Headcanon ficathon!

[reikah]

Well, it's been a while since the Olympics, so I thought I'd throw this here as a fun community event (don't worry, this isn't the summer challenge/contest, I'm still ironing that out).

Welcome to the Kurofai headcanon meme!

What is a headcanon? A headcanon, for those of you not familiar with the terminology, is "An idea, belief, or aspect of a story that is not mentioned in the media itself, but is accepted by either the reader themselves or the fandom in general. If it is confirmed by the author of the story, it becomes canon." (Thanks, urban dictionary!) Examples might include 'Fai has terrible metabolism, his feet get very cold' or 'one of Mokona's 108 techniques is Vibrate Mode' or anything else you feel is true but never confirmed in the text. Not all headcanons are worksafe.

How it works:

You leave a comment with one of your Kurofai headcanons. You can do so signed into a dreamwidth account or anonymously, for those of you without dreamwidth accounts/with embarrassing headcanons.

Someone else will write a short story based around your headcanon, and post it as a reply to you.

In short, it works a lot like clampkink - but for headcanons rather than kinks!

Anonymous commenting is enabled, but you do not need to post headcanons/stories anonymously if you don't want to. I'm also going to go ahead and label this post NOT WORKSAFE preemptively, so please be careful browsing where your computer access is monitored! Stories can be as long and short as you like, and as SFW/NSFW as you feel like, or, if you prefer, you can fill with fanart instead - both are excellent. For our rules on threesomes or moresomes, check the comm rules in our profiles.

That's all the nitty-gritty out of the way - now let's go ahead and share some headcanons!

Filled Headcanons
Fai's hands hurt after the tower - filled by cloverfield
Holitsuba!Fai gives Kurogane finger puppets to help him teach sex ed - filled by Anon
Fai always could use chopsticks - he just pretended not to as part of his harmless idiot act - filled by eijentu
Fai doesn't like to sleep alone - filled by Anon
Tomoyo hand-stitched Fai's furisode herself - filled by ereshkigali
Fai is disappointed to be alive after Outo - filled by farenmaddox
Kurogane is an absolute SAP - filled by zelinxia
When Fai began to suspect what was going on with Ashura, he evacuated the survivors of Ceres to another world, which the travelers then encounter during their journey - filled by Anon
Kurogane forced Fai to feed the first time in Infinity - filled by farenmaddox
Kuro-sama likes being tied up - filled by cloverfield
Yama & Outo - Kurogane realises he's fallen for Fai - filled by rinoa11
Kurogane had a crush on an older ninja who acted like Fai, who died - filled by zelinxia
Kurogane is really bad in bed the first time - filled by tsubasafan
BB!Fai remained friends with the little freckled girl from Ceres - being filled by farenmaddox
Kurogane expresses his love in subtle ways ("the moon is beautiful tonight," touching just the edge of Fay's sleeve, etc) - filled by zelinxia
Post-series, Fai needs to hear Kurogane's heartbeat to reassure himself his happiness isn't a dream - filled by uakari
Fai - real Fai, the one that died - was the older twin - filled by anon
Fai - real Fai, the one that died - was the older twin - filled by farenmaddox
Fai feels guilt over Kurogane's scars, and Kurogane thinks he needs to keep them hidden from Fai - filled by ereshkigali
Kurogane and Fai get married/bonded before the xxxHolic epilogue - filled by caffeine_buzz
Fai starred in a porn film during the group's travels & had fun - filled by misskirichan
Kuro-papa survived minus an arm and has been roaming dimensions looking for his son - filled by anon
Holitsuba - Yuuko & Fay have had sex before - filled by misskirichan
Holitsuba!Kurogane, Fai, and Yuui are all in a mutually satisfying relationship - filled by misskirichan
Holitsuba!Kurogane is the first person who hasn't been jealous of Fai and Yuui's closeness - filled by kittenkin
Kurogane prefers it when Fai tops - filled by xwittychickx
Fai feels guilt over Kurogane's scars, and Kurogane thinks he needs to keep them hidden from Fai - filled by sotongsotong
Kurogane is an absolute SAP - filled by anon
BB!Fai remained friends with the little freckled girl from Ceres - filled by anon
Kurogane forced Fai to feed the first time in Infinity - filled by sotongsotong

Unfilled Headcanons
Kurogane's father trained him the way Kurogane trained Syaoran.
Kurogane had a case of performance anxiety before he and Fai had sex the first time.
Kurogane is a virgin. Fay is not.
Kurogane takes particular notice of how Fai smells. Fai changes soap and Kurogane has to work up the courage to ask him to change it back.
Fai starts to experience some of Sakura's memories after C!Syaoran stores her feathers in his eye.
Fai and Yuui were born on a national holiday; this is considered an ill omen for Valeria
Kurogane accidentally kills his father during the fall of Suwa
Kurogane & Fai resettle Suwa post-series, and Kurogane grows his hair out like his father
Kurogane has a well-worn notebook filled with terrible poetry. Fai enjoys flipping through the pages and trying to guess which world each was written in.
Holitsuba - Kurogane and Fai keep tracking of whose on top with different coloured condoms. Fai steals Kurogane's in order to top more.
Fai slept around in Ceres (with men and women), but Kurogane is his first steady significant other.
Holitsuba!Kurogane hums to himself when he's in a good mood.
Fai is a creature composed out of magic, rather than human.
Kurogane's conscience sounds A LOT like Tomoyo.
Kurogane was devastated by Fai's 'good morning, Kurogane'.
Post-Clow arc: When Sakura and Syaoran went into the tube o'doom, they left their bodies as empty shells on the floor. Touya found them, and moved them into a long-term care wing at a hospital; waiting for their souls to come home again.
Fai is musically gifted, and every song he plays represents a specific memory/event from his life. Kurogane comes to realize this without Fai knowing it.
Kurogane is the worst boyfriend ever.
The other dimensional versions of Chi, Hideki and the twins live happily.
Fai was a virgin until he met Kurogane because Ashura-ou had some non-fatherly feelings towards him and though he couldn't openly have Fai he could stop others from even thinking of approaching Fai, and none dared to oppose the king.
Fai is uncomfortable with the Japanese way of bathing where everyone just strips naked and soak together.
Fai knew that he would live much longer than Kurogane and while traveling with Tsubasa!Shaoran has been trying to find a way for Kurogane and him to share the same lifespan.
Kurogane is loud in bed.
Kurogane and Fai shared a tent in Yama; Fai felt dirty after being assaulted by soldiers and begged Kurogane to clean him. They had sex regularly after that.

Comments

[farenmaddox]

ahahahah ALL ABOARD THE ANGST TRAIN

(note: I used the word "Gehenna" because it was the word child!Fai used in the translation of TRC I read)

----------------------------

Gehenna probably isn’t full of plastic.

He’s learned the way plastic feels from some of the worlds they’ve been in, and what’s under his hands is very definitely a hard, smooth, artificial curve with a strange hint of warmth. Plastic.

So not Gehenna.

And that quite definitely means he is not dead. Because when he dies, there is only one destination for him and he knows that. Although he rather feels Paradise would not have plastic either.

He opens his eyes and sees himself sitting in front of a bank of controls in a capsule, and he blows out his breath. His real breath. He’d had his suspicions that something was wrong with Outo all along— his magical sensitivity was screaming at him from the moment they’d arrived, those girls with the soulless eyes that welcomed them to the city doing nothing to help. But because he couldn’t pinpoint the problem, he’d assumed it was the demons. He’d never encountered their like before, and he’d chalked up the intense alarm his magic had raised to the constancy of the threat the demons posed.

He’d never dreamed it would be something like this.

He lifts his eyes away from the controls, still trying to make sense of this. He’s alive. There is someone coming toward him, dressed in an outfit that just says “uniform” all over it. This person is an employee of the facility that Fai is clearly being held in.

“You lost your life, huh?” he says sympathetically. “Well, you can always start a new game.”

Game? This was . . . A game?

(Hasn’t every moment of this journey been nothing but?)

Fai leans back in his seat, smiling cheerfully at the employee of this game room or whatever it is. “Now where would be the fun in that? A game like this isn’t fun if you can come back to it as many times as you want, after all.”

It’s his usual sing-song. The employee looks at him doubtfully. Most people would probably like to jump straight back into the game, wouldn’t they? Fai himself would love to, he supposed, if he’d known it was a game to begin with. You could pick a different job or location each time. That had some appeal.

He hadn’t known. He’d thrown himself at an enemy thinking he was protecting someone. Thinking he was dying for a reason.

Thinking he was dying. Thinking it was over. No more of this endless game he was always playing, in Outo or out of it. No more smiling until his face felt cracked in half, surreptitiously touching his fingertip to the corner of his lips to see if he was bleeding. No more laughing as the ninja chased him, a bright spot in his heart that dared too much, and that he always carefully and thoroughly pulled out of his chest and smashed into pieces at the end of each day. (He didn’t apply words to the bright spot. No, defining it was worse thing imaginable.) No more waiting and no more plotting. He’d get the torment that was coming to him after he died, and there would be no more princesses with belief in their eyes.

For that one moment, short but full of strange clarity, he’d been looking forward to Gehenna.

“Your friends are probably wondering why you’re not back already,” the employee says cautiously. It's more than likely his duty to make Fai spend more money here.

His friends.

They must think he's dead.

Something is wrong with their game, and Fai knows it. His senses are still screaming at him about danger, even though he is unmistakably in the real world now and not locked inside a game. Something big is still coming, and his friends are still in danger. They are right here in their little capsules, unmoving in reality but in their heads they are still dreaming and talking and planning— (Are they crying for him? Does he want them to?)

“Is it okay if I stay here while I wait for my friends to finish their game?” he asks with a smile, stretching his arms above his head. It feels wonderful. For all that he thought he’d been leaping around, cooking meals, fighting demons, getting injured (pause for a strange jolt in his chest when thinking about that night) he hasn’t actually moved in probably hours.

Something is definitely wrong, and he’d better try to fix it. They still have work to do, and since he is alive, he has no excuse for not doing it.

[animangod]

Oh god; this is so much better than the one I began to write. XP Quite good characterization.

[cloverfield]

Oh god, Faren. Pretty sure this hole in my chest belongs to you at this point, and I don't think it's gonna feel all right for a little while.

...I need to scroll down and read the sappy fills because "No more laughing as the ninja chased him, a bright spot in his heart that dared too much, and that he always carefully and thoroughly pulled out of his chest and smashed into pieces at the end of each day" was goddamn painful and "He’d get the torment that was coming to him after he died, and there would be no more princesses with belief in their eyes." damn near killed me.

And then he just sits up and smiles and stretches his arms and oh god Fai you poor broken thing you.

brb, bawling until the end of time. ;A;

(Your writing is as powerful as always, lovely one, and every word here is purely devastating. Amazing, heartbreaking job. ♥)

[renlylittlerose]

This is so powerful, sad and beautiful... FAREN YOUR FICS KILL ME!

[misskirichan]

This was beautiful, Faren.

The way that you capture the inner torment, the inner anguish... the idea that the 'real' Gehenna would be a blessing, because the fight would be over. That it would be far preferable to the hell he's already living. This pull he has between wanting friends, but not wanting to hurt them. That he thinks his entire existence only serves to hurt those he becomes close to. It's heartbreaking, to see him consciously trying to put up a wall against what he really wants because he doesn't want to hurt the others. The acting. The role that he must slip into day in and day out. You captured this really well.

I think it's often easy to get lost in how flippant Fai acts, and even when we do get those rare glimpses of the 'inner anguish' in canon, I think it's easy to break his anguish down to a plot device or something that's used to move the narrative forward. But what you have done here is given that anguish roots. It's not just the pain behind his eyes, or the brief flashes of deception, but what it is costing him, and how deep it goes.

While I was a little thrown off by the POV at first, I think it actually worked really well for this. My only suggestion would be to work slightly on the transition shortly after these sentences:

"Game? This was . . . A game?

(Hasn’t every moment of this journey been nothing but?)"

The tense becomes more passive verses active after this section. Which is definitely necessary for what you're saying, the transition just seemed somewhat abrupt, if that makes sense.

Again, absolutely loved this Faren. The emotion you bring to what you write, and the way that you are able to express it in such a powerful way is one of your greatest gifts.

*hugs*

[farenmaddox]

ahahaha OOPS true story I was writing this in a different tense, and decided to change it, and apparently I missed that line when I edited. >.>;;;

Fai is one of the most broken characters I've encountered, and for me it's not POSSIBLE to use that as a plot device or anything like that. Any exploration of him has to take into account that he's literally never been happy and spent his entire life in mental and emotional shackles. It only made sense to me that for someone who's lived that kind of life would embrace death, awful as that sounds. His story, and ability to open himself up to hope, a future, the possibility of happiness and choosing his own purpose... it's one of the greatest stories I know.