Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Author: Higuchimon
Fandom: Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu LOVE!
Series Title: Love of Spirits||Story Title: Light Wind
Romance: Kinshiro x Atsushi/Atsushi x Kinshiro
Word Count: 4,006||Status: One-shot
Genre: Romance||Rated: PG-13
Challenge: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, G23, fic that is T rated; Advent 2015, day #6, write about one of your favorite pairings; KinAtsu Week Day #1, how we met
Summary: Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do when angry enough. Or at least a spirit of the sun...
Kinshiro didn't notice wind spirits very often. In his opinion they weren't very important, little bits of fluff that danced around during their season, and vanished when it passed, perhaps seen again, perhaps not. Sometimes he noticed the more annoying ones that brought thunderstorms or even showers of rain, but he couldn't ignore them, since they blocked out the light that he brought.
Sun spirits, in his opinion, were far more beneficial to the world at large than wind spirits. No one could exist without sunlight. Wind had a place in the natural order, but far, far below his own gleaming light.
So when he caught sight of a wind spirit frolicking with a patch of leaves, his first reaction was just to concentrate on brightening the light so the local farmers could work on tending to their crops before it grew late.
Kinshiro kept himself so focused on his work that he didn't notice the wind spirit getting closer until a gust blew against him. Sun spirits couldn't get cold, especially not summer sun spirits like he was, but he glared at the stranger anyway.
"What do you want?"
The wind spirit gusted a bit more. "Just to say hello?"
Spirits weren't visible to mortal eyes and did not look like mortals even if they had been. But if he'd possessed eyes in the way that humans did, Kinshiro would've rolled them at that.
"Why?" Sun and wind spirits did not interact. Or, in all fairness, Kinshiro did not interact with them. He far preferred other spirits for his rare time to himself.
"I don't see why not. I've seen you around here before." Again the wind spirit gusted against the leaves, sending them spiralling around. "You're a sun spirit, aren't you?"
"Yes." Kinshiro judged how much more time he had before he would have to leave. The farmers had almost finished their work. This was one of his busiest days, so close to the longest day of the year, and he always put in his best work around now. "I'm working. I don't need interruptions."
The wind spirit gusted once more, this time in confusion. "I didn't think I was interrupting." He hesitated before going onward. "I'm Atsushi."
The wind spirit annoyed Kinshiro. He interrupted him when he was trying to work and he kept on talking when Kinshiro would rather not bother.
And yet Kinshiro found his own name falling from his lips, something he'd never done to a wind spirit, especially not one he'd spoken not even twenty words to.
Atsushi whirled around in pleasure. "It's nice to meet you, Kinshiro. You're going to finish soon, aren't you?"
"Yes." Kinshiro found himself a little tempted to work just a bit longer than he needed to, in the hopes that this annoying spirit would just go away. Wind spirits worked by day or by night and surely this one would have business to take care of somewhere else. If not, Kinshiro would make certain that he did somewhere else. Somewhere very far away.
"I'm kind of new around here," Atsushi confessed. "I was hoping that you could help me."
"Just do your job." Kinshiro kept his words clipped. In all of his life, since shortly after he'd kindled, he'd never found any reason to do something that didn't involve work more than it didn't. Even when he spent his rare visits with Arima or Akoya it involved at least thinking about work at some point.
Again the wind gusted and blew, this time in something Kinshiro recognized as a bit of embarassement. "I've been doing it. I bring scents to people. Like this!"
Another gust. Kinshiro didn't know where he found it, but now the aroma of cooking food filled his nostrils, or whatever he had that passed for those. He could smell it and that mattered more than defining body parts he may or may not have possessed.
And because of that scent, he recoiled, shuddering. "Stop that!" He hated smelling anything strong. He didn't mind so much aromas such as light perfume or flowers, but anything strong? Anything overpowering? It distracted him from his all-important work and Kinshiro hated being distracted.
Atsushi pulled back a little, swirling the leaves and grass in confusion. "What's wrong?"
"That foul stench is unbearable!" Kinshiro moved farther away. "Don't ever do that again!"
He didn't wait around for Atsushi to acknowledge his command. He didn't wait around for Atsushi to do anything at all, but instead gathered up all of his power and slipped away. To humans it would just seem that night fell a trifle more quickly, but they'd done their work and it was time to rest anyway.
That held true for mortals and spirits alike. Some spirits didn't need to rest and could go on as they were for as long as they pleased. Kinshiro wasn't one of them. Sun spirits wandered the world only so long as the sun was up in their particular region. Which meant now he returned to the upper regions of the air and would stay there in peace until sunrise.
"Uh, did I do something wrong?"
Kinshiro jerked around at that. "What are you doing up here?" He didn't like people being in his personal space without his invitation or knowledge.
Atsushi fidgeted more. There weren't any leaves to toss around up here but he nudged a stray cloudlet around anyway. "You looked mad. I wanted to say I was sorry if I made you that way."
What words Kinshiro had in mind died away at once. Few enough entities saw him or spoke to him, especially without him doing so first, that the idea of one apologizing hadn't ever crossed his thoughts. He tried to work his head around this.
"What do you want?" Why else would a silly wind spirit talk to him in the first place?
Even without bodies, some essential impressions came through. Kinshiro could tell Atsushi was, for lack of a better word, nervous. "I just thought we could be friends? I'm a summer wind spirit and you're a summer sun spirit, so we'll probably see a lot of each other anyway."
Kinshiro didn't have a mouth. That didn't make a difference in the fact if he had, it would've been dropped in surprise at those words. Then he gathered himself together with all due speed.
"Very well." He didn't think this would last very long. It would cost him nothing to grant the poor wind spirit's request for a short time, until the whole idea blew itself out of his head. It would probably be gone by dawn, anyway.
Atsushi brightened so much that the unwary could've mistaken him for a sun spirit himself. "Really! That's great!" He spun around quickly, a low laugh rippling out that humans would've taken for a huge blast of wind. "Were you going to do something? Because I wanted to go see En for a while and you could come too."
"En?" Kinshiro could not completely follow Atsushi's train of thought. But he tried.
"He's a river spirit." Atsushi flicked a breeze in one direction. "I met him a little while after I blew in. It's hard to talk to him sometimes, though, because he's a sleepy little river." A laugh, something that wrapped itself around Kinshiro and echoed in the most pleasant of ways in his mind. "But would you like to meet him?"
Kinshiro did not fidget. He was a sun spirit and they did not fidget. "I really need to rest. I have work to do tomorrow."
The cloudlet Atsushi played with dropped a bit as Atsushi stopped. "Oh."
"Sun spirits don't go around all day and all night," Kinshro felt obliged to tell him. Clearly Atsushi hadn't ever spent much time with the radiant beings.
"Oh. Well. Maybe another time, then?" Atsushi perked up a bit when Kinshiro bent his head slightly.
Kinshiro wasn't actually sure if he would try to see Atsushi's friend. But the idea of disappointing Atsushi, even so slightly, crept up on him as being something he didn't want to do.
"I should go, then, so you can rest." Atsushi blew a quick farewell and then was gone. Kinshiro stared at where he'd been and tried to figure out exactly what had happened.
What happened was that he'd become friends with Atsushi. Every day the cheerful wind spirit blew by and asked how he was doing and if he wanted to go do this or that when he had the spare time. He would blow up some of the more interesting fragrances that he encountered in his work, mostly the lighter ones now that he knew about Kinshiro's aversion to strong odors. But sweet flowers, ripening crops, and the like were all suitable.
Kinshiro had no idea of how to deal with Atsushi. He showed up every day and chattered about all that he'd seen blowing around his territory, which seemed wider than Kinshiro's. That wasn't surprising; while light touched everything, sun spirits divided the world between themselves.
"So you've never seen anywhere else?" Atsushi wondered, kicking around the branches on a tree as Kinshiro focused his attention on reflecting light off of a pond. The work of a sun spirit wasn't all ripening crops, after all, and Kinshiro prided himself on doing even the smallest jobs to perfection.
"I see enough." His territory wasn't that small. He'd just never made much of an effort to go beyond it.
Not that he couldn't. A sun spirit could go anywhere that sunlight went, so long as the sun shone in the sky. After that, it was better to remain in the upper air until dawn.
The more time that Atsushi spent around him, the more Kinshiro began to expect to see him there. He refused to even think he was getting used to the wind spirit, not for a single moment.
He'll forget one of these days. Wind spirits were like that. Or so he'd thought. But day after day after day passed by and Atsushi showed up as regular as the sun itself.
Atsushi kicked around the clouds a little, making sure they didn't interfere with Kinshiro's work. Kinshiro appreciated that.
"What do you do when it's cloudy? I mean, really cloudy. Storms and things."
Kinshiro counted himself lucky that such a day hadn't happened yet since Atsushi blew into his life. "I rest." What else was he supposed to do? Besides, the odds of a cloudy day that covered his entire territory were somewhat slim. He'd seen it happen only a handful of times since he kindled, and that spanned centuries.
Atsushi flipped toward him, lighting up in that way that he had. "Next time it's cloudy, you can come see En with me. You still haven't." How Atsushi could pout when he was the wind confused even Kinshiro. But he did it somehow.
"I have a lot of work to do," Kinshiro protested. He knew the excuse wouldn't last forever; summer would draw to an end and he would truly start to rest for another year. That was when he did what socializing he ever did, dropping by Akoya's flower field and sliding through the broken windows of Arima's falling mansion.
He suspected, like it or not, that visiting a sleepy river would be put on his agenda. At least it would make Atsushi happy.
Kinshiro tried not to think about how much making Atsushi happy began to wind into his view of the world.
Atsushi buzzed around a bit more before swirling into position in front of Kinshiro. "I've got to go. I'll see you tomorrow."
"All right." Kinshiro tried not to sound happy, and it was easier than he would've thought once upon a time. Spending time on his own didn't seem as appealing as having Atsushi around to kick things up.
He'll be back tomorrow. Kinshiro kept that firmly in mind. Atsushi would come back. Atsushi always came back.
Atsushi didn't come back.
Three very long and very quiet days passed, the kind of days Kinshiro would've thoroughly enjoyed only a handful of weeks earlier. Now he couldn't concentrate on his work. He stopped caring about how well he could make a pond sparkle or if he'd focused enough attention on shining in the proper ways.
Where is he?
It wasn't right. Atsushi always showed up, if only for a few moments. Once or twice he'd just had time to blow around leaves or branches or kick some clouds, but it was enough so that Kinshiro knew he was around in the first place.
Only now he hadn't. Now there wasn't anything. The wind lay dull and lifeless. If it blew, there wasn't anything of Atsushi's essence in it. Just the wind, nothing of the spirit of it.
Something was wrong. Kinshiro didn't like things being wrong. Especially when what was wrong involved Atsushi.
Clouds crept in, thick and dark, a storm unlike anything that he'd ever seen in all of his life. Kinshiro slipped above the clouds, a wary sensation filling him the more he watched them. This storm tasted of magic, a strange entertwining of mortal magic and immortal: a thing that should not happen.
But what sent chills through him – a thing that also should not happen to a sun spirit – was what type of immortal magic he sensed in that storm.
Wind magic.
Atsushi's magic.
Kinshiro, by now, knew where En's sleepy river trickled. They'd passed by it once, and Atsushi had tried to get him to visit. But there'd been no need to make anything sparkle there, since the river flowed underneath a covering of trees and bushes that kept it mostly in the shadows.
Kinshiro dropped down there like a bolt of lightning, not caring that his touch singed the leaves and burned the branches.
"Where is he?"
The river spirit would be there somewhere. He would know where Atsushi was. Kinshiro didn't want to think otherwise. The only thing he wanted to have wrong was that Atsushi's magic was somehow involved in this horrid storm.
"Where is he?" His words shook the earth beneath him, sending small pebbles darting into the river. A shaggy head rose up from there, yawning.
"Who are you and what are you talking about?"
Kinshiro stared down at the other, his brilliance scorching the rock underneath his feet. "I am Kinshiro. Where is Atsushi?"
En had to know. He had to know.
En blinked a few times. "Is he missing?"
Kinshiro wanted to scream. He wanted to burn things. This wasn't even close to right. "Why don't you know where he is?"
"I've been asleep." En yawned and brushed his fingers through his hair. Unlike Atsushi or Kinshiro, he chose to have a human-ish form, though it wasn't any more necessary for him than it was for them. "Seriously, what's wrong?"
"I told you. Atsushi's missing. He's been missing for three days." Kinshiro indicated the rising storm. "This has his magic all through it, but it's wrong."
En looked a bit more worried the more Kinshiro spoke. "I can't leave my river. You'd better go find him."
Kinshiro didn't waste another moment. I shouldn't have bothered coming here anyway. What would a river spirit know, especially one that sleeps all the time?
Regardless, En was right about this: he needed to go find Atsushi, and the sooner the better.
Quick as the light that formed him, Kinshiro darted from place to place, searching for any more tastes of Atsushi's magic. With every passing moment the storm grew worse, the wind tearing at everything that it could, ripping leaves off branches, ripping branches off trees, ripping trees out of the ground. Houses that weren't sturdy enough fell before its vast strength.
This wasn't a summer wind at all. This was a wind of hell.
Kinshiro didn't know what humans called places or their opinion of distance between them. He cared even less. What he knew was that after far, far too long, he found what could only be Atsushi, or his magic.
It centered over a human city, tearing it to pieces. Somewhere in there Kinshiro could feel Atsushi's presence, weak and fluttering and somehow restrained, by human enchantments.
Kinshiro wasn't restrained. Kinshiro dropped down from the heavens and for the first time in his long, long existence, he shaped himself into a human form.
What he saw when he landed confused him for the first handful of moments. At first glance, a simple human stood at the end of enchanted chains held by a human wizard. Then the energies cleared themselves and he understood what he saw.
"What did you do to Atsushi?" For his first words in human form, they came out with all the hissing strength of the sun.
The wizard stared at him in utter disbelief. "Who are you? What are you?"
"Release Atsushi." Kinshiro didn't care about introductions. He didn't care about what this creature wanted or why it had done it or if it knew what it had done. He cared only about getting Atsushi back. "And I might not burn you that much."
"Would you say something that makes sense?"
"Kinshiro..." Atsushi's voice wasn't what it had been when he'd danced with clouds and leaves. Weaker, weakening, a tremble that Kinshiro didn't like at all. "Don't stay here. He can bind spirits..."
"I don't care. He won't keep you." Kinshiro would burn anything he needed to. It wasn't something he'd done before. But sunburn wasn't just a word tossed around in vague amusement for him.
The wizard kicked at Atsushi. "Keep quiet. No one asked you to talk." He looked back at Kinshiro, an avid little gleam in his eyes. "You must be a sun spirit." He licked his lips. "I've never tried to bind one of those before."
Kinshiro wasn't going to let that happen. "You hurt Atsushi. I don't forgive that."
Kinshiro hadn't ever taken human form before, but he knew the weapons he carried anyway. A glowing bow of sunlight with a single arrow appeared as he raised his hands. He took one shot.
He'd never used his beams to fight like this. But he had eons of experience in aiming his light where he wanted it to go and this wasn't any different.
Whatever defenses the wizard had in place melted beneath the power of the sun. Kinshiro watched in detachment as the human fell back, fried to the bone, then turned to Atsushi. In the moment the wizard breathed his last, flickers of energy poured over the captive wind spirit. Kinshiro reached out to him, not sure of what else that he could do. Didn't spells end with their creator gone?
They did. Atsushi threw his head back and howled as the chains fell from his wrists and the cry turned into the howl of the wind as the storm above spun into silence.
Kinshiro turned his gaze to where those in the city who'd watched the wizard could see them now. His bow will in his hands, he spoke.
"Leave the spirits alone."
He gathered Atsushi into his arms, even as they both faded away from human sight. It wasn't necessary once they were both in full spirit form again, but he held the wind spirit close, and learned what it meant when humans said their hearts raced.
Kinshiro settled them both by En's river, not being able to think of anywhere else that would be safe. The sleepy river spirit could at least watch out for them while Atsushi recovered. The humans would just have to deal with the sun not having Kinshiro's flair to it for a while.
"Why did you do that?" Atsushi wondered one evening as the stars began to fill the skies.
"He hurt you. He took you away from where you belong and tried to make you do things that you wouldn't want to do." Kinshiro didn't think Atsushi should've even asked. Why else would he have done it?
Atsushi gusted against him a bit. For now, they were little more than a soft breeze and a glint of the last rays of the sun together.
"I didn't mean to scare you. I didn't know what was going on." Atsushi shuddered, a cold breeze quite unlike himself. "I couldn't do anything but what he wanted me to do."
Kinshiro did what he could to warm Atsushi. "It's over. No one will try that again." He would burn them all if they even thought about it. He would burn anyone if they tried to hurt Atsushi.
He would do worse to those who did hurt Atsushi.
The wind spirit said nothing else, but only made himself more comfortable against Kinshiro, a quiet breeze gusting around with each breath that he took. Kinshiro could see En watching, eyes half-closed and drowsing, and wondered if he should let Arima and Akoya know what had happened. His visits were far enough apart that they likely didn't worry about him – except Arima, who worried about everyone and everything – but he found that he wanted them to know Atsushi. The wind spirit was important to him. So they should know.
Later. Once Atsushi recovered enough to travel again.
Kinshiro was so wrapped up in his own thoughts he almost didn't hear Atsushi speaking to him. Only when the wind spirit tapped against him did he realize it.
"I'm sorry. I was somewhere else." He would never have been like that before Atsushi. He thought he liked it, at least as long as it did involve Atsushi himself.
"Why did you come? How did you even find me?"
Kinshiro regarded Atsushi with a bit of confusion. "Why wouldn't I come? You were missing. And then you were hurt." He said it as if it were as obvious as the sunlight he directed. To him, it was.
Atsushi's voice trembled the tiniest of bits and made Kinshiro want to spin a web of light to keep him safe. "I didn't think anyone would come. Yumoto was with Gora and he wouldn't have known. Ryuu said he'd be busy for a while the last time I talked to him. En can't leave his river."
Kinshiro held Atsushi even closer. "I'll always come for you if you need me." This was Atsushi. The annoying, exasperating, stressful, straining, wonderful Atsushi who'd spun his way inside of walls Kinshiro hadn't even known that he'd built and blown them away without even a thought. How could he ever leave him? How could he ever not come for him if Atsushi needed him?
He...he loved him. He loved Atsushi. He could not imagine loving anyone else or how it happened, but there wasn't anyone else and Atsushi was there, so close to him.
He knew spirits loved. Some did very well indeed, such as one of those Atsushi mentioned. But he'd never bothered for himself.
He'd never even thought of how to say the words. He didn't now how to say them now. So he didn't bother himself or Atsushi with saying them at all. Instead he just surrounded Atsushi with all the light in him, every single ounce of it, to the point the rock beneath him began to heat up and En gave him dirty looks for sending steam up from the river.
Kinshiro hoped Atsushi understood the message. The wind spirit gazed at him, swirling sticks and leaves, and then blew as hard as he could, in a way that caused no damage – Atsushi would never hurt anyone by design – but which held the core of his heart as much as the light held Kinshiro's.
From that moment there were few times when they weren't with one another. It had to happen now and then; their jobs and natures hadn't ended, but when clouds for a natural storm filled the skies or when darkness fell over the land, light and wind wound around one another in a dance that could never end, nor would they have wanted it to if it could.
The End
Note: Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed the story. Please let me know what you thought of it if at all possible.
Note: There is a reason Atsushi didn't mention Io when thinking of those he knew, such as En or Ryuu or Yumoto. There will be other works in this world that will explain why.