#writing2021

--

The sun sits low on the horizon, casting long shadows along the gently sloping landscape of the country they’d dropped into just yesterday. Fai leans against the railing of their temporary apartment’s balcony and watches as the dark slowly creeps over the city below, fire-light lanterns lighting gradually along the city streets. He takes a long sip of wine and focuses for a moment on twirling the glass stem between his fingers. The air around him is hot enough for it to be uncomfortable, even though he’s stripped down to his barest layer. It’s muggy as well - a sensation that he finds even more uncomfortable than heat itself, as he can feel the dampness in the air begin to cling to his skin.

Fai sets his wine glass on the railing and buries his head in his hands as he replays the night’s events over and over again in his mind.

“It looks like they’re holding a summer solstice festival.” Kurogane explained, settling their groceries down on the counter, “We had something similar in Nihon.”

Fai hummed in response and focused on putting things away, only half-listening to what Kurogane was saying.

“We should go.” Kurogane handed him another bag and Fai very pointedly didn’t look at him.

“Sounds fun. I’ll ask Syao--”

“ We should go.” Kurogane was behind him now, close enough that Fai could feel the warmth radiating from his body. Fai’s heart sped up as he set the last box in the cupboard and turned, slowly, to face Kurogane.

“The kid said he would be busy anyway. Something about researching local legends,” Kurogane continued, staying a small distance from him to give Fai his space. Fai looked up and they locked eyes for a long moment. His breath caught in his throat, his heart pounding hard in his chest. Even with all of the stilted confessions they’d laid bare to each other after the battle with Fei Wong Reed, Fai still felt unable to accept whatever this was - whatever it could possibly become.

No matter how many times Kurogane held him, no matter how many whispered endearments he’d been offered, it still didn’t feel quite real . He can’t quite stop himself from thinking of all of the possibilities - every tiny thing that could go wrong and snowball into something that would completely alter the way Kurogane might feel about him, and that stops him, even now, from reaching out and moving this forward.

“If you insist, Kuro-sama,” Fai gives him a small, mischievous smile, “but you’re paying.” Fai’s heart leapt into his throat as Kurogane grinned back at him, clearly pleased with himself.

“Tomorrow. It’s a date,” Kurogane said, turning on his heel and making his way out of the kitchen before Fai could say anything in response.

Fai slumps against the balcony railing and lets out a long sigh, trying not to let his nerves get the better of him. He feels a little silly, all things considered, worrying about going on a date after everything that had happened.

=-=

The sun begins to peek over the horizon, signalling the start of a new day, and Fai feels like he’s barely slept a wink. He’s always been an early riser and until this point, it hasn’t really bothered him. He finds himself awake long before the other two so much as stir in their beds and he spends this time pouring over the five outfits he’s managed to accumulate up to this point, trying desperately to figure out which combination of the five would suit a summer solstice festival, an event he knows next to nothing about, and a date.

Fai closes his eyes for a moment and mulls over the choices. His normal travel wear was out of the question and his original clothes seemed a bit out of place as well. Cracking his eyes open, he runs his fingertips over the soft chiffon blouse he’d picked up in Moryo country. High neckline, flowing lantern sleeves, detailed ruffling around the wrists, and muted glitter shimmering within the fabric - he remembers liking it so much that he’d refused to sell it when they’d arrived in the next world - but Kurogane was never one for frivolous details was he?

Fai sets it aside and moves on to the next set neatly folded beside it. A simple cotton shirt with thin golden embroidery lining the sleeves and small embroidered flowers decorating a thin breast pocket. Practical and thin, maybe a bit too casual for a date? It was hot enough that this would likely be the best option, as he glanced over at the last outfit and remembered it was more well-suited for winter months.  

Fai shuts his eyes again and focuses on breathing for a moment before grabbing the cotton shirt and heading to the bathroom to get ready for the day.

=-=

Fai finds himself fussing over very menial tasks around the apartment until Kurogane is finally ready to leave for the festival. He’d flip-flopped all morning about so many tiny details that by the time Kurogane came to tell him it was time to leave, he was already exhausted and it was barely mid-day. At the last minute, Fai had changed his mind and decided upon the long-sleeved chiffon blouse - a decision that he is now regretting based both on how hot it is outside and also because he seems to be woefully overdressed.

The townsfolk around them are all dressed in casual summer clothes, similar to the types they had seen back in Hanshin country years ago. The crowds are thick in the market square with people crowding around the varieties of colorful booths lining the streets. There’s barely enough room to walk through and Kurogane sticks close enough to him that Fai starts to overheat embarrassingly fast . Kurogane seems absolutely unbothered by the heat, as per usual, a fact that Fai used to be envious of until they had managed to land themselves in a world with a tundra climate similar to his home country and Kurogane’s teeth hadn’t stopped chattering the entire time they’d been there. Fai glances up at Kurogane and smiles, fond memories of teasing Kurogane while they both shared his longcoat springing to the forefront of his mind.

Kurogane looks down at him and raises an eyebrow, but Fai just grins back at him in response. The crowd gets thicker and harder to navigate to the point where they nearly get seperated a few times, so when Kurogane offers his hand, Fai takes it. His palms are sweaty, both from the heat and his own nerves, but Kurogane says nothing and simply pulls him along until they reach their destination.    

They stop at a few food booths and Kurogane orders for the both of them - most of the things on the menus look like nothing he’s ever seen before, and a majority of it is pretty good, apart from the one crispy food that Kurogane hands to him that turns out be some sort of battered fish. Fai begrudgingly swallows that one down and makes a mental note to sneak way too much sugar into Kurogane’s coffee tomorrow morning.

Eventually, they make their way to the small park at the center of the city square. There are more tents set up in the park, all lined with glittering lights and colorful tapestries. While a majority of the booths they’d seen up to this point were more focused on food, these tents seemed to be hosting a variety of games. Kurogane has stopped leading him since there are less people in this part of the square, and Fai pauses to let his eyes wander over the first few booths in the line. A game with a bunch of colorful bottles, one with tiny children’s bow and arrows, and one - one that he feels an odd sort of pull toward.

Fai wrinkles his nose, suddenly even more on-edge as he takes in the curved lines of a red, orange, and black wheel painted to look like a giant sun. He stares at it for a long moment, trying to figure out just what about it seemed odd. He’s so focused on it that he nearly jumps out of his skin when Kurogane places his hand on the small of his back, gently guiding him toward the booth.

“Let’s check it out, you seem curious enough about it.” Kurogane says, and Fai can feel his face heating up even more - if that was even possible (he probably looked like a giant tomato at this point, dear gods) .

As they get closer to the booth, Fai can see small pegs lining the outer ring of the wheel with tiny words written in between them. Up-close, the sun painted on the wheel looks distinctly familiar, but he can’t quite place where he’s seen it before. Kurogane hands the game tender an amount of money and Fai watches as he spins the wheel. It lands on a word that he can’t read and the attendant grins as he pulls a box out from behind the wheel.

“Ah, a wonderful prize from the box of mysteries, my friend! You never know what great treasures you may find!” The attendant gestures to the top of the box and that strange pull that had pulled him here grew just a bit stronger. When he sticks his hand in the box, he feels a few boxes, a few things that feel like rubber, and something - something that seems to fit itself into the palm of his hand all on it’s own. Fai is no stranger to magic and he can practically feel whatever this object is pulsing with unreleased energy.

He pulls it out and opens his palm to reveal a strange orange gem with streaks of red running through it. It feels odd in his hand - strangely right, and that makes him nervous. Magical objects that seek out their users are generally not good news.

He’s pulled out of his reverie by Kurogane tugging lightly on his sleeve, leading him away from the booth. Fai pockets the gem without much thought and follows him, tentatively brushing his hand against Kurogane’s and smiling when the ninja twines their fingers together as they walk further into the park.

The sun has fully set by the time they reach a little alcove with a small park bench that Kurogane had apparently been leading them to. Kurogane plops himself down on the bench and makes himself comfortable, raising an eyebrow at Fai when he doesn’t follow.

“What are we--” Fai begins, and Kurogane closes his eyes and leans back into the bench.

“Fireworks. Should be starting in about half an hour.”

Fai sits and almost immediately becomes very aware of how sweaty he is as he leans back on to the bench seat and feels the chiffon of his shirt stick to his skin as he shifts. They sit in silence for a few minutes - a fact that had Fai’s nerves building in the pit of his stomach, even if he can’t rationalize why he’s nervous. The night around them is loud with chirping crickets and the far-off sounds of the festival. Fai shifts again, wanting desperately to unbutton a few of the top buttons of his shirt but feeling much too awkward to do so.

Kurogane shifts next to him, placing one of his arms along the back of the bench behind Fai’s head and Fai feels like he needs to fill the silence with something, literally anything, so he says the first thing that pops into his head.

“Do you come here often?” Immediately as he says it he wants to drop his face into his hands and never look Kurogane in the eye again. Kurogane says nothing for a long moment and when Fai finally chances a look up at him, he’s grinning down at him.

“We’ve only been here for two days,” He says, clearly amused, “I happened by this place on the way back from the market yesterday.”

Fai puzzles over this for a moment and then comes to a realization, “Did you plan all of this?”

Kurogane looks up to the sky and hums in response.

“I have something for you.” Kurogane glances over at him and smiles, soft and easy, and Fai feels his heart nearly skip a beat as he pulls a small box from his pocket and places it on the bench between them.

Fai feels like his heart is literally going to pound out of his chest, a million different scenarios running through his mind as he picks up the tiny box, slowly unties the ribbon, and slides the top off. He stills as soon as he sees it, glittering on top of soft white cotton. A beautifully intricate hair comb made of weaving silver and deep blue gemstones. Fai stares at it for a long while and when he finally looks up, Kurogane is still smiling at him.

He takes the box from Fai’s hands and lifts the comb from it, turning it over in his hands.

Kurogane leans closer and Fai focuses on trying to keep his breathing steady as Kurogane brushes a few locks of stray hair behind his ear.

“Your hair is getting long. I thought you could use something to tie it back.” He says, brushing his thumb over Fai’s cheek. Fai closes his eyes as Kurogane guides him to turn around and gathers all of his hair into a bun. He’s surprisingly gentle - more gentle than Fai could ever imagine Kurogane being, and when it’s all said and done Fai feels much cooler now that his hair is off of his neck.

Fai chuckles as he turns back around, trying to will himself to calm. Absently, he sticks his hand in his pocket and when his fingers hit the gem he’d picked up earlier, he closes his hand around it. It’s surprisingly cool for having been in his pocket for a while now, which should be odd, but he doesn’t exactly have time to think about that as Kurogane leans forward once more and touches their foreheads together. He’s so close that Fai can’t really think straight, his heart once more pounding away in his chest, panicking, panicking as Kurogane closes the distance between them and --

=-=

Fai wakes just as the sun begins to peek over the horizon, signalling the start of a new day, and he feels like he’s barely slept a wink. His heart is still pounding like crazy as he sits up in his bed and tries to parse through what had just happened. Had he blacked out? Had Kurogane carried him all the way back to their apartment and put him to bed? He thinks hard for a moment, trying to remember anything that happened after Kurogane kissed him - tried to kiss him? He doesn’t actually remember it happening, now that he thinks about it.

Fai sighs and brings his knees up to his chest, resting his chin on the soft flannel of his sleep pants. The same pants he’d been wearing two nights ago. He feels something heavy and cold in his left palm and as he slowly uncurls his fingers, he recognizes the gem he’d picked up last night. It takes him a moment - longer than he would like to admit - to realize what’s going on.

Quickly, he makes his way out of his room and down to the kitchen. He checks the fridge and sure enough, the leftovers from two days ago that he’d eaten for breakfast yesterday were still sitting on the top shelf. Fai closes his eyes for a moment and gently shuts the fridge door, his fist tightening around the gemstone still in his hand.

Magical objects that seek out users are almost always bad news. He repeats to himself as he slowly climbs the stairs back up to his room. As he readies himself for the day, he finds himself to be much less nervous this time. He already knows how the night is going to play out and that gives him an advantage, right?

He wears the short-sleeve cotton shirt this time, knowing how hot it’s going to be, and he manages to get a few chores done while waiting for Kurogane to come downstairs. Very purposefully, he’d left the gemstone tucked away in one of the drawers of his nightstand.

Kurogane comes downstairs at the same exact time he had yesterday and greets him in the same way. He holds out his arm for Fai to take as they make their way to the market square.  They get the same food but this time, Fai knows Kurogane is going to try and trick him into eating fish - so he purposefully orders something else for himself at that booth. It’s something that he doesn’t quite understand, but it sounds good when Kurogane describes it, even if he does give Fai an odd look after he’s ordered.

Fai pops exactly one of the tiny balls of dough into his mouth and immediately regrets all of his life choices up to that point. His eyes start watering, from the spices burning his tongue and all the way down his throat, and when he looks up Kurogane is clearly holding himself back from laughing at him. That tittering nervousness he’d managed to lock away is now back in full-force as he tries to run to the nearest water fountain, ends up tripping over something, and lands in a very conveniently placed mud puddle.

He’s wet, muddy, and his mouth is on fire, when he feels that odd pull he’d felt the night before, tugging at his hand and guiding it to his pocket. The gemstone sits within, even though Fai knows he’d locked it away in that drawer.

“You alright--” Kurogane only gets two words out before Fai closes his fingers around the gemstone.

=-=

He wakes once more at the first light of dawn.

The third time is much quicker - Fai manages to accidentally push Kurogane into a fountain and calls it quits right after that. The fourth time he somehow ends up free falling from the ferris wheel in the park and probably breaking his ankle - he doesn’t stick around to find out. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth are all absolute disasters as well, and by the ninth time he sends himself back, he’s completely and utterly done.

Before anyone in the apartment even wakes up, Fai is storming down to the park, heading straight for the booth he remembers having the sun wheel game. It’s still early in the day and most of the vendors are setting up shop, but oddly enough in the spot where he definitely remembers the sun wheel booth being, there is an empty space. When he asks around at the other vendors, no one seems to remember a booth ever being there, despite this being the second day of the festival. He closes his eyes and counts to ten, trying to will the frustration down, because of course no one has heard of that booth.  

Eventually he heads back to the apartment and shuts himself in his room, refusing to answer the door when both Kurogane and then Syaoran try to get him to come out. His plan at this point is to wait the day out to see what happens - getting out of a cursed time loop was more important than Kurogane being upset with him for missing a date.

Except, Kurogane is never one to sit idly by, particularly when he thinks Fai is doing something stupid, and he ends up getting Mokona to unlock his bedroom door because he’s worried.

Fai doesn’t say anything as Kurogane steps into the room, he just pulls the covers over his head and waits. Kurogane ends up sitting on the opposite side of his bed and Fai hears him let out a long sigh that has him instantly regretting his life decisions again.

“Mage,” Kurogane says, and when Fai doesn’t answer, “ Fai.”

The gem is set out in front of him, shimmering on it’s own underneath the blankets. Fai closes his eyes and brushes his fingers across the smooth stone.

“ If I’ve done something to make you -” is all Kurogane gets out before Fai closes his hand around the gem once more.  

=-=

The fifteenth time, he figures it might be a smart idea to try and recreate the first night, because at this point, he’s barely even making it past leaving the apartment without panicking and restarting the day. He’s steadily grown more nervous over the days and he knows it’s not helping him but he can’t seem to stop.

As he gets ready that morning, he puts on that same too-hot blouse and tucks the gem away in his pants pocket. They manage to make it to the town square without anything super disastrous happening. Fai had stepped in a puddle and now one of his shoes was wet and squeaky, but all things considered, that was a minor inconvenience. He lets Kurogane lead him around the food booths and chokes down the same fried fish he’d eaten on the first night. He spills his drink on Kurogane and feels his fingers itch, that pull resurfacing and trying to pull his hand toward his pocket, but he ignores it.

When they make it to the park, the booth with the sun wheel is still not there - the space where it had been is empty and oddly placed. They end up playing a ring toss game instead and somehow , somehow, he manages to angle the ring in just the right way so it bounces back at them, hits Kurogane directly in the eye, and leaves him with a giant black bruise. What are the odds? Fai is just about to reach into his pocket when Kurogane starts laughing. Fai gets him an ice pack from the festival’s medical tent instead, and Kurogane teases him relentlessly about it until they find themselves at the same bench where they’d talked that first night.

Kurogane sits first, gestures for Fai to join him , and Fai does, resigned to the fact that the night was almost over and he’d not only managed to spill hot chocolate all over Kurogane, but also gave him a black eye. Fai slumps in his seat, takes in a long breath, and briefly contemplates whether he should just try one more time.

“You look upset.” He hears Kurogane say, and when he turns to look at him, he’s frowning.

Great, Fai thinks, you’ve managed to upset him again. At this point, he decides definitively that he is going to start over one more time. Maybe he just won’t eat anything the next time, maybe Fai can convince Kurogane that they should just avoid the festival altogether and do something entirely different.

Fai sighs and looks up at the sky. The stars are barely visible with all the lights from the festival so close by.

“I mean, it’s been a pretty awful day,” Fai says, very pointedly not looking in Kurogane’s direction.

He nervously fiddles with the opening to his pocket, one moment away from reaching in and closing his fingers around the gem once more, when Kurogane laughs. It starts out as a gentle chuckle and cascades into a full-blown fit of laughter that has Fai wondering just what about this situation is funny.

He’s about to ask when Kurogane finally calms himself and gives him a sidelong glance, effectively stopping him in his tracks. Kurogane is still smiling, a soft and gentle smile as he takes Fai’s hand in his own and interlaces their fingers.

“I don’t think this even counts as one of the top ten worst days we’ve had together, Mage.” Kurogane says, and Fai feels himself flush as Kurogane runs his thumb over Fai’s cheek, “It’s been eventful, sure, but when is it not? I had fun. Didn’t you?”  

Fai simply stares at him for a long moment and realizes that in all of his worry and confusion, he’d completely forgotten exactly why he likes - no, loves Kurogane as much as he does.  He slowly pulls his free hand out of the pocket with the gemstone inside and brushes his fingertips along Kurogane’s jaw until they meet the back of his neck and tangle themselves in his hair. In this moment, Fai cannot even begin to remember everything he’d been so worried about or why he’d even been worried about it in the first place, as Kurogane squeezes their hands together and leans forward to rest his forehead gently against his own.

It’s Fai that closes that final distance between them, a soft and hesitant kiss that turns into something more, something deeper, in mere moments. Kurogane pulls away first and when Fai finally comes out of the haze of finally kissing this man that he’d been pining over for literal years at this point, he notices Kurogane staring at his pocket, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“Your pocket was just glowing.”

Fai reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small shard of shattered stone. He smiles and tosses it to the side, pulling Kurogane in for another kiss.

=-=