Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shou sees him, the boy in the black gakuran, in the drab halls of the Seventh Division, and everything stops at once. Or at least, everything in Shou’s head stops at once. The world goes on, but his brain goes slow-mo, close up, camera zoom in on this stranger Shou has never seen and very well might never see again. He doesn’t go to the theaters much, but he’s seen enough of the shitty romance movies Serizawa hoards to know what this change of perspective means and his first thought is Oh, hell no and his second thought is Oh, hell yes.

First, habit. Threat assessment. This stranger is the strongest of the espers around him, but he’s just about nothing compared to Shou. He’s clear at the other end of the hall and so Shou can’t hear what he’s saying, but he can hear how he says it, and that tone comes like a thunderstrike in a snowstorm: unexpected, but certain and confident, the tone of someone who think before he speaks but thinks at light speed, mind whirring like a factory machine with a broken off switch. That cleverness makes up for the sheer weakness of his powers, but it can’t make up for it enough that Shou won’t be able to take him down in three seconds. He could crush this stranger like a bug, cripple him with the flick of a wrist, throw his head into the concrete and do it with enough force to kill him six times over. His skull would burst like a birthday party balloon and his brains would get all over Shou’s jacket and he would never think about it again.

(Lie number one.)

He’s clearly in charge of the rag-tag group of escapee prisoners. Shou can tell that they know each other, but not well. This isn’t a close-knit group of friends who have known each other for years and years and years. This is a group that can be divided and conquered within the space of half an hour. He might do that, maybe, if he gets bored, but none of the others grab his interest like this one has. Even then, his interest wasn’t so much as grabbed as entirely stolen from him and now it’s narrowed to the point that this stranger might as well be the only person who exists. Everyone else, everything else—it’s all just backdrop for the main show. Static props, kettles and tables and painted pieces of wood to make a setting. The flesh-and-blood people around him might as well be made of styrofoam compared to the boy in black.

Shou is quite literally invisible, so he sees no harm in stepping closer, and then closer, and then closer still. Threat assessment is done, and now he can look at whatever he pleases. Shou gets right up into his bubble, unseen, and takes in odd little details that are fundamentally useless, but he wants to know them anyways.

His hair defies about as many laws of gravity as Shou’s does, but there’s no gel in it. That’s just what it does on its own, which is just obscenely charming. His eyes looked dark and plain from a distance, but close as he is (right up in his face, close enough that if Shou exhaled too harshly, he would feel it), Shou can see that there are bits of red in them, like there’s a fire burning in his head and the reflection of it is coming out through two almond-shaped holes in his skull. His lips are dry and chapped and there’s a split from where he was worrying at it (most likely while in one off the cells) and Shou wants to kiss him very, very badly.

And then camera flash, sparkle effect, turn up that cheesy love ballad, crank that shit up as high as it goes, the stranger looks right at him. Shou can see straight through him and he sees the look of years of silent, unyielding pressure, secret haughtiness, a fear that stays pushed down but never disappears and comes out in backwards, ugly ways. It’s like looking in a funhouse mirror, distorted enough that Shou can love it and similar enough to his own that he can understand it and maybe, just maybe, it can understand him back. His heart and a thousand desires (want to see him, want him to go away, want to protect him, want to break him in two, want to hear him talk, want him to shut up, want to worm his way into his brain, want him to remain perfectly unaffected, want to want, want to not, want, want, want) leap up into his head and echo there, useless. The only thought that’s in his head that qualifies as halfway sensible is Jesus Christ, I’m so happy he isn’t a telepath.

Realistically, Shou knows that he’s not being looked at, he’s being looked through, but he doesn’t even care. He wants to see that look again, that stubborn thing that’s clearly hurt but still has the audacity to try not to be. He wants to draw it out, see how it changes in every possible circumstance, he wants to touch every part of him that forms that look and pick it apart and put it back together again and make something new. He’s so struck by that face, not so much by the fineness of the features (and god, are they ever fine) but the actual expression, that he barely realizes that the word love crossed his mind. Shou shrugs it off as a dumb nonsense thing. Love at first sight is for suckers. That would never happen to him. That certainly hasn’t just happened now.

(Lie number two.)

Back up, pan out, take in everything, camera. See the rest of him. Student council armband—cute—and scratched up uniform—cute—and fingers running through his hair as he thinks—cute and oh my god I want to touch his hair—and a hint of concealed stress that’s not quite concealed enough—cute—add to what he’s seen already. Shou want to talk to him, suddenly, wants this stranger to see him, and so he really backs out, backs up, back to the other end of the hall where he was before Cupid bitch slapped him with a bundle of arrows. He’s got to make a good entrance, the right entrance, something clearly cool but something that’s also not trying too hard to be cool. It’s a hard balance to hit, but Shou knows he can hit it. He’s got this.

When he hears this boy figure out that they can’t use the lackeys as an army yet, something proud wells up in his chest, something Shou has no right to feel but feels anyways. He appears at the end of the hall and he claps, sarcastic and loud and cruel. He moves slowly, each and every step echoing down the hall, and he’s more than visible now; he’s hyper-alive. Shou watches the stranger run through the same threat analysis that Shou ran on him just a minute ago. He can see the conclusion he comes to.

He does not run.

“You’re good!” Shou says, contorting his smile into something less sincere because wow, genuine emotion sure is embarrassing. “It’s true, we can’t use them as an army yet. You taught them a good lesson, though.”

A boy with an ugly pompadour says something Shou barely processes, something like “Another troublesome guy!” and Shou doesn’t react except to grin wider, fix his gaze on Ritsu, and ask “Well, who do you think I am?”

“We don’t have much time. Spare me the quiz.” He says, properly nonplussed, and Shou loves and hates that look. He wants to shatter it, break it, affect him enough that he won’t ever be so blasé again, but also he doesn’t want to touch that face. Shou wants it intact, wants him to see the world through those jaded-yet-not almost-fire eyes, and he wants to study that expression with the same passion of mad scientists and starry-eyed poets, write a thousand essays about it and then say “I figured it out, I figured him out, and he gets more and more wonderful by the minute, and ha! You miserable bastards, none of you could do it! None of you even looked! But I looked, and I saw, and I understood everything!”

Shou takes another step forward, and that step cracks the cement around him. “Don’t be so cold. Here I thought we could get along!” He teases, just because he wants to see the reaction to that, and he finds no reaction yet. Well, there’s still time. Shou will make time for this. He’ll stop time if he has to—he doesn’t know how to do that, but he’ll find a way if that’s what has to happen.

He looks a bit scared now, this stranger who walked right through Shou’s head and all but restructured it, and Shou can see the wheels turning, can see him figure that Shou is cadre (He isn’t) and Shou is going to kill them all (He isn’t) and Shou doesn’t correct him, not yet. There’ll be time for that later. When the stranger’s aura wraps around him tight and sticks out like glass shards, Shou’s grin drops. He leans towards the group, all five of them, and gives them the look that he knows freaks people out, the one where he’s not trying to look like anything but his calmest, truest self. “Go back to where you came from.”

“Everybody, get out of here.” He says, and there’s an explosion of “Kageyama, are you really…?” and “Ritsu, don’t do it!” and there’s that confidence again, that thing that he hides fear behind so well, and even better, now this stranger has a name. Ritsu Kageyama. Ritsu Kageyama. Ritsu Kageyama. It carves itself into Shou’s heart with a knife, Ritsu Kageyama, and when he dies and stays unburied and the doctors crack open his chest to see the anatomy of a monster, they’ll find scarred muscle tissue in the shape of that name, Ritsu Kageyama and Shou can’t stop thinking it, Ritsu Kageyama, like it’s the only group of sounds to ever exist. Objectively, it’s a plain name, but that doesn’t stop it from getting stuck in Shou’s head like one of those earworm bubblegum songs that the ginger girl here at Seventh likes to play so much, but Shou doesn’t think he’ll get sick of it any time soon.

“I’ll do something about this guy.” Ritsu says, serious as death, ignoring the pull of “Don’t, don’t, don’t.” He’s staring at Shou like he’s picking him apart, and Shou wants to stand there and see what he finds. Shou also wants to hide away from it and never be seen again because no one, no one has ever looked at him quite like that. The words wash over him like a tidal wave, the stupid sacrifice he’s making for people he half-knows, but more than that, Shou sees the face of someone who wants a fight after so long where there hasn’t been a fighting chance. And Shou knows that look, wears it daily, and so Shou will give him a fight. Shou will give him the best fight he’s ever had.

“Do something?” Shou echoes, tilting his head to the side in the way he knows makes it look like he’s more shadow than person. “You can’t do something. You can’t beat me.”

“I don’t think so.” He says, sending Shou completely reeling, but he hides it well. Hides so much well.

Background characters start to fade, silent and unobservant. Pompadour and blondie and the girl with spiral curls begin to blend with Claw-built cement. Claw-built cement looks washed out and dull compared to stark black student council uniforms. Stark black student council uniforms are nothing to amber covered in gasoline, surrounded by a faint blue-pink glow; it looks like shattered stained glass from some church somewhere, a stolen saint in front of him, holy and hellish. “Why? You should be smarter than that.”

“Because there are many people out there stronger than you.”

He’s wrong about that,

(Lie number three.)

but Shou admires his confidence as the last of his nothing group scamper down the hall like scared mice. It’s just the two of them now, and Ritsu’s aura is bright and mesmerizing and Shou knows that he’s smart because he makes the first move, tries to get the upper hand where he can get it, aims a thousand of the pebbles Shou unearthed with his spiderweb crack at bullet-speed towards his face.

Shou stops them all without thinking and sends them back. Ritsu dodges, doesn’t quite dodge enough, gets knocked right on his ass, and Shou grins down at him.

“Do something, you said? Wanna think again?” Shou’s being a dick, being absolutely insufferable, but it’s what he knows and what he does well and a villain is what Ritsu needs here: something he can fight against, something he can try to defeat, something solid and certain instead of the vague shadows of Claw. And so he’ll be the villain if he has to be. He’ll be that for him. Later, maybe, when Shou’s plans for stopping all this Claw bullshit are more solid, he’ll explain it all and they can be on the same side, and he can fight with him instead of against him and then maybe—

Focus, Shou, you’re fighting him, not planning your fuckin’ future with him. Ritsu gets up, throws his powers around recklessly, and it’s easy, so easy, for Shou to get right up in his face and punch him in the gut. Ritsu doubles over, head smacking Shou’s shoulder in what could almost be something sweet if it was removed from time and space and any sort of context that existed at all, but even then, it wouldn’t quite make it all the way there.

“You know, getting one hit on me doesn’t—” Ritsu cuts off his own words when Shou’s aura shoves him against a wall and then pins him there. His powers strain against it and he almost shatters it, comes so close that Shou can’t help but beam, but he doesn’t make it all the way there. Shou eases up for a second, lets him regain his bearings and aim a fist straight for Shou’s face before slamming him back again, Ritsu’s head making a dent in the concrete.

“Doesn’t what? Cat got your tongue?” Shou prodes, but Ritsu doesn’t answer, glaring blearly at him. Okay, Shou might’ve hit him a little hard there, but that’s what fights are for. Ritsu spits at him and Shou adores that attitude. He wipes it off with his sleeve and then smiles at him; real, impressed, lovestruck. He tilts his head to the side, leans in close enough to breathe Ritsu’s air and whispers “Huh. Well then.”

Ritsu doesn’t blink, pupils blown out wide and breath held in his chest and Shou imagines what would happen if, hypothetically, he kissed Ritsu right now. He’d definitely hit him, a real suckerpunch, and Shou would probably let him do it. When it comes to fighting, he doesn’t mind if Ritsu’s not exactly over the moon because fights aren’t meant to be cheery and bright and fun, but Shou has a feeling that kissing is different. More sacred. Something not for right here, something not for right now. Something for someday, though. Definitely something for someday. If-when he kisses Ritsu, Shou decides he would rather have him enjoy it. He would rather have Ritsu kiss him back.

Ritsu puts his hand on his shoulders and shoves him away. Shou stumbles back one step, lets Ritsu escape the grip of his powers, curious to see where he’ll go now that he has a whole hallway to work with. He puts a good bit of distance between them, at least twelve solid feet, and attempts to lift the heaviest piece of cement that came loose when Ritsu got his head slammed against the wall. It’s a decently large piece and he manages to get it a few feet off the ground and aims for Shou’s stomach. He doesn’t just hop over it—he frontflips, flashy, lands on his feet, aims the same piece at Ritsu and it throws him back, wrist now caught between wall and a chunk of cement. Shou throws a similarly sized piece at his other wrist out of habit and feels something almost akin to regret, but not quite.

“You’re not going—” Ritsu struggles, there’s a sickening, familiar snap from one wrist, and then another, and he lets out a pained gasp, bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming. A stupid, prideful gesture. It warms Shou’s heart “—to get away with this.”

“And what’s this?” He asks, not throwing anything else at Ritsu when his hands are pinned like that because that’s not a fair fight, really. That would be a beating, and he’s here to give Ritsu something proper. Something he can’t win, but something he can try to. Something where he maybe has one quarter of one percentage point of a chance of succeeding in some way. It was more than anyone gave Shou the first time he was in a Claw branch, and he wants to give Ritsu that fighting chance. Well, actually, he wants to give Ritsu the world on a shiny silver platter, but Shou will stick with the fighting chance for now. “Come on, tell me, what’s this?”

“This Claw bull.” Ritsu says it, Claw, with hatred reserved for scorned lovers and playoff hockey fans. “Whatever your endgame is—”

“You don’t know my endgame with Claw, Ritsu.” Shou doesn’t let him finish the sentence. He knows that the implication is that he’s working with Claw, and Shou’s done nothing to make it seem like anything else, but hearing it from his mouth, hearing it from this person he barely knows but ardently adores that he’s working with the organization that ruined his life would throw out any pretense of a fair fight. It would throw out any pretense of a fight at all. Shou knows himself well enough to know that it wouldn't even be a beating. It would be a murder, and Shou doesn’t want to do that. Not to him. And so he doesn’t let Ritsu finish the sentence. He does throw his name on the end of it, though. Just for kicks. Just to let him know that he knows it. It disturbs him that Shou knows his name, startles him for just a second, but he recovers. The recovery is a work of art, a simple thing that Shou could watch for hours, but they don’t have hours. They don’t even have minutes.

“Then illuminate me.” Ritsu, eyes not moving from his face, manages to drop the borderline boulders pinning him to the wall. Two broken wrists don’t stop him from lunging at Shou, ready to reach his hands down his throat and pry the explanation out of there, and Ritsu’s broken wrists don’t stop Shou from jumping around like a monkey, landing glancing blows on whatever part of Ritsu is closest. It’s not enough to break, but just enough to bruise, to linger. He can wear Ritsu out like this, and that’s what he does. He moves constantly, never still, bringing the fight to one end to the hall and then the other and Ritsu doesn’t get in any hits, but he comes close, closer, and they end up on the ceiling and Ritsu is panting, exhausted and bleeding and likely concussed. He’s figured Shou out by now, but upside down is the only place Shou still enough to give Ritsu the time to say it. “You’re not fighting.”

“Not totally.” He admits with a shrug. “I’d kill you if I did.”

And then Ritsu lunges towards him again and Shou drops them from the ceiling to the floor. It’s Shou who absorbs most of the shock and Ritsu ends up on top of him, tries to hit him with power-charged fists but can’t get through the barrier, lets out a scream of frustration and headbutts it instead, fails there, but he doesn’t give up. Shou just watches, not smiling, but fondness clear around the eye to anyone who would know how to look for it in him. Luckily, Ritsu doesn’t know how to, not yet.

He senses the aura of another esper coming closer and Shou wants to draw this out longer, wants to talk to him more, wants to explain himself in pieces, wants to finish the conversation, but getting found like this would screw them over because Shou wouldn’t let a Claw esper actually try and take Ritsu again and he’d end up outsting himself as a traitor far earlier than he actually needed to just to keep him away from horrors that he knows, horrors that Shou doesn’t want him to go through. And so he looks up at Ritsu, genuinely sorry and grinning before he throws him against the ceiling hard enough to knock him out.

He’s unconscious before he even hits the ceiling, the force of it getting him before concrete can, and he falls ragdoll limp and smacks his head on the ground. He looks more peaceful like this, more unguarded. Younger. Shou never consciously thought about his age while they were fighting, but he assumed Ritsu was older by at least a year, maybe two. Here, now, he looks Shou’s age. Just to confirm his suspicions, Shou steals a look at his student ID and finds his birthday. He does the math and it turns out Ritsu’s not two years older than him, or one year, or even half a year; he’s just four months older than Shou. Four months. It’s practically nothing. It’s a useless piece of information, but he holds onto it anyhow.

(July second used to be a nothing date, but now it’s a tiny bit of Shou’s heart that’ll be there forever, no matter how this ends. July second, and Ritsu Kageyama.)

Dust and dirt and blood are all over him and Shou does something he’s only seen in shitty romance movies: he reaches out and rubs some of it off with his thumb. His skin is tantalizingly soft and lovely, and in the end, he doesn’t so much as get rid of it as smear it around Ritsu’s face, but it doesn’t matter. The aura of the other esper is a little closer now, and Shou’s running short on time. Now that they’re almost here, Shou can tell that they aren’t Claw at all, that his hastiness was foolish, that he maybe really could’ve drawn it out, but it’s too little, too late. He doesn’t worry, though. Shou knows he’ll see him again before his escape. He knows it in the same way he knows his own name, his own fate, the back of his own hand.

Seconds. He has seconds. Ritsu is out like a light. The unconscious don’t dream, only the sleeping do, but Shou wonders what he’ll dream of when he finally does. Wonders if he’ll dream of him. He hopes that Ritsu does. And with his seconds, his less-than-seconds, Shou moves his bangs aside (his hair is unfair soft, unreal soft, softer than anything he’s ever felt in his life) and he presses a kiss to Ritsu’s forehead. It’s gentle and barely there, like Shou isn’t even touching him at all, but he does it. Shou has only known hard hits and gripping tight, but this gentle shit, this soft stuff...It’s against his nature, against every nature he knows. But he likes it. Only here, only now, he likes it.

And before anyone can catch him like this, Shou disappears down the other end of the hallway and he lets the scene end, scene change, but he’ll see Ritsu again before the end of the act. And if not, he’ll see him by the end of the play. He knows it. He knows it more than anything.

(Lie number four.

He hopes it more than he knows it.)

***

Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!

Give me my sin again.