Argumentative. Flirtation
Rated for KazuRyu bickering. X3
This oneshot disclaim'd!
xxx
Like rats, they'd starved, they'd waited. Hidden out amongst the dunes and cliffs-- the long-suffered stretch of barren land that was the wasteland, so aptly named in all its humble, thriving ugliness. A village or two here and there paid small tokens of homage to the two renegade heroes, should the two twice praised and loathed 'outlaws' and these impoverished peoples' crooked paths ever cross, but it seemed the strugglers passed through every time with a little less than they'd had coming in.
They took the meager home-cooked meals from the generous housewives, pocketed the small, miscellaneous gifts lavished on them by village children- awed and humbled by their individual sum of scars, their veteran tales of fights against the mainland, and their rough-and-tumble way of life- and turned down not one single dollar offered to aid them in their strange united struggle. At the same time, they refused new clothes and temporary shelters-- didn't want to hear the news about the ultimate fall of HOLY, what eventually became of Mimori Kiryu and the young girl called Kanami.
It was one of these kind communities that the duo had just passed through, rag cloth pockets weighted down with the small treasures of charity, and the two found themselves holed up in a cave outside the village limits as another night descended-- thus signaling to them that it was their time to stop and rest.
The temperature was moderate; bone dry, somehow, but humid, and a stifling darkness stretched and yawned itself across the rocky mountaintops, plumping the lip of a crescent moon and stars so close above their heads they seemed to burn right through their eyelids. Ryuhou was huddled in a corner, swaddled in all his dirty folds of cloak, brown, now, like all the shit and the piss they'd had to wade through, and the loose tatters of bandages that wound themselves up his arms and legs. Underneath it all, he still sported his HOLY uniform-- sticky with heat and bloodstained, inlayed with dirt, with dust-- that itched and clung and bothered to no end, but that he could not bring himself to abandon for the life of him.
In Kazuma's case, it was still the tight jeans and leather jackets, heavy boots and fingerless gloves. Only now there were shreds in everything. Empty reminders of the past.
The scars had gradually worked their way up his Shell Bullet arm, across his left shoulder and collarbone, and now were creeping up his neck into his jaw line, making dark, rope- like patterns in the skin. Ryuhou's were pinker and thicker and wilder, twisting and turning up his chest and stomach like vines on a white canvas-- crawling up underneath the stormy red-black eyes like blood rivers set inside the pale skin; sunk into the thin face. Marring.
They hadn't abandoned the fight but they'd given up everything, it seemed. Love and life for an existence that consisted of pain, starvation, bloodshed-- nomadic, like animals, moving and moving across the vast face of the Lost Ground, nudging each other along with a nagging little hatred and a grudging little respect and a whole lot of addiction, because maybe that's what it was, addiction-- or dependence. The only thing they hadn't managed to escape was the need to fight each other and to fight together. Need, eat, sleep, walk, and breathe together. Yes, they fended off the Mainland troops and protected the citizens of the Lost Ground. Yes, they kept these people's lives intact; these poor, ignorant, humble people, because yes, they loved them. God, they loved them. In all their dirty begging weakness-- their cowardly half-assed pride-- they loved these people, and if they had to disappear, slowly, physically and mentally, emotionally deteriorating like the scars that broke them down atom by atom every time they packed an Altered punch or kicked somebody's stupid fucking Mainland ass, than so be it.
Kazuma's only real wish was that he could have stayed around a little while longer for the little girl he still loved. Wished he would have been-- no; could have been-- better to her, or better for her. There to protect her. There to watch her grow up.
And, in some strange, longing kind of way, Ryuhou wished, too, that he could have been something else for Mimori. Maybe he could have loved her, once; he should have told her that he loved her once. And he still kept his promise to Cherise every day-- the one he made when her lips pressed against his and his death flowed into her like all the life poured into him; exchanging one life for the other. The one he made in secret as he wept over her clothes.
He wasn't ever going to love again. Never never never love again.
Kimishima and Ryuhou's parents-- and dog-- were something neither ever liked to talk about. Kazuma never questioned when or if Ryuhou had ever had the time to arrange his father's funeral or sort out his (staged) suicide case with the city police, not to mention being the sole heir to the Kiryu fortune, therefore coming into a rather large inheritance that he hadn't seemed to have collected as of yet, and similarly Ryuhou never found the gall to ask exactly where Kazuma had dumped the body of Kunihiko Kimishima; if he'd ever quite forgiven him for that. Instead, both focused on the present.
Ryuhou shifted his head under the hood of his cloak, turning to glance at his 'partner' from his spot near the cave entrance. Kazuma was trying to make a pit-fire on the cave floor with a few rock chips and some dusty sticks he'd found outside in the dirt, with no success. He was growing increasingly frustrated, grinding the useless twigs together and muttering a string of colorful curses under his breath.
Ryuhou smirked.
"Treasoner," he remarked, coolly. His voice had, indeed, grown a tone deeper over time-- huskier with the gravel and heat in the air after having traveled such long distances over the wasteland's rough and inhospitable terrain-- and it sounded odd to him, to hear himself out loud. "You're doing it all wrong."
Kazuma snorted a gruff, "Like you could do it any better," and continued mercilessly banging the poor withered stumps together, never once meeting his comrade-rival's skeptical look.
"Simpleton. Even a simple barbarian such as yourself should know how to build a proper fire by now." Inching a little closer to the present object of scorn, he offered, almost cajolingly, "Why don't you hand those over. At least one of us was lucky enough to be born with an average IQ higher than that of a doorknob."
Kazuma growled, glancing sidelong at his insensitive prick of a traveling companion.
"Bastard," he muttered, rounding his shoulders as if to block Ryuhou's view of his progress, and continued to feverishly work at the task at hand; not so much with concentration now as with impatient brute force. They would be lucky if they had three shreds of solid bark to work with afterwards, if anything.
Ryuhou scooted closer to the scowling brunette, peering in over his left shoulder. Kazuma growled, shifting away. "Go away," he grumbled, not up to the inevitable scuffle that would ensue if he were to prod or punch or kick the other off from him-- and reluctantly resisting the various violent impulses that sprang to mind as the other continued to invade his 'working' space.
"Idiot," Ryuhou murmured, cryptically, close to the other's ear; huddled behind him with a set of narrowed eyes. He sniffed, almost haughtily, looking cold and dejected as the dark grew darker and the windchill picked up from inside and outside the vaguely damp enclosure, making even Kazuma shiver a little under his leather jacket and snarls of red-brown hair. He shifted his knees against the other's back-- snaking an arm around the slim waist, and snatching their fire-building materials out from under the other's nose. Kazuma whirled around, attempting to grab them back from the renegade HOLY officer, but to no avail.
"Pay close attention, Kazuma," the older male stated, raising the stolen objects a little above Kazuma's head and speaking as if to a particularly dull child. "This is the way that those of us having actually received a grade-school education build a basic fire." He smirked, making the other visibly bristle. "Take notes."
And, much to Kazuma's chagrin, they did, indeed, have a working fire set up in the cave enclosure within minutes of the elder's demonstration. Kazuma huddled near to it as the flames roared to life, pointedly ignoring the blatantly pompous looks his rival-companion was making no effort to hide behind his back. Ryuhou, realizing this, moved up to sit at his side, about an arm's length away, huddled somewhere deep within his massive pile of tattered clothing. It was Kazuma's turn to grin.
"What's with that outfit, anyway? Don't you ever get tired of wearing the same tired-ass uniform day after day? Not to mention the pile of dirty wash rags you call an overcoat . . ." He chuckled, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and middle finger; lips curled into a feral, toothy smirk that Kazuma had since perfected, looking more canine then than ever. "I don't even want to smell you." And, just to push the last few buttons, he added: "Man, you'd think a guy with a stick as far up his ass about everything as you do would be anal about hygiene, too. Guess it just goes to show you, you can't judge a book by it's cover! Eh, Ryuhou?"
Stretching out his lean, white legs, the elder of the two wrinkled up his nose in distaste for his partner's tactless sentiment, fingers disappearing swiftly into the folds of his cumbersome attire. Kazuma watched with sneering curiosity; chest swelling in triumph over the arrogant asshole in a battle of wits, for once.
"Eh?" He prodded, shark-tooth smiling as the other continued to unfasten the binds of his HOLY uniform from underneath his cloak. With a secret smile of his own, the darker-haired male promptly slid the rolls of fabric off his shoulders, revealing the unzipped mess that was-- at one time-- an immaculate purple and white uniform, pooled haphazardly at his waist, and the black tank shirt underneath that, which clung to every sinew by the sum of his sweat and dirt alone.
For a moment, the toothy grin on Kazuma's face faltered and his jaw unhinged, just a little, from his mouth, as he was caught surprised by the lean muscle and slim waist-- hidden for so long under the ambiguous cloak and bandages disguise as to go completely unremembered, until then.
Realizing the odd look that the former was giving him, (he must have been staring longer and harder than he'd noticed), Kazuma gave a low, appreciative whistle. Ryuhou immediately scooted an inch or two in the opposite direction, muttering the word "lewd" under his breath.
"Don't be such a frigid bastard. You wouldn't have taken off that nasty- ass cloak if you hadn't wanted me to look at what was underneath."
"Hmph," Ryuhou 'hmphed'. "Pervert."
Kazuma leaned in closer to his traveling companion, making the other visibly tense. He grinned, knowingly, as the moved over the other's shoulders-- tickling the exposed flesh with the long ends of his hair.
"You mean to tell me you don't party that way, HOLY man? I may be stupid, but I'm not blind."
Lowering his lips to breathe against his pissed off rival's collarbone, he continued, tauntingly, "C'mon. Next to that Tachibana kid, you're just about the gayest of them all. You even had the pretty-princess act down pat. "Justice" this and "you're HOLY's bitch" that. . ."
Lips twisting into a cold sneer, the green-haired male shoved Kazuma back roughly, upper lip curled in disgust. "Personal preferences aside," he growled, "I'd fuck Kyoji Mujo's corpse up down and sideways before even considering having to touch you."
With a particularly dark smile, he added, "If I wanted cheap, dumb and easy I could pay for a prostitute easily enough."
Snarling like a rabid dog-- preferably one off its chain-- Kazuma threw his whole weight onto Ryuhou, pinning him to the rock floor inches from the fire pit. Ryuhou glanced aside, warily, at the flames before taking hold of Kazuma's thin forearms, glaring a hole through his forehead with narrowed red-black eyes. Kazuma smirked predatorily, arching up over his rival and allowing a string of drool to drip onto the older boy's face from the corner of his mouth.
Ryuhou scowled in disgust, raising a knee threateningly between the other's thighs.
"Try that again and I'll make sure no village slut ever has your mongrel children," Ryuhou snarled, low in his throat.
"You wouldn't," Kazuma countered, sickly smooth, his face hovering inches above his rival's-- mocking him. "Because then you would be all alone in your perverted head, in this fucking cave, having to make do with yourself because I wouldn't be around to beat you off. Not that I would, anyway; you ugly, arrogant bastard. I wouldn't sleep with your ass for all the money in the goddamn world." The knee pushing between his thighs edged on insistently-- but stopped short of their target, much to Kazuma's relief.
"All by myself, huh?"
Ryuhou smiled, pressing his thumbs hard into the other's wrists, bruising the veins.
"At least that would be sex with someone I can tolerate."
And, with that, he rolled onto his side, dumping the other on the floor behind him with an unceremonious THUD. Ignoring the muttering and curses and the trail of saliva dripping down his left cheek, the green-haired eighteen year old settled down in that position to sleep at the fire's edge, not bothering to straighten out the articles of clothing strewn haphazardly around his waist and thighs.
Muttering under his breath, Kazuma curled up behind him, slipping his arms around the older Alter User's waist.
"You're such an asshole," he murmured, deep against his comrade's back.
Ryuhou smiled, leaning back into the second body's warmth.
"You like it," he answered, tiredly--
And then the two teens drifted off, at last, to sleep.
Wow. That did not end as originally planned. o.o
Finite!