#aurafic

It never snows in the City—or, well, it did. Once. A long time ago, when they were both still children, still rummaging dumpsters and trash cans for food or worthy scrap, believing that home meant each other, not the orphanage with the kind caretaker and a warm smile. Of course, they still believe, still think, still entwine their hands and fingers together in a shy dance of affection and love, longing for nothing more than each other.

Or, they used to. They used to sit on top of the rickety old buildings in a deserted part of Commons, lost to abandonment and frequented by scavengers, gazing at the stars and the sky and pointing up, up, up to the city above. Rin had smiled so brightly, had reached for their dream without a doubt in her heart, because she believed that two poor Commons-born children could ascend the ladder and become part of the City despite all evidence otherwise. Because she had faith and determination, she had hope, and he clung to it (to her) desperately.

They used to talk about everything and anything atop those buildings, sometimes content to do nothing but sit for hours on end, enjoying the starlight and each other’s presence. And Rin used to tell him, Yuugo, it’ll be easier to stargaze when we’re up in the City, and he’d believe her with every ounce of his being, every awed breath he released.

They used to, before Rin disappeared, before she was kidnapped, before Yuugo failed to save her even though he promised he would protect her.

(Some kind of protector he is, right?)

Yuugo sucks in the cold air, exhaling through his mouth a trail of white steam that rises with the heat and then fades away. It never snows in the City, not even in the winter, but when it did a long time ago, he remembers jumping feet-first into a pile of building snow, loving how it crunched underneath his boots. They were raggedy old things, his clothes, and not meant to protect him from snow.

Because it never snows in the City.

Rin had smiled, dressed in an old denim dress that had patches all over, and perhaps once the dress was something of beauty, before it lost its value and was discarded away. Her jacket was two sizes too big for her, but clothes were clothes, and it didn't matter what shape they were in as long as they had some.

She put her hand out to catch the falling flakes, marveled at their novelty, and then told Yuugo: “Be careful! You could catch a cold.”

“I don't believe in colds.”

“That doesn't mean you can't catch one!”

Yuugo stomps down the memory with a grit of his teeth, hot steam escaping from his mouth as he strains to catch his breath. He doesn't deserve to remember that, lost in pity as he is because he couldn't protect Rin. Because he wasn't strong enough, wasn't fast enough, and the villain had carried her away into the night, in a flash of violet that blinded his eyes.

(He cries wolf because the wolf exists but no one wants to help him. No one wants to confront a wolf when it won't help them. Rin isn't worth anything close to tomorrow’s meal for them, isn't enough to thaw their hearts because she was—is—just another Commons.)

Yuugo grunts, kicking the cement with a blind fury that hurts him more than helps him. A way to release his frustrations. He refuses to look at the streets, now, too reminded of how they had been dangerous because of the snow and ice, how he had slipped and hurt himself, how Rin had helped him home with nary a word.

Not even “I told you so”.

It is cold in the winter, cold enough for frost to cover the windows, cold enough for puddles to freeze overnight, and definitely cold enough for the unprotected to catch the flu.

But it doesn't snow.

“What are you doing, Rin?”

She had her hands clasped in front of her, eyes closed as the snowflakes fell all around her, surrounding her. Yuugo had only blinked at her posture and tilted his head in question.

“I’m making a wish!” she'd said, opening her eyes again to smile at him. “Because it never snows, so it’s like a miracle! We should take advantage and see if it'll grant our wishes, too.”

“Hey up there,” Yuugo says, though it’s low and muffled by the collar of his scarf, and his eyes are looking anywhere but at the sky. He shuffles in his spot, tugging at his jacket and his scarf, posture reserved but eyes aflame. “You’re all dicks, but at least… Can’t Rin come back? Can’t I rescue Rin?”

Of course, they don’t answer him. Yuugo doesn’t believe in gods, and never has, but Rin did. Rin read all the books they could have, she believed all the fairy tales, she believed and she prayed and she did her duty as a follower of the gods but she’s still gone.

(And Yuugo had cried out, not sure if his voice was his own or a dragon’s, a loud roar of despair that shook the ground and scattered the birds. He had lashed out and scarred the buildings, had breathed dragon’s fire over stone (futile, so futile). He had even spread a dragon’s wings, all sharp edges and beautiful crystal (like the fake gems Rin put in her hair and declared herself a queen).

Because there was no dream without Rin, there was no Friendship Cup without Rin, who he had promised that they would make it together, that they would reach the life that they had always wanted and chased after in the shadows of the discarded items that fell from the City above.

We’ll get up there, she’d said. We’ll make it to the City, she’d said. We’ll live without having to scavenge everyday for money, she’d said.

It’ll be easier to stargaze when we’re up in the City.

He believed every dream she could conjure, every word that fell from her lips. She was a never ending world, of which dreams live, and hope prospers, and through her eyes the world could gaze into eternity—perfect, crystalline, remembered. An eternity that only lived through her hope, and the way her amber eyes would shine whenever she saw Yuugo, whenever she held him in her arms and thought of nothing but his happiness, his prosperity, his well-being, because she never once considered herself.

Because Yuugo never once considered anyone but himself.)

All the more reason the gods don’t even exist, Yuugo grumbles.

(Arashu, goddess of protection.)

It takes him a while to notice it, lost in his thoughts (uncharacteristic, for someone who so brashly leaps into conflict, who never thinks before slamming on the gas pedal, who doesn’t question what he’s been told until later), but when the first drop of water hits his nose, he almost jumps in surprise. His eyes immediately go up, holding his hand out to make sure it’s rain he’s feeling.

It starts out small: playful water drops that land on his face and hands, and Yuugo knows that he only has but a minute to find shelter before it starts pouring. He turns on his heel and dashes for the nearest awning, cursing under his breath as part of his outfit gets soaked.

She had found him on a day like this, the water beating notes against the heavy metal awning of an abandoned store, his body shivering and shivering with the cold, dressed in no more than a t-shirt and shorts. He couldn’t afford better clothes (he couldn’t find them, either), and the only protection he had was a thin blanket wrapped tightly around him.

“Are you lost?” she had said, holding a patchy umbrella in her small hands, a mere child of no more than eight staring down at him.

“No,” he’d replied, teeth clattering and body shaking. “This is my home.”

She had blinked, confused, but hadn’t asked what he meant, and she hadn’t questioned him further. Rin merely took off her coat—a large, warm parka full of rips and tears—and draped it over him.

She didn’t even know him.

“I don’t need your pity—”

“You know,” she interrupted him with a fond look outside, not once missing a beat. “My mother used to tell me that it only rains when someone feels sad in their heart.”

“Hey, Rin,” he says, sitting down on the cement and looking out to the pouring rain. He leans his head against the metal of the ruined door behind him, the water from his hair running down his face and soaking his clothes. Yuugo exhales, again, the steam continuing to escape from his mouth.

“... Used to?”

“Yeah, used to.”

“I’m—” he stutters, squeezing his eyes shut. His cheeks are red from the cold, he’d tell anyone who asked, and his breathing is labored because he just ran some ways. “I’m sad right now, too, in my heart. I-It’s so cheesy saying that, isn’t it?”

Yuugo laughs, hollow.

“... I miss you.”

Akaba Reiji holds galaxies in his hands, eerie bioluminescent masses made of gas and light, with a hundred dying stars and a thousand more made from the ashes of their death. And in-between each star there orbits planets in a ring, a million more organisms on its rocks, life and bacteria and too many other things that humans dream of in their wildest fantasies.

To be more specific he holds power in his hands: wealth and knowledge and prosperity bundled in his arms, fame on his face, enchantment in his mouth. Upon his smile there are a thousand beautiful flowers that spring from his skin and cover the earth in its color, its beauty, its resonance and abundance.

He was felled by flowers.

The seeds that grew from his mouth were beautiful roses, camellias, spider lilies—red, red, and red all over. The stems that sprung from his lips were bright green and canton jade and amazon moss and caribbean seaweed and too many other things that highlighted the bunch of red petals on top, covering his mouth and his nose until he could breathe nothing but flowers.

“You should see a doctor,” one of his servants had said, looking up from the stack of papers in their hands to him, fingers curled around a clipboard until the knuckles were stark white. “You should see a doctor and get those flowers removed.”

“That’s not a priority right now,” he’d responded, too caught up in his work to notice his own well-being. He’d feel a weight in his jaw and reach in to pull a stubborn petal from his mouth, slicked in saliva, and bundle it up in a tissue to throw into the nearest trashcan. “Our stock reports from the last month, if you will.”

Akaba Reiji would not be felled by simple flowers.

(Ignored, untended, untouched, unpruned—the flowers continued to grow until they spilled from his ears and covered his eyes.)

(Like graveyard soil.)

So life went on.

In the morning, he’d wake up and remove more flowers from his mouth, dumping whole spider lilies and camellias into the trash bin, cut stems from his cheeks and deposit them all into the sink.

“How do you do, Mister Akaba?” his servants would greet him and there would be no trace of plant life in his bones until lunchtime, when they regrew with new vigor and attempt to cover his entire face in their petals.

“You’re pretty stupid, Akaba, but this is a new low,” Kurosaki Shun had said, pushing aside the thorny stems of roses to cut them all from their perch on his face. “They’ll start coming out of your eyes next, and then you won’t be able to do your precious work.”

“I have plenty of time before they reach that stage,” Reiji responded and let Shun do what he needed to get rid of all the greenery on his visage. “There’s no need for haste.”

“Yeah, tell that to me when you can’t see anymore,” but despite Shun’s snort he ran his thumbs along Reiji’s cheek one last time, pushed down all the stubborn stems and checked him once more before leaving.

Months went by, and the flowers continued to grow.

There exists a disease in this world called Hanahaki-byou, the flower-spitting disease. Seeds will sprout from the heart and cause a person to cough up flowers continuously. If left untreated, the disease will spread until the flowers start growing out of ears and eyes and mouth, petals will overtake skin, and keep growing until the host is a flowering graveyard, unable to move or speak or breathe.

Infection does not come from airborne pollen or bacteria, by the touch of another infected person or by fluid contact.

Infection comes from love.

Akaba Reiji fell in love with a passing summer, a boy whose eyes were red like the stars he held in his hands, laughter light like the glow that shines from them.

Recovery does not occur until that love is returned.

“Sakaki Yuuya!” he’d introduced himself, smile bright and shining, hand welcoming, flaming red hair like camellias and spider lilies and roses, green roots like amazon moss and canton jade and caribbean seaweed. He was two years younger than Reiji, with dreams of Broadway and Hollywood, flying with his own two wings. “Nice to meet ya!”

“Likewise,” he’d said in reply, taking Yuuya’s hand in his and shaking it firmly. Sparks danced across their skin and ignited the seeds in Reiji’s heart that began to flower and grow, encompass his immune system in pollen. “Akaba Reiji.”

And like summer, he’d left at the end of August, taking with him Reiji’s cure and chance of recovery.

“You should find him, you know,” Shun likes to say, pushing nails into Reiji’s skin and making him hiss in return as he pulls seeds from his skin. “Before the flowers start to grow from your fingers and you can’t use them anymore.”

“I have plenty of time before that; there’s no need for haste.”

“So you say,” Shun replies, frowning. “Akaba, you may be a huge asshole, but—whatever, just find the guy. I don’t want to do your goddamn work for you when you can’t.”

“So you do care,” Reiji raises an eyebrow and receives a rather harsh jab in return.

Shun hisses, cheeks red. “Fuck no. I just don’t want to clean up your mess.”

And leaves him, once again, flowerless.

—A year goes by.

The flowers grow from the holes in his eyes and cover his vision, camellias dance across his hands and reach for his face, spider lilies sprout from his chest, rose petals make their way out of his mouth in saliva and blood, an unholy matrimony of red, red, and too much red.

He would die like that, covered in a majesty of carnelian, vines around his legs until he couldn’t move, flowers sprouting from his heart and into his lungs until he couldn’t breathe.

Akaba Reiji, felled by flowers.

(Akaba Reiji, felled by love.)

“There’s someone here to see you,” his nurse says, smiling down at him pitifully in his bed of roots and stems and petals, blooms on his lips and neck, flowers wrapping deadly vines around his entire body. “I’ll let them in.”

Reiji lost his voice a month ago, when the flowers deposited seeds along his throat until they grew from every crack and crevice of skin there, entangling his voice box in thorns and roots. Shun had pitied him then, too, proceeded to try and cut the flowers from his eyes so that he could still see. The least he could do, he said.

Summer comes running in with wide red eyes, worry on his face in the creases of his brow, hands trembling with fear, and he approaches with hurried steps, afraid to go any slower to Reiji’s deathbed.

“Gods,” he says, disbelief in his breath, and runs his fingers along a single spider lily on Reiji’s chest. “I didn’t know.”

You weren’t supposed to, Reiji wants to say.

Yuuya gives him a weak smile, splays his hands across the field of flowers on Reiji’s shoulder. “I didn’t know at all, and I thought I would end up like this, too.”

Too? Reiji wants to ask but Yuuya reads the knit of his brows and laughs.

He turns around and coughs into his hands, tanned fingers pressed against his mouth until he retches and shaky white petals fall out. Reiji doesn’t believe his eyes—the flowers must have roots in his brain—but Yuuya doesn’t stop until he coughs out an entire flower, and the world freezes in its tracks.

White chrysanthemums.

Spit-slicked white chrysanthemums, with stone grey stems and shining silver leaves resting on the palms of Yuuya’s hands, and Yuuya smiles—relief, satisfaction, triumphant.

“Too,” Yuuya repeats.