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Shiryu is meditating under a tree in the back garden of the manor when he hears footsteps approach. He never likes to be disturbed, but it’s fair enough for someone to join him now, he thinks; he’s been sitting in this spot since before dawn, and now the sun has crept high enough in the sky that the shadow of the tree’s canopy is receding, letting the daylight warm his feet, his shins, his hands where they rest on his knees. He doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that Shun is the one approaching. He’s probably here to try to drag Shiryu back inside for lunch.
“You’re worried,” Shun says in lieu of a greeting or a request, toeing lightly at something on the ground. Not hard enough to actually disturb the dirt. Just for something to do. He’s so gentle, but he gets restless sometimes. This is the wrong line of work for him, Shiryu thinks. A boy like Shun should be painting murals, or teaching martial arts forms to children as an extracurricular instead of an actual matter of life and death. Not… this.
“We’re all worried,” Shiryu says. He doesn’t open his eyes yet, but he does smile slightly. It’s adorably hypocritical of Shun to think that anyone else worries too much, and Shiryu finds himself rather enamored by it. Soothed, almost. Hypocrisy is something that real people do. It’s very human.
Shun makes a noncommittal little noise. “You’re not always like this, though. What’s bothering you?”
Shiryu opens his eyes and looks up at him. Shun is wearing sneakers and jeans and that green hoodie that shrunk in the wash and still fits him because it was too big to begin with, but the pink metal of his gauntlets is peeking out from under the worn-thin cuffs of his sleeves. He’s been paranoid, twitchy, never goes anywhere without some piece of his armor. Shiryu can’t blame him; the only reason he’s not doing the same thing is because, for him, his body is already his weapon, so he has never been afforded a choice about whether or not to bring it with him. Can I be honest with him? Shiryu wonders, and decides—recklessly, selfishly—that the answer is yes. “I don’t like seeing you hurt,” he says.
Shun’s mouth twists into a nervous scowl, and he breaks eye contact and looks off into the distance, embarrassed. “No one likes seeing me hurt, Shiryu. I know what people think of me. You don’t have to rub it in.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” Shiryu says. Shun knows it. They both know that Shun knows it. So why are they talking about it?
The story that people tell goes something like this. Shun clawed his way out of Andromeda Island not because he was brave but because he was scared. He’s weak, pliable, cries easily, misses his brother far too much. He wants the wrong things. People protect him because they pity him. He’s kindhearted because he’s too childish and stupid to know any better; eventually he’ll either grow the fuck up or lie down and die. Pretty boy, always throwing himself on the tracks even when he knows it won’t stop the train.
Shiryu hates that story. He thinks it’s a poor cover for the truth, which is that Shun’s kindness comes from an abundance of wisdom rather than a dearth of it, Shun’s hesitance in combat comes from an awareness of his own lethality rather than a lack of confidence in it, and Shun’s motivations need not be legible in order to be correct and just. But he understands two things. One: on the ordered list of reasons that people believe certain stories rather than others, ‘it was a realistic and plausible explanation of the available facts’ is not particularly close to the top. Two: it is not his place to tell the world how wrong it is about Andromeda Shun.
“I know you don’t. I know,” Shun says. He sighs and lets his head fall forward, chin to his chest, unsettlingly limp. A lock of hair escapes from his messy high ponytail and falls in front of his face, hanging straight down in a perfect loose spiral. Set against the bright blue afternoon sky, the green strands almost look black. They’re shiny, too, a little bit stiffer than they ought to be. Shiryu will probably try to coax him into going for a swim later just because it’ll mean he’ll shower afterwards.
“I saw you fight Black Andromeda.” Shiryu wants to say it, so he does. It’s not exactly what they were talking about, but it’s reachable from where they already are in the conversation.
Shun’s head snaps back up and he looks at Shiryu again. “Oh? Did you.”
Shiryu nods once. He uncrosses his legs and stretches them out in front of him on the ground, uncoiling.
“And?” Shun asks. His gaze tracks Shiryu’s face as Shiryu gathers his feet underneath himself and stands up.
The ground is raised around the base of the tree trunk, roots pushing it up into a little hill, and while Shiryu usually only has a few centimeters of height on Shun, he’s looking down at him now, his chin at the same height as the top of Shun’s head. “‘And’, nothing,” he says, taking a step closer to him so they’re on level ground again. Shun sways slightly towards him, like he wants to lean in for comfort but is still running some sort of calculation about it in his head. “I wish I’d gotten there sooner.”
There’s something eerie about facing someone who looks and moves like you. Shiryu found the experience distressingly intimate; Shun was right there by his side when he faced Black Dragon, but if he had been watching from a distance instead, approaching unnoticed, then Shiryu thinks… well, he thinks he would have wanted to know that Shun had seen the fight, that’s all. He’s returning a favor that he imagines would be given to him if their positions were reversed. Projecting his desires out into the world. Watching Shun fight Black Andromeda had felt like witnessing something private, and carrying that knowledge had started at some point to feel like keeping a secret, so Shiryu wanted to unburden himself of it. It only belatedly occurs to him that this may have been selfish. Perhaps Shun would have preferred to believe that he hadn’t been seen. Well, it’s too late to worry about that now. “Shiryu, please,” Shun says, expression softening, “don’t do that, don’t—you’d already almost died to restore our Cloths. Don’t act like you should’ve fought the whole battle for us too. You did more than enough.”
This has gone on for a long time. Longer than this conversation. Longer than this war. The people they love are always telling them that they’ve done enough, and then providing evidence to the contrary by suffering in ways that they believe they could have prevented. Shiryu is tired of seeing the people he loves in danger. He’s tired of seeing Shun’s blood on the ground. “Next time, I—”
“Stop.”
Shiryu closes his mouth so suddenly that his front teeth click together. This time, he manages to stop himself from saying something selfish. This time, he realizes that the kindest thing he can do is to refrain from making a promise he may not be able to keep. He laughs to break the tension—dry and quiet, little more than a sharp exhale—and looks down at the dirt, suitably cowed. “All right, all right,” he says. “You win.”
They make eye contact again. Shun looks nervous and tentative for a long moment and then slowly settles, like someone who has pulled their hands back after putting the finishing touches on a house of cards and is now becoming more convinced with each passing second that the structure is strong enough to stand on its own. “It really wasn’t so bad,” he says, giving Shiryu a soft smile.
(It was very bad. The chains dug in so tight they tore his clothes. Then, when they tore his skin, little bits of shredded fabric got pushed into the wounds. Shun spent the entire plane ride back from the island staring out the window not even noticing that his body was knitting itself back together with the scraps still inside. They had to be cut out the next morning so they wouldn’t fester. Shiryu knows this because he was the one Shun had entrusted with the scalpel.)
“See,” Shun says, “here,” and Shiryu feels something cold and unforgiving wrap around his wrist.
He looks down. It’s one of Shun’s chains, slithering up his forearm and twining around it. It feels smoother than it looks; he sees individual metal links, but it feels like one sinuous unit as it moves across his skin.
Ah. Shun wants to be reassured that he can touch without hurting. He wants—even if only for a single desperate moment—to pretend he is not dangerous.
The end of the chain dips down and rubs at the back of his hand. It’s the circle chain, free of sharp points. Nonthreatening, Shiryu thinks. Shun has this persistent illusion that as long as he stays on the defensive, he won’t hurt anyone. He is constantly chasing a fantasy of pure reactivity.
Shiryu smiles back at him.
They are both something that slips and weaves and twines itself around another. They both wield a serpentine sort of power.
Maybe it makes them a bad match for each other. Maybe it makes them a perfect one.
Either way, Shiryu can be what he wants right now. “Lead the way,” he says.
Shiryu kneels in the middle of one of the bedrooms in the manor, shirtless but otherwise still dressed. He’s not meditating—not even reaching for a partial application of any of his meditative techniques—but he feels at ease, in the way he always does when he has a task to complete. A liquid waiting to be poured.
“Put your hair up,” Shun says. He’s flitting nervously around the room, orbiting Shiryu like something previously interstellar newly caught in his gravity, clinging to the periphery, but when he presses a large hair clip into Shiryu’s hands, it’s as real and solid as anything is.
“Why?” Shiryu asks. He puts the narrow end of the clip between his teeth so he can use both his hands to gather up his hair and twist it into something manageable.
“So it doesn’t get caught,” Shun says.
Shiryu freezes for a moment as he takes the clip out of his mouth. It’s only the briefest hesitation, but Shun sees it.
“Shiryu?”
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.” How could he even begin to explain it? These kinds of things aren’t supposed to matter. They’re above that. They are untouchable. Aren’t they? They bleed, and break, but things turn out all right in the end. Don’t they? He thinks about how Shun’s chain had felt like one solid coil around his wrist in the garden. He tries to imagine his hair getting caught between the individual links—the sound of a few long strands snapping, or the pinprick pain of them being yanked out at the root—but the thought slips away before he can catch it.
He slides the clip into his hair and fixes it in place. The weight of the bun pulls on the back of his scalp in a way that would eventually turn unpleasant if he were to wear it like that all day, but he doesn’t think they’ll be here for more than an hour or two, so he decides it’s good enough.
Shun kneels next to him. Not behind him to tie him up, or in front of him to face him. Side by side. Like they’re awaiting a punishment together. He leans in and knocks his right shoulder playfully into Shiryu’s left, and then stays like that, propped up against him.
“Are you okay?” Shun asks, resting his head on Shiryu’s shoulder.
Shiryu tilts his head to the side too, resting it against Shun’s. “I’m more okay than you are.”
“Oh,” Shun says. “Okay.”
It seems to be good enough for him. It has to be good enough for him. “Will you kiss me first?” Shiryu asks. They’ve kissed each other plenty of times, but Shun still likes being invited to do it. It’s that fantasy of reactivity again. Shiryu doesn’t mind indulging it. At least now Shun is being prompted to do something nice instead of being prompted to kill.
“Of course.” Shun lifts his head and leans closer against Shiryu’s side. He cups Shiryu’s face gently in one hand, turning it towards him, and presses their lips together.
The kiss is sweet and lazy. Not quite chaste, but not hurried either. “Hey,” Shiryu says quietly when Shun pulls back. It’s hard to resist the urge to smile, when he’s been kissing Shun, so he doesn’t try.
“Hey.” Shun uses his fingertips to brush Shiryu’s bangs to one side, not really succeeding at rearranging them. “You’re cute with your hair up.”
“Oh?” Even though Shiryu is still very young, it’s been a long time since anyone called him cute.
Shun nods. “Mhmm. You should wear it like this more often.”
Shiryu leans in for another kiss, lingering longer this time. “Maybe I will,” he says when they part for air. “Be careful what you wish for. I’ll steal your hair clips.”
“They’re yours if you want them,” Shun says as he stands up, bracing himself with one hand on Shiryu’s shoulder. “I’m sharing. It’s not stealing.”
Shiryu laughs under his breath, acquiescing. He turns his head to one side and then the other as Shun circles around behind him. It feels strange not to have his long hair whispering across his shoulders and back like a blanket.
What feels stranger is Shun’s chains wrapping around his wrists and pulling them together behind his back. He gasps, and then it’s Shun’s turn to laugh fondly. “That okay?” Shun asks.
“Yeah, it’s good.” Shiryu closes his eyes and rolls his shoulders back, ensuring that he’s in a position he won’t mind holding for a little while. Staying still of his own volition is one thing, but being comfortable when he’s held in place requires a different approach.
“I almost…” Shun trails off and clicks his tongue. “No, never mind.”
“Hm?” Shiryu asks. He’s already drifting slightly, seeing nothing but the warm vague light that comes through his eyelids, settling into the pressure. Even if he wanted to escape, which he doesn’t, he knows he wouldn’t make any progress by struggling against what binds him.
The two chains continue wrapping around his forearms. His wrists are bound together, but his forearms aren’t; the chains are working their way up his arms separately, wrapping each of them in metal from wrist to elbow. They’re snug but not unpleasantly tight. It almost feels like wearing his own gauntlets. He can feel the individual links now, tracing their spiral paths along his skin like identical pebbles. “Well, I thought about wrapping your torso, but I decided I didn’t want to cover up your tattoo,” Shun says. “It’s so pretty. You’re pretty.”
Pretty. Another word Shiryu isn’t used to being called. Shun has so much kindness in him, such a unique perspective. How characteristic of him to find beauty in something made for killing. How heartbreaking that he can’t extend that same kindness to himself.
But it hadn’t occurred to Shiryu that Shun wanted to do this so he could look at him. He’d assumed it was all about the control, all about constructing a proof for how a tool of war can be used for something else. The new knowledge sits strangely under his skin, embedding itself alongside the ink. Is he pretty? Sure, why not. He can be pretty—here, now, for Shun.
As he considers the discovery that he’s less comfortable with being appreciated for who—what—he is than he would’ve thought he would be, a wry smile rises to his lips. Now who’s the hypocrite? he chides himself. A close cousin of reactivity is reflectivity. Perhaps he should not be so confused by Shun’s struggles to love himself. Perhaps he and Shun are similar enough that Shiryu can learn new things about himself by becoming more familiar with him.
“Shiryu.” Shun’s voice cuts through the fog, but it doesn’t startle him. Shun kneels and wraps his arms around Shiryu from behind, resting his chin on Shiryu’s shoulder. “What are you thinking about?” he asks, starting to rock them both slightly back and forth.
Shiryu feels comfortable in his arms. He leans back, letting Shun bear some of his weight. “I’ll tell you later,” he says. He likes this moment. He likes the people they both are right now.
“Mm, okay,” Shun says. The warmth of his body is a welcome contrast to the cold metal still binding Shiryu’s arms. “Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise,” Shiryu says. This, at least, is a promise he’ll be able to keep.