pairing: ritshou
2,742 words
rating: Teen + Graphic Depictions of Violence
chapters: 1/1
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Quantum entanglement is a bizarre, counterintuitive phenomenon that explains how two subatomic particles can be intimately linked to each other even if separated by billions of light-years of space.
—
His head is to the floor and there’s blood everywhere and it’s pooling from his skull.
He can almost see a god that clearly does not favor him and he begs and pleads and whispers pitiful apologies to it for not being what it wanted him to be.
He coughs out murmurs of a prayer he hasn’t recited since before he’d even reached double digits in age and he wallows in the aftermath of a scene he hasn’t quite processed and he begs for mercy on the cold and lifeless concrete floor he’s been left to die on. He begs until his whispers are mere scratches of his hollow throat and he begs until his fingers clawing at the concrete beneath him are bloodied and raw, leaving oozing trails of crimson in their wake, the pool beneath his head running out in fractals between the grooves of the cement.
There’s a body slumped lifelessly somewhere to his right and its eyes nearly pop from its skull and roll across the dirtied floor. Their head split near in two (like Shou’s own would have been had he not saved himself by the skin of his teeth) as it oozes, oozes onto the floor in unrecognizable matter.
The light above flickers dimly, a shine on the blood that trickles over the bridge of Shou’s nose before dripping down, down, down into the ever-growing puddle beneath his head.
The light flickers and burns out in the blink of an eye, leaving the room in almost complete darkness, aside from the sliver of evening light that crawls beneath the crack of the closed door, wood splintering from age and wear.
Shou huffs, throat gurgling with the build of more blood. Always more. It spills and dribbles over his cracked and chapped lips, stinging at the small cuts and staining his tan skin an unnaturally bright red. It would be almost gorgeous had the scene been less gruesome.
A noise from behind the door catches his attention as he blinks his way to fight through a fatal unconsciousness that claws and begs and cries to him to succumb to it, to lay his head to rest and let it be. Let go.
He’s torn between a fighting spirit and a soul that’s done what it was made to do, and has no more purpose to be here.
The noises grow louder—voices maybe, he’s unsure. His ears are cotton-full and unhelpful, muffling the sounds of anything in his surroundings.
There’s a banging behind the door and Shou can’t bring himself to try and lift his head, look behind him and check for further threats. More threats than what has already cataclysmically destroyed his heart and brain from the inside out—the outside in.
The door bursts open, splintering further than it already had, crunching sickeningly at the force of impact. It reminds Shou grossly of himself, the sickening crunch of his own self, the disgusting feeling of being splintered.
Voices (several) come rushing into the room, tending to the body Shou can see, and the others he cannot.
Concern wafts through the air in nauseating thickness; nobody had ever been concerned about Shou, not even now as he lies the last still-breathing person in the room. They still didn’t care.
A stream of light, almost akin to an angel—light haloing their head just like one—a person knelt before him, whispering words Shou couldn’t hear but didn’t know if he were ever intended to anyway. They lifted his head gently, placing it on the shaking, pale skin of their thighs. They folded in half, whispering sweet words in Shou’s matted and bloodied hair. They were uncaring of the blood that came with Shou, that followed him, trailed him endlessly. It was sticky now, cheek pressed to warm, warm flesh, blood sticking like gum and drying dark. The fresh blood still oozed from his head and over his lips and past the gashes in his skin.
It dripped and cascaded in raindrop trails over their thighs, their knees, curling under and onto their shins. It stained their socks and painted their hands gruesomely as they cradled his head and stroked gently through tangled locks.
Although Shou’s vision was limited in his haze between life and death, on the brink of an internal and external struggle to maintain the very limited flow of oxygen in and out of his lungs, he had understood now who held him, who had been the only person in the room—in the whole world—to care about him.
Ritsu.
Always Ritsu.
Shou’s mind was muddled and fuzzy, rattled and shaken, but he turned ever so slightly as best he could and pressed a bloodied and slick kiss to his friend’s thigh.
The pale hands in his hair gripped ever tighter, but still so gentle at the blood-matted strands, a soft whimper coming from the person he laid pressed to, their form gently shaking with what Shou could only assume to be restrained sobs. He felt guilty for being the source of these feelings but really—nothing was in his hands at this moment, everything was out of his control and into the universe’s.
It didn’t stop the nauseating waves of remorse.
If he’d never met Ritsu—never made him stick by his side—then he wouldn’t be here now, upset and crying over someone he shouldn’t waste his tears on, really.
He wouldn’t be sat in a pool of his friend’s blood, stroking their hair so gently while they were on death’s door, getting their gross, sticky, inner fluid all over him, staining his clothes and his pretty pale skin.
So pale; The color of innocence, really. Always like an angel. Ritsu was always like an angel.
It was really a shame that Shou would die here, bleeding out in his friends arms, in the arms of someone he’d loved like nobody else and like nobody had loved him. It really was a shame to love somebody so bad that it chokes you up and they don’t even love you back.
All those dumb internet metaphors about choking on flowers full of loving meaning were a little truer than Shou wished they were.
It made him sick.
He choked on the blood gurgling from his throat instead, something more befitting to Shou’s rough edges and brutal personality. There was no sense that needed to be made from why he was left the way he was, it made sense already, why he’d always been alone, always unwanted.
Exception of Ritsu. Always the exception of Ritsu. Shou could never pinpoint why, but he didn’t have the brainpower left in him now to use it thinking of dumb explanations for why Ritsu had always, always, wanted him. Like a runt of the litter that a child had pointed at and said, “That one! I want that one!” Or like a broken item in a shop that some caring person had claimed because, “Who else will give it the love and care that it needs?”
Ritsu was like that. Ritsu was like a saint to Shou. Ritsu was angelic. Ritsu was everything to Shou, and Shou was just a broken object he’d found and decided to pick up, because who else was going to do it, if not for him?
Shou’s eyes drooped heavy, eyes threatening to close and shut his brain off for indefinitely forever.
Ritsu’s hands cradled his face gently, wiping blood away with the pad of his thumb (doing nothing more than smearing it across tan and lightly freckled cheekbones). He bent at his waist and whispered prayers into red hair, bowed almost religiously.
There was nothing holy about the scene of this room. A massacre, maybe, had more been collateral.
A botched job if they couldn’t even kill the most dangerous in the room. Although Shou was more than disarmed at this point, and left to die on his own in a far worse way, so there were props to them for doing that at the very least.
They hadn’t accounted for Shou’s brain’s unwillingness to die because some cute boy with dark hair and a stupid academic record had came and caressed his face so soft despite the blood—and had whispered words that would be left unknown by Shou, only heard by the stale wind that breezed the musty basement room as Shou’s ears were plugged and useless.
Although Shou had begged mere moments before for mercy, some semblance of kindness from an unkind and unjust god to end him quick and painless, now he begged to survive, at fear of devastating his friend—the one he loved (whom had not loved him).
Pulses of blood oozed in rivulets with each weak pump of Shou’s heart, drum of his flowing blood waning quick, losing its will to keep pushing. He turned his head and coughed weakly into the open air (though could something so putrid truly be considered open), blood pumping up and through his esophagus, painting the floor in strips and spatters of dark and unsettling red.
Ritsu lifted his head, crying out for something (someone?), muffled words, words above the waterline that Shou was buried six feet beneath.
His own wet and messy grave.
He coughed until his lungs were dry and there was no more blood left to run down his face in a diluted runny pink instead of its usual jarring red.
He turned his head again, pressing it into the soft skin of his friend’s thigh, mushing his face and smearing blood, maybe in an attempt to join as one before he’d lose him forever.
God, did he love Ritsu. His soft black hair and rough edges, his reserved but loud personality if you treated him right (lord knows Shou did everything to treat him right). He whispered hoarse words to milky flesh, meant to be heard by nobody. He would take these words to the grave.
Shaking hands kept combing deftly to untangle Shou’s hair, a soothing light scrape to the base of his skull. It lulled him deeper into a sleep he wasn’t meant to succumb to, but this didn’t seem like such a terrible place to die.
Head in his best friend (and unfortunate crush)’s lap, lips pressing barely-there kisses to his skin, whispering words he’d never intended to say out loud, but Ritsu would never hear all the time.
It was better than dying alone and cold, bleeding out on this concrete floor. It was better than dying in that lab, or dying at the hands of his own dad (couldn’t even kill his own son himself).
Ritsu pressed his face to the crown of Shou’s head and whispered endless streams of words, his hands cradling whatever remained of a conscious Shou. He felt the movement of his lips to his scalp, felt the blood stick and ooze. It was disgusting all in all (as if Shou minded), and probably breached some sort of hazard code when it came to handling people on death’s door.
He was gonna die anyway, so it’s not like it mattered.
Maybe the hallway light flickered or maybe the little dingy attic light in Shou’s brain did, but whichever one it was, cast a dark shadow over the room, dark enough to blind Shou and all the sounds that came with his environment.
Figured that he’d finally die after pleading for so long, sitting in his own blood.
——
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep—
Shou sat up with a start, breaths short and rapid, chest heaving. The heart monitor beeped quickly. His gaze flitted across the room, analyzing his unfamiliar surroundings as quickly as his sluggish brain could manage.
A sharp pain behind his eyes momentarily stopped his flighty animal senses. He groaned and pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes, attempting to soothe the ache in his skull. He felt the smooth material of the bandages wrapped securely around his forehead
A warm hand—urgent and shaking the slightest bit—grabbed his wrist, tugging on it gently.
“Shou,” they whispered, voice rough around the edges and wobbly. Shou pried his hands off his face and blinked slowly at the source of the call.
“Shou,” Ritsu breathed a relieved sigh the moment their eyes met, grip tightening a fraction.
Ritsu, Ritsu, Ritsu, Ritsu, Shou’s mind repeated like a prayer, always Ritsu.
“Ritsu,” the corners of Shou’s mouth quirked up with the hint of a smile.
“Shou…” Ritsu’s voice cracked, lower lip wobbling as his face crumpled. He buried his face in Shou’s lap, hospital blanket surely scratching uncomfortably at his face. Ritsu nuzzled Shou’s lap while he cried, tears muffled in the fabric. Shou folded over his friend, tucking his face into Ritsu’s neck and feeling the way Ritsu’s shoulders shook beneath his chest.
“I’m sorry,” Shou whispered. The heart monitor at his side skipped a beat.
“Don’t.” Ritsu sniffled, shuffling to wrap his arms tightly around Shou’s waist. “Don’t start, Suzuki. It’s not your fault.” His voice was thick with tears.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t feel like this,” Shou mumbled, nosing at Ritsu’s neck, his heartbeat loud and his skin warm.
“If it weren’t for me, Suzuki, you’d be dead,” Ritsu grumbled, moving to sit up, pushing Shou gently off of him.
“I liked it better when you said my first name with disdain,” Shou frowned, moving to sit up, scooting closer to Ritsu.
Ritsu sighed, keeping his arms loosely wrapped around Shou’s waist, leaning close and into his space. Shou would have it no other way.
“You’re an idiot, Shou.”
“You saved me, so who’s the real idiot,” Shou huffed, shuffling down the bed and opening his arms for Ritsu to join him.
“Don’t joke like that, Shou,” Ritsu frowned, crawling onto the old hospital bed at Shou’s side and laying his arms lazily over his waist. “Please don’t say things like that. Not after you almost died at my feet,” Ritsu mumbled, voice cracking like it had before.
Shou buried his face in the crown of Ritsu’s head, laying an arm over his shoulder. “In your lap,” he corrected.
“Shou.”
“Sorry. Thank you,” Shou closed his eyes, letting the sudden onset of drowsiness consume him. “Have you been here all this time?” Shou questioned.
“I haven't left your side since I found you in that basement,” Ritsu admitted, “I wouldn’t let them take you from my side so i’ve been with you the whole time, yah.”
Shou smiled, feeling an overwhelming sense of love overtaking him. The heart monitor picked up speed by a barely noticeable fraction of a second. “How’d you get cleaned up? I remember bleeding all over you,” Shou hummed.
“Ah, you do remember what happened?” Ritsu tightened his hold on his friend’s waist.
“Yah… It’s a little foggy, but yah,” Shou nuzzled Ritsu’s hair again, fingers threading through the hairs at his nape. “Can we talk about it later?” His voice was quiet; Shou felt small.
Ritsu tangled their legs together, pressing their bodies flush together. “Yes. Of course, yes.” Ritsu hummed, rubbing slightly up and down Shou’s sides in a soothing motion. Shou curled in further.
“I rinsed off in the shower in the bathroom here,” Ritsu pointed to the door attached to Shou’s hospital room. Shou hummed in understanding.
“Are we stuck at the hip forever now?” Shou joked. As if we weren’t already, he thought.
“We’re trauma bonded now, you can’t get rid of me,” Ritsu teased.
Shou smiled, pressing his cheek to Ritsu’s head. “I beat you unconscious the first time we met, we’ve been trauma bonded.”
Ritsu laughed, “You’re forgiven.” He tucked his face to Shou’s chest. “Nap?”
“Yah… That sounds good. Now that I don’t have to worry about not waking up,” Shou huffed.
“Yah,” Ritsu’s voice was thick again with choked back tears. “I love you,” he barely whispered into the fabric of Shou’s shirt. The heart monitor picked up speed once more.
“I love you too,” Shou admitted, holding Ritsu tightly and Ritsu held him back. His angel—his savior, his everything, all his. They drifted off tangled together, practically fused together as one. A pair of binary stars that were finally wrapped up in one another again.
The heart monitor soothed into a steady beep. Beep. Beep.