Written for the K Project Feburary Fic Exchange, for the prompt sappy Kuroh / Shiro, soulmate AU, any variation of there is a mark on the body that indicates you've found your soulmate
Comments and critique are greatly appreciated!
"Who… are you two?" asks the boy Kuroh's never met, forming the words with lips Kuroh is only too familiar with, and he could not have hurt Kuroh worse if he'd sliced into Kuroh's chest with a knife instead of his words.
This poor boy, Kuroh knows, has lost more than Kuroh can possibly imagine. Losing someone dear… even losing a King pales in comparison to losing one's entire self for over a year, yet he can't comprehend how anyone could possibly hurt worse than this and survive. It's horribly selfish of him, he knows, to be so self-centered. But the hollow ache wrapped tight around his heart is all-encompassing and seems impossible to shake.
Somehow he manages to keep his voice steady as he tries to explain in the simplest terms – less an explanation, really, than it is empty reassurance. Too much has happened to tidily sum it up to someone who was never consciously involved. All he can do is offer to take the boy somewhere safe, and hope the Blue King can find words where Kuroh has failed.
"Kurosuke shouldn't cry," Neko tells him later – much later – once the boy has been handed over to Scepter 4, and the two of them have returned to the small school apartment that feels so strange and empty with just the two of them. The tiny kitten that appears with a sudden pop might only be an illusion, but she's an illusion that breathes, purrs, pricks his leg with sharp claws as she scrambles into his lap, and though he wasn't crying he can't deny the dampness that forms in his eyes as she butts her head against his hand. She stays that way long enough for a few scritches between the ears before letting the illusion dissipate, her real body resting with her head in his lap, but the illusion of a purr remains as he absently strokes her hair. "Shiro will come back. He promised. He's our King, he'll come back!"
Our King. Yes, Shiro certainly is that. But Kuroh feels he has no right to take comfort in Neko's words. She misses her King, as she should, but Kuroh… he selfishly misses something that was never his to have at all.
"Let me see your mark."
It's far from a proper proposal, but with his face burning as hot as it is, Kuroh supposes it will have to be enough that he got the words out at all. In the silence that follows he holds his breath, braced for rejection, already more than half-convinced he never should have opened his mouth at all. These feelings he has for his King aren't proper either, a distraction from the loyal service Shiro deserves from him – but he's already lost Shiro once, and if there's even the slightest chance his words might keep Shiro from leaving him again…
When Shiro turns to him with a weak attempt at a smile, resignation to the worst turns Kuroh's blood to ice in his veins. Not for a second does it occur to him that rejection might not be the only potential problem.
"You don't need permission to love me, you know."
That is so far from anything Kuroh had expected that he can't find a response; he can only stare, dumbfounded, unable to grasp Shiro's meaning. The only permission he needs is Shiro's, of course, but what does that have to do with anything?
"Surely if two people make each other happy, that's enough of a sign that they should be together? And you make me very happy, Kuroh. I'm so very glad I met you."
"Then what's the problem? I don't understand –"
He's struck speechless again when Shiro tugs his shirt free of his waistband, and before he can regain enough composure to protest that this is incredibly improper – especially with Neko in the room! – he finally catches on to Shiro's meaning. It is utterly inconceivable to him, and yet undeniable evidence presents itself as Shiro pushes up his shirt to reveal the birthmark tucked under his ribs.
Two people who are meant to be together have marks that complete each other, in exactly the same place – and the abstract swirl of pigment on Shiro's side doesn't match the mark on Kuroh's wrist. They're not… but he was so certain…
If this feeling is not love, then what is?
"My apologies. I was so certain…"
"That we were meant to be together?" Shiro takes a step towards him, reaches out to grasp his shoulders; his smile is still a little sad in a way that tears at Kuroh's heart. "You were sent to me. I fell from the sky to meet you! How could something so romantic not be a sign?"
"I was sent to kill you!" Kuroh points out – but it's hardly more than a token protest, and Shiro, laughing, sees right through him.
"But you didn't. Nor did you allow anyone else to. And when you discovered I was a different King entirely, you stayed at my side." His hands slip down from Kuroh's shoulders to the small of his back, and Kuroh closes the distance between them before he even realizes Shiro's touch is too light to move him.
It feels right, to be this close. He lets his own hand rest on Shiro's shoulder, and is rewarded with a sensation not unlike the completion of a circuit; each breath draws the soft, gentle light of Shiro's Silver aura into his body, and some of the Silver Shiro has lent him flows back to its source with each exhalation. Shiro is not the one he is destined to love, and yet…
"I love you," he whispers, curling close against Shiro's chest, embraced by Shiro's arms and Sanctum both, and nothing has ever felt so right as the gentle kiss Shiro presses to the top of his head.
"And I you, mein Schätzchen. More than words could possibly say."
For a brief moment, Kuroh has everything he could possibly want.
But it feels like only a moment, before Fate intervenes and steals Shiro away from him again.
The Slate is gone, and the chaos created by its destruction almost makes Kuroh wish they were still dealing with JUNGLE. He knew, of course – perhaps better than most – how large a role the seven Kings played in maintaining order and stability, but to see that system fall apart firsthand is something nothing could possibly have prepared him for. As the power gifted to him by his two Kings slowly drains down to nothing, he throws everything he still has into ensuring the Slate won't take all of Japan down with it.
He's in the kitchen, trying not to fall asleep on his feet as he makes dinner, when he hears Neko yelling about something in the other room. Before he can even remind her to be considerate of their neighbors and lower her voice, the very "something" that caught her attention sneaks up behind him and sweeps him into the tightest hug he's ever experienced. "Hello again, mein Schätzchen," Shiro whispers into his ear, and for a moment he's much too flustered to question his King's sudden reappearance.
Once he's regained at least a bit of his composure, he's further stymied by the fact that it's awfully hard to breathe.
"Shiro…" Can he still call this man Shiro, anymore? Even with him at his back Kuroh can tell this isn't quite the same person who so abruptly left. He's taller, for one thing – stronger, too, if the crushing pressure of his arms is anything to go by – hardly the delicate boy his age Kuroh could so easily carry, but his presence is somehow all the more reassuring for it, Or would be, except – "Shiro, I can't breathe."
"Sorry, sorry!" Laughing and entirely unapologetic, Shiro lets him go, and Kuroh spins round to get a good look at the man who seems determined to escape death at every opportunity.
He is taller, and pale, too, all silver-on-white, but even though near every aspect of his appearance is different he is still unquestionably the man Kuroh swore fealty to… and the man he fell so hard in love with. A feeling that Shiro still reciprocates, if his greeting was any indication. Kuroh's never asked what that particular phrase means, but he can hear the affection in it, and his chest goes tight with a flood of conflicting, contradictory emotions. This love was never his to have, and yet…
"Shiro," he says again, hesitant this time, questioning, but Shiro's smile only brightens. That's one thing answered, then. It might be Weismann's body standing before him, now, but the same person as ever inhabits it.
Kuroh has to improvise a little to put together dinner for two instead of three, but he can hardly complain about being able to sit down to a meal with the two people most dear to him. Neko has a million questions, and Shiro seemingly endless patience for them; for the most part Kuroh just listens, watches the two of them and feels as though his heart might burst with joy.
Neko wears out early, but once Kuroh's put her to bed there's still a great deal to discuss. Shiro has questions of his own, of course, and they sit together late into the evening, going over everything that's happened since the Slate's destruction. Even though their discussion is serious, Kuroh finds himself relaxing against Shiro's side, and he's hardly about to complain when Shiro slips an arm around his waist and pulls him closer.
The gentle intimacy does nothing to cure his exhaustion, and Shiro wraps up his round of questioning when Kuroh's yawning starts to interrupt his answers. He offers a hand to help Kuroh to his feet, and Kuroh takes it gladly – then stops, as Shiro's arm shifts and the dim lamplight illuminates something just visible beneath his sleeve, a thin swirl of darker skin around the prominent bone in his wrist. Even before he lays his own arm alongside Shiro's, he knows what he'll see: His own birthmark a perfect mirror of Shiro's, both of them connecting to form an abstract heart.
"I thought…" It's hard to find words; this new revelation feels as though it's knocked the wind right out of him. He's only vaguely aware of Shiro settling back down beside him, but moves without thinking when Shiro reaches out to gather him into his lap. "Why didn't you say anything? You could have told me…"
"Would that really have reassured you, though?" Shiro's hands are gentle as they free Kuroh's hair from its ponytail and softly comb through its length. "Or would you have assumed the right mark being on this body was a sign you weren't meant to love that one? I know you, Kuroh," he quickly goes on, before Kuroh can quite find the words to protest. "You would have questioned it, and the uncertainty would have hurt you. I wanted you to be happy – and I was a little selfish, I suppose. I wanted more than anything for you to find as much happiness with me as I do with you."
Shiro does know him, and he's exactly right. He would have questioned himself, fretted over what it could possibly mean that his fated match was an empty shell, as good as dead. A thought that seems stupid now, in hindsight, but he's glad that particular worry never occurred to him regardless.
"I was happy. I am happy. Nothing could possibly delight me more than you have and will, Isana Yashiro."
And perhaps the most delightful thing of all is Shiro's laugh, the sound of it and the way he can feel it where they're pressed together chest to chest, and the smiling lips that capture his own for a kiss.