archive of my yoshiden slashfic, which you can access here!
chapter 5: sopoforic
author's notes and warnings
tws: graphic depictions of murder, emotional manipulation, discussion of past abuse & withdrawl symptoms
stay safe guys!!
˗ˏˋ★‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹strangers ; car seat headrest
ian curtis wishlist ; xiu xiu
October 1997
His shirt sticks to his skin, soaked nearly through with sweat and stained in large blotches of dark red, some drying into an ugly, flaky brown. It’d been white when he first got it, the cotton softer than now, a comforting weight draped across his shoulders by his savior. Like a shield, covering the bruises lining his neck, teeth marks heavy badges of impurity staining lines across goosebump riddled skin, Miss Makima had been an angel, descending down from the heavens to drag a heathen like him up with her.
Denji’s knuckles are bruised, skin split open around the edges. His arms ache, his head feels heavy, and every half-hearted kick he delivers rattles his bones, but it’s all okay because Miss Makima has kissed him. She’s kissed him. Holy fuck. p
Denji has never been happier in his life.
The woman on the floor groans, a low sound of pain, like a wounded animal. But she no longer flinches with each hit, not longer cries out when he jabs the knife– when had he gotten a knife?– into her side. No she lies there and takes it, eyes squeezed tightly shut, hair splayed out like a fan floating in a pool of scarlet.
His face is damp, sweat trickles down his forehead, or maybe it is tears or stray droplets that had sprayed when he slashed her across the neck. He feels disgusting. Gross– stickiness reminds him of late nights with Doll, when she’d rent him out for whole nights. This position, too, where he’s straddling her across the hips and wringing his hands around her neck, shooting glances at the figure across the room who he knows he loves... it feels compromising. Like he’s one of them.
But Miss Makima had kissed him, and when his pupils focus on the shadowy corner of the room where she’s standing, she is smiling.
And that makes everything– the situation, the position, the unnamed feelings bubbling up in his chest– okay. It’s all okay.
The feelings pop, happiness bursting like a bubbling, casting multicolored shards of light like stray bits of latex in the air, stretching and covering him like a second skin, a warm embrace, a white shirt clinging to `1his chest. He is still shivering and shaking, but he’s warm now, at the very least, and no longer scared.
The woman chokes, gurgles on rising blood in her mouth.
Heels click over. “Good job, Denji,” Miss Makima purrs, reaching out to stroke Denji’s head. Happiness swells like a crescendo, threatening, once again, to burst. But her hand tightens on his hair, nails digging into his scalp, pulling the strands upwards. The skin around his eyes moves with it and pain blooms like fireworks in his head. He stops.
Her body is mangled to the point of no return. He can’t distinguish where one part ends and another begins– it’s all severed and broken, covered in a messy layer of now congealed blood. Her body jolts, muscles reflexively tightening, even after Denji’s stopped.
They wait in silence for a long moment. Miss Makima’s hand doesn’t let up.
Finally, the woman relaxes, head lolling sideways into a puddle of her own blood, mixed with saliva and snot and tears and whatever else.
She makes no effort to move.
And... She is dead. Denji has killed someone. He’s killed someone for real.
This... this is different. This isn’t the same as when he’s tearing through those guys with a hazy, muddled mind. This is different. This is real.
His hands are shaking badly now, tremors vibrating through his entire body, tugging him forward and down. He wants to curl in on himself, wants to cry, wants to scream, wants to tear himself apart.
“Denji,” Miss... Miss.. Fuck. Denji can’t remember her name. “Denji.”
He looks up, hoping to find some semblance of solace. She will make it all okay, if only he could remember, if only he could see her face.
But her image blurs like a mirage, like she’s unfocused somehow. No matter how he squints, her features swim and muddle together.
“Denji, Denji, Denji.” She is calling his name.
And cold hands are sliding down from his head, down the nape of his neck, tracing the shorter hairs there. He waits, tensed, for those delicate fingers to grab and pull but it never happens. The hands move on, curling around the bone of his jaw before finally resting on his cheeks.
They don’t hurt. Instead, the beckon, lifting him closer and closer and closer. Thin fingers seemingly press through his skin, leaking into the spots just behind his eyes, scraping at the hollow of flesh there, prinching around the optic nerve—
“Denji, Denji. Fuck. Hey, Chainsaw man, wake up.”
Denji feels hot all over– he’s sweating. It’s a feverish feeling, too hot, then too cold, like his skin can’t decide on a temperature to settle on. His head, too, hurts like a little bitch, like every thought is bouncing around in his skull and trying to hammer their way out of his cranium with their bare hands, driving little fists into the wall of his bone. Sounds flood into his ears, ricocheting off of that little snail thing or whatever the fuck, too loud and too quiet all at once. A faint whirring underfoot, the distant scraping of metal and metal, his own heavy breaths, and someone else, too.
He’s also... moving? Yeah, he’s definitely moving. His arms and legs are flailing, scratching dragging nails down skin and fabric. Pain doesn’t come, at least, not like he expects it to. Probably because... because...
He opens his eyes.
Yoshida’s face fills his vision, sweaty forehead pressed against his own. They’re both panting, and belatedly, Denji remembers that he’s still moving. And, belatedly, he realizes why he knows he’s scratching skin through bone but it doesn’t hurt.
It takes effort– too much effort, if you ask Denji– to force his muscles to relax. It takes a lot of thoughts, for one: it feels like every single nerve in his body is dead set on fighting whatever the fuck he’d been fighting. He has to individually un-tense everything, and by the end of it, he’s exhausted, hanging limply in Yoshida’s loose embrace.
They’re close, really close, bodies pressed together. Close enough that Denji can feel Yoshida’s cold-ness seeping through the fabric of their clothes into his own body. It’s not uncomfortable, though, and Denji welcomes it, quite literally, with open arms.
“You’re awake,” Yoshida breathes. The exhaled air from his words tickles the back of neck and he shivers. “You cold?”
Grunting, Denji shakes his head. He’s the furthest thing from cold right now.
Sensation is starting to trickle back into his limbs, pinpricks of hurt that, at the very least, feel better than not feeling anything at all. He can feel his fingers now. He flexes them slightly, clenching and unclenching his fists. For how difficult it had been to relax everything earlier, it’s harder to tense them up now. He can’t clench a full fist, not without the dull pain of soreness to make itself known in every single muscle in his body.
Slowly, he peeks up at Yoshida, who is still holding him, cold hands pressed into his uniform. He is smiling, and Denji can tell that it’s a for-realsies smile, because the other boy’s eyes are all crinkled at the corners. It feels more genuine, this way, none of that ironed-flat smooth manufactured look.
There’s something else swimming in the depths there, too. Perhaps it’s in the way his eyebrows furrow down, or in the way his pupils dart down Denji’s body, assessing the way he winces at even the slightest movement. It’s concern, worry, fear, and maybe a bit of relief.
Denji stares and stares and stares until he realizes that he’s probably been staring a little too long, and then he stops staring all at once, face flushing hot (if that were even possible) and averting his gaze as best he can. He searches, desperately, for a topic, which isn’t all that hard. “Where the fuck am I?”
“Safehouse,” Yoshida responds, cut and dry. His hand slips off of Denji’s cheek, trailing skin on skin for just a little longer than necessary. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I–” Denji starts, stumbling forward. His legs strain under his own weight, foreign, and it takes a moment for him to steady himself. Everything feels off kilter, somehow. Denji blames the unfamiliar environment. And, of course, the uncomfortably close Yoshida. “Are you okay? You look like you got run over by a fucking truck, dude.”
And it’s true– Yoshida looks fucking exhausted. It’d been less clear when they were up close, squeezed nearly chest to chest. But from a little further away, Yoshida really does look like he got run over by a truck. And then mauled two seconds from death by a bear, shit on by a bear, then run over by a truck again.
He’s sweating like crazy, for one, not to mention the fact that his uniform jacket is ripped to near shreds. The white button-down underneath, previously perfectly ironed, is now grimy and wrinkled, blooming red in the sleeves. Really, everything is red. Yoshida is bleeding. All over.
The wound that Denji had patched with unsteady hands that night is open again, made clear by the large and probably wet spot of red so dark it looks more like a mudstain slowly soaking through Yoshida’s button-down. Scratches cover his forearms where the sleeves have been ripped all the way through, crisscrossing with the silvery scars already present. (They match, Denji notices, the scars, that is. He wonders if this isn’t the first time Yoshida’s been so thoroughly scratched.) There’s a bruise blossoming on his right cheek, just under the barely healed one just a few– or was it yesterday– nights ago. It’s an odd combination of greenish-purple, piss yellow around the edges, blending into a muddled tan, undeniably extremely new.
Yoshida pats the bruise on his face gingerly in response, turning a slightly more strained smile back at Denji. “All thanks to you.”
And what the fuck is that supposed to mean? What were they even talking about?
Denji’s been so caught up looking at Yoshida he’s forgotten everything else, like, fuck, the fact that he’s in a “safehouse” or whatever. It seems more like a shoddy coverup for the fact that Yoshida’s kidnapped him, now that Denji thinks about it.
The other boy must have some sort of sixth sense, though, because he steps closer again to press a palm against Denji’s forehead, swiping the stray strands of hair there upwards. His hands are cold as ever. “Headache?”
“Whu?”
“I asked if you had a headache.” Gently, Yoshida knocks the base of his palm against the side of Denji’s head. It sends a horrific lightning bolt of nerve-frying pain through his head that materializes in a full-body tremble, running from the back of his neck down to his toes, accompanied by a decidedly-unmanly yelp. Yoshida winces in empathy, smile dropping and concern taking over. (That fucker, it’s not like he’s the one being brutally assaulted by what can only be described as a hangover times five billion. Not that Denji knows what a hangover feels like.)
Denji yanks the offending hand away from his head with a scowl. “That hurts!”
“I bet.” Yoshida rises from the couch, making his way across the room to a backpack slumped by the door. It doesn’t look like the one he usually uses– this one is too new, the fabric too clean.
The corner of the sofa digs uncomfortably into Denji’s spine so he shifts again, propping himself against the junction between cushion and armrest with his legs half-curled out in front of him. There’s a distinct metallic smell to the air in the safehouse– if he could even call it that. Honestly, a panic-room-slash-bunker would be a better name for it. A retired panic-room-slash-bunker. Something used once in the War of the Worlds One era (or whatever that war was called) and never used again.
The floor and ceiling are stripped-concrete, and Denji’s pretty sure that if he pried one of the large metal plates lining the walls, he’d find concrete too. Not that he’d actually touch one of those, because they all look so rusty he thinks he might get lung-tetanus just from breathing in the vicinity of them. The only sources of light in the room are the flickering fluorescent beams overhead, casting everything in a sickly, vaguely green glow. Aside from the couch, there’s a low coffee table that looks like it’s been through several car accidents– are those bite marks on the legs?– a tiny kitchen table with two equally tiny chairs, and a rusty mini fridge that looks like it’s barely functioning.
Yoshida is rifling through backpack, muttering incomprehensibly under his breath as he sifts through the stuff he has there. After a short while of digging, he sighs loudly and dumps everything onto the kitchen table instead.
Stuff scatters and Denji thinks he sees the flash of a pistol before Yoshida picks it up and slips it into his waistband. Still, he waits oddly patiently. It feels like his brain is still playing catch-up, what with everything happening all at once.
It’s odd, too, to see Yoshida looking so thoroughly destroyed. He’s usually so put together, so perfectly perfectly assured of himself, that it feels inherently wrong to watch this same boy fumble with a pill bottle while desperately attempting to preserve his own modesty in a shredded button-up. It feels off, and that feeling, combined with the hazy sensation of slowed-down brain processes, echoes the feelings that dreams give off. Or those visions, or whatever– the ones where the lady appears.
It takes Yoshida a long time to walk back. He’s limping, favoring his right side heavily, but when he glances up and their eyes catch, Denji sees the lines of his jaw tighten. His steps speed up, a little more measured in tempo, but there’s a pain in Yoshida’s eyes that Denji doesn’t miss.
He’s such a conflicted guy, honestly, and Denji’s a little sick of it. Things are starting to come back to him, snippets of conversations with dark-haired girls and loud steps in alleyways, dried blood under his nails and strands of thick pink hair, jumbling into a memory-soup. Denji isn’t even sure if it’s all real, but the feelings settle at the pit of stomach like a gallon of water drank too quickly, a shifting mass that moves whenever he moves.
Denji jerks out of his stupor just in time to catch a cold can of soda hurtling towards his face. It drops unceremoniously from its landing pad (Denji’s nose) into his waiting arms, sticking uncomfortably to bare skin in the way just-refridgerated things do. As far as cold things go, Denji prefers Yoshida’s hands to freezing aluminum.
“Your favorite,” Yoshida explains, cutting Denji off before he can spit a barely-formed insult. He dumps the rest of the stuff onto the coffee table, stopping a roll of bandages with his foot before it rolls off the table.
He tosses the can between his hands. The weight of the liquid sloshes each time he catches it, vivid red packaging neutralizing in the fluorescent lighting. “I’ve never had this brand before.” Still, he pops the can tab open and tips it back, if only to avoid the way Yoshida’s lips thin at the statement.
Sweet liquid assaults his taste buds first, followed rapidly by a burning stinging sensation that fills up the inside of his mouth and down the back of his throat, like the drink is expanding or something. He tries, valiantly, to keep the liquid down, but fails horribly.
He sputters, hunching forward. It burns, it hurts, oh god had Yoshida just tried to poison him? Tears spring to his eyes unwittingly and he attempts to simultaneously spit the liquid out and swallow it. The motion results in an odd gurgle as it slides down what feels like the wrong tube.
It takes a moment for Denji to gather his wits about him.
Okay, a really long moment.
When he finally wipes the stray drops from the corners of his mouth with an aggressive swipe of a forearm and looks up, Yoshida is laughing. “What. You think this shit is funny?”
“A little,” the crinkly-eyed motherfucker responds, stepping forward to kneel down on the concrete in front of Denji. Tender hands wrap around the stem of Denji’s ankle to pull him a little closer. “I don’t know what I was expecting. You did that the first time too.”
Denji lets Yoshida take his ankle without much a fight, still recovering from the drink. “The first..? Oh.”
“Yeah,” Yoshida hums. His laughter– well, it was more of a chuckle, now that Denji reflects– has long since passed, and all that’s left in its wake his a foreboding, somber feeling. There’s a cut curling around the front of Denji’s ankle, deeper in some places than others. He hadn’t noticed it before.
Denji lets Yoshida patch the cut in silence. He tries the drink again, a smaller sip this time. It’s still oddly spicy, yes, but now that he knows what to expect, it tastes better. Really good, actually– sweet enough to settle his nerves and spike his nausea. It’s no mystery how it was(?) is(?) his favorite drink.
“Why am I here?” He asks, finally, when Yoshida tucks the final corner of the bandage down the top. The gauze is clumsily wrapped; clearly, while Yoshida is talented in many different aspects, bandaging ankles is not one of his strong suits. The job is even more dubious than Denji’s patching of Yoshida’s stab wound, but it’ll do the trick until Denji gets home, which, speaking of– “Where’s Nayu?”
The hands around his ankle tighten, momentarily, before loosening again. Yoshida doesn’t respond, just turns away to grab a tiny orange tube of prescription pills.
And Denji isn’t fucking dumb– Yoshida doesn’t have to respond for the world to come crashing down, for Denji to understand. “Where the fuck is Nayuta? Is she– Did you fuckin’ kill her or something? Is that why I’m here? So you can tie up loose ends?”
“No, she’s fine. I’m sure she’s safe–”
“ Are you though? That she’s safe? Don’t lie to me–”
“I’m not, I promise, Denji, please–”
“So why am I here? Why am I all fucked up?”
“I don’t know, Denji. Why were you all fucked up?” Yoshida’s breath hitches and Denji watches the other boy’s eyes un-crinkle and slant down.
And the tension is palpable, Denji can feel it. It hangs heavy in the air, clammy and static, but he can’t help but fire back. It’s the only thing he knows how to do, really, and he’s angry enough that he doesn’t care about consequences. “You can’t ask me that– You... Do I look like I have any fucking idea? I woke up in this fuckin’– fuckin’ serial killer basement looking place and you’re here all bloody and covered in gross shit, and, and, and–”
“And I leave you alone for one fucking second, Denji. One day without watching your every move and you go and get drugged up in some alley, goddamnit–”
“So I can’t even get drugged up without freaking your stalker ass out, huh? You’re not my dad, okay? So just shut up. Shut up, ‘cos I can do whatever I want.”
A pause. Yoshida’s mouth drops open, then shuts again, like an asphyxiating fish.
Denji feels the need to clarify. “I wouldn’t get drugged anyway, you lying bitch.”
That, at least, seems to pull Yoshida out of his momentary pause. “You were 100% drugged.”
Another pause. The tension fizzles, albeit slowly, and Denji slumps against the ratty couch cushions, defeated. Adrenaline slowly seeps out of his veins and his headache returns tenfold, alongside a bone-deep feeling of exhaustion.
“I’m sorry,” Yoshida whispers, and goddamnit, Denji isn’t in the mood for an apology right now.
He averts his gaze, and he tastes the copper of blood before he realizes that he’s been chewing on his lips, peeling the flaking skin off the top of the bottom and dragging it down like a hangnail in his mouth. “Say sorry after you tell me where Nayuta is.”
“I–” Yoshida starts, but he stops before he can get another word out, like the sentence is stuck in the back of his throat. He swallows, loud enough for Denji to hear.
Denji glances back. “If you’re gonna lie, shut the fuck up.” His head really hurts– enough for him to want to wish he could knock himself out on a pole or something.
“Right.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Denji watches Yoshida waver, tilting back and forth between his heels and the balls of his feet, like someone’s playing invisible tug-of-war with his body or something. If it weren’t for the headache pressing behind his eyes, the rising nausea, and the the fact that Nayuta is fucking missing , Denji would laugh, because Yoshida looks ridiculous. It takes a while for Yoshida to decide, but finally, he seems to make up his mind, because he snatches the pill-bottle off the coffee table and lowers himself onto the couch beside Denji in one fluid motion.
The cushions sink as Yoshida shifts a little closer. Denji is normally petty enough to shift further away, but today, he’s too exhausted to. And he couldn’t if he tried, since he’s already cornered.
Yoshida is too far to his right to secretly spy on him, so Denji stares resolutely ahead and pretends like he isn’t curious about what the other boy is doing next to him.
Plastic scrapes against plastic.
Plastic– or maybe it’s the pills– shake. Like a little maraca.
Two taps on his shoulder. When Denji doesn’t turn right away, the hand snakes up his neck to tap twice on his cheek.
When Denji finally faces Yoshida, four pills greet him, lying neatly on an outstretched palm.
Denji eyes the white capsules with no less suspicion. “You’re giving me more drugs.”
“Painkillers,” Yoshida supplies, shrugging “For your headache. I don’t have anything else on me to help right now.”
“I can’t–”
“You can’t eat pills. That’s what you said the first time, too. You aren’t supposed to eat them dry, you know. Wash it down with the coke.”
Denji doesn’t know what coke is, other than the fact that he used to deal it.
“The drink,” Yoshida clarifies, tilting his head at the can still clenched in Denji’s hands. Right. He’d forgotten about that.
Slowly, Denji reaches out and takes the capsules. It takes a couple tries to grab all of them– they keep slipping through his fingers. By the time he has all of them clutched in his palm, his hands are sticky and they’re melting a little bit. The residue they leave behind is sticky in some places and chalky in others, burning into his skin like a brand of a broken promise long forgotten.
“I don’t feel drugged.” The words tumble out of his mouth too quickly, and the moment they reach open air, Denji wishes he hadn’t said them.
“It’s been a few hours. And the headache would be because of... the drugs.”
Silence. Longer, this time, than before, permeated only by the low grumbling of the generator beneath the room. Denji hasn’t taken the pills yet, twisting them back and forth between his fingers. He’s putting the task off.
“How’d you know I was drugged?” Denji asks, finally, tilting sideways to bump his shoulder against Yoshida’s.
“Found you tweaking out behind old company grounds. I had to drag you here.” There’s a quirk to Yoshida’s lips, a stiff tug upwards, like he’s trying to smile but can’t. “I’m only lying a little bit, promise.”
Old company grounds. That answers something, at least. So the building in the photo had been familiar for a reason– it was where Denji– no, Chainsaw – worked.
But Yoshida’s loose-lipped and exhausted, arms still bloody with scratches. He’s tired, too, by the looks of it, face weary and dirty. He holds Denji’s gaze, head tilted to the side. “You’d always get crazy on whatever Control gave you. Black out and start kicking, scratching, whatever. We got out before she started testing on me. She’d planned to start me later, I think.” He motions vaguely at the scars lining his body, silvery skin stitched together and torn open again, and suddenly, Denji can feel the phantom sensation of flesh stuck beneath his nails, feel the heat of blood pouring openly against his hands.
He clenches and unclenches his fists, ignoring the way the capsules grind against each other. Yoshida sounds like he’s speaking gibberish, but his words feel so significant. They feel heavy and intentional, despite the way the other boys’ eyelids droop.
“But I didn’t take the drugs,” Denji confirms, just to make sure. “I didn’t do that to me.”
“No,” Yoshida chuckles humorlessly. “You wouldn’t do that. Ever.”
Thank God. Denji doesn’t know how Yoshida can say something like that with such absolute certainty, but he decides to take it at face value.
Under Yoshida’s watchful eye, Denji takes all the pills at once with a big sip of his new(?) favorite drink. They go down uncomfortably, and for a terrifying moment, he thinks they’re gonna get stuck somewhere in his throat and he’s gonna choke to death, but it’s only for a second.
“See? That wasn’t so bad,” Yoshida mumbles. Denji looks down, and Yoshida is slumped on the cushion beside him, eyes already shut.
“Yeah,” Denji responds. His voice feels muted, like it isn’t his own. “Nayuta’s okay, right? I didn’t hurt her or anything?”
Yoshida doesn’t respond.
Denji slips back into unconsciousness.
Hirofumi has been watching Denji sleep since the very beginning.
At some point in the middle of the night, Denji had fallen off the bed, no doubt due to a nightmare. After so long of observing Denji sleep, Hirofumi knows for a fact that the other boy won’t so much as twitch if he can help it.
Yet, Hirofumi wakes up a mouthful of soft blonde hair and his legs tangled with another’s. Even now, it feels achingy familiar, and in a rare lapse of judgement, before checking to see if he’s dreaming, Hirofumi allows himself to believe that they’re still together. That Denji still remembers. That they are still the rules of the world. That nothing can ever stop them.
“Rare” lapse of judgement, Hirofumi’s ass– taking those pills last night had been a lapse for sure (even if he’d taken them behind Denji’s back), and so had dropping that involuntary info bomb about Control while high on opioids. Yeah, he needed them, but he definitely hadn’t needed that many .
It feels like everything has been a lapse of judgement, even back then. That rush of invincibility, too, had lasted only a blink, before reality had come rushing back to punch him in the gut.
Still, Hirofumi wishes, not quite ready to wake up yet. Lately, all his dreams have been like this– a semi-nostalgic recall to a little less than a year ago, when waking up with Denji pressed up against him was normal. When everyone was still around. When life still felt like it had a fucking direction.
Of course, wishing that everything was just like before would imply that Control would still be around; that Denji would still be on a stupid regime of whatever his beloved Miss Makima saw fit to pump into him on a daily basis; and that they would still have to go on long missions that always ended bloody, even when they specifically ordered not to get physical. Denji could never hold himself back, and for that, Hirofumi was the only one to blame.
Sorry, he used to whisper into Denji’s hair, over and over until his voice was hoarse. It was his fault that Denji had so many nightmares, his fault that, by the end of it, it’d come to the very worst. He glances down, now, at the sleeping boy on his chest, and suppresses the urge to apologize like before.
And his thoughts stutter to a stop, the fleeting emotion of nostalgia giving way to the far more familiar weight of guilt. Suddenly, he feels disgusting, head cottony and fuzzy, like all of his internal organs had been removed, then replaced in his sleep, clumsily, like a child had been playing an anatomy puzzle with his body parts. It feels wrong, to project his memory of past Denji onto this one, one who is so similar, yet so different.
For a long while, he lies there, the back of his head pressed uncomfortably against the rubber expansion strip between the grimy concrete slabs of ground. He’s so fucking conflicted and complicated that he can’t even stand himself anymore– it’s shameful just to feel that temporary happiness that is Denji’s steady breathing tucked within the pocket just beneath his clavicle yet he still isn’t strong enough to push the other boy away.
This, too, is inherently selfish.
Realization dawns (or, perhaps, it had dawned a long while ago, and only now was Hirofumi accepting it) like a fist to the stomach. Famine had been lying to him for who knows how long– lying had been the only goddamn thing she knew how to do. And Hirofumi had pretended to believe her, pretended to be a fool who didn’t know any better. Pretending hadn’t done anything, especially now when, deep down, Hirofumi knew a lot better, knew for a fact that Famine had and still has ulterior motives. Yes, it had hurt to realize that she never cared for him, sure, but Hirofumi isn’t as hurt as he could have been. He hadn’t expected any less from her.
So why had he stayed? Why had he put Denji in danger? It had been his own idea to seperate the power duo, to keep Denji in the dark about it all.
Maybe Hirofumi had enjoyed playing house with Famine, deluding himself into believing that, if he followed along with her orders, she could come up with a solution better than his own to get Denji’s memories back and return them to the other boy in some magical fashion ending with sunshine and rainbows. An ending where both Denji and Hirofumi could live happily ever after. Together.
Of course, that would never be possible. But he had believed, out of desperation. Hirofui wonders just how much he could make himself believe if he became desperate enough, if he let even this slip through the cracks.
Desperate enough to be Famine’s puppet but not so desperate as to commit to it– God, if Kishibe saw him right now, he’d get pulverized. Hirofumi knows, and Famine knows now, too, that he’d been withholding information from her since the beginning. He’s been withholding information from everyone since the very beginning, since he’d first started watching Denji sleeping. So, what now? Hirofumi is a double agent for no one, and because of his stupid indecisive nature, he’s the enemy of all.
Fuck, Hirofumi wishes that Kishibe were still here, so he could clutch at his true father’s suit jacket and cry. What else could he have done? If he’d been obedient, Denji would be lying dead in a ditch somewhere, organs dissected and preserved deep in the basements of the Horsemen’s old base of operations, his liver sealed tight in a glass jar alongside Angel’s pancreas and the ghost of Fox’s brain.
There hadn’t been any other options for a coward like him, yet because of nothing other than his own nature, Hirofumi is stuck in a constant state of purgatory, too guilty to be obedient, but too weak to be defiant. So he settles for complicity and hates himself for it. God, he hates himself; hates himself for his selfishness, hates himself for his hypocrisy, hates himself for every single one of his fucking shortcomings, of which there are far too many.
And now, Denji is facing the consequences of Hirofumi’s actions (or rather, inaction) in the same way Hirofumi had faced the consequences of Denji’s actions before. Only this time, Denji doesn’t remember what had led to those decisions, doesn’t remember their history or the circumstances. And fuck, it hurts to realize that the very things he’d chastised Denji for in the past, the very actions that had torn them apart and ruined their temporary paradise, are and always have been Hirofumi’s first instinct.
Hirofumi doesn’t have any fucking idea what he’s doing– probably has even less of an idea than Denji does– but here he is, pretending like he knows what he’s doing. He is a fraud and he knows it, and it won’t be long before Famine figures out he doesn’t have a plan at all, not for himself, and definitely not for Denji.
He is a hypocrite, a hungry, hungry hypocrite, starved for happiness and aching for affirmation. He stretches himself thin to get what he wants and ends up with nothing but a mouthful of Denji’s hair. it feels like everything he’s ever done, he’s done wrong and everyone he’s ever loved, he’s ended up killing.
He looks down at the sleeping boy on his chest, at the long blonde lashes that just barely skim the skin under his cheek, and he wants to rip himself apart. He’s lying to everyone, even himself– it’s not his luck that’s awful but rather his decisions.
He had been the one to push Denji away when he was withdrawing. Without the proper care and support, Denji would lose his memory long enough for everything to blow over. Whatever scraps came floating back would probably be irrelevant by the time he put it all together. That decision had been the most selfless thing Hirofumi had ever done, and he regret it immediately.
Less than two fucking months later, when the left side of his bed was too cold and the room too silent without the even rhythm of Denji’s quiet breathing, Hirofumi had been the one to pay off the officers with dirty money. He had been the one to call in favors that he hadn’t meant to to get a hold of the Little Control. He had been the one to deliver Denji’s clothes back to him in a pitiful attempt to see the other boy’s face.
And when he regret that decision, when the papers on Famine’s desk started piling up and the sidelong glances thrown his way became a little too suspicious, he had been the one to swap watching shifts with Kobeni, all a futile grasp to keep Famine in the dark.
And now, he’s come to regret this decision, too. Fuck, what had he been thinking?
He’s stuck here, in an old Horsemen bunker, with no friends and no allies except for the amnesiac boy at his side.
Denji’s steady breath, previously in tandem with the rumbles of the generator, quickens. Hirofumi doesn’t– can’t– move away immediately. Instead, he presses closer for just a few seconds longer before finally prying himself away; even after self-reflection, he is as disgusting as ever.
Fumbling fingers unwrap the gauze from Denji’s ankles. They look a little better than they had last night, at the very least– Hirofumi had done an okay job at dressing them, better than he’d expected. That might just be because the skin surrounding the wounds is no longer covered in beaded drops of congealed blood.
Hirofumi had never been good at dressing wounds– that had always been Angel’s job. Even Denji was better at bandaging than Hirofumi, at least, when his hands weren’t shaking from the residue artificial adrenaline. He gropes around the top of the coffee table by his head, careful not to bump himself on the sharp corner, for a roll of fresh gauze and isopropyl alcohol. The scratches are deeper than they look, courtesy of the barbed wire he’d had to drag the other boy over. The wires had been dirty, too, rusty and caked with dirt from years of ignorance. If the scratches become infected, Hirofumi isn’t sure how either he or Denji are going to deal with it.
He should get them to a different safehouse soon, one with a shower, preferably. And check on the little Control. She can hold her own, Hirofumi is sure; she hadn’t been raised fighting for her life under Control for nothing– Hirofumi is sure she’s shot and killed before– but it’d do Denji some good to know that Hirofumi isn’t lying every time he promises her safety.
As he lowers his arm, twisting his elbow around the blunt edge of the table, his wound throbs, early morning soreness setting in, bleeding through his thoughts to take up the forefront of his mind. For that, Hirofumi is thankful: at the very least, he’s been trained to deal with physical pain. As he mechanically pulls the edge of the bandage out, he runs a mental check on each of his injuries. He’s probably torn through the makeshift stitches on his side– last he’d checked, the yellowed skin around the edges of the wound had started to... well... melt. At least his sprained ankle isn’t smarting with every step anymore.
The generator stutters, steady drone tripping and sputtering back to life. It’s loud, and Denji flinches, shifting slightly, before slowly opening his eyes.
“Hiro?”
Hirofumi hates how that nickname, however unconscious it may be, never fails to replant the seed of hope inside him. The first time Denji had blurted it out, that day in the alleyway just a few blocks from the old Horsemen buildings, Hirofumi had nearly frozen with shock. Even after Denji has tossed it around a couple more times, Hirofumi still can’t keep his hands from shaking ever so slightly.
But he directs his attention back to the matter at hand– the power is failing in the bunker; they need to switch locations. He finishes wrapping the bandage around Denji’s ankles, feigning ignorance. “‘Morning.”
Denji’s breath hitches when Hirofumi pokes a little too hard– the scratches have to hurt more than Denji let on last night. “Sorry.”
Denji laughs, and it’s more of a cold bark than anything else. “Ah... Yoshida. Dunno why I keep calling you that other name.” His voice is gravelly from disuse and screaming.
The words sting. “Call me that whenever you’d like,” Hirofumi responds, a surprising steadiness in his words despite the slowly rising tide of tears threatening to spill over.
Another bark of laughter. “I’ll start calling you that when you stop watching me sleep like a fuckin’ creep.”
October 1995
Hirofumi wakes up just as Fox’s beat up Mazda bumps over a final rut in the road, bouncing into an old gravel parking lot. His limp body jerks forward, straining against the seatbelt pulled taught over his chest, stopping him just before his forehead slams into the back of Angel’s seat.
For the guy rumored to have the steadiest hands in the industry, Fox is shit at driving. Not that shooting a gun and maneuvering a car have anything in common, but Hirofumi is sorely disappointed nonetheless.
“We’re here,” Fox sates, shifting the car into reverse to back into a parking spot at the far end of the lot. The car skids in place for a brief moment, tires crunching on the gravel underfoot, before finally lurching backward.
Hirofumi moves to unbuckle his seat belt, groggily rubbing his eyes. Beside him, Denji shifts, too, blearily blinking himself out of sleep.
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Fox warns. “I have to brief you.”
Denji yawns loudly, flinging his arms into Hirofumi’s face. “What’re we doing so far out here anyway? This place looks boring.”
And, as much as Hirofumi hates to admit it, it’s a good question. Fox had driven them far– far enough for the concrete jungle of downtown Tokyo to fade into endless fields of vegetables, dotted by large traditional houses and the squiggly lines of the occasional road.
Hirofumi hasn’t ever been this far out of the city– hell, he hadn’t even been let out of the Horsemen building before two years ago. The green, the flat fields, the distant shadow of the mountains... it’s all new. Most of his missions, though reconnaissance, were easily done within city limits.
Most of his missions, too, had been briefed to him beforehand. Surely, even with group assignments, it’s standard practice to know what the fuck is supposed to be done before arriving at the location.
Then again, from the little he knows, this group has little to do with standard practice.
Fox, for one, is an odd one. From eavesdropping on the rookie practices that he cycles through, the man is a bit of a legend, even outside of the Horsemen. The best shot in all of Tokyo, an unfazable man who doesn’t hesitate to shoot, not even for a moment. He’s taken down whole groups of people by himself– though, now that Hirofumi has seen Denji in action, he isn’t sure if that’s much a feat or just dumb luck– and is responsible for handling Control’s special unit. That, at least, is what the rumors say. From what Hirofumi’s seen, Fox just seems like another one of those guys who prance around with a stick up their asses and who exclusively drink black coffee.
Angel is even weirder. Control’s poster boy, her precious little treasure, at least, before Denji came along. Hirofumi’s never seen the guy in action (he hasn’t seen anyone in action other than Denji and himself) but Angel is supposed to be a machine. Kishibe had respected him. He’s a good kid, he’d confided in Hirofumi, in the locker room after a particularly late sparring session, but there’s no way Control hasn’t broken him in already. Kishibe had been right, in that regard: Control breaks everyone in.
Fox clears his throat, parking the car, and turning around in his seat to face Hirofumi and Denji. “Octopus. Denji. I’m Fox, that’s Angel– Kobeni’s driving herself. She should be here in a moment. If not, we’ll start without her.”
So that’s three. Hirofumi hasn’t heard much about Kobeni, not since Control pulled him out of the rookie groups. But if she’s in the special unit, she has to be good, or at the very least, not completely awful. Hirofumi sneaks a sidelong glance at Denji, who is currently gazing bleakly out the window of the car, oddly complacent.
“I thought there were four in your unit,” Hirofumi asks. He can’t remember who the last one is, but Kishibe had mentioned Fox’s group more than once.
Rather than an answer, he’s met with a chilling silence. Angel tucks a strand of hair carefully behind his ear and coughs delicately into his forearm. “It’s just us three,” he says, and Fox nods. Suddenly, the already tense atmosphere in the car grows a little thicker. A little more stifling.
Just let the mission start already.
“So... when’re you gonna tell us what to do?” Denji scowls. He’s finally stopped staring out the window pensively, back to his usual, constantly shifting self.
“Right,” Fox says. His voice is a little gruffer than before. “The target is Skin–” he tugs a wrinkled polaroid out from his pocket and tosses it two Hirofumi– “average build, styled black hair, brown eyes, same height as me– 185 cm. He’s working with a group in Tokyo, but he’s from the US. His conversational Japanese is fine, but his reading is lacking. It’s what tipped us off in the first place, though the fucker ran off before we could catch him.”
Hirofumi takes a precursory glance at the picture. Skin looks average, for what it’s worth. There isn’t anything in his appearance that would scream “Yakuza backstabber on the run,” unless you counted his ridiculously styled hair. He passes it to Denji, who sniffs and twists it between his fingers, crinkling the image further. “And we’re worried about this guy because..?”
Another beat of silence. Angel shoots a look at Fox that Denji seems to miss before swallowing thickly. “He’s gotten a hold of some of Control’s files– stuff that can’t get out. She wants him dead.”
Hirofumi’s breath hitches. Dead– just for stealing some files? “Not just the info back?”
Fox levels him with a disbelieving look. “What, keep Skin alive to tell the tale of how the Horsemen were so kind as to let a backstabber keep his life? What part of dead do you not understand? Or is the little prodigy unable to stomach big-boy material?”
Hirofumi’s cheeks flush, a rush blood roaring in his ears as his stomach twists uncomfortably. Denji shifts angrily beside him, opening his mouth to fire back a retort on his behalf. Hirofumi tugs him back by a harsh hold on his wrist before Denji can say something irrevocably stupid. “Dude–” Denji hisses, yanking his hand out of Hirofumi’s hold, but Hirofumi cuts him off a with a fierce shake of his head.
“I can handle it,” he mutters.
“You better,” Fox states. “If you’re in the right position, I want you to shoot. We can’t have Skin slip through our fingers again because a little kid can’t kill.”
Another beat. Angel tucks his already-tucked hair behind his ear.
“The plan is simple,” Fox continues, after clearing his throat again. “Informants tracked him down to here. No one’s seen him leave, so he’s either hiding until things blow over a bit or he’s stupid enough to lead us back to a real base of operations. I’m betting on the former, but we have to be prepared for a high number of trained guys on edge just in case. Got it?”
“So,” Denji declares, after a moment of silence, “the plan is to go in that ratty ass hotel–” he jerks a finger at the front door of the hotel– “and fuck shit up until we get a guy with weird hair.”
“We want to avoid detection. Best case scenario is a silent takedown. Control has reach over most police in Tokyo, but we’re out far enough that our influence over law enforcement is shaky. So don’t just bust in and ‘fuck shit up,’ as I’m sure you’re excellent at doing.”
“Hell yeah, I fuck shit up,” Denji grins.
Hirofumi waits until Fox and Angel are far enough away from the car to tug Denji back, to the other side of the Mazda, out of sight. “Hey you,” he whispers, pressing a finger to the other boy’s lips and tugging him down into a half-crouch before Denji can protest.
He waits for Denji to stop freaking out before letting his hand drop. “Something’s weird.”
Hirofumi doesn’t doubt that most of the plan is Fox’s– it’s smart. Sneak in from a side door and crash in a single room on the third floor as Fox, the most ordinary looking out of all of them, gets a card from the front desk. They’ll do a sweep later at night. It helps, too, that the right wing of the hotel is under construction for the summer: less places to hide.
All things considered, it’s far more of a lowkey mission than the bloodbath stuff that Denji does. Hell, Denji’s only ever done the bloodbath stuff. And Hirofumi knows that Control isn’t dumb– if this mission were anything like it seemed, she wouldn’t send clueless rookie Denji who only knows how to burst into a room drugged up and crazed.
It’s no coincidence.
Hirofumi has no idea what Control is planning– hell, he’s only been active for the past year– and it’s at moments like these that he wishes he still had Kishibe in his back pocket. But he’s learning, learning the best he can, and he knows–
“Denji, if things go wrong, we run, yeah?”
“Huh?”
“When things get fucked up, we’re out of here, okay? I’ll jack Fox’s car if I have to– we’re not saving those two.”
Denji stares at him for a moment, mouth slightly parted, eyes wide. Hirofumi thinks the other boy is going to argue, play the hero, scoff and say, What? It’s a group mission, you selfish fucking idiot.
“Duh,” Denji laughs, clapping Hirofumi on the shoulder and standing up.
Clearly, Hirofumi has Denji’s character down completely wrong.
author's notes
FINALLY this is posted!!!!
shorter than usual, i know, but this was a DRAG to get written, esp because i've had the next plot point in mind for literally forever, but i just couldn't figure out how to get there yk???? anyways, thank you all for ur continued support, i love reading ur comments, and, because this chapter is actually NOT proofread, please please please feel free to point anything out in my guestbook-- ur feedback is always welcome.also, if u get any of the references in my writing, please mention them. i'm a huge nerd and will actually start shaking if anyone points my silly little references out :))))) again love you all, and keep an eye out for the next few chapters!!!!! i promise i won't take two months to post!!!!
