Work Text:
His first breath came interrupted, lungs pushing forward through the mouth but finding it locked. His nose took over and precious oxygen flowed through his blood once more. As his senses flooded back, he recognized soft hands and lips holding him gently. Brown, familiar eyes received him back into the world.
Like waking from a deep sleep, lingering thoughts that seemed massively important were now fading away. Some desperate priority disappeared from his mind as sounds started grounding him in the present. It was a chaotic sound, unfitting of the sunlit haze he could see above him.
“Return,” the other said in his eternal smile.
Then, Ren blinked. Glass falling, voices shouting, the feel of furyoku rising, the feeling of tiredness disappearing. Context hit him like fuel sparks a speeding engine.
Yoh’s face was replaced by a round, blue spirit as it moved away. Between the surge of emotions bombarding his mind, that especially felt like they’d just pulled out the cold steel from his split chest.
But, no matter. He was indebted and needed to get back to the lender, past this entire annoyance.
It didn’t take long to get out and find everybody else, and as such his mood was still gravitating around the ungrounded feelings he awoke with. He came into the building eavesdropping.
“Important past?” Ren spat, “You’re just someone who gives up their dreams easily. Those stories only make people feel more pathetic.”
Yoh was thrilled to see him resurrected, but Ren pointed out he looked barely a step beyond the grave himself.
A heavy silence befell. Ryu and Manta didn’t follow, to keep a distance, and they’d made the right decision, as a discussion was thoroughly needed. It didn’t seem like that for Yoh, however, as he brushed himself off and chose an easy yet quiet smile to stand by.
“I don’t need to tell you what I’m thinking,” Ren started, looking away.
“Yeah…” Yoh replied, “I’m really sorry. I took matters into my own hands.”
“That’s right,” Continued Ren, his voice uptight. “You’ve saved my life. You should be feeling mighty good.”
Being the savior of the wicked had to taste like grandeur, otherwise why would he keep doing it? Or was he collecting favors, to keep them all as close as he kept Ryu and Faust?
“But all I can feel is guilt,” Ren continued.
“But,” Yoh rebutted, “Should you have died, you wouldn’t have been able to repay your guilt.”
Ren snickered at Yoh’s double-meaning, Yoh giggled right back. Sometimes they knew each other too well.
Another silence followed, but this one was heavier, weighed down by rising anticipation. Yoh stepped closer and carefully bent down to inspect Ren’s vertical scar. At first, it was a casual approach, where Ren off-handedly explained it as a side-effect to Ryu’s interruption during the ritual.
But they were alone.
Yoh took another step, Ren felt his breath catch alongside his. Ren tensed, as he always did, and stepped back. Yoh followed. When the wall stopped their dance, Yoh closed in. Ren didn’t stop him.
One of Yoh’s hands lifted up to open fabric around the scar, to the exposed new tissue, to rapidly rising lungs and a loud, healthy heartbeat. Ren’s eyes focused on that hand, on every twitch and tremble and hesitation.
Ren looked up and, in a second, understood the vision he had upon returning to the world of the living. The next second, and through all the layers of worry, he was witness to Yoh’s brown eyes flashing a hunger that disappeared in the next blink. He longed for it; the care and tenderness that came with his touch; the guidance of a lighthouse in the storm of a life they’d been dealt; the healing from his shy lips. Yoh looked into Ren’s eyes, Ren stared back.
But they were not alone.
With a visible pang, Yoh remembered so, and let his hand fall away in regret. Ren felt confusion; he’d been so close to actually touching him. Yoh squeezed his eyes shut, unable to meet him in the middle anymore. All he could do was turn his head towards the door on the opposing side of the building. Ren followed his lead and — saw Anna, standing by the edge of the cliff, waiting for her fiancé.
Ice set into Ren’s spine but Yoh was only able to clench his fists and, slowly, painfully, step back.
“Though I can no longer become Shaman King, I still owe her the promise we made.”
The deathly stab was nothing against this feeling of emptiness. And Ren understood it plain: The arrangement had been finalized; a life for a life.
Unsure of what or if there was anything to do, Ren stepped back one last time and left Yoh. He once again walked past everybody else. He had to go deal with his inevitable heartbreak in private; he at least owed him that.