
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/10746525.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      No._6_-_All_Media_Types
  Relationship:
      Nezumi/Shion_(No._6)
  Character:
      Nezumi_(No._6), Shion_(No._6)
  Additional Tags:
      Reunion_Sex, Clothed_Sex, First_Time, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, Non-
      Penetrative_Sex
  Collections:
      Smut_Swap_2017
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-04-27 Words: 2196
****** Time Won't Work It Out ******
by cerasi
Summary
     Post-canon, Nezumi returns to his apartment, and to Shion.
Notes
     This is a VERY belated treat for havisham. I've always wanted to
     write something for these two, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity.
     Hope you enjoy!
     Title is from "Ocean of Noise" by Arcade Fire.
See the end of the work for more notes
When he comes back, Shion is in his apartment.
He stalls at the door and tries to work the feeling back into his legs as he
watches Shion chopping potatoes by the sink, oblivious. This is the reason he’s
here, probably the onlyreason. But the sight of Shion working happily, humming
along with the radio, almost has him backing out of the door and shutting it
before Shion notices him.
With some effort, he doesn’t.
“Shion,” he says, instead.
Shion whirls around with the knife, and Nezumi is afraid he’s going to drop
it—and then, just for a second, is afraid that he won’t. But then Shion’s face
breaks into a smile, and he wipes the knife on his apron, turns quickly to set
it on the counter. “Nezumi,” he says, and Nezumi hears the weight of every
month that he was away woven into the syllables of his name. He lets Shion take
the bag out of his hand, lets him step in close and wrap an arm around his
back.
“Welcome back,” Shion murmurs into his ear.
Nezumi exhales, and thinks that maybe this is something he can try.
*
“I thought you’d be back home,” Nezumi says, when they’ve finished eating the
meat and potato stew Shion was preparing. “With your mom.”
“She’s here now,” Shion tells him. “Just down the hall. Our home…” He shakes
his head. “Well, it wasn’t safe. At least not safe enough for the baby, she
thought.”
“Baby?”
“You remember,” Shion says, “the baby we found,” and Nezumi does remember,
remembers Shion’s quiet determination, his own insistence to leave it to die.
“It’s alive?”
Shion smiles. “My mom’s raising her. I guess she’s my little sister, now.”
Nezumi’s glad he’s already eaten; his stomach feels twisted.
They sit on the couch after dinner, and he tells Shion about his year, the
places he’s been, the things he’s done. Shion listens with interest and doesn’t
ask him why it took him so long to return, why he never sent any messages back.
“I’ve been using your bed,” Shion says, when Nezumi comments on how late it’s
gotten. “You can have it back, if you want.”
Nezumi shakes his head quickly. “I’ll take the couch.”
Shion doesn’t look at him when he says, “Or I thought… maybe we could share
it.”
A shiver goes up Nezumi’s back, and his throat goes tight. It’s an innocent
request, he’s sure; they haven’t even kissed tonight, and yet…
Shion is blushing, he realizes. He takes a breath, tries to respond.
“Shion…”
“I just mean,” Shion says, “you know… to sleep.” He swallows visibly and raises
his eyes. “I’d like to,” he adds softly, and Nezumi doesn’t know how he can say
no.
When they get into bed and turn off the lights, Shion moves close to him and
puts a hand on his side, and it feels easy when Nezumi wraps an arm around his
shoulders; it feels right.
I’ll protect you, he thinks, testing out the thought in his head. I want to
protect you.
The words don’t scare him like they used to, but they feel emptier now, too.
Shion doesn’t need his protection now. He has a place in this world; he’s
leading others. He’s been fine on his own, all this time.
“Thank you,” Shion says quietly. “For coming back.”
Nezumi swallows and touches his hair, tries to figure out how to make sense of
his thanks, his apologies, his urge to explain. But before he can, Shion is
finding his face in the dark, curling a palm around his cheek. He feels a soft
brush against his lips and realizes only as it’s ending that Shion is kissing
him.
“Shion—” he says, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. He’s tingling
from head to toe.
“A good night kiss,” Shion says, and tucks his head into Nezumi’s shoulder.
“For real, this time.”
Nezumi hesitates. Then he kisses the top of Shion’s head and wraps both arms
around him, holding him close. “Good night,” he says.
*
He stays, and he tries to make himself useful. Shion goes into the city nearly
every day to work on bringing order to their new world, and sometimes Nezumi
goes too, helps read paperwork for the new government that’s been established,
answers questions for the citizens he wanted to kill. Some days he just goes
down the hall to help take care of the baby, Yurika, or helps Shion’s mom with
her baking—“Practice for when I open the store again!” she says, and sits him
down with a plate full of flaky confections to try.
At night, though, it’s just the two of them, sitting on the couch and reading,
talking, asking about each other’s days. Sometimes Shion touches his shoulder,
while they talk, rubs his thumb in pensive circles where the fabric joins, but
otherwise the only affection they share is in bed, Shion’s goodnight kiss that
lingers longer every night, that takes Nezumi’s breath away every time even
though he knows it’s coming.
Finally, there’s a night when Shion’s mouth hovers near his after they
separate, breathes warm and lingering on his lips, and then one goodnight kiss
turns into two, and then three, Shion’s hand slipping down to cradle his jaw as
he kisses Nezumi chastely, again and again.
“Shion—” Nezumi whispers. He doesn’t want to pull away, but he does; he turns
his face into the pillow and wills his pounding heart to be quiet. He’s hard,
he realizes, and he desperately tries to quiet that, too.
“I’m sorry,” Shion says, and Nezumi shakes his head.
“No, it’s fine. It’s just—” He doesn’t know how to continue.
Shion nods and settles onto his pillow, his little finger just barely brushing
the side of Nezumi’s hand. “Good night,” he murmurs into the dark.
*
The next night, Shion doesn’t try to kiss him.
“Hey,” Nezumi says, finally, and brushes his lips over Shion’s cheek, his chin.
“What about this?”
“I thought maybe you didn’t want to.”
Nezumi kisses Shion’s lips, feels the way his body tenses, the tiny sigh that
leaves him as they pull apart. He knows he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t even
come close. He also knows that Shion, for whatever reason, is waiting for him
to decide. He closes his eyes. “I want too much,” he confesses, and kisses
Shion again.
He’s more forceful, this time, but he barely has to be; Shion melts at his
touch, parts his lips at the first touch of his tongue and moans, soft and
sweet, as Nezumi licks into his mouth. The kiss was a decision, but it’s raw
instinct that has Nezumi pushing him down into the sheets, angling to make the
next kiss deeper as Shion’s hands tangle in his hair and his shirt, as Shion
makes a small, needy noise at the back of his throat. His head feels hot; his
whole body feels hot, and there’s no way Shion can’t tell how hard he is, how
much he wants this, how much he wants more.
He rips himself away, and the room spins. Shion is lying limp, gasping for
breath. “Nezumi,” he whispers.
Nezumi turns over and pulls the covers up to his neck before he can change his
mind. “Good night,” he manages to say.
Behind him, he hears Shion take a shuddering breath, and then another. He’s
afraid Shion is going to say something—he doesn’t know what, but he thinks that
almost anything would make him lose his resolve. But Shion lays still, his
breaths growing steady until they grow too faint to hear. Nezumi almost thinks
that Shion must be asleep by the time Shion finally whispers back, “Good
night.”
*
“You don’t have to hold back for me,” Shion tells him, the next morning over
coffee.
“Huh?”
“Last night,” Shion says. He’s blushing, but Nezumi can see that he’s
determined to be straightforward; it makes his chest ache with admiration. “You
didn’t have to stop, if. You didn’t want to.”
Nezumi swallows. “I wanted to.”
“Oh.” Shion nods. “Well, that’s—that’s fine, then.” Nezumi can hear the
disappointment in his voice.
“Shion,” he says, “it’s just… I want…” to be careful with you, he thinks, but
it sounds foolish, even in his head.
Shion smiles and shakes his head. “It’s alright,” he says again. “There’s no
rush.” He takes Nezumi’s hand and squeezes it, and Nezumi thinks that he might
actually understand.
*
He can’t make himself go back to chaste kisses, though, after that. And it
doesn’t take long to figure out that he’s being as cruel to Shion as he is to
himself, kissing him until he’s gasping for breath and quivering under Nezumi’s
hands, and then leaving him to whimper softly at the drag of the sheets over
his erection as Nezumi pulls away.
“Shion,” he finally murmurs one night, as Shion fists hands into his shirt,
chases his next kiss while keeping his lower body purposefully angled away on
the bed. “I want… I want you to have more.” He leans down to lick at Shion’s
neck, and Shion gasps, lets his head loll to the side.
“Huh?” he asks hazily.
“I want you to come.”
“Oh,” Shion says, and then—“Oh,” he groans, as Nezumi bites down on his neck
and wraps a hand around his clothed cock in the same moment.
“Is that okay?”
Shion moans wantonly in reply, bucks up against his hand and buries his face
against Nezumi’s temple. “Please,” he begs softly. “Please, Nezumi,
please—just—”
He was going to use his hand, but his willpower slips a notch, and he lifts
Shion’s leg instead, hooks it over his shoulder and sighs in relief as they rub
together. Shion is taut and shaking under him, and Nezumi doesn’t think he’ll
last long enough for them both to finish, but when Shion comes a half-dozen
thrusts later, his breathy wail and the vice of his legs around Nezumi’s back
have Nezumi groaning in shock as he hits his climax with a final thrust against
Shion’s quivering thigh.
Shion whimpers and clutches at his back. “Oh,” he says, softly, again. He
sounds lost. “Oh.”
Nezumi struggles to clear his head. “Are… are you…?”
“I’m…” Shion exhales, warm and damp on Nezumi’s neck. Then he draws in a breath
that turns into a laugh as his limbs finally loosen. “Wow.”
Nezumi feels a familiar bubble of guilt rise up inside of him, but it’s
tempered by something else, some strange feeling of lightness that’s at once
impossible to grasp and steadfast in his chest. It’s Shion’s smile, he thinks,
the purity of it. If he’s made Shion smile like that, then he must have done
some small thing right.
He helps untangle them from each other and nudges Shion onto his side, presses
up against his back and smooths sweat-dampened hair from his forehead. His
pants are in an unmentionable state, and Shion’s must be, too, but it feels
wrong to do anything but stay close.
“I’m sorry,” he says, the words rumbling low and unplanned from his chest.
Shion makes a small, alarmed noise, but Nezumi presses on before he can
interrupt. “I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I never… never wrote to you, or told
you I was coming back.”
Shion doesn’t respond at first. Then he moves his hand down to where Nezumi’s
arm is encircling his waist, and he laces their fingers together. “I knew you
were coming back.” His voice is steady, but it wavers just a little when he
adds, “As long as you were alive.”
Nezumi swallows against the bitter guilt rising in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he
says again, hoarsely. “I just wanted…” But there’s no excuse that’s good
enough, and it feels worse to fall just short. He goes quiet. “I was ashamed,”
he finally says. “And I was too selfish to keep that from hurting you.”
Shion’s thumb rubs softly over his knuckles. “I know.”
“You don’t have to forgive me for that.”
Shion keeps rubbing his hand, but he doesn’t say anything. Finally he moves,
shuffling around until they’re face to face on the bed. When they’re situated
with a hand’s width between them, Shion looks up at him. “You didn’t promise me
anything different.”
“...No,” Nezumi says, “but—”
Shion kisses him. For a second he thinks it’s a distraction, but there’s no
urgency to it. It’s deliberate, measured. When Shion pulls away, his eyes are
steady. “Will you?” he asks.
It takes a second for the words to make sense, but when they do, Nezumi feels
like he can't draw a breath.
“Is that what you want?” he asks, when he’s able to.
Shion doesn’t answer for a second. Then he tilts his head. “Is there somewhere
else you’d go?”
“No,” Nezumi answers, and then he realizes what he’s said. He didn’t think
before speaking, but he didn’t have to; it seemed obvious. Shion is here. Shion
is going to be here.
He breathes in, and decides.
“No,” he says again, and the beginning of Shion’s smile is enough to make him
feel sure. He smiles back and says, “I’ll stay.”
End Notes
     Left in the morning
     While you were fast asleep
     Into an ocean of violence
     A world of empty streets
     You've got your reasons
     And me I've got mine
     But all the reasons I gave
     Were just lies to buy myself some time
     I'm gonna work it out
     Cause time won't work it out
     I'm gonna work it out
     Cause time won't work it out for you
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