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I DREW ART BUT THE LINK STOPPED WORKING AND I CANT FIND THE FOLDER ITS IN SO YOUR JUST GONNA HAVE TO PICTURE SOME RLLY PRETTY ART. I WORKED HARD ON IT OK
Ritsu sat staring at the celling in his futon in a room at Shou’s small secret base. He had gone with Shou when he showed up on his doorstep with the offer of teaming up to take down Claw. Since then, Ritsu’s house had been burned down and he learned that Shou’s father was the leader of Claw.
Ritsu was on edge about the whole thing. Something about the way Shou looked at him unsettled him- maybe it was because of those bright blue staring-into-the-depths-of-your-soul eyes of his. If he was quite honest, he hadn’t even wanted to accept his offer. He just wasn’t sure if he could trust him to not harm him or his parents if he said ‘no’.
Even though it was much past dark, Ritsu couldn’t bring himself to go to bed.
Not that it matters if I’m asleep or awake. If he wanted to, he could easily sneak in undetected and end me instantly either way.
He shuddered at the thought. He doubted Shou would do so, especially since he never fatally harmed him during their fight, and (assuming he didn’t change his mind) he considered Ritsu to be a valuable asset to him.
Sitting up, he grabbed the journal he had brought with him from the small table to his left. He had nothing better to do with his time.
Shou, meanwhile, was pacing the dark room he shared with his three underlings. Usually he separated the rooms they slept in, but he didn’t want to make Ritsu to have to sleep near anyone else, so he let him have the room he usually slept in.
When he had came to Ritsu’s house to recruit him, his terrified expression when he recognized Shou was still imprinted in his brain, haunting him. The slight upturn of his eyebrows and the raw fear in his eyes. He was still afraid of Shou- and Shou could only blame himself for it. And although he found it enjoyable to get under his skin and make him uncomfortable, fear would get in the way if he wanted any sort of relationship with him.
“Something the matter, boss?” asked Higashio, an underling in his mid-twenties with a blond broom of hair on his head. He was laying in his futon, likely unable to sleep from Shou’s walking.
I have nobody better to get advice from.
Shou turned to him and plopped down on the floor, his arms crossed.
“How do you get someone to trust you?”
Higashio looked surprised, but considered the question. “Well, I suppose you would try and spend time with them and patiently wait for them to trust you. Ya can’t force someone.”
“…I’m going to get some fresh air,” announced Shou, standing to leave the room.
Ritsu thought he might have been imagining it, but after a moment he was confident- Shou was getting closer. He could feel his aura approaching.
Soon after, he heard knocking at his door. Ritsu maintained silence, thinking he could maybe deter him by making him believe his was asleep.
“I can tell you’re awake.”
“…”
“Dude, I can tell by your aura.”
“… what do you want?” asked Ritsu casually, as if he wasn’t panicking over what the fuck Shou could possibly want from him at 1:30 in the morning. Shou took this response as in invitation to come in.
Shou entered and found Ritsu sitting up, a book resting in his lap, staring him down suspiciously. Whenever they were in the same room, Ritsu always did that, as if he expected Shou to leap to harm him the moment he lost sight of him. His eyes were icy and cautious.
“Yo,” he greeted, sitting down next to Ritsu. He leaned over his shoulder to look at the book he was holding. The moment he did so, Ritsu snapped the book shut.
“Awww,” he whined, his head hovering above Ritsu’s shoulder. He could feel Ritsu stiffen from the close contact.
Sighing, he crossed his legs and floated in front of Ritsu. If he wasn’t flying, he’d be sitting on his lap. Ritsu’s shoulder’s relaxed- he seemed more comfortable this way, but his guard was still up.
“What do you want?” he repeated, now leaning on the back of his hands.
“I couldn’t sleep and I felt you were awake, so I came to hang out,” he said. Ritsu raised an eyebrow in doubt of this. He opened his mouth to reply, but he stopped when his eyes caught on Shou’s white tank top. His eye’s widened slightly, and he lifted his arm towards a nearby lamp, turning it on with abilities.
“What did I spill … food…” started Shou, trailing off after he realized which tank top he was wearing.
“… is that your blood?” he murmured after a moment, looking up to observe his response.
“Nah, it was the blood of the puppies and innocent maidens I kill in cold blood for fun sometimes.”
Ritsu’s eyebrows shot up- Shou grinned.
“Obviously not, man, of course it’s my blood. It’s my shirt,” he laughed, propping up his elbow on the air to rest his face on, kicking his feet behind him, all mid-air.
“Well, how’d it get there?” he replied, his face returning to its standard non-emotion.
“A year or two back, my dumbass father hired me a ‘babysitter’ after I did something he didn’t like. The guy wasn’t really nice, so I got tired of him and decided to beat him in a fight myself so I didn’t have to deal with him anymore. I won, but not without taking damage. Left a cool scar, though,” he explained, the same tone someone would use to talk about an annoying homework assignment.
Shou cringed at the pity that flashed across Ritsu’s face for a half second. It went as soon as it came, but he still saw it.
“I don’t want your pity,” he complained, frowning.
“Good, because you didn’t get it,” he responded flatly.
“Liar. You made a pity face.”
“Wrong. I didn’t pity you, I empathized with you,” corrected Ritsu.
“Nuh-uh. To empathize with someone, you need to help them.”
Shou grinned as he watched Ritsu consider this. This topic served as the perfect distraction- Ritsu seemed to completely forget about how close the two of them were.
Shou felt a strange possessive impulse whenever Ritsu was around, and a longing when he wasn’t. The boy held so much power over him, and had no idea. It was the hardest thing in the world for him not to reach out and hold his face like he had that one day.
He wondered what Ritsu would do if he did. No doubt he’d be uncomfortable.
“Doesn’t helping you defeat him count?”
“Hmm… but I wanna hug for comfort,” Shou challanged, sitting up midair to cross his legs, leaning in slightly. He was close enough to see the brown of his eyes.
Ritsu leaned back a bit, but dug his legs out from under the blanket. Shou looked up at him, confused.
Ritsu then awkwardly lightly wrapped his legs around Shou’s floating upper body.
“What the fuck are you doing dude,” Shou asked, his voice wavering from his attempt to not laugh.
“Hugging you, dumbass,” Ritsu replied. It may have been the soft lamplight, but Shou thought he saw a small blush dust his face.
“Hmm… were you not hugged as a child? You need to wrap your arms around someone to hug them, not your legs. Not that I’m complaining about being squeezed between the thighs of a hot-“ Ritsu promptly kicked him in his side before he could finish- not very hard, but hard enough to throw him off his balance. Shou broke into a fit of giggles, clutching his stomach while floating sideways, hovering above the foot of the futon. Ritsu just sat there staring, his face tomato red.
“I-“ Shou began, being cut off by his own laughs.
“If you’re just going to laugh at me then leave,” Ritsu grumbled.
“Nah, wait, wait,” giggled Shou, recollecting himself. He floated to the same position he was in before. “I actually had a secret reason for coming here,” he said before Ritsu could tuck himself back into the futon’s blanket.
“Thought so,” Ritsu groaned.
“C’mon, I’m not gonna ask you to do any manual labor or something.”
“Just say what it is.”
Shou held out his hands to Ritsu, his palms facing up welcomingly. “The roof has a sweet city view. I can float us up to it,” he said excitedly.
Ritsu looked at him suspiciously.
“I promise not to drop you,” he swore. Ritsu didn’t look convinced. “What if instead of hand holding, I heroically held you like the pretty little princess you are and floated us up to the top?” he teased. To his surprise, Ritsu didn’t seem that opposed to this one, but he still didn’t say anything.
Without warning, he dashed to Ritsu’s side to scoop him up. Ritsu froze in his arms, clearly unsettled by the situation. He didn’t say anything except stare, dumbfounded.
“What’s wrong?” Shou asked. He knew he should set Ritsu down and wait until he’s comfortable with touch before he pulled something like this. But he couldn’t bring himself to. He craved Ritsu’s acceptance.
“I don’t…” Ritsu managed, growing pale.
“I’m being serious about not dropping you,” Shou reassured him.
“… whenever you touch me, every nerve in my body screams at me to run,” he admitted. Shou’s jaw dropped.
“That wasn’t the case back when I kicked your ass at the 7th division,” Shou argued.
Ritsu stared up at the redheaded boy.
His mind was a mess.
He was so confused. Was Shou Suzuki his enemy or ally? At this point, he actually believed what Shou promised- to not drop him, to not harm him. That was the scary part.
Ritsu was beginning to trust him. And somehow trusting him was scarier than fighting him. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to run from Shou not because he thought he would be harmed, but because he was convinced he wouldn’t be.
Shou was unpredictable. What if Ritsu let him in, and then he left him or hurt him? What if Shou was secretly playing him all along? He feared it may have been too late for that. He couldn’t tell a thing that was going on in his head. It was impossible to get a good read on him.
He could feel the warmth of Shou’s hands through his clothes.
Letting him in would be the same as giving him a knife, closing his eyes, and blindly trusting he wouldn’t cut him with it.
He searched his eyes for answers, hoping to find something in those bright blue eyes he found himself slowly growing fond of.
Almost half a minute had passed, and Shou was beginning to worry why Ritsu just sat there saying nothing, looking into his eyes like they held the secrets of the universe. Maybe he was pushing this too hard? He couldn’t lose Ritsu, and he hated the feeling of being feared by him due to his power. That was one of the reason he feared and despised his father, and it pained him to think Ritsu probably felt the same about him. He suddenly became very disheartened.
“It’s chill, do you want me to set you down-“
“No!” shouted Ritsu quickly, scaring the both of him. Shou stared in silence for a second.
“Well, ok then,” he said finally, heading toward the window. Unlatching it with his powers, he hopped out. They were in a ten-story apartment complex, and Ritsu squeezed in a little closer looking at how far they were from the ground. Shou tried not to focus on the way he was leaning into him.
He then levitated them to the roof, which was only a short distance up. He laid Ritsu carefully down, sitting next to him. The two boys stared in silence at the view.
“Can I see it?” interjected Ritsu. Shou nearly choked on his saliva in surprise.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Your scar… it’s fine if it’s a no,” he said, turning to look at him.
“I mean, I don’t mind. It’s a pretty sick scar,” he replied, turning to face him and crossing his legs. He began folding up his shirt to reveal the vertical scar that was there.
Vertical scars always left mor of a mark than horizontal ones. Shou knew this from experience, and he wondered if the man hadn’t known that too and done it on purpose.
Ritsu hesitantly brought his hand to it, tracing the air above it, but ensuring not to touch it. The skin was bright red and mutilated slightly. Ritsu just stared at it, thoughtfully.
Desperate to snap him out of whatever train of thought he was on, since him staring at Shou’s shirtless lower torso made him excruciatingly more nervous than he expected, he asked, “You got any cool scars?”
Ritsu jumped slightly at the question, and avoided eye contact thinking about his answer, letting his eyes rest on the space to the left of Shou’s neck. “Um. Yeah,” he said.
“For real? How?” Shou asked, intrigued.
“…Well, my biggest one is from our fight, you little shit,” he , turning away again to continue looking at the view.
“Can I see it?” blurted out Shou. Ritsu whipped his head around to him, his eyebrows raised slightly in small surprise.
“I guess. It’s on my shoulder blade though, so I gotta take off my shirt.”
“I won’t make you if you’re uncomfortable,” Shou mumbled, now regretting asking. Ritsu only replied by unbuttoning his school uniform’s Gakuran jacket. Underneath was a long sleeve white dress shirt. Shou sat in the agony of awkward silence, not sure to look while he was undressing. He really, really regretted asking.
After unbuttoning the shirt, there was a thin white tank top which he slipped his arms out of. He faced away from Shou, revealing his naked back. Shou immediately saw the scar- it was a fairly large one, which was likely due to the fact he couldn’t receive medical attention after the skin got scraped off when he was slammed into the wall. The skin was raw and pink.
“It’s still a little sensitive, but it’s fully healed now,” Ritsu said, trying to fill the long stretch of silence.
“Can I…?” asked Shou hesitantly.
“… I don’t care,” nodded Ritsu, who was glad he wasn’t facing Shou at the moment. He was trying and failing at hiding his fluster.
Shou gently brushed the skin around the edge of the scar, and Ritsu felt a shiver snake up his spine at the contact. He leaned back, ever so slightly, to try and silently signify he was ok with it. Shou continued to trace the edge of the scar. Suddenly and without warning, Shou planted his forehead in the nape of Ritsu’s neck. Ritsu’s whole body jumped slightly.
“Although I’m flattered by your attempts to seduce me, put your tank top back on. I’m gonna go grab some blankets,” Shou quipped, quickly jumping up and off the balcony to fetch blankets.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Holy. Shit.