I'm really enjoying the idea of Lewin clocking Renzou and deciding to carry on Osceola's legacy by trying to help him the way Osceola helped him, except 1) Renzou does not want Lewin to be his mentor and 2) all of Lewin's advice starts with "well, Osceola said".
It's fun because Lewin misses Osceola but doesn't really know how to mourn him so his method of doing so is by bothering the shit out of Renzou, who is rapidly running out of places to hide, to understand what Osceola got out of taking care of and teaching him.
I think one of the reasons Renzou develops ASPD is because prosocial standards were so intrinsically linked to duty and responsibility that he had no choice but to ignore them in order to avoid it. The problem is that it was modeled in front of him by everyone else around so he knows all the ways he's wrong.
Unlike Lewin, who likely was never exposed to prosocial behaviours until Osceola took him in.
This is something I want them to talk about. Lewin who didn't have any other frame of reference on how to be until he met Osceola (and by then he was pretty set in his ways) so while he knows something is technically wrong with compared to other people, he doesn't really care. Renzou who had dozen of people to reference but was so determined to write his own life he never internalized the rules they established so he knows exactly what is wrong with him and hates himself for it.
I like imagining Lewin clocking Renzou as a kindred spirit. Or Renzou recognizing it in Lewin and reluctantly seeking help for the first time in his life. He thinks he's broken. Lewin thinks they're fine. He has no advice aside from what Osceola told him growing up, all of which Renzou already knows because he grew up learning it. Unfortunately it didn't stick.
One of my favourite thoughts on this, though, is Renzou venting about some violent fantasy he has and Lewin laughing at the end that he's never had that fantasy before and Renzou spiraling because what the fuck, he's worst than this guy???
But sometimes it is nice to kick down your best friend's mentor's door and complain because you love your boyfriend so much it makes you angry because love gives him too many chances to hurt you so you can't stop thinking about hurting him first.
Lewin gets a kick out of because he likes analyzing Renzou (can relate, it's fun!) and also Renzou has looser morals than Ryuuji so he's a little more willing to do sketchy things as Lewin requires.
On Renzou's end, he gets to vocalize the thoughts in his head without worrying he'll be judged or arrested for having them. His friends likely would not take "sometimes I want to kill you" very well and he wouldn't want them to! It's a horrible thing to think once, much less repeatedly. But Lewin doesn't care and he doesn't repeat. So it's okay, it's safer.
Izumo thinking Renzou was acting back at the Illuminati. She knows they're similar - both hiding their true feelings under a façade. Her mask is superiority, it's uncaring, it's selfish, it's survival of the fittest. His mask is different - it's casual, relaxed, uncaring in a languid way, too social, too reliant on others.
But she knows beneath it, they're the same. He wants what she wants - to be loved, to be cared for, to be wanted. I hate them, he'd said so casually, with a big smile on his face. She knew he was lying. Even she liked their friends, and, though they were a lot, she liked his family too. It was the tight-knit community she'd always wanted - people who would have her back no matter what.
He was heartless in the way she was heartless - not at all, feigning it when necessary because connection meant vulnerability, and vulnerability meant weakness, and weakness meant pain, meant failure.
Meant death.
And yet... sometimes it crept up on her. Running down a hallway. Seeking freedom, seeking safety. Only to freeze short when he strolled languidly down the hall. How bright his smile was as he faced her, as he fought her, as he threatened her. How content his voice.
It was an act, she'd remind herself. There were cameras everywhere. He didn't even kill Mike or Uke - just pretended to. He was playing a part. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Still, sometimes, when she woke up with sweat plastered down her back, his threat would echo on her mind. Making her brain-dead. Turning her into a vegetable. All so she'd be of use for an experiment that was guaranteed to kill her. The fear she felt would roll up her chest in nauseous waves.
Sometimes she'd wake, sweat plastered down her back, and wonder what would have happened if the others didn't come in time. If they had been just a few seconds too late. Would he have just stood there and watched as she died, host to a demon she couldn't fight, body a lifeless puppet.
(At what point does a part stop being a part, an act stop being an act?)
Sometimes she'd wake, sweat plastered down her back, and she would remember the flat apology he gave her. They were my brothers, she'd said, and he who had grown alongside three brothers just looked at her with no remorse, no care.
Sometimes she wouldn't need to be asleep to remember it. Sometimes she'd simply be seated near him, near the others, when his family came up in conversation. He avoided going home when he could, had to be coaxed into it by the other two. It wasn't uncommon, either, for them to tell him to answer his phone - that his brothers, his sisters, his mother, his father had asked them to remind him. And he'd laugh it off each time.
And each time that happened, she'd remember his flat affect when she told him that the familiars he'd just killed were like family to her. As though he couldn't understand why that would matter. She'd remember the subtle laugh in his voice when he told her he hated everything - family, friends, the temple he'd grown up in.
Her skin would crawl. Part of her wanted to jump up. To warn them. But she wouldn't. She'd remind herself that it had been act, a part he was to play. He was faking detachment, faking heartlessness. It wasn't real then. It wasn't real now. There was no reason to say anything.
It's all over now, a small part of her would whisper, there's no part to play, so why is he still acting?
She'd ignore it.
Maybe he's not, it would say, and she'd shove thought away, far to back of her mind, refusing to dwell, even as it whispered, Maybe he never was.
Thinking about Shima who craves control over his own life so he slacks off whenever and however he can and lies through his teeth about everything and anything and studies people to find areas he can poke and prod to get what he wants and no one thinks anything of it because he's clueless and because he's lazy and because he's not mean.
He's nice and simple and no one notices what he gets away with, don't notice how little they know of him, how little he feels, how little he cares, always chasing the rush and weaving tales, unbothered by the ugliness of the final tapestry he leaves behind.
At this point in his life, he was used to this phase in the ever recurring cycle that was his emotional state. He'd always known he didn't feel the same way other people did. It took him a while to realize the extent of it though - sometime during the first year of holding Yukio's hand and kissing him when no one was looking. When the other boy stared at him, face flushed, eyes prickling wet, and asked, voice frustrated, "Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?"
He didn't know. Sometimes he picked a fight, needled someone into lashing out at him because he was angry and wanted an excuse to be angry. Sometimes he poked at the bear to see what would happen. But sometimes he just did it to do it.
Yukio had fixed him with a calculating look back then, and swiftly answered in his own question in the midst of Renzou's floundering at being called out. "You're bored."
Whenever he remembered that moment, part of him always wondered why Yukio didn't just leave when his words had Renzou freaking out in the cruelest way possible. He didn't like being clocked that easily. His friends from childhood didn't even notice it, how the fuck did Yukio figure him out that fast?
When all was said and done, Yukio just stared him down and coldly asked, "Are you done?" and Renzou resisted the urge to hit him because he was not his father, he was not his brothers, he was not his family.
He was better than them and he was tired and he didn't know what was wrong with him and he was empty and he was lost and his boyfriend was holding him gently in a way he didn't deserve while he panicked because what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck was wrong with him?
In hindsight, he'd always been a little self-sabotaging. Good things didn't last for him. Something always happened to take them away.
Good emotions were much the same. Which frequently left him feeling bored and aimless and hopping from task to task, activity to activity, terrible idea to terrible idea, trying to feel anything that wasn't mind-numbing hollowness.
Scrolling passively on his phone, he vaguely wondered if he should cave and try cocaine or something. Had no idea where to get it but that had never stopped him before. It took some effort but he bashed the idea away. Drugs were a slippery slope. He didn't need to add yet another way to blow up his life.
The thought was always tempting though. Weed wasn't enough. It helped when he was restless, but this wasn't that. This was a pervasive hollowing that would pass when it passed and until then he'd just have to grit his teeth and try not to fuck up everything he'd spent the last four years trying to build for himself.
He'd already masturbated a couple times and it felt good, it always did, but there was no relief. No satisfaction. The effects were purely physical and barely lasted. Even as he did it, he felt bored. And a little annoyed because it was taking too long, which was irritating because so what? It wasn't like he anything else going on.
He played through three hours of a video game. It was distracting in a helpful way to pass time but otherwise did nothing to get him out of the void. Fingers crossed that he was just restless, he went for a jog. Then came back home and wished Yukio was a slightly messier person than he was because maybe if he had something to clean...
That thought was unbelievably laughable. Clean-up was hard enough when he could feel things. It wasn't fun and it wasn't satisfying and the mess would just repeat in the end so what was the point? When everything in him died, it didn't get done. He'd rather just lie in bed and doom-scroll for hours than be productive because at least watching people fight each other online was a little entertaining.
It sucked during moments like these that he couldn't attend to the upkeep of their home. Fortunately Yukio was viciously anal about keeping things tidy. And generally, unless depression joined the party, he could cook for them, which was something in all of the nothing.
He turned off his phone and put it under the pillow. Maybe if he took a nap? It wouldn't reset him, but at least the time would pass. Waiting for it to pass was honestly the only thing he could do.
Infuriating.
Unbelievably beyond infuriating.
There was little Renzou hated more than not being to control his own life. Not being able to enjoy the shit he enjoyed was such a stupid thing. Being forced to teeter on the edge of danger just to feel something, just to get his blood singing, was like being eight years old and dragged out in the summer heat to train with his brothers. Annoyingly against his will. He could get a popsicle with everyone else but only if he played their dumb games.
In hindsight, learning to deny himself the icy sweet treat to get out of doing something he didn't want to do was probably the kick-off in why he was suffering now. Every so often his brain just went "why aren't you denying yourself happiness and pleasure" and cut him off from it.
It took a painfully long time to doze off. Another side effect. It was fustrating because he wasn't thinking, he wasn't feeling - why couldn't he just relax. Why couldn't he just sleep. But, before sleep could truly take him, his phone buzzed. A mental groan eclipsed through his head as he grabbed his phone and, without a look, threw it across the room. It clattered against the floor somewhere. He didn't know. He didn't look.
You could've broken it, Yamantaka warned.
I don't care, he thought miserably. I'll just get it fixed.
The demon didn't respond. Just regressed back to the corner of Renzou's mind.
Trying to sleep after that was a crap shoot. He kept his eyes closed nonetheless and counted up from one. By the time the front door creaked open and Yukio's voice called out to him, he was somewhere in the two thousands, having lost count a few times.
He didn't answer the call of his name, just squeezed his eyes shut, kept his body tight, and repeated over and over in his head, Don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up, until the bedroom door opened.
Yukio wasn't stupid. He probably saw this episode coming long before Renzou got a whiff of it. So he said nothing as he rested his bag on the ground and squeezed Renzou's bare knee. The move normally had his stomach swirling. Now it just had him cracking open an eye to watch Yukio undress into something more casual.
He sat down by his feet to peel off his socks. Balling them up, he threw them successfully into the hamper near the door.
"Winner," Renzou said, trying to inject a little feigned cheer into his voice.
Yukio snorted. "It's not that far." He crawled into the space beside him, rolling onto his side, back against the wall. "Tired?" A half-hearted hum. Yukio's thin fingers stroked through his hair. "Okay. We'll order in. Have you eaten today?"
He closed his eyes and rolled over. Long limbs pulled him in close. He didn't answer the question. Couldn't because he hadn't. Not because he forgot but because he looked in the fridge and nothing sounded good. Because he looked at through the cupboards and nothing sounded good.
Because he stared at the menu at the cafe down the street, willing himself to buy the same thing he always bought, the thing he knew he liked, only to turn around and walk back home.
So he didn't answer the question. Just grit his teeth and muttered into Yukio's chest, "What is fucking wrong with me?"
Yukio didn't answer. It was a rhetorical question. He didn't need to.
The first handful times of Renzou had asked, he had. Short and clinical. It was more an automatic response - some deepset urge to clarify just in case. They knew fairly well what was wrong with Renzou. But just because Yukio knew, didn't mean that Renzou particularly liked being reminded that he knew.
It made him feel exposed. A fish out of water. Fileted and ready for consumption.
Fuck that.
Learning each other's moves was a slow and strenous process. Yukio self-isolated too much. Got mean when he was stressed, when he felt cornered. Renzou poked at sensitive spots, started fights because he didn't know how to handle when things were good for him, because manipulating people was how he got by for the first sixteen years of his life and he didn't know how to be with someone without it.
But they talked things out. Yukio went to therapy. Religiously for two years, then on and off as needed. Renzou did not because fuck that too. The idea of talking about his emotions, about his life, being vulnerable with someone he barely knew, someone who would hold all the cards and provide little else in return sounded like a sentence worse than death.
He looked shit up. He talked to Lewin, which was probably as close to confiding in a third-party as he was ever going to get. He wasn't perfect. But he was less shitty.
Less damaging.
So when Yukio asked, "What do you want to order?", he swallowed the urge to snap that if he knew, he would've eaten alredy, and just shook his head.
"You pick." Yukio shifted away as he pulled his phone out. Light flashed across his face. His thumbs tapped quietly against the screen. It took a minute before Renzou could press through the mental block and ask, "Hold me?"
Yukio blinked owlishly behind his glasses. Then set his phone down and pulled Renzou in closer. "Of course."
They'd had this conversation before. It wasn't depression. He knew what that felt like. Knew the misery, the cold and inescapable loneliness freezing through his very core. Knew the sense of hopelessness that followed at his heels like a dog.
This was different. There were still reasons to live. They just didn't do anything for him. The world wasn't cold, he wasn't dying, he wasn't encased in misery. He was just. Bored. And listless.
Depression had him clawing for a way out.
This had him clawing for a way in.
Luckily cuddling with Yukio was always a winner. Nothing could deny him the faintest bit of joy from that. From being wrapped up close but not tight, soft strokes through his hair, the smell of Yukio's soap still clinging to his skin.
"You wanna spar before dinner?"
In the corner of his mind, Yamantaka stirred. Always eager for a fight. Bloodthirstiness wasn't really Renzou's thing but... it'd be something. Right now, he just wanted to feel... calm. Or something close to it.
"Maybe," he mused, to settle Yamantaka's growing interest. "But I like this right now." He nuzzled Yukio's collarbone through the thin cotton of his shirt. "How was your day?"
"Long or short version?"
"As detailed as you can manage."
"Ah." Yukio's lips formed a smile against the top of his head. "The "anything to distract me" method."
Renzou gave him a weak shove and he laughed. "Maybe I just like hearing about your day."
That was true. He liked the sound of Yukio's voice. Maybe the added benefit was that it would be a helpful distraction from his own internal void and the disappointing knowledge that work would be one of the few things keeping him from rotting in his bed for the next couple weeks. But that didn't mean he didn't like hearing it.
Yukio hummed thoughtfully. "Well, let's see..."
Renzou closed his eyes and listened as Yukio discussed his day from the very start of the morning, long before Renzou had even woken up. He knew contentedness and peace, and this wasn't that. But it was so painfully close he could taste it.
Renzou who sometimes breaks his siblings' things just to see if he can get away with it. Who will shatter something in plain view of everyone else and lie and lie and lie. Sometimes he's successful, sometimes not so much. The older he gets, the less the tears and blubbering work. But the older he gets, the more silver his tongue becomes. Who cares anyway? It's just a thing. They'll get over it.
Renzou who innocently suggests that maybe his friends left their books at school, left them at the library, left them somewhere they can't pick them up right away. It's fine. They need to relax anyway, blow off some steam instead of sitting hunched over at a desk for the millionth time in a row. With fingers so used to sneaking books and money, he fiddles with the timer during study breaks, fiddles with their watches, rolling the time back and back and back.
It's harder when they all have phones, but a few times he succeeds - silencing whichever one counts down and flipping it over so no one can see the flashing screen. Never once in all his fiddling do they question him. It's funny. He would've questioned him.
Renzou who listens from dark shadows and rooftops and to words spoken directly to his face, building bridges and filing away secrets. Sometimes he drops bombs and watches the explosion from a safe distance. Sometimes he throws grenades and dodges the ones sent his way. Sometimes shrapnel hits him anyway. But better cut than blown to pieces.
Renzou who grins and bears it when people berate him - his friends, his family, the others in the temple. He smiles and laughs and jokes it off. He smiles and laughs and takes nothing seriously. He smiles and laughs and ruins their day with casually dropped secrets and sticky fingers and shattered toys. He smiles and laughs and wins.
Renzou who watches his teacher, his peer, his mark swiftly slip and slide down the icy path of instability. He's cute when he's trying to keep himself upright, Renzou thinks. He's cute when he's shattering.
Renzou watches, he observes, he picks his moments and wraps his cold words in multiple layers and grins behind a casual tone and lazy shrug when his teacher, his peer, his mark only unwraps the first. It's fun to manipulate people smarter than him. After all, it proves him right. Book smarts will only take you so far.
Renzou who lies as easy as he breathes.
Renzou who manipulates and deceives and gets away with it.
It's funny, isn't it? I'm a spy, he said, and they all yelled, we don't trust you! And yet here he still is with all their truths and all their faith. You're a spy, they say, as though trying to remember why they shouldn't be placing their lives in his hands. And yet they do anyway. Taking his hand over again and again no matter how many times he lets go.
He smiles and laughs and takes nothing seriously and they stand on the bridge between them and forget they wanted it to burn.
He smiles and laughs and takes nothing seriously and they forget he was the one who lit the match.
He smiles and laughs and takes nothing seriously and he lies and he lies and he lies.
I should care more, Renzou thought as he watched his mother fret back and forth. Her eyes were thick with unfallen tears. Yumi had finally stopped crying. Juuzou was still holding her, body strong and confident, eyes betraying his fears. Hunched over, Jun spoke quietly into her phone. With his knuckles white from gripping his knees, Kinzou was mercifully silent.
But who wouldn't be with their father possibly dying just a few rooms away.
It was moments like these that Renzou was reminded of how little heart he actually had. Sometimes he thought it was there - when he got mad when one of his friends were injured, or when he paused to help a crying kid clean up their skinned knee. Some kindness. Some sense of love and affection.
Instead, the truth always came like a throwing star to the face - fast and sharp. As he was cut open, he was reminded there was no heart. Just an empty void.
After all, what kind of person was more preoccupied with the fact that they were so close to walking through a magical doorway and taking and long lazy nap instead of the fact that their father could be dead any second now?
A heartless one.
If he is dying, he sure is drawing it out, he thought, sinking back into his seat. There was some tiny part of him that kind of hoped his dad would die. Just one less birthday to attend. And he could nix the father's day visits. Plus it wouldn't hurt to have one less person berating him about his life choices.
Then the pause. Because, oh, right. Normal people didn't think that way about their family. Normal people cared about their families, even when they had difficult relationships. If Tatsuma had had a heart attack back when Ryuuji was still beefing with him, he still would've been on the first train back to Kyoto. And he'd cry like a baby too, probably. Even if Tatsuma didn't die.
What was that like, he wondered. To care so deeply the emotions just burst out of you like that. To cry over someone you were mad at just because they were sick. To love people.
Did Renzou love people? Or did he just love what they could do for him? He had yet to figure it out. He liked to think he had the capacity for love. A small capacity, maybe. And, unfortunately for them, his family didn't really make the cut. Except maybe Yumi. He struggled to envision himself not attending her funeral. With the others it was ridiculously easy. He just wouldn't go. But Yumi was the baby. Maybe it was that. And the fact that she didn't really knock him around like everyone else.
Well, his mother didn't knock him around all that much either. But she still chastised him for everything. At least Yumi didn't do that. She mostly just ignored him, especially if Konekomaru was around.
Small mercies, he supposed. It would suck to have no one in his family whose funeral he'd go to.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Okumura Yukio/Shima Renzou
Characters: Shima Renzou, Okumura Yukio, Okumura Rin
Additional Tags: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Physical Abuse, Implied/Referenced Emotional Abuse, Attempted Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Shima Renzou centric, Antisocial Personality Disorder, (or at least traits of it considering the character is under 18 😅), Emotions, Introspection, discussion of rape fantasies, Dissociation, vaguely upbeat ending
Summary: Ever since he was a child, Renzou has wanted to control his life, forge his own path. He thought that was obvious by now. Evidently, he needs to make it a little clearer to the people around him.
Excerpt:
The crash was loud, but he could barely hear it behind the pounding of his blood. Stunned silence echoed through the room. Everyone frozen and staring at him. Shock aglow in their eyes. Why wouldn’t they be, though?
Renzou had never hit back before.
Wisps of Yamantaka’s shadowy flames flickered off his fist. K’riks and other weapons were just far easier ways to channel the demon. But certainly not required. The demon lived inside of him. Renzou’s body was a personal portal between Gehenna and Assiah. Judging from the look on his mother’s face, he wondered if they’d forgotten.
Then, from beneath the rubble of shattered wood and toppled book's, Kinzou let out a loud groan. And everyone was moving. Renzo didn’t even have to look back to stop his father from grabbing him. Why would he?
