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Nightmares. Every Remnant has them.
Some are louder than others. Owari and Mioda scream so loud, the first few days with both awake and back on the island instead of monitored by the Future Foundation at the Neo World Program study on the center island had him running outside, half expecting one of his friends glossy-eyed, dissociated, weapon in hand and victim in the other. The rooms the Foundation had them stay in were halfway between prison cells and rooms at an old mental hospital. He guesses, in retrospect, it was necessary- the students responsible for the Biblical Rapture they caused during the Tragedy could turn into supersoldiers at a moment's notice, motivated by nothing but the urge to destroy. Nobody knew what they were dealing with when people started waking up. He didn't; he still remembers the fear in Kuzuryuu's eyes when he had to hold a gun up to his chest when he startled coming out of that pod, clawing at his transplanted eye festering with infection.
Sometimes when he closes his eyes, he still hears his voice the day he asked, ‘Why didn't you just fuckin’ shoot me, man?’, with a hand twitching at the string of his eyepatch. Something in him feels hollow, ceiling looking back at him in the twilight.
He likes to think Kuzuryuu is doing better these days. He could say different for himself.
The others have nightmares. Night terrors, for some of them. Sonia dresses herself in her old clothes, the ones with frills and crests on the pocket, and walks out of her cottage muttering in Slovakian. Souda found her having dived head-first into the pool, heels on, jewelry shined; dragged her out still in his pajamas, just in time before she inhaled any water.
When she woke up, she asked why she wasn't home. Why she wasn't in her throne room. Where the executioners had gone.
Hinata shivers. Her cottage has an outer lock on it now and he has the key. He casts a glance out the window, the full moon hanging like a jewel in the blue-tinted sky. A ray falls through his open window, catches in the gossamer curtains. They're just thin chiffon and cotton, but in the hazy light of a yawn-inducing 2:33AM, his sleep deprivation turns it into light through a diamond.
Everyone has nightmares, except two of them. Him and Komaeda.
Hinata tells them he has nightmares, and he doesn't feel like its a lie. They're just… When he's awake. The Project gave him Talents any number of people would kill for – and several dozens died for – all stacked up in a brain engineered of matter grown in petri dishes, sewn together like some sort of Venetian silk, designer paid for a price he wishes he never spent. His eyes flutter closed, scars on his temples pounding. Isn't Chanel supposed to be fucking enjoyable? Besides how trapping his Louis Vuitton prefrontal cortex felt, it also had a drawback he wishes he read fine print on: he can't forget anything, no matter how bad he tries.
Sometimes he swears he sees the faces of those students whose pictures were plastered in the old contract files of the record office in that basement he woke up in, years and years ago, in the corners of his vision when they get bad. As if seeing your own worst memories, and subsequently sins, playing on repeat in front of your open eyes isn't horrorifying enough, sometimes he even thinks he's haunted.
He glances outside the window at the moon in the indigo sky. It almost looks like a stage set. His mouth goes dry. No. I know I'm haunted.
Just not by them.
When it gets late and Hinata's artificial insomnia rages, he finds himself lamenting on the finer details of his existence. That's dangerous when you live a life like his. His jaw aches from clenching it against his migraine, and the whisping of the curtains around his bed do nothing to help the flashes of a strawberry blonde in his vision, the smell of too much expensive perfume, the fluttering of mascara-ed eyelashes around eyes too blue for the kind of person they hid. He sits up with a start, stomach churning. He smells smoke and the unique, gut-wrenching scent of decay. He looks down at his hands. Blinks.
Blood covers them. He blinks again. They're clean.
He needs a drink.
Some people might say they expect someone like Hinata to be an addict. He'd agree- except along with every other edited part of his body, he can't be an addict. His brain was optimized to never be controllable, breakable, turned against the Academy, made to withstand torture methods that go as far back as Ancient Mesopotamia. I know. I read their papers... Another thing I'd love to forget. He guesses removing human vices was a part of that process. The Academy was brutally paranoid; sometimes he thinks to the point of concern. They assigned several shrinks to study how to mutilate the human mind to make sure it couldn't be broken by any government, facility, terrorist, or organization.
Too bad one Killer Barbie did it anyway. And yet the fucking bourbon is inferior. That's rich.
He walks the steps to the hotel. Granite feels like sand under his feet. He wonders, absentmindedly, if a strong kick would chip it. In one embarrassing breakdown in his early weeks on the island, he started punching the solid brick wall outside the music venue on the other island. Pekoyama tried to pull him back, and her and Nidai ended up on the floor. Kuzuryuu yelled at him to ‘stop fucking throwing a tantrum, Hajime!’ when he heard the brick start to crack.
He told him later it was a worry about him breaking his hand. $You're our handyman around here," he grumbled as he patched him up. Yakuzas know all about bloody knuckles. Hinata regarded it a little fondly, until he remembered Kuzuryuu's face when he said, “We'd all… Die without you.” His jaw was clenched in a way Hinata's Ultimate Psychiatrist talent knew meant fear.
Sometimes he misses his old mind. That one wouldn't recognize that one of his best friends was scared he might snap and break his spine one day.
His hands brush over the whiskey glasses, then over the ice shovel. The light is thin, cold, clinical. It looks too much like a hospital. He flips off the overhead light by the stove, the fluorescents too white. He stares at the freezer full of ice, eyes unblinking.
He shoves his hands in it. He leaves it until it starts to burn.
A glass of ice and vanilla bourbon with grenadine later, he holds it in his wet, cold hands. They shake, and he stills them mechanically. Nothing about it feels right, so he lets them shake. I'd rather shake like a damn chihuahua than look like him. Hinata lifts the glass to his lips, and the smell hits him square in the face.
Vanilla. Alcohol. Something red.
He washes it down the sink and starts the tea kettle. It whistles in the background; he grabs a chai bag with brown sugar syrup and pours it. His hand stings on contact. He takes it as a reminder he's alive.
I… Should be grateful I have that, at least. His heart quickens and he pretends not to notice.
... Like I can not notice fucking anything.
He wishes he had the balls to stomach the bourbon.
He knees open the door. The room is full of cool blue light, the all-glass balcony wall letting in twinkles of starlight. The jewel of a moon hangs in the sky outside, mocking. Constant reminder I'm awake at this ungodly hour. Hinata sighs, takes a sip of his tea. It warms his teeth, washes down his throat with a taste darker than vanilla. Smokier. Fuller-bodied.
The balcony door is open. He feels the room drop a few degrees.
“Komaeda,” he says. “I didn't hear you.”
He turns. Komaeda is leaning against a table with his legs crossed, tilting dangerously on the back legs of the wooden chair. His eyes gleam like a lion, mouth not betraying his excitement. Its neutral, but he knows that look in his eye. “Do you ever, Hinata-kun?” A few beats pass. A slow, glittering smile takes over his face. It has the shine a freshly-sharpened knife does when you grind it against marble.
Something like you?, his mind can't help but run. He white-knuckles his styrofoam cup. Never. Not even me.
He doesn't say that. Komaeda hates reminders. “What are you doing here?” He bites back what are you doing up. He knows. He knows as he has ever since Kamukura found that damned file among all the others in the Hope's Peak archives about their studies, the only one titled with Komaeda's name. The only one without a picture. Komaeda's smile evens back out to a thin line, and he knows that means he won't answer. He groans. “Are you fucking with me right now?”
“No,” he says, and the amusement is clear in his tone. Hinata's stomach drops. Oh, what did I fucking say now? For all its worth, he feels a bit more human to not be ten steps ahead of his next move for a minute. That's a first this week. Komaeda lets a little teeth show, and a shiver wracks Hinata's frame. “If I was fucking with you, I'd be at your cottage. Wouldn't I?”
His jaw tightens. Even though its 3AM, he glances around like he expects someone to have heard. He swears he hears a creak in floorboards, eyes flying around. Komaeda tuts, motions to the floor. His chair digs into the planks. “Paranoid tonight, Hinata-kun?” he asks, then stands. His white hair is windswept and has a dent in the back of it. “Is Kamukura haunting your sleep tonight?” His eyes remind him of a shark.
“Shut up,” he bites. Komaeda makes a surprised face he knows is all drama. “Your hair dented from your coffin again?” he snaps, and Komaeda's eyes darken. He looks up through his eyelashes, all parted lips and breathy laughs.
Komaeda hates reminders… Until he doesn't. Hinata gulps. I probably just turned him on. Shit.
Komaeda takes a step forward. Or starts to, anyway. He stops with his boot halfway to the floor. Hinata would never admit it to his face since it would probably register as foreplay, but Komaeda freaks him out. He's the only thing that does. Thing. Even when Hinata was just ‘Kamukura-san’, Komaeda unnerved him to his bones – the first thing he ever came across then that made a shiver run down his spine, messed with his senses, made his breath quicken. It hasn't changed.
Komaeds takes a breath. Deep, through his nose. Smelling. Hinata feels an urge to take a step back, but he doesn't. That's the only thing that makes me who I am with him. Komaeda unnerves him- Hell, he freaks him out most days- but Hinata is probably the only person alive who can be near him when his eyes go dark and dilated and he sniffs the air like that and not immediately run or shit his fucking pants. He smiles. Hinata registers he's wearing his Equestrian boots. He nearly snorts, tries not to look fond. Less of a fashion crime than those zipper mouths, Jesus Christ. Komaeda smiles.
Its genuine beneath the hunger. Hinata's heart quickens and he tells it to heel before he takes it to the Goddamn pound. Komaeda taps the lid of his tea. “Chai?” Komaeda hums. His nails have grown long again, and they're pointing to a tip. Hinata's going to have to wrestle him to cut them. You'd think I'm the only one trying to keep everyone from staking you. “And… Don't tell me,” he hums. “And…”
He takes a step forward. He leans in, close enough to Hinata he feels the cold radiating off of him like a body on ice. His mind swirls with estimations of how many centimeters it takes to close the gap. I'm as deranged as he is, he takes a breath in. I need a psych eval.
They'd tell me I'm nuts, his voice snaps back. He wants to lean in. Show him what else is in it. Split personality integrated and gone fucking Stockholm Syndrome, Holy shit. Komaeda licks his lips and his breath is cold. “... Brown sugar syrup,” he whispers.
“Not fucking fair,” Hinata grumbles, then pushes him back with a hand to his chest. There's no pulse or warmth to greet him. The floor tries to fall out from under him, and suddenly it feels like he drank anyway. “You can smell that shit from across the island, Komaeda.”
Komaeda ignores him. Lets him push him back like he can't take a star-shower of bullets and walk away breathing, bends his arms back like he would if he pushed him off the top roof of Hope's Peak Academy. Hinata imagines that, imagines what would happen. There'd be no body on the ground. Komaeda turns mid mock-fall, flipping on his heel like he's waltzing, then trails the edge of the table with a hand, back to Hinata. “Its my favorite tea,” he hums, then looks at the wall. Crosses his arms, smile playing his lips. He grins, and his sharp teeth catch the light like pearls carrying threat. His hips are parallel to the wall, even if fifteen feet away. He stares at it like a mirror he can't see into. “How cruel for you not to bring me one, Hinata-kun.”
His mouth goes dry. “You don't drink tea,” he curses his throat for making that damn croak. I sound like a frog. He tries to clear it without being heard, which is stupid, because Komaeda can hear his pulse from a football field away. That idea makes him try to pull it under; its too damn loud in his ears.
“You don't drink anything, except-” Hinata cuts himself off. His stomach feels like he just jumped off that damn roof. “... You don't eat or drink anything. We both know that.”
Komaeda doesn't correct him. He knows he knows, and he knows he knows he knows. That's the whole fucking point. He's a voyeur. He almost kicks himself in the leg if Komaeda wouldn't see from his peripheral, which with him, is the damn same as dead-on– so he just bites the inside of his cheek and remembers to stop before it bleeds. I need to get a hold on my word choice, oh my God. “Its my favorite,” he insists, and Hinata opens his mouth to bite back. He read Vampires Encyclopedia, thank you very much. Eyes flit to the balcony door wide open.
“How'd you get in here, anyway?” He knows the answer. Asks anyway. Who's the voyeur now?
But Komaeda looks at him, and for a second, its just those swirling eyes. Then he blinks, and those eyes are red, redder than his were once upon a time. His voice dies in his throat, and he suddenly can't blink anymore. Bastard. “Its my favorite because it tastes like you,” he runs his tongue along his lip, “and… I came in through the window.” He whispers it, just to be mean.
Hinata's knees go weak. He's not sure if that's him or the hypnosis. Komaeda looks away and down to the floor, walking with footsteps that don't echo leisurely, languidly up to Hinata. The arms crossed over his chest loosen until they look like he's just walked out of a crypt with an open blouse on, eyes scanning his face. His lips. His neck. “You're hungry,” he says, blank. He's glad this time it doesn't betray how dry his mouth is.
“Famished, love,” Komaeda hums, and the nickname drops like a silver coin in the water. It sinks like it can't brand his skin. Hinata doesn't cover up the way he shivers. He slams the cup down on the table. Komaeda doesn't pretend to act casual; his eyes light up like he knows what sun feels like.
“Fine,” he grumbles, starts walking to the booth along the wall. Sitting is always safer when it comes to Komaeda feeding. Some days he'll take a few mouthfuls, others Hinata has to perform ethically-confounded blood transfusions on himself at the hospital without Tsumiki questioning where another blood bag has gone. At least its gone to someone living this time, he thinks every time, without fail. Once he almost said it to her. He didn't, but she saw the scandalized look on his face. “Get it over with.” He adds extra bite to cover up his embarrassment at remembering how fast he ran away from Tsumiki. He's pretty sure he kicked dirt in her face.
He feels a yank on his wrist, then a pull. The air whips around his face. “Wh-” his blood roars in his ears, floor out from under him. “Komaeda, what the fuck?!” He gets it out fast, because he's moving fast. The wall behind him thuds loud. If he wasn't a superhuman bioexperiment, the wind would be knocked out of him. His back aches. It throbs duly against his spine. Komaeda's cold hand trails up his hip, his side, then settles on his shoulder. He ignores the leg between his, face flaming. He's trying to get my blood pounding, Hinata rations with himself. He knows he's lying. Komaeda looks like a siren on the edge of the rowboat.
Wrong monster. The hand roams down his shoulder, and he scowls for emphasis. He sticks his hand out at Komaeda, fishing for his Army knife in his pocket. “Are you in a biting mood,” he asks, trying to sound like he's pissed off. If he doesn't, he sounds too… Complacent. Submissive. He's ready to kick his leg now. “Or do you want to use the knife? You feeling sadistic?” he quips, like its a dig. Komaeda grins with all his teeth.
“I prefer to sink into you, Hinata-kun,” he whispers, and oh, fuck you. Hinata knees him in the crotch as hard as he can. He doesn't know why, because unless he captured the sun in a jar or laid a communion wafer on his forehead Wilhelmina-style, he can't hurt Komaeda. Even after that damn surgery. Komaeda laughs wheezey and breathy, and he feels like a fucking dumbass.
“I was trying to hurt you,” he gets out, but it sounds dry. Komaeda sinks to the ground, and for a split second, his mind goes blank. What the fuck?! What happened to the blood, dude?
And then he promptly feels the need to run to a confessional- I'm not even fucking Catholic- because Komaeda was just grabbing his hand. Oh. Yeah. Blood flow. Gravity. Right. He needs to get fucking neutered.
Komaeda hums, smiles. “Below you, where I belong,” he rasps, and Hinata almost kicks him in the face. He hopes he's on some self-deprecating bullshit again and that wasn't an innuendo. Komaeda kisses the vein that runs to the middle of his palm, and he grits his teeth. This is going to hurt like a bitch. He's not excited.
“You know I can tell when your heart quickens, darling?” Komaeda's voice sounds like molasses. Hinata's noticing more and more these days that he only puts the pet names in sentences that flaunt his status as a member of the eternally damned. He glares down at him. Who do you take me for, Drac? Bella Swan? He considers saying it.
“Yes,” he hums. Hinata chokes. Asshole. He feels for his rosary in his breast pocket. Not there.
“Stop with the fucking psychic shit,” he hisses. “Where'd I p-put that thing?” Komaeda licks up his palm and he tries to hide the shudder. It fails. He fishes his pocket.
Komaeda reaches into his boot. Tosses something on the floor. Hinata's eyes zero in. “You dick,” his voice gets louder, “You absolute fucking- oh!”
It sears. It burns. It feels like being stabbed, it feels like an IV getting placed. It feels amazing. His head swims, palm throbbing. Komaeda sinks deeper, and Hinata notices the signs a second before he tenses in preparation. Komaeda tears sideways with his teeth still buried, a gash going sideways. He gapes, breathing heavy. The bastard had a knife right there. He grits at him. “Do you have to use those things as a blade,” he puffs, lightheaded with the sting, “when this is right here?” He brandishes it, for fun.
Komaeda purrs. Literally. It echoes in his chest like a motor on a car. Hinata's eyes flutter, and he flashes to the image of Carmilla, feline and heavy, laid across a bed somewhere in Europe, a thousand miles and hundreds of years away. He opens his eyes and sees feline eyes staring right at him anyway. He gulps. “Again,” he says, “The only thing I want in you is me.”
Okay, he's definitely doing that one on purpose. Hinata almost slaps him, but he knows what that will do, and exactly where it'll end. With me staring at the lid of a coffin all damn night with my shirt off. He swallows. “Stop making sex jokes and drink,” he sounds breathless even to his own ears. He tells himself its pain. That the palm has way too many nerve endings for him to be entertaining Komaeda's sadism. He needs to start carrying scalpels again. He shoves his palm in his face, wipes some of the blood on Komaeda's lips.
Its a dangerous game. Or would be, if he was anyone else. If he cared about danger, or if it cared about him. Komaeda's eyes dilate and Hinata grinds his teeth to ignore the growl that tears through the air, wolfy and loud.
It sounds obscene. It sounds sinful. Not just in the way its wet, loud, smacking- like teenagers kissing behind the prom night dumpsters, teeth and tongue and something reckless, juvenile. It sounds bloody. Its the kind of wet that Hinata knows from too many years racking up bodies on the streets of almost every Prefecture of Japan, the kind he's slid in, gotten his shoes oily across a tile floor with. Its the kind that wets your hands, stains your hair, clots under your nails. It runs down his wrist, and Komaeda licks, kisses, acts devotional. His eyes are anything but Holy, but Hinata can't help but indulge a Talent- the ones he swears he hates- to reassure himself the look in them is worship.
He doesn't know what it says about him. That he'll betray his recovery against the worst mistake of his life like that- to go to bed knowing that look means the blood is Holy oil made human to him. The rosary mocks him on the floor.
Hinata has an urge to crush it. I'm starting to get blood loss. I'm getting delirious. The Hail Mary's glint back at him, and he counts all seven. Komaeda digs his serpent tongue into the wound and his head hits the wall. He swears he hears something crack.
“Your body is so strong,” Komaeda whispers across his skin, and he's so deep in the gash it vibrates through him. Hinata shakes. His knees are getting weak. He pulls back, lips streaked with blood, diluted down his chin. His eyes are rubies in the light, skin pale and pearlescent. He's gorgeous. Hinata doesn't even chide himself that time. Komaeda licks a thumb, shuddering. “Am I the only person who can tear it like this? Like its paper?”
He knows he's goading. Knows this is some weird kink thing and he shouldn't feed it. He tilts his head down, breath shuddering, heart hammering. His palm throbs blood that drips onto the floor. Cold fingers with long nails dig into his wrist. Hinata's eyes seem to flutter again, then they roll. Same thing could be said about him, but then again…
Fuck it. I've crossed that line way too many times, anyway.
“You tear me easier than the knife does,” he murmurs, wipes the sweat off his forehead with his good hand. His chest heaves. He thumbs a button open, and Komaeda's mouth opens. It drops to the wound, salacious, lavishing. “Than the scalpel did.” It should feel wrong to say. It should feel fucking depressing. It feels like a confession instead. It feels like a promise.
He remembers a lifetime ago when Komaeda wore a collar with a chain on it and a leather jacket. A sweater too girly for a man who lived centuries, with titles in the aristocracy that would put Dracula to shame. Boots with heels. Curls in his hair that got thick with blood when he bent over him with his teeth in his neck, staining a black suit and tie.
It is a promise. Komaeda kisses up his wrist. His knees start to go out. They crumble from under him. Komaeda grabs one thigh and pushes him back up, fingers wrapped around it like a vice. His mind blanks. The only vice I'm weak to.
That breaks through. He's going down, fast. He always does when they do this, but he's the only one who knows. He erased any memory from the Tragedy or prior from everyone's memories before taking them out of the Program. Komaeda teased him for being territorial. He swore it was that everyone was terrified of him – he wouldn't put it past someone in a flashback to shove him out into the Pacific Island sun one afternoon and lock him out.
Komaeda bites into his wrist, white-hot and deep. A scream erupts from his throat. His wrist drips, veins pumping harder. It starts dripping faster, the echoes on the floorboards sounding Cathedralic. His body shakes, and Komaeda stands up slowly, one leg at a time, pressing himself close, whispering words in some foreign language against his pulse. My pulse is on the fucking floor right now, what fucking pulse? Hinata's head rolls against the wallpaper, breathing labored. His own scream echoes back and he cringes. That… Sounded- I'm not even gonna think it.
That time he does kick his leg. He hisses, blood loss dragging down the artificial pain tolerance the Kamukura Project gave him. When Komaeda feeds, for just a second, he almost feels normal- so human, so fragile he feels like he's atoning. Like he's just Hinata Hajime again. Like he's got finals at the end of the week and the world still stands outside his dorm window.
His eyes prick with tears. His wrist burns and his heart feels full, even while it pumps to fill what he's losing. Komaeda pulls back; there's a perfect fang mark imprint in his inner wrist, almost mocking in how flawless it is. So cliché. He looks down at Komaeda. His whole body feels like a live wire, sparking and oil-slick.
He's not going to say it. He's not- “Show me your teeth,” he huffs.
Komaeda grins, but the bastard tilts his head so Hinata can't see his teeth from that angle. He starts to whine somewhere in his thrumming throat before he catches himself, clears his throat, and, in a moment of clarity, tries to steady himself. He stares level at Komaeda, daring, mouth wet and open, panting from exertion and blood loss. He hisses at him, and vaguely he thinks, damn, you sound like the vampire.
“Teeth,” he grits at him. Grabs his chin for good measure. Komaeda reaches up with fingers warming from bloodflow when Hinata pulls his lip up over a canine. It curls and extends far enough Hinata can guess its double the length it should be, at least right now while he's hungry, feeding. For a split second, he thinks it looks like a sliver of a crescent moon.
His head isn't getting good blood flow. Its not. He'll blame that, or will when he wakes up in the morning. Wherever he does. Yeah, that's why, not enough blood to the head- a pad of a thumb trailing over the point of a canine, running over receded gums, teeth stained a shade of red he remembers washing out of clothes, running through water until the tap ran clear.
His mind is startlingly clear when he hears it echo, I hope your tongue never fucking runs clear. He steps forward.
To Hell with it.
He tugs Komaeda up by the lapels of his sleep shirt. He only ever wears this stuff around me. The shirt is white, matte satin, open collar and buttons down three, showing collarbones sharp with marble skin, age that never touched its texture. His mind runs and his hands follow, running along the sharp edge of the bone there. He half expects it to slice his finger open wide, leave a new wound Komaeda would no doubt assault the same- but instead he feels a texture he thinks you'd feel on an alabaster sculpture carved to look like old silk, a veil on the Virgin Mary.
He leans forward. His feet are unsteady, but his heart is hammering and he's drunk on blood loss. His mind swirls with whatever Komaeda infects him with through those Goddamn wounds, mouth leaving a spell in their wake. Some kind of glamour must leak into his blood stream when he salivates into an open wound like that- Hinata makes stupid decisions when he's like this, high and pretentious, ready to throw religion to the wind. Religion he never had.
Komaeda does that to him. He's not ashamed. Not right now, with his lips stained with so much blood he looks like he's wearing lip gloss. Dizziness clashes with drunken haze in his head so bad Hinata forgets he didn't actually touch the alcohol. I wonder if it tastes like cranberry.
Komaeda's eyes flash. Red gleams like garnets in his vision, and he's knocked against the wall again. It winds a lot more with less blood, with a vampire hunting him like some kind of wild animal, hands clawing. He feels the nails sink into his skin through his clothes, and all he can think is, I am so fucking glad I didn't ask him to cut them yesterday.
For a split second, it feels like he's falling. Or flying, or both. Komaeda's hands wrap around his thighs and haul him up, a feat someone human could never do. It makes the burn feel like gasoline; accelerator gone glassy, skin hot to the touch between his ice-cold hands. For a second, he thinks he sees the reflection of firelight in Komaeda's eyes. I swear I-
He's expecting a messy clash of lips and teeth, something teenage and as drunken as he feels. The kind of thing you expect after too many sips off the spiked punch, laser lights on the gymnasium floor flashing in his head. Komaeda leans close, cold breath fanning his face, and his wrist still drips on the floor. His eyes roll, feeling halfway to passing out, pulse a waterfall roar in his ears. He blinks, bleary and wild-eyed.
I'm so glad Komaeda doesn't come with a hangover, is all he remembers thinking, throwing an arm around the back of his neck.
And then it hits. A twin stab, cold and cruel, then a tear, then sinking, searing pain. His neck slicks, wet, warm, and a hand covers his mouth faster than he realizes he's being bitten. Its not as romantic as the movies. The pain hits first and Komaeda isn't the type for self-control – he rips and gnarls and once, Hinata had to have him help him pack a shoulder wound like a bullet tore through him. But he makes a noise that might be a gasp into the tunneling wound, and Hinata has one clear thought before all Hell breaks loose-
Hinata gasps like he's being fucked. He better not stop if I pass out.
The world spins, stops, and falls forward. The room turns into a kaleidescope. Everything glares with lights Hinata knows isn't there, lights Komaeda could never handle. Things blink black twice, then hold a spectacle of teal-indigo light. Everything goes sparkly and searing white.
Komaeda doesn't know where he is. He doesn't know who he is, what name he's using this century. His feet are rooted to the floor, the laces up the front of the old riding boots pressing into the front of his jeans. Something echoes far back, rumbling and quiet, reverberating like a cave's ricochet; I'm with Hinata-kun, he thinks, breaking away to breathe. He doesn't need to. He does anyway. The blood connects to his lip with a string that's starting to coagulate. His stomach lurches forward like it chases the taste. I never wear my old clothes with anyone else.
It tastes like old pennies and stale milk on the surface. Like water left out too long in a rusty container. Deeper than that, it tastes like the smell of pinewood fresh on a carriage trail. It tastes like a cherry cocktail with too much sugar and tequila you drink after you swore you'd never drink tequila again one too many crazy karaoke nights later. It tastes like the kind of coffee teenagers who drink lattes call ‘mud’, thick with grains at the bottom you get stuck in your teeth. It feels like being a teenager and drinking vanilla extract to get a buzz and ending up liking the flavor when it burns your throat. It tastes like the bourbon vanilla and grenadine Hinata dumped down the drain.
Komaeda pulls back. His vision swims. Skin lays torn and ruined, pulsing with pain and blood dripping down Hinata's back, down his clavicle, through his shirt. His chest heaves with uneven breaths. He's huffing, he's whining, his neck is so wrecked that the noises come out like gurgles. There's blood leaking in his throat, down the back of it. If he didn't clot better than anyone not made out of fake petri dish organelles, he probably would be passed out, halfway dead by now. The idea makes Hinata feel things it shouldn't, sounds better than it has any right to.
He grips the wall. His vision dips, goes black. Maybe not clotting too well. “Woah-” his throat feels wet in the back of it, free hand grabbing at Komaeda's shoulders. “Dizzy. Holy fuck. I- nearing blackout territory, Komaeda, seriously damn close.”
It wasn't a stop. It wasn't even a pause. That says a lot about me. He tries to pretend he's just altruistic. He's not.
He's half expecting Komaeda might not stop. Sometimes he can't. It wouldn't be the first time. But he does- he pulls back, eyes clearing, smoke going flat. Hinata watches the edge of his face blur, feminine lines going in several directions when the light hits. “Are you still against the coffin tonight, Hinata-kun?” he teases, chuckling. Something about his words is tight when he laughs.
But its not cruel. He's laying Hinata down on the booth seat like its a cot, hand flitting to his unmarred jugular and pressing two fingers there. His fingertips are almost warm. It makes Hinata laugh, throaty and unembarassed. “Warm,” he thrums, head heavy. He sighs. Gotta lay it down…
Blood loss is a bitch, because he's laying down, head flopping side to side like Komaeda teared his spleen out like some sort of cannibal. Is it cannibalism if he isn't human? Hinata stares at the ceiling, half-high. Dazed. Komaeda hums. “You'll survive,” he says, nearly haughty. Hinata snorts. Oh, like you're proud to test me?
He's up in Komaeda's arms before he feels the gravity beneath him. If he had the blood for it, he would blush being carried bridal style so easily. I'm not light. How much weight can he carry? Hinata was a Hell of a lot of artificially-sewn sinew and muscle mass, and Komaeda sometimes could hide behind a well-built toothpick. Looks can be deceiving when you haven't been alive since…
His head swam. His forehead wrinkled, memory buzzing like a static screen. What did my research say about his earliest-?... Hinata couldn't remember. He's never tell a damn soul, or even those without one, but he spends free time in the library sometimes, pouring through historical accounts in different languages, looking for the oldest account he can find of a boy with white hair and a family of prominence. His earliest was…
My memory only is faulty around him. It shouldn't make Hinata smile, but it does. Blame it on the blood loss.
When the door closes behind him, everything darkens behind his lids. Komaeda's curtains are blackout, his lights are a quieter fluorescence, and Hinata put UV window film over his bathroom windows days before he brought him back to the island after he woke up. The room is so dark that once, Hinata slept in it two days straight – so hard that apparently, the others thought Komaeda had hacked him up into tiny pieces and buried him in his window plant pottery.
Trying to explain what he had been doing in Komaeda's cottage for two days was not a task he wants to repeat.
He hears rustling. A wooden creak hits the ceiling like some kind of Cathedral, the quiet whisper back humming in his head. He opens his eyes to see soft, buttery light – probably one of the kerosene lamps on the coffee table – flushing a glare off Komaeda's white hair, blood flow so impaired he reaches a bloodied hand up to run fingers through it. Komaeda doesn't flinch when he gets blood in it. Hinata doesn't wince when he soaks a wash cloth in saline and rubbing alcohol and wipes him down like he's the doctor between them.
He's laying down in soft, silky sheets. There's two tall walls at his side. Hinata's hair at the back of his neck is soaked in blood, flaking and thickening with clumps already mushing against his skin. Komaeda lays down gauze that smells like sterility and single-use plastic, whispering in that language again. Hinata looks up through eyelashes that shimmer with bronze gleam.
“What language are you speakin’?” he grumbles, and Komaeda just smiles. Keeps whispering in it. Hinata furrows his eyebrows, tries to look intimidating when he's laid out like a piece of meat. The butcher had a fun time with me. He blinks at Komaeda through his eyelashes again. “Hey,” he tries to sound big, but his throat croaks. The blood runoff thickens his speech, and he tries to clear it. “What, are you speaking Romanian or something?”
Komaeda hums. He smiles. His teeth are quieter now- average sized, if not sharp and a little long. Hinata stifles whatever thought he felt bubbling about missing the gnarly canines that came down out from under his upper lip. “Yes,” his smile is nearly sleepy. Sunlight is starting to pour in under the curtains. Hinata's mind short-circuits.
“What?” he asks, and for a second, he tries to sit up on his elbows. He crumbles, groaning up into the open air. Komaeda giggles girlishly, crawling over the casket edge and into the space beside him. The lid comes over, not enough to close, but enough to shield the light from the lamps, the bathroom kept on for Hinata stumbling in the middle of the night. He turns into Komaeda, whispering. “You know Romanian?” His bloodied shirt collar brushes under his nose, and it smells rusty and romantic. Its the smell of a secret nobody else keeps.
Komaeda hums. “Ask me if I'm Romanian in the morning, Hinata-kun,” he shushes, running a hand over his back. His breathing is evening out, and Hinata feels something in him swell with whatever takes up the absence of blood. Who needs it anyways? “You lost a lot of blood.” There's a long pause.
“You kinda scared me,” Komaeda whispers into his blood-drenched hair. He breathes out, then in. The smell of iron and Hinata's shampoo mix, and for a second, he swears he feels a heartbeat in his chest. “I… I was worried when you-”
He's snoring. There's a quiet pitter-patter against Komaeda's shirt. He smiles, lips brushing brown hair mingled with sweat and something rotting.
“... Te iubesc, Hinata-kun,” he whispers, just in case he's awake.
Kuzuryuu is no stranger to nightmares.
He had them before the Tragedy. He had them since he was six years old and accidentally walked in on his father's lackeys torturing some loan shark in his office thinking he was going to walk in on the board meeting he'd heard about all week instead, intent on asking his dad to take him and Pekoyama for ice cream. Before that day, his father was just a man with a deplorable self-made business- and a very successful one at that. He had a nice house in the middle of a skycrape-ridden city, urban and full of gunmetal-silver surfaces that gleamed with reflections that he swears spoke back, weapons at the holsters of every bodyguard in every room he grew up in. He had a lot of employees and he took care of his wife. Rule one of the mob: respect the women. They take care of the children. The heirs.
He blinks his one eye – the one I have left – and scratches through his buzzed hair, sighing into the empty of the room. Pekoyama snores softly in the bed beside him. He blinks again, and in the darkness his jaw tightens, seeing those skyscrapers on fire, tilted into collapse, bomb debris at his feet. The buildings he watched from the backseat of his dad's limos as a kid going back and forth to shady speakeasies that bowed to him like Japan still had a monarchy and he was the prized prince no longer stood proud. He kicks on some shoes, blinking back traitor tears. His mind keeps running. Adrenaline response from growin’ up with hits on your back before you could drive your own damn car.
Those skyscrapers are level now. Tokyo's asphalt has dents the size of dinosaur footprints, left behind by teenagers gone insane. Guess those are my tire marks. His fist clenches at the doorknob.
Pekoyama's sitting up in bed, crimson eyes shining. A nightgown strap is going down her shoulder. He wants nothing more than to go back to bed with her in his arms. His eye stings again. “You had a nightmare,” her silver-cool voice hits like a brick to the head. He doesn't nod. “Do you need anything, Fuyuhiko?”
At least there's none of that Young Master mess anymore. He's not young and he certainly isn't her master. Not anymore. He likes to think he never was. He nods, curt and cold. Hard nights make him extra emotionally unavailable, even with Peko. He dosesn't like that about himself, but he isn't changing anytime soon.
He casts a glance at her, or goes to, but the missing eye cuts half of it off. He can't see much of her because of it. His heart squeezes and he never has hated himself more, except for when she died. He grits his teeth so hard he thinks something might chip. She smiles at him. “Grab me a beer, will you?” she asks, and he nods again.
The air outside is biting. His night shirt billows in the island cold, pinstripes curling with the breeze. Its a shirt he got in imitation of his blazer, still sat up in his closet with blood on the lining, original and ruinous. He hasn't worn the one from his childhood since the Tragedy. Hinata made him a carbon copy when he woke up, found him on the floor of the canteen at the Foundation's HQ clawing at the breast pocket like it contained his own heart.
Hinata could be sentimental when he wants to be. He often is. Kuzuryuu likes that about him.
Hands in his pocket, cheeks stinging with salty air, he starts off towards the hotel. The world is quiet, the stars shining back on him. The air smelt like fresh Earth and something alcoholic. Maybe someone left a cocktail by the pool. He doesn't bother looking. His boots squeak on the damp wood planks, creaky, haunted-house-old. If he wasn't used to shoving down shivers on his spine, he'd have shuddered at the noise.
He's not alcoholic and he's certainly not addict, but the nightmares are visceral with him. He was never shy of violence, even before he became a Remnant. The apocalypse he had a hand in only made him a worse man to cross. I wasn't even a man, he thinks, remembering the day they all celebrated what should have been their graduation with flames set to the school garden, eyes swirling with Dionystic madness. She sat in the middle of it, worshipped like a Goddess, preening and running her fingers through her bombshell curls like Aphrodite sitting on a sea rock. He clicks his tongue in his mouth. His eye socket burns. Like the damn whore didn't get enough attention as a fuckin’ model.
She didn't. It wasn't enough attention until she was crushed to death, broadcasted to the world. It wasn't enough attention until the population of Japan, of Korea and China and all of Asia, of the world itself started turning against its own humanity for her fucked up, psychotic philosophy.
Sometimes Kuzuryuu thinks she still craves the attention. That that's what the flashbacks are; her haunting his thoughts and wrapping her knuckles on the side of his head, whispering with glossed lips brushing his ear.
It takes everything in him not to punch through the glass of the hotel door when he reaches for it and it doesn't open. Someone locked this bitch? He growls out into the ocean air, chlorine on his tongue. He swears the pool behind him sounds like it has waves in it, like someone's wading. Nobody comes between me and my alcohol. Nobody.
He swears he's not alcoholic. He just… Feels like he deserves something to help him sleep, after what he's been through.
With a kick to the bottom of the front door, glass trembling, he turns on his heel. He'll take the stairs up to the balcony and go in the door up there. He swings the gate at the threshold of the staircase a little hard, for good measure – it hits the railing wall and jitters like its got as much anxiety as he does, shooting a glare at the trembling wire weave. Shut the fuck up. Don't be dramatic, he chastises. “You ain't been through nothin’,” he grumbles under his breath, starting the stair case. He doesn't take his hand out of his pocket to hold the railing.
Halfway up the stairs, he pauses. Goes stock-still. He smells vanilla whiskey, warm and sweet with something cherry-scented. Its got honey to it and it smells like its been warmed up on a stove, woody and savory. It wafts on the wind like its coming out of the wall, a shiver wracking up Kuzuryuu's spine. The wind whistles, and then he hears it.
They've all reported it. That Goddamn classical music. He's not a priss, so he couldn't tell a soul what composer it is- but every now and again the others will hear a waltz on the breeze, or in a room alone, or at the old abandoned military base, or even in the shower with their eyes closed and the memories pouring in like floodwater. They told Hinata. He looked at them and said, in that voice that sounds too much like Kamukura, ’Its just the psychosis. Take an Ativan and come find me. Junko liked to listen to classical when she was planning something.'
And they all loved him, so they let him believe they believed him. They took the pills like candy and ignored the cold flush in the air, never asked why he didn't hear it himself. He and Komaeda are the only ones who never said they heard…
He's at the top of the stairs now. His hand is reaching for the door. He's turning towards it. The music screeches to a halt, the sound deafening, metal on stone. Its a shipwreck on a dock, on a cliffside in the water. Its the sound of a proper blade being churned and sharpened through the fire. He looks up, vision sparking, ears ringing.
What. The. Fuck. Hajime, what the FUCK are you doing? He has half a mind to open the door anyway, let him have a piece of his mind. His vision swirls with the screeching a little more, and when Komaeda's grip on him tightens against that wall, nails in his friend's thigh, Kuzuryuu swears under his breath and looks up towards the sky.
Might as well give them some Goddamn privacy.
Kuzuryuu is like everyone else on the island. He wants Hajime to get over himself, his little crush. Komaeda's a fucking freak, and he's a weirdo too- he always carries that black umbrella Hinata made him, those velvet gloves, and he says things that can range from creepy to downright historical fanfiction, Jack the Ripper style. Kuzuryuu has never been able to figure him out, and he figures everybody out. He's the king of interrogation and he can piece together mysteries he's not emotionally involved in faster than Holmes. Even Kirigiri compliments his intellect, which when you know Kirigiri, is a real tribute. But Komaeda stumps him. More than that – he scares him.
He remembers the day he found a pistol in his drawer, volunteering to check up on his health for Hinata. It was loaded with bullets he had no idea how he got. The Future Foundation wouldn't let any of them have any weapons period, much less loaded. But Hinata was clearly head-over-heels, even if he wasn't honest with himself- and as much as Kuzuryuu loved him, he had to admit if anyone could match Komaeda's crazy, it would be Frankenstein's Monster.
He just didn't know he already got over it, hands in his hair and making out against a fucking restaurant wall at 4AM. Blocking my fucking beer, you dick, Kuzuryuu thinks. If it wasn't for Komaeda's access to guns and his territorial streak, he'd be barreling in that damn place, and-
He stops. He feels like he's being watched all of the sudden. He starts to take a few steps back, shoes squeaking on the balcony floor. His back hits the railing. His eye shuts, almost involuntarily.
Flashes. Blood. Teeth too long, gnarled, gleaming white. Nails that look too much like claws for comfort. Eyes that should be grey, maybe a little green, glowing red in the dark of a ruined Towa City, wheezing laughter and the last of his humanity-driven dread crushing Kuzuryuu as Komaeda looks up from the edge of Kamukura's blood-drenched suit, leather jacket smeared with red. He blinks again and its gone.
He sniffs in. The air smells like rust settled in the bottom of a glass and wet dirt turned over, cut grass. Dew on a windowpane.
He runs down the stairs and doesn't look back.
I'll- I'll talk to Hinata about him fucking Komaeda tomorrow, he promises himself.
If he remembers.