Disclaimer: As of the first chapter and I don't own Shakespeare...just an entire collection of his plays. :)
Author's Message: Random piece of information: I actually read and re-read Romeo and Juliet a few times in order to write this fic. Just needed to get the lines to fit, you know? I really hope the quotes does not disrupt your reading but then again, I am sure all of you are great readers to have made it this far. :) I was of the belief that this fic would never see any readers. Anyway, hope you all enjoy this! Thank you for the reviews!
Warnings: Shakespeare...as in those tiresome, flowery lines. Beware! Oh and a back story. Double beware!
Chapter 7: Scripts and First Times
Albert had lived in the Hiwatari second mansion for as long as he could remember. He was only a boy when he was the attendant of Kai's grandmother, then still alive, still young and beautiful. He may be young, but he was old enough to remember that Voltaire Hiwatari had once been a smitten man; smitten by the young woman's beauty and charm, smitten by every word she breathed and every move of her body.
Voltaire Hiwatari had once been more than capable of love and had loved his wife, and the child they had, unconditionally. The child grew up a happy boy but when that boy was barely on the cusp of adulthood, the Hiwatari matriarch fell ill and it was not long after that she died. Upon her death, Voltaire Hiwatari started to withdraw into himself but he still had some affection for his son left.
He watched the young man graduate from university and was there at his wedding, even visited when his son and daughter-in-law first held a child in their arms. Voltaire was a proud grandfather, but he did not have the chance to enjoy it long enough before his only son and his daughter-in-law met with a fatal accident on the way home from a dinner party.
Voltaire was already too far withdrawn into himself when the little bundle of life was thrust into his care. He hired a wet nurse and left the boy in the care of Albert the butler, who was by then a grown man.
Albert was there to see Voltaire off at the door. The old man was making his way to the other Hiwatari mansion, which with his settling was made the Hiwatari first mansion. The baby was fretting and the wet nurse was trying in vain to soothe it. As if he knew that he had lost all hopes of a normal, loving family, the baby bawled properly as Voltaire strode down the steps to the waiting car. Albert watched the old man leave. Voltaire never looked back once as he walked down that path.
The servants did all they could to make the boy as happy and comfortable as possible. He was thankfully not spoiled, but he rarely ever smiled.
Some things when severed are indeed really lost.
Albert always felt sorry for this boy, growing up with no one but people who were there only to serve him, a boy who had no notion of what a family really meant. Kai Hiwatari did his homework dutifully and spent his free time reading books, but never much else. He had no friends in school. Like his grandfather before him, he was utterly withdrawn.
Then in the second year of elementary school, he started returning home with bruises on his face. Yet, he smiled, more a roguish smirk than a smile, but a smile nevertheless. He was smiling! He would talk, animatedly and not with his usual mono-syllable utterances, about how he was going to beat this one boy next time round even as a cloth soaked in warm water was applied to his face by an alarmed maid.
Albert had been worried. He was even more worried when Voltaire came for visits. The teachers would be quick to inform the old man about Kai's fights and for the first time ever, Voltaire actually looked at the boy, actually tried a hand at disciplining him with the cane. Voltaire harangued constantly about how was he to expect to pass his business empire to such a miscreant. Still, Kai would go right back into the old fighting routine when his grandfather went back home.
The pot of soil appeared not long after, in which Kai, versed in the art of gardening, placed a seed and nurtured it into a plant. Little trinkets followed, in those globes that you got from coin toy dispensers. Albert had been shocked the first time little Kai approached him for help buying someone a present. That someone, young Kai had blushingly revealed, was someone called Tyson Granger.
During those few years, Master Kai showed some bit of life, looked forward to something. He was not chatty but he was acknowledging the people around him. For the first time, the servants saw that Master Kai was seeing them, really seeing them and not a glance in passing, or gazes like those he always directed out of a window.
They had gotten used to it and the house was not somber anymore. Even the servants dared to speak and joke with one another. They sunk into it, accepting it, with much relief, as normality, until Master Kai started becoming withdrawn again. His concern led Albert to find out that the boy was gone. Kai was only fourteen, and he completed middle school the same way he had started elementary school—sullen and silent. Excellent grades placed Kai in a prestigious high school, where the environment; the neat students, the competitive nature, everyone's general snobbishness towards someone like him, someone with dual-toned hair, a pierced ear and casual disregard for school rules; only served to make him colder.
Some of the life returned when he met Tala, Bryan, Ray and Spencer in the college, but once in the mansion, Master Kai was the way he used to be, barely speaking to anyone, barely seeing anyone.
Therefore, it had not escaped Albert when Master Kai returned one day with that little spark of life in his eyes again.
Albert walked down the corridor to Master Kai's sitting room. He was still a distance away when the sound of laughter, growing more familiar by the day, floated down to where he had stopped in his tracks. It was not Master Kai's laughter. He was not one to laugh with so little restrain. Albert smiled and continued his way to the sitting room. The door was ajar but he did not enter. He took the liberty of peeking into the scene beyond it. The two young men had pushed the chairs away from the table a little and were seated on the lush carpet with their backs leaning against them. Kai appeared entirely at ease even as he glared at Tyson as Tyson couldn't seem to control the sudden peal of laughter than seized him.
"You know, Tyson," Kai said, exasperated. "You are not making this easy for me."
Tyson tried his hardest to hold back his laughter by clamping his hand over his mouth. It took him a while before he was calm enough to speak.
"I can't help it, Kai!" he explained. "You read with such a monotone! I can't get into the mood."
"Look, I am not the one acting, so why should I be serious about this?" Kai demanded, never lifting his glare from the bluenette's face.
Tyson returned his glare with a level, slightly bemused look and replied, "To help me?"
He lifted the script, turned it a few pages to the front and scanned it a while.
"Let's start with the first scene in the first act."
Kai frowned.
"But there isn't any Juliet or Romeo in it," he pointed out.
"The play is never about any one or two characters, Kai," Tyson explained patiently. "It is about everyone. The moment someone steps on stage, it is already the play. Knowing everyone's parts in a play, even if it is not yours, is very, very crucial to the production. It helps you get a feel of everything and thus, helps you get into the right mindset for your part."
Kai raised an eyebrow.
"You sure know a lot," he said, feeling impressed despite himself.
Tyson ducked his head and answered, "I did take part in a play in the city school."
Kai blinked. Tyson's shyness always affected him in odd ways. He would get strange urges to do silly, irrational things, like ruffling Tyson's hair or leaning forward to…do whatever it was that people do when they leaned their faces and bodies towards another person. Mentally shaking himself of such a scandalous thought, Kai returned to the script.
"Let's get this over and done with, Tyson," he said coldly. "Act 1, Scene 1. You read the 'Prologue', I'll be Sampson and you be Gregory. Got me?"
Tyson stared at him a while, thinking how the commanding tone was becoming of Kai, before grinning.
Eventually, he chirped, "Aye! Aye! Captain!"
Kai muttered something that sounded like, "Idiot" under his breath before turning his attention to the script and the sound of Tyson's voice reading the 'Prologue'.
Albert on the other side of the door was reluctant to interrupt their little moment, but duty called for him to enter and announce dinner.
"Now, by her maidenhead, at twelve year old…" Kai stared down at the page and frowned. "Wait, Juliet's twelve?"
Tyson looked up from the script, to which they had promptly went back after dinner.
"Thirteen actually. Her father said that she had not yet seen fourteen summers," he explained, seeing no cause for alarm in it.
"Fine, she's only THIRTEEN, Tyson," Kai emphasized.
Tyson appeared sheepish when he replied, "Yeah. I guess girls come of age earlier back in those days. I read somewhere that girls get married at ages as young as eight. In the actual story of Snow White, she was only seven when all those things happened to her."
"Snow White was seven?" Kai found it far too hard to believe.
The bluenette smiled and suggested that they got back to the script.
They kept at it for a few weekends. Romero had been pleased when Tyson came up to him and told him about the part that Kai was playing in the production, which although was minor was worthy of the credits. (Kai thought he sensed something sly about the way Romero was pleased.)
Tyson was memorizing his lines perfectly; even the Drama Club veterans were impressed. Kai thought the bluenette was a natural at this. Sometimes, during their little rehearsals, he wondered what Tyson would look like in a dress. A wondering he would be quick to dash from his mind and focus on the script.
They did everything scene by scene; making sure Tyson remembered all his parts before they moved on. Tyson's visits changed something about the Hiwatari household. The servants were always glad to see Tyson, Albert was more cheerful than usual, Portia was always outdoing herself with the dinners on those few occasions where Tyson was not going back to eat, and if he didn't stay for dinner, Portia made sure he had something so unbearably sweet to bring home anyway. Kai…well, Kai could not say he dreaded the rehearsals. He was comfortable enough to bring Tyson to his room, where they would sit side by side on the carpeted floor with their backs leaning against the bed, to rehearse.
Kai…Kai liked the way Tyson always looked so languid, his legs splayed out before him as if there were no bones in them. Sometimes, Tyson would lounge like a cat on his bed as they read the lines. Of course, Kai would never, EVER admit to anyone that he looked forward to having Tyson over during the weekends.
Tybalt's line was read: "Now seeming sweet, convert to bitterest gall" and with that Tyson turned the paper over so that he would not see the parts he was to read on stage. Kai kept his eye on the page, to make sure that Tyson got it right. Besides, he was supposed to read his parts as Romeo too. They were already into act 1, scene 5, after Romeo and Juliet first met.
Kai read as Romeo:
"If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."
Reading that line, Kai could not help but think what a cheesy sap Romeo was. However, when Tyson read in his Juliet voice, Kai looked up, the way he always did, to the point of distraction sometimes, when Tyson read his parts.
"Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much…" read Tyson.
From then, everything started to seem strange. Kai could have sworn that he heard singing, tiny fairy voices belting out a little melody in the air, sprinkling some sort of shimmering dust on everything in the room. Kai did not realize he was reading Romeo's lines without some snarky thought running through his head. Tyson's voice and his own drew him into a scene that was all at once alien and familiar to him, as if a secret wish was suddenly remembered, a hidden desire ignited. It all culminated in a single line which Kai spoke with an ardent he did not know he possessed:
"Thus from thy lips, by thine, my sin is purged."
Kai saw Tyson's face getting closer to his own, saw those eyes narrow and the head tilt a little. Or maybe, Kai was the one leaning in closer to Tyson and having his head tilted. It was hard to tell. What was possible to tell was that their noses were going to fit well alongside each other and their lips, especially so. Their faces were so close then and it was only the distance of a centimeter that Kai had to cover before they would—
They both jumped away from each other at the same time. Kai saw that Tyson's eyes were wide and welling up with a frantic disbelieve that he discovered he wanted so badly to reach out and erase.
The desire to slap himself and rotate a knife in his own guts was overwhelming. What was he about to do just now? And with Tyson too! Kai could not think of what to say, as shocked as Tyson was about what had almost happened, what Kai had so naturally tried to do.
For a while they both stared at each other, before Tyson scratched the back of his head and ducked his head to look at the script once more. "Y…you don't have to really kiss me, Kai. It's only a dramatized reading."
Kai turned away and hid his eyes beneath his bangs. "Yeah...you're right. Now, let's just get on to the next part."
They dove back into their scripts with greater energy, trying their best to ignore what had just passed. Kai hoped that with the bustle of rehearsals in the studio, Tyson would forget all about the incident.
Kai kept his face averted well away as he read:
"Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again."
Tyson did likewise with: "You kiss by the book."
And so they went about it, the awkwardness and unasked questions hanging thick like smog about them. At the end of the day, Tyson took himself to the door as always and as always, Kai walked with him down the stairs. Both walked with about two arm's length of distance between their bodies and their conversation were about things which were severely mundane.
Next Chapter: Dress Rehearsals