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When Neige LeBlanche first sets foot into the grim, dark halls of Night Raven College, he expects all eyes to be on him. It's only natural, after all: his music career has really taken off these past couple years, and between that and acting he really can't go anywhere without turning heads now. Of course, the students there are used to living in close contact with a celebrity - they almost entirely stopped gawking at Vil when they strut down the stairs to the main hall - but Neige is a different story. He's new. He's exciting. He wins every heart by just standing there, like a brand new toy under the tree on Christmas morning.
He doesn't mind the attention - he revels in it, in fact. There was a time when hundreds of prying eyes would intimidate him, make him feel small and bare and disgusting as they picked him apart and turned him inside out, but he has long outgrown it. Now, when he stands in the limelight, it's like standing in the sun, now he bears the weight of those eyes with a smile and a wave and he almost feels alone, pointless in his most mundane moments when he has no one to see him.
But there's been one pair of eyes he can't help but be acutely aware of, for all his experience and thick skin. One he finds himself unable to enjoy or elude, one that bores into him with an intensity he has never felt before.
At first he had found him silly in an endearing kind of way, this outlandish blond boy running back and forth in an effort to make himself useful in the preparations for the Song and Dance Championship, with a laugh that could be heard from miles away. He even though he knew him from somewhere - some meet&greet maybe, since Vil had introduced him as a "big fan of their work", with the tiniest twitch in their upper lip Neige had absentmindedly taken notice of. He had paid him no mind, though, between rehearsals and enthusiastic tours of the school; that is, until he started noticing he was practically everywhere.
Neige was chatting with Dominic one morning after rehearsal - something about a missing costume accessory was driving him crazy - and from one of the hallway’s tall windows he had casually spotted his eccentric new acquaintance in the courtyard. He looked very preoccupied with moving heavy decorations around under Vil’s watchful gaze, and Neige had smiled at the scene, regaling it with no more than a second of his attention. Later that day, Rook had waved at him from the other side of the cafeteria, waltzing through a crowd of students with a tray in one hand and a shiny bow in the other - the infamous missing accessory. He’d proclaimed himself très, très désolé for taking so long to find it, and offered no further explanation, simply leaving it in Neige’s waiting hands. He had thanked him, and when he’d returned the bow to his anxious friend he had been mildly perplexed to hear that no, of course Dominic hadn’t bothered anyone else with the matter in such busy circumstances. He had no idea how the Pomefiore boy came to know about the bow.
These occurrences alone, however frequent and of increasingly intimate nature, did not immediately alarm Neige. In fact, it wasn’t until he’d overheard two Pomefiore freshmen talk about their “terrifying” vice-housewarden breaking into their locked rooms during night watch - surely an exaggeration - that he truly started paying attention to the way Rook moved when no one was looking at him. How he would appear out of nowhere without anyone hearing him coming, seemingly manifesting out of thin air mere inches away from an unsuspecting student. How he could hear things nobody else heard, see what nobody else saw - one evening he’d noted the faint smell of tangerine zest on Neige’s hands from across a twenty seats table, and the idol had spent a good portion of the night scrubbing the skin of his palms until it nearly bled. All these skills - he learned the morning after at the breakfast table with Vil and the sweetest-looking boy he'd ever seen, periwinkle locks still askew - made Rook an excellent hunter, other than a very scrupulous vice-housewarden. Neige's heart wept for the innocent creatures that inhabited the woods surrounding the Pomefiore dorm, but at least that explained why he’d seen him wander outside his window a couple nights before, quiet as death with his knife at hand. He’d almost felt silly for barricading himself in his room that night, eyes glued to the door as his bedside cabinet stood propped against it. Lack of sleep is simply dreadful for the skin.
“And an excellently sneaky photographer too!” Epel had noted in his thick accent, mouth still half full. He didn’t seem to notice Vil’s side-eye. “By now he’s gotta have shot Vil more times than all them snooty Hollywood shutterbugs together.”
“He took your pictures?” Neige had trilled between sips of his milk tea, looking at Vil with benevolent complicity. “And you showed me none? Should I be concerned? You never pass up an opportunity to show off your face!” he had giggled. Vil’s smile was tight.
“It’s the ones he doesn’t show you should be worried about” Epel had snorted under his breath, a sour little smirk curving his doll-like lips at Neige’s quizzical look. “This guy told me he saw the wall behind his bed once as he was getting out of his room, and-” he’d leaned secretively over the table before cutting himself off with an unexpectedly crude string of curses as Vil’s nails had dug into the back of his hand.
“Stop scaring our host” they’d hissed, staring daggers in poor Epel’s face before returning their attention to Neige, their flawless set of features rearranging itself in a teasing smile. “We don’t want him to chicken out before the big show”.
Neige had laughed it off in the moment, but he hadn’t been able to shake off the sinister undertone of the freshman’s words for the rest of the day. As used as he was to being photographed, there was something morbid, something predatory about Rook with a camera - in his hands, it simply became another weapon. So he’d looked over his shoulder at every turn, jumped at every rustle, taken all the routes he’d never taken before in order to avoid running into the hunter all day. It had worked, but it left him wrecked by the end of the evening, utterly hunted by clicks of shutters that never rest and Epel’s enigmatic words about a wall in Rook’s room that grew larger and larger around Neige’s mind until it enclosed it entirely.
So now here he is, in front of Pomefiore’s vice-housewarden’s door in the middle of the night, when he knows he’s out and about and everyone else is fast asleep. He looks down the hallway one last time, then aims the tip of his Magic Pen straight for the keyhole, hurriedly whispering a spell, and after a moment the lock gives with no damage, letting the door creak open before him as he secures the pen back to the waist of his pajama pants. His eyes take a while to get used to the darkness once he tiptoes inside, half-closing the door behind him while he feels around for the light switch. When he finds it, the first thing that captures his attention is the majestic outline of a buck’s antlers, sitting posted on the wall opposite to the door above a terrifying amount of hunting weaponry: bows of varying size sit neatly with their respective arrows, and to the left, neatly displayed in a large velvet-lined cabinet, dozens and dozens of knives, blade curved like a smile or straight like a grimace, sleek like a caress or jagged like a bite, shining a multitude of tiny lights down on him. The knowledge of Rook’s occupation is of no comfort to Neige in the face of such a sight: for every knife he lays his eyes on, his brain returns a vivid image of how it could be used to cut into his throat, his stomach, his milky thighs. He can still see them clearly as he turns to face the canopy bed, Epel’s words echoing in his mind. On a first glance, the wall behind the mattress looks entirely innocuous: there are a couple pictures, taken across the three years Rook has been attending Night Raven - a group of scraggly-looking freshmen, a handsome boy with green hair, all of Vil’s portraits are framed - but nothing incriminating. Hesitantly, Neige hops on the neatly made bed, standing up to take a closer look: the wallpaper, although well kept, looks fairly old, and has started peeling in some places, like the upper left corner of the wall. He idly runs a hand over it to smooth it down, and as it folds back into a dog-ear, a small white corner peeks out from under it. Brows knit, heart punching at his sternum from the inside, Neige holds his breath as he grabs the wallpaper corner firmly and pulls: it comes off surprisingly easily, revealing in slow motion a mosaic of polaroids affixed to the naked wall beneath.
His feverish eyes dart from picture to picture as they are unveiled. A younger Vil with longer hair, making kissy faces at their full-length mirror in a nightgown, taken through a window. A beastman he doesn’t recognize, brushing his hair in the courtyard - the angle is entirely too low. Vil sobbing privately in the corner of a backstage, mascara running down their face. Epel with his PE uniform shirt riding up slightly, the green blur of leaves too close to the lens. Vil’s naked back. In this sea of faces, it takes him a moment to identify his own eyes looking back at him from the polaroid film: he’s looking a little above the camera, face looking entirely too young without make-up, and seemingly intent on a phone conversation. This was the first day he came to Night Raven. He instinctively takes a wobbly step back, both his hands clutched over his chest, and the eyes staring back at him increase ten, twenty, a hundredfold: him at school, in the morning with a pillow mark on his cheek, heading out of a casting call or kicking his legs on stage at his last concert, him laughing uncouthly or bawling his eyes out, kissing a stranger up against a wall at a festival months ago. His life emptied on an autopsy table and dissected frame by frame, smiling at him, screaming at him, reaching out for him from a thousand different directions.
He takes another step back, then another, then the bed is no more, and he falls hard on the floor, stomach churning with every new movement.
He needs to leave.
---
He pulls the heavy front door open, and immediately a powerful gust of wind engulfs him, sending the blanket he’s draped over his shoulders fluttering behind him. The frosty air clings like a myriad of tiny claws to his warm face, sneaks up under his clothes like strong hands trying to drag him back inside, feeling, groping, scratching at his ribs under his India paper skin. But Neige thrashes and fights against them, and he pushes through, and when his bare feet touch the soft, fresh snow, he doesn’t feel its cold bite, only the light, dull cracking that reminds him of the weight of his body, solid and real and still unmistakably his.
In front of him, a frozen wasteland stretches out as far as his tired eyes can see. Blue-white snow returns a fraction of the moon’s pale light, revealing the jagged shapes of dark trees against the black sky as it lies draped mournfully over their branches. And farther than that, barely discernible on the dark horizon, the bars that form the spiked gate protecting the college; and farther yet, beyond the bars, freedom. Safety.
He swallows, his throat painfully tight, and pulls the blanket tighter to his body. For seconds, or hours, he stands still in the snow, unblinking, listening to the symphony of the night - the owl calling to its children, the wind screaming in the trees. Then, suddenly, it ceases: the field goes silent, suspended like the air in his lungs, and Neige starts running faster than he ever did, faster than he knew he was capable of, far from the building and into the sparse trees. His heart rages against the inside of his chest, all the blood rushing to his ears, but he can't bring himself to mind, because he's fast, so fast that trees and bushes dart past him like arrows and his feet barely touch the ground. So fast that he thinks he could fly over the gate if he spread his arms right now. So fast that when his naked foot finds an old root sticking out of the ground, and he trips, his body rolls and bounces for several meters in the snow before coming to a stop.
He almost doesn't make a sound when he hits the ground - a snowflake meeting the soft white earth. He doesn’t know how long he lies there for, cradled in the melted outline of his own body. All he knows is when he finally forces himself to sit up and looks down at the snow under him, crimson red is blooming everywhere on the white canvas, surrounding him like a bed of roses. Do roses still grow in the middle of winter? For him, maybe. He reaches out to touch them, the tiny red-soaked crystals popping under his fingertips where he expected the prick of a thorn, and when his hand pulls away it leaves a small, tapered print, four stubby fingers and small sharp nails to match. He vaguely remembers seeing a similar shape in the ground as a child, when the wild rabbits used to yean in the field behind the orphanage. He looks at his hand, makes a fist. Looks back at the snow under his broken body. It sure would be nice to have a small hole to hide in now - he thinks as he slowly starts getting back up, and suddenly all the weight of his body is upon him again, and it hurts, it tears. When he manages to prop his head up again, he scans the space around himself, ears pricked for any noise as he catches sight of the gate again and starts limping towards it, dragging his injured leg behind him.
It's nothing like his elated run for freedom from before: now he can only hobble towards his hope, his path a wobbly line in the fresh snow, yelping like a wounded fawn whenever his weight rests on his sprained ankle. Now he feels the cold, sharp and merciless without the humble cover of his blanket - lost and forgotten in the snow where he fell - occasionally interrupted by a dull warmth that offers no comfort.
Now the ringing in his ears from the hit is deafening, so much so that when the wind picks up it sounds to him like nothing more than a whisper, despite the physical force of it almost making him topple again. Because of this, he’s all the more startled when he can hear the sound of his name carried in that muffled howling, barely discernable from the fury of the wind at first, then louder, raspier, hungrier. It freezes him in place for a moment, naked heels digging in the soft snow, eyes impossibly wide, unblinking, unwilling to turn towards the danger; then, slowly, he forces his head to the side, and in the distance, coal black against the solitary blanket of snow, a familiar silhouette invades the corner of his eye, static at first, then bigger and bigger, closer and closer, howling his name from across the field.
Neige starts running again before he even turns back towards his destination. His heart feels like it’s about to leap out of his throat with the next step, and in a couple more he’s doubled over, on his knees in the snow. One, ten steps more, or rather hops, taken on his one good foot before he even stands fully back up, hands sinking in the searing cold ground now and again for support, and run, run go the trees high above his head, each branch a pin in the big music box of his desperation, and Neige, Neige, Neige goes the bow over the hunter’s shoulders as he follows behind him, quiver heavy on his back, breath heavy behind his ribs, inside an especially dense patch of desolate vegetation.
The sickly light of the moon barely reaches him there, amidst the contorted dead bodies of dozens of trees, and as he burrows into the thick of that withered cluster it becomes a feat of its own to avoid bumping into a once-mighty oak or the tragic vestiges of a willow. He only allows himself to stop running for a moment because his body wouldn’t take him one step further otherwise, leaning with his back against the rough bark of a sleeping giant and shooting blown-pupilled looks in every direction as he tries to remember how to breathe. He straightens himself against the trunk as best as he can - a half-hearted mockery of human posture - to allow his lungs to properly fill with air, only to have that air immediately knocked out of him as a sharp pain tears through his body at the position shift, making his left leg jolt uncontrolled where it joins at his hip. When he lifts the hem of his silk pajama shirt, briefly exposing his abdomen to the merciless winter wind, he’s greeted with the glistening ruby red of the stone that adorns his Magic Pen, the same colour soaking through his white pants and staining his skin where the stylographic tip of the pen has entered the tender skin of his lower belly. He stares at it as if neither the pen nor the body belong to him for a time, then his trembling fingers wrap around it, soft and languid like they’re handling an extention of his body, and he tentatively pulls on it: the drag of the sinuous point through skin and fat is short, but still enough to make Neige whimper as the fresh wound is exposed to the chilling outside air. He can feel a rivulet of warmth gush out and down his leg, soon turning cold. He holds the precious little object up to his face to examine the sharp tip, glistening under the weak moonlight with the deep shade of the inside of his body, and a thought starts to form in his frenzied mind, that if he really is prey, at least he’s been blessed with the chance to defend himself. Like a glorious pair of antlers. He doesn’t have the chance to dwell on it, though, because the sound of fresh snow crackling under the sole of a heavy boot just a few meters from him
forcibly drags him back to reality. The hunter emerges from the thick wall of sleeping trees, breathing heavy clouds in the cold night air: he’s close enough that he can see his eyes, like two viridescent cuts of a knife, slashing the veil of the night. Pen still tight in his fist, there’s a moment when Neige turns to face him, stance wide, as if he’s going to fight him off with a spell. He’s done it dozens of times, after all. But when his voice catches up to him, a cacophony of desperate barks amongst which he can only make out Neige, Neige, the clouds close in on him again, and no words come to him, threat or plea, and all he knows how to do is run. He runs through the indefinite maze of vegetation, no longer careful to avoid impact with it, chasing after the weak gaps of light that the moon dangles in front of him. He screams when the sharp claws of a bony hand pierce through the silk of his clothes right above his elbow, scratching viciously at his skin - this is it, he’s done for - but then he twists and pulls a little bit harder and the hand snaps, a twig falling into the thick carpet of snow. It's not long before more hands join in, grabbing at him more viciously with every step he takes, tearing through silk and skin as they try to hold him back and the recoil from his body escaping them makes them clap together in a mock applause. Sometimes he thinks he sees faces in the trees, looking at him with contempt or desire - faces of old casting directors with wandering hands - and sometimes he turns and all he sees is him, seemingly unbothered by the prying hands that part obediently under his outstretched arm as he gains ground on him.
He doesn’t know how long he’s run for when he spots a small window of white in the trees to his left, and his feet make a sharp turn for it before his brain can even register it; all he knows is when he pushes through the last of the branches and leaps out in the open field again, the light of the moon filtering through his tears-frozen eyelashes burns like a firebrand. His naked feet sink up to the ankle in the snow here, heavy and unsure and no match for the hunter’s swift steps behind him, but he keeps pushing against the resistance, no longer even turning to check on his pursuer, eyes fixed on the gate across the snowy field. He can almost smell it, the acrid note of rusting iron - or maybe it’s just the blood - when a sudden weight on his shoulder sinks his body further down in the ground, and his heart with it, finally bringing the chase to a halt.
He hears Rook’s voice like a far echo through the thunder of his heart in his ears - Neige, Neige - urgent and wavering and far more desperate than it has sounded up until now, and he feels his hot breath condensing against the back of his neck, and all the heat that’s left in his body rushes to the point of contact with his iron grip. A single snowflake stops mid-fall, just above their heads, frozen. Neige’s body goes limp, then hard, then snaps back like a bowstring.
“… Neige! Roi de N-” Rook chokes, voice dying in his throat in a low gurgle. His left eye is a little moon of its own, wide and bright on Neige as the idol turns around completely on his unsteady feet; his right eye twitches and clenches down on the stylographic pen where it’s firmly entered its socket. Neige can feel the spasms through the pen as if he’s holding a small animal in his fist, through his arm that aches with the force of the blow.
A single snowflake resumes its fall. Rook’s shriek can be heard across the entire valley.
In the next heartbeat, Neige feels himself being shoved back with a strenght that makes his ears ring; his injuried leg gives out under him, and the weight of his body pulls the pen down with him and out of Rook’s orbit with a squelch before it rolls away from his hand in the snow. For a split second, all he can see is the night sky, looking down at him with its big opalescent eye before Rook’s looming shadow eclipses it, all heaving shoulders and ragged breaths as he kneels beside him, leaning over his supine body. The gaping hole where his right eye used to sit gets larger and larger the more Neige stares at it, taking over his whole face, hideous, hungry, sucking all the life out of him. And for a moment, Neige really does feel the light leave him: his body grows numb and fuzzy and his eyelids flutter close. Then something hits him, like a thunderbolt at the base of his spine. This does not have to be the end. He’s hurt him once. He can do it again.
With an almost animalistic grunt, Neige’s body springs up, blood-slickened hand pushing at the ravaged side of Rook’s face hard enough that the blond topples backwards with a pained howl. Neige is on top of him before his body has finished leaving its imprint in the snow, his exhausted thighs holding the hunter’s hips in an iron grip as he straddles him, raining blind punches on his face and chest and drowning out questions, pleas, Neige, Neige, Neige.
“You! You need to leave me alone!” the rough, feverish voice seems to come from outside his body, startling him for only a moment as he whips to the side to escape a large hand going for his wrist. He can feel an occasional shudder go through the larger body under him when his hands sloppily hit a bloody cheekbone or pull out a strand of blond hair, the painful restraint of an immense amount of force he doesn’t recognize as his hands find Rook’s thick neck and press down on it. A solitary cloud moves past the full ring of the moon above them, the light shooting past Neige’s shoulder to shine a spotlight on Rook’s face: his boyish features are almost completely swallowed in the bloody mess of his vacant orbit, rigurgitating milky tears from under a half-closed, sagging eyelid. He’s very bruised and very warm and very human under Neige’s hands.
He is, at least, until he presses down harder, the full weight of his body on his throat now, and he feels that tension from before snap, like finally letting an elastic band go before it breaks in your face. Rook’s hips no longer seem weighted down by him at all as they thrust violently into his, turning his body over with a quickness that punches the breath out of him and sinking it down in the fresh snow with the weight of his own, unmovable between his kicking legs. Rook’s gloved hands find Neige’s wrists, wrapping around them like a vise and pinning them down at either side of his thrashing head: he screams - there’s nothing else he can do - then chokes and gags when a trickle of blood and vitreous humor invades his mouth from above, smearing his face and blurring his sight red. He can feel his breath again, hot and laboured where it swells in his chest pressed just over Neige’s heart, in his throat where it vibrates in a low growl, rolling between the shine of sharp teeth. His body arches in one last surge of resistance, then yields, spreading itself open under the hunter, red as blood and white as snow and black as the fog that takes over him as Rook’s mouth makes soundless shapes at him, the last thing he sees.
And then... he wakes up, the warm embrace of clean sheets a comfortable weight on his body. He stares for an undefined amount of time at the ceiling of a room that isn't his, his legs shifting restless under the blanket, trying to rid his body of the remnants of that paralyzing terror or recall it with the same vivid intensity, and failing at both. As he forces himself to sit down on the bed, pulling the heavy blanket as close to his body as is physically possible, the chase, the fight, the screams become diluted in his mind, less of a memory and more of a dream. His magic pen rests neatly on the drawer next to him. Of course, it must have been. He tentatively wanders up to the full-length mirror, his ankle sending an acute shot of pain up his leg when he rests his weight on it, and he holds his breath as he starts undressing himself, uncovering thin scratches along the sides of his body, red and purple. He smiles at his reflection, relief washing over him for the first time in days. Of course it was a dream. He could never hurt anyone like that.
He puts extra care in getting ready for the big day - his big day - waltzing between outfits in a dreamy haze, posing for the mirror, kissing its silver surface red before waving his reflection goodbye as he walks out of the door and down the hallway towards the cafeteria. His reflection waves back.
He wouldn't normally eat a full breakfast before a show, but he's starving, like he hasn't eaten in days. Not a proper meal, anyway. He's so preoccupied with that thought that he almost misses Vil making their agitated way to the opposite end of the hallway, the snap of their steps on the marble floor uncharacteristically heavy. When he stops them to chat, their face looks overwrought, their make-up ever-so-slightly creased in between their furrowed brows. Their eyes are red and puffy and more violet than ever under their scowl.
"Have you not heard? Rook got hurt..." they peep, their voice breaking in the softest way despite their best attempt at sounding annoyed with their careless companion. Neige's heart sinks to the bottom of his stomach. Suddenly he's acutely aware of how much his body hurts.
"He... how? How did he get hurt?" he asks, breathless, and he must look devastated because something in Vil's face softens, and he thinks he sees the solace of a shared pain there.
"He was out hunting last night, he said he was 'outmatched'... how could he be so careless, now of all times?! He knows how much is at stake! And his face..." Vil trails off in a shaky breath, or at least Neige thinks they do. If they say anything else after that, he does not hear it. His feet move faster than his mind can follow, speeding in the direction he'd just come from with Vil at his heel, yelling for him to wait for them - something unprecedented, considering Vil's naturally long stride. They stop right outside the infirmary door, from behind which a scolding voice is listing a seemingly infinite series of sanitary measures, and wait in silence, Vil one eloquent step ahead of Neige. Minutes drag themselves eternal. Finally, the door creaks open, and a familiar face covered in unfamiliar freckles peeks out from behind it. Straw-coloured bob askew, Rook seems surprised to see all of two people by his sickbed at first, but soon his expression melts into his usual simper, left eye a gleeful upside down crescent moon, right eye hollow under layers over layers of bandages taking up a third of the space on his face. As soon as he goes to open his mouth, Vil chimes in like a river in full flood. How could he do this to them right before the contest? Was it worth it? It serves him right, now he can forget about even setting foot on that stage. And does he know they would die if they were to lose him? Rook allows himself to be swallowed by Vil's emotions with practiced indulgence, apologizing profusely and holding their hands in his when Vil's voice starts to shake again. Behind them, Neige tries hard not to listen. He focuses on the dark brown stain seeping through the bandages on the hunter's face, threatening to swallow him whole. It almost seems merciful right at this moment.
It's only when Vil's rambling comes to a stop that Neige notices the solitary green eye turned to him now, still smiling, unreadable. Something primal at the pit of him tells him to run. Instead, he steps closer to the man he almost killed, his pale hand cupping his cheek on the pristine side of his face.
"It's not too bad." says Rook before Neige can form words or even a coherent enough thought, not quite leaning into the touch as Neige suspects he would if Vil wasn't there. "The nurse says I'll be able to swap the bandages for a proper eye patch in a week. That's pretty exciting, n'est pas? I find it has a roguish charm to it..."
He's so cheerful, so kind despite everything - is this the monster he's been running from? Neige wants to drop to his knees in front of him now.
"Last night..." he starts, not quite knowing where he's going with that sentence. His throat is so tight he can barely speak. Thankfully, Rooks cuts him off.
"A magnificent beast. It fought so beautifully, so desperately for its life" - there's a laboured edge to his breathing, Neige feels it against his wrist - "I can't even bring myself to resent it for taking un petit souvenir from me!"
"I'm so..." Neige starts again, but a sob almost immediately swallows his words. His big brown eyes fill with glossy tears, smudging Rook's face until it's nothing but a blur of green and yellow and off-white. He tries again. "What will you do now..?"
Neige hears Vil scoff beside him as Rook takes a step closer, producing a small handkerchief he devoutly wipes his tears with: they never suspected Neige might care so much, and it makes them seethe.
"Ça va aller, Roi de Neige. One eye is enough to watch you perform today!" he says sweetly, his only functioning eye boring into him, vertical pupil expanding and contracting with the rhythm of their joined breathing. The strong smell of iodine makes Neige's nose twitch. "Truly, I'm content as long as I see you".
---
A few weeks have passed since Neige’s first place at the Song and Dance Championship, and people are only just now starting to grow tired of talking about it. It was a solid performance, and, though the general public’s opinion was that an injuried member put the competition at an unfair disadvantage, fans from both sides regarded it online as his and Vil’s “most sensational showdown yet”. Some chaos ensued, but most things from that afternoon were such a blur…
Rook spent the entire competition cheering from the front row, fists clenched in a repeated motion of encouragement and his one remaining eye wider than Neige had ever seen it, trying to capture everything on its own. He’s the one thing he remembers vividly, even now. When Neige was eleven, someone had told him neons look like glitter when reflected in the eyes, and ever since then, whenever he performed live, he would look straight into the spotlight; but that day, his eyes kept wandering to that front seat, and were met, every time, without fail, with that unblinking look of carnivorous adoration, burning so hot and bright that it made every other eye that was fixed on him flicker out and disappear. It pulled something out of him he thought long gone. For the first time in ages, on that stage, he felt small and bare and disgusting, he felt picked apart and turned inside out, only this time it wasn’t at the hands of tens of thousands of anonymous spectators, but from the single-eyed vigilance of one apex predator, canine pupil blown wide and threatening to swallow him whole at any moment.
It didn’t go away: not when he came down the stage, legs weak and trembling and heart beating so fast he could barely hear the roaring applause behind him; not when he left Night Raven College that same evening - a day earlier - after bidding both Vil and Rook goodbye without looking either of them in the eye; not now, despite the clean air and green nature and secluded whereabouts of the nice little cottage he has retired to after declaring a hiatus period. A “mental health retreat”, his manager suggested during his last interview, tactfully glossing over a number of accidents Neige has had on set during his last few shootings, when he thought someone was spying on him. He hasn’t really been himself lately. The location has been kept secret from everyone to ensure quiet and privacy, and he really tried to enjoy it, but isolation hasn’t been doing him a whole lot of good, if he has to be honest. And judging by the enormous assortment of flowers that was dropped at his doorstep this morning, the secrecy aspect leaves much to be desired too.
The bouquet lies nicely on a coffee table now as Neige examines it, shedding the occasional withering petal or dried out leaf - red roses, honeysuckle, red orchids, delphinium and red sage all part under his gentle touch, kissing his fingers with devotion and leaving an intense perfume in their wake. As he undoes the intricate bow holding the stems together to section them in more manageable bundles to decorate the house with, a small envelope the prettiest shade of lavender peeks out of it. He holds it in his hands for an indefinite amount of time, feeling the rough texture of artisanal paper with his fingertips. It’s not unusual for fans to leave small messages with gifts. This doesn’t stop his hands from shaking as he breaks the wax seal unceremoniously, heart thumping against his ribcage as he wills his eyes to focus on the fine, fluttering penmanship, and the eye he’s been feeling on himself is so real, so tangible he can almost feel the brush of eyelashes on the back of his neck. Like a kiss. It startles him to find there’s a thrill of anticipation there, amidst all the horror.
Mon tendre Roi de Neige,
It pains me so to know you’re unwell!
The world laments your absence already, but alas, if this is what must be done for you to get better, alors ce serait réglé!
We simply cannot wait to see you again.
Bon rétablissement!
-R