I finally stopped writing crack. Actually, this was going to be crack too but it just took a serious turn so I went with it. Feels weird not writing crack...


Model

XX

Commuting was hell.

Kurogane flicked through a newspaper, understanding nothing of the written language yet skimming through the pages to gaze with bored crimson eyes at pictures of violence and murder most foul. The rustling of the paper was only a small disturbance on what was a packed train platform. People dangerously pushed and shoved for room, the sound of ringing phones and twittering voices almost drowning the radio announcement that the oncoming train would be delayed for yet another ten minutes.

It annoyed him that, no matter how hard he glared or how chilling his gaze was as it swept over the crowds, no one backed away to give him space simply because there was no space to give. His infamous 'almighty ninja death glare of infinite pain and agony transcending all of space and time™' had granted him a space on one of the few benches but that was the extent of its power here.

A large electronic board hanging over the platform told an inaccurate time whilst the curving wall opposite was pasted with oversized posters of things like 'Call now for your free quotation!' and 'Thinking of kill yourself? Let suicide101 help!' and still Kurogane was infinitely bored.

"Kyaah! Look! Look! Isn't he hot!" two girls that he had the displeasure of sharing the bench with were huddled over some girly magazine in their girly school uniforms making generally girly noises of excitement.

"Hey, he's a new face, I haven't seen him before but he's sooo cute!" one of the girls squealed and Kurogane winced out the range of high frequencies that the female voice could reach.

"I heard that he's a foreigner," the other whispered, though she was still loud enough for him to hear, "a real exotic type," she giggled.

"Of course! Look at that hair and those eyes! There's no way he could have been born a boring place like this," the first girl nodded, tugging the magazine her way.

"He's sooo cool!"

He only glanced over to ask them if they would so kindly shut up. Come to think of it, that was the beginning of his mistake. He would have been better off just staring at 'Let suicide101 help!' and posters about different beverages.

Yet glance over he did and his heart almost flipped at what he saw.

XX

The kitchen was always busy. With Kuro-daddy earning money to feed his starving family and Syaoran following in the footsteps of his surrogate father as vice-breadwinner-in-training, both Sakura and Fai had taken it upon themselves to be ready and waiting with a hot meal to welcome them home.

It was for the sole purpose of feeding those two hungry mouths every evening that the two were rushing about the kitchen, attending to the burning stove and the boiling pots as they ran around like chickens cooped with a fox.

"Sakura-chan, the food on the second ring!" Fai alerted her and the princess whipped out a fan to tend to the flames.

The doorbell rang just as the clock struck the nineteenth hour. The familiar da-bee-da-ding-dong, of their eccentric bell brought a wide grin to Fai's lips.

"Ah, that should be the daddy home from work," he reached for the doorknob, pulling it open with a receiving smile. "Welcome home, Kuro…" His voice trailed away. He had been expecting to see Kurogane when he opened the door. Even if it was the sight of a tired, overly grumpy Kurogane, that was the sight he had hoped and expected to see.

Instead, he was presented with the image of…himself.

"What the hell is this?" Kurogane's voice growled from behind the pages.

At the moment the most intelligent thing he could think of saying was a profound "Eh?"

Kurogane lowered the magazine so that Fai could see his face. It was a slightly annoyed face. It was a little ticked off face. It was the face of a puppy that had been promised chicken only to receive corned beef instead.

"What the hell is this?" he asked again, waving the picture a little so that the pages flapped but never fully turned to cover the photograph of Fai wearing nothing but fishnets and over-sized chains.

"It's a girl's magazine," Fai took the pages from the ninja's hand, "Kuro-chi, I had no idea you were like that…"

"Shut up! It's not like that! I stole it from some high school girls and…"

He paused, realising that, the more he tried to explain, the worse it would sound.

Fai cocked his head to one side.

"Kuro-chan?"

"Shut up!" he yelled. "Anyway, explain this. Why the hell are you in a magazine and why are you dressed like that?"

A wide smirk split across Fai's face, a knowing smile of one with devilish intentions. "Jealous, Kuro-rin? Do you only want me to dress up for you?" he asked teasingly, lightly bumping into Kurogane's body, his arm slid past his hips and gently pushed the door shut with a finger.

Kurogane's first instinct was to push Fai away but his second thought was to answer the question Fai had oh so innocently posed. The pushing and shoving could come later.

Unfortunately, his mind was half way between pushing and answering and so when his words were finally voiced, they came out as a garbled mess and a group of words that he unintentionally let slip.

"Well, the play-boy bunny is…" he began and paused halfway, silently glaring at the blond for somehow tricking him into letting his innermost fetishes slip.

"Kuro-gon likes bunnies. Who would have thought?" he murmured. Fai's smile was both amused and wry, as if wondering whether this vital piece of information could be manipulated for use in the area of blackmail or bribery.

"Shut-up!" he snapped. "Besides, is this photographer trustworthy? You don't know what sort of licentious, sleazy things he could do with your picture!"

Fai raised an eyebrow, never loosing the expression of one who knew some scandalous secret. "If you're so concerned then you can accompany me. I'm going again. Tomorrow."

XX

The licentious, sleazy, perverted man Kurogane had spent imagining turned out to be a young, thin lady in her early twenties.

Kurogane could not say that he was disappointed.

The door opened, and the photographer entered. She wore a clean-cut suit and her dark hair was slicked back with gel that gave the impression of an overly critical professional. Indeed, she scrutinised Fai over red-rimmed glasses in a predatory, almost frightening manner and nodded to herself approvingly.

Then she smiled and squealed and suddenly Kurogane was presented with the nauseating image of a hyped moe-fan.

Now Kurogane could say that he was disappointed.

"Fai-san! It's always a pleasure," she grinned, arms open wide for a familiar embrace.

"The pleasure is all mine," Fai grinned, used to his employer's bubbly personality.

Kurogane was having a bad premonition as he caught the wizard turning towards him. "This is - " he began.

"Kurogane," he introduced himself before Fai could pin him with another obscene nickname.

The woman glanced over him once and her eyes went wide. She spread her arms wide and drew a deep breath, bringing herself to her tiptoes as if she could swallow more air that way. "You're gorgeous!" she gushed. Her enthusiasm was somewhat unnerving for an adult twenty-something year old.

"I have a great idea! Kurogane-san, would you - "

"No!" he dashed her hopes with a sharp bark, cutting her down before she could even begin. "No way," he shook his head, adamantly denying her the right to 'play dress-up' with him.

She looked rather off-guard, something akin to a deer caught in the headlights, but not the least offended by his blunt refusal. Her smile was one of acceptance as she cast Fai an all-knowing smile. This, however, seemed to confuse him as much as it confused Kurogane.

The two were ushered into her dark studio and Fai disappeared somewhere to change, completely at home with the dangerous wiring trailing along the shadowy floor. It was dark and cluttered and somewhat cold. Strange metal things slept along the sides of walls where thick cables ran over their slumbering bodies.

Kurogane sighed and took a seat somewhere on a large wooden crate. There seemed to be nothing suspicious at all and the photographer did not seem to have the intellectual capacity to do anything illicit. It seemed that he had come here for no reason.

It was boring.

But it sure as hell beat commuting.

A moment later, Fai reappeared wearing a shirt and a pair of tight jeans, only his shirt was open to reveal the vast snowscape of his chest and there were silver chains dangling around his neck. He stood in front of a painted background, ready to begin.

Suddenly, Kurogane was not so bored anymore.

The photographer transformed into a button-happy maniac once safely behind the camera lens. Flashes went off every five seconds, punctuated only by short, excited directions, which Fai followed accordingly. After about twenty camera flashes, (not that Kurogane was counting) Fai went back to change and the mad rush for pictures resumed.

In total, Fai went from being the Cheshire cat to a knight in shining armour, to a rather clean-looking pirate to a cat-boy in chains to a member of the shinsengumi.

A full hour passed, or so Kurogane reckoned, the dim studio seemed to have its own set of rules to which time flowed differently than it did on the outside world. However, he was sure that it had been a full hour when the woman called for a break.

Fai waddled over to him, stumbling over the thick cables running along the cold concrete. His shadow fell on top of him, enveloping Kurogane in an oval of deeper darkness.

He glanced up at Fai, crimson eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"What are you wearing?"

"A pineapple suit!" Fai chirped, spinning to show off all angles of his plush pineapple suit.

"I know that but…why?"

"Because it's fun!" he replied with the same unnerving enthusiasm as his photographer. Kurogane made a mental note to leave this world as soon as possible lest the insane mage develop a new depth to his insanity.

"But I think that this would look better on you. It suits you more. You're tough and thick-skinned but underneath it all, you're sweet and crunchy."

When Kurogane stared at him, he was staring at a madman. There was no use questioning where such an analogy could have possibly sprung from when talking to Fai in a giant, novelty pineapple suit. He was not so sure about the crunchy bit…or the sweet bit for that matter.

"If we're talking about being hard to get inside of, then the pineapple suits you better," he said. He did not expect Fai to seem so shocked to him say such words, he was shocked; Kurogane registered a look of surprise just before he lowered his eyes and hid his expression behind his blond bangs.

There was nothing to be shocked about though. Surely the wizard knew that Kurogane had long since caught on to his happy pretence, his smiles that shielded him from the world, his need for attention that brought others close to a superficial Fai and distanced them from the real thing.

"It doesn't," the wizard whispered. His words were spoken so softly and so suddenly that they floated and disappeared into thin air before Kurogane had time to grab them.

Nothing shifted within the studio. The crates piled in corners and the electrical equipment leaning lovingly against each other was as stationary as the next piece and so there was nothing to distract them from each other. Outside, the sound of traffic was only a distant buzz.

"I'm right here," he whispered but before Kurogane could clarify what Fai meant, the photographer came trundling back into the studio calling, "Fai-san! Time to work!"

Fai's expression underwent its quickest transformation and his smile shone in all its synthetic glory. "Coming!" he piped and flounced away.

It was only then that Kurogane understood that seeing Fai slightly sad whilst in a giant pineapple suit was one of the rarities of life that he would never have the pleasure of seeing again.

Fai posed and spun, grinning and laughing or fixing the camera with a look of lust. He ranged his expressions from naughty to nice, always completely natural whatever expression he chose to wear.

Kurogane could see through them all.

He never knew that his comments could have such an effect on the blond. All he had done was say what he always did – the complete, honest, brutal truth – and that was that Fai did distance himself from others; no one could ever deny that.

So why did his smiles seem even more forced now? Each time the camera flashed it seemed to take a plastic model of the real thing, capturing only a superficial image, never delving deeper than what was only physical beauty.

Each flash made the surrounding equipment shine and sparkle. The photographer squealed and ran all over the studio to take shots at different lengths and angles like some excitable tourist snapping up the latest exhibit from in front of a wall of glass.

"Beautiful! Beautiful!" she cheered and ushered Fai to the changing rooms for yet another costume change.

Fai smiled and disappeared around the back for the umpteenth time. As he vanished, Kurogane felt the distinct weight of the photographer disturb his wooden perch. She sat next to him on the crate fanning herself with a piece of a paper after a long day's work that was near its end.

Kurogane only glanced at her, neither bothering nor caring to speak to the woman.

It was the woman who spoke to him.

She pulled at the collar of her shirt and fanned her chest, red faced and exhausted. "Phew!" she sighed, blowing cold air his way, "Fai-san is quite a find. It's too bad that I can't pair him up with another sexy young model."

"Why not?" Kurogane was bored enough to ask.

Without a pretty model to squeal at and hug, the woman seemed more subdued, almost resembling a normal human being, one that could function in everyday society. "I respect my models and their wishes," she explained. "He told me that, even if it was just posing, he did not want to be paired up with someone else."

"Someone else?"

"You'd have to ask him personally what he meant by that," she smiled and rose to her feet. Long years being in her profession must have caused her to develop some sort of sixth sense for only a second later Fai emerged in his final costume.

He trailed into the camera's line of vision, standing in front of the background board. The white and blue jacket he wore as embroidered with gold thread in a fleur-de-lis pattern that lined the hems. It was long, with two tails that trailed to the floor and opened near the stomach to show his navel. A belt was slung loosely across his hips, also gold and carrying a similar pattern.

There was a red love heart encased in crystal curled tightly in the nest of his fingers. He opened it onto his palm and held it close as if about to kiss it but his eyes were turned to the camera with a lustful gaze and a slight pout on his led lips.

The camera flashed and Fai brought that crystal heart close to his own, his expression changing into a delicate smile just as fragile as the heart he cupped in his hands.

Kurogane watched from his comfortable place on the crate. Fai certainly looked good in such a gorgeous outfit, wearing such a tender expression. Of course, he always looked good. Even caught in the heat of battle, ragged and worn, he somehow still managed to look good.

But he was never beautiful.

He acknowledged the man's ability to make girls swoon and woman sigh but he had never considered Fai to be beautiful. Beauty was something that radiated from the inside out. Beauty was something natural and forgiving, it was warm and soft and indescribable with just mere words.

Fai was only pretty and hollow. Even though, for reasons unfathomable to Kurogane, it somehow made him feel a little regretful, he did not think Fai could ever be beautiful so long as he wore a plastic smile and hid himself behind glass, just like the little crystal heart he was posing with. It seemed that Fai wanted to stay as far away from others as he could and never be close to anyone.

I'm right here.

XX

The sun was beginning to set as they finally made their way out of the dingy studio and into the real world. The dying sun bled into the sky, dying it with colours red, orange and purple. The city glowed in its wake, gilded in gold and Kurogane walked with Fai along empty streets that were almost silent.

The wizard was inwardly smiling, tossing the heart encased in crystal up and down as he walked – a present from his photographer. "That was nice of her," he sighed with contentment. With only a day of looking pretty and being photographed, he had scored a crystal heart and an envelope full of cash. It was not a bad deal.

Kurogane watched the man through the corner of his eye. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. As Fai tossed the heart up again, Kurogane's hand came in from above, catching it before it could descend into the safety of Fai's palm.

He examined the trinket, scrutinising the gleaming red heart hidden beneath crystal for some sort of hidden secret.

"Your heart."

"Well, Sakura-chan's heart, actually. I thought that I'd give it to her as a present."

He handed it back to Fai, shaking his head at the idiot among idiots. "No, your heart," he insisted, narrowing his eyes to pin the shorter man. "Even though you feel as though you need to hide it beneath those plastic smiles, really you wanted someone to find it, didn't you?" his voice was laced his accusing tones yet lacked any sense of malice or threat.

Fai stopped walking.

Kurogane stopped too.

"What do you mean?" Fai asked, his voice light and carefree, hiding behind it a warning that Kurogane was treading on dangerous ground here.

The ninja grinned. Dangerous ground was fine by him. Dangerous ground was more exciting.

"I mean, you really want someone to find you. I mean that you don't always want to wear those damn-annoying fake smiles. I mean that you're the kind of stupid-ass guy who spends all his time waiting for some jerk who will take him away and yet no one ever does because," he paused, "because no one ever realises that you're right here waiting."

Fai let his shock dance upon his face for five whole seconds - a personal record for how long he could go without a smile.

Kurogane moved forwards. Fai instinctively moved backwards, all the way back until Kurogane had pinned him to the wall. He felt a finger tilt his chin upwards and found that he was gazing into the crimson pools of Kurogane's eyes, unable to look elsewhere.

He was not sure whether he was the one who kissed Kurogane or if it was the ninja who initiated the kiss. He supposed that it did not really matter – the result was the same.

He wondered why they were doing this. He wondered why Kurogane was being so tender with him. He knew the man was not the sort to kiss anyone out of pity.

Perhaps it was lust. Perhaps it was just a comforting kiss. Perhaps it was the ninja's way of saying that he was right here too.

As Fai moved to cling onto Kurogane's arm, the crystal slipped from his grip, shattering on the pavement, though neither of them cared. Yet, if they ever had the time to pause and glance at the broken shards, they would have noticed that, amongst the jagged pieces, there was a ruby red heart lying still intact.


And that's the end of the seventh chapter. Now I have a huge urge to write MokoFai crack and SyaoSyao fluff.