Survivors [Loveless, Ritsuka/Soubi, PG]
Title: Survivors
Author/Artist: harukami
Rating: PG
Warnings: Non-graphic shotacon, references to attempted rape, references to brainwashing
Prompt: Loveless, Ritsuka/Soubi: Sometimes, you just have to fight - Take the hurt out of all the pain
Word count: 1881
Summary: Ritsuka finds out about the Zero boys and Shinonome; Soubi never told him.
"Soubi, you liar! How could you!"
With interest, Soubi watches Ritsuka pace around Soubi's one-room apartment like a tiger in a cage testing the boundary limits, like these walls are the only thing keeping something from inside Ritsuka breaking free to take apart the viewing crowd. "I'm sorry, Ritsuka," Soubi says, complacently.
"You're not sorry!" Ritsuka says. He's agitated almost to the point of tears, face stricken. Cute Soubi thinks, and at least feels a little guilty for thinking it, but he does think it, that Ritsuka can be at his cutest when he has so much passion in him. Maybe, Soubi thinks, he's too used to people whose only distress is anger, and who never let even that touch their hearts. "If you were sorry, you wouldn't say 'sorry' so easily!"
"Sorry," Soubi says, and then, to the furious face Ritsuka turns on him, "Yeah, maybe."
"There's no maybe! It's the truth! It's the truth, Soubi, you're not sorry!" Ritsuka draws a shaking breath. "I found out from Natsuo and Youji that they knew Sensei. That you met them when you tried to save her from them! Do you know how that feels?"
Soubi reaches for Ritsuka. "How does it feel?"
"It's the worst! You're the worst! To find out later that my friends can do something like that to Sensei! To find out that you covered it up!" He smacks away Soubi's hand. "And then to find out that you did something to Sensei too! Do you know what else they told me, Soubi?"
Ah, Soubi thinks. "I thought it was better to do it properly," he says. "If they were going to transfer into your class regardless, why cause her additional distress? Worse, why leave it to Natsuo? You don't want Natsuo digging around in that woman's memories. I'm not sure what he'd leave behind."
"It's better if she remembers!" Ritsuka says, and stiffens as Soubi touches him again, a hand on his shoulder. "Even if it's agonizing, it's horrible to forget. That's a part of her life you stole from her, Soubi! It doesn't matter if she could handle it or not! She's been dealing with it this long with nobody helping her, hasn't she? You can't decide for someone else whether or not they can remember something that's become part of her life!"
"Who wants to remember being victimized?" Soubi murmurs.
Ritsuka shakes his head furiously. "That's wrong! You're wrong, Soubi, that's because of something wrong with you! She wasn't a victim -- she was a survivor! If you take away her ability to handle it, live with it on her own, that's when you've made her a victim!"
"Hmm," Soubi says, but doesn't otherwise verbalize any disagreement. "Do you want me to give her memories back?"
"I don't know," Ritsuka says, and clutches his head. "I don't know what's crueler, now! Why is this my decision? This shouldn't be anyone's decision but hers!"
Soubi waits to see if he has more to say and, when he doesn't, pulls Ritsuka closer.
For a moment Ritsuka relaxes into it, needy, but then he remembers his anger. "No! Don't act like it's okay, Soubi, it's not okay! Don't act like if you hold me, everything will be okay! You still lied to me, and you still took her memories. Did you take mine too?"
Ah, Soubi thinks. The heart of the matter, even deeper than an injury done to someone he cares for. "No," he says. "No, Ritsuka. I didn't take your memories."
"How can I know you're not lying?"
"Because--" Soubi hesitates. "That day in front of the school was the first time I ever saw you."
"And how do I know that?" Ritsuka demands. "How do I know you're not lying to me again?"
Urgently, Soubi squeezes Ritsuka's shoulders. "It's the truth. Because it's the truth, Ritsuka."
"I can't know that! When you lie to me, I can't trust anything you say! If I agree to believe what you say is the truth, you'll just use it as an excuse to lie to me more easily! I've known you're a liar, and agreed to believe you before, but then you do things like this. How much do you hide from me, Soubi?!" Ritsuka's in agony; Soubi shudders with the way Ritsuka's pain, Ritsuka's words, are sparking his own pain to burning life, hot, hot. "I want to trust you, but you won't let me! I want to trust you but I can't! How can I believe you, Soubi? No matter what you say, how can I believe it? Why do you always do these things? Because you think I won't find out about them?"
A little awkward, Soubi shrugs. "If you don't find out, it's fine."
"That's terrible! How is that fine? The only thing that changes is that you abuse my trust and treat me like an idiot!"
"It's fine because it doesn't bother Ritsuka," Soubi says. "What you don't know doesn't bother you."
Ritsuka's small chest is heaving and the distress on his face is cuttingly sharp. "That's not fine. I'd rather be bothered than a fool, and I'd rather try to fix problems than ignore them. We can't all be like you, Soubi!"
Soubi looks away, struck deep, because if he's someone who tells lies, then Ritsuka's someone who can tells the truth, and they both know each other too well. "If you punish me enough," he says, "I won't misbehave."
"I can't!" Ritsuka wails, grabbing at his head again, pulling at his own hair as if he's desperate to hurt something and won't allow himself to turn his violence on anyone but himself. "I won't beat you into obedience, Soubi!"
"Then you can't trust me," Soubi says.
"Is that really it?!" Ritsuka pulls again, white-knuckled. "Is that the only thing I can do to guarantee that I can trust you, Soubi? Break you? I can't break you!"
"You can."
"I won't!" Ritsuka really is crying now, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. Soubi watches them with a strange, distant fascination, because he's not sure he's ever seen Ritsuka pushed this far. Ritsuka's seen him here, but Ritsuka's walls are so built up that he can't break, won't break. "Don't try to talk me into abusing you, Soubi! You're the worst..."
"I am," Soubi agrees, and then, "Ritsuka, I love you."
"Soubi--!" Ritsuka's pleading, though for what, Soubi doesn't know.
Still, he tries to deliver, pulls Ritsuka close again. "I love you, Ritsuka."
"Then why do you lie to me? Aren't we partners? Why can't you tell me the truth?" Ritsuka's face is crushed to Soubi's chest but he doesn't try to get away this time. "How can I love someone I can't trust?"
Ritsuka's mother comes into Soubi's mind, and Seimei, but he doesn't voice the thought, horrified by the comparisons and unwilling to make Ritsuka think of them if he hasn't already. Instead, he says, "Believe me, Ritsuka."
"Even knowing you'll lie to me?" He's more exhausted than angry now. Soubi prefers him angry, but an exhausted Ritsuka is all right as well. He strokes Ritsuka's hair. "Even though you'll keep lying and lying?"
"You can always choose to believe me. Because Ritsuka, I also tell you the truth."
"Your unreliable truth," Ritsuka says, and puts one thin, shaking arm around Soubi. "Don't you want me to be able to believe you when you tell me the truth?"
Soubi closes his eyes, kisses the top of Ritsuka's head. "Always."
"Do I have to believe your lies to believe your truths, too? Can't you just tell me the truth?"
"I'll tell you the truth," Soubi tells the top of his head.
Ritsuka sighs heavily enough to rock his body in Soubi's arms. "You're lying."
"I'm not."
"You are. By omission at least. You'll tell me the truth, but you'll also lie to me. Won't you."
Helpless, unable to answer a way Ritsuka wants to hear, Soubi says, "I love you."
Ritsuka folds his hand into a fist and very gently places his knuckles against Soubi's side. A punch softer than a butterfly landing, Soubi thinks, and hurts.
***
Ritsuka stays for dinner. He lost his chance to leave in anger when he lost his rage in the middle of the argument. The thought of leaving after, soft and sad and both of them feeling this broken, wasn't right either. So he stays over and waits for things to feel okay enough that he can go home.
"Is it okay?" Soubi asks, because Ritsuka's curfew is in effect more strongly than ever. He's cooking, moving around his kitchenette and pulling things together in the way that looks as much like magic, sometimes, as any actual spell.
The only cost that will come of this will be physical, his mother tearing the fear of what his disobedience signifies out of his body, so he nods. "It's okay."
Soubi gives him a long look like he knows what that means. "Is that really okay?"
"It's fine, I said," Ritsuka says. He puts his head down on the kitchen table, pillowed against his arms. He's too tired for this, for another fight today, for another fight about his mother. He knows Soubi's arguments, he knows that it's one of the few things Soubi will get worked up enough to actually argue about, that choosing to stay in a situation of abuse shouldn't be all right, but it's never that simple. Not since he loves her.
Soubi doesn't, thankfully, follow up on it, but puts a bowl down with salad, and goes back to doing something with chicken. It's nice to watch, Ritsuka thinks, painfully. He thinks, too, that he might love Soubi even if he can't trust him at all, and wonders, as he wondered in the fight, how that can even be possible. But it's impossible to watch Soubi moving around the kitchen and not think, I want to be happy. Like it's a reflection of some alternate world where they can live just like this, domestic, without all their flaws rising up to get in the way. Like in that world they'd do this and he wouldn't be hurting so much right now. Like Soubi wouldn't be hurting in that way he does, mild and calm and smiling like a bandage over an open wound, fake synthetic skin that doesn't actually blend in enough to hide the injury, only to cover it.
Ritsuka rises, goes over to him, wraps his arms around Soubi's waist, leans his face into the broad expanse of Soubi's back. That close, he both hears and feels Soubi's small, sharp inhalation. Soubi waits, as if expecting Ritsuka to say something, but Ritsuka can't find anything right now, totally spent from the earlier fight and deeply unsure.
When he doesn't speak, Soubi starts to turn. Ritsuka loosens his grip, hands coming to Soubi's sides instead, and Soubi turns, braces himself against the counter, and ducks down, folding himself around Ritsuka, wrapping his arms around Ritsuka's shoulders and clutching Ritsuka to him.
Ritsuka turns his hold into an embrace again, hard and shaking, and they stay like that for a long few moments.
"I haven't forgiven you yet," Ritsuka says, rawly.
"Yeah," Soubi says, and Ritsuka thinks, from the tone of his voice, that Soubi understands everything Ritsuka isn't saying there.
Ritsuka closes his eyes and tilts his face up, offering himself for a kiss. Soubi's mouth touches his a moment later, opens into heat and wetness and searching tongue and Ritsuka clings to him, holds on, and doesn't let go.
Author/Artist: harukami
Rating: PG
Warnings: Non-graphic shotacon, references to attempted rape, references to brainwashing
Prompt: Loveless, Ritsuka/Soubi: Sometimes, you just have to fight - Take the hurt out of all the pain
Word count: 1881
Summary: Ritsuka finds out about the Zero boys and Shinonome; Soubi never told him.
"Soubi, you liar! How could you!"
With interest, Soubi watches Ritsuka pace around Soubi's one-room apartment like a tiger in a cage testing the boundary limits, like these walls are the only thing keeping something from inside Ritsuka breaking free to take apart the viewing crowd. "I'm sorry, Ritsuka," Soubi says, complacently.
"You're not sorry!" Ritsuka says. He's agitated almost to the point of tears, face stricken. Cute Soubi thinks, and at least feels a little guilty for thinking it, but he does think it, that Ritsuka can be at his cutest when he has so much passion in him. Maybe, Soubi thinks, he's too used to people whose only distress is anger, and who never let even that touch their hearts. "If you were sorry, you wouldn't say 'sorry' so easily!"
"Sorry," Soubi says, and then, to the furious face Ritsuka turns on him, "Yeah, maybe."
"There's no maybe! It's the truth! It's the truth, Soubi, you're not sorry!" Ritsuka draws a shaking breath. "I found out from Natsuo and Youji that they knew Sensei. That you met them when you tried to save her from them! Do you know how that feels?"
Soubi reaches for Ritsuka. "How does it feel?"
"It's the worst! You're the worst! To find out later that my friends can do something like that to Sensei! To find out that you covered it up!" He smacks away Soubi's hand. "And then to find out that you did something to Sensei too! Do you know what else they told me, Soubi?"
Ah, Soubi thinks. "I thought it was better to do it properly," he says. "If they were going to transfer into your class regardless, why cause her additional distress? Worse, why leave it to Natsuo? You don't want Natsuo digging around in that woman's memories. I'm not sure what he'd leave behind."
"It's better if she remembers!" Ritsuka says, and stiffens as Soubi touches him again, a hand on his shoulder. "Even if it's agonizing, it's horrible to forget. That's a part of her life you stole from her, Soubi! It doesn't matter if she could handle it or not! She's been dealing with it this long with nobody helping her, hasn't she? You can't decide for someone else whether or not they can remember something that's become part of her life!"
"Who wants to remember being victimized?" Soubi murmurs.
Ritsuka shakes his head furiously. "That's wrong! You're wrong, Soubi, that's because of something wrong with you! She wasn't a victim -- she was a survivor! If you take away her ability to handle it, live with it on her own, that's when you've made her a victim!"
"Hmm," Soubi says, but doesn't otherwise verbalize any disagreement. "Do you want me to give her memories back?"
"I don't know," Ritsuka says, and clutches his head. "I don't know what's crueler, now! Why is this my decision? This shouldn't be anyone's decision but hers!"
Soubi waits to see if he has more to say and, when he doesn't, pulls Ritsuka closer.
For a moment Ritsuka relaxes into it, needy, but then he remembers his anger. "No! Don't act like it's okay, Soubi, it's not okay! Don't act like if you hold me, everything will be okay! You still lied to me, and you still took her memories. Did you take mine too?"
Ah, Soubi thinks. The heart of the matter, even deeper than an injury done to someone he cares for. "No," he says. "No, Ritsuka. I didn't take your memories."
"How can I know you're not lying?"
"Because--" Soubi hesitates. "That day in front of the school was the first time I ever saw you."
"And how do I know that?" Ritsuka demands. "How do I know you're not lying to me again?"
Urgently, Soubi squeezes Ritsuka's shoulders. "It's the truth. Because it's the truth, Ritsuka."
"I can't know that! When you lie to me, I can't trust anything you say! If I agree to believe what you say is the truth, you'll just use it as an excuse to lie to me more easily! I've known you're a liar, and agreed to believe you before, but then you do things like this. How much do you hide from me, Soubi?!" Ritsuka's in agony; Soubi shudders with the way Ritsuka's pain, Ritsuka's words, are sparking his own pain to burning life, hot, hot. "I want to trust you, but you won't let me! I want to trust you but I can't! How can I believe you, Soubi? No matter what you say, how can I believe it? Why do you always do these things? Because you think I won't find out about them?"
A little awkward, Soubi shrugs. "If you don't find out, it's fine."
"That's terrible! How is that fine? The only thing that changes is that you abuse my trust and treat me like an idiot!"
"It's fine because it doesn't bother Ritsuka," Soubi says. "What you don't know doesn't bother you."
Ritsuka's small chest is heaving and the distress on his face is cuttingly sharp. "That's not fine. I'd rather be bothered than a fool, and I'd rather try to fix problems than ignore them. We can't all be like you, Soubi!"
Soubi looks away, struck deep, because if he's someone who tells lies, then Ritsuka's someone who can tells the truth, and they both know each other too well. "If you punish me enough," he says, "I won't misbehave."
"I can't!" Ritsuka wails, grabbing at his head again, pulling at his own hair as if he's desperate to hurt something and won't allow himself to turn his violence on anyone but himself. "I won't beat you into obedience, Soubi!"
"Then you can't trust me," Soubi says.
"Is that really it?!" Ritsuka pulls again, white-knuckled. "Is that the only thing I can do to guarantee that I can trust you, Soubi? Break you? I can't break you!"
"You can."
"I won't!" Ritsuka really is crying now, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. Soubi watches them with a strange, distant fascination, because he's not sure he's ever seen Ritsuka pushed this far. Ritsuka's seen him here, but Ritsuka's walls are so built up that he can't break, won't break. "Don't try to talk me into abusing you, Soubi! You're the worst..."
"I am," Soubi agrees, and then, "Ritsuka, I love you."
"Soubi--!" Ritsuka's pleading, though for what, Soubi doesn't know.
Still, he tries to deliver, pulls Ritsuka close again. "I love you, Ritsuka."
"Then why do you lie to me? Aren't we partners? Why can't you tell me the truth?" Ritsuka's face is crushed to Soubi's chest but he doesn't try to get away this time. "How can I love someone I can't trust?"
Ritsuka's mother comes into Soubi's mind, and Seimei, but he doesn't voice the thought, horrified by the comparisons and unwilling to make Ritsuka think of them if he hasn't already. Instead, he says, "Believe me, Ritsuka."
"Even knowing you'll lie to me?" He's more exhausted than angry now. Soubi prefers him angry, but an exhausted Ritsuka is all right as well. He strokes Ritsuka's hair. "Even though you'll keep lying and lying?"
"You can always choose to believe me. Because Ritsuka, I also tell you the truth."
"Your unreliable truth," Ritsuka says, and puts one thin, shaking arm around Soubi. "Don't you want me to be able to believe you when you tell me the truth?"
Soubi closes his eyes, kisses the top of Ritsuka's head. "Always."
"Do I have to believe your lies to believe your truths, too? Can't you just tell me the truth?"
"I'll tell you the truth," Soubi tells the top of his head.
Ritsuka sighs heavily enough to rock his body in Soubi's arms. "You're lying."
"I'm not."
"You are. By omission at least. You'll tell me the truth, but you'll also lie to me. Won't you."
Helpless, unable to answer a way Ritsuka wants to hear, Soubi says, "I love you."
Ritsuka folds his hand into a fist and very gently places his knuckles against Soubi's side. A punch softer than a butterfly landing, Soubi thinks, and hurts.
***
Ritsuka stays for dinner. He lost his chance to leave in anger when he lost his rage in the middle of the argument. The thought of leaving after, soft and sad and both of them feeling this broken, wasn't right either. So he stays over and waits for things to feel okay enough that he can go home.
"Is it okay?" Soubi asks, because Ritsuka's curfew is in effect more strongly than ever. He's cooking, moving around his kitchenette and pulling things together in the way that looks as much like magic, sometimes, as any actual spell.
The only cost that will come of this will be physical, his mother tearing the fear of what his disobedience signifies out of his body, so he nods. "It's okay."
Soubi gives him a long look like he knows what that means. "Is that really okay?"
"It's fine, I said," Ritsuka says. He puts his head down on the kitchen table, pillowed against his arms. He's too tired for this, for another fight today, for another fight about his mother. He knows Soubi's arguments, he knows that it's one of the few things Soubi will get worked up enough to actually argue about, that choosing to stay in a situation of abuse shouldn't be all right, but it's never that simple. Not since he loves her.
Soubi doesn't, thankfully, follow up on it, but puts a bowl down with salad, and goes back to doing something with chicken. It's nice to watch, Ritsuka thinks, painfully. He thinks, too, that he might love Soubi even if he can't trust him at all, and wonders, as he wondered in the fight, how that can even be possible. But it's impossible to watch Soubi moving around the kitchen and not think, I want to be happy. Like it's a reflection of some alternate world where they can live just like this, domestic, without all their flaws rising up to get in the way. Like in that world they'd do this and he wouldn't be hurting so much right now. Like Soubi wouldn't be hurting in that way he does, mild and calm and smiling like a bandage over an open wound, fake synthetic skin that doesn't actually blend in enough to hide the injury, only to cover it.
Ritsuka rises, goes over to him, wraps his arms around Soubi's waist, leans his face into the broad expanse of Soubi's back. That close, he both hears and feels Soubi's small, sharp inhalation. Soubi waits, as if expecting Ritsuka to say something, but Ritsuka can't find anything right now, totally spent from the earlier fight and deeply unsure.
When he doesn't speak, Soubi starts to turn. Ritsuka loosens his grip, hands coming to Soubi's sides instead, and Soubi turns, braces himself against the counter, and ducks down, folding himself around Ritsuka, wrapping his arms around Ritsuka's shoulders and clutching Ritsuka to him.
Ritsuka turns his hold into an embrace again, hard and shaking, and they stay like that for a long few moments.
"I haven't forgiven you yet," Ritsuka says, rawly.
"Yeah," Soubi says, and Ritsuka thinks, from the tone of his voice, that Soubi understands everything Ritsuka isn't saying there.
Ritsuka closes his eyes and tilts his face up, offering himself for a kiss. Soubi's mouth touches his a moment later, opens into heat and wetness and searching tongue and Ritsuka clings to him, holds on, and doesn't let go.