'Because Tomorrow is Frightening' - [Uruha/Reita, Drabble]

[colberry]

Title:  [Because Tomorrow is Frightening]
Description:  The stage-persona is just a farce, a shell and nothing more.  Right?
Pairing:  Uruha/Reita
Notes:  Note the usage of names.
Comments:  This just...came out of nowhere, haha!  I'm still working on the third chapter of Violet Pulse, don't worry - this little sucker just wrote itself so here it is, out of my head and out of my way :P

“You’re not right.” 

The brusque statement clatters to the olden floorboards to kiss the shards of glass he had left from the dying breaths of his lungs.  His nose is becoming frigid, pressed along the glass of the window so sharply, he can feel the aureate tresses stick to his cheek like a lost lover.  He doesn't dare swivel his eyes toward the silhouette that has spoken.  Rather, he closes them shut, eyelashes filling the hollow dip of his sockets. 

There’s a slight shuffle of insistent patent leather shoes, “You’re not right; you’re broken apart.”

The repetition sifts along the stagnant air of the small room, but Uruha can’t listen to Akira’s broken record.  The vinyl is splintering, tearing those precious marionette strings of his pulsing organ and he might just scream if the elder reaches out with that hesitant hand.

His own hand clenches at his side, the numerous silver rings adorning his fingers glinting in the moonlight.  One for every day you make it worth it.  There’s thirteen of them, and maybe there were more instances where heart met faith, but Uruha had always been an avid collector of irony. 

But Akira continues, spinning sentences that are far more gossamer than the dress shirt Uruha adorns for this night, “You need to tell me what’s wrong or I can never help you.”

There is a smudge of desperation that mars the canvas.  It’s faint, but Uruha hears it all the same and it makes him part his lips in late commissary for the death of Akira’s pride.  Its ghost swallows his bones along with the Muse’s phantom, and he hopes he still has enough words for a proper eulogy. 

For it is a mighty death.

“Please tell me what to do, Kouyou.”  Fingers dip into his golden locks, and Akira is cupping the sun.  He is holding Uruha’s sun, and the younger man can’t stand to watch Akira turn to sweet ashes.  So he turns toward him sharply, eyes forever open and gazing into Akira’s own noir irises.  He can see Akira pause (this isn't Kouyou).  He can see midnight refracting in the man’s pupils and suddenly it’s so late, time elapsed without a proper goodbye and Uruha is left with too-large cuffs drowning his hands.

Is this how he hides?

When those stars flicker, die a billion deaths in the shadow of his honey-glazed irises, does he veil the hands that have spawned such perfect messes? 

Akira’s breath stutters, little pouts that set the rhythm to his spine – those dreadful butterflies lodged inside his vertebrae exploding – and he barely registers how the elder has rolled up his billowing sleeves, how he starts to rub the flesh in an attempt for friction-heat.

“I was always broken.”

The confession slips through his lips unannounced and halts Akira’s deft fingers.  He can feel the other man’s stare upon him, but he keeps his eyes to where his hands have been released.  The imprint of the palm on his arm is too warm, too alive against his porcelain skin, against the kohl that surrounds his eyes, against the myriad of no’s and have not’s that glaze this moment.  Padlocked, Uruha watches Akira’s fingertips trace the edges of his rolled-up sleeve, a certain courage that shakily exhales before latching onto his wrist.   

“I didn’t mean that – ”

“Yes you did,” Uruha tosses his head to the side, letting the words drip out because he was never in control to begin with, “I will always shake apart because I’m not really him, am I?”

And suddenly Akira (or maybe it was Reita) snatches his hand painfully tight, crushing those fingers that have both saved the likes of Andromeda and destroyed the Moon’s stars in one pen stroke, one note, “Don’t ever say that – you exist.  You breathe.  You feel.”

A bitter, wan smile breaks the beauty of Uruha’s countenance, grotesque and misplaced.  He averts his gaze, watches the shards of glass upon the floor glimmer in the pulse of the night.  The Chardonnay has splattered, a lovely vermillion stain on the Persian rug, and he absently notes that he might just fall in love with the imperfection. 

His voice is soft, gentle in a way that reminds Akira of wilting daffodils, “I have never felt.  You’re mistaking me with someone else.”  The mockery, the subtle sarcasm that laces his words makes the elder man grit his teeth.

The pressure on Uruha’s wrist tightens and the younger man’s eyes widen at the ache in his bones.  His eyes flicker to Akira, a question of betrayal in his expression, but finds the elder’s gaze holding searing zephyrs in its grasp. 

“Then you don’t feel this, right?”  Dull nails engrave scarlet crescent moons in Uruha’s flesh, “This is nothing.  Nothing.” 

Uruha’s lip trembles slightly, shock swelling in his chest and instinct telling him to flee, flee, run before everything becomes too real.  But he finds himself in perpetual paralysis, caught in Akira’s words, caught in the moon’s teeth.  He can see Akira join him, breaking apart as his eyes flash and his other hand comes to grip Uruha’s upper arm.  And he’s no longer trying to keep Uruha still, no longer attempting to make such a transient being idle.  He needs him now, holding onto whatever last tendrils of this they had together, to keep afloat. 

To keep together.

His bravado quivers, “You were never anything.  All those pieces of paper tacked to these goddamn walls are nothing.  You’re just a broken doll, then, right?”  He swallows, releasing Uruha’s bicep to twirl a piece of his shoulder-length hair around his index finger.  Round and round, cutting off circulation, the tip of Akira’s finger fading to a beautiful violet. 

“Just a doll,” He relinquishes the twirl of hair and lets it fall.  His fingertip is still violet, still bruised.  “Hollow.  Like everything that’s spilled from your pen is just child’s play… Dammit, Uruha!”

Akira tears himself away from Uruha’s being, as if the sun had finally burnt him through.  His eyes shut tight, fists clenched and his patent leather shoes crush stray glass.  The younger watches him pace, break, and wonders if Akira realizes that he has brought back the stars.  The glass crushed by his feet now sparkling like the billions of orbs that had flickered away.  He can’t hear Akira’s impassioned screaming, can’t see the man folding in on himself by his desk.  All he can register is how the night sky is now spread across his floor.

And then Reita is gripping his shoulders tight, forcing his honey-irises to drink in his presence, that he is here, and jars his soul awake, “You aren’t someone’s plaything!” 

It is now that Uruha finds the tear stains criss-crossing  Reita’s broken visage.  The lovely rivulets feel cool when he places his fingertips upon them, smearing and erasing their presence.  It’s all touch, touch, wait-now-and-just-be-here, because Reita is shaking in his hands, whispering useless words that hang from his tongue like bent pendulums, “You are my reality, can’t you see it?”

Can’t you see it?

His fingers meld into Reita’s cheeks, salt meeting flesh, and he leans forward.  A hush is upon his lips because he knows they’re both so broken, broken, but maybe they can fit together just this once.

“I’ve always seen it.”

&&&

A/N:  I really don't know.  Just something that had to be written, I suppose.

Look out for 'Violet Pulse' sometime next week :)