Sleep First, Then Dream, Kyoya.
His room was too tidy, even by Kyoya's standards.
Every book perfectly placed, no discarded clothes, no stray paper but one on his bed.
On his desk was a thick manila envelope addressed to Takashi Morinozuka, and a small white envelope simply addressed to The Host Club, Music Room 3, Ouran Academy. The two were arranged in painfully accurate alignment, as if set in place using a T-square. They were impossible to miss.
He lay flat on his back, arms to his sides, clad in supple black designer pajamas, beneath very a tightly tucked duvet. Though pale at the best of times, bright early morning sun only accentuated the contrast between his skin and jet black hair. His hair was the only unruly note to the scene, mussed gently around his face, soft wisps escaping across his sharp features.
Despite his controlled position, he looked relaxed, younger.
For a moment, the sunlight caught his carefully folded glasses on the nightstand. They reflected an almost blinding white. It promised to be a beautiful Spring day.
The paper found on the bed was in Kyoya's handwriting.
Sleep First, Then Dream
Glancing back, I puzzle it through
Was my virtue, my value
Only convenience
Or perhaps duty
Construed as kindness
The first courtesy
Entangled me permanently
I could have been anyone.
Claimed and acclaimed for simply being there.
Mad plans danced in his head
Impractical, he, intractable
No one thing, no person
Should contain so much happy mad babble
So little sense.
Why I obliged
Is walled off, another country of my heart.
But I did oblige with time I did not have
To be his tour guide, his minder
Somehow caught, not the god-friend-lover
Someone other, other than me.
Sometimes I think I became more than
More than I was made to be - his dream of me maybe
More often upon reflection I see
A ghost wearing my clothes, chasing hope
There I stand, his invisible architect.
I am the blurred photograph, the footnote
Cold, cutting, kind, whatever suits the day's dream
And still, at the time,
I knew I might wake, took pains and pills to stay
In his world I fight to keep sleep at bay
Too many impossibilities to tend
Too many finances to mend
He has dreams to build and so I build them
Guide him, bind him to the ground
Long enough for compromise
To find some praise in the edges of his eyes
But his gaze was almost always up or through
Despite the uncanny, intermittent prize of insight
His soul-gazing.
I am not a shadow king
In the end, I kissed the ring.
His notebooks were gone, and so was he.