Chapter Text
Hiori was running.
His muscles ached. Burned. Ten more minutes. That was what the voices in his ears insisted. Ten more minutes! Then he could stop sprinting, stop putting himself through this torment and go back to his video games. The female voice on his left shoulder spat and hissed if he dared to slow down, dared to nurture his sore feet or dared to give his straining lungs a rest. The male voice on his right shoulder snarled with gruff insults when tears welled up in his eyes, threatening to roll down his cheeks.
Ten more minutes.
But that ten minutes was never over. It was as if there were a stopwatch hanging over his head, automatically resetting every time a single minute ticked down. It wouldn’t end, not here. Not in this inky expanse of wherever the hell he was.
Was he even anywhere at all?
Did it matter?
And then, he was suddenly small. Six years old. Those same voices were arguing somewhere, ever-present. They threw taunts and jeers at each other, ignoring their own son standing terrified only a few feet away. All he could do was run. For once, that horrific regime of never-ending drills was good for something. He was running. Running.
Falling.
Perhaps it was a good thing that he fell? After all, if he could no longer run, no longer kick a football, he was useless to these people. They could finally give up on him. Let him go. The stairs of his family home cascaded past him, each one holding the memory of every time he’d climbed it, every time he’d been forced to run up and down them as punishment for not beating a personal best.
The hardwood floor collided with his back. A scream might have bubbled in his throat but he didn’t hear it. He heard nothing. He was free…
Thorn-like arms seized him. “Call an ambulance!”
Ah… right, he thought. It didn’t go like that…
He would never be free. No matter how much he wanted it. No matter how many times he failed to make the A-team in his district’s youth football club, his parents had this messed up delusion that he was somehow the best. Their voices poisoned his every move, cursing him when he didn’t train and heaping on piles of empty praise whenever he did choose to bend to their wishes.
Run.
That’s what they’d trained him to do like a loyal dog. Keep running. Never stop. Never look back.
And so, he was running. The empty abyss of nothingness swallowed him — his safety. If he stayed here, letting the sting of lactic acid in his muscles spur him onwards all the more, perhaps he could outrun his parents one day? There had to be some place in this world where he could be free from their hold…
Strong hands grasped his shoulders. Those vile voices were only a few feet behind him.
It was hopeless. No amount of running could get rid of them. They were here. Behind him. In front of him. Inside his head. Nowhere was safe. Nowhere was free.
He screamed.
-—-
“Hiori!”
Strong hands gripped his shoulders. They clutched him tight, holding him steady.
His mouth hung open in a silent scream, the echoes of an actual cry snatched away. His eyes were so wide they hurt, straining in the darkness of his bedroom. Sweat stuck his nightshirt to his chest and back, sweltering, and his hair was plastered against his temples in matted layers.
It wasn’t his parents holding onto him. No, they were long gone.
Thank fuck.
Rin’s grip remained fixed. Purposeful. “Hiori,” he repeated. That was all he said, over and over, his eyes never once leaving Hiori’s gaze. “Hiori.”
Deep breaths. That was what Hiori needed to focus on. Deep breaths and those beautiful, teal eyes. For a while he was still, the only sound being his breath coursing in and out. Then, the trembling set in. His head lulled forwards into the crook of Rin’s neck, burying into his boyfriend’s shoulder as shaking hands found their way around Rin’s torso.
Rin had never been the best at comfort. Hiori knew that. They both did. Nevertheless, Rin brought his own arms around Hiori, hugging him close in an awkward way, tense and squeezing too tight. “It was just a dream,” he muttered. “It wasn’t real.”
For a while they just remained like that. The quiet was their truest ally. With every passing moment, the trembling subsided. The truth of reality settled more and more until it was undeniable — Hiori was in his college dorm room, hugging his boyfriend, having not seen or spoken to his parents for almost two and a half years.
He was free. He’d long since run far enough away from them.
The longer the silence went on though, the more a sense of guilt started to weigh in Hiori’s mind. He and Rin didn’t sleep in the same room. This wasn’t an apartment, just on-campus student housing (it was a miracle that they’d managed to snag rooms on the same corridor, given that Rin was still just a second year). Tonight, Rin had been pulling an all-nighter to finish his most recent coding assignment. Every single person taking computer science knew how unforgiving their professor was about this particular topic.
Hiori loosened his grip. “I’m distractin’ ya,” he said. “Ya should get back to work.”
Rin didn’t leave though. For a long time, he didn’t move. Then, he pulled away… only to nudge Hiori over a little. He laid himself down on the side of the bed he always settled with when he stayed in here. “Don’t tell me what to do. It’s not like I’ll be able to concentrate with you like this.”
“But yer work-“
“If Ego gets pissy at me for submitting it late then I’ll get pissy right back. Come on,” Rin sighed. “No more excuses.”
There wasn’t any point in trying to get Rin to change his mind. Once he’d decided he wanted to do something, there was no talking him out of it. And so, Hiori exhaled a long, deep breath and eased himself down into Rin’s arms. He rested his head on Rin’s chest, listening to the gentle thump of Rin's heartbeat and taking in his comforting, now-familiar scent.
“Yer so gonna get sent to the dean,” he mumbled, “if Ego doesn’t sentence ya to death himself.”
Rin shrugged. “Family tradition.”
“Sae got deaned too?”
“Dean Buratsuta fucking hated Sae.”
“More than you do?”
Rin paused. “No.”
Hiori chuckled. “So yer still the number one Itoshi Sae hater?”
“No one will ever hate that bastard as much as me.”
It was nice, the two of them laying there, talking in the darkness about whatever came to their minds. The nightmare drifted further away with each passing minute while they talked about random things, all spoken on tired lips ebbing in and out of complete consciousness. They talked about ideas for coding and dumb stories from various club outings and drinking parties, not that either of them were massively social people. They also suggested potential future date spots to each other — Hiori had recently discovered a small, family-owned place only about fifteen minutes away that specialised in ochazuke.
From time to time, they settled into periods of silence. In these moments, Hiori’s eyelids fluttered shut and he nuzzled into Rin’s body. Sleep didn’t come to him though. In fact, whenever he began to feel himself slipping, those horrible dreams — those horrible memories — flashed in the back fo his mind and he lurched awake again. Only the safe confines of Rin’s arms guided him back to reality. After it happened for a third time, he felt Rin’s thumb stroke slow, circular motions around his shoulder.
“Will you be okay when I’m gone?” Rin asked.
Hiori opened his eyes again, turning his chin upwards to squint at Rin's face. “The internship orientation thing?” he asked. “Ya don’t leave until this weekend, right?”
Rin wasn’t looking at him, instead glaring at the ceiling. “I just,” he sighed, “I don’t want you to…” He was being very picky with this words.
Hiori could tell because Rin wasn’t usually like this. Rin didn’t give a shit what kinds of insults came out of his mouth and he didn’t care if he offended anyone by accident. It was a reassuring bluntness, one that Hiori found a strange comfort in. At the very least, it was a million times better having someone in his life who was honest instead of someone who pretended to love him for the sake of personal gain. That no-nonsense demeanour was one of the first things that had drawn him to Rin over a year ago.
So for Rin to be this hung up about what he might say next, this situation was weighing on him hard.
Hiori squeezed Rin’s waist. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “This was just a one-night thing.” That was a lie but he wasn't going to tell Rin any time soon.
“You’re sure?”
“Mhmm.” Hiori paused for a moment. “It… it was my parents.”
Rin tensed. His grip on Hiori’s body tightened. “Did they call you or something? I’ll fucking kill them.”
“No no,” Hiori said quickly, “nothin' like that. It was just a bad dream, like ya said.”
Hiori had told Rin bits and pieces about his family life. He’d talked about the false love, how he’d often had his gaming consoles confiscated for weeks on end because he’d failed to win a football match, and how he’d felt like he’d had to be some sort of magical glue keeping his family together.
There were bits he didn’t talk about though. The parts he found too horrible to revisit. The days he’d spent training until he threw up. The nights he’d cried himself to sleep from overhearing the arguments going on downstairs. The never-ending, all-encompassing loneliness that had come with not being allowed to make friends. Those were the things clawing their ways back to him tonight, things that he would run from for the rest of his life.
Things that were in the past forever. He was never seeing those bastards who’d called themselves his parents ever again. It was coming up on three years. One day, he was going to graduate with a degree in computer science and head off to a whole new world of possibilities. Nothing could hold him back now. Things were getting better day by day.
He leaned upwards, planting a soft kiss on Rin’s jaw. “I’ll be fine this weekend,” he said. “Don’t worry ‘bout me, 'kay?”
Rin looked at him. “I’m not worried,” he mumbled before dipping his head down and brushing his lips over Hiori’s.
“Yer such a bad liar,” Hiori whispered in return, closing the rest of the gap between them.
The first kiss was brief. Chaste. They pulled back after only a few seconds. That was all the time necessary for a familiar, loving warmth to bloom in Hiori’s chest though. He felt a dopey smile spreading across his lips, probably rather silly looking. He didn’t care. He simply leaned back in for more, again and again, revelling in the closeness of it all. He cupped Rin’s cheeks as if he were holding a sacred effigy, gentle and delicate.
And just like all the other times they’d done this, Rin reciprocated with clear intent. He was calmer. More careful. One hand carded through Hiori’s hair, the other inching down Hiori’s side to rest on his hip. It was honestly hard to believe this was his first relationship. He was so attentive of the smallest details. So thorough. So safe. Sure, in the outside world he was an argumentative loner-wannabe who started fights about the dumbest things. In here thought, concealed by the darkness and bedroom walls, he was Hiori’s haven. Hiori’s lifeline. Perhaps others would find it strange, unbelievable even with Rin being the way he was, but it was the truth.
They remained like that for a while, dipping in and out of increasingly eager kisses and soft touches but never taking things further. That didn’t need to happen tonight. This was enough. After pulling back for the fifth or sixth time, Hiori had lost count, he bumped their foreheads together with a hum. “Ya staying here all night, then?”
“Might as well.”
“Ego’s gonna kill ya.”
“The lanky bastard couldn’t kill me if he tried,” Rin flopped his head back down onto the pillow. “What’s he gonna do? Strangle me with those toothpick arms?”
“I reckon he could bite,” Hiori nudged himself up a bit, resting his chin on his hand and gazing down. “Have ya seen his teeth? Straight outta a zombie movie.”
“The worst zombie movie ever.”
Hiori reached out, stroking a stray hair out of Rin’s face. “I’d call it ideal castin’ personally.”
“That stupid four-eyes can’t act for shit.”
“Ya don’t know that.”
“He’s a fucking compsci professor,” Rin rolled his eyes. “I doubt he even knows what a theatre is.”
Hiori laid down in Rin’s arms again, pulling the comforter over both of them. He was definitely feeling better now. Who knew all it took was a cuddle, a kiss and a silly conversation with his bootleg edgelord boyfriend at three in the morning? Whatever shitty memories had been trying to worm their way into his subconscious, they didn’t matter.
He nudged himself in closer, yawning. “I’m sleepy.”
As if in response, an arm found its way around him, pulling him in. “Then sleep.”
At last, he’d probably be able to. Like this, enveloped in safety and solace, he could let the throes of sleep take over once more. There were no horrific voices waiting for him anymore. No echoes of the parents he hated so much. Instead there were teal eyes gazing into his, mindful hands holding his own and the distant sound of a tide flowing in and out against a far off sea shore.