A running-away-from-work fic. RouTasu, AU-ish.
Characters : Aragami Rouga, Ryuenji Tasuku, Hyoryu Kiri
Warning : genderbent, possible grammar mistakes
Disclaimer : Future Card Buddyfight and the characters belong to Bushiroad and XEBEC.
They are only two kids, nameless and homeless, borrowing identities and stealing to live, running into the uncertain world.
"Where did you get these?" She asks, her voice sharp with accusation. He shrugs and tear into his dinner, the bread is soft and fluffy and is like heaven in his mouth.
"We don't steal!"
"Then don't eat," She's unbearable sometimes and he's told her that, to which she reddened and her voice rose another octave. He wondered that time if there are another girls like her in the outside world.
She glares at him and he returns it with an uninterested stare. She knows he's right, and he knows that. She sits down eventually and begrudgingly bites into her meal. He watches her eyes light up from the corner of his eyes and makes sure she sees his smirk. The light dims and sharpens like sword into another glare, but he knows she's losing and she knows that.
He wonders if there are another girls like her in this world, but he doesn't mind if there are none. He likes it that she's the only one.
(And he likes it that she's his.)
-x-
"I think I might cut my hair," She says, looking at the tangled mess with narrowed eyes. "It would confuse them and buy us some time. Besides, it's a hassle."
She plucks a stray leaf out of it and blows it into the dusty air of the shed. She notices him looking at her.
"What is it?" She doesn't understand the look on his face, and he's still looking at her hair, at that abomination that has stopped growing after it reached the center of her back.
"Instead of you cutting yours, I should be the one cutting mine," He said eventually and she looks at him and at his hair, long and sticking out in several places. She looks at his dark face and chalky hair and tries to picture him with different hairstyle.
"No, you shouldn't," She shakes her head and squeezes water out of her hem. He frowns at her.
"Why not?"
"Don't take my enjoyment of seeing you getting all grumpy because little birds decide that your head is more suited to be their nests away," She raises her eyes and smirks at him. He looks at her incredulously before regaining his stance.
"I could say the same to you. I'd love to see fleas inhabiting your hair, could be an entertainment in boring nights."
(She just doesn't want to admit that she likes his hair long.
He just doesn't want to admit he likes hers that way.)
-x-
She used to sit on top of a house's roof, watching the sky and the sun rising and setting from the outline of the wall. She had always liked height, the wind, and the sky. She didn't know why. Maybe it was because the real her liked it.
She didn't like the boy with wolf-ish grin who loved to wreak chaos in their little city, stealing from people and breaking things and short-circuiting the machines and banging the computers and scattering the papers into the wind. She didn't like him because he disrupted order, because he made troubles, because he didn't feel guilty about it one bit.
She didn't know if that was really the reason, or it was just another thing unreal about her.
(Because the real her hated crime and criminals, trouble and injustice. And he hated the other boy with pale hair who stole things and tried to hurt the real her's friend)
-x-
The researchers always told them the same story, over and over again that she memorized every word.
"The outside world is a terrible place. It's corrupt and it's broken, it's destroyed and you will find nothing there."
They gave her and the other children books to read, fairy tales and encyclopedia, and observed their growth both physical and mental while the children dreamed.
She found the fairy tales revolting, and she soon found that she was interested of the story about the real her more.
The boy with one eye and hands as cold as ice, who came from the outside world, told her all about it. He told her that the real her was a gifted boy, that he was kind and loved. He desired to help people, and he would do anything to fulfill it. She found out that he has a partner who is a dragon, and that they flew together day and night.
After knowing all that, she decided that she liked the stories about the real her more.
(She just wasn't aware that she was only pretending to).
-x-
One day, she saw the first fairy tale that was neither boring nor revolting.
It was blue and black, white and yellow, a little splash of red here and there. She looked at it for a long time while in her head, stories started to sprout, about another life and finding a way home, about lost words and voices found, about chain, cuffs, and finding solace in each other.
Later, she learned that it was called graffiti. And it spread across the city (she would also learn later that it was called vandalism and was considered a crime at the outside world, but strangely, she objected very furiously about it even though she knew that the real her would not have any objection about it).
As fast as it spread, she wrote. Drafts of stories and pieces of the world the graffiti formed. She went around the town to look at every graffiti, and she spent hours in front of each one, tracing every line and every jerk into her head.
Then one day she came across one by pure accident. It was still fresh, still wet, and the boy with wolf's grin (and whom she hated) was standing next to it, the brush in his hand was still dripping.
(Only long after that would she realize that she hated him because he was free and she was not).
-x-
Rain hurts like hell, and he begrudgingly admits that those researchers back at the city is right about the 'broken world' part.
They run, scampering into nearest building, but still it bites into their worn-out boots and stings their exposed skin. At the time like this, he wants to cut his hair so badly as it keeps sticking to his face, but she was so stubbornly against it and offered to tie it into a ponytail as a solution.
"Damn acid rain," He grumbles as soon as they get into the safety of a storage building. He feels the same irritation from her as she pushed the door closed. Then they look around at the cardboard boxes stacked by the wall and a lone stool on the corner. It isn't an abandoned building and most likely the owner will come back as soon as the rain stops, but they're tired and hungry and the rain hurts so he says, "Let's rest here for a while."
They sit on the corner and she says, "I'll fix your hair."
He pulls himself from the wall and lets her smooth that disaster called hair with her fingers. She pulls on it sometimes, not enough to hurt but enough to draw a grunt from him. She does it on purpose a few of those times, but he lets her have that small pleasure because he actually enjoys the feeling of her fingers on his hair.
(Of course it would take forever to get him to admit it).
-x-
When they ran away from that place, they had their hands intertwined.
-x-
At night, he notices again and again that she's small when she's sleeping. In the day when the sun shines down on them or the rain pelts their back, he hardly notices it because they're always moving, barely having time to think about something else.
In the night when they are calm, she's curled up against him and he can hardly feel her weight. He looks down at her and wipes dirt from her nose with his thumb. She shifts slightly but doesn't wake, and he settles down with her barely-there weight and the sound of her breath as his anchor to the earth.
-x-
From the day he learned about the real him, he'd decided that he would do anything to be his own person.
The real him did all that he'd done for the boy who had extended his hand to him on that snowy day years ago. He stole, fought, and got hurt for that boy who might had never considered him a friend.
It was shameful to watch.
As for him, he was different. He did things for his own sake.
He wanted to see the researchers in dismay, to see the pathetic people of the fake city in a mess, to see colors in this monochrome world built on science and theories.
So he grew his hair, ignored guilt when he made troubles, and painted graffiti on every wall he could find.
He was not that boy and he refused to have his name, to like what he liked, to do as he would, to be what he was.
(He just didn't want to admit that he was scared of merely being a duplicate of someone, a duplicate that could be made again if he was lost).
-x-
People of the outside world could fly. That was the first thing he learned when he saw the small boy with blue crescent moon on his back and snowflakes around him.
The boy told him about the outside world, about forests competing with factories, about art clashing with science, about rapid development of human technologies and slowly but surely disappearance of individuality, about a boy who is barely an adult and is sitting on the throne.
He thought that it was not broken and not destroyed. Corrupted, maybe, but there would be something he could find. He decided that he wanted to see the outside world.
(And he did admit that he wanted so badly to be out of this plastic and steel utopia)
-x-
He couldn't stand the girl.
She acted like she was the most righteous person in this world, glaring at him whenever their eyes met and spoke openly about how she despised his trouble-making attitudes.
No wonder, he told her one day, fruit wouldn't fall far from its tree. He watched her face change when she realized what he meant. He was surprised that he didn't take any enjoyment in seeing her expression.
(Since when did he try too hard to be different that he started hurting others?)
-x-
She told him his graffiti were good four months after that accidental meeting. She had a notebook she wouldn't let go of, no matter what. He had this strange urge of wanting to see what was inside.
Two months later, she agreed to show him one of her drafts. She was going to throw it away anyway, she said absently as she handed him the bundle of paper. He had been skeptical, although his chest did an enthusiastic flip flop.
It was the one about the girl who was imprisoned for her power and the boy who kept coming to see her because he saw himself in her.
It was unfinished and he was reluctant to hand it back to her. He did well in hiding his relief when she tucked the papers back into her notes instead of ripping them into thousand pieces.
(He found comfort in that story for a reason he couldn't explain).
-x-
Five months later and they were on the roof and he found out that she was not good at sewing. Her sock had a tear on it and she kept prickling her finger with the needle.
She glared when he laughed at her but seemed strangely relieved when she looked at her messy stitches. When he asked her about it, she answered.
"The real me can do everything. He's really good at sewing."
He thought about that all the way home and dreamed about it in his sleep. The next night, he said to her.
"Let's run away from this place."
(It was a hasty decision, but he didn't regret it one bit, for he'd found that he wasn't alone).
-x-
She broke her ankle when they jumped down a building to shake off their pursuers. She can tell he's trying very hard not to fuss over her.
It's raining hard outside and every inch of her body throbs and her ankle feels as if acid is burning its bones, but she looks at him stealing glances at her and she feels a lot better.
"I'm fine,"
"I know," But still he keeps glancing at her ankle and at her face and it's so hard for her to keep from laughing; she doesn't want to tease him, not this time, because she secretly enjoys being fussed over once in a while (the real her certainly would not).
So she leans over and kisses him, straight on the lips.
It might be the impulse of the moment, or it might be something she's been longing to do without her really knowing, but she can feel his surprise and his hesitation, and considers to lean back and release him.
Except then he kisses her back.
His graffiti were blue and black, white and yellow, splashes of red.
When they pull back and break the kiss, both of them are blushing and she suddenly feels very much embarrassed. But she doesn't want to tell him to forget about it because she won't and she doesn't regret it.
They might not be real, they don't have names and birthdates, and their hobbies and their favorite food might not even really theirs, but his graffiti, her stories, their hands intertwined, and these past few months of them running around together and appreciating the world are real, real and theirs alone.
That's why she wants to solidify it with something, with that kiss.
She hopes he understands because she has no word to explain even though she's the writer between them, but then he puts his hand on her head and pushes her gently to lay on him, and just like that, she knows that he does.