Crossover - Snapping Out of Something. [Death Note/Loveless]
Title: Snapping Out of Something.
Fandom: Loveless/Death Note.
Warnings: Weird-crossover, semi-au for Loveless, smut, mild D/s, implied spoilers for Death Note up to page 77, more or less.
Characters/couples: Ritsuka/Soubi, Near, Matt. Mentions of Wammy House.
Summary: There's a reason why he never carries that cellphone, and there's only one reason why Soubi would've taken it to him.
Rating: NC17.
Snapping Out of Something.
Oh my god,
I'm not supposed to say this
'Cause i know that you're trouble but...
Is that your real name and why are you doing this?
And how did i get here?
Ok..no more questions,
No worries
It's destination unknown
So dive in
The waters great
Listen i'm starting to speak like you
"Close Up", Frou Frou
Zack curses under his breath when he sees Soubi sitting by the stairs near his faculty, smoke uncurling from his cigarette. He glances at his clock despite knowing he still has twenty minutes before the next class (minutes that he thought he was going to spend eating something before going inside for a double Philosophy class) before he shakes his head and walks towards Soubi.
"You better have a good excuse," he informs Soubi, taking the cigarette from his lips and taking a drag, then letting it fall down and stomping it off. He pushes his hands inside his coat.
Soubi smiles pleasantly and then offers him a pristine white cellphone. Zack blinks for a moment and then has to fight the urge to curse again. There's a reason why he never carries that cellphone, and there's only one reason why Soubi would've taken it to him.
"I was asked to inform you that they were going to call you again," Soubi says. Zack curses for the third time and glares at Soubi as if he was the responsible for this travesty before turning away from the faculty and towards were Soubi has to have the car.
"You're cutting off classes?"
Zack snorts. His breath curls around him, cotton gray before it washes over him. He's still pissed off, even when he hears Soubi walking behind him, steady.
"Won't make a difference."
***
He glared at the strange man who refused to speak in Japanese. Of course he could understand him. His English might be weak, but he knew enough to know what he was saying. The man that had picked him up from Social Services kept his hand over his shoulder, probably thinking it was supportive.
Roger - the man who had picked him up in Japan and brought him to England - was explaining how his mom had killed herself after her brother died, about his grades, about how unusual his amnesia was. The old man was talking about a school he didn't get the name off, and then about England. Ritsuka only answered when he heard Seimei's name.
"No!" He yelled, glaring at them both. "You don't speak of Seimei."
If anything, this seemed to amuse the other man. He crossed his hands on the table and leaned forward. Ritsuka's glare intensified.
"Well," as he knew it, the man did know Japanese. His accent was terrible and Ritsuka rejoiced a little in the fact that his English was much better than that. "Aren't you a little brave one, making demands like that?"
"You don't speak of my brother. Seimei died and he was good," he was very careful with his words, trying to keep talking as he usually did. "Or I won't help you."
Something shone in the man's eyes and Ritsuka forced himself to keep on looking at him directly to the eyes.
"What makes you think that we need your help?"
"Because you do." Ritsuka was a little surprised by how certain his voice had sounded, but he refused to back down. "You mentioned a school. Roger-san mentioned Seimei. This school might be involved with Seimei's murder, and you want to catch them. I'm your prey."
The man kept on looking at him for a moment before he smiled. Ritsuka blinked at the sudden change, especially when he felt Roger's hand squeezing his shoulder and he looked to both men, curious.
"Good," the man said again. Then he was being walked outside the office while the man back in his office picked up the phone. He could barely hear his name being uttered before the door was closed.
***
The phone rings when Soubi is on his knees, his lips pressed against his navel, his long fingers working open his belt, sliding against his skin, tongue playing with the ring at his bellybutton.
Zack glares at the phone but doesn't move the hand from Soubi's head to show him that he is to carry on.
He picks up the phone and opens it without looking, answering before anything other than static might try to interrupt.
"No."
From the other side of the line, Zack can practically feel the amusement. His glare intensifies and his fingers tighten on the pale strands of Soubi's hair. Soubi gives a soft groan, and the one thing Zack allows of himself is to lift his hips enough for Soubi to get his pants down to free his cock.
"It seems Zack is doing well."
"And that's exactly why I'm saying no," he focuses his glare on his fingers when they start twirling Soubi's hair, forcing them to just curl over the nape of his head, to guide him as Soubi takes him in his mouth and presses his tongue to the underside. It's been years since he has indulged in his childhood habit of copying other people's habits, and he refuses to allow it to surface just because he's talking to someone from said childhood.
"I heard you're working as a freelancer for several newspapers. Does Mr. Agatsuma help you?"
"Shut up," Zack tells the phone, still not hanging up, but he allows himself to close his eyes and enjoy a second of Soubi's hot, wet tongue cradling him, opens his eyes to look at Soubi just to see how his mouth looks stretched with his cock and he smiles a little, reassuringly, possessive. "What do you want, Near?"
***
He was introduced as Zack. He soon realized that it wasn't strange that he had no family name, or that he was Japanese. His roommate was a boy three years younger than him that came from South America, with dark skin and olive green eyes who went by the name of 'Tom'.
At eleven, he was older than many of the kids when they were brought to Wammy, and he was behind most of the classes. Zack spent most of his time the first two years studying, learning as much as he possibly could, gathering information on who and how and what as much as he possibly could. He had no free time whatsoever, but what little he could find, he tried to gather information about Seimei's case, about how he had been murdered. Most files were classified, but that meant, like every kid who had been allowed to stay more than six months in Wammy, that he just had to find the way to hack into the system and get the information.
When he made it to the top ten students, a few weeks short of his thirteenth birthday, he was given a manual camera and a book on how to develop the photos.
A few weeks after he had finally made it to the top five, when he was fourteen, a man named Soubi appeared in Wammy House.
***
"Oh for fuck's sake, Zack, it's four o' fuck A.M. " Matt groans but he's only pretending about half of the annoyance. There's loud music playing on the background.
Zack smiles, lighting a cigarette and turning a moment to look towards Soubi, but the older man is still sprawled on top of the bed, face first, uncovered, and Zack follows the naked, elegant line of his back and ass before he lets out the smoke.
"Interrupting?"
"Nah," but Zack knows how every one of the top five hates getting these calls. Not that they had before; without a real L, they had all been mostly free in this world Kira was mutilating, just blending in as best as they could, keeping to the shadows and just turning from the conversations that featured the megalomaniac that was conquering the world. "So. What's up?"
"I was told that an old friend of yours was near your area," Zack says. He takes another drag of the smoke before he pressed it against an ashtray, keeping the phone pressed between his shoulder and ear as moved to the closet, searching for something a Japanese boy his age with a crush on a Gothic Lolita-esque model would wear, finally taking out a pair of Soubi's leather trousers; one of his own shirts'll work. "And I thought maybe you'd want to give him a hand."
"Uh-huh. Is he trying to surprise me, then?" The music grows fainter. Matt seems to be walking out of wherever he is.
Zack pauses a moment as he struggles with the damn leather, making the mental note to order Soubi to eat more and smoke less, but finally it clings to his hips as a second skin. He'll have to wear boots, though, or he'll drag about two inches of them.
"Oh, you'll be surprised alright," he agrees, still moving through the loft. Even if Soubi is awake, he won't move until the call has been over, he knows. And then he'll have to order him not to follow. "You know the kind of parties he likes."
"Uh-huh. Man, I don't want to have to bail him out of jail again," Matt murmurs, but Zack can't help but smile at the unsaid worry.
He takes out shirt after shirt, finally taking out some mesh and one of his old, worn, soft button-down shirts, letting most of the buttons open except two at the middle. It's smaller than he thought and it's a little uncomfortable, but let it all be for the sake of justice.
"I'm sure that once he mellows out, he'll thank you," Zack assures, picking up a dog-collar, a few crosses Soubi had bought once and he had decided to keep as a memento, an old eyeliner that he's begging works, not fancying much having to buy another one for his costume, and he's ever so glad that one of the girls he took the picture for recently left a gloss that he never returned.
"And what are you doing now, then?"
Their voice is friendly, calm. If they were to get their emails hacked, there are several mails from Matt in his system, enough to betray a deep and honest friendship, wondering about girls, school, jobs, family, life.
It's the first time they've spoken since they left Wammy.
"Ah, you know," Zack says, sitting down over the bed. Only then Soubi moves, silent as a shadow as he wraps his arms around him, chin against his shoulder; he can feel his breath against his neck. Zack moves a hand to touch the spill of hair that falls over his shoulder, fingers rubbing against Soubi's hair. "Star-gazing."
***
Zack lost his coolness when the man spoke of Seimei and he was barely refrained by Roger. The man, Soubi, said he had known his brother and that he had been waiting for Ritsuka (and how strange it was, after so many months, to hear his given name in a Japanese accented voice) and, when Ritsuka didn't come for him, he went to search for him.
The one good thing about Soubi appearing is that he finally started getting some answers about his brother's case, since all he had gathered over the three years in Wammy had been merely speculation, theories that he couldn't prove and which remained locked.
But then Roger told him about the chances of Seimei still alive, Seimei having pretended his death to try to take over the Seven Moons, the organization that supposedly killed him. Soubi said nothing about that, refused to talk about what happened in that 'school' and only seemed apologetic about that when Ritsuka asked him, whispering to him with a soft look over his eyes that he had been ordered not to say anything.
The part of him that remained Ritsuka, that had been Ritsuka just because of Seimei, refused to believe what he was being told. The part that he had come to understand as Zack still tried to find a way out, but possibilities and theories run through his brain and he realized that there was a high chance that Seimei was still alive.
"I need to see it," Zack had said, because the odds where so very wrong and yet they pointed to the fact that his brother might have lied to him and if that was it, Zack knew it had to be him the one to bring him to justice, not the police and not L. Not a random stranger.
Roger hadn't said yes, but Zack had readied his thing, had drilled Soubi for as much information as the older man had been able to give (was he brainwashed, perhaps? Surely that was it. Conditioned. He had had his free will almost completely stolen, it seemed), packed a few things and waited for Roger to contact L. Zack was almost sure that L had predicted this from the moment he had come to Wammy.
The last thing he did before leaving England with Soubi, taking a plane towards his home country, was take pictures of the people he had spent three years around. He knew that, happened what happened in Japan, he wasn't coming back to Wammy ever again.
***
When he comes back to the loft, six days after he called Matt, with the sun creeping inside through the wide windows, barely disturbed by the canvas Soubi is currently working on, Soubi isn't there. Zack lets his things fall down as he walks, drops his bag and jacket and keys and the many chains he had wrapped around his wrists without a care, just sitting on the edge of the bed to take off the damn boots and then he rolls on the bed to be face down. He should take off the rest of his clothes, take a bath, wash away the last few days, ready to forget.
Instead he moves to sit down again, pushes his bangs away from his, face picks up the cellphone that he had dropped by the side of the bed and dials the one number registered there and informs Near what little he had learned from Amane Misa, about her relationship with Yagami Light, about them returning to Japan, says what he had thought about her until there's nothing there but tiredness.
"I see," He hears Near's voice and something falls down on the other side of the line. He should've guessed Near still played with toys. "I appreciate your help, Zack."
"I still want my money," Zack says, hoping that his voice just sounds tired after the trip and not tired after having been on the edge of adrenaline for so long, trying not to think how outside he had been, of the fact that if Kira had been looking closely, he'd be dead. "Or even better, for you not to call again."
"Of course you'll have your money, Zack," Near answers instead. Zack feels the edge of hysteria trying to creep along his spine and he forces himself to breath, closing his other hand tightly, makes himself to stop shaking.
"Good." He doubts a moment but then decides, what the heck. "Oi, just wondering... you still have that picture of Mello I took?"
There's a faint sound then, and he wonders if this, too, amused Near but Near doesn't say anything as he hangs up and it's by sheer stubborness that Zack forces himself to stand up and put the phone back to charge instead of throwing it away. He has to give it to Soubi, knows that it's the only way he won't be expecting it to ring all day, everyday, because if Soubi has it he can believe he's safe and he can believe that nothing will happen, and he doesn't care if that makes him weak.
He leans against the wall when his legs start to tremble.
Soubi catches him before he falls to the floor, silently takes him to the bathroom and keeps his hair out of his face as he vomits nothing but water, helps him to the bed and undresses him with quick, deft fingers, never asking a question, brings him a glass of water to wash the taste of bile off his mouth and then cleans him with cool, wet clothes, erasing the mark of eyeliner from beneath his eyes, moving so softly that the only thing Zack is able to do is look at him with wide, violet eyes.
When he pulls at his wrist, Soubi goes willingly, falling on the bed by his side; Zack rolls on top of him and tells himself that Soubi's eyes aren't empty anymore, not like they had been when Soubi had killed Seimei after Seimei had tried to kill him, that they aren't as empty as they were for months afterwards.
That they aren't empty the way Misa's eyes had been.
Soubi lets him kiss him and kisses back, helps him take off his clothes and glasses but otherwise remains unmoving, knowing what Zack needs, just gasping sweetly as Zack licks at the scars his brother had left over his skin, calls his name and makes Soubi beg for his touch and then he sinks into him, and Soubi keeps looking at him, only at him, and Zack tries not to wonder if now he looks that much like Seimei, tries not to wonder why Soubi decided to stay with him even after the Seven Moons was dissolved and the headmasters sent to prison and Seimei was six feet underground. Soubi's eyes only close as he comes. Zack follows him a few moments after, arms trembling before he collapses on top of Soubi.
"Tell me," Zack begs, still breathless, pressing his face against Soubi's chest, still inside him. Soubi's arms curl around his back and his legs wrap around his hips and Zack closes his eyes, trembling.
"I love you," Soubi whispers. Zack shudders at his voice, clings tighter to him. "Ritsuka, I love you."
He almost believes him.
Fandom: Loveless/Death Note.
Warnings: Weird-crossover, semi-au for Loveless, smut, mild D/s, implied spoilers for Death Note up to page 77, more or less.
Characters/couples: Ritsuka/Soubi, Near, Matt. Mentions of Wammy House.
Summary: There's a reason why he never carries that cellphone, and there's only one reason why Soubi would've taken it to him.
Rating: NC17.
Snapping Out of Something.
Oh my god,
I'm not supposed to say this
'Cause i know that you're trouble but...
Is that your real name and why are you doing this?
And how did i get here?
Ok..no more questions,
No worries
It's destination unknown
So dive in
The waters great
Listen i'm starting to speak like you
"Close Up", Frou Frou
Zack curses under his breath when he sees Soubi sitting by the stairs near his faculty, smoke uncurling from his cigarette. He glances at his clock despite knowing he still has twenty minutes before the next class (minutes that he thought he was going to spend eating something before going inside for a double Philosophy class) before he shakes his head and walks towards Soubi.
"You better have a good excuse," he informs Soubi, taking the cigarette from his lips and taking a drag, then letting it fall down and stomping it off. He pushes his hands inside his coat.
Soubi smiles pleasantly and then offers him a pristine white cellphone. Zack blinks for a moment and then has to fight the urge to curse again. There's a reason why he never carries that cellphone, and there's only one reason why Soubi would've taken it to him.
"I was asked to inform you that they were going to call you again," Soubi says. Zack curses for the third time and glares at Soubi as if he was the responsible for this travesty before turning away from the faculty and towards were Soubi has to have the car.
"You're cutting off classes?"
Zack snorts. His breath curls around him, cotton gray before it washes over him. He's still pissed off, even when he hears Soubi walking behind him, steady.
"Won't make a difference."
***
He glared at the strange man who refused to speak in Japanese. Of course he could understand him. His English might be weak, but he knew enough to know what he was saying. The man that had picked him up from Social Services kept his hand over his shoulder, probably thinking it was supportive.
Roger - the man who had picked him up in Japan and brought him to England - was explaining how his mom had killed herself after her brother died, about his grades, about how unusual his amnesia was. The old man was talking about a school he didn't get the name off, and then about England. Ritsuka only answered when he heard Seimei's name.
"No!" He yelled, glaring at them both. "You don't speak of Seimei."
If anything, this seemed to amuse the other man. He crossed his hands on the table and leaned forward. Ritsuka's glare intensified.
"Well," as he knew it, the man did know Japanese. His accent was terrible and Ritsuka rejoiced a little in the fact that his English was much better than that. "Aren't you a little brave one, making demands like that?"
"You don't speak of my brother. Seimei died and he was good," he was very careful with his words, trying to keep talking as he usually did. "Or I won't help you."
Something shone in the man's eyes and Ritsuka forced himself to keep on looking at him directly to the eyes.
"What makes you think that we need your help?"
"Because you do." Ritsuka was a little surprised by how certain his voice had sounded, but he refused to back down. "You mentioned a school. Roger-san mentioned Seimei. This school might be involved with Seimei's murder, and you want to catch them. I'm your prey."
The man kept on looking at him for a moment before he smiled. Ritsuka blinked at the sudden change, especially when he felt Roger's hand squeezing his shoulder and he looked to both men, curious.
"Good," the man said again. Then he was being walked outside the office while the man back in his office picked up the phone. He could barely hear his name being uttered before the door was closed.
***
The phone rings when Soubi is on his knees, his lips pressed against his navel, his long fingers working open his belt, sliding against his skin, tongue playing with the ring at his bellybutton.
Zack glares at the phone but doesn't move the hand from Soubi's head to show him that he is to carry on.
He picks up the phone and opens it without looking, answering before anything other than static might try to interrupt.
"No."
From the other side of the line, Zack can practically feel the amusement. His glare intensifies and his fingers tighten on the pale strands of Soubi's hair. Soubi gives a soft groan, and the one thing Zack allows of himself is to lift his hips enough for Soubi to get his pants down to free his cock.
"It seems Zack is doing well."
"And that's exactly why I'm saying no," he focuses his glare on his fingers when they start twirling Soubi's hair, forcing them to just curl over the nape of his head, to guide him as Soubi takes him in his mouth and presses his tongue to the underside. It's been years since he has indulged in his childhood habit of copying other people's habits, and he refuses to allow it to surface just because he's talking to someone from said childhood.
"I heard you're working as a freelancer for several newspapers. Does Mr. Agatsuma help you?"
"Shut up," Zack tells the phone, still not hanging up, but he allows himself to close his eyes and enjoy a second of Soubi's hot, wet tongue cradling him, opens his eyes to look at Soubi just to see how his mouth looks stretched with his cock and he smiles a little, reassuringly, possessive. "What do you want, Near?"
***
He was introduced as Zack. He soon realized that it wasn't strange that he had no family name, or that he was Japanese. His roommate was a boy three years younger than him that came from South America, with dark skin and olive green eyes who went by the name of 'Tom'.
At eleven, he was older than many of the kids when they were brought to Wammy, and he was behind most of the classes. Zack spent most of his time the first two years studying, learning as much as he possibly could, gathering information on who and how and what as much as he possibly could. He had no free time whatsoever, but what little he could find, he tried to gather information about Seimei's case, about how he had been murdered. Most files were classified, but that meant, like every kid who had been allowed to stay more than six months in Wammy, that he just had to find the way to hack into the system and get the information.
When he made it to the top ten students, a few weeks short of his thirteenth birthday, he was given a manual camera and a book on how to develop the photos.
A few weeks after he had finally made it to the top five, when he was fourteen, a man named Soubi appeared in Wammy House.
***
"Oh for fuck's sake, Zack, it's four o' fuck A.M. " Matt groans but he's only pretending about half of the annoyance. There's loud music playing on the background.
Zack smiles, lighting a cigarette and turning a moment to look towards Soubi, but the older man is still sprawled on top of the bed, face first, uncovered, and Zack follows the naked, elegant line of his back and ass before he lets out the smoke.
"Interrupting?"
"Nah," but Zack knows how every one of the top five hates getting these calls. Not that they had before; without a real L, they had all been mostly free in this world Kira was mutilating, just blending in as best as they could, keeping to the shadows and just turning from the conversations that featured the megalomaniac that was conquering the world. "So. What's up?"
"I was told that an old friend of yours was near your area," Zack says. He takes another drag of the smoke before he pressed it against an ashtray, keeping the phone pressed between his shoulder and ear as moved to the closet, searching for something a Japanese boy his age with a crush on a Gothic Lolita-esque model would wear, finally taking out a pair of Soubi's leather trousers; one of his own shirts'll work. "And I thought maybe you'd want to give him a hand."
"Uh-huh. Is he trying to surprise me, then?" The music grows fainter. Matt seems to be walking out of wherever he is.
Zack pauses a moment as he struggles with the damn leather, making the mental note to order Soubi to eat more and smoke less, but finally it clings to his hips as a second skin. He'll have to wear boots, though, or he'll drag about two inches of them.
"Oh, you'll be surprised alright," he agrees, still moving through the loft. Even if Soubi is awake, he won't move until the call has been over, he knows. And then he'll have to order him not to follow. "You know the kind of parties he likes."
"Uh-huh. Man, I don't want to have to bail him out of jail again," Matt murmurs, but Zack can't help but smile at the unsaid worry.
He takes out shirt after shirt, finally taking out some mesh and one of his old, worn, soft button-down shirts, letting most of the buttons open except two at the middle. It's smaller than he thought and it's a little uncomfortable, but let it all be for the sake of justice.
"I'm sure that once he mellows out, he'll thank you," Zack assures, picking up a dog-collar, a few crosses Soubi had bought once and he had decided to keep as a memento, an old eyeliner that he's begging works, not fancying much having to buy another one for his costume, and he's ever so glad that one of the girls he took the picture for recently left a gloss that he never returned.
"And what are you doing now, then?"
Their voice is friendly, calm. If they were to get their emails hacked, there are several mails from Matt in his system, enough to betray a deep and honest friendship, wondering about girls, school, jobs, family, life.
It's the first time they've spoken since they left Wammy.
"Ah, you know," Zack says, sitting down over the bed. Only then Soubi moves, silent as a shadow as he wraps his arms around him, chin against his shoulder; he can feel his breath against his neck. Zack moves a hand to touch the spill of hair that falls over his shoulder, fingers rubbing against Soubi's hair. "Star-gazing."
***
Zack lost his coolness when the man spoke of Seimei and he was barely refrained by Roger. The man, Soubi, said he had known his brother and that he had been waiting for Ritsuka (and how strange it was, after so many months, to hear his given name in a Japanese accented voice) and, when Ritsuka didn't come for him, he went to search for him.
The one good thing about Soubi appearing is that he finally started getting some answers about his brother's case, since all he had gathered over the three years in Wammy had been merely speculation, theories that he couldn't prove and which remained locked.
But then Roger told him about the chances of Seimei still alive, Seimei having pretended his death to try to take over the Seven Moons, the organization that supposedly killed him. Soubi said nothing about that, refused to talk about what happened in that 'school' and only seemed apologetic about that when Ritsuka asked him, whispering to him with a soft look over his eyes that he had been ordered not to say anything.
The part of him that remained Ritsuka, that had been Ritsuka just because of Seimei, refused to believe what he was being told. The part that he had come to understand as Zack still tried to find a way out, but possibilities and theories run through his brain and he realized that there was a high chance that Seimei was still alive.
"I need to see it," Zack had said, because the odds where so very wrong and yet they pointed to the fact that his brother might have lied to him and if that was it, Zack knew it had to be him the one to bring him to justice, not the police and not L. Not a random stranger.
Roger hadn't said yes, but Zack had readied his thing, had drilled Soubi for as much information as the older man had been able to give (was he brainwashed, perhaps? Surely that was it. Conditioned. He had had his free will almost completely stolen, it seemed), packed a few things and waited for Roger to contact L. Zack was almost sure that L had predicted this from the moment he had come to Wammy.
The last thing he did before leaving England with Soubi, taking a plane towards his home country, was take pictures of the people he had spent three years around. He knew that, happened what happened in Japan, he wasn't coming back to Wammy ever again.
***
When he comes back to the loft, six days after he called Matt, with the sun creeping inside through the wide windows, barely disturbed by the canvas Soubi is currently working on, Soubi isn't there. Zack lets his things fall down as he walks, drops his bag and jacket and keys and the many chains he had wrapped around his wrists without a care, just sitting on the edge of the bed to take off the damn boots and then he rolls on the bed to be face down. He should take off the rest of his clothes, take a bath, wash away the last few days, ready to forget.
Instead he moves to sit down again, pushes his bangs away from his, face picks up the cellphone that he had dropped by the side of the bed and dials the one number registered there and informs Near what little he had learned from Amane Misa, about her relationship with Yagami Light, about them returning to Japan, says what he had thought about her until there's nothing there but tiredness.
"I see," He hears Near's voice and something falls down on the other side of the line. He should've guessed Near still played with toys. "I appreciate your help, Zack."
"I still want my money," Zack says, hoping that his voice just sounds tired after the trip and not tired after having been on the edge of adrenaline for so long, trying not to think how outside he had been, of the fact that if Kira had been looking closely, he'd be dead. "Or even better, for you not to call again."
"Of course you'll have your money, Zack," Near answers instead. Zack feels the edge of hysteria trying to creep along his spine and he forces himself to breath, closing his other hand tightly, makes himself to stop shaking.
"Good." He doubts a moment but then decides, what the heck. "Oi, just wondering... you still have that picture of Mello I took?"
There's a faint sound then, and he wonders if this, too, amused Near but Near doesn't say anything as he hangs up and it's by sheer stubborness that Zack forces himself to stand up and put the phone back to charge instead of throwing it away. He has to give it to Soubi, knows that it's the only way he won't be expecting it to ring all day, everyday, because if Soubi has it he can believe he's safe and he can believe that nothing will happen, and he doesn't care if that makes him weak.
He leans against the wall when his legs start to tremble.
- He had to thank Soubi because it was only because of him that he still could get a Japanese accent, and Amane Misa hadn't doubted him at all when he had begged for an autograph because he was so sad here in America, so lonely, and if he could have Misa-Misa's autograph then he'd be the luckiest boy in the world --
"I never found out who killed my brother," he had said, voice low as he clenched his hands over his thighs, shaking, trying not to think on Seimei being killed by one bullet Soubi had used, trying not to think on the gun his brother had tried to point at him. Instead he had looked towards her and he had known his eyes seemed liquid. "... so now, I just pray that Lord Kira killed them, too!" --
"Aoyagi Ritsuka!" he had answered, first time since he was eleven that he had offered his name voluntarily but he knew he had to be honest, and he had flushed as Misa giggled and gave him a signed photo and a picture, wishing him to find a girlfriend as cute as she was. "Oh, no, not as cute, not possible. Second-cute only!"--
Soubi catches him before he falls to the floor, silently takes him to the bathroom and keeps his hair out of his face as he vomits nothing but water, helps him to the bed and undresses him with quick, deft fingers, never asking a question, brings him a glass of water to wash the taste of bile off his mouth and then cleans him with cool, wet clothes, erasing the mark of eyeliner from beneath his eyes, moving so softly that the only thing Zack is able to do is look at him with wide, violet eyes.
When he pulls at his wrist, Soubi goes willingly, falling on the bed by his side; Zack rolls on top of him and tells himself that Soubi's eyes aren't empty anymore, not like they had been when Soubi had killed Seimei after Seimei had tried to kill him, that they aren't as empty as they were for months afterwards.
That they aren't empty the way Misa's eyes had been.
Soubi lets him kiss him and kisses back, helps him take off his clothes and glasses but otherwise remains unmoving, knowing what Zack needs, just gasping sweetly as Zack licks at the scars his brother had left over his skin, calls his name and makes Soubi beg for his touch and then he sinks into him, and Soubi keeps looking at him, only at him, and Zack tries not to wonder if now he looks that much like Seimei, tries not to wonder why Soubi decided to stay with him even after the Seven Moons was dissolved and the headmasters sent to prison and Seimei was six feet underground. Soubi's eyes only close as he comes. Zack follows him a few moments after, arms trembling before he collapses on top of Soubi.
"Tell me," Zack begs, still breathless, pressing his face against Soubi's chest, still inside him. Soubi's arms curl around his back and his legs wrap around his hips and Zack closes his eyes, trembling.
"I love you," Soubi whispers. Zack shudders at his voice, clings tighter to him. "Ritsuka, I love you."
He almost believes him.