damned_institute | Night 61: M-A Block Hallway

"So enthusiastic," he drawled, giving Renji a knowing look. He was momentarily interrupted by a familiar voice calling out and he glanced up to catch sight of Sora briefly and lifted his hand in a wave before turning back to the redhead.

"Alright, talk," he finally demanded, his golden gaze narrowing intently on the Shinigami's face. "Out with it. You've been brooding almost nonstop."

Renji shouted a quick greeting to Sora, then dragged his attention back to Daemon. He shrugged again. "I always brood. It's how you know I'm alive." He tried to shake Daemon's hand off his arm without seeming like it was a thing. "C'mon, boss just saw us loitering. Let's go find some shit to kill. That'll put a smile on my face."

Daemon wasn't going to be shaken off so easily, however, and he put himself in front of the other man, blocking his way. "This is different," he answered stubbornly, not falling for the redhead's excuses. "This is more than that. And no, killing stuff has not put a smile on your face. Talk to me, Renji. You're starting to worry me."

Renji stared at Daemon, a snarl curling his lip for a moment. Punching Daemon was starting to sound like a good idea, which was weird, considering three seconds ago it had been all hugs and shit. "Talk to you about what?" he growled. "You don't need my bitching to know that shit ain't right." He glanced around. "And do you really want to have some kind of fuckin' shouting match in the middle of a hallway?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Daemon countered mildly before giving the redhead a sharp smile. "But if you'd prefer, I'll happily drag you into the nearest bedroom."

He didn't mind Renji snarling at him. They all had to snap and snarl once in a while.

Renji punched Daemon in the arm again, and this time there wasn't really anything friendly about it. "The fuck is wrong with you?" he hissed. "Why would you even say that? Shit ain't funny, man."

"Is that what this is about then?" Daemon asked, not flinching back from the punch, his gaze narrowed, but still intent. He kept his hands to himself, not wanting to do anything that would alarm the Shinigami, but he wasn't going to let this go, either. "The Doctor? Have you seen him again?" he asked, watching renji carefully.

"I'm not trying to be funny here, Renji, I'm perfectly serious. And the fact that you jump to that instinctively says we've got a problem between you and me."

Renji stared at Daemon, feeling strangely light headed and sick. "No." He shook his head, more like a nervous twitch than anything. "I haven't. Not yet anyway." His eyes narrowed. "Don't bring that up like this again. Ever. It's nobody's goddamn business."

He scrubbed at his face with one hand. "Fuck you. You're always joking about shit like that. I don't got... have a problem with you. Come on. Let's just go beat some shit to death."

"It is my business when it's affecting you this way," Daemon replied, his tone a little sharper now. He reached out, catching Renji's arm. The move was purposeful this time - he knew why he was doing it, and he needed to see the response he got from the man. "You've got to talk to someone, Renji. You're not a fucking island. And you're not here in this alone."

Renji didn't flinch away this time; he was a little too angry for that. "There's nothing to talk about. Shit happens. You got to survive it. There's nothing more to it but that. Talking doesn't change a fucking thing!"

Though that was something of the crux of the problem. He'd survived. He shouldn't have survived. And now he was back in this place like he'd never left, only most everyone he'd been friends with was gone. And... most everyone he'd been friends with.

"Doesn't it?" Daemon shot back, taking a step closer to the redhead, pushing him, testing him. "Yeah shit happens, but is this surviving, Renji? Are you actually trying? I might not have known you as long as your Shinigami companions. Maybe not even as long as Sora. But I do know you, Renji. And fuck, I understand all too well the shit that happens. There's something else here eating at you and it's making you reckless. And if you think I'm going to stand by and watch you get killed, you better start rethinking things."

That was too close. Renji shoved Daemon back. This would be a lot easier if the man would just shut the fuck up and hit him, anyway. "Don't matter anyway if I get killed, does it? Sure didn't take the last time!"

Daemon went carefully still, his golden eyes glinting dangerously for a moment before he gave Renji a half-lidded look. "So I was right," he murmured, his voice soft, almost a croon. He didn't step closer again after the push, but he didn't move out of the way either. "What game do you think you're playing, Renji? And in what fucked up way have you reasoned that it won't matter if you get yourself killed? What would your Rukia say to you right now if she'd heard those words fall from your lips?"

It was Renji's turn to go quiet, clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw popped. "I imagine she'd start out by fucking calling me Kyle," he snarled, but somewhere in the last word, his voice cracked. "And then she'd tell me to stop playin' with my imaginary friends like Daemon and let the nice doctors help me. The fuck do you think she'd say you asshole!?"

He lunged forward so he could shove Daemon again. "You fuckin' happy now? Anything else you'd like to know? I could tell you a fuckin' awesome story..." Another shove, though this one lacked the angry conviction of the first. "A fuckin' awesome story about bein' drugged half out of my mind and stuck in a fuckin' tiny room in a fuckin' strait jacket for an entire fucking day. Wanna hear that one too?" An even weaker shove.

"If that's what it takes, I'll listen to every fucked up one you've got," Daemon returned, his voice heated, but it wasn't with anger. He gripped Renji's arms when the shoves weakened, dragging him up again. "At least she's fucking alive, Renji. She's not out of reach. And as for the other..." His expression tightened for a moment but he met the redhead's gaze, his own intense. One hand cupped at the back of Renji's neck, keeping the physical contact for a moment. There were wounds here, so many of them, that it was like maneuvering a minefield.

"As for the other, you bide your time. You grit your teeth and endure it. You don't give them more openings, you don't let them break you. You're a Shinigami, Renji. You're a threat, you're more dangerous than a lot of these others. So yeah, you get to see more fucked up shit. Because you're one of the few who can pay them back in kind. But not if you give up, not if you're careless, not if you've got some kind of deathwish. You're one of the best fighters I've ever seen. I don't want to see Landel or that fucking doctor or even some stupid fucking rat lay so much as a scratch on you."

He gave Renji a shake, his gaze narrowed into a glare. "You're alive. So is Rukia. So are the others. Make a gift of what you have. She's somewhere. She's alive, even if she is fucked up. She's not here, that's a start. That ups her survival chances above you and I by quite a bit. But you're no good to her dead for no reason. Who's going to know to look after her if you don't?"

Renji fought against Daemon grabbing him, though he felt strangely weak. Still, he managed to land a glancing blow here and there before he just gave up, going limp like an angry cat that had been scruffed.

He shook his head, laughing. "You don't fucking get it, do you. Yeah, Rukia's alive. Good for her." More and more anger gathered in his words until he was shouting again. "She was thinking about all the lies before she disappeared. She was starting to fucking buy into them. Guess everything I could give her wasn't enough, huh?"

His shoulders sagged. He was tired of this fight. "So yeah, I'll go looking for her. Because I'm a fucking pathetic dog and I don't know what else to do. But she ain't gonna be happy when her stray comes home."

And there it was, the sick, heavy truth of it. Daemon's fingers shifted, tangling in spiked red locks and he dragged the other man closer for a moment, his eyes sliding shut with regrets.

"Listen to me," he said softly. "They were getting to her. Yeah, I can see how that could happen. Part of me wishes I could buy it too, some days. But I don't, and I can't give in that easily. I can't afford to. But if they started to get to Rukia, it wasn't because of you." He tilted Renji's head up, his own gaze intense as he met the Shinigami's eyes. "Rukia loves you, Renji. I saw it. I felt it. Maybe they thought this would be the knife that cuts the deepest - and they would have guessed right, but that doesn't change the facts that exist far beyond the fucked up boundaries of this place. You're forgetting you're her stray. And when you get to Rukia - the real Rukia, she will be happy. More than. And I suspect that if she knew you thought otherwise, she'd kick your ass. Or attempt to. Or at the very least draw very creative images of it occurring."

Renji finally just gave up and leaned on Daemon. That was okay, he told himself. The expression he directed at his friend was too bitter to be called a smile. "Yeah, well, I learned early on that sometimes love's not enough." He sighed. "Look, I... let the nurses kill me once."

And fuck, it hurt to admit that.

"I let 'em do it. I was kind of... fucked up. But it didn't work. It'd be real stupid to try to do something like that again. Trust me to think up new kinds of stupid."

Daemon tilted his head slightly, letting the Shinigami lean against him, his own arms loosely snaking around Renji. He knew how skittish the redhead still was with any physical contact and he didn't want to push this too far. Not on top of everything else.

"I suspected... something like that," Daemon admitted softly. "Although I'm relieved you're not stupid enough to try it again, because I would track you down in whatever realm you ended up in and kick your ass back to the living ones."

"But Renji," he added, his tone a little more serious now. His fingers brushed absently over one of the dark tattoos on the Shinigami's neck, the touch soothing. "If you learned that early on, you learned the wrong thing. It can be. Sometimes... sometimes the timing's just not right."

"Just... don't let 'em do that to me again." At this point, he'd already lost his shit this badly so it felt like it didn't really matter any more. He buried his face against Daemon's shoulder. "Don't let 'em lock me up like that again. I can't. I can't do it." It was a stupid thing to ask, he knew it the minute the words passed his lips. It wasn't like Daemon could do a fucking thing.

Renji's shoulders tensed at the feeling of a hand on the back of his neck, but he didn't push Daemon away. He wrapped his arms around the man instead. It was okay, he told himself. "Stop trying to make me feel better, asshole," he muttered into Daemon's shoulder. "You suck at it."

Daemon's arms tightened momentarily around the redhead as he closed his eyes, his face impassive as he leaned his cheek against the top of Renji's head. "I swear to you," he murmured softly, his voice intense. "I will do all in my power to keep you safe. You're not alone here, Renji. You're not. I'm not leaving you alone."

He chuckled softly at the muttered words, something distant glinting in golden eyes. "I suck at this version of it," he agreed mildly. "Back home I'd be getting you blind, stinking drunk right now. Or offering up other methods of distraction. This talking shit is overrated."

Renji managed a suspiciously damp-sounding chuckle. "I'm holding you to that. You better not fuckin' disappear again."

He laughed again, and it sounded steadier this time. "Well, you're the one that wanted to talk. I wanted to go kill shit. How about next time, we do what I want to do?"

"You're not getting rid of me that easily," he murmured with a soft chuckle, keeping his embrace loose but warm about Renji's shoulders. He gave the man another squeeze. "Besides. Someone's gotta be here to drag your ass out of the trouble it seems so fond of attracting," Daemon teased gently.

"And we usually do what you want to do," Daemon pointed out with a crooked smile. "It wasn't working so well this time around. It was either this or make you freak out and punch me again."

Renji finally pushed Daemon away, though gently. He scrubbed at his face with one hand, sniffed once, then squared his shoulders. "Well fuck. I'm always happy to punch you," he said.

He sniffed again, rubbing the bridge of his nose with one knuckle. "So what're we gonna do?" he asked quietly. "We gonna escape, or gonna get revenge?" One shoulder twitched. "'Cause I want blood. But I think we've established I ain't in my right mind. Haven't been for a while."

"I always want blood," Daemon replied with a sharp smile, then gave a shrug. "But this isn't just me. And we don't know enough yet to make that decision. Forget what I saw for the moment. We don't have all the pieces to make sense of this puzzle yet so until we do, we take things one step at a time." He held out a hand to Renji, simple, waiting.

Daemon was used to working solo. He was used to walking into a mess and walking back out with it fixed, the walls stained red in his wake. He was fully prepared to do the same this time, even if he didn't walk back out. He wasn't sure he had anything to go back to, even if he did. But Renji did. And he was going to see to it that the redhead got that chance.

Night 61: M-A Block Hallway

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