JSHK Headcanons, Oneshots, & Musings

Midnight, the Stars, and You

Author's Note: This is a Hanako x reader story, but it's also a character study for him. This story is from his perspective.
————————————————————————

You understand it's dangerous to want things. Desires are what led you to this path. A path with no continuity and no way to return.

  You wanted once. Long ago, you had wanted the moon, the stars, and the vastness above. You wanted to hold on to your everything. To have it be ultimately and unquestionably yours. You wanted to hold onto your moon, so tightly that it breaks apart.

  However, this is what cost your future and created your dogma. There isn't any want left for you. Your atonement leaves no room for it.

You look to the sky, severed from earthly connections, and it's lonely.

  But it's easier this way.

  It's easier to never want. To never let them see what's under. If you let them see, let even a small glance, undeserved forgiveness and skewed assumptions of what they could never understand were to follow. The intrusion of matters that only makes sense between two, the mere thought of it makes you sick.

  Now it's been getting harder to not want things when you meet someone who passionately wants to understand.

  They want to understand you. Every part of you from your outward facades to your guarded heart. You recognize it as sweet, but deep down, you're deathly afraid of this.

  Where others before would spin their own narratives in your favor at the price of inconsideration, this one wants to know what happened between you and your other down to both of your natures.

  And it's terrifying. You don't believe anyone could come to understand, but you come to find that you wish they could. It's foolish to hope but you somehow do.

  You never encountered anything like them and it's painful. It hurts to gaze at their skin, so alive with warmth pumping in their veins. It's difficult to look at them, and even harder to feel the fleeting heat when they let go of your hand. It reminds you too much of the dissipating life that leaves a body with its arms outstretched for one final embrace.

You shouldn't want more. You left that all behind, and yet, you indulge yourself on wishing upon stars again. It's then you realize how much of a fool you are.

You feel the desire to have sunshine upon your skin. You want to be unbounded from the school, to just go anywhere, hold their hands, and not have them flinch at your ice-cold touch. Untold wishes wells up in you, like a flood ready to tear down the gates, but you still keep it in because you're afraid to want again.

  You shouldn't feel this way. You really shouldn't, but faced with someone who tries so hard to understand, from perspectives none had bothered to see, you feel yourself crumble. Cracks form and chips fall but you refuse to back down. Too much is on your tongue and too little is within to let it out.

  You can't wax poetics about their meaning, nor can you begin to explain how much the stars Castor and Pollux mean to you. It isn't fair how you can't form the words to tell them how Pollux shouldn't overshadow Castor. That the dimmer twin is just as beautiful.

It's unfair how you can't talk about the few precious things you have. It's unfair how much you want them; to mar their skin and stake your claim on them. It's unbearably unfair that your cowardice holds you back from vehemently confessing that they are yours.

So upon the rooftop, where the night sky's radiance outshines any light, you sit side by side. Your mind battles with itself. It fights tooth and claw with conflicting thoughts, a savage turmoil that eventually has you muster up a single line to your most prized.

  "The moon is beautiful, isn't it?"

And that is all you can say.

 
————————————————————————

Key:
Castor and Pollux- The twin stars of Gemini. In mythology, they're twin half-brothers of which Pollux is immortal and the other is not. In myth, Castor dies and Pollux pleaded with Zeus to bring him back. Zeus agreed to immortalize both brothers, if they spend half of their time on the Earth and the other half in heaven as stars.

"The moon is beautiful, isn't it?"- A Japanese phrase that means "I love you."