Archive of Our Own

 The morning after Kanna is murdered before your eyes, they give you peaches for breakfast.

Dripping with morning dew, cubed and left to sink into the watery stirrings of porridge beneath. Excess juice seeps from the fruit flesh and bleaches the oats wound-pink. Nobody eats. Sou—

(Shin?)

is not here. Sara is not here. Reko is not here, because she is watching over Sara.

Alice is not here. Nao is not here. Kanna is not here.

You remember your old chemistry teacher offhandedly mentioning that peach pits contain cyanide. It occurs to you that this breakfast is eating around poison—consuming saccharine sweetness and trying to forget what it was built around. The juice drips off of your chin like blood, like a seeping rotting wound.

Nobody eats.

Sara is scarily absent. You blame yourself, and the rest of the shitty so-called adults who put far too much responsibility on her fragile shoulders. Sometimes you think Kai was the only sane one around here. 

You wish you had more time to know him. You wish you knew...

More. Anything, at this point.

Sou. Shin. You turn the names over like a coin, heads or tails, Russian roulette, one chamber empty and one filled. You whisper his name out into the dark like a shameful secret — 'Shin Tsukimi, Shin Tsukimi, Shin Tsukimi.' It leaves a bitter aftertaste, like swallowing apple seeds. You catch glimpses of him in the hours before they move you to the third floor — he is more haunted than Sara, a matchstick boy in garish colours slipping in and out of the shadows of the floor. But more than the sadness, or the—the longing, or whatever it is, there is a palpable kind of rage.

The kind that lingers. The kind that sticks.

He is sharp and angry, and his glare curdles in your peripheral vision. You think maybe he hates Sara and Keiji more than even you. You didn't vote for Kanna, after all. At two a.m., you slip out of your cold lonely room where you do not sleep and you find him in the Relaxation Room. He curls up against the wall where you kissed him for the first time, head on his knees. The thing that strikes you is that he isn't crying. He's just staring out at the blue-dark, seething, waiting.

You swallow. "What are you doing?"

For a good half-minute, he doesn't answer. You're beginning to think he isn't going to when he says, curtly, "What on earth makes you think I have to answer you, of all people?"

For once, it's your turn to wince. The second main game had flipped this dynamic of yours that you were beginning to settle into so comfortably around horribly. Now you're the one fumbling for words, and Sou stares past you, through you, like you're not even there. It makes your skin itch. You don't want to wonder why the idea of his eyes not being on you makes you so jumpy.

"You shouldn't be out here on your own," you manage after a few moments, taking care to take any effects from your voice; it comes out cold and toneless, but you have a nasty feeling that Sou will see through it anyway. That's one of the things that you've reviled about him from the beginning, after all; how perceptive he is. Though you find, frighteningly enough, it's kind of hard to hate him right now. All you can conjure up is pity. "'S not safe."

He laughs, empty and bitter. "Oh, I don't think Ranger is going to be committing too much violence in his sorry state." His eyes are round and empty, pale blue moons when he raises them to you. "Or are you talking about our fellow participants? Maybe Miss Sara and Mr Policeman would prefer to get me out of the way now, save them the trouble later..."

"Don't say that," you return automatically. "They're not... they wouldn't..."

Sou fixes you with a headlamp stare. "They're above killing me, but not a teenage girl?"

You flinch. "Sara's a teenage girl, too. You can't..."

"I told them to vote for me," he spits. "I begged. You did."

Your fingers curl in the fabric of your clothing, searching for something to ground you. "Not for you," you tell him. "For Kanna."

Sou lets out a breathy laugh. "Well, fat lot of good it did." He drops his head to his knees. "Go away," he tells you flatly, muffled. "I'm sick to death... of looking at all of you."

This time, you listen.

Sou's distance continues the next day, and the next. The floor is quiet without Ranger. Safalin shuffles in and out like a melon-scented ghost bearing food, occasionally, but more often than not you're all left to soak in your grief. You wonder if you'll stay on this floor, this time, or if they'll hurry you up to another one like shepherding cattle.

You're not sure which would be worse. On the one hand, you don't want to get used to an entirely new floor, new floormasters, new horrors to unfold. On the other... sitting here with the remnants of the dead lurking like pockets of grief is no good, either.

You go to the computer room and for just a moment, Nao stands there, forehead pressed to the shattered screen. You visit the Relaxation room, and Alice lurks against the door, eyes following Reko with abject wistfulness. When you pass Sou in the corridors, just for a moment, you see a girl in green skipping behind him at his heels, angelic eyes turned up to the ceiling, a smile on the pink bow of her mouth. If her absence stings you, you can't imagine how Sou feels. 

God. You shake your head. Since when did you start caring about how that asshole feels?

Keiji stops you one evening, the third—no, fourth, after it happens. You're on your way to bed when his large hand spiderwebs over your shoulder as he catches you in the door.

"Hey there," he mutters, looking more tired than ever. The circles under his eyes are so deep they look like bruises.  "How you holding up?"

"Oh..." Lonely as it sounds, nobody's really checked up on you recently. It's fine—you're not really the victim here, in any case. You'd rather they focus on Sara and Reko, the ones who actually lost people. "I'm okay. How's Sara?"

Keiji shrugs. "'Bout as well as can be expected," he replies, cagily, as you've come to expect everything he says to be. Sometimes you wonder if he just thinks the mystery makes him seem sexier. "Look, I don't like to ask, but..."

Your mouth purses a little. "Is this about Sou?"

Keiji winces. "You think you could, ah... look in on him a little? Mr Policeman's getting a little wary of him, y'know?"

A week ago, you'd have jumped at the chance to irritate Sou. Now something twinges in your gut. "I—I don't know. I think he's just... processing."

Grieving implies some level of acceptance. You don't think Sou has accepted anything, yet.

Keiji seems to weigh this. "Dunno. Don't put it past someone like Sou to leave it at just feeling sorry for himself. I think he might have something else up his sleeve."

You bite at your lip, gnawing at the skin there. "You really think he'd plan something to hurt us? There's kids here..."

"Kanna was a kid, too," Keiji says flatly. "And Sou's furious. Furious people do dumb things, sometimes. Would you mind?"

A beat. You pretend to think about it. "No, it's okay. I got it. I don't know why you think he'll talk to me, but..."

"You didn't vote for Kanna," Keiji replies bleakly. "Makes you a hell of a lot more popular with him than me. Reko's in no state. Q-Taro, uh... lacks the delicacy for this kinda stuff, I think, and Gin's a kid. Don't trust him around Sou, to be honest."

You nod. "I get you. Uh, I'll try. But..."

Keiji smiles crookedly; it does not reach his eyes. Nothing ever does, you realise. "'S okay. I'm not expecting much anyway, to tell you the truth. Lemme know if you turn anything up, though, yeah?"

"'Course. See you later, Keiji."

You wander to the tiny kitchenette that juts from the dining hall. It's usually only occupied by Safalin, now. Alice used to frequent there, to scrounge whatever fruits he could find rolling around. He'd had some sort of sweet tooth for them, he'd admitted to you once. In contrast, Reko liked sour things. You suppose there must have been an uncountable number of similarities and differences between the Yabusame siblings. Now there is only one important distinction; one is alive and one is dead. You wonder if there will ever be any healing from that.

Safalin has left half a melon out on the side; it glimmers weakly back at you, dishwater green and underripe. It will do. You take a butterknife and begin to slice, methodically cutting the fruit into rough cubes. They pile up around the wooden chopping board, lukewarm and smelling of very little. You don't even know if Sou likes fruit. You don't even know if it matters.

What are you doing?

Barely a week ago you shoved Sou against a wall and jerked him off. Four days after that you tasted him in the back of your throat. You've had pretty much every thought about him, ranging from scandalous to murderous, and now you're—you're cutting up melon into dinky little cubes for him. Like it fucking matters. You hate how sorry you feel for him; loathing him without intricacy was so much easier. You'd still be doing it now, if he didn't look so haunted every time you caught a glimpse of him, if Kanna's screams weren't still ripping through your nightmares.

Scowling, you scoop the fruit into a bowl and make your way out of the kitchen. Sou will be in his room, most likely. It's where he spends almost all of his time now. 

It's not right from the moment you walk in.

You don't even know why Sou lets you into his room, truth be told. When the door swings open he's caught off-guard; his eyes, over circles so deep they resemble bruises, widen a little at the sight of you. His lip curls when he sees the bowl of fruit in your hand.

"Ah... come to poison me?" he says pleasantly enough, if a little tired. "Might've known it would be you."

"It's just fruit," you say unnecessarily, not letting yourself rise to the bait. "Can I... come in, or...?"

Sou raises his eyebrows, a smug expression that sort of makes you want to throttle him, but whatever, you didn't come here with an agenda. So when he steps aside after a moment you just brush past him, waiting for the click of the door.

"So." Sou leans against his chest of drawers in a show of nonchalance. "Who sent you to lurk around here like some sort of overgrown fly? Was it miss Sara?"

"Keiji," you answer, seeing no point in lying. "He's worried for you."

Sou laughs emptily. "Worried about me, you mean," he mutters, tugging at his hat. "They're all so very worried, and for what? I'm the one with a zero percent survival rate, remember? Not like I could actually do anything to take them out, right?"

You don't like the gleam in his eye when he says that; it's like a shard of cut glass. But you force down the anger and frustration bubbling up inside you. "I dunno about any of that. I just came to give you this. And to see—how you're doing, I guess."

Sou blinks at you. "How I'm doing?"

"I mean," you mutter. "I know you were close with Kanna. I—come on, I'm not fucking heartless. I'm sorry you lost her, okay?"

Sou tugs at his hat again, ducks his face. "Stop it."

"I just mean, if you want to—"

"Stop it!" Sou snarls. It flies out of him like specks of poison, and you stiffen, taken off-guard by the utter viciousness in his tone.

"Stop what?!"

"That!" he shouts, gesturing to the bowl in your hand. "This! Acting all nice to me as if you aren't—like you don't—you think just because Kanna is dead I want your fucking sympathy? Looking at you makes me sick to my stomach!" 

His hand flies up, and for a moment you think he is actually going to strike you, and you don't have time to wonder why that scares you so much before his fingers knock straight into the bowl. Carved wood and cubed fruit sputter to the floor, spilling out in a colourful mosaic. A wedge of pale green melon rolls to a stop beside your foot.

There is no sound, then, except for Sou's heavy breathing. You don't think you're breathing at all. Sou glares at you like you're the mangiest stray he's ever had the misfortune of laying eyes upon. 

"I," you say, a little bewildered. "I was just. I was just trying to help."

Sou's laugh bounces off the walls like a bullet, loud and cracked and full of derisive disbelief. "Help? That's what this is supposed to be? What, not shoving me into corners and bringing me cut-up fucking fruit? That's helping, in your addled little mind?"

"Well, what do you want me to do?" you finally argue back, crossing your arms firmly. Embarrassment and anger brew a dangerous cocktail in your gut, boiling and acidic. "I don't—"

"Just..." His hands come up and swipe his beanie off his head in frustration; your eyes catch on the movement of his slim, pale fingers as they rake through badly-dyed hair. You can see the roots of dark brown peeking through at the scalp. "This whole shitty 'caring older sibling' vibe, or whatever you call it... just quit it. Seriously, it makes me sick."

"So, what?" you ask, stunned. "You want me to be mean to you again?"

Sou glances at you quickly, reddens, and just as quickly looks away again. Your heart thumps.

Oh.

Oh.

"You do, huh?" you ask, voice sliding effortlessly into something lower, smoother; it rolls over Sou like hot honey. He turns away. "Why?"

For a moment, he doesn't answer. You're beginning to think he won't at all when he says slowly, haltingly; "When you're acting nice... you remind me so much of him." He spits that last word with far more venom than you've ever seen from him. It makes his distaste for Sara and Keiji almost mild in comparison. "I can't stand when bad people try to act all sweet. You, Miss Sara... among others. It makes my skin crawl. At least you used to have the guts to own up to all you really were, warts and all."

"I don't think you're really the authority to speak on being who you really are," you inform him stonily. "Shin."

He flinches from you, scowls. "Don't call me that. I told you in the main game, I left that name behind."

"Yeah, and look at all the good it's done you." 

Sou's eyes go wide and hurt and for a moment your stomach drops. Before, you didn't think there existed a boundary you wouldn't cross if it meant getting under Sou's skin. Now you're worried you went too far. Kanna's death is a wound that has barely even begun to heal, and you're prodding at the tender flesh beneath skin ripped open.

But then Sou's face sets. "You see?" he says quietly, toying with his scarf. "This is the real you."

Maybe the worst thing of all is that he is right. Dropping the careful sympathetic look feels like shedding a mask, and when you set your lip and glare at him, it's like coming home.

"Look at me, then," you say, finally. Sou doesn't, so you take his chin roughly in your hand and make him, and he doesn't fight back, not in any way that matters. A venomous look, a twitch of his jaw. 

You step forward and catch his mouth in a kiss that is all bruising and no affection, hands coming up to cage his face. Sou blinks, eyes widening, and releases a stuttered gasp into your mouth but you don't let him exhale, digging your fingers into the foam of his hairline and dragging him forward to meet your mouth again. He melts beneath you, butter-soft all of a sudden, pliant. But you're working with too much anger to meet him halfway. Your teeth poke out of your mouth and nick at his bottom lip, hard.

Sou jerks back. "O-ow! What the—"

"Shut up," you tell him. "You wanted me mean, you better not complain. I don't want to hear a fucking word of backtalk from you, got it?"

Sou stares at you. For a second, you think he might refuse. But most of you knows he won't. This is what he needs, and it's what he's needed for a while, and the both of you know it. So you wait. 

Finally, he nods, jerky and meek. The smile you reward him with his poisonous. "Good boy."

And he fucking whimpers. The sound goes straight to your abdomen, liquid lightning. 

You kiss him fast and hard, rough like you have something to prove. It's all lips and teeth and tongue, a fast wet drooling mess as Sou opens himself to you with a shaky sigh, and you wonder when this began to feel so familiar, wonder when slotting yourself between his limbs began to feel like rehearsing steps in a choreography. You can predict the way his heartbeat goes berserk when your fingertips come to rest at the pulse point in his throat. When you run your hands through his hair and curl your fingers within it to lock him in place, the static shock of your nails against his scalp makes him gasp and stutter.

You break the kiss, staying close enough so that he must feel that he cannot run away, keeping your grip locked on his hair. His breathing comes in quick, shallow bursts, sending the faint scent of toothpaste over your face.

"What do you want, Sou?"

He makes a quick, anxious noise in the back of his throat, licks his lips. They're chapped from that constant nervous tic, always with his lower lip caught between his teeth, worrying at the skin. "I— I—"

You could take pity. You could play nice. But you suspect Sou wants neither of these things. "Use your words, Sou."

The pale, thin skin of Sou's throat flexes when he swallows; his eyes dart everywhere, avoiding your own, his cheeks scarlet. You've grown used to this, you realise. Even worse, you think you've grown to like it.

"I just want." Sou trails to a stop, taking in a sharp, painful breath. "To not think. About any of it. I just need it to stop, want you to make it s-stop."

Your heart catches. 

Sou's words are so soft, so vulnerable, chastised into the air between you in a whisper. You're so used to the mocking, the anger, the cruel wicked blade shimmering between the lines of everything he says that this wavering takes you briefly off-guard. He sounds seconds away from bursting into tears.

Before—before Kanna, before all of it, you would've refused just to spite him. But you can feel yourself melting like butter. Death sinks its teeth into the soft fruit of your humanity, flicking its tongue over the poison nesting there.

You don't have the heart. You have far too much heart.

Sou shakes beneath your hold, awaiting your answer. 

Finally, you manage to speak. "Can do."

Before Sou can speak, you remove your hands from his hair and shove at his chest; he topples back with a gasp, the back of his knees caving in as they hit the stooping bedframe. He sinks into the firm mattress, scrabbling for a quick hold in the comforter.

You stand in front of him — no, loom over him, arms crossed firmly over your chest, expression set. It makes a visible shiver run through Sou's body, the controlled expression on your face.

Here, in this room where it is only the two of you, you could make him do anything.

You could humiliate him. You could hurt him.

You could kill him.

And you should feel guilty. You find it to be almost sacrilegious that you don't, in fact. Sara is catatonic with grief, Reko hasn't looked anybody in the eye since Alice had died. Nao's screams haven't left your ears. Kanna...

Mishima. Joe. Kai. Alice. Nao. Kanna.

How many more? How many until this nightmare ended?

You had no control over any of it, out there. You weren't incompetent, but your cunning didn't hold a candle to Sou. You aren't tactical like Keiji, or inspiring like Sara. You aren't resourceful like Gin, or strong like Q-Taro, or as protective as Reko. You live on the coattails of their greatness, and all it would take was one wrong card in the Main Game for you to die.

This was the only place, the only temple in the world you had some semblance of control.

And Sou had handed it over to you.

Once, you would have craved the fight of taking it from him. Now you're just glad to have it in your hands.

He stares up at you, wide-eyed and expectant. There truly isn't much defiance left in his face. You suppose it's because it's the first time he's asked for this, really. Waiting for you to speak.

You hide your shaking hands in the folds of your arms, and, voice low and gravelly, you tell him, "I want you to touch yourself."

Whatever Sou had been expecting, it clearly wasn't that. He chokes on his own spit, head jerking back in shock; scarlet floods the apples of his cheeks. "You—what are you talking about?!"

Your heart races, but you think you hide it relatively well. "You heard me. You think you can just barge in here and take what you want? If you want me to touch you, you'd better earn it." You stick out one of your legs, hook your shoe around one of Sou's ankles. His breath catches when you yank his legs roughly apart.

Sou stares at the sudden gap between his legs as though he'd never seen it before. He swallows hard. "You... you can't be serious."

"Do I look like I'm joking?"

Sou's fingers grip the comforter hard enough to wrinkle. 

You sigh. "Look, I'm not forcing you to do anything, am I? If you don't like it, you can leave. Obviously. You're the one who came to me."

Sou chews his lip. "It's embarrassing."

"Uh, yeah," you laugh. "That's kind of the point, baby."

Sou flushes further at the nickname, fidgets with his hands for a moment. You think he might be about to refuse, when, avoiding your eye like his life depends on it, one of his hands slowly uncurls from the bed and makes the painstaking journey towards the crux of his legs. You watch, suddenly intimidated into silence as Sou blows out a breath from between a tense, locked jaw and begins unbuckling his belt.

A thrum of anxiety works its way down your spine when it occurs to you, as Sou's belt clinks in the background, that you've never really... seen him. Not like that. The first time in the Relaxation Room you'd just sort of stuck your hand down his trousers, and the second time was in the dark. It felt odd to be so familiar with the touch and taste of a body part you'd never even seen.

Sou's cheeks darken brilliantly as he lifts his hips, shuffling awkwardly to tug his trousers down to his thighs. After a second of hesitation — and one last fleeting look at you to check that yes, you are so serious about this — his dark boxers follow.

Your breath catches.

It's... well. Not that far from what you'd imagined, actually. Not that you'd imagined. Pale but flushed at the tip, not overly long or thick, and obscured by a soft thatch of dark hair at the base. 

He shifts, waiting for something. You're not sure what.

"Take off your jacket," you tell him, because he looks weird all top-heavy like that. "Your scarf, too. It's fucking hideous."

He scowls. "Like I'd take fashion advice from you."

"I'm not asking you to, sweetheart," you sigh. "I just don't want to have to look at it. C'mon, already, off."

Sou rolls his eyes, but the scarf unwinds from his neck and pools on the carpet, and his jacket follows shortly after. He sits more exposed than ever, pale matchstick arms poking out of the shirt that's slightly too big for him; the collar droops, exposing a sharp jut of collarbone, and of course, the harsh metal ring encircling his neck. The delicate dips of his bones are obscured by that collar of steel.

It's always nice to see it, just to remind yourself that it exists. That he's just as much of a prisoner as the rest of you, even if it doesn't seem like it sometimes.

You walk over and slide his stupid beanie off his head yourself. He flinches and glowers up at you, like a dog who's had its favourite chew-toy taken away. Dark brown roots peek through the swathes of teal, and his hair feels kind of damaged beneath your fingers. You can picture him, suddenly, in a shitty apartment bathroom with flickery lighting, a box of the cheapest dye he could find at the drugstore in one hand. Hair pushed back, wet, dark with paint, pale skin stained at the temples.

He's probably the kind of person that forgets to wash the back of his ears and goes around with them stained for a week until someone is kind enough to point it out. And then he probably goes home and cries about it.

You toss the beanie into some forgotten corner as you return to your position standing before him. He's half-sunk into the mattress, cheeks aflame in only his shirt and his trousers pushed halfway down his thighs. It strikes you again, violently, how thin he is. How breakable.

Three people dead and endless hearts broken because of him. 

Maybe Kanna was just a taste of his own medicine.

You dig your nails into your palms, horrified at your own train of thought. Kanna was an innocent girl. Fourteen years old, and she died screaming. There was no good world in which that could be justice for any wrongdoing.

But maybe this wasn't a good world.

Joe died screaming too. Kai. Mishima.

You don't like where this silence is taking you, so you force yourself to speak. "What are you waiting for, Christmas? Start, already."

Sou sighs irritably. "You're as patient as ever, then..."

From the way his blush only darkens as he tentatively moves his hands to grip his dick, his petulance was just a way of deflecting his embarrassment. You supposed you could give him that, but all his backtalk really wasn't sitting too well with you. He had come to you, after all; if he had been expecting gentle, he should've kept to himself.

Refusing to look at you, Sou adjusts his fingers carefully and gives himself one long, experimental stroke that has his breath hitching. The first few seconds are awkward and jittery, his hand moving too stiffly to be comfortable. Tension lines his shoulders and reflects in the jerky motions of his wrists; he's like a badly-oiled machine, rusted at the hinges.

Stepping forwards again, you tell him softly, "Stop."

Sou's brows knit; confusion must win out over humiliation, because he looks up at you with an expression that's half bewildered and half annoyed — but any and all expression melts away when you grab his wrist, hold his hand up below your chin. He makes a spluttering noise halfway between indignance and disbelief when you suck his middle and index finger past your lips. Every second you spend with his fingers in your mouth feels like hours—he tastes of skin and soap, a thrillingly uninteresting mixture; your tongue slides over the soft skin, the blunts of his nails, all the way down to the third knuckle. 

"What—" Sou says hoarsely, eyes glued to the way your mouth purses around his skin, but he's cut off when you yank his fingers from your mouth, gather a pool of saliva in your mouth and spit. Drool drips from your lips and makes a sparkling trail to Sou's open palm. He watches, slack-jawed and eyes bugging, not even twitching at the contact.

You don't let go of his wrist, instead sinking to your knees before him. Sou's legs jerk instinctively, his blush seeping down his neck — but you only envelop the back of his hand with your own and guide his fingers back to his cock. His breath catches again with a wheeze as his hand, now slick and warm with your spit, wrap back around him, at the pressure your own fingers apply.

You squeeze once, teasingly, and Sou chokes before you pull back.

"Should be easier now," is all the explanation you offer. 

"Disgusting," he mutters, but even as he speaks his voice wavers a little, and his hand is already moving as though it's disconnected from the rest of his brain. He inhales shakily as he starts swelling under the attention. "D-don't you have any manners?"

You choose not to reply to this; in the silence, Sou finally picks up a steady rhythm. He starts slow at first, probably conscious of the fact that you're there and watching him, but after not too long he finally tips his head back with a shaky groan, eyes squeezing shut. His hips begin to cant up into his fist, tiny subtle jerks that make his thighs shake with effort.

You watch, kind of entranced as Sou begins to lose himself in the pleasure, teeth sinking into his bottom lip in an effort to stifle the soft, breathy sounds you're growing only too familiar with. You pay careful attention to the way Sou touches himself, the subtle jerks of his hips, the way his wrist twists a little at the base. What makes his breath stop, what makes him moan. His unoccupied hand is restless—it scrapes its nails down his thigh, leaving scarlet railroads, it clenches in the comforter, it flies up to cover the top of his face in some effort to preserve his dignity.

An effort you don't reward, of course. The first move you make in minutes is to catch his hand in a bruising grip and yank his arm away from his face, a silent message that there will be no hiding from this, what he asked for. His eyes flick up to you, shocked and wounded, and it probably shouldn't send a hot thrill right through you but it does. Your legs shift a little, seeking relief, and you thank whatever God exists that Sou is too caught up in his own pleasure to notice.

Sou, you distantly realise, does not last long. Once is an incident, two is a coincidence, but three—you watch as his mouth drops open, his eyes screw shut, and the veins in his neck jut sharply against his papery skin as he gasps and hisses through locked teeth, how his thighs tense and flex as his hips begin to fuck up into his fist desperately—three is a pattern. His hair droops over his red face like parted curtains, the interval curtain rising at the theatre to welcome you back to the show, and the show is that he's about to come already.

Just as you open your mouth, he cracks open an eye, and your voice dies in your throat. His expression is wound, frantic, and he gasps out, "I—I'm close, I—can I, can I..."

You're speechless, just for a moment. Did Sou just ask permission? With no prompting from you?

You hesitate for a beat too long; Sou groans, slowing his pace, so tense you can see his wound-up muscles trembling. He peers up at you with more emotion on his face than you've seen in days. "P—fuck, please, already, I—nnh..."

"Yeah," your voice escapes you before your brain can catch up; you're so thrown that you register a moment too late that you sound vaguely awestruck. "Yeah, Sou, go on, I want to see."

"F-fuck," he pants, hand resuming its pace again, lip trembling as his mouth drops open again, "fuck, I—mmh!"

His whine hangs in the air like a dissonant piano string for a few moments as he comes back to earth. For a moment, there is only his stuttered, heavy breathing—and what you come to realise is your own, echoing back into your ears. Hastily, you swallow hard, dig your nails into your palms.

After a few moments, Sou looks up at you, vaguely disgruntled. His petulant expression almost startles a laugh out of you. "What's that face for?"

"I mean..." He casts a clearer-eyed look down at himself; disgust settles faintly in the lines of his face as he takes in the quickly-cooling release soaking his shirt and hand. "If that was all, I didn't have to come to you for that. Why'd you even want to watch, anyway?" The tips of his ears burn red. 

Your fingers tap into the fat of your arm. "Well, who said we were done?"

Sou blinks; some of the colour leaves his face. "What—what do you..." Some penny seems to drop behind his eyes, and he blanches further, seeming to shrink in on himself, and you watch his throat bob as he swallows hard. "Do you... want me to do something for you?"

You falter, wrongfooted. No, actually, that hadn't been where you were going with that train of thought. Actually—maybe weirdly, considering how much you've touched him over the last few days—your thoughts have never really strayed to the other half of the circle. Maybe because a few days ago the thought of Sou's hands revolted you, and you'd rather squash them into a blender than have them on your body. 

Unbidden, heat rushes to your face. Oh, but you're thinking about it now, sort of against your will. The pale flex of the veins in his hands, curled into your flesh, gripping, stroking, his wavering breath against your neck as his teeth scrape over shivering skin. 

Maybe he'd bite down. Not enough to hurt, just enough to remind you that he could. 

"No," you say, your voice a touch hoarser than it was when you spoke last. You swallow. "No, you just... stay there. Just stay there."

Sou's brow furrows. You shuck your jacket off and toe off your boots quickly, leaving you in jeans and your shirt, and you pretend you don't notice as Sou's eyes automatically track the new planes of exposed skin, how a flush begins to creep in from the roots of his hair again. You really dislike how seen you feel before his eyes, sometimes. Not even Keiji, in all his calculative mistrust, seems to see you as Sou does. 

You walk over to the bed and kiss him. It's no less insistent than before, if the muffled yelp he releases into your mouth is anything to go by, but it is slower, you guess, and you keep it up for a good few minutes. It's hot. Literally. You don't leave any space between the two of you, your hands on his jaw, his jerking pitifully at his sides, and you surge forward between his legs 'till the two of you are pressed flush; his body heat, tepid as it is, becomes yours. You feel your own heartbeat under his skin. 

If you close your eyes for long enough, you can forget it's Sou's mouth you're tracing with your tongue. It almost feels nice, then.

Any languidity stops short when Sou feels your hand wrap, none too gently, around his length. His whole body jerks, skin sparking like a livewire at the contact, and he breaks the kiss with a yelp.

"What—" he pants, staring from your face to your hand; colour explodes over his cheeks at the sight. It occurs to you that just as you've never seen him properly, he's never really seen you, either. The crook of your neck with your hand down his slacks, maybe; a feeling of the soft inside of your mouth in the dark. Can he see you now? 

Your hand moves in slow, careful strokes, and Sou keens, whiny and stuttered like an injured animal. 

"What are you—" he gasps out, voice tight and high. "I just—I only just..."

The strain in his voice softens you, maybe, just a little. You slow your pace, breathe against the space behind his ear. A soft, breathy sound slips past his lips at the barely-there contact. "You don't wanna think," you murmur into his hair. "Hm?"

He trembles against you. "I... I guess."

"That's what you said. You changing your mind?"

The pause seems to last a hundred years. And then Sou slumps against you in defeat. "No. I... no."

You kiss the shell of his ear. "Sure?"

"Yes, already, just—mmphf!"

You close your mouths together again, pushing forward with force this time so Sou tumbles back against the mattress; the shitty old wooden boards holding it up creak in protest as you clamber over him, his hipbones pressing into the soft inside of your thighs. This part, at least, feels familiar, the way he shudders and arches into you, the want pulsing beneath his skin. It's a sweet flavour, knowing you put it there; it's a bitter drink knowing you're going to make it hurt.

He hiccups a little when your hand begins to move again; there's no need for saliva this time, and Sou tosses his head back against the bed, eyes screwed shut and he moans, long and low. His hips twitch with the overstimulation, the raw sensitivity, and you know you're only adding to it as you start to stroke your fingers down the side of his neck. He practically vibrates under you.

His head twists, seeking to bury itself in the covers. "Too mmm-uch. H-hurts—"

"You can take it?" Sou lets out a long, wavering sound that could be a moan or a sob, but he nods. You can pinpoint the moment pain begins to ebb in favour of pleasure, as the strain on Sou's vocal cords disappears, as he starts chasing your hand frantically. His back twists, arches, follows your loose fist as you stare down at him, weirdly, repulsively entranced. There's... nothing quite like watching Sou fall apart beneath you. 

You always know his real moment of weakness is coming when he touches you.

It's like he thinks if he doesn't, then it's not real. But when he gets desperate, frantic, it's like he forgets. One of his hands grips your wrist as though terrified you're going to pull away, the other digs into your hip, makes a pathetic attempt at pulling you closer. Not that you can be much closer, but you oblige, lean down 'till your chest dips against his. You can feel his heart jackhammering against his ribcage, the way he twitches and jumps at the prolonged contact.

"Haah, ah—" he sputters, eyes screwed tightly shut, hips rocking against your hand. "It's—feels—"

"You gonna come?"

"I d-don't—" he gasps, peeling his eyes open and looking up at you desperately. It sends a hot thrill of lightning hollowing you out from your chest to the pulsing between your legs. "I can't—it's too much, t-too much, can't, can't..."

"You can," you affirm sternly. "I hope you're not thinking of wasting my time, Sou."

Sou's mouth falls open. He heaves in one tight, wavering breath after another, his whole body seizing up. 

"Ah!" 

He arches up into you, mouth agape and eyes screwed shut, and you pull back. He makes a sound like he's been suckerpunched, a pitiful thing somewhere between a sob and a wordless question. 

You grin down at home, hoping your teeth glint in the light. "What's the magic word?"

Sou throws an arm over his eyes again, jaw tense. He's fighting it, he can tell, but you physically watch his resolve weaken as you start tracing light circles on the sharp, pale shelf of his hip. You're so close to his stomach that you track the tense, quick rise and fall of his breath.

"Please," comes the inevitable submission, quiet and angry. 

"What's that?" Your fingers circle his dick, feather-light; Sou releases a cry of frustration.

"Please," he snaps. "Fucking—please."

"You're so ungrateful, y'know that?" you sigh flippantly, but you slot your lips over his, catch his bottom one between your teeth and bite down. The same moment that blood begins to stream down his chin, you swipe your thumb hard over the tip of his dick, and Sou is gone.

He wails so loud that you have to hastily clap a hand over his mouth; these rooms are pretty soundproof but Sou almost sounds like he's getting fucking murdered, all stuttered gasps catching in his throat, all half-sobs falling sweet and dissonant over your ears. 

He mumbles a name you don't recognise (but one you will come to), then a curse, and then yours, over and over like a mantra, like he's trying to remember who it is looming above him. 

Breaths punch out of him in the aftermath, straight into the crook of your neck. They sputter from him like a janky old film reel, rushing and pausing, an endless nervous stammer. His fingers grip weakly at your clothes. When you pull back a little, letting the blood from his lip streak brightly over the slope of his chin, his flush climbs all the way down his neck, and his eyes are teary at the corners, and a cold sweat has broken out on his pale temples.

You click your fingers before his glassy eyes. "Oi. Sou. You with me?"

He gives an incoherent mumble, something between a sigh and a whine. His eyes slide shut. 

No good. You worry your lip between your teeth. 

"Hey. Shin."

He jolts so violently that you're almost upseated, brought starkly back to awareness; even as you watch, the colour drains from his face, and his eyes, suddenly clear as crystal, find your own urgently. The intensity of his stare almost frightens you. 

His expression sets into a wobbly glare. "Don't call me that."

You shift, feeling defensive; Sou hisses and jerks at the unintentional friction. You can't strictly blame him; his skin must feel like it's on fire. "Why not? 'S your name."

"No it isn't. It's... it's not. Don't you call me that again."

"Touchy," you mutter, with little real venom behind it. Sou sighs, tight and angry, and you roll off of him and flop down on the mattress beside him, arms not touching, suddenly cold all over.

After a few long, chilly moments of silence, Sou speaks again. His voice is hoarse and wavery. "It didn't help."

"Huh?"

"I can't... stop thinking about it. Kanna..."

His voice goes thick and wet. Your heart lodges itself under your tongue. Oh, no, no no—you're not equipped for this. You've never been good with people crying, let alone ones you hate. 

Thankfully, Sou just draws in a shuddering breath and swipes his arm across his eyes, sniffing hard. 

"Well," you say. "Maybe there's no running from it. Maybe it's just—another bad thing that happened, that we have to move past."

"Move past?" Sou echoes, and sits bolt upright. "She was a kid. Fourteen years old! She died because of them, miss Sara and that sleazy policeman, and—"

"And what?" you snap. "Gin? He's a kid too, Sou, in case you missed it. Didn't realise we suddenly started caring about the lives of people here—where was this holier-than-thou fucking attitude with you got Mishima killed? Kai? Joe? Do they not count? Three people are dead because of you, you fucking coward. Maybe you—" You catch your breath, heart hammering. 

Sou stares up at you, stricken. "Maybe I what?" he whispers. "Deserve this? You think Kanna deserved to... to die screaming, because of me?" He gives a hollow, bitter laugh. "Ah... you're colder than I thought. You never... fail to surprise me."

You bite the inside of your cheek so hard you taste blood. "Well. Guess we suit each other, then."

Sou casts you a sideways look, and grunts. You feel close to crying, all of a sudden. It's all hitting you like a ton of bricks. Already Kanna has become a scapegoat for your grief and anger, a way to take it out on Sou. She deserved far more than that, and yet... 

Already you're forgetting the sparkle in her eyes. The set of her pursed, determined lips. The lilt of her soft voice. It's going, it's going, retreating into the thick grey fog of things you'd rather not think about. 

"What are you crying about?" Sou asks, disgruntled; too late, you realise your tears have spilled over, rolling down your cheeks. You swipe at them halfheartedly, hating the way he watches you. The way he sees. The way he's sort of always seen, no matter how you play at being in control, no matter how you make him cry and beg and only exist in the places you're touching him. At the end of the day, Sou still sees you, and nothing will take away from that.

The mattress shifts suddenly, and before you can blink the blurriness out of your eyes there's suddenly a weight pressing into you. You choke on a gasp, hands flying up automatically to push at the sudden warm, solid mass pressing into you. Sou leans over you, hair tousled, cheeks red, eyes a little distant. His lips are bitten raw; the blood from the split has been wiped but not thoroughly enough, so there's a small blot on the pale slope of his chin, red as sin. 

You shove at him. "Get off me."

"You're crying," Sou sneers. "How pathetic. Don't tell me those tears are for that crazy old teacher? Or are they for the cowardly traitor, or the boy you didn't even know? For miss Nao? Well, I certainly know they're not for Kanna, so—"

"Get the fuck off me!"

You shove at him, hard, and Sou catches your wrists clumsily, leaving you spitting mad, glaring up at him with a look so acidic it could probably dissolve cement. Whatever sadness had been filling you is slowly giving way to hot, bubbling anger, and it's filling you up and it feels good, feels fucking familiar, and maybe you're playing right into Sou's hands but you can't find it in yourself to care. It feels good to hate him again, feels good not having to feel guilty, not having to think of Kanna. 

It feels good, being as selfish as Sou know you are.

"You are such a fucking asshole," you snarl, digging your fingers viciously into his shirt and flipping the two of you over; he gasps when you shove a leg between his, pin his body into the mattress with your weight. 

"Gah! Careful!" he hisses as your leg drags between his thighs, arching away from the contact.

"Careful?" you echo. "You don't want me to be fucking careful, Sou. You want me mean, right?"

His lips press together into a firm line, and his gaze slides away, awkward, petulant. But you're just about out of patience, so you grab his face with your whole hand and yank it back to look at you. His eyes peer out, wide from between your fingers. Your nails press grooves into his soft, pale skin.

It's sort of blurry, then. You're aware of kissing him again, harder if possible, and your teeth scrape together like gravestones in your mouths, clumsy, jammed into the dirt and forgotten about, and it makes for rough kissing but worth it for the whimpering, wispy noises he stifles against your lips. His eyes roll back into his head and his whole body shudders when your hips start to roll against his. It's uncomfortable. His bones all jab into you through his papery skin. 

Your leg drags against his dick again, and he cringes with his whole being, pulls back, a small "Wait, waitwaitwait..." mumbling from his mouth. His hands grab at your hips, but he doesn't push you away or pull you closer, either. He just sort of holds you for a moment. 

You lick your lips. "What am I waiting for?"

Sou doesn't answer. You think, for once, he doesn't have one at the ready.

So your hips twitch again and he groans, throws an arm over his eyes. "Hurts," he whines.

You shrug; even this tiny movement makes him shudder again. "But you're not thinking, are you?"

There's a moment of stillness, and then Sou shakes his head, small and maybe a little sad. You choose, consciously, not to see it. Not to think about what it means. You just move again, and for the first time since you started this—whatever it is, there's something else. This isn't crowding Sou into a wall and lording your control over him, it's not pinning him down to the bed and making his body a traitor to his own head. It's something else. It's for you, too, suddenly, and your jeans are too tight and too rough so you're yanking them off.

And there's so much skin, your legs sliding against his, unshaved, rough, a plane of stubble as they twist around each other. Ouroborous, you think you resemble. Does a snake swallowing its own tail learn to love the taste of venom?

The soft cotton of your underwear must be a relief compared to coarse denim, because when your hips join Sou's again he sighs shakily and tosses his head back. Your loose shirt bunches over your waist when he reaches up to grip your hips, your midriff, pale spidery hands skating over your torso for a hold as you start to move. 

There will be nothing more than this. Even the thin barrier of your underwear makes you feel a little revolted. Sou is so loud, now, skin on fire from the overstimulation, arching simultaneously into and away from you, body writhing like a snake. But you know if he wanted you to stop, he would tell you, or maybe he would sink his teeth into your heart and pull it out, but either way, it would stop. 

But he doesn't. So you don't.

It feels good, is the part of it that both relieves and infuriates you. It shouldn't. Sou is Sou, is Shin, whatever—the one person who'd gotten under your skin consistently, the man who'd made you seriously contemplate murder, the one responsible for the deaths of three people. The one who had the audacity to sit and cry and seethe when the same thing happened to him. 

But for all that—for right now—he's just a weirdly beautiful man squirming under you, near-sobbing with a stinging cocktail of pain and pleasure. His mouth hangs open, stifling nothing, lit up scarlet by a flush that starts at the sharp apples of his cheeks and floods down beneath the neck of his shirt. It feels alien that he should be giving you pleasure in return, but there's a hot twisting coil winding tight inside you as his hips cant up to meet yours in tandem. And suddenly holding back your own breath is hard, even as you clamp your hands over your mouth there are small noises escaping you, ones you can't swallow, your fingers twisting the fabric of your shirt in desperation for something to keep you grounded.

You lean down and bury your face in the crook of Sou's neck, feeling his high, heavy breathing against your ear. Amongst the breaths there is nonsense, and in the nonsense is words, endless frantic babble, "please fuck oh god oh god, pleasepleasepleaseeee..."

You dig your teeth into his neck, taste sweat and soap, and it grates at you that you all use the same soap here so he must smell the same as you. You wonder, nonsensically in the part of your head that isn't fuzzy and hot with pleasure, what he smells like at home. Convenience food and dust, probably. Maybe cigarettes. Does he smoke? He has anxious fingers. They shake where they scrape against your bare skin.

He moans your name, long and soft and high. "I can't," he hiccups. "I—I'm—but I, I can't, can you—"

"Y-yeah," you mutter, appalled at how wavery your own voice has gotten. "Yeah, sure."

Your hips move faster; Sou cries out, his hands sliding under your shirt to trace planes of skin and he's running hot now, not cold like he usually does, as if his whole body's flushed, as if you've set every cell that makes him up alight. They all respond to you, your hand, your eyes, your—

Your back arches, pushing impossibly further into him, and something snaps hot and hollow somewhere so deep inside you that your mouth drops open with the shock of it, your hand knots in Sou's hair and the other worms beneath his back, traps itself between his spine and the crushed heat of the mattress and you scratch so hard that you feel blood bead in your wake.

Sou kicks out, near wails at the pain but his hips stutter against yours; he knocks his forehead against your shoulder and sobs as he comes for the third time. His whole body shudders with it, and as soon as it's over he goes totally boneless in your arms, breathing quick and wet and thick against your skin. The two of you stick together with sweat, your face hidden in the arch of his shoulder.

It's you who finds the strength to move first, which is unsurprising. If tears weren't still running down Sou's cheeks, you think he might have passed out already. You manoeuvre yourself none too gently off of him, his limbs flopping limply when you're no longer there to hold them up. After a few moments, he turns his face against the mattress and rubs against the covers to wipe at the tears, like a cat scratching itself at a post. His inhalations are shuddery and weak, and he sniffles a lot, but he seems okay. 

Not that you care. 

There's a glass of water on Sou's bedside table. Normally you wouldn't go through the precautions, but he looks so weak that he might die quite soon right now. So you take a deep gulp and then hold the rim of the glass to Sou's mouth. He's just aware enough to mindlessly purse his lips against it; some of the water runs down his chin, but you watch his throat flex as he gulps some of it down. You use his discarded shirt to clean the both of you up, figuring you'll shower first thing in the morning.

After, as Sou's tears ebb to occasional sniffles, as you hover with legs only shaking a little at the foot of his bed, the silence presses in. The pleasure in your stomach begins to twist into something cold and rotten. 

"What should I..."

Sou inhales sharply, once. "D-do as you please," he mutters, and he doesn't sound any angrier at you than he usually does. In fact, there's something subdued about him. Something familiar. Something worryingly at-ease. You swallow your discomfort and clamber into bed next to him, tuck your body under the covers to hide it.

The both of you look up at the ceiling for a minute.

"You made me bleed," Sou rasps. "My back, that is."

"I know." You feel the urge to apologise, but you bite it back. It tastes like cough medicine going back down your throat. "Not my fault baby has sensitive skin."

Sou snorts, bitter and empty. "You... do realise you just did me a favour, right? I mean, me?"

"Well," you mutter, ardently avoiding his eye. "Nobody's that heartless."

In the short silence that swells after that, Kanna's screams worm their way under your skin again. Sou scrapes a hand down his face.

"I wouldn't do it for you," he says. You laugh despite yourself.

"I'd kill you if you did. Get the light, already."

Sleepily, Sou does. When darkness crowds the room, he asks, "You're not going to kill me in my sleep, I guess?"

And let Kanna die for nothing? "Like I said." You turn on your side, your stomach heavy. "Nobody's that heartless."

When you wake the next morning, Sou is still asleep. It's the first time you've ever seen him asleep, actually—for once, there is no furrow between his brows, no hiding, no expression to speak of. His mouth lolls open. Of course, he's a drooler.

You sit up gingerly, push your legs out from under the covers. You hope you haven't slept in; you should probably make your way back to your own room before everyone else wakes up. Quietly, you find your clothes and gather them in your arms. 

Just as you head for the door, you pause. The discarded bowl of fruit you'd brought lays where Sou had knocked it out of your hands. You see that the cubes of melon, so meticulously cut, have rotted through the night, the dewy green flesh turning black and blotchy.

You don't suppose it matters. There's no need to pretend you care anymore, after all.