Pulled From The Inside.
Ritsuka calls him in the middle of the night, sometimes. It's irregular enough that Soubi hasn't been able to find a patron yet; sometimes he stays awake all night thinking that Ritsuka will call with nothing but smoke and canvas to distract him, and then two days later he wakes up at 2:59 AM with Ritsuka whispering in the phone.
"Did I wake you up?"
That's a trick question; different and yet similar enough to the kind of questions Seimei used to do that Soubi can't help but smile, light his cigarette, a sparkle of orange and yellow and then nothing at all. He pictures the gray white smoke curling as he blows a little and stays lying down, without turning on any other lights.
Like this, he can almost think Ritsuka is laying down by his side.
"I'm dreaming," he answers. Saying 'yes' would mortify Ritsuka and he would apologize and hang up despite Soubi telling him he doesn't mind. Saying 'no' would anger Ritsuka, call him an idiot that doesn't care enough about himself, or accuse him of lying.
Ritsuka gives a small sigh, but it's not annoyed. Soubi smiles and takes another drag, let's the smoke curl away from his lips and dispel. If Ritsuka was here, he thinks, he'd complain about the smell.
He hears Ritsuka shifting, pictures him putting the phone against his ear between the pillow and him, resting on his side. Soubi bites at the sudden urge to ask Ritsuka if he's picturing that he's laying down besides him, if he wished he was. He knows that Ritsuka wouldn't answer, and the pleasure of a 'yes' wouldn't erase the bitterness of a no, nor the way that Ritsuka would surely hang up then.
"Tell me?" It comes more like a request rather than an order. Soubi makes do.
"There are clouds, shaping each other like birds, and they are twirling around a velvet red sky before plunging in amber-like waves. I think they're hunting for stars."
If Ritsuka can't sleep, Soubi likes being awake. He's not sure yet how to tell this to Ritsuka, and he finds himself a little wary that Ritsuka would order him to just sleep without picking up his phone, though, so instead he just waits for those calls.
-...-...-
Ritsuka, Soubi thinks, probably gets a little annoyed at art and the way the artist perception changes things or adds things that weren't there. He's too much of an empiricist to warm up enough at the incongruities. He likes art, yes, but Soubi is willing to bet that he tries not to think about it too much. Watch at it through blurry eyes and from a perspective, rather than to get angry at the way that some things don't mix.
It almost makes him want to buy Ritsuka a book on surrealism, watch Ritsuka's face go to that half glare, cat ears half back in annoyance. It's a look that he's terribly fond of. One of these days he has to tell so to Ritsuka, too, so he can get the half shrieked 'Soubi!' from the boy.
Soubi has learned to sketch Ritsuka even while he's moving. Ritsuka would stay calm if he asked him, but Soubi rather likes him moving, feet kicking a bit while he reads or does his homework, or playing some video games.
A quiet, calm Ritsuka is more often than not a nervous, scared one, a wary Ritsuka just expecting something to go wrong. Soubi likes to think that this Ritsuka - moving around his place and looking through his books and sitting down on his bed or on the floor, or peeking over his shoulder to look what he's drawing - means that Ritsuka has grown to trust him, if only a little.
The thought warms him up enough that he doesn't mind the way he later has to redo parts of his sketches.
"I never thought you'd be someone to like surrealism, Agatsuma-kun," his teacher tells him, a surprised smile over his face.
Soubi makes plans of buying Ritsuka a manual camera for his next birthday, something for black and white pictures. A Kodak, perhaps. Pulling Ritsuka away from the comfort of colors will be tricky enough, but he's willing to try and see the results.
-...-...-
The sleeves of Ritsuka's shirts are barely covering his wrists bones. Soubi turns to look at this, catches Ritsuka's attention and then Ritsuka rolls his eyes at him and calls him a pervert before sprinting the few last steps to his house. When there's no sudden crash nor screams coming from it, when he notices the light in Ritsuka's room turning on, then Soubi turns away to continue his way.
Ritsuka is starting to grow up. It's not something so strange, since he's reaching thirteen. It's still a somewhat displeasing thought. Not because of the reasons that Kio thinks - besides the guilty pleasure he gets of being able to hold the boy against him and have him fit so well inside his arms, giving Soubi the impression that if he could just keep him there, then nothing would ever again hurt Ritsuka.
It is, however, because Ritsuka is barely starting to be a child again, Soubi thinks as he sits by the park, a book open but unseeing the words as Ritsuka, Yuiko and Yayoi try to decide on what to research for a school project.
He hears Ritsuka's surprised laugh at a sudden joke Yuiko makes, looks up to Yuiko's surprised face and Yayoi apparently trying not to laugh either before Yuiko also starts giggling. At that, Yayoi finally loses it and he starts laughing too, three kids happy under the trees of a park.
Despite the sudden twist of jealousy, Soubi thinks that he loves the girl a little, if only for the way Ritsuka's hands fold over his stomach as he laughs, long and hard until there are tears over the corners of his eyes.
Soubi knows that, as much as he would like to try and give some innocence to Ritsuka, he's too tainted to do so; he can only smear the taints with his own in a vitriol of red. The best he can do is try to be a shield and leave the real innocent to share that with Ritsuka.
-...-...-
Ritsuka likes to fill in the blanks of things around him, so Soubi thinks that he shouldn't have been as surprised as he was when Ritsuka asks him about his parents.
"My parents?" he says before shrugging a bit. Ritsuka is sitting over the counter, his book resting over his lap. Soubi keeps stirring the stew, blinking towards the boy. "They died when I was very young. Why?"
Ritsuka shrugs, looks down to his book. "Just curious," but Soubi is ready for the next question when it comes, doesn't even look up from the food his making. "What did they do?"
Soubi hums a little, plucks a bit of the chicken and blows over it before offering it to Ritsuka. Ritsuka eats it and chews a little, informs him it needs a little more of salt before still looking at him, curious with unguarded sunset eyes.
Ritsuka, he thinks, is trying to humanize him, blur the edges that make him a weapon.
"My mother was a painter, though I can't remember if she was good or not;" Soubi lies easily enough. Truth is, he barely remembers his parents as people he once knew, wouldn't know their faces if he was to stumble unto a picture, and sensei never liked to talk about them. Soubi thinks it's not completely a lie. He half remembers a woman's soft touch against the back of his hand, a soft voice telling him how things weren't always what they seemed, that even colors changed through the light, and he remembers the hidden sketches that sensei kept in his room that seemed somehow familiar.
Ritsuka hums, obviously interested, and Soubi could love him only because of that lack of pity in his voice. Ritsuka's eyes just understand what it is to lose something as fragile as memories, after all.
"And your father?"
This isn't lying, Soubi thinks. It's more of telling the version he built for himself when he was young. If Ritsuka wants his past, Soubi will build it with sunshine and laughter and music and everything so that Ritsuka doesn't have to worry, doesn't have to look sad for him.
"My father owned a bookshop," he thinks he remembers the smell of old books, of whispers of other people in French. "We lived on top of it."
Ritsuka looks at him again, frowning a little, probably searching for signs to tell if he's telling the truth or not. Soubi smiles and leans forward, steals a kiss and a shriek of 'SOUBI!' from the boy.
"Dinner is ready," he says.
-...-...-
Ritsuka doesn't ask about the BELOVED marks despite the fact that, by now, Soubi is sure he has realized how different they look from other pairs names. When the bandages are off, his fingers move softly over them, though, almost as if he was apologizing, or perhaps asking in silence.
Soubi pretends he doesn't understand either of those, and tries to stop himself from thinking that Ritsuka's touch has opened them again, has left his skin raw.
Ritsuka, too, pretends about his wounds. These days he doesn't glare at him as if daring him to say anything at all. Soubi doesn't and just helps him clean them, wipe the blood, trace the way the cut will make Ritsuka's skin different again.
It's strange to think that they're both so adept at pretending, despite Ritsuka's attempts to keep from saying lies. Soubi could pinpoint that pretending to be a normal twelve years old is a lie, but he thinks Ritsuka would shelter inside him again. It's taken him enough to get this close, after all. He won't make something to break that apart.
Instead, when Ritsuka lays down over his bed, Soubi turns off both their cellphones and puts them over his night table, takes off his glasses and shoes, and then curls around Ritsuka, an arm around his waist and pressing his head against Ritsuka's hair.
Ritsuka doesn't move at all. Soubi thinks that he probably has his eyes tightly closed, just as tightly as his closed hand is over the pillow.
He knows that Ritsuka is pretending to be asleep, can feel the way his tail twitches nervously against his thigh.
Soubi smiles and closes his eyes too, stops himself from whispering the 'I love you' that dangles from his mouth and he pretends he doesn't know, content on the way Ritsuka, little by little, relaxes against him despite his wounds.