Uh, happy holidays.
Title: Bruises
Fandom: Eyeshield 21
Characters: Unsui, Hiruma
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,647
Summary: Hiruma confronts Unsui at a post-Christmas Bowl party and discovers some unsettling things.
Warnings: Language, inexplicit discussion of violence and rape
Author's Note: Do you ever have one of those ideas that depresses you, but that you can't get out of your head? Yeah. I tried to give it a hopeful ending.
The problem about wanting to be alone, Unsui has found, is that circumstances often conspire to make it impossible.
He hears footsteps and a metallic click, and when he looks up, Hiruma is leaning against the back of the shed beside him, lighting a cigarette. “Gonna tell me what you’re doing back here, Fucking Chew Toy?”
Unsui winces, and he wishes he hadn’t because he knows Hiruma noticed. Chew toy. Deadly accuracy: a quarterback’s greatest attribute. “Just…getting away from the party,” he responds, shrugging, and he knows that Hiruma knows that isn’t all.
A moment, long and filled with the faraway sounds of post-Christmas Bowl celebration, passes without comment. Unsui wonders if he ought to stand up. He feels small, hunched against the back of the storage shed with his elbows propped on his knees, staring at the ground. But he can’t bring himself to look up. He’s seen Hiruma before, and knows that pensive expression, the one that betrays nothing and seeks nothing, staring into open air as if contemplating something dull and unrelated. He convinces himself that if he looks at the grass long enough, Hiruma will go away.
“Fucked you up pretty good, didn’t he?” Hiruma says at length, and Unsui flinches again. He wants to make some sarcastic remark about how true that is, or at least about how that’s none of Hiruma’s business.
What he does say is “Who?” in his best imitation of unconcerned innocence. Hiruma snorts and flicks some ash into the grass.
“Fucking Dreads. Kicked your ass earlier, right?”
Oh, is that all, Unsui wants to say. That’s nothing. That happens all the time. More often, recently, since Agon tasted defeat and found it a bitter pill, but Unsui can handle it. He isn’t gifted, but he’s strong enough for some things.
“He was…angry,” Unsui says quietly, but that sounds wrong; it sounds like betrayal. “I mean he was upset,” he tries again, “because of the game. He’ll get over it. He just…needed to let off some steam.” He shrugs, and adds “I don’t mind.”
Hiruma flicks more ash, this time an angry gesture. “You say shit like that every time somebody asks you about your fucking bruises?” he asks, curt and derisive. “Or do you just say you fell down some fucking stairs?”
Unsui refuses to look up; refuses to get angry. It’s his business, not this…this foul-mouthed, invasive delinquent’s. Who asked him? He means to say this, or something like it, but what actually comes out of his mouth is “Nobody ever asks.”
It sounded so raw, and he’s ashamed of himself, but Hiruma is silent. His next words are sharp, but not cruel. “You sound like a fucking battered wife, or something.” He drops his cigarette, grinds it into the grass with the toe of his expensive shoe. “You never try hitting him back?”
“Of course not,” Unsui says, almost before Hiruma is finished talking, and shuts up just as quickly.
“He’s not fucking invincible.”
Unsui sighs. “I know. He knows. That’s why he does it.” Why is he talking about this? This is not something for other people to know about, especially not people he barely knows. But he’s asking, and nobody ever asks. “It’s safer to just let him. If you try to fight back, he gets angry, and…” Unsui shakes his head, as if in denial of something, but he isn’t sure what. “He’s a lot tougher than me.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t--”
“And I’m a lot tougher than most of Agon’s girls,” he interrupts. This time he bites down on his lip to keep himself quiet.
Hiruma is quiet, too, and for a long time. “Fucking Chew Toy,” he says simply, and it’s a cross between admonishment and annoyance and bitterness and something else that might almost be admiration if it weren’t so angry. “Fucking Dreads,” he says after that, and it’s much quieter and much darker.
For someone who stops talking so rarely, Unsui is amazed at Hiruma’s ability to express so much in so few words. “I’m not saying I’m some kind of a martyr or something,” Unsui says haltingly, almost under his breath, because he is suddenly concerned what Hiruma thinks of him. “It’s just that…Agon…doesn’t care what other people want. If he wants something…he takes it.” He swallows thickly, feeling like a traitor. “A-And sometimes, sometimes he…sometimes he’ll get a girl and she’ll decide that she doesn’t want, you know, what he wants, and. He doesn’t care.” Unsui stops and looks off to one side, turning his head away from Hiruma. It shames him to be talking about this, and he knows it isn’t right-- Agon is his brother; Hiruma is just another person Agon hates.
Hiruma says something under his breath, but Unsui doesn’t hear it. “That happen a lot?” he asks eventually, voice flat and free of inflection.
Unsui shrugs. “Usually girls like him,” he says, as if it’s an excuse, and now he feels worse than he does for selling out his own brother.
“And you like him too, Fucking Chew Toy?”
At this, Unsui looks up. Hiruma is staring down at him, perfectly emotionless. “What?” Unsui croaks, suddenly aware of how dry the air is.
“You love him.” Three words, punctuated by brief pauses, insistent and utterly devoid of feeling. And Unsui is suddenly angry.
“He’s my brother,” he snaps, and he’s never been so infuriated at something so small. “Of course I love him. I…he…” He looks down again, at the grass, trying to think. “Yes,” he says finally. “I do love him. But…sometimes…most of the time, I hate him.” And that hurt to say, the words stabbing at him like so many knives, and Unsui is abruptly and viscerally aware that he can never take those words back. He laughs a little, nervous and crackling dry on the end of his tongue. “I’m a terrible brother.”
“You?” says Hiruma, incredulous and almost amused. “He’s a fucking abusive asshole rapist and you love him anyway? I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, Fucking Chew Toy, but you’re a hell of a lot better at being a brother than he is. I know that much.” Out of the corner of his eye, Unsui watches Hiruma take a pack of gum from his pocket. “So you hate him.” He sticks a piece of gum in his mouth and replaces the pack. “All that means is your fucking sanity’s salvageable.”
Unsui can’t help but laugh at that. He wants to feel better, and he almost does. “That…might just be true,” he concedes. But there’s still a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he still feels wrong for everything he’s said. Agon always told him not to tell, and Agon always finds out. “He’s going to know about this,” he mutters.
Hiruma snorts, and snaps his gum. “How?”
“Good point,” Unsui admits, but he isn’t convinced, and he knows that Hiruma can tell.
“What’s the worst he can fucking do to you if he finds out, anyway?” Hiruma asks, sounding casual now. “Even if he does kick the shit out of you again, you’ll survive. Why the fuck are you so afraid of him?”
And there are so many answers Unsui can give, all of which would make perfect sense, some of which are even true, ranging from the fact that anyone with sense is afraid of him to the fact that Unsui was raised to know that he isn’t worth enough not to be afraid like he’s supposed to, but he has to say it, he knows he has to, and it’s going to kill him. He lets out a shaky breath, draws one in, runs a hand over the top of his head and leaves it there, giving him an excuse to stare at the ground.
“Because,” he says thickly, “when we were younger, he wanted to…to teach me that…that he’s in charge. Of everything. Of me. And…and he doesn’t care what anyone wants, and--”
He can’t go on. The silence that follows is oppressive, and Unsui clenches his fingers on the back of his neck and waits, waits, waits.
The sound of Hiruma’s gum snapping is louder than a gunshot. “Get off your ass and come back to the fucking party, Chew Toy,” he commands, with a sense of finality. “Try to fucking enjoy yourself. People do that sometimes.” He steps off from the wall and turns to face Unsui, who can only look up at him and wonder what to think. “You coming, or not? I’m not going to find the fucking track captain myself.”
Unsui is baffled. “Track-- Ishimaru Tetsuo?”
“That’s him. Fucking hard to find, too. Get off your ass.”
“Why…?”
“Because,” Hiruma says, clearly exasperated, and pauses to snap his gum again, “he’s got a spare futon and he can’t say no. Do I have to tell you to fucking stand up again?”
It takes a moment for Unsui to catch on, but he stands up. “But…I don’t know…are you sure it’ll be okay?”
“The hell’s he going to do about it?” Hiruma remarks casually, and adds “Anything’s all right by him,” in a manner that isn’t strictly reassuring, but might be if looked at correctly. He waves Unsui to follow him, and Unsui does.
“Tha--” he says, and stops when Hiruma turns around to glare very sharp daggers. “It’s…a nice party,” he says instead, and Hiruma grins even sharper.
“Damn straight. Now hurry the fuck up, keep an eye out, and start thinking about where you want your new place to be. I can’t have you ruining my fucking player’s sleep with your mooching."
Unsui’s bruises ache as he follows Hiruma back to the celebration, but as the quarterback prattles on about land prices and bank loans and financial planning, he thinks that soon enough he can start to forget about them.
Fandom: Eyeshield 21
Characters: Unsui, Hiruma
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,647
Summary: Hiruma confronts Unsui at a post-Christmas Bowl party and discovers some unsettling things.
Warnings: Language, inexplicit discussion of violence and rape
Author's Note: Do you ever have one of those ideas that depresses you, but that you can't get out of your head? Yeah. I tried to give it a hopeful ending.
The problem about wanting to be alone, Unsui has found, is that circumstances often conspire to make it impossible.
He hears footsteps and a metallic click, and when he looks up, Hiruma is leaning against the back of the shed beside him, lighting a cigarette. “Gonna tell me what you’re doing back here, Fucking Chew Toy?”
Unsui winces, and he wishes he hadn’t because he knows Hiruma noticed. Chew toy. Deadly accuracy: a quarterback’s greatest attribute. “Just…getting away from the party,” he responds, shrugging, and he knows that Hiruma knows that isn’t all.
A moment, long and filled with the faraway sounds of post-Christmas Bowl celebration, passes without comment. Unsui wonders if he ought to stand up. He feels small, hunched against the back of the storage shed with his elbows propped on his knees, staring at the ground. But he can’t bring himself to look up. He’s seen Hiruma before, and knows that pensive expression, the one that betrays nothing and seeks nothing, staring into open air as if contemplating something dull and unrelated. He convinces himself that if he looks at the grass long enough, Hiruma will go away.
“Fucked you up pretty good, didn’t he?” Hiruma says at length, and Unsui flinches again. He wants to make some sarcastic remark about how true that is, or at least about how that’s none of Hiruma’s business.
What he does say is “Who?” in his best imitation of unconcerned innocence. Hiruma snorts and flicks some ash into the grass.
“Fucking Dreads. Kicked your ass earlier, right?”
Oh, is that all, Unsui wants to say. That’s nothing. That happens all the time. More often, recently, since Agon tasted defeat and found it a bitter pill, but Unsui can handle it. He isn’t gifted, but he’s strong enough for some things.
“He was…angry,” Unsui says quietly, but that sounds wrong; it sounds like betrayal. “I mean he was upset,” he tries again, “because of the game. He’ll get over it. He just…needed to let off some steam.” He shrugs, and adds “I don’t mind.”
Hiruma flicks more ash, this time an angry gesture. “You say shit like that every time somebody asks you about your fucking bruises?” he asks, curt and derisive. “Or do you just say you fell down some fucking stairs?”
Unsui refuses to look up; refuses to get angry. It’s his business, not this…this foul-mouthed, invasive delinquent’s. Who asked him? He means to say this, or something like it, but what actually comes out of his mouth is “Nobody ever asks.”
It sounded so raw, and he’s ashamed of himself, but Hiruma is silent. His next words are sharp, but not cruel. “You sound like a fucking battered wife, or something.” He drops his cigarette, grinds it into the grass with the toe of his expensive shoe. “You never try hitting him back?”
“Of course not,” Unsui says, almost before Hiruma is finished talking, and shuts up just as quickly.
“He’s not fucking invincible.”
Unsui sighs. “I know. He knows. That’s why he does it.” Why is he talking about this? This is not something for other people to know about, especially not people he barely knows. But he’s asking, and nobody ever asks. “It’s safer to just let him. If you try to fight back, he gets angry, and…” Unsui shakes his head, as if in denial of something, but he isn’t sure what. “He’s a lot tougher than me.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t--”
“And I’m a lot tougher than most of Agon’s girls,” he interrupts. This time he bites down on his lip to keep himself quiet.
Hiruma is quiet, too, and for a long time. “Fucking Chew Toy,” he says simply, and it’s a cross between admonishment and annoyance and bitterness and something else that might almost be admiration if it weren’t so angry. “Fucking Dreads,” he says after that, and it’s much quieter and much darker.
For someone who stops talking so rarely, Unsui is amazed at Hiruma’s ability to express so much in so few words. “I’m not saying I’m some kind of a martyr or something,” Unsui says haltingly, almost under his breath, because he is suddenly concerned what Hiruma thinks of him. “It’s just that…Agon…doesn’t care what other people want. If he wants something…he takes it.” He swallows thickly, feeling like a traitor. “A-And sometimes, sometimes he…sometimes he’ll get a girl and she’ll decide that she doesn’t want, you know, what he wants, and. He doesn’t care.” Unsui stops and looks off to one side, turning his head away from Hiruma. It shames him to be talking about this, and he knows it isn’t right-- Agon is his brother; Hiruma is just another person Agon hates.
Hiruma says something under his breath, but Unsui doesn’t hear it. “That happen a lot?” he asks eventually, voice flat and free of inflection.
Unsui shrugs. “Usually girls like him,” he says, as if it’s an excuse, and now he feels worse than he does for selling out his own brother.
“And you like him too, Fucking Chew Toy?”
At this, Unsui looks up. Hiruma is staring down at him, perfectly emotionless. “What?” Unsui croaks, suddenly aware of how dry the air is.
“You love him.” Three words, punctuated by brief pauses, insistent and utterly devoid of feeling. And Unsui is suddenly angry.
“He’s my brother,” he snaps, and he’s never been so infuriated at something so small. “Of course I love him. I…he…” He looks down again, at the grass, trying to think. “Yes,” he says finally. “I do love him. But…sometimes…most of the time, I hate him.” And that hurt to say, the words stabbing at him like so many knives, and Unsui is abruptly and viscerally aware that he can never take those words back. He laughs a little, nervous and crackling dry on the end of his tongue. “I’m a terrible brother.”
“You?” says Hiruma, incredulous and almost amused. “He’s a fucking abusive asshole rapist and you love him anyway? I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, Fucking Chew Toy, but you’re a hell of a lot better at being a brother than he is. I know that much.” Out of the corner of his eye, Unsui watches Hiruma take a pack of gum from his pocket. “So you hate him.” He sticks a piece of gum in his mouth and replaces the pack. “All that means is your fucking sanity’s salvageable.”
Unsui can’t help but laugh at that. He wants to feel better, and he almost does. “That…might just be true,” he concedes. But there’s still a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he still feels wrong for everything he’s said. Agon always told him not to tell, and Agon always finds out. “He’s going to know about this,” he mutters.
Hiruma snorts, and snaps his gum. “How?”
“Good point,” Unsui admits, but he isn’t convinced, and he knows that Hiruma can tell.
“What’s the worst he can fucking do to you if he finds out, anyway?” Hiruma asks, sounding casual now. “Even if he does kick the shit out of you again, you’ll survive. Why the fuck are you so afraid of him?”
And there are so many answers Unsui can give, all of which would make perfect sense, some of which are even true, ranging from the fact that anyone with sense is afraid of him to the fact that Unsui was raised to know that he isn’t worth enough not to be afraid like he’s supposed to, but he has to say it, he knows he has to, and it’s going to kill him. He lets out a shaky breath, draws one in, runs a hand over the top of his head and leaves it there, giving him an excuse to stare at the ground.
“Because,” he says thickly, “when we were younger, he wanted to…to teach me that…that he’s in charge. Of everything. Of me. And…and he doesn’t care what anyone wants, and--”
He can’t go on. The silence that follows is oppressive, and Unsui clenches his fingers on the back of his neck and waits, waits, waits.
The sound of Hiruma’s gum snapping is louder than a gunshot. “Get off your ass and come back to the fucking party, Chew Toy,” he commands, with a sense of finality. “Try to fucking enjoy yourself. People do that sometimes.” He steps off from the wall and turns to face Unsui, who can only look up at him and wonder what to think. “You coming, or not? I’m not going to find the fucking track captain myself.”
Unsui is baffled. “Track-- Ishimaru Tetsuo?”
“That’s him. Fucking hard to find, too. Get off your ass.”
“Why…?”
“Because,” Hiruma says, clearly exasperated, and pauses to snap his gum again, “he’s got a spare futon and he can’t say no. Do I have to tell you to fucking stand up again?”
It takes a moment for Unsui to catch on, but he stands up. “But…I don’t know…are you sure it’ll be okay?”
“The hell’s he going to do about it?” Hiruma remarks casually, and adds “Anything’s all right by him,” in a manner that isn’t strictly reassuring, but might be if looked at correctly. He waves Unsui to follow him, and Unsui does.
“Tha--” he says, and stops when Hiruma turns around to glare very sharp daggers. “It’s…a nice party,” he says instead, and Hiruma grins even sharper.
“Damn straight. Now hurry the fuck up, keep an eye out, and start thinking about where you want your new place to be. I can’t have you ruining my fucking player’s sleep with your mooching."
Unsui’s bruises ache as he follows Hiruma back to the celebration, but as the quarterback prattles on about land prices and bank loans and financial planning, he thinks that soon enough he can start to forget about them.