xantissa

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Cat’s-paw 10: Relief
PG-13
Kio, Soubi
Summary: Kio was never the one Soubi waited for, after all.

Kio walks back to his apartment while it’s still light. He doesn’t like to admit it, even to himself, but he’s now afraid of going though the city streets alone at night.

The bruises just started to fade, turning yellowish-blue and his ribs almost stopped hurting. Two weeks and his body is already erasing the marks from his body, but the ones in his head are still fresh.

He still jumps at shadows, he feels uncomfortable when tall men are around him, his heart still freezes every time he opens his door, waiting, hoping to see a silent figure drawing butterflies on his living room floor.

The sun is warm on the back of his neck and the breeze ruffles his hair gently. He tries to smile, but the bruising on his face still doesn’t really allow it, and neither does his heart.

The moment he opens his door, however, he knows something is different. The silence is still there, heavy and oppressing but no longer empty.

“Sou-chan?” He calls, just like he did for the last year.

No one answers him, but it’s also something he got used to during the last twelve months.

He searches the kitchen and bathroom first then the bedroom, half convincing himself it was just him imagination when he sees him.

Dressed in faded jeans and black long sleeved shirt, Kio vaguely recognizes this person as his own Soubi. He lays in the large bed on his side, his too thin arms curled towards his chest in a childlike manner. His eyes are closed, glasses nowhere in sight and he looks so young to Kio. So young and thin and fragile, it breaks Kio’s heart all over again.

His own body may be broken, his spirit shaken, but the only thing that could break Kio’s heart is this husk of a man lying on his bed, sleeping as if he wasn’t gone for two damn weeks without a word.

There are some cuts on Soubi’s hands, his lip is split and his hair is an absolute, filthy mess, but Kio doesn’t think he saw anything more beautiful in his life. He sags to his knees, arms on the bed beside the sleeping man and cries tears of relief.

Soubi was back. Maybe not whole, not safe but alive and it was all Kio needed.

He stays like this for a while, just crying himself empty, waiting for comfort that never comes. Eventually, he has to put himself together, because there’s simply no one else left to depend on, not that Soubi was ever the dependable one.

He wants to shake the other man awake and scream at him, yell until he is blue in the face for leaving him like that, hurt and frantic, wondering if Soubi was even alive anymore? But he learned that no matter how much he screamed, how much he pleaded and begged, threatened and cajoled, Soubi would not respond to him.

Kio was never the one Soubi waited for, after all.

He gets up to make something to eat because he knows Soubi hasn’t eaten much, if anything, the whole time he was gone. Kio starts making a light soup, coming back to check on Soubi every few minutes because he just has to make sure the man is still there, still asleep on his bed, not just a figment of his imagination.

Kio hates the silence; it seems that along with Soubi, he brought the ever oppressive silence to his home as well. He flicks the old TV on, eager for some noise. He only listens with half an ear to the games show and then the news as he prepares the food. It takes twice as long because he keeps coming back to the sleeping man, just looking, making sure.

It’s the name that catches his attention. He stills, every single muscle in his body freezes as his eyes snap to the TV.

“...Yasuo Matsueda, Tatsumi Shisei and a third, as of yet unidentified, young man have been admitted to the hospital yesterday night with extreme injuries. All three of them are now fighting for their lives on the ICU under the protection of police. It’s been already concluded that the massive injuries sustained by the three young men were caused by someone rather than an accident. The police are looking into the connection between those three men and searching for the perpetrator.”

Kio doesn’t even notice that the spoon he was holding falls to the floor with loud clatter. The tomato sauce splatters on the floor like blood. Like his blood two weeks ago after he crawled home half conscious and scared out of his mind.

“The police are looking into the connection between those three men…”

He knows the connection, he is the connection. He remembers those names, those faces. He will never forget them. He shivers and bile rises in his throat.

“You fucking, faggot. I’ll teach you a lesson...” The words, memories, echo in his brain with painful clarity.

He takes a step back and then another, until he’s back in the bedroom.

Soubi’s eyes are open and flat, staring at the wall with a kind of hardness Kio doesn’t remember ever seeing.

He doesn’t have to ask. He knows it already, sees it in the bruises on Soubi’s knuckles in the quietly menacing way he just stares at the wall without acknowledging Kio.

Kio slowly sinks to his knees, too stunned, too shocked to utter a sound.

He should have found it odd that those upperclassmen weren’t at the University any more, that he hasn’t met one of them after he came back to the classes, but he was just so damn grateful not see them...

“Soubi.” He moans from under his hands, eyes closed.

He hears a soft rustle and then quiet footsteps as Soubi approaches him. He can not look up, still unable to comprehend, to believe in what he already knows is the truth.

He watches the bare feet approach and then stop in front of him. There’s a faint clinking sound as something metal hits the floor and then Soubi sidesteps him. After a while he can hear the now sickeningly familiar scratch of charcoal on paper.

He looks for the objects that Soubi dropped.

Earrings. Three silver studs with a symbol of their university baseball team. He remembers them all too well, gleaming in the lamplight as Yasuo and Tastsumi held him while...

There’s still blood on them.

tbc