless. The magician was frighteningly silent. A sole soft footfall alerted Kurogane to his presence.
"Kuro-puppy is up so early!"
He wasn't startled, because of one footfall. He didn't twitch.
"It's the only way I can get some peace and quiet. So much for that."
Kurogane glared, and Fai smiled, following the wind in aimless patterns across the tiles. The room smelled strongly of tea, the hot-water-dried-leaves richness of their darkest brew, and Kurogane held a steaming cup in one hand.
"Did you make enough tea to share, Kuro-tan?"
Kurogane sipped his tea; it was oversteeped and unsweetened. Fai would doubtless want sugar and honey in something weaker.
"There's a pot next to the stove, but you probably won't like it."
"No – it's fine. It's just cold."
Kurogane leaned against the doorframe, looking out into the morning. "Already?"
Fai tipped tea into a porcelain cup. The atmosphere of the cafe was usually as sweet as the cakes it served. This nipping air from outside was intrusive and odd. The tea was dark and bitter, but he didn't add sugar.
"Not the tea, the room."
"Wuss," Kurogane grumbled. "I thought your country was much colder."
"Cold isn't a relative thing. Either you are or you aren't. I've been colder, but I'm still cold now.
"Is your country like this, Kuro-wan?"
Fais slipped the question onto the end of his statement as he walked across the kitchen, stopping at the other side of the door. He and Kurogane framed the open scene, the pink cherry blossoms, the golden mist. Wind blew between them, tousling Fai's silken hair.
"That's not my name." He said it without force. It didn't really matter, if they were alone. Fai wouldn't take him less seriously. Probably couldn't take him less seriously. Nicknames were not worth being riled at if there was no danger of the kids taking them up.
"That's not my question."
The wind was helpless to dishevel Kurogane's hair – as was any attempt at styling, as were long, sword-calloused fingers dragged through. The jet-black mess stood up in stochastic clumps, ignoring any force acting upon it. Kurogane wasn't sure where he had acquired the gesture, running helpless fingers through his unruly hair. He preformed it anyway, uselessly, and took another sip of tea. The dregs almost choked him.
Fai waited, and even in his stillness, he was always poised to run.
"We have cherry blossoms in Nihon," Kurogane began suddenly. "In the early spring. It's sometimes cold like this when they bloom. They last for a week, maybe two. There are ceremonies. Celebrations."
The blossoms were always so bright after the monochromatic winter that it was almost unbearable. The whole world went from white to a riot of pink. For a few days they were in bud, making everyone breathless with anticipation. For a few days, they were in bloom, heartbreaking in their beauty. Tomoyo would perform the rituals that could only be done in the spring, by sunlight and by moonlight; Kurogane would watch over her, she would always be safe.
"Then they all blow away, and that's that."
He couldn't describe it. That would be too poetic.
"There would never be this much pink in Celes," Fai offered. "It was always white and blue. The pink and gold is too warm, it hurts sometimes. I'm still not used to it."
The wind bowed the top of the nearest cherry tree, and the sun burst through, molten gold. Fai blinked and squinted and bowed his head so there were shadows over his ice-blue eyes, light trapped in the golden filaments of his hair. Kurogane didn't bat an eyelid.
"Kuro-sama, the tea is gone and I'm still cold," Fai complained.
"What do you want me to do about it?"
Fai skipped across the amber square of sunlight that separated them, his shadow sliding long and lithe like a quick blue stain across it, and then he was standing with Kurogane to the left of the door, too close. There is space that shouldn't be breached uninvited, and Fai was in it, but not quite touching – there were inches between their skin, less where the magician's body was convex curves and angles. Kurogane was trapped against the wall; any motion would mean contact, and it would be his fault. For all his strength, he was pinned by paper-thin propriety and honor and shame.
"I'll kill you," he threatened.
Kurogane radiated heat, in the way athletic people do, the byproduct of a fierce metabolism, waste energy evanescing into the air. "But Kuro-puppy is nice and warm," Fai cooed.
"You think I'm not serious."
"You'll never catch me."
"You are good at running away."
Fai went sharply, tensely silent.
"It's what you do, isn't it?" Kurogane pressed.
Fai's shoulders closed defensively, his neck straight so he stared, unseeing, into the golden and pink and blue light outside.
"At least I'm moving on. You just want everything back. Don't you understand that's impossible?"
Kurogane looked over Fai's head, into the interior of the café, but loose golden strands of hair put odd patterns over his vision.
"Nihon isn't my past. It's my home, and I'll find it again. At least I have a goal. Something I'm trying to get to instead of something I'm running from."
The teacup trembled in Fai's hands, and Kurogane would have taken it before it shattered on the floor, but Fai held it away, too far to reach without grappling, and looked up. He had that smile, with his eyes closed, that smile that was just a shape his pink lips made against his pale face, like the curve inside a seashell or the rounded edge of a cherry blossom. Of all the lies Fai told, that smile was the most odious.
"Really, don't worry about me, Kuro-pon," Fai advised. "I'm having fun, adventuring, finding Sakura-chan's feathers. I'm happy."
There was a ringing clatter, broken porcelain. Kurogane's empty teacup hitting the floor. Otherwise he was unmoving. It may have fallen. It may have been thrown.
"You're a liar. You're almost as dangerous as I am, and I can't believe you don't have scars from whatever made you that way."
"I'm happy now," Fai asserted. "At this moment. I can't worry about anything else, can I? You should try it."
He looked away, at the ground, at the shattered cup, not meeting Kurogane's eyes. So he wasn't lying. Kurogane turned his head stiffly, staring out at the cherry blossoms.
"I'll be happy when I get back to Nihon."
Fai was not warm. Even from this distance, through clothes, his body heat was barely palpable. And he was very very careful. He shifted and twisted, but always maintained some hair-thin distance. The fabric of his shirt never touched the blue of Kurogane's kimono. Given his usual careless ebullience… but what about this conversation reflected his usual attitude? The morning (the silence, the closeness, the absence of the children) made them both too perceptive and too morbidly philosophical.
"You're a liar too, Kuro-rin. You don't hate everything as much as you pretend to. I think you're happy in this instant."
A pregnant pause, a gust of wind like a heavy sigh. Spilled tea crept slowly across the marble floor.
"Maybe so. I have to clean up that teacup."
"Not yet."
Kurogane was still trapped.
"Are you still cold?"
Maybe it wasn't a betrayal to be happy in this instant, and maybe it would be all right to touch him, just this once. Even though Fai was as ephemeral as cobwebs and morning mist, he had to have more than just the fragile saccharine mask he wore. Would his facade shatter like the teacup if Kurogane held him, melt away like spun sugar, and reveal nothing, golden dust motes and dancing lights, no core of strength no past no soul? Kurogane hesitated, awaiting permission.
"A bit," Fai admitted.
And perhaps he hadn't known that was permission, because when Kurogane put an arm around him he was tense as a statue of glass and golden wire, trying to flinch away in every direction at once. He was fragile as crystal, but not insubstantial, not the mirage he sometimes gave the impression of being. For a second Kurogane held him, and Fai suffered himself to be held, and did not dissolve, did not vanish. There was no judgment and no disaster and maybe this was all right after all, just this once.
But Fai also did not relax, just held still for a moment like a panicked bird in the coils of a snake, then shattered the silence.
"Kuro-pon. I'll have to shout for Mokona if you're taking advantage of me."
He said that with a laugh, so violently forced his shoulders shook.
"Don't flatter yourself." Derision. Kurogane made it a heavy, insulating layer. "You shouldn't complain about things if you don't want anyone to do anything about them."
"You're right. It won't happen again, Kuro-sama. I promise."
Fai is too much like Tomoyo in one regard – that he is dangerous in his own way, but would be better off with Kurogane's protection. It would be a betrayal to transfer loyalties, though. Kurogane released him.
As for Kurogane, he is too much like what Fai knows he needs, stable and practical and devoted, too much fun, too easy to be around and be with. That path leads to transient pleasure and heartbreak, and Fai will not walk it, for all his talk about being content with happiness in this moment. He dances away from the warrior, to behind the bar where he keeps a dustpan and broom.
"I can just shut the door," Kurogane volunteered, holding his post while Fai sped from point to point, perpetual fluid motion.
"No, that's all right. It's a beautiful morning. I want to look at it."
"Even if you're going to be cold?"
"Even so."