Soulmate Stories

Yorinobu and he barely saw each other outside of meals, which they had together in silence, filled with unspoken tension.

The funeral came on the afternoon of Sunday, a concession to his mother's Catholic roots. He was brought up to his room, a servant guiding his path, eyes as ever downcast as he boiled in his rage. The anger was a far more pleasant feeling than the grief so willing to consume him once again.

A black suit was laid out, high-collared and conservative, showing very little skin. His golden cross was given back to him, and for a very long moment, he held the chain and fake metal in his hand. The edges dug into his skin until it felt like it would bleed. He was given black leather shoes, also conservative.

He dressed quietly.

Yorinobu was outside his door, also dressed in a conservative style with a black tie and suit with black leather shoes. The man who was always with him was also dressed in the same style, his back straight and respectful. Yorinobu held out his hand, his fingers soft, and David took it without a word. Yorinobu was taller than him by almost half a foot, and usually, it felt like they were worlds apart because of it, but now all that mattered was a dead feeling swelling his chest, making everything hurt.

They walked quietly through the hallways, sleek and old, into a waiting AV even nicer than the one that took him to the compound. It was his first time outside in months, but he barely paid any attention to his surroundings. The colors were bleeding away from the world.

They landed by another traditional Japanese building: all white paper walls, tatami mats, and dark mahogany wood. Yorinobu guided him through the building until they were in a room full of people with calculating eyes and vaguely similar features to Yorinobu. There was whispering around them, and many came up and gave him their condolences, all with insecure smiles and assessing gazes, but he paid it no mind, just clutched onto Yorinobu even harder. The older man made no comment about it and gave a comforting squeeze in return.

It was a Catholic service in respect to his mother's faith once again, with a Catholic priest ordaining his mother's casket. They bio-froze her two days after the accident, but even then, the frost did the damage decomposition would have.

He sat numbly through it, quiet and pale-faced.

Then it was over, and they got up as the eyes bore into him, taking him in. The AV ride was silent as he stared blankly out the window, Tokyo passing in one blur under their convoy.

Once they got back, he collapsed on his bed and fell asleep almost immediately. His funeral attire wrinkled.

He was given three days to spend as he wished, and then he went back to his lessons as if nothing ever happened. Yorinobu left Sunday, back to his apartments in Arasaka Tower to get back to work, and he let his days pass in the bliss that came with being busy.

The next Sunday, Yorinobu greeted him at dinner, surprising him. They ate in silence. The Sunday after that, Yorinobu appeared again and again. At first, he refused to speak to him, refused to do anything but maintain stony silence, but he was desperately lonely, and eventually, he gave in to his weaker impulses and started making light, snide remarks about the residence and him and anything else he could attack. Yorinobu bore it all with his assessing eyes and cool face.

One month and another passed, and his longing for human connection eventually superseded his impulse to attack. At first, it was a light comment about how he liked the fish in one of the dishes. When Yorinobu commented that he also enjoyed the flavor, it goaded him into a conversation about different fish flavors and which was his favorite.

The next Sunday, it was his favorite painting, and then the Sunday after, it was his thoughts on corporate enterprises. Yorinobu was a surprisingly good conversationalist, well-educated and deeply passionate about the matters he discussed. After that, they fell into an easy relationship where they would see each other once a week and discuss whatever caught their fancy.

He hated himself when he started looking forward to the end of the week, but it was the only actual conversation he had in a very long while, and he couldn’t help but enjoy it.

It even made him forget what was coming up.

Yorinobu had told him they would be married by the end of the year, and he was very much a man of his word.

He had simply forgotten about it in the lessons and foreignness and grief. Forgotten all about it until Oda mentioned the date of the ceremony in passing one day, surprising him enough to drop the calligraphy brush he carefully held in one hand, causing the ink to splatter all over his expensive kimono.

The instructor used a thin black stick to smack his hand for the mistake. The pain diverted his thoughts for a second.

“What? I misheard you, what was that?”

Oda glanced at him, looking over his face as if in careful reflection.

“Your wedding is in four months.”

The brush completely fell from his hands as his face went very, very pale, and his eyes widened to almost comical proportions. The instructor tsked disapprovingly beside him, but he couldn’t give two shits about that.

All he could think at that moment was one simple word.

“Fuck.”

"I didn’t fucking agree to this.” He burst into the dining room, a week of pent-up frustration and rage boiling over. Oda was hot on his heels, his hands drumming against his side in what he had learned meant he expected him to be stupid. Yorinobu glanced up from his meal and raised an eyebrow.

“Agree to what?”

“Marriage, you fucktard.” He stalked over to the older man until he stood before him, his fists shaking. “I didn’t fucking agree to a fucking marriage, you fucking cunt.”

Yorinobu smiled thinly. “Creative.” He turned back to his meal, dismissing him.

“Oh no, you fucking don’t.” He lunged, grasping the little wooden table and flinging it away from Yorinobu before Oda grabbed him under his arms, restraining him.

Yorinobu sighed gently, picking up his napkin and using it to wipe elegantly at his mouth as he bared his teeth and growled.

Once he had finished, he took a moment more to fold his napkin by his side before finally turning to him. “If you wish, we can forgo the ceremony.”

“Fuck you,” he growled.

Yorinobu simply sighed once again, shaking his head and standing in one smooth motion.

“I’ll take that as an agreement then. I am glad; I was hoping to avoid any additional tediums we may have.”

He just struggled hard, trying to claw at the man's apathetic face. Oda was forced to hold him until Yorinobu and Takemura had left the room, and he was left panting softly.

He lunged at Yorinobu every time he visited, and it got so bad that before dinner even commenced, he was put into a restraining hold, and a servant quietly placed food in his mouth as he struggled to hurt the man before him.

Still, it was all pointless, and four months to the day he was informed of it, his signature rested smoothly on a marriage certificate next to Yorinobu's.

Oda forced his hand through each stroke. His arm steel as he did whatever he could to break the hold. Yet, it was pointless.

Yorinobu, sitting next to him, was quiet and thoughtful as he fought with all he had and lost.

That night, the older man visited him, dismissing Oda and Takemura from the room. He was dressed in a light yukata, and when he saw him arrive, the stars falling from the sky, he tried to flee, to fling himself out the window. But before Oda left, Yorinobu ordered him to tie one of his legs to the bedpost. Oda did so with discontent on his face.

He called him a rapist, a bastard, a pervert. A monster.

He screamed, he screamed and screamed. First in anger and then in desperate cries that filled the room, staining the rafters and expensive wood with the sound of his pitiful pleas. Later, his screams turned to whimpers, the painful moaning of a hurt animal.

Yorinobu simply said it was necessary, and then he said no more.

His clothes tore, and the sheets became wrinkled. But they left no other evidence in the room, just on his body, stark bruises appearing like a patchwork of scars.

At the end, he cried, tears dripping down his face like falling petals.

Then, at the end, he felt little but pain, so much pain. He was reduced to little whimpers of sound, nothing but a begging mess.

“Please,” he said at the end, his voice broken. “Just please stop.”

But Yorinobu never did.

The bottle was half empty. It was full two hours ago, but now it was half empty. The ice he had first placed in the glass melted long ago. Still, once one cup was swallowed down, he poured another.

Takemura stood behind him, his eyes accusing.

“Was that necessary?”

It was the first time Takemura took the initiative to speak first, but he didn’t think of that at the moment, the alcohol taking the sharp edge off all his thoughts.

“The boy had to learn.”

Takemura shifted, his disagreement clear.

“What could he have learned from something like that?” The cyborg spat in disgust.

Yorinobu swirled the brown liquid in his glass, watching it twirl like a thousand little dancers before swallowing the half cup in one large gulp. A single tear slid down his face.

“His place.”

He was given Monday to recuperate, Oda acting softer than usual, more protective if that was possible. Waving the servants away and hovering like a mother hen with a wayward chick returned. Bringing him food with intentionally loud footfalls. Ensuring that the window was not opened in the morning and no one else came to bother him. He slept through most of the day, passing in and out of consciousness as if slipping under bathwater. If he just let his body relax, he was in the dark once more. A doctor came briefly to ensure that no lasting damage would occur, his face calm and collected. He was allowed to sleep through most of the exam, and he did.

Oda’s fingers flicked on and off his katana every time the doctor came a little too close to him.

The next day, though, he was awakened as normal, the light of dawn sliding through his bamboo blinds. His instructors made no indication that they knew what had happened, and the servants did not speak of it. Oda remained overprotective, hovering even when he would usually relax, a constant flighty presence.

He made no comment of it, wandering through the halls as if he was a ghost. Absolutely silent unless directly addressed, and even then, he gave single-word answers to every question.

Yorinobu had left that night to get back to Tokyo, and he hoped with almost every fiber of his being that he would stay gone.

The week passed as it always did in the routine he had as always.

When Sunday came, a pit opened up in his stomach, and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. All day they shook and shook and shook. He couldn’t get through either of his musical lessons without heavy censure, and Oda was gracious enough to inform his kanji and calligraphy tutors that he was not feeling well and could not attend his lessons.

He refused to leave his room when the dinner hour came, huddling under the blankets like a child, quivering like one too. Oda did not make him get up, did not make him move. Just fell into his place by his bedside.

He thought that Yorinobu would not come, that he had gotten what he wanted and had forgotten about him. But he was a Night City resident; they never got that lucky.

The older man appeared as the sun was falling below the horizon, David's eyes tracking its progress through the sky. The slow crawl helped him relax.

He heard the footsteps first. That particular way that Yorinobu walked: one step, and then an almost unnoticeable pause, and then a second step. As if he was deciding the very best place for each of his feet before they landed on the ground. He heard the sound, and every muscle in his body froze. Adrenaline pumped through him almost instantly, and his heart jackrabbited with such speed that he could hear little else outside of his heartbeat and those footfalls. His eyes left his window to stare at the alarm at his door.

Oda did not react. Just stood in his spot, his eyes glued to the far wall of the room.

When the older man finally appeared in the doorway, black suit sleek and stylish, Takemura behind him, his breath was coming in short little bursts, so quick it barely felt like he was breathing at all.

He just stared, stared and stared at the dark figure before him. His eyes were so wide it felt like they took up half his face. Yorinobu said something, but he could not hear. His brain wired to focus instead on the man's moving lips, memories he tried so hard to repress coming to the surface of his mind, making him breathe even faster. Takemura was moving then, approaching him how one might approach a frightened animal. He curled the blankets tighter around himself, the fluffy comforter creating a kind of cocoon.

The motion didn’t even draw his eye, everything in him focused on Yorinobu. It was not until Takemura was next to him that he flinched back violently and suddenly, seeming to surprise them both. His body slammed over one of the nightstands by his bed, creating a blaze of pain across his back, knocking the electric lamp off it and causing the small device to fly off and crack against the ground. But he paid it no mind as Takemura touched his shoulder, the skin on it exposed, causing him to black out almost instantly. The blackness was one sudden wave that hit him like a freight train and, for once, was not comforting.

When he woke up next, he was lying on his bed, his back feeling like nothing had ever happened, and a feeling of bone-chilling apathy over him. His lips felt heavy, cold, and hard to move.

Yorinobu was sitting on the other side of the bed, and Takemura and Oda bracketed them like a wall of Arasaka ninjas.

He was reading a datapad, scrolling through it with a tired look in his eyes and keen focus. He studied him carefully, the artificial lights casting strange shadows over his face.

He opened his mouth to speak, but it felt dry, and his throat was parched. Oda appeared next to him with a glass of water in his hand, the condensation on the side sliding over his hand.

He helped him sit up, his hands gentle and with care poured the water down his throat. David's own hands felt cold and unresponsive. Then he returned to his position, the empty glass sitting on the nightstand that had been fixed after he knocked it over.

He licked his lips, his tongue feeling like one large worm in his mouth.

“What did you give me?” Even his voice was calm, the rushing panic he felt slithering away.

“Something to calm you down.” He flicked his optics, they flashed as he acknowledged a message and then seemed to go offline. Putting his datapad down a moment later and letting his head rest gently against the bed's headboard as he stared out of the window, looking into the blackness of the night.

“Oh.” David licked his lips again despite the fact they felt completely numb. “What do you want?”

“What I did last week, I wish to talk about it.” Yorinobu was drumming his fingers on his forearm, one tap of his finger after another. For some reason, David found the motion mesmerizing and couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“You mean when you raped me.” He said it like a fact. It was a fact.

Up and down the fingers went, up and down.

“What happened last week will happen again.”

Up and down, up and down, faster and faster the fingers went.

“Oh?”

“You are my spouse. My soulbound.”

Faster and faster until it almost seemed like one was falling before the other one even lifted.

“That’s silly.” He watched the fingers move.

“Many things in life are, but they must be done.”

Without really thinking about it, he remembered his mother's smile. “Not cruel things. My mother always said that cruel things were pointless, that there was always a better way.”

The fingers stopped at his words. “Your mother was a foolish woman.” Yorinobu’s voice was cold and unforgiving.

“I loved my mother. I loved her more than anything.” The fingers lifted as Yorinobu turned his back to him, shifting over and bringing the blankets up. “Regardless, it will be done.”

His hands still felt numb, everything did, the world turning gray as his head tilted to the side, his eyes closing as he once again drifted off to sleep.

“Oh.”

He woke up the next morning, cold sweat on his skin and panting like he had run a marathon.

The side of the bed next to him was cold, and pure panic was in his chest.

That’s when he tried to die. That’s when he fought with everything he had, but Oda remained his stony guardian. He didn’t get so much as a scratch.

Yorinobu kept his promise. Every Sunday, they would have dinner together. Then they would take a walk in the gardens, slowly and mostly silent but for the conversation they made. Which, for a very long time, was very little. The first time he came back, Oda had to fully restrain him as he frothed and lashed and tried everything in him to do something. Anything really, except the listless state he was in. Swinging between bouts of depression and a frantic need to tear at his own skin, to get rid of the parts of it that were contaminated. It felt like he could still see the bruises even weeks afterward. He still knew exactly where they had been.

So he fought, and screamed, and cried. Yorinobu just watched him, disappointment clear on his face as he was dragged along. They tied him fully to the bed, his legs and arms strung up like a pig to slaughter.

His one saving grace was that Yorinobu didn’t take long. Not really, it was fast and quick. There was no pleasure in it. For either of them.

The time after that, he fought a little less. Then the time after, and after that too. Until weeks had passed, and he didn’t fight at all.

When the sun had fully fallen, the routine was simple. Yorinobu would lead him back to his bedroom. His hand was cold.

First, his yukata would fall into a pile on the floor, Yorinobu’s shirt next.

Then all he knew was cold hands and lips that glided over his skin and left a trail of what felt like frost in their wake. He hated it most when he took it slow, when he spent long hours touching, and grabbing, and hurting.

He would wake up the next morning feeling sour and tired and would be given the day to rest. 

Then the week would pass and he would do it all again. 

For a year this went on without interruption. His life sliding back into routine. Until two months after their first anniversary, Yorinobu holding him in his arms kissed the top of his forehead. His hold as if they were real lovers. 

“Would you like to visit Night City?”

He asked as if he was asking about what he wanted for dinner the next day. 

“Yes.” David let the word slip out almost a plea. “I would love that.” 

He fell asleep to Yorinobu hands slowly petting his forehead and a weary tiredness invading his mind.