Title: Stories
Prompt: Warmth/ Cold
Pairing: Zero x Yuuki (and the usual one-sided Kaname appearance. ugh, this is so getting old).
Rating: T
In blackest winter she stands by the window and traces patterns in the frost, lines indelicate and thick with heat. Warmth radiates from her fingers, melting the ice and leaving clumsy silhouettes. Condensation on her fingernails catches the candlelight and glistens like liquid diamonds—the water leaves trails like tears on her skin when she presses her hands to her face.
She has never liked winter. It is a time for running and for freezing, when survival is at its most tenuous. There are no places to hide in winter and once can only hope that it will snow enough to cover footprints left in the snow. Here, though, it is warm. Kaname-senpai doesn't like winter, either, but his reasons are so different, innumerable and complicated and none of them his own. She wonders if he would ever tell her happy stories about their parents, about pictures and laughter, about hot cocoa and fireplaces, because all of these seemed like legends, vaporous as ghosts. And as frightening. He had told her before that they were once real, and she had been compelled to find them herself. It was odd, though, for it was not her brother who had kept her sane during those sleepless nights. Those nights when the silence had been painfully marred by her screams, everything around her tainted with shining crimson—with blood. Strange, that it had to be a boy, the one who had painted his lips red and had left crescents of blood on her shoulders. And stranger, still, how she never complained—not even once.
Her brother joins her by the window, and tells her a story. She doesn't listen to the words, but to his voice. She pretends that this will save her, that the rise and fall of his words have no meaning outside themselves. She had loved this man since she had first laid her eyes on him, but now, she's not so sure anymore. She pretends that she is not dying, that this does not leave her empty. This is all she can give, and all that is hers to take. She pretends that it is enough.
She closes her eyes and thinks of the future. Her brother's hands find hers and they were gentle as waves, snow falling like cold stars far away, far away. The image stutters and freezes before she can see herself, before she can see what place she holds, what time has promised.
A pureblood. Aidou-senpai's harsh words stings her ears, again, and she shakes her head to forget.
When she opens her eyes, his are closed, as if it is real life that cannot be shared. This does not surprise her and she walks silently away, busies herself with the kettle and water and stove. He does not have cocoa, as far as she can tell, and she settles for tea instead. She wants chocolate and cream. But liquid bitterness will have to do.
Wind covers the city in visible waves, weaving throughout the high buildings and along the cold streets. The roads are unyielding beneath a slick layer of ice—she knows this because she had slipped earlier; her bike tires sliding like silk across glass, and the sensation had been so sudden, so much like freedom, that she'd forgotten that she would land. The sharpness had bitten into her palms, torn at her skin and left jagged, humbling lines. She had never felt more human. Human—
But this, too, shall pass. It will fade. One day, she would not be able to hide any longer. One day, Zero would find her. It doesn't bother her that it would mean her—no, their end. She remembers words unspoken and finds that they have come too late. How did things come to this, she wonders. When did Zero become unreachable—frozen oceans and cold starscapes?
The kettle settles and she pulls it from the heat, measures the water between two cups and carries them out to him, to where Kaname waits. Steam wafts, rich and delicate, and she wraps her fingers around the mug as if she can absorb the heat, as if to take it into her body. It doesn't work. He watches her over his own mug and she wonders if he knows. The air is tranquil and the evenness of their breathing makes her drowsy.
He smiles and the tea cools, forgotten.
She wonders if that is the only reason why she had been born. Solely for the purpose of being his—the role her mother had wholeheartedly played for her brother. But it is wrong, Yuuki decides, if she is to forget her vampire nature. She had lived with humans for too long, after all. Zero, she thinks, instead, as she closes her eyes and let Kaname's lips warm hers—Zero will find me soon.
Later, the wind cries outside and razor-edged pleas dance in the air. He breathes against her hair and she does not listen.
i wonder how i can still find the time to write amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday life. my imagination carries me away at peculiar times, and words randomly appear on my brain that i am simply left with no choice but to reach out for a piece of paper and a pen and write them down else they drive me to the brink of insanity. ah, the beauty of printed words on blank paper.
