Title: Congratulations

Show: Kuragehime

A/N: One shot. Short like a midget, but sassy like your mum. No further summary needed, really.

"You should have gone with the ivory."

Sucky first words.

"Or, you know, magenta."

A little less accusatory, but still lame as hell.

Kuranusuke tries again, and they're the right words, but so, so terrible it's like he's betraying the sun, moon and stars by drawing a black veil over the earth.

"Congratulations."

And he dies, because as it turns out, he didn't even have the nerve to give his own heart a chance to avoid breaking.

There's this thing about people in love. They're like planets that after years and years and years of spinning and spinning and spinning, they've been centred on an axis, and the solar system is that much more beautiful now you can see them.

Then there's this thing about people out of love, where they're a bit strange and powerful and so utterly free and perfect it's almost exhausting to comprehend.

Then there's the ones that have love that is incomplete, unreturned; a loose thread that snags on everything, everywhere, every day, every goddamn minute until all their clothes are tattered and measured by halves and revealing everything they wished hidden. They're stars yearning to become constellations. They keep their hearts carefully folded in their pockets, waiting, waiting, waiting.

But now he doesn't even have the luxury of waiting. The one waiting for her in the afterlife will be her husband, and their happiness will probably force four-leaf clovers to grow on highways.

Or something.

So he picks up her train (her bridesmaids have no idea how to protect lace) and does his best to be best man, without stepping over and showing he is the Best Man.

And he so doesn't want to admit to himself that despite everything he's still devastatingly attracted to her. But it would be so easy, so easy that he can see it in his mind, running through in stop motion and flickering like a cheesy, old romance drama. He pictures it the way little girls see their weddings, and he hates himself for it.

He can see himself rubbing circles on the palm of her hand when he's not even realising that he's doing it.

He sees himself telling her that from a certain angle, she kind of looks like Danny Devito.

He also sees himself telling her that from the other direction, at a certain angle and in certain lighting, she kind of looks like a hot Judy Garland.

But he won't tell her what she looks like when he closes his eyes and she gives him a little wave from the back recesses of his mind. She's kind of pretty, but a little chubby with a skittish quality to the way she rings her hands. But when she looks up at him, it's like she seems something joyful and warm. And he feels like he may be able to do something to make the two people he loves most in the world happy.

A/A/N: I wasn't kidding about the short thing.

But ohhey! I know these drabbles have been on the downer side of things, but I'm currently working on (another!) multi-chapter fic for this show/pairing that will be joy and unicorns. I swear.

So subscribe, just like you know you want to (yousaucyminxyou).

X Schnook