Mind Games (Nick + Susamu)

The dark cloud hanging over Nick was abruptly blown back as he felt someone throw their arms around him from nowhere. Someone female. The last time he had had a female body this close to him – the first and only time – was when he had held Rin…

Except that was not Rin’s voice. Not Rin’s voice at all. He recognised who it belonged to even before it shifted from lilted pleading into straight up mocking malice.

Mother. Fucking. Susamu. The rotten, degenerate, smug little slattern that had made a fool of him all for kicks and then dragged him forcibly into Amadeus’s services. Few others could have ignited the blazing supernova of rage that exploded within Nick.

“Get your fucking filthy hands off me, you whore!” he roared in a voice that could have terrified away a starving lion. He did his best to throw her off and was about to swing his hand to slap her much as he had during their first meeting when he caught the wide-eyed looks his outburst had drawn from the arcade’s other patrons.

It was enough to make him remember how Susamu had caught him the first time, when she had deliberately goaded him into attacking her so she gained footage to blackmail him with. She knew he had trouble holding his transformation back when he lost control of his temper, and it was not exactly expected of Yuuei students to go around attacking civilians, was it?

Thus, he took the most difficult, deepest breath of his life. It did very little to calm him.

“What the hell do you want?” he demanded in a tone sharper than a sword. He had lowered his voice significantly, however. A few patrons were still glancing their way, but it seemed most of them had decided to give them a wide berth.

She had changed disguises since they last met. Instead of a delinquent she had gone for some kind of Gothic look. Her mocking had given her away, though. Were Nick less full of hate and anger he might have wondered where in the world she bought all these outfits.

The words she had spoken before she began outright taunting him remained stuck in his mind. Of course he had not wanted Rin to say such things, he told himself. He despised everything about her, so why would he?

…Why did he not fully believe himself?

Nick wanted to smash her face against the screen. To ram a joystick through one of her eye sockets. To straight up strangle her. All those and more at once. She had him right where she wanted him, again. And there was nothing he could do about it, again.

God, Nick hoped with all his heart this game of her taunting and manipulating him whenever she felt like it was not going to became a regularity – yet somehow he felt it might.

He stood there and glared at her for several seconds after she started up the game. Then, slowly and reluctantly, he approached and chose his character without so much as a one second glance at her. He did not even care which character he selected or about playing the game at all. All he cared about was why she was so interested in his actions with Rin.

“You already have the means to blackmail me,” he growled at her. “Why does it matter what I do with Rin? What is she to you?” His final words sharpened with extra anger and something almost like defensiveness, for reasons he was again afraid to know. He did not want Susamu to go after Rin, if that was why she was prying at him about her. “Leave her alone, you hear me? She’s my prey.”

She was his to ruin. That was the only reason he said such a thing, he told himself. Susamu could stay the hell away…

Nick grinded his teeth as he listened to Susamu speak with great reluctance, wishing now he had never left Yuuei’s grounds. He supposed this was his own stupid fault. He had messaged the whore and asked her to deal with the footage of himself and Rin, knowing all too well that he would be doomed if the school saw it. He just had not expected her to make such an infuriating fuss.

Nor did he expect her next words about Rin and her ‘lover’.

His character was immediately knocked out, but he did not care. He was no longer holding the controls. Every inch of his body was as tense as it could possibly have been. The thought of someone else being with Rin, holding her as close as he had, kissing her as he had made something inside twist and writhe in the most fiery anger, even more so than the thought of Susamu attacking her.

“Tell me who he is,” he demanded in a voice darker than the void itself. “His name. His location. What he looks like. Everything. And you better not be fucking with me! You tell me what happened right now!”

Why did he feel this way? He asked himself this on the inside, and to his surprise this time an answer came: Rin was his. He had just said so. No one else could touch her but him, not in any way.

Nick did not even touch the controls when the game restarted. Videogames were the furthest thing from his mind. No, his mind was full of Rin, Rin, Rin. The pieces were slowly but surely starting to fall together, even if it was all still a befuddled mess. He wanted to ruin her and drown in the strange-but-enticing feelings she gave him and make sure no one else ever got to feel anything like them from her. Because she was beautiful and amazing and strong and he admired all of that. Hated her for making him feel such a way, but the admiration was growing ever stronger…

He came back to reality somewhat as Susamu drew closer to him. He shot her another glare as venomous as a nest of cobras for daring to encroach on his sacred personal space. Her words wormed their way into his mind and made him tremble, however. No, no, how dare this man look at Rin that way; no one could do that.

He visibly recoiled at Susamu’s attempt touch him and bared his teeth.

“You didn’t answer me, you irritating slag,” he snapped. “Name. Appearance. Address. Now.”

Somewhere in amongst all his confused feelings and rage, a voice reminded him that Susamu was an open trickster and manipulator who clearly got her jollies from using people. She could have been lying, trying to make a fool of him again. It could have all been a game between her and her so-called beloved.

Nick let out a long, frustrated growl. “That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it? You’re really getting off on this. What the hell did I do to piss you off so much? Just leave me be and take your lies somewhere else!”

What if she was not lying for once, though? The doubt and paranoia ate away at his mind like maggots on a corpse. He could not stand the thought of anyone looking at Rin like that, and even worse, Rin looking back at them the same way. No, no, no. Godammit, he wanted to scream.

Each ‘no’ made Nick scowl even harder. It was so tough to hold back from trying to rip her tongue right out of her skull when she stuck it out at him.

“As if that’ll stop me,” he hissed at her, even though truthfully he knew he lacked her resources and had no real hope of tracking down her ex-boyfriend alone. And she knew it, too. He had not thought it possible for him to hate her more than he already had until then.

When she brought up a proposition, his scowl darkened all the more. He was about to retort that he would never listen to any such proposition of hers when she carried on speaking anyway, and he immediately shut his mouth.

Was she implying she would help him capture Rin? The temptation was the strongest he had had ever felt – but then he saw his mother’s face in his mind, glaring down at him, judging him.

“If I do anything to Rin, then I’m out of Yuuei for sure,” he said, looking away from Susamu. “Mother still needs me in there.”

Did he really care that much, though, compared to the notion of having Rin all to himself…

His fists clenched, the old part of him trying to resist this unfamiliar new part. “Your precious Otou-sama,” he mimicked her voice when she said it, “still needs me in there. You don’t want to let him down, do you?”

Nick was not sure he quite believed Susamu when she claimed Amadeus would not care, but then again he barely knew the man, so who could say? He still had his doubts, however, all too aware of how full of shit she was. His only thought when she showed him her burn marks was that it was a shame Thunder had not done a more thorough job.

He looked away from her and down at the ground as she carried on talking, but it was impossible to block her out. Her words were so difficult to resist, and he was starting to wonder why he even wanted to; keeping Rin with him and away from anyone else sounded like a dream. His head abruptly jerked up again when she mentioned Rin’s father, however. “Her father used to…”

His mind suddenly brought back flashes of broken ribs, of lying face down on the ground bruised and bloodied, of voices yelling at him to get up and stop being so utterly pathetic. All things that had made him stronger, as he had forever told himself, that had taught him what weakness was, and yet hearing Rin had been hurt in a similar manner somehow broke the hold Susamu had been slowly gaining over him.

Being as sheltered as he had been, he had never heard of anyone from outside his group with a similar such experience before, and perfect little Rin of all people? Then Rin would know what it felt like. She would have grown stronger from it, too.

Susamu kept talking, dripping sweet poison down his ears, and it still sounded so very tempting. He could keep Rin forever…

He screwed his eyes shut as he visibly cringed. “Shut up. Shut up.”

He turned around and began walking away without another word. Really, he should have just walked away the moment she showed her stupid face. He did not even know where he was going; just anywhere away from Susamu and her lies would do.