#wooooosh

Himawari is wearing Celine RTW 2017 and Chanel earrings!

The poem is a modified quote from the Japanese version of a scene from FF13: Lightning Returns. “Open your heart” is what her release is.

Speaking of which, her zanpakuto spirit! (Yes, it’s Bhuniveze from Ff13 lol).

I don’t know where I’m going with this lol.

Anyways have a new song I’m associating Himawari vs the Gotei 13 lol:

“Wait, I need my torch,” Marc says, straightening and giving Álex a wide-eyed look.

“What? Why do you need a torch?” Valentino interjects. Álex glares at him for no fucking reason.

“Go get it, Valentino. It’s probably in the garage.”

“But—”

Marc turns to level Valentino with just — the most ridiculously pleading eyes ever. Álex glares harder.

“Okay,” he mutters, pushing away from the doorframe and turning on his heel.

He feels along the wall for the lightswitch once he reaches the garage, until everything bursts into colour, motion lights triggered by his searching arm. He squints against the fluorescence, stumbling past an endless line of bikes and gear and other crap.

Six minutes later, when he’s twelve drawers, four cupboards, and a tub deep with no torch in sight, he decides Álex was fucking with him. He hisses air through his teeth. Fuck you, dick. Just for that, I’m snooping. There’s a dark corner he hasn’t made it to yet, so he can technically still call it searching when he swipes a large grey tarp from over a waist high pile. It takes him a second to figure out what he’s looking at, and then —

His stomach drops. A big, worn cardboard box, sealed shut with six layers of duct tape that have clearly been opened and resealed and opened and resealed over and over again. Scrawled in black permanent marker across the front, DO NOT OPEN. And on top of that, two of Valentino’s helmets. He sinks to the floor, hands reaching for the first helmet — from 2013. There’s a thick enough layer of dust that he could write his name in it across the visor. Fucking hell, he thinks, setting it gently beside him, and the second, from 2014, beside that.

The box is next, because he can’t help himself. Equal parts burning curiosity and ice cold fear, because what else deserves to live covered in a dark corner but things that remind Marc of Valentino. He presses his nail along the seam of the tape, and it gives way, opening beneath the pressure. It had been cut but not closed.

He pulls it closer to him, pulls it open. Something knife sharp dances on the first knob of his spine. Slides down to his tailbone, cutting him apart when he realises what he’s looking at.

Four little motorcycle figurines, each with 46 printed across the front in yellow. He swallows down the flood of nausea rising in his throat.

He takes each one out carefully, fingers tentative over the plastic. They form a little cavalry beside his knee, shiny under the bright white lights. There’s still more in the box; four neatly folded shirts, and Valentino doesn’t need to open them to know what they are. A rolled up poster, ripped in several places. A framed — Jesus — a framed photo, and Valentino remembers that moment like it happened yesterday, Marc, tiny, all brown eyes and gap-tooth smile, handing him a little red car like it was the most exciting thing he’d ever done.

Is it true that I was his idol? Is it true that he has a poster of me in his house? I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’d like to check for myself.

There’s a noise at the door, and he jolts, hands dropping the frame like it’s burning him. It’s Marc, already making his way over, eyes wide and curious.

“Álex found the torch,” he says casually, dropping to sit on the ground next to Valentino, legs folded underneath him. “What is… Oh.” Recognition blooms across his face, mouth falling open. He picks up one of the bikes, knuckles brushing against the curve of Valentino’s leg. He can’t say anything. He doesn’t — this will be it. Marc will look at the box, the helmets, covered in dust and hidden away, at the guilty wrench of Valentino’s brow. And he’ll put it together, and this — whatever this has been, will end.

“I wondered where all this was,” he murmurs, turning the figurine over in his hands, reverent. Valentino rocks with the relief that hits him like a bullet. There’s no sudden clearing in Marc’s eyes, no tension in the bow of his spine. He smiles, tracing the 46 with the pad of his finger. “Why is it…”

“We only got them from your parents a little while ago,” Valentino interrupts. Marc’s attention leaps to his face. “I guess we just — forgot to unpack. And the helmets. Álex must have returned them. From — the loan, the museum.”

Marc hums like that makes all the sense in the world, and Valentino can’t help himself.

“Tell me about them,” he breathes, heart stuttering in his chest. Fear is a strange thing. He’d almost lost it — felt the illusion caving in, imagined recognition dawning on Marc’s face. That can be the excuse. The excuse for placing his hand on the floor, close enough to press the side of his palm to Marc’s leg, for letting himself be anchored by it.

“Have I told you before?” Marc asks, eyes swooping up to Valentino’s face, crinkled in the corners.

“Sure. But tell me again.”

Marc goes all soft, melty, shuffling closer to press himself along Valentino’s side. He places one of the bikes in Valentino’s hand and picks up the little Honda for himself.

And Valentino listens, entranced. How Marc bought one every two weeks, walked himself to the store and back, pocket heavy with coins. He watches the dark fan of Marc’s eyelashes across his cheekbones, the peach-coloured rounds of his nails as they dance over the miniature handlebars.

They carry everything out to the dining room afterwards. Marc organises the bikes like a centrepiece on the table, and Valentino swipes the dust off the helmets as subtly as he can. Álex comes around the corner right when Marc shakes the creases out of a 2002 championship t-shirt, which Valentino refuses to watch, feeling far too much like he’s been put through the wash and hung out to dry.

“What are — where did —” his eyes find Valentino, the sputtered line of questioning dying on his tongue. Valentino grimaces, because Álex would have known where this was. Knows Valentino had to go sniffing to find it. He raises an eyebrow, though, challenging, because Álex, with the torch in his hand, had sent Valentino away just to piss him off. So, there.

“Look, Álex!” Marc calls, holding the shirt up to his chest and peering down at it with a blistering grin on his face. “It’s like a time capsule, ha.”

“Yeah,” Álex says, frozen to the spot. “You must have looked really hard, Valentino.” Valentino glances at Marc, too occupied with another shirt to catch the lethal gravel in Álex’s tone.

“I really wanted to find the torch,” he replies, slow, intentional. “But seems like you have that covered.” Álex’s face twists. Marc pulls out another shirt, and when he holds it to his face to sniff it, Álex’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. He leaves not long after, torch abandoned on the table, pulling Marc into a hug and then calling over his shoulder at the doorway that he can fly out at a moment's notice if needed. Yeah fucking right, not happening. He’d like to keep the Márquez presence at the ranch limited to one or less. Ideally less.

Suitcases packed and all three of Valentino’s belongings shoved back into the duffel bag they came from, Marc drags him by the wrist up the hall to his room. Panic starts to flutter in Valentino’s chest, and he’s too fucking old for this, can’t have a heart attack at the prospect of sleeping in Marc’s bed or — or whatever else. The night before, he’d left once Marc was asleep. Snuck out, curled up on the couch and set an alarm to wake himself up before Marc could realise he’d left.

“I can’t, Marc,” he protests.

“Can’t what?” Marc flips the sheets back and folds himself under them, eyes big and round on Valentino’s face, expectant.

Can’t — he can’t — well. He swallows, throat clicking.

“Can’t sleep, before I fly. I get — it makes me stressed.”

Marc’s face contorts into something so genuinely sympathetic that Valentino thinks he might be sick.

“It’ll be okay,” he whispers, patting the space beside him.

“I don’t want to keep you up with my tossing and turning.” Yeah, that’s — that’s good. Reasonable. Marc laughs.

“I could not sleep knowing you were laying somewhere else, nervous,” Marc says, teeth catching on the swell of his lip. “I would rather be awake all night next to you.”

Jesus Christ. Valentino sits down on the edge of the bed, not trusting his knees to keep him standing. He nods, faint, unsure if he’s even still in the room.

“Okay,” he croaks after a long stretch of quiet. “Let me brush my teeth.”

When he comes back, Marc is on his side, eyes fighting to stay open. Valentino watches the flutter of his lashes as he swaps sweats for pyjama pants, barely aware enough to be self-conscious under Marc’s heavy-lidded gaze. He slides under the covers, and Marc’s eyes drop closed immediately. He shuffles up along Valentino like a magnet, nosing against his collarbone, legs pushing to twine around Valentino’s own.

Valentino doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe for fear of shattering this. It feels vulgar, this obscene lie that they’ve constructed, that Marc doesn’t know a single piece of. But he’s too — Marc is here, breathing against Valentino’s neck, and so the guilt slides into a far corner, buries itself away long enough for Valentino to slide his hand up the side of Marc’s throat, fingers brushing over the shell of his ear, whispering across dark curls. Marc hums, and the noise vibrates straight through Valentino’s chest, pushes against the aortic thump of his pulse, of this work of fiction he finds himself in.

He thinks of the little bikes on the dining table. Glinting in the lowlight, plastic, unfeeling. Thinks of himself, glinting in the lowlight.