A/N: It is evident that I do not know what romance is.
Another thing, I've already thanked this person privately but I'm going to do it here as well because I enjoy milking things massively. Thank you, Mimizuku9, for posting the links to here on the RoChu Week tumblr tag - I apologise I didn't do it myself haha. Anyone else, go and read all of Mimizuku9's RoChu right now.
4. beauty
There are particular lights, Ivan has found, that just make ghosts look disgusting.
It is late in the afternoon, nearing the end of the twilight hours, and Ivan is impatient to go home to Yao after a day of chasing ghosts. The rush of Alfred Jones' exorcism is gone, vanished the moment the ghost chaser guild turned to him with suspicious stares this morning, voices insultingly incredulous as they asked whether he was telling the truth - you seriously want us to believe you just 'happened upon him'? After we've been after him for so many months?
He hasn't been in a good mood all day, and he is not in one now when he watches Toris Laurinatis pull an exorcism circle around the ghost of a middle-aged woman they've been following for the past few hours. In the half-light of a November evening, the pale glow of the ghost doesn't look magical anymore, it just looks ugly. Ugly and cloudy and thick, nothing like the sparkling, clean shine that Ivan is used to. He doesn't know whether it's just the time of day, or the still-warming streetlights casting red light down at them, but whatever it is it's not nice.
The ghost isn't helping either, twisting her face into ghastly expressions of anger as Toris says the Latin chant and she blows up in front of them.
Ivan watches her memories spring up, the pictures painted in dull colours almost as ugly as her spirit, and when he gets bored of them he turns to the ghost chaser next to him. Toris hasn't been in the ranks long, having joined just after the hunt for Alfred Jones began, and he is quiet and nervous, always running a hand through his too-long hair or fiddling with his thumbs or dodging eye contact. Ivan likes him, even if he is a little jumpy - sometimes his docility is refreshing compared to Yao's cocky arrogance.
He sighs, and Ivan asks him what's wrong. There is a pause as Toris pockets the small exorcism chips again. "I just... hate ghosts."
"Do you?" Ivan asks, an image of Yao flashing through his thoughts. He must have sounded more surprised than he wanted to because Toris takes a few quick steps away and hastily apologises for nothing.
"Well, I don't- I'm sorry, that was probably a- hate is a strong word, I know." He laughs nervously, runs a hand through his hair, rubs the back of his neck, dodges Ivan's eye contact. "Sorry."
"No, that's fine," Ivan replies, "I guess there is something nasty about them."
He thinks of Yao again.
"I'm not sure there's anyone who could say they wholly like ghosts," he adds.
He watches the pictures from the woman's life fade, thinks of Yao, isn't sure why he's agreeing with Toris.
"Have fun killing ghosts?" Yao asks.
"No, not really," Ivan replies. "You always ask that."
"I'm waiting for the day you'll say yes."
They shrug to each other rather than say anything else, a lazy way of ending the conversation. Ivan walks over to his bed, kicks his boots off, collapses in a heap on the duvet, and the whole time he keeps thinking about how Toris outright said he hated ghosts - and how he agreed.
He doesn't hate ghosts.
Even when he was little he didn't hate ghosts - he found them fascinating, a mystery that only he could solve. He has never hated ghosts, far from it.
He looks over to Yao, floating gently and looking out at the street below, and as quietly as he can, sits up and crawls across his bed to reach the light switch. The moment the lights go out he falls back to the same position he was in before, lying sprawled out on his bed with his scarf lying on his chest and his head turned to the window.
Yao spins around to see what's going on - and Ivan thinks, this light, this is the one that he likes the most.
It is dark outside, but the white moonlight on a clear winter night is shining perfectly through the window and illuminating the icy glow surrounding Yao's shape. It looks ethereal, magical, like a ghost should look, better than a ghost should look, and Ivan briefly wonders if the ghost Toris exorcised today could ever look as beautiful as Yao does now. He quickly decides it would be impossible, there is nothing in the world that could surpass the ghost of Yao Wang.
Except for his real, physical body, Ivan thinks, but pushes the idea away.
A small part of him thinks about holding Yao's real hand, running his fingers through his real hair.
"What?" Yao says eventually. His look of surprise is perfect.
"You're really beautiful," Ivan replies.
Yao visibly falters, blinking in the darkness as he tries to think of something to say, and Ivan is unable to resist a smile. "You don't have to say anything," he says, "Just stay there and let me look."
In this light, the cold light of the moon, Yao's entire form looks like it could be sparkling. Some poetic thought of Ivan's likens him to a god, a goddess, something far more incredible than just a ghost, some higher being that Ivan doesn't deserve to have - but has, incredibly, incomprehensibly, has.
He thinks about the old photographs on the internet, taken with old cameras and printed with old printers, of Yao in the 1960s, in the few years before he died. Every time he looks at them it reminds him of how he should not know Yao Wang, should not be talking to him - should not be able to talk to him, but here he is. It reminds him of just how incredible what he has is.
He wonders if Toris Laurinatis would call it incredible or disgusting, if he was to say he was in love with a ghost.
A/N: And here we have the introduction of Lithuania, in case anyone was wondering why he's listed in the characters. It's still RoChu, don't worry.