#aspd!shima

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?