Warnings: Shounen-ai. Major angst. Knowledge of Tokyo Babylon highly recommended prior to reading this fic.
Summary: The shattered cup. The shattered dream. But the delicate heart that breaks can bleed for years – until the one who pities it, lets it die. A Subaru fic.
Notes: I started writing snippets when I was feeling pretty low. This is the result. Oh, and onmyouji means "ying-yang magician." Kekkai means "barrier."
SuspensionIn the dim hotel room, a man sat on the edge of his bed. The cool sheets were soothingly clean against his pale skin, washed blue in the moonlight. The curtains were partly drawn. Between the windowsill and the bottom of the glass pane, where the brown paint was chipped and cracking, the winter chill of the outside world invaded like a snake made of mist. It slithered like a live thing until it brushed the young man's cheek – and recoiled.
Subaru Sumeragi was already marked.
Subaru flinched and wrapped his white trenchcoat tighter around the soft slope of his shoulders. On the rickety side-table, a cigarette lay in a nondescript ceramic ashtray resting upon the countertop's patchy veneer. The shellac had worn away in some places, revealing the vertical striations of wood beneath.
Subaru turned when the first cinders of ash fell.
Although his legs were unstable and weak, he stood and swept the warm ash into his hands. His fingers lingered on the worn wood as if they were comforting scorched skin. He had seen many sad-looking tables in the last nine years of his life as a nomadic onmyouji. A few of them had born knife marks, one had been missing a leg, and another stained black by permanent ink. But this one was simply wearing away with time and use. His fingers had felt no grooves, or nicks, only a slight roughness. Subaru felt pity for it.
It was nondescript, and plain. Forgettable.
Outside his window, the moon waned as it hid behind a cloud. Subaru Sumeragi lifted the back of his palms to his face and concentrated. Tapping into his power, he caused the star-shaped brands to flare to life. In his dark room, the marks glowed brightly as a beacon. But the one that had originally carved them did not answer. No answer had come for nine years.
Seishirou-san was easily bored.
Subaru rubbed his hand as the light began to slip away. Maybe the Sakurazukamori had found a new interest, and cast away his old one into the dark corners of the closet – like a toddler suddenly discarding an old toy when he spots a new intriguing plaything.
Subaru, after all, did not think of himself as anything unique…
A deadly smile.
A golden gaze.
DISTAIN.
…and certainly…he was not special to that person.
Subaru walked over to the far wall to fiddle with the thermostat. The room was too cold. His breath formed fog every time he exhaled. The gray blanket was stiff and unyielding so he had not bothered to cover himself with it. After a few more adjustments, Subaru sat back on the bed. There was little else in his room, and even less in his apartment in Tokyo, which contained nothing more than a place for sleep and a lonesome phone on the hardwood floor. Subaru could have afforded more lavish accommodations in his travels across the country; the Sumeragi Clan of onmyouji were affluent and well respected, but the last time he had stayed at a fancier hotel he had felt out of place. The abundance of the room, although impersonal, asphyxiated him. It's false warmness was incongruous with his soul.
It threatened to burn him. To burn his heart in which winter resided permanently.
"To me, breaking your arm is the same as breaking a glass cup."
Subaru returned to the bed. His fingers traveled a second time across the wood insistently, striving to learn all its contours. Hoping to find its uniqueness. There was a dirty coffee cup in the way. It was a recent addiction, just like his taste for nicotine. But while the cigarettes provided him with time to retain stillness and to meditate, the coffee…the coffee…
He struck at the bitter liquid. The sudden clink of smashed glass greeted his ears.
The dark stains spread across the dingy carpet like the legs of a spider. The black-brown of dried blood. Subaru stared – he would not be able to erase them. He could not even pick up the pieces. Sharp edges that would cut the too soft barrier of skin. A flimsy kekkai for the treasure it held.
"Seishirou-san." A half-whisper of tortured hope.
Shattered cup. Shattered dream. Shattered heart.
"I thought, even if you saw me no more than a pebble, or a twig underneath your foot, another of the countless offerings to the Sakura…still…it would have been you."
Subaru waited. But there was no one in the empty room to answer him. He lay down. He slept with a hand over his heart, but only to cradle the photograph hidden in his breast pocket. Three happy faces frozen in the past. One did not exist. One was dead. The last one was a dying ghost, with broken shards for a soul…
Subaru breathed uneasily.
…with broken shards for a heart.
Owari.
Please review. There's a sequel of sorts called "Requirements of a Bet" waiting in the wings. ::Twiddles thumbs wondering if anyone got the coffee reference::