Chapter 1
To call the place a house seemed somehow like a terrible injustice. It was a castle, glowing and sparkling with resplendent light inside and out, overflowing with some whimsical energy, like something out of a fairy tale. Out of its enormous doors poured a muddling, deafening, throbbing wave of sound; wailing horns and stamping feet and a myriad of overlapping voices shrieking and shouting into the night. And one man, hesitating on the front steps of the colossal, shining, screaming superstructure, who was silent.
Kagami stood back on his heels, shoving his hands deeper in the pockets of his fastidiously ironed black dress pants, probably wrinkling them horrendously but not caring one whit for appearances. Not in the face of the madness and the fracas and the ravenous gluttony of the human spirit that flowed in a fantastical tidal wave from inside his neighbour's home. People from all around, from all walks of life, crowded together in a massive mob, hands raised and hips swaying, with no elbow room to speak of and entirely too much to drink, filled every corner of the first and second floor of the laughably large and extravagant mansion belonging to one Aomine Daiki.
He'd never even laid eyes on the ever-elusive host, in all the time he'd lived directly next to him, but just earlier that evening, he had received an envelope addressed to him in slender, elegantly slanted blue penmanship, inviting him to attend one of the exorbitant, practically famed parties thrown by Mr. Aomine on an almost weekly basis. To his knowledge, he was the only one out of the dozens upon dozens of visitors to receive such an invitation...everyone else simply showed up as they pleased, it seemed. He wasn't entirely sure what to think about that, but there was most definitely something to read into in the fact that he alone had been summoned, when all the rest just passed through Aomine's door without permission or request, of their own volition, and left just as freely at the end of the night, sometimes at the very cusp of dawn.
Letting out a low sigh, he came to the conclusion that he wasn't going to uncover the meaning behind his mysterious, singular invitation if he didn't go inside, though being swept up into that packed, roiling chaos was a prospect he faced with equal measures of uncertainty and apprehension. Something told him that, once part of that crowd, it would be very difficult to weasel his way back out of it in one piece...or sober, for that matter. Kagami himself was not a drinker, any more than when manners or circumstances dictated, but he doubted any man or woman that walked through Aomine's magnificent front gate left it without becoming pretty heavily intoxicated. He felt he could get drunk just by breathing the thick, steamy air rising from that mass of inebriated bodies, in fact.
And so it was with trepidation that he finally took a deep breath and crossed the wide threshold, his tentative footsteps stirring the drifts of glitter and confetti that littered the polished marble floor like brightly colored snowfall. His ears were already ringing with the sounds of loud, raucous laughter and music and drunken outcries of anger and hilarity and dismay; every raw, human emotion swirling in a humongous cacophony of sound. He picked out familiar faces all around, the famous and reviled interspersed throughout the crowd, and yet at the same time, he didn't know a soul. With his considerable height he towered over the majority of the complete strangers dancing and drinking and whirling around him, and though he felt like he stuck out like a sore thumb, he went all but unnoticed as he weaved between them, occasionally privy to a snippet of misdirected conversation or a clap on the back from some utterly wasted man or other he'd never met in his life.
"Some shindig, eh?" One such person was exclaiming, looping an arm around his shoulders and flashing him a bright, rather tipsy smile as he tossed back a head of shimmering golden hair and laughed. From the look of his clean-cut, lustrous clothes and the harem of scantily clad women hanging on him from all sides, he must have been some kind of playboy entrepreneur, or something.
"I'm looking for the host!" Kagami tried, having to shout to be heard over the noise, shaking the man's arm off of his shoulder and turning to face him imploringly, "Mr. Aomine, do you know where I could find him?"
The man's wide smile persisted, and he jabbed a wavering finger at him, fixing his burnished but rather hazy eyes on some point slightly over his shoulder, "Ain't nobody seen him! He's a ghost, I think, a...a figment! He doesn't exist!"
"I got an invitation from him, I live right next door!" Kagami insisted, thrusting the letter embellished in dark blue cursive at him, but the man was already turning away, saying something in a loud, sporadically pitching voice to his female companions about skinny dipping in a swimming pool of champagne as he departed.
Rubbing a frustrated hand over his face, Kagami started up a winding staircase teeming with throngs of giddy, boisterous guests to try to get the lay of the place from above, wondering if he would be able to pick the host out of the crowd if he had a bird's eye view. It was his party and his house, surely quite a bit of attention should be on him? Even just locating the richest-looking, probably drunkest and gaudiest man of the bunch might help his chances considerably, he figured.
Once he reached the balcony overlooking what he could now see appeared to be a great marble ballroom sprawling with people of every array, he realized what a futile endeavor it really was to try to find the guy based on looks. There were several dozen candidates for the most extravagantly dressed or most drunk under the table man, several who looked like kings but were acting like children, and several that were surrounded by admiring, even worshipping groups of peers hanging on their every slurring word; any one of them could have been Aomine, and just as easily could not have been. Sighing heavily to himself, he folded his arms against the ornate white railing wrapping around the edge of the balcony, letting his hands hang loosely over the sea of shambling humanity below.
"Well that's a sour face," a man parked right next to him snickered, leaning an elbow against the same railing, narrow silver eyes dancing with amusement and intoxication beneath his jet black bangs.
"Takao," the man's taller companion admonished from beside him, sporting a shock of green hair swept back in a neat swath and a pair of spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, a lacy cravat tucked under his chin, which he adjusted with one hand cloaked in a pristine white glove, "Don't be a nuisance, the man clearly does not want to be bothered."
"I'm just saying!" the man called Takao chortled, breaking into a rather feisty grin, "It's a party, not a funeral, he should lighten up and try to have some fun!"
"I don't suppose either of you know where I might find the host," Kagami muttered, self-consciously pulling at his tie which was feeling entirely too tight at the moment.
"The guy called Aomine?" Takao asked, perking with interest, just as his companion opened his mouth, "Nah, nobody ever sees him. I hear he's a real medieval villain, though, people say he took over a whole dynasty singlehandedly and stole the crown of some foreign prince, that's where he got all his money from. And some say -"
"Only rumors, of course," the green-haired man interrupted, hitting Takao over the head with what looked like a restaurant menu, clenched conspicuously in his fist, "A good deal of Mr. Aomine's reputation is shrouded in mystery; very little about him is known for certain. But I do not believe he is the petty killer or swindler or bootlegger many claim he is. I believe he is a sophisticated gentleman, and it is his considerable good fortune that has led to his wealth."
"Everything's about fortune and luck with you, Shin-chan," Takao complained in what could charitably have been called a whine, pushing the taller man with one hand lightly, "It's much more fun to think of him as a great conqueror or hero; maybe a pirate who used his stolen treasure to buy this place, or an explorer who stumbled across the ancient shrine of -!"
"Thanks for your help," Kagami cut him off, somewhat sarcastically, as he stepped away from the railing, starting to leave his current, rather informative but ultimately bothersome company. One thing he had learned from listening to their chatter was that this man Aomine was even more of an enigma than he'd originally thought, to the point where people had to come up with increasingly more outlandish explanations for his success in lieu of any actual facts. His chances of actually meeting the guy seemed to be dwindling even lower, then, and in light of that, he decided on giving the mission up for lost for now. Aomine had invited him personally, and lived right next door to him, but he supposed that didn't really guarantee him an audience with him, or even the chance to see him in person, if no one else here was allowed to. What had led him to think he was so special, an exception, just because he had received a letter - a mere handful of polite words, really - from the mysterious man asking him to come to one of his parties?
On an impulse, he snatched a flute of champagne, then another, from one of the silver plates being toted around by what he could only assume were Aomine's servants, throwing the first back almost without tasting it and feeling the bubbles shoot from his throat to his nose almost instantly. Covering a cough with one hand so he didn't spray the drink everywhere, he leaned against the banister at the top of the stairway and sipped the other more slowly, simply observing the nearly ludicrous chaos that surrounded him and no longer trying to decipher it. Whenever another plate of cocktails or snifters or martini glasses passed by, he would almost unconsciously partake of it, the mess of disorderly, rambunctious strangers gradually becoming more pleasing to the eye, a spectacle more akin to a wildly expressive, abstract painting than a mob of increasingly vexing insanity and depravity. He looked out at the din and the collage of movement and saw life itself, in all its raw, tangled forms, instead of only the lowest dregs of humanity's most primal urges. And though he stood entirely still, but for occasionally lifting a hand to drain another glass or shifting his weight from foot to foot, his gaze was in almost constant motion, taking in everything.
"Not a fan of the dance floor, I take it?" a low, husky voice asked from directly beside him. Tingling pleasantly from the alcohol slowly seeping into his system, Kagami didn't even flinch.
"Not when it's this packed," he answered, glancing at the speaker distractedly, and then doing a double-take. He was tall; taller than Kagami, by a good inch or so, and dressed much the same as he was; in a plain, well-fitted black suit that drew attention to his strikingly dark skin, an indigo bow tie at his throat complementing his short navy hair and gleaming, stormy blue eyes. His devilishly handsome face was split in a careless grin, not as foolish as the bumbling, drunken folks gamboling around him, but full of some rare, sincere pleasure and assurance.
"Ah, I see. Crowds make you nervous, then? I quite enjoy them." Leaning an arm against the railing, he seemed to survey the scene with an air of mild amusement, as if watching a play being acted out on stage. When he moved, Kagami caught the hard, dark flash of a single ring on the last finger of his left hand, the only visible jewelry he sported, unlike many of the guests who were decked out almost to the point of becoming eyesores.
"I wouldn't say nervous," Kagami shrugged, "I'd just rather not be around them, given the choice. Parties like this aren't really my scene." Swilling the half-empty cocktail in his hand, he met the man's vibrant blue eyes for a moment, his own wavering slightly, not to the point of blurring or glazing over, but enough for him to notice the grip of intoxication taking hold, "I haven't been able to locate this Aomine, either, with so many people...but I have heard some pretty crazy rumors about the guy. Some say he killed a king and robbed a prince; others say he doesn't exist at all."
He could have sworn the man smirked, his eyes brightening further as a spark of laughter came into them.
"Hm. I apologize, then," he said slowly, releasing the railing and stepping out to look at Kagami, face to face. Kagami squinted at him in confusion. "It was rude of me to invite you here and then keep you waiting so long."
Kagami blinked, mouth falling open as what he said registered. He didn't need to hear the rest, but the man went on after a beat, his smile persisting, though it was smaller now and more genuine.
"...I'm Aomine Daiki," he said, holding out a slender, richly tanned hand to him, "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kagami."
TBC
((...I have no earthly idea where this is going. (Actually I do have a vague sort of plan, but straying from the source material and making this a separate, different story from the actual Gatsby is going to be more of a challenge than I thought). Anyhow, it's been awhile since I launched into a new, potentially lengthy fic like this, but the idea wouldn't leave me alone. And being a pretty long-standing fan of the 20's era and the genre of electro swing, which made for some very nice background noise while writing this chapter, I figured I might as well give it a shot and hope for the best.
Reviews give me life, and keep my stories going strong. Feed the author!))