Work Text:
It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.
-Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by Stephen Mitchell)
.
I don’t want to lose him. I would suffer.
The thought played on repeat in Nezumi’s head, over and over. Shion leaving, leaving Nezumi only a lie of a kiss to remember him by. Shion struck down to the ground, completely helpless to avoid Nezumi’s attacks even while Nezumi held back his strength, how had he ever been stupid enough to think he would survive the Correctional Facility alone? Nezumi had been angry but he’d also tried to prove a point, tried to teach Shion a gentler lesson than the one Nezumi had learned from harsh experience: No. 6 did not consider them human. If Shion couldn’t even defend himself from Nezumi, how could he possibly hope to survive a fight against monsters who would kill him as easily and casually as swatting a fly?
Shion didn’t value his own life enough, wasn’t careful enough about protecting himself. Nezumi wanted to grab him and shake him and say: Why would you do that to me? After everything Nezumi risked to protect him, after telling Nezumi absurd things like “I’m attracted to you” and kissing his mouth and dredging up old, sharp feelings Nezumi had long since buried, and buried for good reason.
He’d left a mark on Shion’s cheek where he’d hit him. It was less vivid now but still red after the whole day had passed and it turned Nezumi’s stomach to see it. Shion was breakable. He was breakable, and Nezumi did not think he would survive losing him, and Nezumi was going to drag him into Hell.
“Is something wrong?” Shion asked. He turned to face Nezumi and regarded him curiously from where he sat on the floor, back against a bookshelf. “You look upset.”
“Nothing wrong,” Nezumi lied, “Just thinking.” Hadn’t he only earlier that day promised Shion that they wouldn’t lie to each other? But what was he supposed to say, the truth? I know what the Correctional Facility is like, and when you do too you’ll never sleep another peaceful night in your life.
If you even make it out alive.
“Whatever you’re thinking, you don’t look happy about it,” Shion said. He set his book aside and stood up, walked right into Nezumi’s space without Nezumi realizing or reacting to the danger until Shion’s hand extended to touch Nezumi’s cheek. Nezumi just let it happen without so much as a flinch. If Shion noticed Nezumi’s breath stuttering out after, he said nothing.
Shion slowly swept his fingers over the bruise he’d left on Nezumi’s face. “I didn’t realize I’d hit you that hard,” he admitted, contrite. His touch was gentle as to be unsubstantial, almost as if he were not touching Nezumi at all.
You should have hit me harder , Nezumi thought, and then Shion’s lips followed his fingers and it was the same, it was the same helpless terror he’d felt before when Shion kissed him, some murky terror in that blurred boundary between fear and horrible longing.
It was easy to forget himself, around Shion. Before Shion could pull away, Nezumi turned his face sideways to catch Shion’s lips with his own. Shion startled at the touch but Nezumi reached out and held him in place with a hand against his cheek. His lips were parted in surprise and it was easy for Nezumi to push his tongue between them, trace the soft inside of Shion’s mouth. Shion pushed quiet gasping noises into the kiss, responded by slowly sliding his tongue along Nezumi’s, and that gentle reciprocation sent shockwaves down Nezumi’s nerves, reminded him why this was so dangerous. He pulled back.
“That was a goodnight kiss,” he said with snappish anger he didn’t really feel to Shion’s flushed, bewildered face. “Not that a naive little boy like you would be able to tell the difference.”
That would have been the end of it, should have been the end of it, but this was Shion and Shion never knew when to fucking quit: he bunched the fabric of Nezumi’s shirt in both hands and pulled him back in for another kiss. He was overeager and crashed their teeth together, but it was Shion, and that was all Nezumi cared about.
He wasn’t supposed to want like this. He wasn’t supposed to allow himself anything he couldn’t stand to lose. Being around Shion messed him up. He’d been doomed from that first night, hadn’t he, when he fell asleep defenseless in the other boy’s arms and awoke in the morning unharmed.
He drew Shion closer, into his arms, fitted close chest to chest. He touched Shion’s cheek again, as gentle as he knew how to be against the red bruise there. No one in living memory taught him gentleness, before Shion; Nezumi wasn’t very good at it.
Shion seemed to take Nezumi’s innate roughness as permission to be rough in return, matching a nip on his lips with an uncomfortably harsh bite on Nezumi’s, but that was good, that was something Nezumi knew how to handle. He stepped forward into Shion until he’d walked him backwards against the wall. They broke for breath, Shion panting hard and fast in the shared air between them, his pupils dilated until his violet eyes darkened to almost fully black. Being stared at like that made Nezumi nervous no matter who was doing it, but with Shion it was worse, it was less like Shion was undressing him with his eyes and more that Shion had peeled back his skin and was staring into his guts.
Nezumi trailed his hand from the bruise on Shion’s face down to his throat. Shion didn’t resist as Nezumi splayed his open palm over Shion’s windpipe, only gasped when Nezumi applied the slightest bit of pressure. So fragile. So trusting . His pulse fluttered rabbit-fast beneath Nezumi’s fingers. “You’re not gonna fight back?” he asked.
Shion laughed, breathlessly, and grinned. “Why would I?”
It would be so easy to hurt him. If Nezumi was skilled at anything, it was hurting anyone who got too close.
He gentled his hold and lightly touched the raised skin of the snake scar with his fingertips instead. This time Shion flinched away from the contact. “Does it still upset you that much?” he said, not knowing what to do with the unfamiliar hurt that welled up whenever Shion rejected this part of himself. For all of Shion’s alien strangeness, Nezumi understood scars. In no other way were they so alike.
Shion stopped staring at him, eyes drifting to the side to stare at nothing at all, but now it brought Nezumi no relief. He grabbed Shion’s chin with his forefinger and thumb and forced his face back to look Nezumi in the eyes. He was ready for those eyes, this time, willed Shion to see through him like he always did and see the unspoken honesty, the pain he sheltered there. His throat hoarse, his voice came out an angry growl as he said, “No part of you is ugly.”
He was faster than Shion, and faster than Shion could protest, Nezumi leaned down and closed his lips over that scar where it curved over the jugular. Shion’s words died in his throat where Nezumi kissed, stopped them from gaining voice or form. When he bit only enough to leave light indents in the skin, Shion spoke wordlessly, nonsense vowels spilling out as gasps. When Nezumi bit harder, Shion sank his hands deep into the roots of Nezumi’s hair.
No other point on the human body was more vulnerable than the neck. Shion bared his throat without hesitation, allowed Nezumi to slowly kiss along the scar that marked death’s failure to claim him. Such a study in impossible opposites – Shion had fought so viciously for his life when the parasite wasp tried to drain it out of him, but now he submitted himself fully, pliant and yielding, warm skin so delicate under Nezumi’s tongue. It would be so easy to keep kissing him, unbutton his shirt and follow the red line of scar down his body until he forgot how to hate it. It would be so easy to get lost in this, lost in him.
Nezumi pulled away. Shion remained flattened against the wall, knees buckled. Nezumi had left new bruises on him, overlaid against scar tissue. Nezumi liked these marks, though, because each corresponded to the shivery sigh Shion made when Nezumi bit it into him. They added another layer to the story of the snake scar, further proof of triumph over death; only living people bruised.
Shion looked dazed, pupils still blown wide. “Why did you stop?” he said. “I liked it.” He wobbled back to standing at his full height and stepped closer to Nezumi to close the distance between them once more, and how did he so effortlessly manage to make Nezumi feel like he was the one pinned against the wall, with only the force of his eyes?
“We don’t have to go too far tonight,” he said quickly without thinking, then hid a grimace. Tonight? They should never have gotten that far at all. If Shion had never tried his laughable attempt at a goodbye kiss, then Nezumi would never have known how Shion’s lips felt against his own, would have never missed their absence, would never have been stupid enough to kiss him back.
Liar.
“Why not?” Shion asked, completely guileless, as if it were that simple. His expression settled into a pout. “You don’t need to coddle me. I told you, I want to be your equal.”
“That’s not – that’s not why,” Nezumi struggled to say. No one else tripped him up like this, no one else frustrated him to such clumsy fumbling of his words. “I’m not coddling you, I...” Shion looked at him, expectant, accusing, and instead of anything sensible, what Nezumi blurted, hot-faced, was “Maybe you’re ready for more, but I’m not.”
Slowly, inexorably, Shion’s lips tilted up into that trademark dopey grin. “That’s different,” he assured. Nezumi hated the affection in his voice, the easy patience. Hated the gratitude he felt in return.
Nezumi stepped backwards away from Shion. “I’m saving myself for marriage,” he said wryly, like there was anything left to save. Shion only laughed.
Shion was a burden, Nezumi thought as they readied for bed. He’d known this when he took Shion in. Shion was another mouth to feed, another body to keep warm, another heartbeat to guard. A heavy investment of time and resources. A clingy nuisance.
A life as precious to Nezumi as his own.
Shion kissed him again, briefly, before rolling over with a quiet “Goodnight.” He left Nezumi no time to reciprocate so all Nezumi could do was lay there motionless in the dark, lips tingling, blood rushing in his ears. How could something so simple incapacitate him this much? He’d been kissed before and it had never felt like this. He’d never wanted to be kissed, before, never before been struck dumb by the simple press of dry lips against his own. He traced the curve of his bottom lip with his thumb as he listened to Shion’s breathing slow into steady sleep.
Shion was warm and soft against him. He smelled like harsh soap and a little bit still like wet dog and stale sweat, which shouldn’t be pleasant to smell, but it was Shion, so it was. He knew he shouldn’t, but Nezumi leaned his nose into Shion’s hair and gently breathed him in. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted. He reached his arm over Shion’s front and placed his hand palm-down across Shion’s throat again, found the pulse point with his fingertips and let them rest there.
Could he really take Shion to the Correctional Facility? Could Nezumi stand doing that to him? Shion’s friend was probably already dead, or would be dead by the time they broke in. If, against all odds, she survived, she would never be the same, she would lose herself as surely as Nezumi lost the little boy he had been before his stay in Hell.
And even if all of them made it out alive, Shion wouldn’t be Shion anymore.
This was what the old woman warned him against, and this was why. One way or another, I’m going to lose you.
He curled his body forward against Shion’s back, pressed close until there was no seam between them. He recognized the burning behind his eyes for what it was this time and silently cursed himself as he let the tears fall, helpless to stop them.
I’m in love with him.
Only love had ever hurt him like this. Nothing else hurt this much, only grief.
He felt ten years old and powerless, freefalling in the dark. Falling in love had been easy, so easy that Nezumi failed to notice until it was too late. He’d willingly clipped his own wings, he’d locked the shackles onto his own feet. Nothing in his life was ever this easy; he should have realized sooner.
He wouldn’t get to keep this. There was no use getting attached to the feeling.
Nezumi closed his eyes, face tucked against Shion’s nape, and breathed, and breathed, and breathed.
.
That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is – : solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves.
-Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by Stephen Mitchell)