Munchausen's Shadow
1st April 2006
The doctors have told Ritsuka before, about his mother. Ritsuka doesn't like it, though, the way it reduces his mother to a set of words on a medical textbook. Just like the way they classify Ritsuka as a personality disorder, the words like sharp weapons forcing them into a two-dimensional paper corner.
He hates it, but nonetheless the word is there, silvery and hard. Munchausen's Syndrome.
Seimei never acknowledged it. All he ever told Ritsuka was, 'Come to me when she gets like that.'
That.
What that was slipped away from Ritsuka when he was with Seimei. Being held like Seimei was like taking a bath, Ritsuka decided. The memory of their mother's fury slid away from his body like soap in the shower, sponged away by that lapping, gentle touch on the bruises, soft comfort permeating his soul.
People always praise Ritsuka for reading so much.
People with Munchausen's Syndrome have the tendency to hurt people under their care.
The printed words hurt too, only less.
Ritsuka always feels that it's easier to read than to live.
Soubi doesn't like reading, Ritsuka knows, but when he watches Soubi paint, he knows Soubi understands.
Soubi painting is wonderful and beautiful and Ritsuka loves watching him. Soubi is intense, is controlled, is meticulous and wild and a million contradictions all contained in a taut, tight body with a head of blond hair gathered into a loose ponytail.
When he watches Soubi paint two-dimensional butterflies Ritsuka wants to stroke their wings and cry.
There is a word for Soubi too: masochist.
A masochist is someone who derives pleasure from pain.
Ritsuka thinks there's something fundamentally wrong with that concept. The very definition of pain involves not taking pleasure in it. Pain is something you don't like, don't want. If you take delight in it it's pleasure. And then it's no longer pain.
There's a word for it, Ritsuka knows. Pain and pleasure are 'incommensurable'. Six syllables for a simple meaning: contradiction. A masochist is a contradiction; pain and pleasure just don't fit.
But then again, Ritsuka reflects, 'caring for someone' and 'hurting someone' are incommensurable concepts too. And his mother has Munchausen's Syndrome.
So despite the irrationality, Ritsuka still reads these words. The alternative is to admit that his mother just doesn't care.
That hurts the most of all. Ritsuka's no masochist.
When the word 'LOVELESS' finally comes to him, it blossoms across the right side of his chest, small neat letters. He finds out when he's taking off his pajama top to change for school, and for a moment he's frozen with something that's not fear, more like anxiety. He locks himself in the bathroom for a long, long while and stares at it. Oddly enough, he feels like a girl who's just menstruated for the first time. Waking up in the morning to see drops of blood on the bed. A transition that means everything and nothing, and something new and tentative and maybe painful. Something to be explored.
Ritsuka sighs at night and wonders why it didn't blossom on the left side, over his heart. There is a meaning to the placement of these words, he knows, the way Soubi's 'BELOVED' is cut into his throat like a collar, his heart crowned with thorns. He wonders why they look like long-healed scars, although the stigmata had suddenly appeared overnight.
Maybe it's because he's been loveless for a long, long time already, long enough for the words to seep through from his heart and migrate to the right, where they have space.
The skin on the left side has already been appropriated by the livid cut left from a shard of a broken glass, flying from his mother's hand.
He calls Soubi, tells him. Soubi comes over through the window again, and a fourteen-year-old Ritsuka lies back against the headboard and lets Soubi's murmured words fill him, a comforting barrier to the ugly dissonance of his mother downstairs screaming.
Soubi traces the word with his tongue, paints the letters with a coat of clear saliva, and Ritsuka suddenly realizes what Soubi's been telling him all along. Soubi loves Ritsuka.
He pushes the older man away for a moment, but what's different about this time is that Ritsuka pulls Soubi back and kisses him softly.
For the first time since he's known Soubi Ritsuka breaks the kiss to look Soubi in the eyes, and tells Soubi, 'I love you.'
There's no flash of lightning, no spark of electricity. Soubi merely gathers Ritsuka to him chastely, like they've done a million times before, and repeats the same three words to Ritsuka over and over again.
That night, Soubi doesn't go home. Ritsuka lies within the circle of Soubi's arms and thinks of his mother, then murmurs, 'This is love,' and smiles.
The long-sought connection between them is suddenly unexpectedly deep. Beloved's bereaved, and the boy bereft of love from the beginning.
You don't need the same name to be kindred souls.
A freshly bruised Ritsuka comes over to Soubi's house. Soubi daubs cool cream onto the bruises, his fingers lingering over each one.
'You shouldn't let her do this to you.'
'She's my mother,' Ritsuka insists.
'That's not an excuse,' Soubi answers.
That night Ritsuka doesn't go home and doesn't sleep. He watches Soubi paint a pristine white butterfly. There are small threads pierced into the butterfly, these threads thicken into silvery necklace-chains, and those small links soon thicken into chains that are red with rust and maybe blood.
It's two a.m. when Soubi finishes, and he rises from the floor and walks over to where Ritsuka's sitting on the bed. 'Leave her.'
Ritsuka shakes his head no.
Soubi regards him for a while longer, then rephrases. 'Be with me.'
Eventually Ritsuka says yes, and Soubi kisses him again. Ritsuka doesn't draw away.
Living with Soubi is new, is unexpected, but Ritsuka loves it. The lack of perpetual fear in this life is breathtaking. He loves waking up to Soubi in the morning, the whispered 'Ohayo, Ritsuka,' caressing the shell of his ear like breakwaters at dawn meeting the shore. They're both warm, cuddled together in a nest of blankets, their intimacy all the more real for the ears that Soubi touches, the tail that curls around them both.
When he eats breakfast Soubi watches him but there's a difference in the stare, it's not predatory or frightening. Ritsuka wouldn't admit it to Soubi, but he sort of likes the way it makes him blush and look away, and he likes Soubi's answering smile. And when Soubi asks him if he likes his eggs cooked that way, he answers 'yes' without any hesitation, any thought.
This is care, then. It's not what you do, but what you mean by what you do.
When Ritsuka turns eighteen Soubi makes love to him. Ritsuka's old for losing his ears, and he's heard friends talk about it before, how it's painful, or how it's wonderful, it's like a high, it's like drugs, it's like drowning or being torn apart or being burned alive, and still Ritsuka wonders what it'll be like.
He asks Soubi to do it. They're having dinner that night, and there's a small cake in the fridge. They'll have a slice each and Kio will probably devour the rest, Kio likes sweet things. Ritsuka sets his chopsticks down and asks Soubi, 'If I asked you to, would you take my ears?'
'Yes,' Soubi says. 'I would do anything you ask of me.' (That's another thing that's changed about the words between them. Soubi no longer says things like 'I love Ritsuka', or 'I would do anything for Ritsuka'. He uses 'you', because Ritsuka asked him to, and the word just cuts Ritsuka to the quick every time he hears it, the way Soubi says it like it's a holy prayer, born of the sanctity of Ritsuka's request.)
'Do you want to take them?' Ritsuka presses, crimsoning a little.
Soubi smiles at him then, that familiar smile that tends to have Kio backing away yelling 'HENTAI!' at the top of his lungs, but sends a little shiver down Ritsuka's spine. 'Of course.'
Ritsuka has no clue what's going on, but Soubi certainly does, his movements slow and sure as he pushes Ritsuka to the bed and undresses him carefully, like he's unwrapping a package marked 'fragile', or maybe a long-awaited, long-desired present. And when the clothes have been stripped from Ritsuka's body, he sits back on his haunches and takes a deep shuddering breath that makes Ritsuka's cock twitch in response, and Ritsuka blushes because he's not used to this kind of reaction from his body, this kind of feeling.
And then Soubi's body is over his, holding him down but not oppressively, just there and above him, and Ritsuka shivers in the warmth as Soubi props himself up on one elbow before bringing a hand to touch Ritsuka's face, feel his ears. 'I'll miss your ears,' Soubi murmurs, looking at Ritsuka tenderly.
In answer Ritsuka kisses him. 'Soubi,' he gasps. 'Do it. Please.'
'Don't be impatient,' Soubi admonishes, but his smile is fond. Soubi closes his eyes and begins to touch Ritsuka everywhere, letting his hands trail down his face, his neck, his chest, his arms, his abdomen, his thighs, his calves, his ankles, his groin, his cock, the small of his back, the curve of his ass. Like a blind person feeling his way through the unknown, Ritsuka thinks, and just as he thinks that Soubi opens his eyes and the emotion in them just makes Ritsuka choke, because Soubi looks like someone who's just realized what pleasure really is, after years of pain.
Soubi lavishes kisses on him, slow and searching in the secret places that people usually don't pay attention to – behind his ears, the nape of his neck, the crook of his elbow, the palm of his hand, the wrist, the inner thigh, the inside of his knee, the instep of his sole, and each kiss is like a butterfly, warm and ticklish and fluttery, and it leaves Ritsuka feeling terribly boneless and completely at Soubi's mercy.
It feels good. It makes Ritsuka feel wonderfully loved, treasured. In that moment he knows fate is a liar, that the word 'LOVELESS' cut into his body means nothing at all, not when Soubi's warm breathing comes into contact with the skin there, and Soubi fastens his mouth over it, and gives the nipple a gentle lick that has Ritsuka arching against it. Not when the word is overlaid with the slight pink of his first lovebite.
Soubi looks for the rest of the scars too, and doesn't miss a one. He finds the shadows Munchausen has left behind on Ritsuka's skin, faded bruises and scarred cuts, some that Ritsuka didn't even know existed any more, and covers each one with his mouth, and Ritsuka knows what Soubi's trying to do. Soubi's cleansing him, chasing the shadows back into the valley where they belong, and the little red marks that are left behind are a different sort of memory. A sort of memory that is theirs to share and remember, and even though the lovebites will be gone by tomorrow, Ritsuka will always know that they're there. They'll never fade, and the idea leaves him breathless and needy, and crying out with pleasure each time Soubi licks his skin.
When Soubi's done Ritsuka mewls uncontentedly. There's something more to this, he knows, he knows, and he pulls insistently at Soubi. 'Take your clothes off.' The blush flares again as he makes the demand, but need overrides embarrassment and spurs him on. He wants to know Soubi too, wants to lick and kiss and touch him like Soubi's done to him. He wants to be with Soubi, wants to make them a part of each other.
Soubi complies with a quiet chuckle at Ritsuka's insistence, and merely smiles when Ritsuka snaps, 'Don't laugh at me!', and tells Ritsuka, 'I'm not laughing at you.' Ritsuka eyes him doubtfully but his attention soon slips, his hands slide all over Soubi, earnest, searching, tracing each scar and rubbing his fingers against it, erasing their marks from Soubi's skin.
In answer Soubi shuts his eyes and luxuriates in the feel of Ritsuka's young, unschooled fingers and their touch, the inexperienced way Ritsuka feels him, and tries not to scare the younger boy, tries to hold back his body's reactions. It's difficult, though, and the moan slips unbidden from his lips as those tentative fingers close around his cock, making half-hearted attempts at stroking him. Ritsuka pauses but doesn't relinquish his grip on Soubi, instead tilting his head at Soubi with an innocence that makes him heartbreakingly beautiful. 'Ritsuka...' the name escapes his lips and Ritsuka asks, 'What?'
Soubi lets his head fall to Ritsuka's shoulder, blond tendrils of his hair snaking against pale skin. 'I want to be inside you.' He feels Ritsuka stiffen for a moment, then Ritsuka relaxes consciously, makes the muscles loosen as he slackens against Soubi and slips his legs apart. 'Then do it.'
Soubi fumbles for the lube and slicks his fingers in it, pausing to take in the sight of Ritsuka lying there waiting, on their bed – their bed! – before gently pressing one digit into Ritsuka, easing it past the tight entrance. 'It'll hurt a little,' he apologizes.
Ritsuka nods. 'I'll be alright.'
Soubi takes his time to stretch Ritsuka, god, he needs release, and he figures that it wouldn't take more than a minute or two of being buried inside Ritsuka to make him come, but he's not going to be the next one to hurt Ritsuka. Never that. So he goes slowly, carefully, scissoring open his fingers and brushing teasingly against him, and when Ritsuka gasps in pleasured shock Soubi memorizes the angle. He wants to know what will make Ritsuka feel good. He doesn't want to forget it.
Ritsuka groans as Soubi withdraws his fingers and slicks himself down with lube, poised at Ritsuka's entrance with his hands braced on boyish hips. His eyes meet Ritsuka's and then he's pushing in, inch by excruciating inch, there's resistance at first but Ritsuka breathes in deeply and then all the tension just flows away from him in one great rush, Soubi's head slips all the way in, and Soubi stills, leaning down to capture the breath that Ritsuka pushes out from his lungs, a sort of release on its own.
When he's sure Ritsuka's alright he continues, until finally he's buried in to the hilt, and Ritsuka's locks arms around Soubi's neck and shifts a little, the muscles of his tight ass tightening around Soubi as he does so. 'What do you want?' Soubi asks Ritsuka.
'I want you to move,' Ritsuka answers, and then he gasps as Soubi obeys, a gentle thrust at the angle he'd noted earlier, one that has Ritsuka whimpering as he closes his fingers on Soubi's broad shoulders. Ritsuka bucks up against Soubi, and Soubi doesn't need to be told twice.
Their lovemaking only has so many words between them, whispered names and the occasional plea, and the soft, rhythmic sounds of whimpers and moans and flesh rubbing slickly against flesh. It's driving Soubi mad, the way Ritsuka's looking at him, those clear dark eyes limpid and wet as their bodies push together.
There's nothing between them anymore, none of the shadows of the past, nothing but the pleasure that builds in both of them as Soubi drives into Ritsuka, again and again and again, Ritsuka's wanton, answering thrusts, his cock brushing against Soubi's belly, nothing but the pressure that's threatening to push him over the edge, and nothing but the sensation that he's falling, falling into Ritsuka and Ritsuka's welcoming body as he comes with a heartfelt gasp, Ritsuka following suit with a last, tender wisp of Soubi escaping young lips.
There are profound words in this world, Ritsuka knows. Words that speak of the valley of the shadow of death and in doing so help subdue fear, words that make the unbearable bearable and bring measures of comfort to those in despair.
But as he lies still at night and touches Soubi's face, Ritsuka is of the opinion that some things transcend words, and emotions take flight like pure white doves, or maybe butterflies.