Chapter Text
‘What’s with Byakuya’s attitude…? It’s like he… doesn’t even care. I’ve got him cornered, but he’s acting like it has nothing to do with him…!’
⊱♔⊰
The nightmares that have plagued Byakuya all his life have been substituted with disgusting, saccharine fantasies of a common boy.
Every night, life after life he’ll never get to have, each one full of enough holes that once Byakuya awoke, he identified each and every one. Made sure he understood, down to the pulp of his bones, the center of his heart, the entirety of his being— that they were just that.
Fantasy.
Disgusting, saccharine fantasy.
A Togami never mates for something as worthless as— God, it disgusted him to even think the word— love. A Togami does not wake up in a common bed, in the arms of a common boy, dreaming of a common life.
A Togami accepts nothing less than the finest life has to offer, in possessions and coupling. In dwelling and life.
Naegi scrutinized him from across the trial grounds.
Byakuya stared back, stalwart.
He could see every single one of Naegi’s freckles, each little mark blending together into a beautiful dusting across his face.
He wondered if he was freckled elsewhere. Down his arms. On his shoulders. On his legs and stomach and—
What Byakuya wouldn’t give to see it. What he wouldn’t do to offer Naegi money, so much money, too much money for a common boy to ever deny— enough for Naegi to show him. Show him everything.
He wouldn’t even touch.
Byakuya’s hand twitched at the thought of touching Naegi.
He looked so soft, so warm, so incomprehensibly comforting that Byakuya would just melt if he’d had the honor— honor?— of laying a hand on Naegi’s beautiful form.
In his dreams, they touched and tangled together and Makoto— he was Makoto in his dreams, not Naegi, and he was Byakuya, all a privilege that would never transfer to Byakuya’s true life.
His true destiny.
His true fate.
Makoto not Naegi peppered soft little kisses on his forehead, tangled his hand in his hair, touched him and loved him and loved him and loved him and loved him and loved him and—
Byakuya swallowed a lump in his throat. Swallowed again.
His whole body itched to retreat back into that fantasy land. To stay there forever.
How disgusting.
How weak.
He just couldn’t control himself, could he?
“What’s the matter?” His voice was steady and strong, as it always was. A Togami never shows weakness. A Togami is always brimming with vigor, with strength, no matter what discrepancy exists between that and his internal affairs.
A Togami should never have that sort of discrepancy in the first place.
“You’re not finished already, are you?”
Look at me.
“There must be more to it.”
Look at what I’ve done.
And look he did, staring at Byakuya with that determined look, that one he got the last trial when he cornered Kuwata.
The extension cord.
The extension cord that only Byakuya used and only Byakuya touched and Byakuya moved to string up the body and only Makoto knew Byakuya used it only Makoto knew Byakuya so well as to figure him out in such a manner.
Something twitched at that.
Naegi poured over every detail of Byakuya’s crime, peering at him as if he was running his eyes over Byakuya himself. As if it were Byakuya’s own corpse he was scrutinizing, tied up and pale, blood seeping out of his head and staining his perfect hair, eyes glassy and unfocused, Naegi running his hands up and down his strung-up body, his feelings for Byakuya spurring him on to find the blackened—
And then it was gone far too soon.
There was a murder case going on— but that was secondary, wasn’t it? Byakuya knew who it was. He could put an end to this farce whenever he’d like.
The crime scene was switched? Switched?!
Far too soon. It was gone far too soon.
Byakuya was cold.
Look at me.
They were discussing the poster.
Look at me.
Ogami’s protein coffee on the rug.
Look at me, Makoto.
The extension cord was discarded along with Byakuya’s desecrated corpse.
Makoto.
Please.
It was so, so cold.
Every cell in his body wanted to rush across the trial grounds, to grab Naegi and make him look, to tangle his arms into him just like in those fantasies.
‘You just couldn’t resist the rush you got from killing, could you?’
He’d said that to Fukawa.
The whole night before Fujisaki was discovered, Byakuya dreamt of two beautiful, grey eyes staring at him. Scrutinizing him.
Realizing his mistake. Outing him in front of everyone left in his little world.
A Togami never missteps.
Byakuya used the extension cord Genocide Jack always uses his special scissors to string up victims it doesn’t fit the modus operandi strung up Fujisaki’s corpse and dreamt it was his own, naked and bare and decaying. Putrid and hollow.
Naegi would hate him, now.
Be so disgusted by him that surely they’d never speak again.
Byakuya swallowed a lump.
Naegi knew what he was now. He saw Byakuya’s rotten soul laid bare— with full knowledge of how disgusting, how wretched and depraved he was.
‘But your efforts were useless. What a disappointment.’
He truly was.
Depraved, frantic, desperate and lonely— what was that last one?
It didn’t matter. Naegi’s revulsion would drive him away forever.
That didn’t matter, either. Byakuya had this one beautiful moment, did he not? One moment of those eyes on him, that boy focusing his full and undivided attention on him. Scrutinizing him like he were scrutinizing his naked form, laid bare to the world.
Byakuya wondered if Naegi would treat his corpse with compassion. Would he investigate gently? Would he miss Byakuya’s presence?
Would he weep?
He couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Couldn’t stop imagining Naegi’s face, distraught, tear-streaked, staring at the form that was formerly known as Byakuya Togami, emotion too raw and desperate to keep inside.
Would Makoto want him back? Miss him? Long to see him again, long for those blue eyes to gaze upon him once more?
How cruel, Byakuya decided, that the one way he could merge his dreams with reality was with his own death.
He couldn’t stop thinking about it.
After all, Byakuya knew one fact well. An irrelevant, unnecessary fact, and thus one that he planned to take to his grave, whenever that day may come.
It was almost him that night, sprawled out and dying on a cold, lonely floor.
He stared at Naegi once more.
He wondered if that would’ve made him look.