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The walk to Ritsu’s house isn’t particularly long or intimidating. It’s a stroll through a regular, quiet street in a regular, quiet neighborhood that Shou’s going to throw into disorder in about half an hour, just like he likes to do. A little arson will be good for these people, honestly. It’ll keep them on their toes, remind them that there are things out there that are bright and interesting and dangerous. People who live in houses that are so cute are definitely going to forget that kind of thing.
Not Ritsu, though. Shou went and made sure of that, but even before Shou, he seemed like he knew. That’s interesting. It seems wrong that such a quaint little place could have made Ritsu, who was the coolest person that Shou had ever fought. Not as far as what he could do with his powers, obviously, but just with how he was. It’s been months and Shou can still remember the dust on his uniform, the angle of his cheekbone against Shou’s fist, the fury simmering under a calm, placid surface. Shou wanted to dive straight to the bottom of him and live down there, although he hadn’t gotten a chance to get more than a few feet deep before they were seperated. Now, he has a diving board and snorkeling gear and a plan to keep Ritsu in his headquarters for at least a weekend, so he’s ready to fucking go.
Shou twists his neck, rolls his shoulders back, and starts cracking his fingers one by one. His cool is effortless most of the time, but Ritsu makes him a little tense in a way that he has to dispel before seeing him again. That’s not to say it’s all bad, though. The feeling that Ritsu gives him makes him stand a little taller, straighten out his clothes, look alive and interested. It’s not nervousness, of course. Shou doesn’t do nervousness. It must be something else, an unpredictable side effect of their incredible bond. Shou’s never bonded with someone that fast, but he knew before Ritsu threw his first punch that Shou had found The One. He wasn’t The One in the way that dumb rom-coms talked about The One, but it was more like...like the Robin to his Batman, the Sasuke to his Naruto, the moon to his sun. There was nothing incomplete about Shou before, but Ritsu was something extra, something that added to him and turned them both into something better. They were meant to work together. It’s almost like fate, and Shou’s going to bring about that fate himself.
Finally, he spots the house. Shou doesn’t sprint, but saunters very casually to the front door and rings the doorbell. The chime is weirdly adorable.
And then, Ritsu. He’s wearing this yellow hoodie that Shou didn’t expect, and it makes him kind of proud. Ritsu’s full of surprises, things that not even weeks of tracking him could’ve prepared Shou for. He wants to take that hoodie. He wants to take everything that Ritsu has and is and keep it for himself.
“Yo!”
The emotions that cross Ritsu’s face are the expected ones. He’s terrified, he’s angry, he’s full of dread, he’s...confused? That’s not right. He shouldn’t be confused.
“You’re...from that one time…” He says, and it sounds cautious. Unsure. Almost like he doesn’t remember.
Shou smiles as bright as he can, leans against the doorframe, and wonders if he made a miscalculation. He quickly throws the thought away. Shou doesn't make miscalculations. Ritsu’s just in shock! That’s all. He’s utterly confident that it’ll wear off in a minute.
“Why’re you here?”
And there he goes! Right back on track, back to the important questions, back to where he should be. He’s confused because he doesn’t know Shou’s plan, of course! It makes perfect sense. He wouldn’t have forgotten anything about Shou. Ritsu’s just foggy on his intentions, which is understandable. Shou picks up the conversation as if he had never stumbled over his existence at all, and he decides not to hold Ritsu’s surprise against him. He could, of course, but Shou’s not going to. He’s just a really nice person like that.
***
The rest of the plan goes off without a hitch. The parents are spirited away to their surprise vacation, the house is burnt down, and they run off to the SUV. Despite the running he did earlier today, Ritsu is still fast. Shou had watched from a distance, but it’s different to see it up close, to run beside him and see the way he breathes, the little beads of sweat that run down his face, his muscles tensing beneath the skin. Running shouldn’t be pretty, but somehow, Ritsu runs and it’s pretty. Shou doesn’t understand how he does it, but he can certainly admire it. If he was lamer, he’d probably write some poetry about it.
“It’s on the left!” Shou tells him, nodding towards the black SUV that Higashio’s been driving around for the past few days. They make it to the car at the same time and hop in the back seat. Ootsuki was nice enough to take the far side, which lets Shou sit right next to Ritsu. He normally doesn’t like sitting in the middle, but after burning his house down, he figures that Ritsu deserves to have the window seat. It’s only fair.
“We’re good?” Higashio asks, looking downright exhausted. It must’ve been a hassle to drive the fake corpses over, get them in place, and then come back to the meeting spot. A necessary hassle, but a hassle nonetheless.
“We’re good. Now, let’s get out of here!”
Higashio nods and starts driving. Ritsu is quiet, eyes hopping between all of the new people without settling on one in particular. Right! He’ll need introductions.
“These are some of the people that work for me,” Shou tells him. “The guy driving’s Higashio. He’ll fix up your house later, so no need to worry about insurance or whatever. Fukuda’s in the passenger seat, and over here’s Ootsuki. They’ll be at headquarters with us.”
“Nice to meet you, Ritsu-kun,” Fukuda says. Ootsuki gives him a nod. Higashio doesn’t do anything except turn left.
Ritsu makes a face at him. “And you?”
“Me? What about me?”
“Do you have a name?”
Shou laughs. It’s maybe a little bit too loud because Ootsuki winces, but really, it’s not his fault that Ritsu asks such funny questions. “I told you my name at the Seventh Division!”
“You gave me a concussion at the Seventh Division, actually.”
“Oh, really? Huh. I must’ve hit you harder than I thought. Anyways, if you’re still having side effects from that, Fukuda can heal you right up! He’s a healer, so that’s his whole thing.”
“I’m already healed,” Ritsu says. “The point is that even though I am healed, I don’t remember your name and I’m likely not going to. If we’re going to be working together, I’m going to need to know that.”
Something in Shou’s stomach drops, something that he didn’t even know existed. “Wait, you don’t remember our fight?”
“I remember the part where you knocked me unconscious.”
“Yeah, sure, I figured that you would, but don’t you remember the rest of it?!”
“Not really, no. I remember some of what came afterwards, though,” he says. “That’s why I came with you. I remembered that you were working with us at the end. I remember what you did with the orbs, too.”
“Oh where I negated them? Yeah, I guess I did do that. It was nothin’ too special,” he brags, because really, it wasn’t, and he needs a distraction from this catastrophe. Not one that’s too long, though, because the matter at hand is possibly more important than stopping his father’s dumb scheme to take over the world. “But before that? You don’t remember anything we talked about?”
“No.”
Higashio sighs. Fukuda drums his fingers on the dashboard, looking like he’s ready to introduce Shou himself. Ootsuki stares out the window, face contorted in a way that makes him look constipated. It’s the face he makes when he’s trying not to laugh, the bastard.
“Well, I’m Suzuki Shou,” he says, pulling out his most charming grin and plastering it to his face. “We have a lot to catch up on.”
“Then let’s do that.”
And Shou, because he’s not thrown off by this at all, he’s totally prepared for this situation and not at all upset, starts telling Ritsu everything he needs to know.
***
By the time they get to the apartment and eat, Ritsu knows everything that he needs to know. Shou does most of the talking, but Higashio, Fukuda, and Ootsuki interject for the areas that they know the most about. The questions that Ritsu asks are clever, and Shou likes the face he makes when he’s listening. It’s not passive and bored, but engaged. Awake. There’s a furrow in his brow and Shou can see him putting the pieces together, coming to conclusions seconds before Shou says them. It makes the process easier.
Eventually, the process ends, and because Ritsu kind of smells like sweat and ash, he takes a shower. The four of them are still hanging around the kitchen. A nice quiet has fallen, one that Shou intends to disrupt as soon as he hears the water.
Once it turns on, he says it. “Ritsu forgot my name.”
“What did you think was going to happen?” Higashio asks.
“That he was going to remember it! I can’t believe that he didn’t.I memorized his name, his address, his birthday, his blood type, his school address, his class schedule, and even his school ID number! It’s 186—”
“23—”
“450—”
“8210.”
The three of them finish the last section together. Shou debates the merits of killing his most loyal lackeys less than seventy-two hours before stopping the apocalypse and, luckily for them, only comes up with two good reasons. “At least you were all paying attention.”
“I wouldn’t take it personally,” Fukuda says. His voice is all soft, like he thinks Shou needs to be comforted. “Concussions don’t take that sort of thing into account.”
Shou is ultra careful not to sound defensive because if he does, Fukuda might do something really nice like hug him. If he tries to do that, Shou will definitely wind up murdering him. “I’m not taking it personally, I’m just saying! This changes some of our plans. Ritsu might need more convincing now that he doesn’t remember how well we worked together. We’re going to have to up security on the parents, too, and it might be worth the time to have Fukuda give him a proper check up. I don’t buy that he’s fully healed.”
“All good ideas,” Ootsuki tells him. Ootsuki is smiling too much for this.
“Yeah, I know. Check in on the parents, won’t you? If you’re going to be so smiley, I’ll give you something to smile about,” he snarks, and shit, that was way too defensive. He needs to be less obvious about this.
“Got it.”
Shou takes a deep breath. This is going to be fine. If they got along so well before, they’ll get along well again. It won’t be like he dreamed, but it’ll be fine. They’ll get to where they’re supposed to be. It just won’t be as quickly as he wants, and it’s frustrating because there’s so much that Shou wants with him, more than he can ever try to name. But they’ll get there! They will. There’s no other option.
“Any word on what the brother is up to?” He asks, because he needs to think about something else. Needs to get back on track.
Mercifully, Higashio gives him an update.
***
Shou and Ritsu wind up sharing a bedroom. They’re on separate futons, but in the same room,so he can't complain much. The moon shines in through the window along with the dim glow from the streetlights, and they have a lot to get done tomorrow. They should get some rest.
Neither one of them is asleep.
Ritsu’s at least trying to sleep. His eyes are closed and he’s breathing deeply, but there are little twitches that let Shou know that he’s awake. He readjusts his arms under the blanket and turns his head, the light from the moon shining right on his face. The slice of light only goes over part of his face, but now Shou can see his eyelashes. What business does he have with having eyelashes that are so interesting, huh? They curl very slightly at the ends and cast the faintest little shadow on his face, or maybe that’s just dark circles under his eyes. Shou would have to get closer to know for sure.
So, of course, he gets closer, scooching his futon a few inches across the floor. This isn’t the most important mystery going on in the world, but it’s worth investigating.
Ritsu opens an eye. Dark circles it is.
“Hey,” Shou says.
“Hey.”
“Guess you weren’t sleeping, either, were ya?”
“Nope,” Ritsu confirms.
Shou turns on his side to face him. “Want to hear about the time I beat you up?”
He groans. “I know the basics of it. You don’t need to rub salt in the wound.”
“It’s not about salt! I mean, I could make it about wounding your ego, but it’s not about that.”
“What’s it about, then?”
“It’s about…” Shou stops. He knows what it’s about, but he doesn’t know how to say it. If there are words for it, he doesn’t know them. He doesn’t think they exist in this language, or any language in the world.. “It’s about a fight, I guess.”
“How enlightening, Suzuki.”
Ritsu turns towards him. He could just as very easily have turned his back, but he didn’t. That definitely, absolutely means something.
“I’m very enlightening, I’ll have you know.” Shou reaches across and pokes him. Ritsu doesn’t smile, but his eyes look a little brighter. “You want to hear the story or not?”
“Go ahead.”
“Alright! So, I was walking around Claw, looking for these escapees I had heard about. And I found you beating up a couple of the artificial esper losers, but it wasn’t just you. You were with these other guys. You remember them? There were five of them.”
“The Awakening Lab kids?”
“I guess? There was a set of twins, a blonde guy, a girl in a turtleneck, and this dude who had some really ugly hair. Aggressively ugly.”
Ritsu snorts. The noise shouldn’t be as charming as it is. “You’re a master of description. But yes, that’s them.”
“Right! So I showed up and congratulated you on beating up the espers, and those guys looked scared shitless to see me. And don’t get me wrong, you looked scared, too. But more than scared, you looked like you were thinking. Using your head. Trying to fit me into what you knew about Claw and how you could use that to get the hell out of there.”
“I probably was,” he confirms.
“Mhmm. And then you asked me who I was, and then I was like, ‘Well, who do you think I am?’ because I could tell you had been thinking about it. I wanted to hear if you had come up with something clever, because there was no way I was going to bring you along for all of this if you didn’t come up with something at least kind of close.”
“...You were already thinking about this?”
Shou nods. “Of course I was! Do you know how hard it is to find people who can be scared and think at the same time? It’s pretty much impossible. And I could try and find a second-in-command who was like me and not scared of anything, but people like that who aren’t me tend to be total morons. So I needed someone with enough sense to be scared, but who wasn’t so much of a coward that being scared was going to stop them. And I was starting to think that maybe that person didn’t exist. I was like ‘I can do it without them,’ because I could—it would be annoying, but I could—but then, you appeared. I wished for you, and there you were.”
Ritsu swallows. He looks more scared now than he did when Shou showed up at his door, than when he turned around at Claw and looked him in the eyes. But Ritsu’s courage doesn’t fail him here. He doesn’t turn away from what Shou has to say next.
“So I was waiting, then. Waiting for you to say something clever, and you know what you said? Deadass, you looked at me and said ‘Please spare me the quiz.’”
Shou laughs and in between his own amusement, he can hear a small laugh from Ritsu, too. “I guess I didn’t like your tone when you asked me.”
“I guess so! And I knew then that I was going to have to fight you, and I knew you were going to lose. Not to shit on you or anything, but you had even less power then than you do now. But I could tell that as far as potential, you were really extraordinary, so I wanted to see how you measured up. I thought for sure the fight was going to be what determined if I picked you or not.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“Nope,” he confirms. “It was what you said before that! You made the other guys run, even though we could all tell that you were going to lose this fight. I thought it was kind of admirable that you were going to fight me anyways. It was the quality I was looking for, but I was like ‘I need to see how this stands up in a real battle,’ you know? And when they left, you said that you would do something about me. At that point, I was like ‘You can’t beat me,’ just to see if hearing that would be enough to shake you. It wasn’t. Instead, you told me that there were people stronger than me out there.”
“...Please tell me you aren’t so stupid that you thought you were the strongest esper in the world.”
Shou reaches across to smack his shoulder. “I’m not that dumb! I knew my Pops was stronger than me at that point, although I have a few tricks up my sleeve that’ll make it easy to beat him. Anyways, that made me certain that I was going to pick you because that means you must’ve seen someone stronger than me and lived. And I knew if you could survive whatever was bigger than me that you could survive this. I knew I was going to come back for you before you even threw a punch.”
Ritus makes a face at him, sour and unamused. “Then why didn’t you say any of that? You could’ve just...told me that you were going to take down Claw and were looking for allies. Then you wouldn’t have had to fight me at all.”
“But I wanted to!” Shou complains. “Come on, you should’ve seen yourself. You were so determined, I had to do it! If you had been me, you would’ve fought yourself, too. And it was a good fight! You lasted for a while, but I did wind up knocking you out. Sorry about that, by the way. If I knew you were gonna forget the whole thing if I knocked you out, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“...Is that the only reason you’re sorry.”
“Is there another reason that I should be?”
Ritsu sighs at him. Shou can feel the warmth of it across his face. “You’re so weird, Suzuki.”
“You agreed to save the world with a guy you’d only had three conversations with. You’re weird, too!”
“You decided to save the world with a guy you hadn’t even had a full conversation with, and who hadn’t agreed to it. You’re weirder.”
“...I mean, you’re probably right about that, but I think since we’re the same brand of weird, we’ll work well together.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” he says. “And it’ll be fun to watch you get stronger! I think you’re going to be stronger than your brother someday.”
Ritsu rolls his eyes. “You don’t have to flatter me, Suzuki. Unless you’re genuinely that stupid, in which case I regret all of this and get to be first-in-command now.”
“I’m not flattering you, and if you want to be first-in-command, you’re going to have to fight me to the death. I’m just right about that,” he insists.
Ritsu’s looking at the wall instead of Shou. Shou shouldn’t be jealous of a wall. It’s not even an interesting wall! But Ritsu’s looking there instead of at him.
“Look at me.”
Ritsu; infuriatingly, doesn’t. It doesn’t even seem to be out of stubbornness, either. Shou’s stumbled upon something that makes him shy. It’s super cute and Shou takes exactly one second to admire it before he goes back to preferring the idea of being looked at. Also, it’s annoying as hell that Ritsu doesn’t believe him. He should believe him, on account of the fact that Shou is right.
Shou reaches over and grabs his hands. They’re freezing. “Look at me, Ritsu.”
That does the trick! Ritsu looks him in the eye and god, no pair of eyes should get to be that pretty. They’re a sweet honey-brown with dark, yawning pupils and Shou could just eat them, honestly. They wouldn’t even taste good because they’re human eyes, but it’s the spirit of the thing.
“I’m right,” he says, now that he has all of Ritsu’s attention. “You’re going to be one of the strongest espers in the world. You have more potential than anyone I’ve ever met! Stick with me and I’ll prove it to you.”
Ritsu considers him for a moment more, and then shuts his eyes. “I’ll consider it,” he says. Shou doesn’t worry, because he says it like he’s already decided to.
“You going to sleep, then?”
“I’m going to try to.”
“Alright. Night.”
“Night.”
The conversation is over, but Shou doesn’t let go of his hands. Ritsu doesn’t ask him to, nor does he pull away. He counts this as an absolute, undeniable victory. It just took a few hours to get there.