Eyes Full of Darkness [2/?]
Title: Eyes Full of Darkness
Pairings: Nishin (Nishii Yukito/Akutsu Shintarou), others TBA
Genre: AU
Chapter Rating: PG.
Word Count: ~2000
Summary: Akutsu's roommates help him out, but he's still no closer to learning who the boy is or how he ended up this way.
Notes: Having a main character this Genre Savvy is hard to deal with. SHIN XD
←To Chapter 1
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Chapter 2: Wash away my Scars with your Tears
He ran into Shiramata’s bedroom. The guy was always crashing into things and getting hit by things and generally getting himself injured, and Akutsu knew for a fact that he had a first-aid kit somewhere. He threw around some dirty laundry and empty takeout containers and eventually discovered it lying on the table. All the noise woke Shiramata up, and he started to sit up and ask what was going on, but Akutsu pushed him back down and told him to go back to bed, he had everything under control. Shiramata looked a little dubious, but that was his normal expression, so he didn’t worry about it. He was more worried about the fact that he didn’t really have everything under control at all.
He set the first-aid kid down beside the boy and opened it up. He took out things he thought he probably needed, then got to work. After removing the boy’s coat, he quickly identified two serious-looking wounds, one a massive gash in his left arm and the other a ragged hole in his side. “Um… I’m going to try to bandage you now, so sorry if it hurts, I guess.”
The boy opened his eyes and managed a smile. “Do what you have to.”
“Right.” Akutsu fumbled with the gauze. “Uh. What exactly do I have to do?”
“Can…” The boy coughed violently. “Sorry. Can you wrap my arm really quick? Then I’ll tell you what to do about this.” He lifted his other arm to his chest and prodded that wound, wincing.
“Sure?” After wiping away some of the blood with a wet towel, he wrapped a bandage around it, and upon figuring out how to get it to stay in place, turned his attention to the other injury. “Okay, what now?”
“Do you have any disinfectant? If you could just clean it a bit…”
Akutsu looked and came up with a bottle of peroxide. “I’ve got this stuff.”
A shudder ran through the boy’s body. “I might scream. Is that okay?”
This struck Akutsu as a very strange thing to ask. “Sure, I don’t care. Unless there’s someone chasing after you and they’re going to hear you and bust in here and I’m going to have to fend them off with my limited edition full-size Buster Sword replica. Because I’ll probably fail unless you give me some special warrior powers or something. And that thing was expensive.”
The boy blinked at him. “Nobody’s chasing me,” he said eventually.
“Okay,” Akutsu said. He wouldn’t have minded warrior powers, but he wasn’t that big on fighting and he definitely wasn’t a fan of getting hurt, so he figured it was for the best. He poured the solution onto a cotton swab and began dabbing at the injury. The boy flinched, and as he continued to clean it, he would moan every so often. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on his face and he had his eyes clamped firmly shut. He threaded his fingers through one of Akutsu’s belt loops and held on tightly.
When Akutsu finished, he opened his eyes again. “Okay. Now… you’re going to have to get the bullet out.”
“Whoa, bullet? Somebody shot you?” As a rule, he didn’t tend to approve of combat involving guns, especially not the kind with real bullets. It could never compare with the tried-and-true tradition of one-on-one sword duels, and it had always seemed sort of unfair to him somehow. Mecha were one thing, but humans using guns on each other… well, he hoped this was a one-time thing, or limited to just one certain boss. Otherwise he would have to seriously reconsider his role in this story.
“Somebody… I thought was a friend.” He cast his eyes to the side. “I… I’ll tell you about it after you’re finished.”
Treachery! Betrayal! Now that was a development. He picked up the pincers and began trying to find and extract the bullet, but his mind was occupied by all the possible scenarios that might have occurred. Maybe the boy was part of some sort of organization, criminal or otherwise, and one of his most trusted subordinates was a double agent or had decided to sell them out to the other side for his own gain. Or, maybe he was the double agent, but one of his contacts had turned out to be a triple agent, and decided he was no longer useful. Maybe they had been vigilantes, fighting demons or something, and his friend had been possessed and they would have to go on a long journey to save him that could only end in tears. That could be fun.
As he probed the wound, the boy clung to him, gasping out little cries of pain whenever he pressed too sharply against the exposed tissue. At long last, he touched something hard. He maneuvered the pincers around it (it seemed impossibly small, weren’t bullets supposed to be huge?) and squeezed them tightly around it. The boy let out a piercing shriek.
Akutsu didn’t jump or anything - he had warned him he might scream, after all - and carefully extracted it. He set it aside with a feeling of triumph and bent over the boy to finish bandaging him.
A door slammed open. “Look, Akutsu, I know she’s your waifu, but it’s late and-” Shion stopped mid-sentence, taking in the scene. “Dude. Do it in your own room, okay?” he said eventually.
Akutsu rolled his eyes and applied the gauze. Scenes where somebody walked in on people doing something that was totally innocent but looked and sounded scandalous were never as wacky or hilarious as writers seemed to think they were. “Obviously I can’t bandage this man’s wounds in my room, he’ll get blood all over everything and I guess you’re not supposed to move injured people or something.”
Suddenly Shion was all concern. “What, someone’s hurt? We should get to the hospital right away!” He flipped open his phone, but Akutsu yelled at him to stop.
“Are you crazy? We can’t take him there. He doesn’t have any proof of identity or anything, so they’ll start asking weird questions we can’t answer and the government will have to investigate and they’ll figure out that he’s actually part of a top-secret group that the world can’t know about!” He looked at the boy. “Right?”
The boy looked surprised, but nodded.
Shion frowned. “Okay, wait, are you guys role-playing or is this for real?”
“It’s for super real!” Akutsu jumped up and grabbed Shion’s hands. “I’m going to be a protagonist,” he breathed, eyes shining.
Shion’s face immediately lit up. “Omigosh, really?! Congrats! Can I be an important secondary character with an awesome love interest? Or at least be part of a character arc?”
“Well, I don’t know what the danger level is going to be, so if you get important you might die.”
Shion waved a hand impatiently. “Dude, that’s fine. Nobody lives forever anyway. Just find me a cute girl with big eyes, a nice body, and a slight tsundere streak, and I’ll be good to go.” He glanced down at the boy and reevaluated the situation. “Alternatively, slightly older, tall, medium to long hair, tough-guy exterior with a sensitive center, with optional facial hair and instability due to a tragic past.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Akutsu promised.
Shion grinned. “That’s why you’re my best friend, after all.” He crossed the room and bent over the boy for a closer look. “Hey, Akutsu?”
“Yeah?”
“We seriously have to get this guy to the hospital. I mean, if we have to we can pretend he’s me or you or Mata or something, but he’s gonna die at this rate. People aren’t supposed to lose this much blood.”
Akutsu thought about this. “Okay. Can we use your ID and insurance stuff then? I mean, I don’t want to leave him or I’d use mine. And it could be a chance for you to get more involved with everything, someone might track down the records and kidnap you or something.”
“Oh, that could be fun!” Shion said. “Wait just a sec, I’ll get it for you.”
He disappeared into his room. Akutsu went into his own room and dug up a sorta clean shirt that he didn’t care about getting stained. (Sunshine Schoolgirl was so last season, and he hadn’t even liked Mai that much anyway.) He slipped it on and went back out to the living room. According to the time on the TV, Ani*Kan should still be on, but instead it was showing a report about a huge explosion at the metropolitan tower downtown. All the better if he wasn’t missing his favorite show after all. “Hey,” he said, gesturing at the screen. “Did you blow that thing up?”
“No. I…know someone who might have, though.”
“Cool,” Akutsu said, and made a mental note to check up on recent mysterious explosions, deaths, and the like, in case it became important later, because there was a very good chance that it would. He turned the TV off and helped the boy sit up. He buttoned his coat back up so that people wouldn’t look at them quite so weirdly when they showed up at the hospital at two in the morning. “You’re okay to go, right?”
“Yeah.” The boy looked up at Akutsu, smiled ever so briefly, and nestled his head against his shoulder. “I know I’ll be fine as long as I’m with you, Shin-chan.”
“Is this a thing where I just don’t remember you yet, or were my memories wiped or something?” he asked.
The boy laughed, but it turned into a loud cough. “You’re so weird. I dunno if you’ll remember, but… I hope you will.”
“Found it!” Shion came running back out. “Awwww, look at you two. That’s adorable.”
“Hey. I could end up with someone else, y’know. Don’t start shipping us until you’ve had a chance to see all the options, okay?”
“I know my OTP when I see it,” Shion said, poking Akutsu in the forehead. “Anyway, here you go.” He dropped his ID and insurance cards into his lap.
“Thanks.” They struggled to lift the boy into a standing position and made it out the door a little awkwardly. There were splashes of blood all along the stairs and the landing, and Akutsu felt a little impressed that he had managed to make it all the way here.
Shion cringed. “I better clean this up or somebody will freak out for sure. Probably Mata, actually.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Akutsu said disinterestedly. “Help me get him on the bike?”
As far as motorized vehicles went… this one was about as far from cool as you could get. The best thing you could say about it was that it would get you to where you were going, eventually. He hoped he wouldn’t be involved in any sort of dramatic chase, or that they’d encounter a sexy mechanic (regardless of gender, all mechanics were sexy. It was like, a law) who would completely retool it into a totally badass driving machine that fanboys would cry thousands of delicious tears of longing over.
Once the boy was safely seated, Akutsu climbed in front of him. He resisted the urge to giggle as Shion helped him wrap his arms around his waist. “Hold on tight, okay?” he said in his best primary male love interest voice. After all, even if it wasn’t endgame, there was no sense in turning down free relationship points before he made the final choice.
“Okay,” the boy said, and squeezed. Akutsu couldn’t hold in his intense feelings of moe, but luckily the noise of the motor starting up drowned out the squeak of joy that escaped him.
“Be careful, okay, and call me if you need anything,” Shion said, putting the spare helmet over the boy’s head.
“Thanks. Will do.” After giving him an encouraging smile, Akutsu flipped his visor down and drove off into the night.
Next Chapter→
Pairings: Nishin (Nishii Yukito/Akutsu Shintarou), others TBA
Genre: AU
Chapter Rating: PG.
Word Count: ~2000
Summary: Akutsu's roommates help him out, but he's still no closer to learning who the boy is or how he ended up this way.
Notes: Having a main character this Genre Savvy is hard to deal with. SHIN XD
←To Chapter 1
--
Chapter 2: Wash away my Scars with your Tears
He ran into Shiramata’s bedroom. The guy was always crashing into things and getting hit by things and generally getting himself injured, and Akutsu knew for a fact that he had a first-aid kit somewhere. He threw around some dirty laundry and empty takeout containers and eventually discovered it lying on the table. All the noise woke Shiramata up, and he started to sit up and ask what was going on, but Akutsu pushed him back down and told him to go back to bed, he had everything under control. Shiramata looked a little dubious, but that was his normal expression, so he didn’t worry about it. He was more worried about the fact that he didn’t really have everything under control at all.
He set the first-aid kid down beside the boy and opened it up. He took out things he thought he probably needed, then got to work. After removing the boy’s coat, he quickly identified two serious-looking wounds, one a massive gash in his left arm and the other a ragged hole in his side. “Um… I’m going to try to bandage you now, so sorry if it hurts, I guess.”
The boy opened his eyes and managed a smile. “Do what you have to.”
“Right.” Akutsu fumbled with the gauze. “Uh. What exactly do I have to do?”
“Can…” The boy coughed violently. “Sorry. Can you wrap my arm really quick? Then I’ll tell you what to do about this.” He lifted his other arm to his chest and prodded that wound, wincing.
“Sure?” After wiping away some of the blood with a wet towel, he wrapped a bandage around it, and upon figuring out how to get it to stay in place, turned his attention to the other injury. “Okay, what now?”
“Do you have any disinfectant? If you could just clean it a bit…”
Akutsu looked and came up with a bottle of peroxide. “I’ve got this stuff.”
A shudder ran through the boy’s body. “I might scream. Is that okay?”
This struck Akutsu as a very strange thing to ask. “Sure, I don’t care. Unless there’s someone chasing after you and they’re going to hear you and bust in here and I’m going to have to fend them off with my limited edition full-size Buster Sword replica. Because I’ll probably fail unless you give me some special warrior powers or something. And that thing was expensive.”
The boy blinked at him. “Nobody’s chasing me,” he said eventually.
“Okay,” Akutsu said. He wouldn’t have minded warrior powers, but he wasn’t that big on fighting and he definitely wasn’t a fan of getting hurt, so he figured it was for the best. He poured the solution onto a cotton swab and began dabbing at the injury. The boy flinched, and as he continued to clean it, he would moan every so often. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on his face and he had his eyes clamped firmly shut. He threaded his fingers through one of Akutsu’s belt loops and held on tightly.
When Akutsu finished, he opened his eyes again. “Okay. Now… you’re going to have to get the bullet out.”
“Whoa, bullet? Somebody shot you?” As a rule, he didn’t tend to approve of combat involving guns, especially not the kind with real bullets. It could never compare with the tried-and-true tradition of one-on-one sword duels, and it had always seemed sort of unfair to him somehow. Mecha were one thing, but humans using guns on each other… well, he hoped this was a one-time thing, or limited to just one certain boss. Otherwise he would have to seriously reconsider his role in this story.
“Somebody… I thought was a friend.” He cast his eyes to the side. “I… I’ll tell you about it after you’re finished.”
Treachery! Betrayal! Now that was a development. He picked up the pincers and began trying to find and extract the bullet, but his mind was occupied by all the possible scenarios that might have occurred. Maybe the boy was part of some sort of organization, criminal or otherwise, and one of his most trusted subordinates was a double agent or had decided to sell them out to the other side for his own gain. Or, maybe he was the double agent, but one of his contacts had turned out to be a triple agent, and decided he was no longer useful. Maybe they had been vigilantes, fighting demons or something, and his friend had been possessed and they would have to go on a long journey to save him that could only end in tears. That could be fun.
As he probed the wound, the boy clung to him, gasping out little cries of pain whenever he pressed too sharply against the exposed tissue. At long last, he touched something hard. He maneuvered the pincers around it (it seemed impossibly small, weren’t bullets supposed to be huge?) and squeezed them tightly around it. The boy let out a piercing shriek.
Akutsu didn’t jump or anything - he had warned him he might scream, after all - and carefully extracted it. He set it aside with a feeling of triumph and bent over the boy to finish bandaging him.
A door slammed open. “Look, Akutsu, I know she’s your waifu, but it’s late and-” Shion stopped mid-sentence, taking in the scene. “Dude. Do it in your own room, okay?” he said eventually.
Akutsu rolled his eyes and applied the gauze. Scenes where somebody walked in on people doing something that was totally innocent but looked and sounded scandalous were never as wacky or hilarious as writers seemed to think they were. “Obviously I can’t bandage this man’s wounds in my room, he’ll get blood all over everything and I guess you’re not supposed to move injured people or something.”
Suddenly Shion was all concern. “What, someone’s hurt? We should get to the hospital right away!” He flipped open his phone, but Akutsu yelled at him to stop.
“Are you crazy? We can’t take him there. He doesn’t have any proof of identity or anything, so they’ll start asking weird questions we can’t answer and the government will have to investigate and they’ll figure out that he’s actually part of a top-secret group that the world can’t know about!” He looked at the boy. “Right?”
The boy looked surprised, but nodded.
Shion frowned. “Okay, wait, are you guys role-playing or is this for real?”
“It’s for super real!” Akutsu jumped up and grabbed Shion’s hands. “I’m going to be a protagonist,” he breathed, eyes shining.
Shion’s face immediately lit up. “Omigosh, really?! Congrats! Can I be an important secondary character with an awesome love interest? Or at least be part of a character arc?”
“Well, I don’t know what the danger level is going to be, so if you get important you might die.”
Shion waved a hand impatiently. “Dude, that’s fine. Nobody lives forever anyway. Just find me a cute girl with big eyes, a nice body, and a slight tsundere streak, and I’ll be good to go.” He glanced down at the boy and reevaluated the situation. “Alternatively, slightly older, tall, medium to long hair, tough-guy exterior with a sensitive center, with optional facial hair and instability due to a tragic past.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Akutsu promised.
Shion grinned. “That’s why you’re my best friend, after all.” He crossed the room and bent over the boy for a closer look. “Hey, Akutsu?”
“Yeah?”
“We seriously have to get this guy to the hospital. I mean, if we have to we can pretend he’s me or you or Mata or something, but he’s gonna die at this rate. People aren’t supposed to lose this much blood.”
Akutsu thought about this. “Okay. Can we use your ID and insurance stuff then? I mean, I don’t want to leave him or I’d use mine. And it could be a chance for you to get more involved with everything, someone might track down the records and kidnap you or something.”
“Oh, that could be fun!” Shion said. “Wait just a sec, I’ll get it for you.”
He disappeared into his room. Akutsu went into his own room and dug up a sorta clean shirt that he didn’t care about getting stained. (Sunshine Schoolgirl was so last season, and he hadn’t even liked Mai that much anyway.) He slipped it on and went back out to the living room. According to the time on the TV, Ani*Kan should still be on, but instead it was showing a report about a huge explosion at the metropolitan tower downtown. All the better if he wasn’t missing his favorite show after all. “Hey,” he said, gesturing at the screen. “Did you blow that thing up?”
“No. I…know someone who might have, though.”
“Cool,” Akutsu said, and made a mental note to check up on recent mysterious explosions, deaths, and the like, in case it became important later, because there was a very good chance that it would. He turned the TV off and helped the boy sit up. He buttoned his coat back up so that people wouldn’t look at them quite so weirdly when they showed up at the hospital at two in the morning. “You’re okay to go, right?”
“Yeah.” The boy looked up at Akutsu, smiled ever so briefly, and nestled his head against his shoulder. “I know I’ll be fine as long as I’m with you, Shin-chan.”
“Is this a thing where I just don’t remember you yet, or were my memories wiped or something?” he asked.
The boy laughed, but it turned into a loud cough. “You’re so weird. I dunno if you’ll remember, but… I hope you will.”
“Found it!” Shion came running back out. “Awwww, look at you two. That’s adorable.”
“Hey. I could end up with someone else, y’know. Don’t start shipping us until you’ve had a chance to see all the options, okay?”
“I know my OTP when I see it,” Shion said, poking Akutsu in the forehead. “Anyway, here you go.” He dropped his ID and insurance cards into his lap.
“Thanks.” They struggled to lift the boy into a standing position and made it out the door a little awkwardly. There were splashes of blood all along the stairs and the landing, and Akutsu felt a little impressed that he had managed to make it all the way here.
Shion cringed. “I better clean this up or somebody will freak out for sure. Probably Mata, actually.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Akutsu said disinterestedly. “Help me get him on the bike?”
As far as motorized vehicles went… this one was about as far from cool as you could get. The best thing you could say about it was that it would get you to where you were going, eventually. He hoped he wouldn’t be involved in any sort of dramatic chase, or that they’d encounter a sexy mechanic (regardless of gender, all mechanics were sexy. It was like, a law) who would completely retool it into a totally badass driving machine that fanboys would cry thousands of delicious tears of longing over.
Once the boy was safely seated, Akutsu climbed in front of him. He resisted the urge to giggle as Shion helped him wrap his arms around his waist. “Hold on tight, okay?” he said in his best primary male love interest voice. After all, even if it wasn’t endgame, there was no sense in turning down free relationship points before he made the final choice.
“Okay,” the boy said, and squeezed. Akutsu couldn’t hold in his intense feelings of moe, but luckily the noise of the motor starting up drowned out the squeak of joy that escaped him.
“Be careful, okay, and call me if you need anything,” Shion said, putting the spare helmet over the boy’s head.
“Thanks. Will do.” After giving him an encouraging smile, Akutsu flipped his visor down and drove off into the night.
Next Chapter→