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ocelotted · 2 days ago

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when the sun comes up (i)

Try as you might, you still can’t quite put your finger on what Hoshibami Taiga is to you. A soulmate is not always a lover, after all, and even so — a lover is not always right. There are no correct answers with someone like Taiga; none that come easily, anyways. It doesn’t stop you from looking. (Alternatively: Things change between you and Taiga in the darkness of a rogue anomaly’s pocket dimension. You're left to think about a lot of things in the aftermath.)

relationships — hoshibami taiga/fem! reader; shinjo ritsu/fem! reader

contains — soulmate au (only seeing colour once you touch your soulmate) + forced proximity. use of 'kitty-cat'. mild claustrophobia warning. soft ritsu, taiga being bewitching and bemusing. more angst than i anticipated. fic is more taiga focused than ritsu focused but in the overall ‘universe’ (should i expand on this) they are equal i promise. dividers are by @/enchanthings

wc — 2.9k

read on ao3

You think, sometimes, that the universe has made it its personal mission to ensure that you become as well acquainted with misfortune as possible before you die.

It's melodramatic, perhaps, but by no means unfounded. You'd been haunted by a faint sense of unease ever since Hyde handed you the case file the other week. He'd done so with his trademark knowing grin, the one that made you want to choose violence without fail (though perhaps he was just getting you in the mood for your infamously irascible companions) and some part of you had known that you'd remember the horrors to come with remarkable vividness. As had long become routine, you'd swallowed down the lump in your throat, ignored how the crimson mark over your pulse point flared with heat, and thanked whatever deity presided over your life that Ritsu was there.

That gratitude has long served its time. Now, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with Hoshibami Taiga in the ridiculously cramped void of an anomaly's pocket dimension, you're left with begrudging resignation at best.

"You don't gotta look so torn up about it, kitty-cat," the ghoul in question drawls. "Told you to make yourself comfortable, didn't I?"

Comfortable. You let your head loll back, hitting an invisible boundary with a muted thump. "I hope you're mocking me."

He lets out a noise that's part-laugh, part-scoff, and you resist the urge to sag against the wall. You're sure your soulmark is warm to the touch; you can feel the heat of it radiating up to your jaw from where it sits atop your carotid artery. It's a painfully intimate placement. You thought it to be romantic when you were younger. Now, you feel like it's a touch too on the nose. Taiga certainly holds no more affection towards it than you do either way, if the fleeting irritation that mars his face whenever your markings burn in conjunction is any indicator.

"I didn't take ya to be set off by a tight squeeze." The lighting is just good enough for you to catch a faint inconsistency in the line of his mouth, the one that tells you a part of him is someplace else.

"I'm not," you respond, somewhat tersely. "I'm just... worried."

Worried, plagued, unsure. Any word is as good as the rest. The suddenness with which you were thrust from fighting for your life on an abandoned cargo ship to finding yourself trapped in here was discomfiting, to say the least, and adrenaline is still humming in your blood. At certain points, you can still hear Romeo's acronymic commands-slash-insults echoing around you, feel the warmth of Ritsu's ungloved hand in your own as he calls out his incantation. He'd given your palm a slight squeeze before you'd left to confront the anomaly, accompanied by that firm, allaying smile that said he was here for you. It had ached, just a little, but you'd returned it as best you could.

Almost unconsciously, you murmur: "I hope the others are okay."

Taiga hums unaffectionately. "You hope Shinjo's okay."

Electricity jets down your spine. You can't help the way your eyes snap to him, as if you could confirm what you'd just heard through sight alone, and find that he's already looking at you — viridescent hues dispassionate, glinting in the low light with something a braver person might call a challenge.

You swallow down the tremor threatening to spill into your voice and raise a brow. "Where did that come from?"

There's something acidulous brimming beneath your tongue. Morbid amusement, you figure, with a spoonful of incredulity.

He returns your expression. "What, did I get it wrong? It sure as hell isn't Lulu you're stuck on."

You frown. "Firstly, you're making it sound like I don't care about Romeo at all. Secondly, I'm not 'stuck on' Ritsu—"

"Coulda fooled me."

"I'm not looking to."

Taiga rolls his eyes. "Come on, kitty-cat. You practically start droolin' whenever the kid starts goin' on about legal crap."

"You—!" Your mouth falls slightly ajar at the coarseness of the statement, and the acid brewing in your throat morphs into something hot and feverish that sets off sparks behind your teeth. With what poise you have remaining, you gather them up and force them back down. "I do not."

You do not. You couldn't — not really, anyways, not while there's a half-eaten star on your neck that has seared itself into your skin a thousand times over. Not while you know him like you do, like only a soulmate does (like only a soulmate can), and certainly not while the cosmos screams that he keeps you turning on your axis, if only to be burned by his light. It infuriates you. It drags you to the ground with a strength a demon would envy.

You are cold when your racing pulse finally falls away, and in the back of your mind there are snapshots of hazy mornings and storm-tossed sheets as your breath mingles with Taiga’s in the air.

You feel distinctly ill.

(You think, sometimes, that there is a flower in your chest. It blooms luminous and gnarled, in all the colours of the world, and it follows the path of Taiga's eyes like its own, strange version of heliotropism. It is your curse and everything but. It keeps your heart beating. It feeds on the blood in your veins.

It's the very same one etched into his skin just shy of the cut of his jaw, settled and surging like a grudge.)

"Why are you even saying this?" You ask. Why do you even remember this, simmers soft and low beneath the words. Somewhere deep within the lattice of your voice there is a small, crouching thing, like a locked treasure chest or a music-box bird, so fragile and lovely and earnest that a part of you can't believe you're baring it to Taiga, of all people.

"'Cause it's annoying as shit," he grumbles. It's crass, but at least it's expected. "If you're gonna shack up with each other, just do it already. Lulu complains about it a shit ton, and it pisses me off."

The muzzle of his revolver glints harshly when he raises it to scratch at his temple. You're reminded of the sun and how it devours itself, uncaring and unceasing; how it gives itself to the risk. You feel his warmth against your skin and are suddenly, inexplicably seized by a surge of heat, like the ghost of a solar flare.

"I don't know if that's all there is to it, Taiga," you say quietly.

Perhaps it's a gamble. If so, it's one infinitely more perilous than anything you'd find in Sinostra. It's one you're willing to take anyways because the knowledge binding you two together is too heavy for the space to bear, spectres of a faraway life superimposed over the black spots dancing at the edges of your vision, and your mark is pulsing like an incessant, unforgiving reminder that the love you once dreamed of will always leave someone in pain.

Taiga's gaze is sharp when it cuts across to you. His fingers flex around his gun.

"You really wanna do this now?"

In another time, you would be marvelling at the words. This. This as in all the choices you never made. This as in the ease with which you fit into each other's space, so natural it borders on devastating, predetermined in the same way that a tragic play's ending is penned before the actors even step foot onstage. This as in the strangeness of having someone who is both your peace and your strife, and most of all the strangeness of having someone who is meant to be your love.

(This as in the strangeness of having someone, anyone at all.)

"Why not?" Your voice comes out steadier than you anticipated. "It's just us here."

And neither of us can run away goes unsaid. Neither of us can fight it and win.

Taiga scoffs. "No one's forcin' you to talk about it, kitty-cat."

"Does someone have to?" Your agitation is bubbling up again, like snapping jaws beneath still waters. Every time. It goes like this every time. "I'm not any happier about this than you are, Taiga. But at least I've got the nerve to face it."

"'Nerve'?" You can see his teeth flash above the curl of his tongue. "Gimme a break. I'm not the one actin' like this is some lifechanging shit."

"Maybe it isn't, to you." Your shoulders slump. "But it is to me."

It is because your ribcage closes in on your heart a little bit more every time you see the colour red, and it is because every time Ritsu looks at you in the library's honeyed glow you know he might never know what that feels like. To see the world in its entirety; to feel its embrace like the pitiless arms of a clock that never stops ticking, ticking, ticking.

Even if Taiga never cares, you think, Ritsu deserves an explanation — a sliver of clarity to tuck away, before you both fall any faster.

"There's not a lot to it, y'know." Taiga says. It could be your imagination, but something's shifted in the grain of his voice. It's not softer in the slightest; rather, a touch exposed, a layer stripped back harshly to reveal the raw and beating underneath. “I don’t give a crap about this soulmate shit. If you wanna make off with the Shinjo kid, then go ahead. But if I ever love ya, it’s gonna be ‘cause I want to.”

Time stops — just for a second.

In all the time you've known Taiga, you've seen quite a lot of him. You've weathered his fury, and you've been singed by his brilliance, and in some twisted, churning way, you've revelled in the look in his eyes when he plays a royal flush and takes from someone what they're worth. But you've never quite seen this part of him: artless and painfully real, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit aching.

If I ever love ya, it's gonna be 'cause I want to. You replay it one more time.

"Huh." You tip your chin up towards stars you cannot see. You are sure they're beautiful, anyhow. "That's oddly sweet."

(You think, sometimes, that underneath it all, you and Taiga are not so different. You love and hate fortune, in all the ways it has wronged you but more so in all the ways that it has served you, and you despise the idea of being bound. You were made to run wild. To choke the world.

Perhaps that is why it is so unfortunate, that you were made for each other as well.)

Taiga snorts. "Don't get that pretty head of yours mixed up. I still don't give a shit."

"You don't need to worry. I'm very much aware of that."

He shrugs. "Long as we've got it straight."

You let out a soft puff of air that is half-amusement, half-acquiescence, and resume gazing into the void. Taiga lingers at the edge of your sight. It comes to mind that you never quite know what you're looking for, with him. He is inscrutable in that way — wound like a predator on the hunt, indifferent like a creature that has laid the rush of being chased to the wind.

At times like this, though, there's something clearer about him: where he's less of a force, more of a person. You decide that you like it.

Suddenly, he perks up. You tilt your head curiously.

"Might wanna brace yourself, kitty-cat." Bemusement twists in your gut, but you curl in on yourself a little on instinct. "Should be right about... now."

As if on cue, the invisible walls entombing you fold back into space. Air rushes in the hollow they leave behind. You pitch forwards with an soundless, unceremonious yelp, one hand shooting out to seize Taiga's arm in a death grip.

You land ungracefully, limbs knocking against scuffed steel with a harshness that makes you hiss.

"See?"

Blinking rapidly, you look to the side. Taiga has one knee up and a shit-eating grin on his face that doesn't betray your discussion in the slightest.

"Kitty-cat," he repeats, revolver spinning in hand.

Your pointed glare (he never lets you off the hook, although you suppose the same could be said for you) is, for better or for worse, cut into by your names being called.

When your head swivels again, you're met with an uncharacteristically dishevelled Ritsu making his way over from the other side of the deck, Romeo striding out on his heels.

"Are you injured?" The former asks, brows furrowed. He stops just shy of your sprawled limbs and you scramble to pull yourself together. It feels faintly unreal, the spill of light into your eyes, the wash of space around you. Your heart is hammering.

(Your soulmark is pulsing red, red, red.)

You shake your head and look around. There are bits of nonhuman viscera scattered around the place, and Romeo's rifle is still smoking. "You got rid of the anomaly, I presume."

The vice-captain clicks his tongue. "Obviously, you BB. It wasn't difficult."

"Nice to see you too, Fico."

"Hey, Lulu." Taiga grins beside you. "Had a good go at it, didn't ya?”

Romeo’s eye twitches.

“Don’t even get me started on you, you BTH! What the hell were you doing? Were you trying to get the both of you killed?!” He fumes.

“Aw, you do care,” you remark, lips curving at the (only mildly homicidal) way his eyes flash.

Taiga waves a hand. “Relax, Lulu. We’re outta there now, yeah?”

Romeo does not seem remotely allayed. “Take this seriously for once! You are the most infuriating—“

The two of them slip into the back-and-forth you've long grown fond of, and a grin rises to your lips. Ritsu is still lingering near you, warm in a way that tears your attention away from the humming at your neck, teal eyes patient and searching.

"I'm glad you're okay," you murmur, under the sound of Romeo's exasperated reckonings. He offers you a small, hesitant smile.

"The feeling is mutual. It was quite a shock when you and the captain vanished so suddenly." He replies. "I'm sorry we were unable to capture the anomaly."

Hearing him say it sends a stab of disappointment through your gut that you'd been trying to repress, but you shake your head. "Don't be. At least we're all in one piece."

Ritsu smiles again in placid agreement, but his eyes are elsewhere. You follow his gaze and realise your hand is still wrapped around Taiga's bare wrist. You'd reached for him on instinct, you remember; you'd held onto him by nature. At some point after the initial fall, your vice-like grip had given way to something softer, looser (and as you soon discover, much more difficult to pull away from.)

You manage anyways. Cold pierces your limbs when you flex your fingers into the empty air; you disregard it resolutely, swivelling to face Ritsu in full.

"So," you say, voice ever so strained, "an anomaly with spatial manipulation powers, huh? Those can't be too common."

Ritsu looks on the verge of saying something neither of you know how to voice. He studies you cautiously, for a brief moment filled only by the silent request to leave it for another day simmering in your eyes.

Your heart almost caves in when he nods.

"I don't believe they are," he acquiesces. "We will be performing an in-depth evaluation of the anomaly's capabilities during the mission write-up. You and the captain were absent for approximately forty-six percent of the active conflict, but an account of your experiences in its domain would be highly valuable nevertheless."

"I'm looking forward to it." You smile, and you mean it. You remind yourself that this is what you know. You are secure with Ritsu, with how his voice flows over you like water, with the soundness of his care. You fit neatly into the palm of his hand and he keeps you there like a promise for his eyes alone, and in another world, perhaps that could ring true.

You blink the thought away. Right now, it doesn't matter. Romeo barks out a, the floor is filthy — what are you still doing down there? and you take the hand Ritsu offers you, focusing all you are onto his touch. Right now, you are alive, and you are here. You can stifle a laugh when Taiga sets Romeo off with another heedless remark and chat with Ritsu about the potential applications of an anomalous pocket dimension to life at Darkwick and pretend that the sand at the top of your hourglass isn't steadily running out, that you aren't just another tragedy on two feet.

"Let's go." Romeo taps his foot impatiently. He turns on his heel without waiting, muttering about how the poor air quality will dry out his skin. Taiga stretches up, green eyes flickering over to you in something wordless and fleeting before he sets off in suit. Ritsu looks at you again, the ghost of his touch clinging softly to your skin.

"Let's go," you echo. Your hands fall limp at your sides, and a warm ache hums to life in your chest at how well his steps match your own when you follow through. The sunset is beautiful, you think, but the truth of wonder is stored in that which it illuminates.

Soulmates and tricky feelings aside, you'll be glad to have these memories when you go.

thank you for reading!

if you made it this far tysm for sticking through to the end! i think the first thing i should say is sorry for the probably ooc behaviour; i'm only up to ep 8 so have mercy on my sinostra loving soul (i'm ready to fight case 59 in the pit). unfortunately i would have imploded if i didn't get this fic out of my system so here it is i guess...

this is my first non-drabble fic (!!!) so it is quite special to me. i have a lot of thoughts about this universe but for better or for worse whether they will actually be written out remains to be seen.

final notes... have a great day!

#tokyo debunker #tokyo debunker x reader #taiga hoshibami x reader #ritsu shinjo x reader #taiga's speech patterns are hell on earth to write as a non native english speaker but for him.....#for him i can learn to brave the horrors #because that's what love is /j #mai.fic

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