1Summary: There is no, no light more brilliant than your smile. (In fixing someone, there is always the risk of breaking one's self. Shuu sometimes believes Ginji is fixing him, because there are penalties to admitting what is the truth– that it is the other way around.)
Disclaimer: I do not own GetBackers.
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O friend of my scribbled life
your heart is like mine -
your loneliness
will bring you home.-'A Deep Happiness', Leonard Cohen
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.V
His frown fits into him, sliding slow and easy like butter, a trail of grease lying behind sticky and remorseful. Shuu watches Ginji, spectral flakes of lazed, unbroken lightning sparking off of his fingertips– thumbs and index fingers, and he thinks 'this, this man, he is our God'.
It is his lord that he smiles for, unabashed and brilliant. Ginji tells him later when the sun is setting and the stars begin their glow in the freshly darkened sky like water lilies pink and fresh in the salt water pond, that his smile carries far more brilliance than any lightning.
Shuu disagrees, secretly, to himself. But Ginji looks over him with some sort of casual, glossed grace and says 'It's true' like he knows about the doubt. Shuu freezes– then relaxes. They lie under the sky for hours and together, that is how they sleep the best.
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.IV
MakubeX, the child prodigy, both frightens and amazes the people he meets, a God in his own right. He smiles, sticky like sweetened liquor, often, and it is this that makes Shuu understand it's falsity. The people of infinity fortress, God or no, do not smile more than necessity.
'I don't trust him.' he wants to say to Ginji, but they are neither old nor new friends, and he still bows before him. Friends do not bow for each other, he reminds himself (not the type of friends, at least, like the grinning buddies strolling through the allies, arms slung across each other mockingly choking– they have never had that, Shuu and Ginji, and perhaps they do not want to), not even when one friend is amazingly better than the other.
Sorely, Shuu tells himself he finds no comfort in Ginji's company that night, even though he does. "Shuu," Ginji says, tone almost light, like he is teasing. It is smooth and soft and Shuu smiles at it, even though only slightly.
Only slightly.
"You'll get cold out here." Ginji continues.
"That's fine with me, Ginji-san." Shuu replies, honestly, and rolls over from his side to his back, glancing up at the dark sky and murmuring about how nice it is that night.
Ginji pushes his own coat, which is large and comforting and warm from the heat of his body, onto Shuu, where it lands and drapes sloppily over his face and abdomen. Shuu scowls underneath it, but doesn't miss the gesture, and adjusts it silently, sullenly, over his shoulders.
"Thanks, Ginji-san." he says, and looks up to meet Ginji's eyes, where they shine in the moonlight and crease almost fondly. One friend is better than the other, but he doesn't acknowledge it– instead slides those strong hands into pockets and tells Shuu to dress warmer, because he's a moron and doesn't he know by now how cold it gets at night there?
Shuu laughs, with a fondness unmatched, and tugs Ginji's coat tighter around himself, pulling sandaled feet upwards and resting his chin on his knees where they are scabbed and bruised and dirty. Ginji doesn't mind about his hygiene, because Shuu is no God of this particular fortress and bathing is few and far between the lines (all those cracks you have crawled through to get to him).
(And you think, perhaps, perhaps you already have, but only slightly.)
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.III
Shido does not like him– his scabbed knees and over-sized tank-tops and sloppy grins, and Shuu mourns slightly over the fact. Shido is not generous, but he is kind in his own ways. Ginji, Shuu thinks, is the same.
(And you think perhaps each of them have their soft spots that you can play into– for Ginji has you even though you do not find yourself particularly special or wonderful in any way that someone else could not be, and Kazuki has Juubei and Toshiki who are always self-sacrificial to the point of being mediocre, and Shido has Emishi who most find infernally annoying and ridiculous, yet he is one of the only ones in the entire fortress with the ability to make Shido's lips twitch into a mild smile.
'One day I'll make him smile so largely that his face will split in half,' Emishi had said to you, because you, too, knew that those little up-quirks of the mouth were never enough to the people who loved and were loved, 'Because he's the only one who hasn't laughed at my jokes– and that's frustrating for a comedian, isn't it?'
You knew, though, that it was more than frustration or generosity keeping you all connected to each other. You have very apathetic ways of showing kindness to each other, but it is more than nothing, more than you should be able to ask from them.)
"He's nothing, Ginji," Shuu had heard. "Why do you stick around him?" Perhaps it had not needed a response– any cold glance or wordlessness would perfectly describe what Ginji's reaction was. He was the Lightning Lord and those who served under him were required to understand every look, expression, and motion. There was no avoiding it.
But instead he had said, quietly, in a voice not angered nor irritable nor amused, "Perhaps for the same reason you do him." And it, too, is enough.
That night Ginji lies next to him again, which has happened less and less often, as more and more people follow the Lightning Lord and more and more challenge him for the place he has built. Shuu misses the company, but takes comfort in the way Ginji creates his position in the world for himself, takes an almost pride in it, as a friend and companion should.
"Why do you stick around me, Ginji-san?" he asks him, forgetting why, but understanding at the same time. It is unsimply simplistic, and he is so content with it he could laugh (never 'Lighting Lord', never '-sama'– it is how you know him, and it is how he knows you. Often you believe that if you did not call him by it, he would never recognize your voice).
Ginji does not respond this time. Shuu, as his subordinate, is trained to understand every silence, look, expression, and movement. But as his friend it is what makes him understand the next action.
Ginji's lips on his are soft and warm and for a small moment in time, Shuu allows himself to melt into it, and forget everything that makes them different from each other. For that moment, he believes, and allows himself the comfort of it, that there is nothing more difficult nor complex than Ginji's mouth meeting his mouth, again, and again, and again...
('I want to make him smile so largely that it splits his face in half,' you think, 'and then I will take one of those halves for myself and keep it until the next age of the world.')
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.II
Ginji's visits get even less frequent, as they have been doing so for the last months, but Shuu tries to ignore the gnawing feeling in the bottom of his stomach and the back of his mind, and enjoys the time he has with him to the best of his abilities. Ginji is the Lightning Lord, anyway, and it should be expected that he has less time for people like him, for people like Shuu, who are of no higher class or power, and only follow people like dogs or ants lined up one after the others (and the hill is on fire, you think, but the queen is giving you no orders to run out).
"Shuu," Ginji says, when their hands are lined up so closely they should be touching, but they are not, "If I left, what do you think would happen?"
His eyes are so serious and stern with the question that Shuu feels uncomfortable, and he laughs to betray his sudden anxiety that grows and spreads like bright wild fire– destroying the thin walls of comfort, of serenity.
('You,' you think, 'You're destroying everything you've built. Why?' But there is no answer, as if you expected one– you are meant from the beginning to understand the silences but this one is still too quiet for comfort.)
"Ginji-san...why would you ask that? Everything would fall to pieces, surely..."
(Why?)
Wild fires will burn for days on end, until either someone interferes or it stops on it's own. Often even with interference, it will continue to ravage the surrounding areas, vicious and merciless to what it will consume. Such is the way it happens, and Ginji's lips on his for once do nothing to settle his heart pounding in his chest or the way his fingers stick to the lines of Ginji's face, so wet with sweat are they.
He feels it; the air of discontent. Both his own and Ginji's, and for once he absolutely can't stand the way Ginji looks calm and apathetic and Shuu's breath grows louder in the quiet of the darkness, the little building he stays in with the broken windows and old couches, dirty floors and borrowed, broken gracelessness.
('Everything you built, are you tearing it down now?' you think, too tentative to speak aloud. The fear of noanswers makes your voice shake even in your mind.)
Ginji kisses him, hard and steady, and Shuu sobs quietly into it. "Ginji-san, don't, don't leave."
But he will, he will.
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.I
Ginji is gone three days later, though it takes Shuu another two to discover it. There are no notes left behind, no apologies, no broken-hearted goodbyes because there are no goodbyes at all.
For Kazuki, it is easy to understand his leavings. For Shido, it is predictable. They leave behind the people like Juubei and Emishi and Shuu and do not know, will not ever know until it is too late, how painful and hurting it is. There are no hard kisses tasting like sweat and grass and reassurance, but there is bitterness, and there is loneliness.
Whether or not, later, Ginji will be the death of him is inconsequential for now.
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Author's Note: I love this pairing, even though half the people in fandom probably don't remember who Shuu is! I wanted to do a larger look on everything, but I think I liked how this turned out anyway, and even though it's not as long nor detailed as I'd hoped (there are a lot of points I didn't cover), it still turned out a lot longer than I thought it would when I started it!
I hope you enjoyed this, anyone who read it, and found Shuu's character convincing, because the manga and anime hardly gave us much of a glimpse into him.