Artless
A Ritsuka x Soubi Loveless Oneshot
Artless…
1 lacking art, knowledge, or skill
2 : free from artificiality
3 free from guile or craft sincerely simple
Ritsuka.
His perfect, beautiful, adorable Ritsuka.
Soubi smiled as the cat-eared boy walked through the school gate. "Good afternoon, Ristuka."
The small, expressionless face suddenly lit up with schoolboy rage. "Soubi! I told you not to come today! I'm still mad at you!"
"Whatever for?" Soubi asked with a perfectly innocent grin.
Ritsuka opened his mouth to answer but found that he honestly couldn't remember. "I forgot…" Ritsuka mumbled, his ears drooping.
Soubi smiled, more softly than before and took Ritsuka's hand. "I'll do whatever you want today."
Blushing furiously, Ritsuka freed his hand from Soubi's. "I'm not a little kid… I can walk by myself…"
"Of course," Soubi agreed. "What does Ritsuka want to do today?"
The boy thought for a moment before his eyes lit up. "I want to get an ice cream cone at the park… A chocolate one…"
"Alright."
O
O
O
Soubi smiled as Ritsuka licked his treat furiously, determined to keep the double scoop of chocolate slush from dripping off the cone. For a while it seemed like he was failing miserably.
"Like this," Soubi said, demonstrating his perfect licking technique on his own ice cream.
Ritsuka tried it and was making better progress but the cone was still threatening to drip everywhere.
"Ritsuka is artless when it comes to ice cream," Soubi laughed.
The boy paused between licks. "Artless?" he asked.
"Lacking skill," Soubi explained. "Unrefined."
Ritsuka frowned. "That doesn't sound like a good thing to be." He returned his attention to the ice cream cone and with some effort managed to lick it down to a manageable size.
The fighter and the sacrifice finished their cones in silence and sat down on a park bench. Ritsuka licked his lips to get all the ice cream off but a small spot of chocolate remained. Seizing the opportunity, Soubi drew closer and licked the sugary remnant off.
"S-Soubi!" Ritsuka stammered, blushing.
"I love you, Ritsuka," Soubi whispered, just like always.
Ritsuka blushed even more furiously than before but he allowed himself to lean closer to his fighter. It was more comfortable that way.
Soubi smiled at the boy's concession. Ritsuka… his perfect, childish, naïve, honest, simple Ritsuka. His artless Ritsuka… who was everything Soubi was not.
"Ne, Soubi?" Ritsuka asked, gazing up at the man beside him.
"Yes?"
"Is it bad… to be artless?"
Soubi shook his head and buried his face in Ritsuka's dark hair.
Ritsuka frowned.
Soubi could tell Ritsuka did not approve of the short answer. "A word can mean different things," Soubi explained, now facing the boy. "Ritsuka is artless with ice cream… but Ritsuka is also sincere, genuine, natural, innocent, ingenuous… artless. Those are all very good things to be."
Smiling, Soubi kissed Ritsuka gently. As he pulled away, he whispered, "I love you, Ritsuka."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Hayama's notes!
I was writing something else and I used my word processor's thesaurus to check for a synonym for 'naïve.' One of the words listed was 'artless' and upon reading that word I was intensely inspired to write a Loveless fic. It's the perfect word for Ritsuka, don't you think?