A/N: This one was inspired by Talaco's "Love and Pancakes," which was in turn apparently inspired by Tin, who cracks me up as well. Ah, writing. The gift that keeps on giving. ^_^

Still . . . Dear God, I can't believe that Talaco writes like that when she's only 13. _;; *looks mournfully at her own fics from age thirteen, then takes a lighter to them* Gah. She could use a beta, true, but at that age I could've used an entire department's worth of editors, so I don't have room to talk. It's almost as bad as SSJ Sky. Of course, I'm more or less terminally addicted to Sky's stuff anyway, but we're getting off-topic here.

Warnings and such-not: Shounen ai and copyright infringement. La.









"Black Butterfly"









Love isn't perfect. Yamato knows this.

He's cooking right now- a lunch for Taichi, who's watching him from the kitchen table and smiling lazily. Daisuke is at the other end of the table, sleeping and for once not snoring. Yamato knows him well enough to understand that this means that he is very upset. In fact, if they did not know him so well, neither he nor Taichi would have known that anything was wrong at all. Daisuke is better at hiding things than most people realize. They still don't know exactly what is amiss.

But back to love.

It's usually flawed in some way or another- if people always had perfect relationships, they could never appreciate them. Nor can anyone exist in such perfect bliss forever. It dulls the mind and takes away from the individual's own beauty.

Yamato knows all of this as well as he knows what Daisuke's strangely serene slumber means, and it does not bother him. Taichi knows it too, but doesn't really care enough to bother forming a real opinion. Daisuke also knows it, though not really in words so much as instinct.

The problem is that there is a "Someone" who does not. A Someone, in a Somewhere, who currently sits under a light summer rain and wonders why Daisuke thinks that they are worthy of him when they are so flawed.

Daisuke does not fall easily. This has been seen before. And when he does so, he does not get up again, and will do everything in his power to be with the one he has fallen for. His bloody butterfly. Once, his butterfly was a light: a gleaming star in the sky of an ordinary life. Now, appropriately, it is the "darkness"- the wicked black butterfly with the most fragile wings of all.

There is an old story about butterflies- they say, if a butterfly flaps its wings, the chain reaction from the air it disturbs will create a hurricane on the other side of the world. The tiniest, most innocent thing can create a domino effect that can devastate entire cities.

Flap.

Ken Ichijouji casts off the masks he once wore.

Flap.

He meets Daisuke's eyes.

Flap.

He smiles, grateful.

And Daisuke falls like an anchor through thin ice and drowns willingly, taking in water like it was air.

This is what happened the first time. This is what happens every time- what will always happen. Because Daisuke is young and in love and invincible, and the person that he loves is beautiful and wise, but naïve in matters of the heart.

So Daisuke sleeps in the kings' kitchen, the brave knight resting before he goes to battle. The only problem is, he does not go out to claim the princess, who has found another knight, but to claim the emperor. Because love isn't perfect. It just is. It exists, and it hurts, and it is. The agony that comes from it is part of its glory.

Ken Ichijouji does not understand this. He thinks that this sort of love is supposed to make the bad things go away. He thinks if someone says, "I love you" to him, he should not be scared.

But it doesn't. And he is.

And Daisuke is sleeping silently in the kings' kitchen, getting ready to get up, go out, and change his mind. He will succeed, of course, because he is Daisuke.

And Daisuke is the only one who knows what kind of perfect Ken is.









* ende *









. : please to review, no da? : .