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nikkari-aoe · 7 years ago

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Slivers of a Whole

[50 Shun/Dennis 1-3 sentence au microfics]

It hits him hard, and not without a fair amount of absurdity- that despite everything, he still cares.

Dennis puts on an irritatingly genuine showstopper’s smile as he walks down the red carpet, waving amicably to his fans beyond the paparazzi while Shun scowls, eyes sharp behind his shades, just daring some crazed fan to leap the rope and tackle Dennis to the ground. Forget his bodyguard job- that would make his insufferable day amusing, at the very least.

Ruri watches them and knows, understands in a way that she doesn’t but somehow does- there is a history hidden there that she is not privy to, a story that told itself while she was a princess trapped in her tower. They dance around each other and she wants to ask what happened- but she can take enough of a guess. It’s not that hard a story to predict.

It hits him hard, and not without a fair amount of absurdity- that despite everything, he still cares.

“You know he’s going to betray us,” Yuuto reminds him none-too-gently, and Shun knows- but he thinks of the boy who trawls through the murky depths of Mementos with them, who fights bold and elegant beneath the frenetic casino lights, who sits quiet at the end of the cafe bar nursing a cup of expensive coffee- and he can’t help but wish.

“My sister is waiting,” Shun says, pulling away, voice rising from its hushed whisper, and Dennis glances fast at the door to their room, waiting for Leader to throw it open and chide them- but nothing comes, and Shun continues, knowing Dennis won’t refuse- “She’s waiting at the bottom of the Abyss. So are you coming with me, or not?”

When the psychic arrives, Dennis can sense their power, taste the steel and ozone at its edges- and finally, he thinks, an air of arrogance about him, a challenge. What he doesn’t expect is to be drawn into their summoning circle and feel the ghostly spell he’d been preparing fall to pieces at the sight of a familiar face from a mortal lifetime centuries ago staring back at him.

Shun likes to think that he’d believe a lot of things, given the chance- but that this... this featherless kid that just fell of his roof is a god? That’s not one of them.

Dennis grins, holds out a hand; Shun takes it and climbs into the cockpit behind him- as if it was ever a question that they’d end up here.

Trust your partner- it’s the rule of the Underground, the key to keeping your wits and keeping from getting erased. And trusting Yuzu, that girl who reminds him so of Ruri, that was easy enough- but Dennis, who can’t seem to give him a straight answer but for the grin plastered fake across his face... Dennis is a different story.

And this Dennis- this Dennis who’s withdrawn into the dark of his room, without a single kind word or outrageous plan to keep their group’s carefree everyday missions alive- Shun pounds his fist against his door, and thinks that he doesn’t know this Dennis at all.

“I’m glad,” he says at the end of it all, the very second before they lose it all to the black of the crawling chaos, “that I met you.”

Shun hears his voice for the first time on the radio, performing a story whose name he doesn’t know and whose conclusion he’s hardly interested in- but he listens all the way to the end, eyes closed and caught up in the sheer emotion of the storyteller’s performance until long after the story’s ended and the channel’s faded into the soft static of the next program.

My grandfather died for yours. It’s an odd sentence to be able to say- but as Shun looks the newcomer over, all false bravado and garish pride, he can’t resist the urge to add, if only in his mind- but I’m not dying for you any time soon.

Dennis has no intention of staying long in the streets of hell. He only came for a brief errand, really, he thinks, the pearls of the underworld wrapped around his wrists- so it’s rather unfortunate that the demon staring him down with eyes black as his wings seems to have no intention of letting him leave.

“Where are we going?” Dennis asks, and beside him, Shun just shrugs and starts the engine. Anywhere, then, he surmises. He can work with that.

Feelings are beautiful, fractured things, cracking along strange edges and fitted together a mosaic across hearts fickle and strange. Dennis watches one in particular, sees the anger and protective love that run across it flames of blue and red, and wonders what it would be like to fall.

When they were kids, they both dreamed of it- the elusive dream world beyond the cage’s gates. As children they planned and plotted and drew their dreams across diagrams spread across the dirty warehouse floor until the day that two became one and the children no longer so young. Watch me, Shun dares, and soars beyond the bars of that cage masquerading as a city, leaving Dennis staring in his wake.

He weaves the trap so elegantly- all wine glasses and card games and poison laced around the edges of it all. He doesn’t expect for Shun to fall into it too- but by the time he realizes it, the guilty party guests have already drunk their fill.

“Kiss me?” Dennis asks, and Shun hates to consider himself indulgent, but…

“Shun and Dennis?” the newcomers ask her, some mixture of surprised and affronted, “They hardly even get along.” Ruri just shakes her head at all of them, and tells them that they’ll see once the tournament begins.

Is he being conned? He’s pretty sure he’s being conned right now, but this conman is so earnestly charming Shun might have to suspend his disbelief in psychic powers- but just the length of an hour’s consultation.

“I can’t believe you two,” Ruri scolds while Yuuto looks on, chiding but amused, “Sneaking around the Overseers like like that is far too dangerous for a little bit of petty thievery like- oh.”

You haven’t seen Shun in years, he thinks in an echo of Yuuya’s voice, what could possibly go wrong? A lot of things, he thinks back aggressively, a whole lot of things.

Shun blinks down at the register, then back at the human approximation of the aftermath of a natural disaster standing on the other side of the counter. Did this kid seriously just order six shots of espresso in his latte? Sure, it’s finals week, but Shun would rather not be responsible for someone's death this particular morning.

Dennis responds to Shun’s slow, “Are you okay?” with a dramatic slump onto his pillows and an overly-enunciated, “I’m very clearly dying here, Kurosaki, so I hope you brought me consolation soup.”

The exact same book. Dennis absently turns a page without reading a word and sneaks another glance at the boy across the cafe- for the third time in as many weeks, they’re reading the same book.

Dennis resists the urge to snap his DS in half. He doesn’t know who ‘blackfalcon’ is or how they can effortlessly blow through all of Dennis’ increasingly more elaborate team compositions- but mark his words, next time he will be victorious.

Shun doesn’t pay too much attention to what Dennis had insisted on drawing on his cast- so when he looks down to see a surprisingly detailed cartoon eagle staring up at him next to Ruri’s tiny harpies, the smile that tugs at his lips is soft and genuine.

All he has left is a card. He turns it over between his fingers, watches Shun’s proud expression catch the light. Dennis frowns, and wonders if there’s supposed to be any satisfaction in this at all.

Dennis sighs; his fans can pick him out of a blurry crowd shot with his hair dyed, shades on, and hoodie pulled over far to shadow his face- and yet they’re collectively useless in trying to find the boy he’d danced with at the masquerade whose mask had barely covered his face.

Shun has never summoned a more useless weapon in his life. It’s not that the new sword is incompetent- no, his skills in battle earn him the position of first team leader within a month- rather, it’s that this new wakizashi is a show-off, a snark, and a shameless flirt. He turns the other way down the citadel halls- his citadel halls- when he sees Dennis approach, thinking all the while- absolutely useless.

“It’s beautiful,” Ruri says, and Dennis can only agree, no matter how much of a narcissist that makes him. He loves it, and wonders if the living painting given life through the last shards of his magic feels the same.

Dennis doesn’t deserve to be King, not after everything that he stole. Shun revs his D-wheel’s engine, watching the timer count down to zero before shooting into the tunnel, Security hot on his heels. He doesn’t let that stop him- he’s going to take everything back, and snatch the crown from atop that traitor’s head.

Dennis is the seventh. Shun is sure of it- sure that of all the gathered Braves, Dennis is the fake, the one colluding with the demons. Now, all he needs is incentive for the unmasking.

“I missed you,” Dennis breathes into his shoulder, his bags slumped forgotten on the floor at their feet. Shun hums his agreement into the top of Dennis’ head. For these feelings of reunion he doesn’t have the words.

“I’ll stay,” he says, hoping it won’t turn into a lie.

Collectively they insist on leaving the ferris wheel for last; they wait the extra fifteen minutes for one of the entirely clear-sided gondolas. He sits with Shun at his side, Yuuto and Ruri across, and they clamor and clamber over each other for the best shots of the city lights glinting below. Dennis sinks against Shun and thinks, a little dangerously, that he could get used to this.

Never in his life has Shun tasted chocolate quite this good. When Ruri and Sayaka had come home chattering one afternoon about the new bakery on the corner, he had scoffed at their high praises, but now he’s become the most regular of the regulars. The patissier who sneaks him extra pastries with a smile and a wink, Shun insists, isn’t a factor.

The patchwork chimera of a magical beast that slinks into his kitchen one day isn’t one that Shun would have ever deemed likely to survive its creation, let alone hang on to a human-like semblance of consciousness. And yet it clutches at its wounded shoulder with beastly claws and, smiling, calmly asks if Shun could spare a bowl of rice.

To the bottom of the ocean the calling card beckons him, to the place where starlight drowns and the magician who sealed his sister away sits waiting in the hazy luminescence of submerged cavern walls. Shun shifts his wings, dreading the spray of the salt against his feathers, then plunges in behind the messenger. Shun squints his eyes against the sting of the water and forces himself against instinct to swim down- down towards the depths, down towards his revenge.

There has to be meaning to it. The reason their world spins and spins the same twenty-four hours over again like a track stuck on loop, an endless melody of blood and fear and saving and sacrifice in turn. He wants to ask, do you remember? every morning that they meet- but instead, today again he waves a quiet hello with a smile that doesn’t manage to reach his eyes, anymore.

Do you trust me, Dennis asks, and Shun wants to say that he doesn’t- but there’s no choice, no time. “Yes,” he hisses out, and Dennis lets go.

Shun races up the stairs as the sirens blare through the mansion, not sparing the breath to curse, not when the the billow of that cloak, that smirk beneath golden mask is right there, disappearing into the first door on the third-floor landing. Got you, Shun thinks victoriously, and throws the doors open wide only to see the phantom thief perched atop the balcony railing, silhouetted by the moon, ruby necklace in hand. Shun doesn’t have to be able to see him to see the mocking smile on his face as he tips his hat, then falls into the open air- another perfect crime.

The angel that falls into the garden is wounded and faint, clinging to consciousness through only the hatred that burns in his eyes. Don’t touch me, he snarls, don’t look, human. So Dennis does neither- simply sits with his back to the angel, biding out the other’s pride.

“Okay,” Dennis says, turning on him with a glint in his eye that Shun knows means nothing but trouble, “So if Ruri can’t be my fake date to the theatre gala, what about you?”

Shun seethes down at the color guard as they start their extra practice- or rather, down at Dennis as he spins beneath a flag toss. Ruri’s assured him a thousand times over that Dennis hadn’t meant to break her trumpet, and at one point Shun could believe it- but both of their trumpets? Shun wishes for a gust of wind to drop the pole straight down on Dennis’ head; unfortunately, he’s not quite so lucky and Dennis catches it with a flourish, just to spite him.

“This movie is awful,” Dennis says and shuffles on the couch to take an unseemly large handful of popcorn. Shun resists the urge to point out Dennis is the one who picked it in the first place.

When he comes home, there’s a letter waiting for him amongst the mail, envelope plain and indistinct. The paper inside is simple, left unsigned; all it says is simply, I’m sorry. He wonders if it doesn’t come too late.

Dennis clips mint green cat ears into Shun’s hair; Shun retaliates by shoving a bear-eared headband into his curls. Dennis just drags Shun to the register and attempts to pay while the ears are still on their heads. He grins- their date turned attempt at getting kicked out of Disney Sea is starting out swimmingly.

Shun looks the new pilot over a few times from afar- he’s seen the kid’s sim scores with the new model, and they’re good, but not impressive, and certainly nothing compared to his own. After a while the newcomer saunters over, winks as he passes. “Don’t worry,” he says, his first words a challenge, “I’ll be taking control of the new frame from you before long.”

#mockingbirdshipping #arc v #dennis macfield #kurosaki shun #kotone writes fic #this is also on ao3 but tumblr's being dumb about links and this isn't too serious so here #if there's an au you like feel free to either poke me for more (b/c i'm always writing mockingbird don't worry www)#or feel free to use these as prompts if one catches your eye? bonus points if you catch the references #anyway microfics are great to utterly annihilate writer's block

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