archive of my yoshiden slashfic, which you can access here!
chapter 3: unfamiliar ceiling
author's notes and warnings
chapter tws: graphic description of injury, flashbacks to death and murder, allusion to torture and child abuse. stay safe!
˗ˏˋ★‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹i threw a rock off an overpass and killed a guy ; sign crushes motorist
October 1997
The slow rotation of a singular dusty fan casting shadows across the popcorned walls in the dim light of early morning greets Hirofumi the moment his eyes snap open.
Where was he? He was– he was–
“Darling,” the man grins through stained teeth, right hand still grappling uselessly at the shattered glass on the floor beside him, other hand limp and bloody at his side. “I never thought Octopus would be a high schooler.”
He’s stalling for time, that much is clear, and Hirofumi shuts him up with a harsh slap to the face, the way Control used to do it. Backhanded, and just enough to leave little pinpricks of blood where fingernails dig into skin.
“Shit!” The guy howls, writhing away. It’s useless; Hirofumi pins him down in an instant, twisting his arm around his back in a practiced motion. Something in his elbow pops and Hirofumi winces in sympathy, his own elbow stinging at the sound.
The man stills in his hold, cheek pressed against the grimy floor below, panting.
“What do you want?” Hirofumi asks, finally. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, he’s left with a sense of bone-deep exhaustion. And his shin is throbbing horribly.
Silence.
“I said, what the fuck you want with me? How did you get the bottle?”
He refuses to talk, letting his head drop to the floor. He stops resisting, letting his arm fall limp in Hirofumi’s hold. Bastard.
“Let’s do this one more time,” Hirofumi threatens, tugging his arm higher– despite the man’s efforts not to let pain show, a wince slips through. “What. Do. You. Want. With. Me.”
In a final move of desperation, the man jerks forward, bucking Hirofumi off his back, scrabbling for the pipe that lies several feet away. Hirofumi wretches backward, and the guy’s arm dislocates with a sickening pop.
The guy howls with pain, curling in on himself, and Hirofumi can’t help the way his stomach twists.
He hates this.
Still, he stands up and steps forward, placing a careful foot on the shin of the writhing guy on the floor. “Tell me about who you work for,” he hisses.
“I’ll tell you about yourself,” the man gasps. “You know what they say about you where I work?”
It’s a useless taunt. Hirofumi lifts his foot and stomps. Bone gives way with a sickening crack.
“C’mon,” Hirofumi says and there’s an edge of desperation creeping into his tone. He’s always been bad at questioning– too long spent learning how to torture and not enough time spent learning how to get anything without torture. “Just tell me about–”
“They say you never kill, Octopus.”
Hirofumi freezes.
He hesitates for only a moment, really. But a moment is a moment too long.
The man beneath him’s face splits into a triumphant grin as the door behind them creaks open– the fucker called for backup.
Hirofumi should have shot him when he had the chance.
And now he’s in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar bed, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling.
Hirofumi scrambles, tearing the covers off of his body and sitting up, surveying the room in a fit of panic. He’s in a small apartment room, dimly lit through the crack under the door, but not completely dark. It looks simultaneously bare and lived-in at the same time, with a clear lack of anything on the walls, but a warm and cozy feeling nonetheless.
Safety practically oozes from every corner of the room and Hirofumi relaxes, heart slowing its frenzied pounding back to a normal, respectable pace.
As the adrenaline drains out of his system, the stabbing pain in his abdomen makes itself known. It sneaks up on him, first a slight discomfort in his side before a raging fire starts burning, hot and agonizing in the muscle under the skin. Hirofumi tries– he really does– to stay upright, but before he knows it, the entire room is spinning and he’s falling backward into the bed again.
His head hits the mattress with a thump (layered with a thin sheet in a pale imitation of a mattress cover) and after a long second of staring blankly at the ceiling above him, Hirofumi decides that this is fine.
If he’s in some random civilian’s house, whatever. Famine has enough sway with the police to get him out without much suspicion.
If he’s in one of Famine’s safe houses, even better. She’ll understand for sure.
If he’s... well, those are the only two outcomes, really. Either that, or he’s already dead.
Something shifts slightly at the foot of the bed, tossing and turning in what sounds like fabric, before finally sitting up. Hirofumi makes no move to investigate. As of now, the ceiling is a whole lot more interesting. It’s also the only thing in the room that isn’t spinning insistently.
And then a familiar head of messy dirty-blonde hair dances through the corner of his vision and Hirofumi has to do a double-take.
“Dumbass,” a voice that can only be Denji’s mutters, clambering up from the floor– floor?– to shift Hirofumi’s shirt– shirt!!!– aside. A light finger grazes the burning spot on Hirofumi’s side and he lets out an embarrassingly loud yelp of pain.
Denji’s eyes widen the moment he realizes Hirofumi is awake and backtracks almost immediately. “Dude, what the fuck? You’re awake? Um!” A rough hand yanks Hirofumi’s shirt back down, then jams a finger into the wound through the cottony fabric, just for good measure. Hirofumi squirms away, muffling his shout into the sheet of the mattress and hitting his knee painfully against the wall in the process.
Through the rapidly bruising pain in his knee, Hirofumi comes to the dawning realization that he’s fucked up. Big time.
As if getting kidnapped wasn’t enough.
Because stumbling through Denji’s doorway in the middle of the night, presumably bruised and bled the fuck out, is 100% roping Denji back into Horsemen business, which is also precisely what he had vowed against in the first place. And the cherry on top of the fucking cupcake is that Famine is going to kill him for putting the mission at risk.
A punch to the back jerks Hirofumi out of his thoughts as another wave of pain shoots through his body.
He rolls back over, lifting the sheets from his face, to look at Denji.
“You bled all over my apartment,” is the only thing the other boy has to say, before picking a box of bandages off the floor and throwing it at Hirofumi’s head. The corner jams into his forehead, but the rest of Hirofumi’s body hurts too much in comparison to even register the pain. “I’m making breakfast. It’s pancakes.”
“I don’t like pancakes,” Hirofumi grunts, lifting the bandages above his face so he can inspect them.
Denji scowls, shoots him the middle finger, and stomps out of the room. He almost slams the door, but stops at the last second, letting it slide shut with a soft click. Right. Because the Little Control is still sleeping.
Hirofumi props himself up against the backboard of the bed– slowly this time, because the mask of adrenaline has sadly left him– to lift his shirt.
He’s wearing one of his old shirts, he realizes, cheap grey cotton nearly threadbare under his fingers. He remembers the day he’d given it to Denji like yesterday, even if the faded Pochita dog graphic printed on the chest was far more vivid back then. The memory sends a pang of bittersweetness through his chest, a far deeper pain than the superficial sting of his injury.
Still, he doesn’t linger on the thought, however much it hurts to let it go. That Denji is gone now, he reminds himself, tugging his shirt up and holding the hem between his teeth to keep it from falling back down.
The flesh around his abdomen is completely swollen, an unnatural shade of red and hot to the touch, and the spot of the wound clumsily bandaged over.
The bandages themselves have definitely been changed a couple times throughout the night; they’re still mostly white around the top, only partially bled through in the layers closer to the wound. And Hirofumi remembers how Denji used to be unnaturally good at caring for injuries back then too, even before Fox had taught them how to properly wrap and splint.
Hirofumi had never been good at it. Not in the way Denji was.
He gingerly peels the bandages off of skin– the throbbing far more apparent the closer he gets to the injury itself. The final layer of gauze reveals a fairly deep stab wound– deep enough that, if Hirofumi looks closely enough, the blood-slicked flesh inside looks like sinewy muscle tissue pulled taut.
The sight of his own injuries no longer scares him– though it had taken a while to get to this point. After being ripped apart and pieced back together so many times by the amateur doctors at the Horsemen, he supposes that it's only natural that the queasiness that previously stuck at the back of his throat through each surgery no longer makes itself known at the slightest drop of blood.
If only the same could be said for the pain.
Wincing, he rewraps his side tightly, watching the wound disappear behind layers of gauze and bandages, before moving on to the other injuries that were making themselves known now that the main culprit was addressed.
For one, his left shin hurts like crazy. After a quick check to make sure the Little Control is still sleeping, he throws the covers aside to inspect his leg. Denji has (thankfully) left him in his boxers, so the extra hassle of shimmying his pants of is no longer an issue. The thought of Denji presumably helping him clean himself up causes a rush of blood to Hirofumi’s cheeks, but it’s a little too late to be embarrassed.
Both his legs are riddled with thinner cuts– knife slices, from what Hirofumi can tell. None seem to be too deep, and they’ll probably scab over in a couple days. His left shin, though, is mottled with deep purple and pinkish-magenta spots, a nasty bruise fading away at the edges in greens and yellows. If he walks on it, it’ll probably hurt like crazy.
For the first time this morning, Hirofumi wonders how the fuck he was able to drag himself from wherever he was to Denji’s apartment.
He decides to wrap his shin, too, after a long while. With all the swelling from the bruising, it might be fractured. He still has the vague memory of a contorted face pressing close to his own followed by the brutalizing force of a kick to bone.
Hirofumi’s wrists and ankles are blistered to hell and back as well, raised and red burns circling otherwise pale skin. He’ll have to buy some ointment when he gets the chance.
And then he sits, leaning against the backboard of Denji’s bed, staring at the wall opposite to him.
He wants to bury his head in his arms (but he can’t– the stupid stab wound on his side won’t let him bend that far) and cry. Because... because it’s oh so clear that something’s off.
That man had somehow gotten his hands on a drug that Hirofumi and Denji had gotten rid of months ago. A drug that Hirofumi swore was gone, eradicated off the face of the Earth. A drug that had hurt– had killed.
And if anything, it’s clear that the man and the entire organization behind him wanted Denji.
Correction: wants Denji. With the state that Hirofumi is in right now, it’s pretty clear that while he had won the battle, the war is just on the horizon. If they were smart enough, they’d have sent someone to tail Hirofumi as he stumbled his way across the city to Denji’s apartment.
If they were smart enough, they’d be watching Denji right now.
Down the hall, Denji hums a little jingle from TV (the Amazing Pochita theme song, Hirofumi realizes with a jolt) as he cooks.
No, Hirofumi reasons. They would have attacked by now– kidnapped Denji while Hirofumi was still out of it. Either they didn’t follow him back here or they didn’t know that Denji used to be Chainsaw. Yes, that’s it. If Hirofumi plays his cards right, he can get Denji out of this situation.
But first–
He slips out of the bedroom and makes his way down the hall, bare feet padding against the hardwood floors. They’re heated, which Hirofumi is immensely grateful for, given his apparent lack of clothing.
The hallway is scantily decorated– entirely bare walls without any pictures. The apartment seems old, too, walls peeling at the corners. There’s a bathroom with the door cracked open across from the bedroom Hirofumi had emerged from, but he doesn’t snoop around quite yet. It feels... wrong. And it’s harder to lie to Famine if he knows what he’s lying about.
The living room is combined with the kitchen, and much more comfortable feeling. Sunlight streams in from the sliding door at the end of the apartment, blinds pulled open to one side. A rickety TV is propped atop a wooden cabinet, made of the same dark oak wood as the bookcases on either side. A couple withered houseplants are shoved into the corners, as if forgotten, as is numerous cardboard boxes filled with unnamed items.
The bookcase is filled to the brim with trinkets. Little collectibles and keychains lie scattered across the different cubicles alongside picture frames stuffed with polaroids and childish paper cut outs of printed photographs. For the most part, everything seems clean and well-dusted, save for the top shelf.
Denji is still humming, a hot pink apron tied around his waist, flipping pancakes with a pair of chopsticks. A plate is set beside him on the counter, already piled high with what seems like a mountain of pancakes. Every few seconds, Denji tears a piece off a random pancake and sticks it in his mouth.
It’s all so domestic that it gives Hirofumi whiplash.
He’s never felt so out of place before, standing half shadowed in the corner of a hallway, watching his former best friend do something so... simple.
Something so normal. Yes, Hirofumi had known about the apparent simplicity of Denji’s life with his extensive stalking, but actually seeing it up close, without the context of a mission, is like an awakening.
Like, up until now, a little part of Hirofumi had been hoping that all of Denji’s actions were a joke. That he would realize that after so long of being not-normal, the facade would be up, and he would run back into Hirofumi’s arms and the complicated mess of issues would be solved.
But that would be going backward. And, it's very clear, now more than ever, that Denji truly believes he is ordinary now. No– it's more than just a belief– the life of the Horsemen is behind him now, the persona of Chainsaw nothing but a silly name for an equally silly person, for all Denji knew.
He stays there, frozen, until Denji pokes his head around the corner and levels Hirofumi with a glare. “Stop being so stalker-y in my house. It’s creeping me out.”
“My bad,” Hirofumi smiles, and steps foot into the sunlight.
Denji hums an acknowledgement and sets the plate of pancakes onto the counter, tossing the pan into the sink. He doesn’t wash it, rather, he crosses around the counter to perch on a barstool facing Hirofumi.
“That’s your blood,” he says, bluntly, pointing a bony finger down the hall. “You have to clean it.”
“I'm injured,” Hirofumi groans, pinching a pancake between two fingers and setting it on the counter in front of him. Denji hadn't taken out any utensils or plates. Some things, it seems, never change, even with memory loss.
“Clean it when you're not injured then,” Denji scowls. He, too, takes a pancake. He folds it roughly into a rectangle and dips it straight into an uncapped container of syrup on the counter.
Hirofumi raises a brow, watching Denji carefully. His hands are wringing the pancake, as if to choke the life out of the dough. A nervous habit– one that he had always felt comfortable enough with Denji to let show. He lets the pancake (now shredded into little pieces) rest on the counter and presses his palms into the cool tile in an effort to keep still.
“You want me to come back?” He asks, finally, when the silence gets to be too long to bear.
Denji sputters on his pancake, coughing violently. Hirofumi is halfway leant across the counter, a hand reaching forward to pack Denji on the back, when he realizes what he’s doing and immediately recoils, snapping his hand back to its spot on the counter.
It is wet with sweat from his clammy palms, whether from his nerves or from a wound induced fever he doesn’t know.
Denji recovers, stuffing his face with the rest of his pancake before responding. “Yeah. To clean up your puke-blood.”
Banter. Hirofumi can do this– this, at least, is familiar. “I didn’t throw up, Denji. I don’t see any vomit.”
“You were throwing up blood. I literally just said that.” Denji hops off his barstool and makes his way back around the counter in a beeline for the mini-fridge in the corner. He swipes two empty glasses along the way and fills them with orange juice– the pulpy kind.
Hirofumi wants to slam his head against the counter and knock himself out.
It isn’t until Denji turns back around, two orange juices in hand, that he finally asks the question that Hirofumi has been dreading all morning. “So,” he starts, pausing to take a long sip of orange juice. A dribble trails down his chin, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand before continuing. “Why?”
“Why what?” Hirofumi pokes at the pieces of his pancake on the counter. They’re soft and fluffy, almost overly so– the way Fox used to make them. Tentatively, he places a tiny piece in his mouth, sugar sweet batter almost melting on his tongue. It’s the same recipe that Fox used as well.
Denji huffs. “Why’re you here?”
“These pancakes are good. Thanks, Denji.”
A glass of orange juice slides across the counter in response.
For a moment, Hirofumi thinks that he’s been let off the hook. He’s just about to let out a sigh of relief when a hand shoots out to grab a fistful of his hair, followed by a half-hearted noogie. A yelp of pain escapes him despite the fact that Denji really isn’t using much force and he coils backwards, swatting Denji’s hands away.
“Cut the crap,” Denji scowls when Hirofumi finally pushes him off, sneaking a piece of Hirofumi’s shredded pancakes into his mouth. “And eat your pancake. You have to eat all your food at the counter.”
Hirofumi obediently sticks a bite of pancake into his mouth, shooting Denji a questioning glance.
He shrugs. “Nayuta rule. You’re also not allowed to lie at the counter.”
“You made that up,” Hirofumi accuses, swallowing his pancake.
“Yeah.” Denji crosses his arms, chin jutting out defiantly. “So? Why were you...” He gestures vaguely up and down Hirofumi’s general form. “I dunno... Why were you half-dead last night?”
His hands have escaped him yet again, clenching the fabric of his shirt, Denji’s shirt– no, his shirt, so tight it feels like the thing cotton might rip. “Someone tried to mug me on my way back from the convenience store,” he lies, tongue thick in his mouth.
He knows that it hasn’t worked the moment Denji’s eyes harden around the edges.
“Liar liar pants on fire. I said no lying at the counter, didn’t I?”
Hirofumi exhales, unclenching his fists in favor of scrubbing his hands over his face. His palms are covered in sweat and butter, sweet sugar mingling with the coppery taste of fear. “You remember the organization you used to work at?”
Denji shakes his head no, but supplies a helpful “the Horsepeople or something, right? I remember the cops told me about it.”
“Yeah. I still work for them.”
“Uh huh.”
“I got in a fight yesterday and...” He catches himself before he lets something else slip– something that he surely would regret. “Yeah.”
Denji screws up his face, chewing idly on another one of Hirofumi’s pancake pieces. There’s a long beat of silence before he finally speaks again. “Why’d you come here, though? Why not to Control or whatever her name is? Or back to the Horsepeople?”
“You used to... we used to work together, Denji. So I might have–”
“–forgotten,” Denji finishes for him, picking the remaining plate of pancakes off the table as he slides off his barstool. “I used to be Chainsaw, right?”
Just hearing the name sends another spike of— sadness? Nostalgia? Worry?– jolting through Hirofumi’s body.
It’s too close.
“You can’t tell anyone about that. About this. About anything, Denji. Nothing.”
Denji doesn’t respond, spinning on his heel to walk down the hall with the pancakes. Hirofumi waits for the door to the bedroom to slide shut before exhaling, scrubbing an exhausted hand over his eyes. It’s oily with pancake residue, just the faintest scent of powdered sugar dusting his skin.
He wants to cry.
By the time Denji emerges from Nayu’s room, Yoshida is gone. The pan that he’d used to make the pancakes is washed and drying in the sink– that and the puddle of dried blood by the front door are the only indication that Yoshida had been in Denji’s apartment.
He’s only a little disappointed that Yoshida had disappeared without saying goodbye.
Denji is lost in thought for the rest of the day, bumbling through his chores without much of a word to Nayuta, simply going through the motions. It isn’t until later in the afternoon that Nayuta finally snaps him back to his senses.
“Octopus was here yesterday,” she says accusingly, perched atop the sofa at the end of the room like a little tyrannical ruler.
Which, Denji supposes, she is. Queen of the house, Denji nothing but her lowly servant. Whatever. He’s okay with it.
He groans in response from his spot facedown on the floor.
“Rule! Answer me when I’m talking, stupid,” Nayuta orders.
“‘Kay,” Denji mumbles. “Who’s Octopus?”
His head feels foggy and muddled, like someone dumped a truckful of jello into his cranium to replace his brains. Thoughts float through without much semblance of a connection to anything really. He’s probably just tired– God knows how many times he woke up last night to change stupid Yoshida’s stupid bandages.
“Octopus. Y’know, Hiro.” Nayuta steps down from her sofa-throne to stand in front of Denji’s spot. Squatting down, she pokes Denji’s head.
He looks up, propping himself up on an elbow. “Hiro? Like Yoshida Hirofumi?”
Nayuta shrugs. “I guess. So, why was he here?”
“How’d you know he was here?”
Nayuta scoffs, and it’s so condescending it makes Denji feel like he’s sinking through the floor, only a few centimeters away from crashing through panels and falling into the apartment below. “I can smell it. There’s blood in the doorway. And–” She jabs at the back of his shirt. “–you’re wearing another shirt. It’s not even washing day.”
Denji relents. “Okay, yeah. Yoshida was here last night.”
He can’t elaborate any more though, because not even he knows why Yoshida had showed up last night. Okay, yeah, he was hurt and bleeding everywhere, but why Denji’s apartment?
And, obviously, the little thing that he’d said at the end of their conversation, when Denji had left to give Nayuta her pancakes still weighs heavy on his mind, popping up in the mess of thoughts every so often. “We used to work together.” What does that even mean? it doesn’t explain anything and it leaves Denji with a shitload of questions– way more than he has answers.
Nayuta doesn’t press, flouncing back to the couch and nestling herself between the pillows. Before, she might have– she wouldn’t stop grilling Denji about his memories his first week with her. She’s probably given up by now, Denji supposes. It’s not like he could answer half of her answers, even if he tried, so he wasn’t breaking any rules or anything.
“Rule! Clean the apartment.”
Denji rolls over, starfishing out on his back. “Whyyyyyy,” he groans, shutting his eyes against the late afternoon sunlight pouring in from the window. It shines directly onto his face, illuminating the backs of his eyelids a pale pink. It’s kind of pretty now that he thinks about it, but after a while, his eyes start to sting, so he turns his face away.
“‘Cos the whole house is dirty. And if Octopus comes back, the house has to be clean.”
“But it’s Sunday,” Denji grumbles. “The rule is to clean on Wednesdays.”
Silence.
“And Octopus or whatever isn’t coming back,” he adds, just for good measure.
“Yes he is,” Nayuta shoots back almost immediately. “Who’s gonna clean up the blood by the door?”
Silence.
“Fine.” Denji pushes himself off the floor– with much more effort than it should have taken– to crawl slowly toward the laundry room like some sort of four-legged creature. He remembers seeing a broom there, somewhere, when he’d first moved in.
He supposes, quite belatedly, that Nayuta is right. They’ve been living here for a couple months now, courtesy of the police department and their mysterious benefactor, and Denji hasn’t even swept the house once. He’d never cleaned his old apartment either– the one that he shared with Dad– mostly because no matter how many times he tried, even to pick the empty bottles off the floor, more trash kept appearing. That and the seemingly endless amount of spiders that crawled out of the cracks in the walls when he shifted anything in their vicinity kept him from even thinking about cleaning.
The most he did, then, was to rearrange the blankets on his dingy mattress into a semi-comfortable position every night, brushing the dirt off the sheets. And by the time Dad had died, the apartment was in such a state of dilapidation that just thinking about setting aside a day to clean sent a pang of disgust through his body. So he let the trash build anyway.
Now though, in this sunny, spacious apartment, the only thing that builds up is dust and dirty dishes.
The dirty dishes, at least, have been taken care of. Denji starts to make a note to thank Yoshida when he sees the other boy at school on Monday, but dismisses the idea as soon as it pops into his head. What would he be thanking Yoshida for anyway? The stalker hadn’t even wiped up the blood on the floor– and now Denji was the one paying the price, cleaning on a goddamn Sunday!
He gingerly picks up the broom, and, on second thought, picks up the dustpan underneath as well. He’s only ever seen people use this stuff on the TV shows that he watched when Dad was out, tinkering with the dials until he finally caught wind of a signal. Not many stations broadcasted that far out into the woods, so it was a rare occasion.
He used to sit there, curled atop his mattress, and watch television for hours, whether it be soap operas, talk shows, news broadcasts, or flashy advertisements. He’d watch them until he either fell asleep to the grainy image playing on-screen, or until Dad’s lumbering footsteps approached the front door. Then, and only then, would he scramble to turn it off, hunching in his corner and shaking with fear, the thought that somehow, Dad would know that he’d been tampering with the TV.
The women– it was always a woman– on TV would hold the broom upright, bristles down, and drag it across the floor in dainty little motions, sweeping dust and all sorts of things into a little plastic shovel. So that’s what Denji does, dragging the broom on the floor behind him as elegantly as he can, really embodying what the womanly figure within him is like. Hell, he even goes as far as to prance around on tippy-toes as he sweeps, as if the sheer feminine magnetism of his actions will allow him more productivity in the cleaning department. Hell yeah, fancy words. Thanks, Nayuta.
It turns out, Denji’s not very good at sweeping.
By the end of the hour, he’s reduced himself to crawling around on the floor, picking up loose scraps of whatever and holding them in his other hand, curling them within sweaty palms until there’s too much to carry. His hands are sticky with sweat and weird melted residue, all feminine energy gone out the fucking window.
Nayuta supervises atop the couch, alternating between strictly pointing out every little spot that Denji’s missed and humming little songs to herself as she hangs off the end of the couch like a bat.
They have a quick lunch once Denji’s done sweeping, a quick sandwich with whatever’s left over from the fridge. Nayuta doesn’t finish hers, tossing her half-eaten sandwich onto Denji’s plate and demanding that he clean the rest of the house– including that one room at the end of the hall that he’s always ignored. The bedroom of the previous owner.
“Just throw it all away,” she whines, looking at him from upside down. She’s hanging off the couch again. “Rule! No random stuff in the apartment!”
Denji tries, at least a little bit, to reason with her. “But this was the last guy’s stuff,” he protests, weakly, as Nayu pushes him to the door.
“Just throw away the boring stuff, then.”
“Why can’t I just scrub the Yoshida blood at the end of the hall? I’ll clean this room later,” he tries, as Nayuta wretches the door to the bedroom open.
She turns to frown at him. “But Octopus is cleaning that up.”
“Why am I cleaning, then?”
“I already told you! Because the whole house has to be clean when Octopus comes back!” Nayuta props both hands on her hips, an accusatory glare twisting her tiny features, looking like the most terrifying little girl in the history of existence.
Denji relents.
As he crosses into the bedroom, Nayuta slams the door shut behind him. “Rule! No sleeping until you finish that room!”
Denji decides that it’s all Yoshida’s fault, plopping down heavily in the middle of the floor, leaning up against the edge of the bed. Surely, if he hadn’t shown up in the middle of the night and gotten the entire hallway covered in his blood, Denji wouldn’t be subject to this cleaning torture on an otherwise perfectly perfect Sunday.
Sorting through all the boxes is annoying– by the time he’s ripped open the third box, taped shut with oddly stretchy duct tape, his fingers are sore from scrabbling at the cardboard. Most of the boxes so far have been clothes and such, a variety of old dusty black suits. Occasionally, Denji stumbles upon a stray hair tie at the bottom of the boxes.
The previous owner must have been a girl.
She hadn’t taken any of her stuff away either, so Denji’s been sleeping in a girl’s room, tangled in a girl’s sheets. He’s been sitting on the same couch a girl sat at. The thought sends a giddy shock through his chest.
But this girl was totally boring.
It isn’t until far later in the evening, the room lit a fiery red by the sunset just out the window, that he finally finds something interesting.
His knees are sore now, too, from kneeling so long on the hardwood floor of the bedroom. He hasn’t moved in a long time apart from leaning forward to sort through the next box. He’s found a couple interesting things– an old box of cigarettes, half-used, and a zippo lighter. All the hairties he’s found throughout the day are gathered in an ever growing pile by his right leg, and the occasional bobby pin thrown in a separate pile by his left.
But this– this is different. Buried at the bottom of the third-to-last box is a plastic-wrapped photo album– the fancy kind, with the faux leather cover and stamped in professional looking kanji words across the front.
It feels intrusive to flip it open, but Denji’s bored, exhausted from cleaning all day (and he can still hear Nayuta tapping around outside the room, so it’s not like he can escape or anything), and desperate for a distraction that doesn’t involve cleaning things up or sorting them into neat, organized little piles.
It’s filled to the brim with pictures– both the cheap instant-camera polaroids and the expensive printed ones layered with a glossy plastic finish.
This is when Denji finds out that the girl is a guy.
There aren’t any baby pictures to ease him in; Denji is thrown right into the thick of it. An older guy with tired looking eyes, red-rimmed and downturned. His face seems to be fixed in a permanent frown in every picture, and even when he seems to try to smile, his lips stretch flatly across his face in a straight line, haggard wrinkles all too apparent. His hair, too, is constantly tied up in a ponytail (if one could even call it that), spiky like a pineapple on top of his head.
Most pictures of the guy show him at professional looking conferences, holding awards and other fancy stuff in front of his chest with a bored expression on his face. Every few pages or so, there’s a more domestic look into his life– making pancakes at the kitchen Denji stood at this morning, a cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth, bedhead an absolute mess; bundled up in a massive parka, topknot shoved into a lumpy winter hat, posing with a snowball in hand.
Denji’s seen him before, he thinks. The way he ties his hair in a stupid straw bundle on his head, or perhaps the manner in which he wears his suits, crisp and clean– it’s all familiar in a comforting way. But Denji can’t remember where exactly he’s seen him. From his dreams, maybe? Lots of weird people show up in his dreams.
And then, he finds the picture.
His picture, to be more exact, because the blonde-haired boy in the photograph is undoubtedly him. And the tall figure with a casual arm slung over his shoulder is undoubtedly Yoshida, even if his mouth is stretched in a wide smile that looks so natural it seems out of place on a normally stone-cold, manufactured face. They’re both throwing up peace signs, pressed into each other’s sides like the closest pair of friends in the world.
Denji thinks about pulling the Yoshida he knows in close, pressing his cheek into Yoshida’s shoulder like he is in the picture in front of him. He imagines the feeling of cotton against his skin– what would it smell like? (Like cigarette ash, but not the bad kind, his brain supplies. Like copper and sea salt and gunpowder) What would it feel like? (Scratchy and a little cold. Like a dead body.)
He’s jerked from his hypothetical by the dawning realization that this... stranger– this guy– somehow has a picture of him and Denji in a fucking photo album of all things, in his apartment.
What. The. Hell.
With shaky (why the FUCK are they shaking?) fingers, he slides the photograph free of its sleeve. It’s still good as new, with a shiny finish that glosses over if he holds it up the setting sun just right– so it’s either been extremely well protected or a fairly recent photo.
Despite the nearly perfect condition, creases run through the paper of the photograph, cutting a harsh line down Yoshida’s left elbow and Denji’s right hand. Fumbling hands find flaps on either side of the photograph; it’s been folded over. That’s some horror movie type shit.
For a moment, Denji hesitates. Does he really wanna know whatever this guy is hiding? He’s gotta be creepy, given that he has a picture of Denji. Maybe he’s a stalker like Yoshida is. Still, curiosity wins out, and he unfolds the photo, careful not to rip the more fragile paper at its seams.
It’s hiding the woman. Well, several women and the guy. But the woman is the one that catches Denji’s attention; it’s the one he sees in his dreams and brief, if not foreboding, visions. Auburn hair, long braid, golden eyes– except now, he can see everything clearly, the finer details no longer blurred by the hazy nature that all dreams have. Her hands are crossed behind her back and she’s standing close to Denji’s side, his cut off hand waving wildly in front of her chest.
She’s... beautiful. And Denji’s type, with a fat ass (he can see it from the front! How cool is that?) and big, round boobs. Something about the way she stares directly into the lens of the camera makes him feel somewhat exposed, like he’s suddenly sitting, naked, in a dusty bedroom all by himself. Which he is, minus the naked part. It makes him feel seen.
Tearing his eyes away from the woman with more than a little effort, he takes in the rest of the group of people. There are two girls, standing to the right of the woman, one of which has spiky teeth bared in a large grin and the other shyly standing further to the side, nearly cut off by the frame of the picture. Both strike a chord of faint familiarity that Denji finds he kind of hates, at this point, like each face that he vaguely recognizes is the universe’s way of sending him another series of gigantic middle fingers.
To Yoshida’s other side stands the guy with his arm curled around the waist of a shorter, slender girl, with faded red hair down to her waist. It’s the first picture where the guy is smiling, eyes straying from the camera to look down at the girl at his side with a soft gaze of adoration. It’s so sweet it’s positively sickening.
The group picture is taken in front of a large corporate building, the name half covered by Yoshida’s massive head. It looks familiar, too, though in a different way than the people are– he can pinpoint where he knows this image. The architecture— glass windows that seem to stretch into the sky for forever, concrete steps out front leading to a spatter of cherry trees, Denji walks by this building every day on his way home from school. But he doesn’t remember ever stopping to get his picture taken, much less with Yoshida. Hell, he hadn’t even gone to school when this picture was taken.
So, Denji’s amazing deductive abilities tell him that this absolutely has something to do with the swiss cheese of his memory.
He asks Nayuta about it later that night at the counter, poking at his mac and cheese with steak. “Hey, Nayu?”
Large golden eyes glance up meet his. “Hi, Denji.”
“You ever go to this apartment before me?”
“Um. No?” She sticks a large forkful of mac and cheese in her mouth, shaking her head emphatically as she chews. Her single braid swings back and forth as she shakes and Denji watches the movement, mouth slightly open, mac and cheese forgotten.
The woman in the photograph had her hair tied back in a braid like that too. Now that he thinks about it, the resemblance is uncanny– the same eyes, the same hair; if he really squints, they have the same face shape too.
“I found a picture,” he says, shaking the thought from his mind. The woman in the photo was hot. Nayuta is his fucking sister. He digs the folded paper out of his shorts pocket and slides it across the counter. “Do you know any of them?”
Nayuta glances at the picture for less than a second before sliding it back across the counter.
When she responds, her voice is cold. Chilly, even. “No.”
She fixes her gaze back onto her plate, stabbing the fork down onto porcelain with far more force than necessary.
She doesn’t look up for the rest of dinner.
October 1995
Control’s touch lingers on his skin for just a little too long, the ghost of her fingernails dragging across the exposed skin just past the neckline of his unbuttoned shirt collar leaving goosebumps in its wake.
Hirofumi flinches at the touch– an unpleasant tingle shooting down his spine– but otherwise remains as still as he possibly can in the hard plastic chair across from Control’s desk. The back digs into his spine almost painfully.
He had come to covered in a layer of cold sweat, still in the shirt he’d tugged on haphazardly before... well. He had been curled into a tiny ball, dumped on the carpet outside Control’s office, cheek pressed into the dirty fibers underfoot. They’d left patterns across his face, messy lines imprinted into skin.
They hadn’t given him time to gather himself, either. The guards standing watch outside the tall oak door paused only to inform him that he’d been out for nearly a day before unceremoniously pulling him up by the armpits and hauling him to his feet. He hadn’t been able to resist, either, not with the metal cuffs tight around his wrists and a throbbing headache that felt like someone was pounding on the inside of his cranium.
Hirofumi stares down at his hands, cold and clammy where they’re still restrained in his lap, dark purple bruises forming around his wrists. He keeps forgetting about the constraints, jerking his hands up to tug at his collar only to let them fall back down at the reminder of restriction.
It feels like he’s playing catchup– sleep-addled brain grasping at straws that seem to be just out of reach. Realizing that a heavily bandaged Denji is sitting on the chair beside him takes a full minute– far longer than it should have. Remembering that Kishibe is dead takes another few moments, and by the time he remembers, he wishes he hadn’t.
He wishes he’d stayed asleep, outside, on that grimy carpet. He’d rather that than this.
Control is taking her sweet time walking to her desk, stopping her meandering pace to ruffle affectionately at Denji’s hair. He leans into her touch, reclining backwards into his seat to chase her hand, even after she pulls it away.
All Hirofumi can see is the image of Control’s perfectly manicured fingers burying themselves in Kishibe’s grey hair, jerking his head up to suffocate him with the smoke of his own cigarette.
Her heels click against the tile floor, stopping in front of her desk. Louboutin heels– Hirofumi can tell from the red undersoles, a flash of crimson just out of the corner of his peripheral. The memory of an imploded brain flashes behind his eyelids– when had he closed his eyes?–staining black with a burst of blood red, red leather on pitch black velvet. His stomach twists like it’s been grabbed from both ends and wrung out, wet towel, emptying everything inside out until Hirofumi’s been reduced to a puddle of gore on the floor. He wants to lunge forward– cuffs be damned– and wretch Control’s stupid heels off of her feet and stab something, anything.
His stomach is climbing up his esophagus, winding itself around and around in tight circles up his trachea. Thankfully (or not), it’s empty. He hasn’t eaten anything since before Control’s mission.
Beside him, Denji shoots Hirofumi a furtive glance as Control sits, bumping his ragged sneakers against Hirofumi’s leather ones under the table. Hirofumi forces his eyes open to stare down at his feet, past the polished oak of Control’s desk to focus on the two pairs of shoes resting before him.
Something to keep the image of Kishibe’s head floating in a puddle of blood at bay.
Denji’s shoes, upong closer inspection, don’t look dirty because they’re covered in a superficial layer of grime. Hirofumi had once thought that the red felt was covered in dirt and mud and barf and whatever other shit Denji got into during a day. At the time, it had felt fitting– someone like Denji was like a dog, or maybe a pig, getting into mud and slop, content with shoes that looked like they’d gone for a round in a garbage dump.
But now that he looks– really looks– Denji’s shoes are as clean as they can possibly be, the splotches of dark brown splashed all over (what Hirofumi had first thought was mud) what Hirofumi can now recognize as dried blood. Blood that, even after numerous washes, evident by the rough texture of the felt around each blot, refuses to budge. Blood that could only be the product of Control’s missions.
Not for the first time, Hirofumi wonders how many missions Denji has been on. He’d only been recruited a month ago– Hirofumi knew because... Kishibe... had been the one to rescue Denji from Doll. They’d, for lack of a better word, gossipped about it in the locker room.
“Got a kid on Control’s orders from Doll today,” Kishibe had said, smoke curling out of his mouth and out the tiny window above the benches.
Hirofumi hadn’t said much, exhausted from a day of training. Now, of course, he wishes he’d responded. Wishes he’d done a lot more than he had.
“Little blonde thing. Looked about your age– not sure though. You kids have a way of lookin’ younger than you really are.”
At that, Hirofumi had scoffed with only a hint of derision. “And you have a way of looking a lot older than you really are.” He’d reached for Kishibe’s cigarette, only for the older man to pluck it out of his reach at the last second.
“Felt bad for the kid– Denji, though it’s probably a stage name. Doll likes to give kids those.”
“Doll?”
“Trafficker. Or traffickers, I guess. Haven’t done enough digging to know if it’s just one guy. No idea why Control wanted me to mess with them– they got ties with Eternity.”
Hirofumi wonders– wonders about the bruises on Denji’s skin. Wonders about the blood on his hands. Wonders about the stains on his shoes. Wonders how many hours he spent, hunched over the sink, hands red from the pressure of the faucet, scrubbing at blood-soaked shirts.
Wonders how Denji can still look at Control with so much admiration knowing what she’s forced him to do.
A file cabinet slides shut with a soft click. Control procures a thin sheet of paper from behind her desk and slides it across the surface toward Denji and Hirofumi.
“Octopus, congratulations on your first mission,” she says, voice smooth and nearly toneless.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Hirofumi murmurs in response, without looking up from Denji’s shoes. He doesn’t even need to look to know that Control is smiling pleasantly, hands clasped atop her desk. This isn’t the first time he’s been called in for a meeting.
Denji’s laces are stained a permanent tan as well. They’re untied, flopping about as Denji jerks his knee frantically, shaking up and down and up and down and up and down and—
“Yoshida. I think a promotion is in order.”
Hirofumi jerks his head up so fast it gives him whiplash. Yoshida? “Pardon?”
Control grins, tilting her head to one side in a careful display of feigned innocence, continuing as if she didn’t just use Hirofumi’s real name. “I said I’d reward you, didn’t I?”
Denji finally stops shaking and slams both hands down onto the table. He turns in his seat, grabbing Hirofumi by the shoulders and yanking him close. “Miss Makima said you did a really good job guarding me. So I was like ‘What if you did it full time!’” He bounces up and down in his seat like a toddler or something, full of nervous energy.
Still reeling, Hirofumi nods before he registers what Denji’s said; it feels like his brain has short circuited or something, still feeling its way through whatever borderline-incomprehensible bullshit Denji just spouted.
“Sorry?” He says, eloquently.
“You. Guard. Me,” Denji says, caveman-style. He adds in a couple hand motions, too, digging his index finger first into Hirofumi’s chest, then jerking a thumb toward his own.
Against his will, the mental image of Denji blood-soaked and high out of his mind, standing atop a pile of bodies with his leg completely shredded, floats to the forefront of Hirofumi’s imagination. If he squeezes his eyes shut, he can image Kishibe’s face atop Denji’s, red-rimmed sclera’s pouring tears down weathered cheeks. He resists a gag and nods again.
Control taps a ballpoint pen against the back of his hand, and Hirofumi opens his eyes to meet her gaze. She doesn’t say anything, for once, just raps her manicured fingers smartly against the paper and slides it a little closer to him. Hirofumi can feel Denji’s movement beside him—scribbling his name down onto the paper, practically vibrating with excitement—but her purposefully doesn’t look.
He doesn’t know if he can handle continuing to look at Denji’s happy-go-lucky face right now.
Control slides the paper a closer, again, a little impatient. Hirofumi glances up, only to look right back down. He doesn’t really want to look at Control right now, either.
Eyes downcast, he busies himself with scanning over the paper, glossing over the words. A few that he know jump out to him, but the rest blurs together like words always do. It’s formally printed, with what looks like... Chinese characters in big bold typeface stamped across the top. While Control sent Hirofumi to school a few years ago, he didn’t go often enough to learn to read kanji, much less Chinese.
He's signed enough papers, though, to know that it’s a contract.
“What is this?” He asks, voice raspy, and he coughs to clear it, awkwardly. His hand comes up to cover it, only to yank painfully on his other wrist.
“Just an agreement about working for Denji and I. We’d like it in paper,” Control says pleasantly. “Unless you have objections?”
He shakes his head. Clumsy fingers reach over the table to fumble for the silver-tipped pen that Control rolled his way. He scribbles his name down as quickly as possible, moving both hands in tandem.
It’s not the first time Control has had him sign a contract, but when he finishes etching his signature into the paper, it feels a bit like he’s signing his soul away.
Denji turns in his bed, facing resolutely away from the mess of blankets on the floor. Octopus– or Yoshida, Denji guesses, like Miss Makima had called him– had looked stormy for the rest of the day, from the moment he’d walked out of Miss Makima’s office to the moment he’d plopped himself heavily on the futon by Denji’s bed and feigned sleep.
Denji thought that the good news, that is, working for him, would brighten the other boy up from the sour mood he was in, but it seemed instead to have the complete opposite effect. Hirofumi wouldn’t even look at him for the rest of the day. And it pissed Denji off– the fact that every time he tried to speak to the other boy, he would avert his gaze and bite his lip so hard it looked seconds away from bleeding.
He’d been half tempted to just push and push and push, see where it takes him, but he’s had enough run-ins with Dad and the whole group of old ass motherfuckers at Eternity to actually try and piss Yoshida off. Who knows what the other boy would do if he snapped? So, he settles on making half-hearted revenge plans in his head.
There were perks, though, to having Yoshida around all the time. For one, Fox didn’t show up to pester Denji about anything. Fox– a tall and brooding man with sad, downturned eyes and a stupid hairstyle– seemed dead-set on making Denji’s life hell from the get-go. Not, thankfully, in the way the lackeys from Doll or Eternity had, but still bad nonetheless. It’s a little annoying, because Denji’s never gonna quit, no matter how hard Fox tries. Who the fuck would quit if they were working under walking-hottie-Miss-Makima? Still, Fox kept his distance the entire day today, and Denji would rather Fox not bother him than Fox yes bother him, Yoshida’s sour mood be damned.
For two, Kishibe– or Claw, as everyone calls him– didn’t show up to bother Denji about anything either. Denji likes Kishibe more than he likes Fox, for sure. Kishibe had been the one who found Denji when he was blindfolded and tied up in that ratty hotel, waiting for another one of Doll’s conquests. At first, Denji had thought that Kishibe was another one of those old men– it was always the old men who wanted him. Something about the way his face screws up when he’s about to cry really truns them on, apparently, so Denji had kicked and screamed and, embarrassingly enough, cried, when he felt Kishibe’s hand on the curve of his back.
He’d flailed around until Kishibe slapped a palm over his mouth and undid his restraints, gunshot ringing loud in his eardrums. His savior.
Despite everything, Kishibe creeps him out, with his cold grey eyes and even colder grey hair, reminiscent of the old men that Denji hates.
For three, Denji gets to sleep with Yoshida. Like, at the same time. It’s different– the fact that Yoshida won’t be standing in the corner, trying to blend into the wall anymore. He’s a lot louder when he’s trying to sleep, too, always shuffling with the blankets, tossing and turning in the futon below. At one point, he slams his leg into Denji’s bedposts and lets out a muffled yelp.
Denji laughs aloud. “Dude.” He pokes his head out the side of his bed to squint at the shadow of blankets that is Yoshida.
Yoshida groans and covers his face with a think blanket before turning and shoving himself into a pillow.
“Hey. Octopus. Octopus. Octopus. Octopus.” No response. He tries again. “Yoshida.”
Finally, Yoshida looks up, glaring. “Don’t call me that,” he hisses, eyes narrowed, faux smile plastered wide across his face.
It’s not a good look on him, twisting his otherwise pretty handsome facial features into what looks more like a grimace than a smile.
“What, Yoshida? But that’s what Miss Makima called you.”
“It’s Octopus.”
Scratch that– it’s a really good look on him. His hair is mussed up from all the tossing and turning and he’s propped himself up so he’s sitting, slouched over. He looks a little more human than he always dows– less stiff, less formal. Smoother and softer around the edges.
“You literally work for me. I can call you whatever I want,” Denji pouts, pressing his lips together. He wants to laugh, but antagonizing Yoshida is more fun.
There’s a long beat of silence. For a moment, Denji wonders if he’s taken it too far; would Yoshida be the type of guy to punch him in the face like Father? Or would he be the type of guy to put his cigarettes out on Denji’s back like the guys from Eternity? Or worse, like the guys from Doll?
Yoshida shifts on his futon, and Denji shrinks backwards, opening his mouth to apologize.
“Hirofumi,” Yoshida exhales, long and loud.
“Whuh?”
“Hirofumi. That’s my other name. My given one. The other one is my father’s.”
Denji’s never heard of having two real names. “Your dad’s?”
Hirofumi nods, letting himself recline back onto the pillows again. “Yeah. I don’t like Father’s name as much. Only Control calls me Yoshida–” he says it like a curse, spitting it with contempt– “So I’d rather you call me Hirofumi.”
Denji rolls onto his back again, too, mouthing the name to the ceiling, testing the curve of the vowels in his mouth. Hi-ro-fu-mi.
“Hirofumi,” he tries, calling out into the darkness.
“What?”
“You can call me Denji, then.”
Oct– Yosh– Hirofumi scoffs. He doesn’t respond, settling instead on shuffling deeper into his covers.
No one talks for a long time, and for once, Denji is okay with that. Usually, he talks himself to sleep, filling the silence with meaningless words that do little more than keep the shadows at bay. Back when he lived in the woods with Dad, the cicadas and crickets had kept him company; even in the winter, there was always the sound of something moving underfoot, close by, a reminder that he was still alive.
When Doll had taken him, it’d been quiet. Windows locked tightly shut, something about keeping the cool air-conditioner air in, he’d lie awake all night, straining his ears for even the smallest indication that he wasn’t alone. They’d found out, of course, when he’d started to talk, shaky voice bouncing around the concrete walls of the room they kept him in.
Then, they’d started the practice of binding and gagging him, blindfold tied tightly around his head, plugs, too, for his ears sometimes. Even after Miss Makima saved him, he still can’t sleep in silence, not even when he can hear Oct– Hirofumi’s steady breathing in the background.
But today, he is content with just the knowledge that Hirofumi is sleeping somewhat beside him. The cicadas have stopped chirping so late, with the humid heat of summer draining away with the turn of September to October.
Hirofumi breathes deeply as he sleeps, the rise and fall of his chest barely visible from the rhythmic movement of his blankets. Denji keeps an eye open, trying to match the pace. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
The world starts to fuzz around the edges.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Hirofumi turns.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
It’s late– far later than it should be– when Hirofumi finally speaks again, quiet. It’s a bit muffled, like he’s speaking through water.
“Why do you do this?”
Denji brain is filled with cotton, stuffed full of tiny bits of ripped tissue paper. His thoughts are getting stuck where they start and his lips have been stapled shut somehow. It doesn’t register, so he doesn’t answer.
“How can you do this?” Hirofumi asks, clearer this time. There’s the distinct shuffling of covers being thrown aside and the edge of Denji’s mattress sinks in as someone clambers up his bed, settling so they’re perched atop him, knees on either side of Denji’s hips. “I said, how can you do this, Denji? How can you do this and not... not want to kill yourself?”
Denji tries to answer but he can’t. His tongue feels like paper, it’s disintegrating in his mouth, wet with saliva that doesn’t feel like his. He tries to reach up, push Hirofumi off of him, but his arms are heavy like lead, glued to the bed at his sides.
A heavy weight rests on his thighs. It takes a moment for Denji to realize that Hirofumi is sitting on his legs, pinning him to the bed. “How the fuck do you sleep so easy? You aren’t guilty, not even a little bit, and I’m losing my fucking mind over one person.”
Hirofumi’s voice is climbing higher and higher in pitch, shakier with each conviction he spits. He sounds like he’s going to cry, voice breaking every other word, ragged gasps tearing out of his lungs, and Denji wants to laugh, wants to push him away, wants to cry and bury his face in his pillow like a baby.
“How the fuck did you think that... that signing that little paper Control tossed at us would make anything better? After everything, and you sit right next to me and laugh, and smile, and... and he’s fucking dead. He’s dead, did you know? Don’t you have feelings?”
Something hits Denji hard in the stomach and he wheezes, forced exhale knocking the breath out of his lungs into still air. He tries to inhale, back in through his nose, but he can’t, lungs stucked caved in, no way for air to go back in. Another hit lands, stinging, on his left shoulder, and another on the side of his ribs.
“I killed him. I killed him. I killed him, Denji. Answer me. Fuck, is that even your real name? I don’t know anymore. Denji, stupid Denji, I hate you–”
The pillow by Denji’s right ear sinks in and Denji can feel the warmth of Hirofumi’s shaking wrist pressing against his cheek. His pulse thrums, fast and hard in Denji’s ear, so loud that he isn’t sure if it’s Hirofumi’s or his own. He’s scared, yes, but he still can’t move. Couldn’t answer even if he tried, stuck still, frozen, paralyzed in his position on the bed.
And then Hirofumi hunches over, sobs muffled in the heartbeat of Denji’s ears, so quiet that Denji isn’t even sure if he’s actually crying.
“I hate– I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I– I hate you.” His voice is still shaky and scared and broken, but it’s deeper now, the resonance further back in his throat. More gravelly.
Hirofumi sounds like Dad.
Hands curl around Denji’s neck, heavy on his windpipe, claustrophobic, crushing, squeezing. Denji wants to squirm away– his head pounds and pounds and pounds and his ears aren’t beating anymore, no– the steady rhythm of his hearts has given way to a single long drag of ringing, shrieking. It’s a harsh sound like an alarm that blares and flashes and bounces around.
He stops fighting his body, relaxing back into the mattress, Hirofumi’s hands still around his neck, and waits. Waits for the other boy– his dad– to move, to squeeze his hands tight and wring Denji’s neck until he’s purple in the face, eyes bulging, and dead in his bed.
But Hirofumi doesn’t move, just rests his hands there and cries, clutching at the skin around Denji’s neck like it’s the only thing keeping him from dying.
And maybe it is.
The first tear hits Denji’s face, wet and broken, soft and sad.
He can move now. He jerks his hand free from its spot on the mattress, not to push Hirofumi away, no– but to touch the drop on his cheek with a shaky hand.
His tears taste salty, like sea salt bits in chocolate.
author's notes
so! how are we feeling! please comment ur thoughts and opinions and feelings here! please! so i know i'm not writing these into the void!
(and yes, the title is a neon genesis evangelion reference. i LOVE nge)
