Work Text:
tadaima .
The day his father was led off to be locked up, he returns to find his mom for the first time in more than a year. He lets her cling to him to the point that he wonders if she’ll ever let go. She does, obviously. And, obviously, he missed her. A lot. He’s used to not seeing her for ages, he’s used to sneaking to her place in secrecy, he’s used to losing touch with her as she moves from city to city, apartment to apartment, transient in an attempt to evade Claw as their area and influence expands. Or maybe she’s just paranoid. He wouldn’t even blame her.
He doesn’t actually recognize her place. She’d moved again. Her new flat is clean and modest and slightly sterile, in the way newly moved-into places are. It’s a perfectly nice place, impersonal and empty of memories, good or bad, but that’s a mercy.
There are still suitcases open on the floor and the kitchen is stocked with mostly instant foods. It’s a small one-bedroom space. His mother had never quite been into dating again after running from Touichirou, and Shou never stays or visits often enough to warrant paying extra for another room that would stay empty and unused.
His mother moves to prepare a frozen meal for them, then stops and laughs shakily, excuses herself with the promise of buying actual groceries so she could cook an actual meal for them. A family dinner for two. Shou tries to tell her it’s fine, he eats or sometimes barely eats anything all the time, but it’s probably the wrong thing to say and it only strengthens her conviction. Before he knows it, she’s gone and left him alone in the apartment.
It’s quite a compact apartment, but it feels far too empty. He waits restlessly in the six tatami room, flipping through a few of the books on her shelf. Murder mysteries, cookbooks, some travel guides... there’s no TV, those are heavy and inconvenient to move when she has to pick everything up and leave in a hurry. He throws himself on the chair and stares out the window. He should have tagged along with her on the shopping trip, but she’d left before it had occurred to him. It must not have occurred to her to bring him, either. It’s been more than a year since they’d seen each other. A year of forgetting exactly how to be a mother, how to be a son.
He missed her and he knows she missed him, but—
This apartment is far too empty and cramped and unfamiliar. It feels like some stranger’s flat. He feels like he’s intruding, like he’d broken into some unknown woman's place and at any time she’d come back and wonder who the hell he is and what he’s doing here.
It’s ridiculous and idiotic and he knows it. He knows it’s his mom’s place, he knows his mom knows and loves him.
But he really can’t stay in a place like this, after all.
He leaves. He doesn’t need a key, he’ll just knock if he comes back— when he comes back. Or he could break in with telekinesis and try not to scare his mom too badly. It might take her a while to make dinner, anyway, depending on what she’s making. What did she like to cook again? What were her favorite foods? Maybe he could pop into a grocery or some convenience store and surprise her with something she likes. Something she likes, something she likes...
He has no idea what she likes.
It’s difficult being a son in a fractured family, one where he’d been struggling to bring one parent to justice and struggling to simply keep in touch with the other. He’d never wanted to follow or belong with his father. He wonders if it’s actually even possible now to still connect with his mother.
He walks past convenience stores and bars and streets darkening under evening, lighting up with lampposts. He has no idea where he’s going, other than out of that apartment, preferably as far away as possible. He isn’t intimately familiar with Spice City, even if it’s his father’s hometown. Actually, that might as well be a point against it. He doesn’t know the city well. He might get a little lost wandering aimlessly like this. Directions aren’t really his strong point. Street names and one-ways are liable to trip him up, but he actually has a decent sense of internal orientation. Like an animal, he can eventually find his way home.
He just has no idea where he’d consider home, now.
But he finds himself following a slowly familiar route until he reaches a vaguely familiar place after all. He’s a little familiar with this residence, he supposes. Burning a place down and rebuilding it practically from scratch will burn it into someone’s memory, for good or for bad. He can hardly knock on the door and say ‘tadaima’, but if he remembers correctly, Ritsu’s room should be—
He taps on the glass, not quite expecting a response. Ritsu opens the shades on the second knock, stares for a second, then opens the window.
“Suzuki?”
“Hey.” Shou waves, as casually as he can. “Can I come in?”
“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be...” Ritsu hesitates, and it occurs to Shou that he’d never really told him about his mom. Or well, about most of his family life, other than the big obvious deal with his father. Other than that, it wasn’t as if anything else was relevant to the mission.
Ritsu was his ally, but he was only and just that. He’d keep things on a need-to-know basis with his allies, who needed to know things like coordinates, bases, mission-critical routes. Not how much he missed or how long he hadn’t seen his mother.
Ritsu stands aside and Shou helps himself inside, floating through the open window. Ritsu stares at him, frowning, looking hesitant, as if watching a wild animal he knows isn’t hostile, but isn’t sure how it’d react in an uncertain environment.
Ritsu’s room... he’d only visited a few times. He’d torched and rebuilt it, along with the rest of the house. It feels so much more familiar than his mother’s flat, so much that it almost makes him sick. Looking at Ritsu is the worst of all, though. He’s only been with Ritsu a handful of times, in battle against and then fighting alongside him, but Ritsu is so familiar he instantly and never wants to leave.
It’s deep evening and Ritsu looks like he’s doing some late-night studying. There’s a book open at his desk, or maybe it’s a journal. There are clothes strewn over his chair, slightly messy, depending on what you’d expect from Ritsu. There’s a cup of tea on the desk, half-full. The whole room is... warm, lived-in, human and whole in a way the transient and unpacked state of his mom’s apartment isn’t. Ritsu has probably lived his whole life in this house, barring of course that one obvious fiery incident. But they’d done a remarkable job restoring the place, and Ritsu looks like he’s adjusting remarkably well. For the minute or so that Shou’s seen him again, anyway.
Ritsu finally breaks the awkward silence.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
He can practically see Ritsu deliberating over the next question, probably trying to decide over ‘what are you actually doing here’ or ‘could you at least use the front door like a normal person’ but he ends up going with—
“Shouldn’t you be at home?”
And obviously the answer to that is yes. He should be. He should be waiting back at his mom’s place like a good kid. She might have finished shopping and be on her way back or just already be back at the apartment right now, and he’s gone. She might be panicking or crying over his absence now. Or worse, completely resigned and used to it. Theirs is a family in which not seeing each other is the norm and reconnecting is the rare occurrence. It’s just the way it is. It doesn’t have to be that way, not anymore, but...
“Can I stay here for a while?”
They barely know each other. They’re allies, but he’s given Ritsu more than enough reasons to be slightly wary of him. He wouldn’t blame him at all if Ritsu would decline. What is he doing, he’s like some stray animal showing up unannounced to a safe home he doesn't belong...
“Sure.”
And Ritsu doesn’t even hesitate at all.
He looks... actually, Shou’s not sure what to make of the look on Ritsu’s face, something just barely like concern or relief. The room is warm and lived in and familiar with Ritsu’s aura—some normal teenaged boy’s room, something almost surreal to Shou. But Ritsu’s here.
“Do you want tea?” Ritsu asks, as if vaguely recalling manners to guests even if he might have reservations about Shou being one.
Shou smirks and steals the teacup on Ritsu’s desk with telekinesis. “Can I have this one?”
“ No .”
He’ll have to go back eventually and apologize to his mother and do something nice for her, something to try to make up for years of childhood’s worth of absence, something to try to make up for his father who can never make it up to her even if he had the world.
But right now, he’s here. And he hates to admit it, but he feels at home.
okaeri .
The only thing worse than overtime is mandatory overtime.
That said, Ritsu pushes himself just as a matter of fact. His coworkers and subordinates and even bosses might clock in to do their nine to five, but he’s used to coming into the office at dawn and then leaving after midnight, dazed and sleep-deprived and head blurring over with reports and algorithms. He probably spends more time at work than at home. Sometimes, it occurs to him that he’d improve efficiency just by living at the office.
But he’s not that far gone.
His apartment isn’t anywhere special. It’s a 30 minute commute from work by train and foot, a modest fourth floor unit in a middle-tier complex for grad students and professionals. Not the most amazing piece of real estate, but that’s city life for you. Even a small place like this costs far more than you’d like to maintain. He supposes one day he might try to buy a house and settle down and...
Thinking about that gives him a headache. Or maybe that’s his sleep debt or his seven upcoming projects he needs to get done over the weekend. He has to bring his work home with him. It’s not an uncommon occurrence, but there’s considerably more this time. It’s crunch time. He can practically feel his sleep debt ticking up in interest by the hour or minute.
He must be so distracted that he almost doesn’t even notice the snoring body slumped across his apartment door until he nearly steps on it. He stops and stares at the man for a brief second before he recognizes—his features, his aura, Shou —it’s a recognition so powerful it nearly slams into him like a migraine. It’s Shou. He’s gotten a haircut and he looks rather sunburnt and he’s napping right on Ritsu’s doorstep like some vagrant or something, but he supposes that’s pretty much what he is.
Ritsu nudges at Shou’s shoulder with his shoe. Then again. Then flicks a psychic burst of energy at Shou’s face. It’s deflected in an instant by Shou’s barrier, and Shou cracks open an eye with a smirk.
“That’s rude, Ritsu.”
“You’re in the way.”
“And you’re late. It’s 2 AM. Were you out on a nomikai?”
He doesn’t even bother to answer that, because of the answer must be as obvious as his dead-eyed thousand-mile stare and the paperwork stuffed in his bag. It’s been a while since he’s seen Shou. He doesn’t even want to think of how long it’s been, or it would make it worse. It’d make the impulse to shake him worse, the impulse to punch him, to grab him and kiss him breathless until he bruises from it.
He runs a hand through his hair, takes a deep breath, tries to pull himself together, reorient himself to Shou being here. Like recalibrating a compass to true north. He’s always been tuned to Shou.
“Where have you been?”
“Oh, you know. Around.” Shou finally sits up, cross-legged, grins up at Ritsu with a faux, instantly-untrustworthy guileless look. “Do you want an omiyage?”
He’s ridiculous... “Fine. Give it to me.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it here somewhere.” Shou searches through his jacket’s inner and outer pockets. Ritsu leans in, curious despite himself, and then Shou’s hand is instantly there grabbing his lapels, yanking him down for a kiss. It’s hasty and graceless and if he weren’t busy being kissed he’d accuse Shou of being out of practice, kissing him like this, and this is exactly the reason why Shou needs to come back more often, damn it. Or even stay.
But right now, kissing back is more important.
His head feels slightly numb with more than just sleep debt this time when Shou lets go of him. Ritsu licks his lips. “Your omiyage sucks.”
“I’m joking. I brought something better than just that, promise.”
Shou’s presence is the best gift he could ask for... Ritsu just unlocks his door. “You could have just broken into my place if you needed to. You didn’t have to sleep out here like a homeless person.”
“Yeah, I could have done that.”
“Why didn’t you?” It couldn’t have been too comfortable out there.
Ritsu opens the door and toes off his shoes and glances back at Shou, who hadn’t followed him in. Shou puts his hands in his pockets, glances down at the floor.
“I wanted you to welcome me back.”
Ritsu stares at him for a moment, trying to process this.
Then he smiles, sleepy but fond.
“Welcome home, Shou.”
Shou crosses through the door, wraps his arms around Ritsu, tight and warm.
“I’m home.”
Ritsu finally thinks he could say the same.