Bonten's Good Girl

He says he remembers clear as day. A guy much older than he was at the time but a long time ago even still. And he beat him with his fists till he stopped moving, till his muscles twitched involuntarily and hanma stepped back to look in shock at what a boy that was barely double digits had done. How did it start? Well the man cuffed him around the ear with a fistful of his hair and hanma saw red, saw a blinding flash of fury slice across his eyes.

You look up at him, at his impassive, handsome face. A face you love so deeply. With all the freckles, marks and scars, amber flecked eyes that turn to you with a muted smile and you're so in awe of this special boy that you can only stare as he narrates.

Do you still think about it? You ask him, and he shrugs and tells you that it's only occasionally that he even remembers it all together. That all the deaths have blurred into one, that he doesn't think anything of them actually because he likes the rush of it sometimes anyway. So why bother being regretful over it at all?

You say you sometimes think about killing a person and before you can finish the thought, he laughs and tells you he'd never want you to. You feign indignation and ask if it's because he thinks you can't, that you're too soft and fragile, but he shakes his head, more sombre now and says that he'd never want to put the burden on taking a life on you anyway, would never want you to taint yourself in the way he's been tainted. That just because he's been doing it for so long and likes it too doesn't mean he knows or thinks it's a good thing.

A life is a life. And to take one is a heavy sin. He's clever enough and aware enough to know he's a bad man. It doesn't mean he's going to stop, but he does know.

You ask him if you'd have met in different circumstances, or if he'd love you if he'd been anyone else.

And he tilts his head to the side, chewing on his cheek and deep in thought. You like when he does this. When he indulges your curiosity, when he opens himself up, ribcage cracked open for a splice of sunlight, for your fingers to crawl around his heart.

Yes, he says, I think we would've met regardless. You're surprised again at the honesty of his answer, the cadence of such vulnerability and the way his voice softens into a whisper against the crown of your head.

I think somehow things would've worked out even if we met in different circumstances, and you would still be my sweetheart, he says, his eyes still trained on the TV like as if the heat isn't crawling into your belly.

The question is, he goes on, would you still like me if I was someone else too? And you sense it on the edge of his words. A hand extending to hold onto you, a naked and soft breath, a vulnerability.

You pretend to ponder just for the sake of it but the answer is always going to be the same. Yes, obviously, a thousand times yes. You were made for him. Even if(and you have) dated other people, and even if the circumstances were different, what other man could be your hero in the same way he is? What other man could complete you so entirely? What other man could've given you such a gift that he has? An ability to believe in yourself, to see yourself as a girl capable and worthy of love, of everything.

What if I was a salaryman? A doctor? An engineer? A teacher?

All of the above and then some. And yes you'd be happy just to do laundry and taxes and mark papers with him and go on coffee shop dates and picnics and make tiramisu for him and warm his hands in the winter and it would be fine because you would be together.

You're so sappy, aren't you sweetheart? He says, an attempt to hide that familiar feeling again, that soft warmth in his chest that blooms whenever he thinks about you.

Is it wrong to say he wants a future with you? That maybe he'd like you to be his wife one day and that it isn't a joke when he says he'll make it so. That yeah, somehow, the idea of going on coffee shop runs with you or supermarket trips when you've run out of cereal on a weekend doesn't bore him at all if he thinks he's doing it with you. That the reason he's so scared and afraid is because it'd you, and it was never meant to be.

What a fool he's been. He was meant to be the one who kept his head throughout, no? The one who refused to catch any feelings, who was so sure he wouldn't when you started offhandedly seeing each other, who would be breaking your heart because of course you'd fall for him eventually right? What a complication it was when he fell first. (You're not stupid, you knew it already)

But somehow, coming to think of it. The idea of being in love with you doesn't sound so bad.

‘My Pretty Girl? Are you still awake?’ A whisper in the otherwise darkened room, his silhouette glowing against the painted wall, the lift of his curls golden in the lamplight. 

You make some non-committal noise from underneath the weight of your pillows and out comes your head, sleepy and clean of makeup, the tired drag of your eyes squinting as his figure looms over you, bright and big and beautiful and him. 

‘What are you doing still awake Sweetheart?’ he says and all but flops onto your sofa, crushing you underneath, the weight of his long limbs pinning you to the soft down of your weighted blanket.

You huff, and move your legs, wrapping them around his hips as you take his face in your hands.

It’s tired, and the harsh lines under his eyes are nothing but an indicator of the fatigue stretching his skin taut.

‘You’re beautiful.’ A swipe of your thumb across his cheek, the dip of his cheekbones that give way to full and plump lips, the golden luminescence of his eyes brighter by the light that falls in shadows across his face. 

‘That didn’t answer my question, Doll.’ And his arms come up to wrap around you, his cheek flat across your chest and he thinks your heartbeat is the best sound he’s ever heard (with one exception of course), the soft drum of it a lull to the otherwise chaotic zing of electricity in his head.

He sighs, his thumbs pressing into the bones of your spine and all it takes is the lingering touch of his too-adept hands to have you folding and writhing against him.

‘Stayed awake for you didn’t I?’ A kiss pressed to the crown of his head, and your hands coming up to brush the curls from his forehead, soft and feathery light, the wisps of hair threading through softer fingers.

He likes it, your touch and it feels more tender than he’s used to. It has taken almost too long to get to this, the stage where he does not still at the contact, the proximity. Where he leans against your palm, chin against smooth skin, pressing you into him, and with a kiss to your lips that often leads to more. Because he is insatiable with you, tempted all too often by the fit of your waist in his eager hands, your neck a canvas for teeth and a tongue that licks at you as eagerly as you do him.

‘Shouldn’t have Sweetheart, you need your beauty sleep.’ And he slides further up, his face now buried safely in the crook of your neck, breath warm on the curve of your shoulder. 

‘And you don’t? You take his face in your hands, press a gentle kiss to his eyelids fluttering under your warm lips, thumbs brushing at the lashes that curve against the apple of his cheeks.

‘I’m beautiful already,’ he says, a smile that’s lopsided with fatigue and half-heartedness, his aching chest now sinking and rising with love. It’s so much sometimes, the heaviness of his heart in his chest, the ache of it, a weight that’s almost burdensome to carry and would be if it were anyone but you. 

‘Who said?’ And you grin, giving him the mischievous glint in your eye that makes his stomach tighten with a familiar thrill. 

‘Excuse me,’ he says, slurring, words tripping and rolling into each other with every languid shuffle of his hips pressed to yours. ‘I’m sexy and I have a big-’

You press your palm to his lips, fingers skimming at the perfect nose that falls in a proud arc. ‘Can you be quiet? I have something to show you.’ 

It had been a spontaneous idea at first, a vague thought ruminating as you worked, gaining speed as the days passed, gaining momentum till you’d all but convinced yourself it was time, the both of you were ready for it, for the leap of faith that led you barreling into each other.

And so you’d done it, and a few hours later, the fruits of your secret were borne and painted on you like the bites he left in his wake. More permanent than the littering of broken capillaries that turned blue and purple by morning, teeth marks still indented into your skin.

He tuts under his breath and huffs, rolling his eyes before blowing an errant curl from his forehead. ‘So serious. So what is it? Is it a lingerie set because-’

‘Shuji shush,’ You poke his side and he giggles, and you wonder if you will ever not trip at the sound, if it will ever not punch at the bones of your rib cage curved around your heart. You wonder if it will ever change, if the sound of his laughter bouncing off the walls, the sight of a grin that stretches from ear to ear will ever not be overwhelming, crushing and freeing all at once. 

You pull your hair to the side, tilting your neck, the lamplight dancing on your skin. There, under your ear, along the fine bones that run down your neck, is the blackened swirl of tattoo ink, a cursive and neat ‘HS’ that sits proudly, mattified and still slightly sore.

It’s small in reality, barely the length of your thumb from start to end, but the implication is enough, and the silence that hangs heavy between the two of you, tension that coagulates in the air tells you he gets it.

He stares, the pinch of his brow deepening, lips pulled between his teeth as if in thought. He pauses, his jaw slack for a momentary second, lidded eyes flitting to yours and searching for recognition, for the genuineness he has always found in you and never in others. 

‘For me?’ he says eventually, his pupils now widened, black swirling in gold,the iridescent shimmer of copper under dark lashes.

He swallows, the lump in his throat heavy, weighted with love and want and all of it so foreign to someone like him, who feels the blood crusted under his fingernails in murky bathrooms, who has killed more than he can begin to name, who has spent years doing so just for the promise of standing on top and looking down.

‘Well, do you know anyone else with these initials?’ You say, drinking it in. The sight of him with pupils blown wide, the adams apple that slips and slides under his smooth throat, the column of it pinkened from your mouth.

‘Oh you’re being funny now aren't you?’ 

‘I am funny, baby.’ A beat, and a smile, gentle and honest and reserved for the moments like this, the quiet ones where it is just you and him and the four painted walls. ‘Of course it’s for you, just something special.’ 

And it is, it really is and he resists the urge to bite straight into it, to drink the air in your lungs like he’s starving, and kiss you till you’re spent and breathless and aching with need.

‘You wanted to belong to me that bad huh Sweetheart?’ His voice is the slightest bit shaky, rough and gravelly with the lump that turns in an arc in the base of his chest, the cigarettes and alcohol and quiet of sleep.

‘Obviously I do.’ An irrefutable fact. Sure you fight, you throw words at each other that bounce off the walls and settle at your feet, vitriol that in hindsight never means much because you always come back, he always comes back and the tension seeps from your skin when he holds you at the end of the day and his chest is so warm and broad that sinking into it is almost a given. You think it’s unfair, mean and incessantly cruel how quickly your body betrays you for him, how instinctual the reach for him is at the end of every day.

‘Do what?’

‘I do love you.’ 

A beat. His eyebrows shoot up and it makes him wince against the light. ‘No you don’t Pretty girl, you’re too good to love me.’ This final part said in a whisper against your collarbone, faltering into the unknown, because Hanma Shuji doesn’t know if he’s capable of loving like you deserve. He’s all fire and chaos and instability, a slave to his own whims.

‘Hey….’ You tighten your grip on his jaw, your furrowed brows now mirrored in his. ‘You don’t get to decide that. I chose you, I choose you now.’ 

You’re convinced that everyone else gets it wrong, and perhaps it’s narcissistic to say that, that everyone else assumes that love is a feeling that carries you and not the other way around.

Perhaps in truth, it’s only that Hanma Shuji makes you work for that love, a conscious choice that you make every morning that leads you ultimately back to him as it always does. In the same vein, he chooses you, time and time again and his choice leads him to your arms, his mouth warm against your neck, attentive enough to have your skin prickling with need.

‘Even though ‘m a real scary guy?’ His voice is muted by fatigue by now, a rough and gravelly murmur.

‘Not to me you’re not. Well maybe a little but to me you’re my hero.’

That earns you a raised eyebrow and the return of a feline grin, lopsided with exhaustion but a grin all the same and you think it’s pathetic how your heart trips in your chest, a hole punched against your ribs.

‘Heroes save people Sweetheart. What if I don’t want to save you huh?’

‘Then drag me to hell with you, do what you want to me.’ Your heels press into the small of his back, thumbs following the sharp line of his jaw till they’re catching on his full lips, now parted and wreathed in the shadow of the lamplight.

‘I like the sound of that, whatever I want… What if I don't want to let you go? Keep you mine forever?’ His hands follow the curve of your shoulder, the bones in your spine, a body that reacts so viscerally to his touch that he feels he could mould you himself, press himself so deeply into you that there’s room for little else.

‘Then do that. I’m yours.’ Your voice drops, a hushed whisper hovering between your lips.

It snaps at that point, the tension that has simmered between you since his return, a snowball of stress and anxiety, love and want and lust and exhaustion that has only grown and peaked. 

And he kisses you then. Softly at first, his hands gentle on your back, thumbs pressing firmly into the grooves of your spine, the dips between the bones that fit his knowing hands so well he’s convinced they were made for him. A soft sigh leaks between your lips and he drinks it up, swallows the avid whining that has you pulling him even closer, his shirt now lopsided, buttons loosened enough for your hands to roam along his broad chest. 

It’s messy, all fabric and shed clothes and sighing that weighs heavily between the four witnessing walls, the lamplight falling on the golden curls, the honeyed skin that’s teased between the open collars, sin and punishment coming to rest on your hips as you rock them against him in need. 

And then you feel it, the sharp bite of his pointed teeth under the flesh of your ear, piercing and rough and dragging down your neck. It’s everywhere and nowhere at once, the sinking of his teeth on the sensitive tattoo, on your collar bones, the hollow dip in your clavicle that he sucks harshly on and then licks over to soothe. 

You think you make a noise of contentment, but it’s half-lost in the mumble of praise falling from his lips, the string of saliva breaking when he pulls his mouth from yours for the umpteenth time and your shirts are discarded on the floor, a pile of fabric and cotton, the cuffs of his sleeves still bearing the telltale red smudges that are fading to brown.

‘Mine,’ he murmurs against the plane of your chest, lips skimming across the skin that’s feverishly hot under his touch. Because it’s true, because he wants to stake his claim on you again and again.