Welcome to Boxer & Rice

(Trunks’ POV)

We’ve only once had a real conversation. No deep reflections, no explanations, just clarification, of what we’re doing, of what it all means. Illumination isn’t found in words, just in actions and my returning every single time is clear enough.

“This won’t happen again,” he said, pulling his shirt over still bleeding flesh.

Only Gohan could manage to sound pretentious and self-righteous in a room that still stank of spilt blood and semen. I lit a cigarette and smirked. “Shouldn’t and won’t are two different things, Saiyaman.”

He scowled and pushed away. “I’m leaving now.”

“Yeah,” I replied quietly. “You leave. You’re so good at that.”

He raked a hand through my hair and pulled my head back roughly, knocking my scalp against the hard wood.

“You smell like her,” I gritted out.

He never mentions Videl.

“Why do you have to smell like her?”

“Because I can’t leave her,” he said with a frown, releasing my hair while a lazy finger traced over the tattered flesh on my neck.

“You mean you won’t.” Nothing new, same old story. And he hears me, of course. Always has. Nothing will change though. Does he see her when he looks at me, I wonder?

“Why do you come here?”

I shrugged, leaned over the side of the bed, and picked up my trousers. “Because you need me.”

“Don’t you have a better reason?”

I didn’t respond.

He swung his feet over the covers and sat on the edge of the bed, eyes staring sightlessly into peeling wallpaper. “Absolution,” he whispered.

“What?” I asked, lighting a new cigarette and reaching for my t-shirt.

He ran a hand over his brow. “In the Dark Ages, penitents could purchase atonement from their confessors. No Acts of Contrition, just- money. They could… buy… forgiveness.”

Socks. Boots. “Sounds like a great marketing strategy to me.”

“But it wasn’t real.”

“Did they think it was real?” I asked him, locating my belt on the side of the bed. “Did they believe it?”

“I’m sure they did,” he replied sadly.

“Then what’s the difference?”

He looked up at me in surprise. “You think God can be bought off?”

“You forget, Gohan, I’ve met our God.” I scoffed. “If he’d been listening in the first place, then they wouldn’t have needed a priest. And yes, I believe that everyone has their price.”

He turned to face me. “What’s yours?”

And I paused, cigarettes and coat in frozen hands. “Me? I’m obviously cheap.”

“Trunks…”
“Look, you can call this atonement, you can call it an act of contrition…Believe whatever you want if it helps you sleep at night.” I inhaled deeply, the smoke calming me. “To me it’s just fucking. I’ll always be here waiting. Every. God. Damn. Time.”

We don’t talk anymore.

It starts in the pit of my stomach. Not in my groin, as you might expect, not even in the increasingly familiar heaviness between my legs. No, it’s higher, a gnawing, all-consuming ache in my abdomen.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Let’s call it what it is, shall we? It’s hunger. All of it, it’s all… just… hunger. And I hate to call it that because food is something I can’t live without, yes, food is something I need, but damn it, he shouldn’t be.

So I stave off the urge as long as I can.

But it begins to take up all of my attention, the gnawing hunger, the burning need. Trembling hands and a ringing in my ears and every cell in my body screaming “Gohan.” The bond pulls at me, begging me to give into it’s siren’s call. And finally it gets to be too much, the shaking and the craving and the images splattered like blood on the backs of my eyelids, and I grab my car keys and head for the door, hating myself every fucking step of the way. I race along the highway, cigarette dangling from my lips, stereo up so loud that I can’t hear myself think, to keep from abandoning the car and flying there instead, and I mutter the words over and over again, all the way there, like a mantra:

“This is the last time. This is the last time. This is the last time.”

Lies you tell yourself when you can’t face the truth. Lies that help me do this again and again, because each time I truly want to believe it’s the last time. But this will never end and I’ll always be waiting. Every damn time the bond calls to me.

I loosen my grip on the wheel and wonder for the millionth time how my hands always know exactly where to go. The same place every damn time. Pull into the darkened lot, the wonder gone with the slam of a door. I turn the key in the lock and step into the moon lit room. Flipping on the bedside lamp and closing the blinds, I strip out of my clothes.

It’s six half smoked cigarettes and into my first rented porn before he shows up. I’ve closed my eyes somewhere in the middle of it, waiting. He turns on the ceiling fan, riffling dead air and pulling cigarette smoke around him like a fog. Frames flicker in the static of white, half-real, and for a moment I’m afraid if I blink, he’ll disappear.

“Late from saving the world again, Saiyaman?”

Gentle swoosh of clothing hitting the floor. “Yeah.”
He looks tired.

I shouldn’t think about that. Whatever goes on outside this room falls strictly in the boundaries of ‘Don’t Want To Know’. But I can’t help but wonder what’s been stealing his sleep. Sadistically hoping it’s thoughts of me that made him look like death barely warmed up.

I turn away as he crawls beneath the covers, close my eyes. Warm flesh to warm flesh. I roll over, bite my lip, and begin. I always start. It’s easier on us both if I take the responsibility.

Less guilt for him.

I can feel him shake under my exploring hands. This act is still sinful to him, whereas for me it is merely wrong, a necessary evil, and I don’t think either one of us has figured out the difference yet. We keep our eyes closed as mouths meet and fingers search. I can feel him trace the lines of my muscles and bones. I’m not sure if Gohan knows about the unfinished bond, his Saiyan upbringing lacking, but I think he’s noticed my significant weight loss in the last couple years. I can tell by the way he runs his fingers over my ribs and handles me like a porcelain. Perhaps he’s heard, I don’t know. If he has, he’s not telling me. If he knows, it still doesn’t change anything.

Desperate hands caressing every exposed surface, tongues battling for dominance, rough kisses up the length of my throat. No promises, no whispered affections, no bullshit. And it’s so real and so pointless that it makes me cringe. But I can’t help it, and I can’t stop myself, and…. I. Will. Always. Come. Back. Because I have the world’s shortest attention span and I keep forgetting the incessant stupidity of it all when I start to drown in the bond again.

His hands work against the back of my neck, scrambling for purchase. He used to love to pull my hair, twisting his fingers deep and hard in the long strands, and tug my head back, exposing my throat to him. No locks of lavender hair now, shorn away in a fit of anger. But you make do with what you’ve got, and he thrusts his hands into what’s left of my hair and pulls my head to the side and I’m already shivering in anticipation, already aware of what’s to come. And as soon as I feel that sharp pain at my jugular vein, as soon as his teeth tear me open I can disappear inside him. I can disappear in the memory of my Gohan and forget the world around us.

No regrets. Don’t think about it, I think desperately as his lips fasten and swallow and take all of me and I disappear down his throat, don’t think about how much it hurts, not on the surface, but somewhere deep inside. Blood of my blood and flesh of my flesh. My mind bleeds, thick and uncertain and now even that private space is filled with him and I’m not alone.

Drink here and live forever.

He looks up at me with something closely akin to longing and I realize that we haven’t bled enough tonight. Hurt enough. Not by half. The scent of guilt permeates everything. He needs to hurt. He needs the pain to ease the guilt. Reading the demand in his eyes, I lean over and gather our belts from the pile of discarded clothing on the floor.

Restraint gives us the illusion of control.

Switchblade cool against my fingers. He’ll try to convince himself later that I planned it this way, that it was all intended, crime and punishment and taking what he had coming from the one who deserves the most to give it. He can’t conceive of the way things just happen, the waking up with that desperate yearning and the pointless union in this bed and the screaming and fucking and weeping and bleeding that seems to take place of its own volition. He doesn’t understand that sometimes you just open your eyes one day and you’re kneeling over your bond-mate, who’s tied to a bed, his belt securing the right wrist and yours securing the left, and he’s looking up at you, begging for something, anything that will make you both feel again, and you’ve got this knife in your hands and this tightness in your chest and what the fuck are you supposed to do in a situation like that? Invention is the father of destruction, isn’t it?

You take the tools at hand and you put them to good use and you give the one in charge what he wants. And you cut and you cut and you cut. And I can see myself bleeding out of his wounds as the incisions begin.

Letters and numbers, insanity in random shapes, darkness seeping into the mattress. “What do they mean?” he asked me once. “What do you want them to mean?” I retorted, without even thinking. Who the fuck cares? But that’s not good enough for him. He wants a meaning. Wants ancient symbols that spell out blessing and forgiveness. All roads lead to redemption. Except… and this is the part he doesn’t get, will never get… they don’t. Some roads don’t lead anywhere. Nowhere but stolen moments and shadows and sticky-blood stained sheets and more and more and more pain. And I don’t want it to mean anything, because I know that the minute it does, I’m not gonna be able to let go.

But the word I always try to ignore is the one I write last, on an expanse of flesh so tattered and torn that even I can’t read the fucking letters I carve there.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I’m still bleeding… I must be, there’s blood everywhere, my hands sticky and dark. How can I still be bleeding? Haven’t I been drained dry yet? My blood, his blood staining the sheets and it feels good, doesn’t it, Gohan? It feels good to suffer for our sufferings. And you don’t fucking deserve that, you bastard, you don’t deserve this absolution, this purification by blade, you don’t deserve to have the scales tipped in your favor, but I can’t hold it in anymore. I can’t keep this grief and this hurt and these bleeding wounds inside me, god damn it, I don’t want this, I never wanted this, so you take it, Gohan. Take forgiveness in your screaming and your pain and your blood in the bed. Because I, for one, am so fucking sick of bleeding for the sins I haven’t committed. The ones I keep committing.

The pain hits him suddenly and he flinches, doubtless assuming behind tightly closed eyelids that I have cut him again. But the blade lies limp in my hand and he doesn’t see the salt tears that fall into his wounds and make him cringe.

I run my hands over his chest, smearing and pulling and tugging, his blood inching between my fingers. I want inside. The urge hits me so suddenly that I almost say it, scream it in raw, sobbing tones. I want inside, Gohan. I bite down hard through my lip to keep the words from escaping, but the cry is deafening in my brain. I. Want. Inside. I want to reach inside of him and drag that hateful, denying heart out of his chest. Wrench it out and crawl inside the empty husk it leaves and live there forever. But it doesn’t work that way, does it, Babe? I’m not an acceptable substitute. You’ll never be willing to give up your soul for me.

But he doesn’t notice. His eyes are closed and there are wounds enough inside his own mind to make him scream, so what fucking difference does it make if I do the same to the surface of his skin? All he can feel any more is pain. Pain when we’re apart, pain when we’re together.

I run my tongue over the wounds, drink him down, swallow him whole. Take, drink, because this is my blood… gulp hungrily, pull back and watch in fascination as dry gashes fill with dark liquid again, kiss it away. Press lips together and delve deep inside, close eyes and disappear within. Maybe, just maybe I can find me in him, if I drink long enough. Deep enough. Find myself again. He moans deep in the back of his throat as I give and take everything that he has, dispensing pain with one hand and pleasure with the other, tugging at the edges of the wounds with my fingertips. Gohan gasps, his head thrown back and tears trickling from the corners of his eyes.

“Hush, baby,” I whisper against his neck, so softly that I don’t think he can hear me. “Ssh.” I drape my body carefully over his own, muscles and bones fitting together perfectly, pressing him to the bloodstained sheets. Maybe, just maybe, if I lie here perfectly still, I can seep into the wounds… but his blood burns my flesh and he’s starting to whimper from the pain. I bury my face in the side of his neck and lay my hands gently over the gashes in his sides while his soft cries echo in the darkness.

He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand. He won’t understand.

I don’t know what to do for him. I’m sorry, Gohan, but I don’t know how to take the pain away, I only know how to give it. That’s all I’m good at. Cutting and burning and blowing away the last of this life and trying to forget.

So I pull away.

Sticky slickness as our bodies pull apart and it’s all written on me, the mirror image of everything I have engraved, the secret of his sufferings, the hidden, darkly spoken language of an unfinished bond. There’s a look on his face that I can’t read, a horror and a sickness and a lust. Yes, lust. Because even under all that pain the bond pulls at him, just like it pulls at me. I don’t have the redemption he’s searching for. Not me. I can’t fix anything. It doesn’t always make sense, why do I have to be the one to figure it out? I don’t know, okay, Gohan? I don’t know how to make it all better. There’s nothing I can do for you. Bleeding for your sins and cleaning up your mess and I can’t seem to remember when the fuck I became the responsible one.

And I can’t pretend to understand the sound of snapped leather, the torn restraints, the angry hands closing around me. Can’t decipher the meaning of being hurled through the air or the smashing against plaster walls or of landing splayed and confused across the dresser, and this time I don’t care. Smirk on his lips and terror in his eyes, but this way, at least, I don’t fucking have to be the one in charge anymore. He drags my legs up and pins me to the dresser, grinding against flesh and bone. I scream. But oh, dear God, it feels good. Feels so good to feel anything again. Shove and push and break me, legs tangling and fingers cracking my wrist bones.

So let’s see how good you are at this, Gohan. Give it to me good. Try a little harder. Let’s see if you and your cracked and bleeding heart have the balls to give me what I need. Because it’s my turn to feel the pain. This is the way it should be, because when he takes me this way, when he hurts me more, I can feel his disgust and hatred. I can feel how much he regrets me in every single thrust. And if he feels that guilty about it, then it’s all clearly his fault, and I’m absolved of any responsibility towards the fucked-up freakshow that my life has become. Maybe I can suffer enough, here, now, in this room, with his teeth gnashing in my face and destroyed dresser digging into my back, maybe I can hurt enough to put things right. I’ve never believed in guilt, but I’m a big believer in karma. And bad things happen to good people, no matter how righteous you live. But then I’m more sinner than saint.

I’m just as much to blame as he is, can’t resist the power and the danger. Because everyone is drawn to something stronger than themselves.

And sometimes I awake with my skin buzzing, longing for the sensation of Gohan’s fists. It might not be an urge I’m proud of, but I’ve never had a bit of pride when it comes to hunger. And I can close my eyes against the bloody ragged remnants of his guilt all I want to but I can’t close my eyes to the fact that I come harder and scream louder with him than with anyone else in my entire life.

Isn’t pain the deepest touch of all? It’s been so long since anyone has cared enough to hurt me.

I just want him to drive into me harder and make me scream louder. I want him to split me apart. I want him to break me into pieces. Shatter me until there’s nothing left, Gohan. Bleed me just a little more. Hurt me until you can forget how much you wish you were hurting yourself. Use me to atone and perhaps it’s simply that I’ve been his whore all along.

One of us is being punished. I’m not sure which one.

Later he carries me back to the bed, lays me gently on the sheets. With careful fingertips he pulls each splinter of wood from my back, my body shaking so hard he can barely grip them. Drops them in a pile on the bedside table where the blood glints in dim lamplight, firewood to burn the heretic.

They’re never gonna get these stains out of the sheets.

When the very last jagged splinter is gone from my flesh, he leans down and gently licks the blood from my wounds, his tongue working into the torn flesh. I dig my fingers into the pillow and screw my eyes shut and bite down hard on my lower lip to keep from speaking, keep from weeping, keep from begging. So fucking close to begging him to stay, to take me back with him, to toss me on the dresser and fuck me blind again. So close to breaking into hoarse, raw sobs and screaming “Don’t leave me. Please for God’s sake don’t fucking leave me again.”

But I can’t speak. I can’t face that refusal again.

I wait until he lays down wearily beside me and closes his eyes before I let the tears fall. Silently, so the darkness hides them. Because I don’t want him to ever know how much this hurts. When I know he is asleep I rise and pull clothing slowly over my tattered skin, find my smokes and car keys, get ready to go. I don’t look at him any more than I possibly have to; better not to invite temptation. Better just to let him sleep. The sun will be up soon.

We stayed all night once. Once. I opened my eyes the next morning to see his sleeping face, his hair playfully mussed. Something inside me broke, cracked open into sharp, jagged pieces and scattered me on the floor.

I’m not sure what happened after that. I remember screaming and crying and shoving him off the bed, eliciting a startled cry when he cracked his head against the bedside table.
Now I always leave before he wakes.

I feel a sharp pain in my side as I pull on my coat. Reaching beneath my shirt, I dig a long splinter out of my hip, stuck deep into flesh. He forgot one. Let it slip. Innocent bystander. Necessary evil. A small sacrifice to the gods of guilt and shame.

Happens every time.

I let my hand drift towards him but stop my fingers a few inches away from spiky hair and gently closed eyes. Pull my hand back and shove it in my pocket to keep it from straying where it’s not allowed to go. Grasp the switchblade instead, the random spatters of blood on its blade a half-assed reflection of him. Twist it shut between my fingers before placing it under the pillow for him to find in the morning. Leave it there, where it’s no longer my responsibility or my fault.