1.

The first time someone tries to kidnap Ryouta, Shougo takes a flying leap from behind and sinks his teeth into the creep's neck. He gets a brief look at Ryouta's panicked face before the man punches him in the head, which is enough to make him clamp down even harder. By the time the police pry him off, there's an awful ringing in his ears and he's pretty sure his nose is broken, but it's worth it for the way Ryouta launches himself into Shougo's arms and bursts into messy tears that soak the front of his shirt.

Shougo holds Ryouta close, bares his bloodstained teeth at the pervert, and says coldly, "I have an untreatable strain of rabies. Just thought you should know."

"That was so freaking cool," Ryouta sobs, getting snot all over his sleeve.

"Story of my life," Shougo tells him, and promptly passes out.

-o-

Shougo spends the next week in the hospital while they fix his face. It's not all terrible, because Ryouta stops by every day after school and charms the staff into letting him stay way past visiting hours. He does this by staring up through his ridiculous eyelashes and pouting until even the security guards start feeding him lollipops.

"What did I tell you about taking candy from strangers?" Shougo yells, the first time this happens.

All he gets for his efforts is another pout. "Shougo-kun will protect me," Ryouta says, prodding his bandages with a sticky finger. Then he smiles, sudden and sweet, so dazzling that Shougo sees it flash behind his eyelids when he blinks.

He stores that smile for later, even as he launches into a lecture about the dangers of overdependence and imparts the fear of perverts forever into Ryouta's mind. "They have earthworms between their legs," he warns. "If you get caught, the earthworms will crawl inside of you. Do you want that to happen, Ryouta?"

Ryouta stares at him, wide-eyed, and shakes his head.

"Good," Shougo says, and steals all of the lollipops.

-o-

When Shougo finally returns home, he finds his father sprawled on the couch, stinking of alcohol. The bastard turns his head at the click of the door and says, "Hey, brat. Where've you been?"

"As if you care," Shougo sneers back. He counts the empty beer cans on the floor and moves swiftly for the staircase.

"Manners, manners," his father says, rising. Then he takes a closer look and asks, "What the fuck happened to your face?"

Shougo grins, all teeth, and says, "Genetics."

In retrospect, he should've waited for the wounds to fade before he used that line; his father is much less careful about hiding the bruises than usual. Shougo pulls up the memory of Ryouta's smile like a shield against the pain. Every kick fades against the image of that smile, bright and secret, given to him alone.

2.

The way Ryouta tells it, their first meeting was a fairytale in which he was a princess held captive by a vicious beast and Shougo was the prince who saved him from its clutches.

What happened was this: Shougo ran away from home and eventually found himself in the neighborhood park, where he proceeded to take out his frustrations on the first living creature he could find. He had just finished reducing an earthworm to its component atoms when he glanced up and saw a tiny fluffy-haired puppy-in-human-form sparklingat him from the swings.

The first thing Shougo said to Ryouta was: "The fuck are you staring at?"

And the first thing Ryouta said to Shougo was: "You're my hero!"

-o-

There have probably been more romantic first meetings in the history of the world.

(But not many.)

3.

Shougo holds out for a year before he falls in love. There's nothing gradual or sweet about it; he wakes up one morning feeling like someone's smashed open his skull with a hammer and replaced all of his thoughts with pictures of Ryouta's face. (Which is okay because Ryouta has a really pretty face, his subconscious notes. Shougo spends the next few minutes hitting his head against the wall.)

It's not a big deal, though. He's had crushes before and knows how to get rid of them: he just thinks about what his father does to the things he loves. He's almost managed to convince himself that everything is fine when he walks down the stairs to fetch Ryouta for lunch and the whole world goes to hell.

The first thing he sees is Ryouta's class rep, who has Ryouta cornered. She's this really pretty girl who's always been sweet to Shougo, even though everyone else is terrified of him, so it hurts all the more when he hears her snap, " - for your own good, Ryouta-kun. His dad's an alcoholic, and he's really violent, even the teacher says -"

Something in Ryouta's face makes her stop. When Ryouta takes a step away from the wall, Shougo sees that his eyes are blazing with incandescent fury. The sun through the window makes his pale skin glow, like his rage is manifesting itself as light. "I don't care," he snarls, every fibre of his being coiled and ready to strike, nothing at all like the Ryouta that Shougo knows. "I'm going to be friends with him. Don't you get in my way!"

Shougo is at his side in an instant. He reaches out and grabs Ryouta's shoulder, and before he can stop to think he says roughly, "I'll change. If you ask me to."

Too late, he catches a glimpse of the class rep's frozen expression and realizes that he's just ripped out his heart and placed it at Ryouta's feet. But Ryouta doesn't notice - he simply blinks, puzzled, and says, "What? Why would I?"

You're so fucked, Shougo's subconscious says happily, as he stares into Ryouta's eyes and forgets how to speak.

He's always known his subconscious was kind of a dick.

4.

For Ryouta's tenth birthday, Shougo steals his father's credit card and buys them tickets to Tokyo Disneyland.

The first thing they learn is that even the kiddie rides turn Ryouta into a fountain of projectile vomit. Shougo leaves him lying on a bench while he runs to the gift shop for clean clothes, and when he gets back Ryouta is staring at a giant hedgehog plushie in one of the booths.

When he sees Shougo coming, he does that thing with the eyelashes and the pouting, because he's a jerk.

Shougo makes him change while he studies the game. It's one of those basketball booths, and while the premise is simple enough, he's never touched a basketball in his life. He sneaks another glance at Ryouta and regrets it immediately when Ryouta flutters his eyelashes, seriously, what the hell.

"All right," he sighs, because his subconscious takes this moment to remind him that Ryouta is the cutest thing ever, and also that Shougo's totally in love (because he's a dumbass). The pretty pink-haired girl playing the game is really good, so Shougo wanders closer and memorizes the curve of her arm, the sharp downwards snap of her wrist. Then he steps up, spins the ball a little to get a sense of its weight, and sinks twenty baskets without hesitation.

When he drops the stupid hedgehog in Ryouta's arms, Ryouta clutches it to his chest and glows at him like he's just solved world hunger. Shougo grins back and says, "So freaking cool, right?"

"The coolest," Ryouta beams, and stands on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. It's kind of awkward because the hedgehog stabs Shougo in the stomach, but he can't stop smiling for the rest of the night, at least until he walks into his house and finds his father waiting.

-o-

When Shougo's head hits the stone steps, he nearly bites through his lower lip to keep from screaming. Ryouta, he thinks, feeling his mouth shape the name like a prayer. He can't seem to draw enough breath to speak, and when he tries to push himself up onto his arms the whole world goes dark around him.

Apparently he loses consciousness, because he wakes to the sound of laughter. "You look like shit," a voice says somewhere in the distance, and he forces open one swollen eye to peer at the speaker. It's one of the neighborhood delinquents - Hanamiya Makoto, he remembers, dragging the name from the depths of his mind - and when the boy sees Shougo watching he smiles, slow and pleased. Then he puts one foot on Shougo's shoulder and pushes him flat against the ground.

"I've been keeping track of you," Hanamiya says calmly, like they're having a normal conversation despite the sticky wetness spreading beneath Shougo's head. "I think you've got potential. Why don't you come with me?" He leans closer, so that Shougo can see the deliberate flick of his eyes towards the house. "I'll teach you how to kill," he whispers, as gentle as a kiss.

Shougo thinks again of fleeing to Ryouta, safe in his perfect home with his perfect parents. Then he pictures his own father storming into that sanctuary and ripping it to shreds until the last element of beauty in Shougo's fucked-up life is lost forever.

He looks at Hanamiya, who can die tomorrow for all he cares, and nods.

"Perfect," Hanamiya says. Shougo almost laughs - that word as the epitaph to his childhood, god his life is retarded - but instead he just closes his eyes again and lets himself sink into pain and rage and darkness.