ryuki 100 fluff challenge.
theme o1.high.priestess.
So it's been exactly twenty three days, and to her, it is the longest time she has experienced. Silence goes by quickly, in memory, so many repeated minor variations in an endless ritual of cleansing blend and meld into each other. Clear and translucent. Easy to understand. She is merely herself onto herself, there is nothing she does not know or not understand.
But each day now is loud and chaotic. The clear water is marred.
Mount Olympus had it easy.
Athena turned a girl into an arachnid for higher weaving quality. Hera threw people off of mountains. Diana shot any man in her wood, end of story. Just one more corpse to hand over to a relative to burn in an endless fire-disposal free of charge.
But sadly, Ruki can't shoot him. Because there must be some law somewhere that says it's illegal to shoot your boyfriend of twenty three days.
Even if it is Ryou, and he is singing about waffles, and you are on a bus to a ski trip to who-knows-where and it's early and you're grumpy and the coffee tastes like sludge that the bus driver scraped up from the side of the road and everyone is so cheerful in the morning- and all you really want to do is go back to the clarity of solitude and sleeping in on Saturday winter mornings without having to throw up as you go up miles and miles and miles of stupid snowy roads-
Ruki was never really a morning person.
Look, mountains!
He is always excited, this hero, always full of the color and sunlight that stirs up the waters, throws the ripples and blurs the message, the solution, and makes a mess of it all- and yet always saves the day. He does not have to work for things as she does, did not have to sacrifice and dedicate his life to a calling of clarity just to try to solve one of his problems.
He merely shows up, smiles happily, and through foolish luck solves the problem, the following evils that occur afterwards, and ensures a happily ever after.
The high priestesses, those who have thrown themselves at the feet of Olympus, have always envied the lazy heroes gifted and chosen out of the blue. They're good-for-nothings, they grumble. Noisy, messy irresponsible things everyone loves. They have no use but as a vent for jealousy in failure.
So ignoring him is always the easiest solution to the problem. She twitches with exasperation, leans her head against the rattling dirty glass pane. Yes. Large clumps of dirt with snow on top.
Twenty three days, and nothing on the outside has changed. Nothing but a mere ripple on the surface. There is still hope to shooting him or turning him into a spider or throwing him off a mountain. She can still save her clarity.
He deflates slightly, and then perks up, leaning against her. Ruki--
Yes? She leans away, and wonders what he'll ask of her now. Perhaps to sing with him?
If I died when I was skiing up there, would you cry? he is oddly concerned, as if this is actually a possibility. The white slopes they are heading to are almost as flat as one of the waffles the song he sang adored.She tilts her head up from the glass pane. I'd bury you.
She goes back to trying to sleep without being noticed by him and carsickness. There is an edge to her voice, rough and cracked and full of all the pain that she's not supposed to have. Only heroes are allowed to suffer, since they suffer dramatically and handsomely to create plot-enhancing problems. No one is interested in the nausea from continuous jolting in a minor high priestess.
It's not quite the response he wants- but he didn't really expect her to say yes, she'd cry and die from heartbreak- but he laughs and falls silent.
Sorry, I'll leave you alone.
The bus is chattering, chattering, and Kazu and Kenta are singing the waffle song- yes, admittedly, even worse than Ryou's version, if this is possbile- and it is odd. The water in the pool has stopped trembling, and she is clear on clear again, bleached of color.
It is odd.
She supposes it's nice, after twenty three days of painted squares of color in more shades than the rainbow, floating inside the clear pool of water that she used to be. Relaxing. Tranquility returns.
But unnervingly odd.
Ryou is staring out the window, and he too is nearly clear, skin almost gray in the winter's white light. The hero is silenced.
Ryou, she starts. She searches for conversation that will not push her past the twenty three days. Something neutral, bland, and unromantic in any sense. Because high priestesses don't happen to be lovely, wonderful and mushy girlfriends. Diana didn't exactly run after Ares, did she? And if Zeus started singing like Ryo, Hera would throw him off the mountain.
Are you okay? She ends lamely, looking at his quiet face. And she is right, she decides, to ask. Because he is too quiet to be mentally stable.
If he ever is.
He looks at her, headache strained, carsick face, and tugs her ear towards him, one hero's sudden impulse. Lean on me.
No, I'm fine..
I'm not. He tugs her hair now, gently. Lean, please?
The high priestess grumbles and leans her head on his shoulder. And admittedly, it's softer than the window, and eases the jolting bumping of the bus that is rattling her brain and making the water that is her splash around with nerves and headache pains.
There. Happy?
The hero smiles back. Yup. Unless you want to go and come closer, Ruki-chan-
He relishes the suffix as if it is the most delicious taste of water from the high priestess's pool that he will steal.
No, Akiyama. She glares at him. Twenty three days still has its limits, no matter how soft of a pillow another shoulder's sweater makes. No.
Laughter from the hero, and she breathes out as color starts flooding into the pool again, bright orange rays of warmth, bumping and jolting her head can live with.
He begins to hum, the same chorus of the inane waffle song. She looks up at him, the water disturbed by the falling of a colored reflection onto the still waters, and she doesn't growl. He smiles, and tells her he'll wake her up when they get there.
Perhaps every once in a while, even the high priestess has a use for the good-for-nothing, chaotic hero.
Even if it is only as a pillow.
I need to write oneshots every once in a while, and not feel commited to do it fast. (And I'm trying out a different style in each one too!) So yes, I agree, this was probably horrible. But it was inspired by an Ouran Waffles AMV (do you like waffles?) and a lot of brownies and a video game. (yeah we like waffles). I have a list of one hundred themes from my friend, and I'm going to try and make myself do ALL of them!
Hopefully this will be a positive learning experience, a good stab at writing oneshots (ok, I'll hope for something that's not bad, to be realistic..) and of course, that this beginning wasn't too horrible. (this theme was hard..)
The 100 ryuki fluff challenge begins!