Title: Love Song
Author: The S
Genre: Angst/pre-Romance

Rating: T
Pairings: Hatori + Ayame, moving toward Hatori/Ayame
Author's Note: This ficlet actually came out of a meme exercise where I was supposed to take the first lineof a fic written by a friend and turn it into a drabble. I've bolded the sentence I took from her fic.

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Love Song

The memories were still loose, scattered like flakes of snow in a breeze. He'd let them drift around him just so all these years, unwilling to get rid of them completely, to part with them forever, and equally unwilling to reach out and take any one of them in his hands to look more closely.

Distance was important. Life wasn't about being frozen. It wasn't about snow. It was about distance.

It was distance that had kept him going for decades, now. From the memories. From the world. From loved ones. From himself.

Distance. Professional efficiency. He was a nearly-perfect perpetual motion machine. He could keep going indefinitely, just so long as the flakes of snow, of memory, of what could have been didn't gather inside his cast iron hull and promote rust. And he'd kept them from collecting, for the most part.

Distance had gotten him a long way. So far, in fact, he wasn't sure where the hell he was anymore. Maybe he was finally having that mental breakdown he'd been holding at bay all these years. Maybe it was just that he had no idea what to do now that the curse had been broken.

Akito was going to live. No more memories would ever need to be erased. His specific services were no longer needed, and, by and large, his core patients had gone their separate ways, striking out for parts unknown to enjoy their new-found freedom. It seemed the curse had been the only thing holding the family together.

Maybe it had been holding him together, too.

A strange sound echoed softly in the kitchen. The palm of his hand obscuring his eyes was wet. There was an uncomfortable cough-like sensation stuck somewhere in the middle of his throat. What was happening?

A clatter of china presaged the urgent patter of light footsteps across the tile floor to his side. He could see the look of shock and panic on his childhood friend's face in his mind's eye; he didn't have to look up. He didn't really want to.

Cool fingers slid across burning cheeks, tilting his face up. His hand slipped away from his eyes, and he was momentarily blinded by the golden orbs gazing down at him. He wished, and not for the first time, that Ayame would not look at him like that. It made him want to run, to shout at him to stop, to strike him, and to hide from his cousin all at once.

"I understand," the silver-haired man told him gently, his silky voice full of compassion.

Stormy blue eyes dropped away from those of his friend. No you don't.

He didn't even understand himself what was going on. How could Ayame know?

There was a frustrated sigh above him, as his intuitive cousin read his thoughts in his expression. "No, you're right. What would I know of regret? What would I know of stepping aside, letting my hopes pass me by, watching my own dreams slowly disintegrate to nothing so that someone I loved could be happy?"

The laughter that followed was manic, and so bitter, it made Hatori look up sharply, blinking the last of the tears away. Ayame wore a dazzling smile for his invisible audience and gestured melodramatically with his hands, as he was wont to do. "I've always gotten everything I've ever wanted. Selfish, self-satisfied, and satiated. That is I."

It felt for a moment as if the mania might take over, as if he might smash the tiny porcelain teacup in his hand, storm out in a suitably dramatic manner. But then something shifted indescribably, and Ayame merely turned back to the sink and busied himself with cleaning up once more.

"If you want me to leave, I will." His voice was so soft, Hatori almost missed it. But there was a burdensome darkness behind the words. A bleak crevasse that stretched down for leagues and leagues. Those words threatened a great deal more than what appeared on the surface.

When he didn't answer - he didn't know how - the moments turned to seconds and then minutes of unbearable silence. Ayame wiped graceful hands on a dish towel and began to collect his things, his face utterly blank.

Before he could turn to leave, Hatori caught him by the wrist. His voice sounded coarse and ragged to his own ears. "Don't go."

He wasn't sure himself what the words meant. But he couldn't let his friend leave like this.

The delicate frame stood frozen above him, tethered to him limply by nothing more than his weak grip. Hatori couldn't look up into his cousin's face. He felt like the world was crashing down on him.

The slender wrist pulled out of his grasp, and he let his arm fall like a stone to his side. As he waited for Ayame to leave, Hatori tried desperately to gather the numbness back around himself. It was impossible to get the distance he needed in the quagmire of his disintegrating world.

He looked over in surprise as a tea tray was set down in the center of the table. His silver-haired cousin sat down across from him, his face a picture of cool serenity as he glanced down, smoothing the wrinkles out of his clothes, settling himself gracefully in the uncomfortable chair. His flawless skin was like moonlight against the silver wind of his hair, framing luminous eyes like silken clouds.

For no reason at all, he remembered how she had envied and admired that perfect skin, that singular colouring. He'd told her the sun had no reason to be jealous of the moon. And her beauty had shone from within as bright as three suns.

Ayame wore his on the outside. There were many people who believed - and he had occasionally been one of them - that that was all there was to his striking cousin. But that wasn't true. In the end, even Yuki had come to see his brother's inner moonlight.

Perhaps that was why it was so easy to miss. Ayame's precious light was subtle, and reached only a select few, strained through a silver filter to make it more pleasing to the eye. It was a quiet beauty easily lost among the gaudy neon lights of Ayame's outward persona.

Maybe the sun had simply seen in the moon something Hatori had refused to fully acknowledge for years.

The moonlight filled Ayame's smile with gentle apology as he passed one of the delicate cups across the table to Hatori. He took it, not caring for once that their fingertips brushed. Because he wasn't worrying that he might have unintentionally given his adoring cousin the wrong idea, for once, he was paying attention when the gold eyes filled with an inexplicable sadness at the touch. The moonlight was obscured by clouds of heartache, Ayame's smile hardly masking the pain. It was like a punch to the gut for Hatori, seeing how much even the little things he did could hurt his friend.

Words seemed to twist their way out of him without his intending them to. "I'm sorry."

The smile was still sad, and the silver-haired man did not look up as he took a sip of his tea. "You have nothing to apologise to me for, 'Tori-san."

And, for the first time, it was crystal clear to him that he did. And just as clear that there was no way that he ever could.

If Hatori didn't avoid the truth, as he'd become so skilled at doing over the years, he'd always known why Ayame had stayed. And why he was still here even after the family had scattered, the curse broken. Even Shigure had departed on a whirlwind book tour. Traveling the world, surrounded by beautiful women that he could finally have any way that he wanted, as often as he wanted, there was a good chance neither of them would see him again for a very long time.

"I'm glad...you're still here." It seemed a pathetic offering of speech for what he felt. But at least it was something. For so long - Hatori was forced to admit to himself - he'd intentionally given Ayame nothing at all.

His cousin finally looked up at him and attempted another smile, the crows' feet at the corners of both eyes showing the quiet pain he'd suffered more than they did his age. "It's just the two of us, now."

Hatori watched the other man in silence for a few minutes, slowly realising something he never would have believed possible of his old friend, progenitor of dramatic chaos, constant center of attention, leader of the beautiful people, the quintessential performer: he was lonely. Hatori didn't understand how that could be possible, but there it was. The monster in the darkness, the lone wolf, the outsider had something in common with the king of popularity after all.

Perhaps it always has been, he thought to himself, in answer to his cousin's statement.

All he said aloud was, "So it would seem."

Gold eyes pessimistic with years of unintentional blows and cold denials searched his face for meaning behind the words, expecting unhappiness, disappointment, resignation.

Hatori gazed back at him, the barest hint of a smile lighting his eyes, turning up the corners of a mouth that had forgotten how.

It was bearable, being alone with someone. Perhaps, one day, he will have learned to live without the distance.

"Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again..."