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"Kio...the hell. What happened." Someone sounded panicked.
"I don't know he was just sitting outside acrossed the street passed out!"
"Put him in my room...Do you know where he's hurt? Where is the blood comming from?"
"I don't know."
He was moving. Being carried it seemed. Was he in a hopital? Dead? He decided he liked the latter.
"Go get me some cold compresses and neosporin..." He felt air hit his legs and tried to open his eyes but a voice in the back of his mind mumbled to him about how nice it would just be to go back to sleep.
"Kio.." He heard the voice shout as his leg was painfully pointed, toes up at the ceiling.
"Forget the neosporin, get hydrogen peroxide and lots of bandages. And some water...He looks sick..."
"Do you think we should try and feed him? He looks so much smaller than last time I saw him."
Ritsuka felt someone attempting to hold him in a sitting position and take his shirt off at the same time and began to struggle.
What the fuck were these people doing? Stripping him naked?
He opened his eyes a bit and the voice begging for sleep got louder. Pushing the large, warm hands away he shoved himself out of the mans hold and fell to the other side of the bed with a light 'plop'.
'So tired...'
"Ritsuka? Ritsuka open your eyes. Ritsuka." Those hands were on his face again.
'Sleep, sleep, I love the dark. It's so relaxing.'
"Ritsuka, I need you to look at me. Stay awake. Please."
'Quiet! I'm trying to sleep can't you see?'
A face was pressed into the crook of his neck and a less than calm voice harshly whispered,
"I should've been there, I'm sorry."
Ritsuka cracked his eyes open,
"You lie." he whispered.
"You're not sorry."
He saw someone walk in and drop something on the bed as he was rolled over by said person.
"Well don't just sit there and stare at him Soubi, come on. He's bleeding on your bed. Do something!"
He felt the sting of the anticeptic on his shoulder that had apparently been torn open by something that had hit him, and his leg.
They took off his previously applied bandages and extremely tightly wrapped another one around his thigh, put an icepack over it, and lightly wrapped that on as well.
Ritsuka was still deciding whether or not he wanted to get up and leav,e or just fall asleep like he had previously so desired.
His legs were propped up on several pillows so that they were almost pointed straight up.
"Is that really necessary? He isn't even bleeding that badly. There was no more than ...like a fourth of a cup of blood on the ground..."
"That was through jeans, and he's obviously not eaten in a while... I'm gunna go make some food...stay here."
Ritsuka decided the light was too bright to allow him to slip back into his peaceful slumber and he opened his eyes fully, for the first time, and turned his head at the weight shifting on the bed.
"You're awake!!!" Kio shouted from a far corner of the room.
"We thought we were gunna have to call 911 or somethin' kid!" He walked up smiling.
"You were so pale and cold and-"
"Will you take the icepack back to the freezer Kio..." Soubi said in his normal monotone voice as he took off the top bondage from Ritsuka's thigh and removed the icepack. Ritsuka's heart skipped a beat at the realization of just who was sitting next to him, speaking next to him, touching him.
Ritsuka immediately wanted the ice back as his numb leg throbbed. He squirmed, grunting a little.
Kio just nodded and took the ice into the other room.
"If it hurts then why'd you do it." Soubi said focussing intently on unwrapping the bottom bandage to replace the gauze that was decently soaked in, now drying, blood.
Ritsuka turned his head to the left away from Soubi and pulled his leg off the pillows and away from Soubi's far too warm hands. He couldn't stay mad with him touching him. Couldn't keep being hopeless of Soubi was speaking to him like he cared. He'd be ripped out of his self enduced state of numb hatred.
"I wanted to remember this forever." Ritsuka said turning his head towards Soubi.
"I wanted to remember having my heart broken by a stranger. So that maybe I'd never do it again." he said looking straight at the side of Soubi's head as the man braced himself on the bed and closed his eyes tightly.
"Ritsuka... You don't understand-"
"No.." Ritsuka sat up.
"I do, you love him. And that's ok. It was ridiculous of me to think I could compaire to Seimei...let alone replace him. You're his."
Soubi shook his head, his long blonde pony tail slithering along his back.
"I don't belong to him. I've got no sacrifice. I am a fighter for whoever claims me." Soubi sighed.
"What about Ritsu? He didn't claim you."
Soubi looked up into Ritsuka's eyes and Ritsuka shook slightly. That look. What made him look so damaged sometimes...
"How did he claim you..." Ritsuka muttered. Soubi just looked away.
There was a long stretch of silence where Ritsuka couldn't quite grasp a hold of a single question he so desperately wanted to ask out of everything he felt he had the right to know now.
"You never claimed me, Ritsuka. You always fought giving me orders. You never owned me."
"But you owned me. And I belonged to you." Ritsuka said, scrunching up his face in attempts to not cry. He couldn't let this man see him any weaker than he already had. Couldn't show him anymore of him than he had already exposed. He didn't deserve any of it.
"I never said I didn't belong to you Ritsuka, I said you never owned me." Soubi whispered as he got up and got more gauze.
Ritsukas eyes went wide and he thought of the way he felt when Soubi had turned to face him and openly announce his love for Seimei.
"You told me you loved me... You made me trust you."
Soubi paused his movements for a second, back facing Ritsuka as he stood at his dresser.
"I do love you Ritsuka."
"YOU LIE" Ritsuka screamed so loudly his voice cracked. He felt that. He felt it go through his entire body. Every ounce of betrayal in the sentence. And he wished he had just gone to sleep like he wanted to earlier.
"Don't yell. You don't have the strength for that."
"You would've killed me if he asked you to." Ritsuka hiccupped a little as he fought back a sob.
"But he didn't. He wasn't going to, he just wanted me to rough you up. It had nothing to do with you..." He came back to the bed and Ritsuka pulled his knees into his chest so that he couldn't touch the wound.
"Leave it alone." He demanded.
"I don't want you to touch me."
Soubi leaned forward and put his face in his hands and rested his elbows on his knees, sighing hard.
"I'm sorry, Ritsuka..you just don't understand... if it wasn't me. If I wasn't his fighter. I'm sure he'd have found someone just as good if not better and killed us both... I couldn't have you die because I was weak."
"So you make all these decisions without asking me? I'm part of this as well!" Ritsuka snapped straightening his leg slowly as he realized it had begun to weep slightly.
"Let me bandage that, please, Ritsuka." Soubi turned and looked Ritsuka straight in the eyes for the first time in two weeks.
"I was a chore for you" Ritsuka gritted out as his held back tears began to poor down his face, causing his cheeks to burn.
"I was nothing but a babysitting job. A child. You might have loved me but not the way you made me think." Soubi went to interupt Ritsuka but he yelled,
"NO. You admitted it Soubi! You sat in front of me and said you loved him-"
"I said I loved my sacrifice, Ritsuka. I said I loved who I belonged to."
In one swift move he was hovering over Ritsuka, hand on his face where that silly bandage always seemed to be, the other stedying him on the bed.
He scooted in as if he was going to kiss Ritsuka but barely pressed his lips to Ritsuka's, mumbling,
"And that is you. And it always has been...And it always will be. Ritsuka."
Ritsuka choked back as much as he could before finally bursting into gut wrenching sobs, face pressed against the mans chest as Soubi craddled him and pet his hair, gently rubbing his ears. Because it really did always calm him down.
"I love you, Ritsuka." Soubi whispered into the boys hair.
"Even if you can't spell my name" he chuckled.
Ritsuka pulled back quickly, glancing down at his thigh, which had managed to get little spots of blood all over Soubi's sheets.
The bold kanji stood out on his leg. Three inches tall and wide. Deeper than just about anything that had ever been inflicted on him,
"壮美"
"I did not!" Ritsuka huffed, wiping his eyes.
Soubi's large, gentle hands lightly touched the mark, he smiled sadly.
"No. It's wrong. My name isn't 'magnificent beauty'..." He reached in one of his pockets and took out a pen, sloppily writing on the back of his own hand "装備".
"It's written like this."
Ritsuka blinked at it a few times before shaking his head 'no'.
"You are not 'equipment' Soubi...you're beautiful.." Ritsuka flushed a little, against his newly paler skin it looked amost sickly.
Soubi smiled, which was something so incredibly rare that every once in a while Ritsuka would think he'd never seen it before.
"Please never do that again... If you want memories.. we can go take pictures." He whispered into Ritsuka's forehead as he leaned forward and cupped the back of Ritsuka's neck.
"You were gone for two weeks" Ritsuka argued.
"You made it very clear you wanted nothing else to do with me.." Soubi mumbled as he slid his face down and captured Ritsuka's lips.
Ritsuka stiffened a little, but still reached out and grasped Soubi's shirt, pulling him closer.
"You were acting like Seimei's 'equipment'...not my 'magnificent beauty'..." Ritsuka mumbled against Soubi's mouth befor the older mans tongue slipped in and his mind went blank, he had grown so fond of blank lately.
He'd have to let Soubi clear his mind more often.