title: with you in my head

pairing: KyokoShoutaro

summary: build me up and tear me down


with you in my head


And he realises it afterwards, why he couldn't close his eyes.

"The perfect couple," he murmurs again, that one idea on replay in his brain – the shattering of the one constant he'd always had. The perfect couple.

That was what they were supposed to be, once. Back in Kyoto, when he was Shoutaro and Kyoko was sweet and dedicated and utterly unspoiled, that's what they were. They were a couple, even when they weren't – the handsome boy and the innocent girl. And he thought he knew all her secrets, because she knew all of his.

But when Kyoko cries, he forgets that they're on set, that the cameras are rolling – he forgets everything but one bright burning memory in a flash of a moment, as he falls. He remembers her, small and helpless and heartbroken. Alone. Shoutaro remembers the way he would freeze up on the inside, and watch her sob her heart out.

He lands on his feet, heavily, clumsily, the air knocked out of him by this one recollection that makes him suddenly seven years old again, speechless, useless –

He's forgotten how this felt; that wrenching feeling in his chest accompanying every one of her tears.

Because even without her telling him, he'd known how it was with her mother. He'd known and he'd had no idea what to say. Even now, he has a feeling he still wouldn't be able to comfort her.

Shoutaro has forgotten how it feels to be inadequate.


"You make it sound as if you only took her along to be a servant."

"Not 'as if'. That's what she was from the start."


And it's a lie he doesn't want to acknowledge, because it didn't start out that way did it? Shoutaro chose her. Everything from Kyoto, he discarded carelessly, effortlessly (selfishly), but not her.

Kyoko is the piece of home he chose to take with him – cared enough to keep, but not to treasure.


When she smiles at him, there's a cold victory curling on her lips but her eyes hunger for more.

"This is just the beginning," she hisses at him in those last few seconds before the director calls it a day and the studio clears, dismantles itself and wipes the canvas clean.

"Is that a promise?" he drawls, lazy, mocking and if no one can see the relief inside that he is still the centre of her universe (even if she hates him, he thinks, even if she wants to set him on fire and watch him burn) so much the better. But he'd still rather everyone see that, the barest truth, than the regret now beginning to smoulder in his bones.

There's a monster growing in Kyoko's little girl skin and Shoutaro knows that he is the one who put it there.


notes: so despite myself, I still ship this.

notes2: bitches be bold and review.