Remnant System

Fuuta will never admit it, but the weekly meet-ups are the only real thing sustaining his sanity as time goes on.

Fuuta finds, eventually, that he can stomach going to some of his classes. He’s so far behind that he dreads the prospect of potentially having to re-do this academic year, but it’s better than being a hikikomori. He showers more, he picks up a video game every now and then. He still ignores his Twitter and any other social media he has, refuses to talk to any of his previous ‘friends’, and finds he doesn’t miss it or them, not even remotely. In fact, funnily enough, this might be the most mentally stable and happy he has ever been.

He wonders how much John is why he feels this way and ignores it. It’s not because of him, he just gave him a... shock, or something. He gave him a reason to leave the house and that helped break him out of his depression or something. That’s definitely it!

He keeps his Grindr profile open purely to talk to him. They start messaging between meet-ups, at first purely because John had to cancel once because of a sudden shift change. Have to do a late then an early, no meet-up. Deal with it. Fuuta wonders if this is his imminent future and tries not to think about it. He has another year before he needs to worry about it, and he’s felt awful enough lately without adding existential dread to it all.

After that, they just never seemed to stop the online conversation and it kept going for days, then weeks. They spend most of their time insulting each other, but the regular contact and how easy it is surprises the both of them.

In any other circumstance, Fuuta would consider this being friends. The idea of gaining a genuine-seeming friend, even with the ridiculous circumstances and outright danger surrounding it all, would’ve made him happy once. After what happened, however, it makes him feel like it’s the last thing he deserves.

Sometimes those sorts of thoughts get bad enough that Fuuta can’t get out of bed. It makes him look at knives differently, at bridges differently. He tries not to think about it, misses some classes occasionally because of it.

He once on his way to see John finds himself feeling worse than normal. He’d had a bad day in class, made a reasonable, normal mistake, but somehow it threw him off so badly he didn’t recover. He ended up locking himself in a bathroom, nearly throwing up from anxiety, and now he’s thinking things a guy probably shouldn’t be thinking in front of an approaching train.

He misses the train. He stands completely still and watches it slow down, watches it stop, watches people get onto it, watches it leave. He finds he’s unable to do anything but literally stand, frozen, staring at the tracks while hearing his own heartbeat thump in his ears.

It’s only when his phone starts buzzing that he comes out of his stupor. Someone’s calling him? This late?! It takes him a few seconds to see who it is and realise it’s John. It’s 11:05pm.

He almost forgot about giving John his phone number months beforehand - a ‘just in case’ measure in case Fuuta deleted his Grindr account apparently - and considers not doing anything before picking up.

Hey, where are you?

Fuuta doesn’t reply at first. He doesn’t know how to. He swallows thickly. “Uh, I’m at the train station.”

Silence for a moment. And you’re there and not here... why?

Fuuta considers several responses before settling on the one that felt easiest. “I, uh -” he laughs nervously “- couldn’t get on the train.”

John seems to consider his response for a few seconds before replying. Is there another one?

Fuuta gets the mental image of jumping and getting completely splatted into gory little pieces and has to crouch down so he doesn’t fall over. John doesn’t say anything for a while until the radio silence from Fuuta goes on for too long.

You still there?

Fuuta doesn’t reply, too busy staring down at the concrete below him, breathing too unsteady to really do much more than stare and watch his vision blur at the edges. He doesn’t hear John hang up. He doesn’t really process much of anything until at some point he feels a hand on his shoulder.

He flinches and looks up, expecting it to be some concerned passer-by. He nearly shits himself when he sees it’sJohn himself, staring down at him with a raised eyebrow. Fuuta stares at him, manages to push himself up, and doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to do or say.

John removes his hand from Fuuta’s shoulder and stays silent for a moment before asking, “So, uh, did you just fancy taking a nap or something?”

Fuuta doesn’t say anything, staring at the tracks again. John notices, puts it all together, and sighs.

“Come on, it’s fucking freezing.”

He very roughly and unceremoniously drags Fuuta to a bench. He sits with him, looking over at him occasionally, noticing that Fuuta is paler than normal and shaking. The next train arrives and John does the first thing that pops into his head that later he’ll curse himself out over.

He holds Fuuta’s hand. Fuuta stares at him like he’s grown another head. John continues to hold his hand until the train stops. John literally drags Fuuta onto the train, still holding his hand. He doesn’t let go until they’re on it.

Fuuta stares at him the entire train ride. When it’s time to get off, John gives him a look that says don’t make me do that again. Fuuta gets off without his help. John steps onto the platform, shoots him another look that’s angrier than the last one, and Fuuta follows without comment. It’s not until they’re on an empty street on the way to John’s apartment that Fuuta stops.

John groans. “Can we please not stop? It’s fucking cold, Fuuta.”

Fuuta can’t recall a single time he’s used his name to talk to him before. All the strange oddities are simply too much and Fuuta deals with it by grabbing John by the shirt, trying to look like anything but a mentally ill wreck who’s had the worst day known to man, who’s probably just been saved from killing himself by the guy he doesn’t even dare to even call a friend because there’s something deeply wrong with the both of them.

John stares at him, properly looks into his eyes until Fuuta feels incredibly uncomfortable, then sighs.

“What do you want?”

Fuuta stops, looks away, trying to will away the tears his eyes stubbornly want to let loose. He lets go of John, turns, changes his mind, turns back, and offers an incredibly weak punch into John’s chest before stomping off to his apartment.

John rolls his eyes but at this point is used to Fuuta enough to know he’s trying in his own weird ass way to say thank you, or maybe ‘I’ll kill you for making me owe you one’, or something. He follows behind him, realises that this is the second time he’s literally had this man’s life in his hands and chosen to let him live, despite all his feelings and misgivings and desires, and tries to ignore the way it makes him feel to realise that.

///////////////////

Fuuta, other than the train station incident, seemed to be doing better. John, on the other hand, was falling apart.

Things had been bad even before Fuuta turned up. The over-work and burnout and the bottomless abyss of a future stretching out before him and Mikoto, on top of things John would rather die than let Mikoto know or remember, had been enough to push both of them over the edge.

Mikoto started hooking up. John started killing people. It seemed to be doing something, at least, to take the edge off the building stress that felt like it was going to swallow the both of them whole. It was a release, it was making them worse, but somehow doing worse made John at least feel a strange kind of better. Anything was better than that picture perfect life, with the perfect grades and never missing a shift and always covering their co-workers and saying thank you and bowing and...

...and Fuuta had completely ruined it. John stopped letting Mikoto hook up. He couldn’t bring himself to kill anyone either. Seeing Fuuta was doing... something to his mental health, but he couldn’t figure out if it was good or bad to have this guy over every week.

He just knew that the idea of not seeing him made him feel worse, but equally seeing him wasn’t making him feel better either, at least not in the way he felt he needed.

After the train incident, it only got worse. John hates the way this guy makes him feel. On top of the stress and the burnout and the over-work, he was now wasting his free time thinking about this random man that had entered his life, partially because of his and Mikoto’s own stupid actions, even more so John’s since if he’d just killed him, or fucked him, or fucked him and then killed him, he wouldn’t be in this mess.

John finds himself desperate for anything to take the edge off. He already smoked, he already drank way too much caffeine, but it wasn’t enough. John hates himself for doing it, but he starts drinking alcohol to try and make it all feel manageable.

Mikoto finds he doesn’t know why he feels so out of it and weird and sick all the time. He sees the empty bottles and doesn’t remember buying them in the first place. He finds it’s harder to handle going to work than normal, harder to sleep, shower, eat, and function, but he also feels the same soothing sensation that John does.

John finds himself falling head-first into the worst kind of addiction he or Mikoto have ever experienced in their life together. They had both experimented before with alcohol before but never let themselves get into it too much - they had to be perfect, they had to be, otherwise he was going to - but the mental stress they were under was simply too much to deal with.

John needs something. He needs anything. It’s either that or feel the equivalent of jumping head-first into an abyss. He ignores the weight in his chest, the way he and Mikoto are struggling to keep themselves clean, the meals they keep forgetting to eat.

It hits the point where they start drinking before work instead of breakfast. Drinking instead of dinner. Drinking on the train. When they start drinking at work, John realises with horrifying certainty that if this doesn’t improve, they areabsolutelygoing to lose their job.

Part of him wants that more than anything. A lifetime of having to be perfect (sit up straight, straighten your shirt, be quiet, don’t move, don’t struggle, don’t) was simply too much for him at this point. He wants everything to crash and burn. He wants their perfect life (it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t, it was hell, it was hell) to go into a bin. He wants their image to be shattered, he wants to look broken.

He is so sick of looking like he’s fine. He loves Mikoto more than he’s ever loved anyone, but the smile he forces on his face, the way he acts like he’s okay when he’s actually dying inside, is so maddening to watch that he just can’t take it any more.

It hurts though. Mikoto is hurting. Mikoto doesn’t know why any of this is happening to him. He doesn’t know John even exists. He just slips between the cracks, amnesia and dissociation robbing him of clarity, of the literal ability to process or understand anything that he goes through.

He comes to, he feels awful, he can’t cope like he normally can and he has no idea why. John watches this happen and feels so much guilt that it hurts to breathe. He has no idea how to tell him, how to even begin explaining how he feels. He starts hating himself - hell, he already did, he already has done for years, for decades.

More than anything, John feels like a child again, and he hates it.

During all of this, John starts avoiding Fuuta. He stops replying to messages. He makes excuses for why they can’t hang this week. He just can’t handle Fuuta on top of everything else he’s dealing with right now. He can’t handle the way he makes him feel: the way he feels seen, the way this stupid idiotic guy makes him laugh when he hasn’t been able to feel anything for weeks, for months, for years, for his whole goddamn life.

John doesn’t realise for longer than he wants to admit that he hasn’t seen Fuuta for around a month. He realises as he comes home from work one day, perpetually drunk at this point despite the consequences, replaying the way his boss looked at him and his dishevelled appearance over and over again. It was all hitting a breaking point.

What John wasn’t expecting was for Fuuta to be stood waiting for him by his front door. It wasn’t their normal meet-up day. It wasn’t their normal time either. John blinks at him, trying to think of what the fuck he was supposed to do in this situation.

Fuuta looks at him, truly looks at him for long enough that John genuinely feels ashamed with himself. John knows he looks bad: he can smell the alcohol on his breath (the flask is still in his goddamn hand too) and the smell of his own body. He remembers things he doesn’t want to remember and covers his face with a hand.

They stand in silence for a while. John looks anywhere but at Fuuta.

He finds himself genuinely terrified of how this guy is gonna look at him. He’s had months now to figure out the kind of person Fuuta is. He’s highly strung, uptight, stubborn, hypocritical, and also somehow a genuinely kind person who cares way too much about what people think about him. John can only imagine the way he’ll see him, the way he’ll look at him.

He misses the fact that Fuuta is looking at him with so much empathy (his dirty rotten bedroom and his complete inability to function for months) that it would break him completely to see it.

When the silence becomes too much, John sighs, puts his flask into his jean pocket, and starts trying to speak.

Fuuta cuts him off, almost immediately. “Open the door, John.”

John can’t recall him ever using his name before. It makes his heart hurt. He glares at him, sees a genuine softness in Fuuta’s eyes, and feels so sick he almost throws up. He swallows down bile and unlocks the door.

Fuuta, none too gently but significantly more gently than normal, pushes him into the apartment. He takes John’s keys and hangs them on the nail that they usually sit on. John stares at him and tries to stop thinking about how domestic it feels, how lonely his apartment is, how much he...

He gapes as Fuuta pushes him down and kicks at his shoes with a pointed look. John pretends it doesn’t make him feel anything, insides squirming from more than just nausea. He takes off his shoes and nearly chokes as Fuuta grabs him by the shirt and forcefully pulls him to the bathroom.

Oh, oh no. No, no, no. John starts objecting before Fuuta literally shoves him inside and closes the door.

John opens the door again. Fuuta shuts it. John growls and wrestles it open, looking the closest to the released thing that Fuuta had unleashed the first night they met. Fuuta this time does not care. He stares him down and glares at him.

“Take a shower. Now.”

“No.”

“Do it.”

“No. Fuuta, what the fuck -”

“Do it, or I tell the police everything.”

John knows he doesn’t mean it which pisses him off even more. He grabs Fuuta by the shirt, absolutely fuming.

“Get out of my fucking apartment right now.”

“No.”

Fuuta grabs his hand, his clammy, sweaty, shaking hand, and un-peels it from his shirt. He pushes John’s arm into his chest and shoots him a look.

“Shower. You fucking stink.”

John starts arguing before he realises that Fuuta, more than anything, is looking at him as if he perfectly understands what’s happening to him. It makes him feel so ill that he genuinely gags. He clutches at his stomach, stares down at his feet, and wishes the Earth would swallow him up.

John only realises that Fuuta has left when he hears footsteps and sees a glass of water in front of him. He groans, feeling his head split open.

“God, for fuck’s sake, Fuuta. Please, stop.”

“No.”

“Please!”

John looks up, not caring how desperate he looks any more. Fuuta’s eyes widen (that look, that fucking look that John hates more than anything) and John tries to pretend that he doesn’t feel anything.

“Just... leave. Please, just leave.”

Fuuta sighs. Something in him seems to disappear in front of John. He shoves the glass of water into John’s hand. He walks off. John hears his footsteps, the sound of him putting his coat back on. He hears the door open and then click shut.

John sways and falls to the ground, the dropped glass smashing and spilling water and shards of glass everywhere. He puts his head in his shaking hands and tries to act like he’s fine. He’s not, he’s so far from fine that he genuinely feels like he’s going insane.

He thinks about Fuuta. He thinks about the way he looked at him and grips his hair so tightly it hurts. He considers the idea of it, the concept of being genuinely cared for, and screams into his hands.

////////////

John messages Fuuta later like nothing happened. Fuuta replies like nothing happened. They meet on Sunday like nothing happened. Fuuta talks about inane shit, John listens, the two of them move forward and act like nothing happened in the slightest.

John is still drinking, he just starts hiding it better. He doesn’t talk to Fuuta about it. He feels the tension in his chest rising and tries to ignore it.

Fuuta doesn’t ask about it. He doesn’t say anything. He’s definitely watching him more closely (stop, stop looking at me) but he doesn’t pry. He doesn’t do anything other than offer John some sort of respect for his boundaries, which makes John feel even worse.

John doesn’t know how to put it into words. How does he even begin to explain how it feels? The kinder Fuuta is, the worse he feels. The closer they get to each other, the worse he feels. Every look and glance and memory of this man makes him feel worse.

And yet, somehow, the idea of Fuuta disappearing and returning to the cycle of numbness, stress, and pointless release (where was it, where was the catharsis he deserved) makes John feel so incomprehensibly bad that he can’t even consider doing it.

What he wants, more than anything, is to feel good. He just wants to feel good, or at least okay. He starts considering hooking up again. He looks at Grindr, sees Fuuta’s recent message, and feels sick. He doesn’t message the guy who seems interested in him. He doesn’t go to the exact street where he knows he can find someone.

He keeps drinking. He remembers the way Fuuta looked at him and wishes he could stop. The drinking doesn’t make him feel better, but not doing it makes him feel worse. He tries to act like he’s fine.

He’s not fine.

Fuuta, meanwhile, seems to be managing. John hasn’t forgotten the incident at the train station (what if he’d actually done it, how would he feel if he) but Fuuta seems to be doing okay enough to not need him right now.

Somehow, that makes John feel worse. He remembers the suicidal, pitiful guy that begged him for death and wishes he could stop thinking about it. He just wants to forget his face, he wants to forget the look in his eyes.

He just wants to stop thinking about it all. He wishes he could erase every memory he ever had. He wishes he could stop existing but he doesn’t know how to, not without taking Mikoto down with him.

Maybe he already is. John knows the drinking is making Mikoto worse. He knows killing people risked Mikoto’s life (how could he tell him, how could he make him remember, he didn’t want him to ever know, he wanted to keep him safe) but he doesn’t know how to manage any of it without doing something harmful to either themselves or someone else.

/////////////////

Three weeks after Fuuta waited for him at his apartment, it all hits a breaking point.

John has had a bad day. His boss is definitely not happy with how things have been going, how Mikoto hasn’t been presentable enough or on time enough or working hard enough. John thinks about strangling the man with his own tie and gutting him like a fish with his bare hands.

He drinks on the way back home. He remembers Fuuta’s due to come over and sighs, trying to ignore the tightness in his chest. He just wants it all to stop. He remembers how Fuuta stared at the train tracks and wishes he could forget everything this man has ever done.

John heads home. He tries to ignore the way he’s swaying, the way people are staring at him and whispering behind their hands. He makes it to his apartment and looks at his watch. It’s 10:30pm: enough time to consider eating, feel too ill and full of self-hatred to stomach it, and sit on the floor and prepare himself for acting like he’s okay.

What he doesn’t expect is for Fuuta to turn up at 11pm in his own state of inebriation.

He knows instantly that Fuuta is not okay. He’s flushed, he doesn’t meet John’s eyes, and he stumbles a bit as he heads down the hallway to the bedroom. When John comes to meet him, he’s sat on the bed, staring out the window, knees tucked up into himself.

John debates asking what’s wrong, but feels like it’s a bad idea. He slumps down in his familiar corner. They sit in silence for the first time in months.

John starts feeling too crazy to be doing nothing by the time Fuuta starts talking, words slightly slurred.

“I think I genuinely just hate being here.”

John looks over at him and raises an eyebrow, trying to act more sober than he actually is. “What, my house?”

“No, just the world.”

John sighs. He tries to ignore the way his chest aches. “Yeah, well...” He shrugs. “The world just sucks honestly.”

Fuuta doesn’t respond immediately. He eventually replies, voice quieter than normal.

“I tried...” he pauses, head in hands. “I tried going to some fucking... social thing that the soccer club put on.”

John manages a smile. “Wow, you actually socialised? Crazy.”

Fuuta doesn’t respond, or glare like he normally would. He’s silent for a while before continuing, voice wavering.

“It was... it was fucking awful. It sucked so bad.” He laughs, a little hysterically. “These guys, they’re just assholes. All they can do is fucking talk about pussy and insult each other. They -” he laughs again, his smile not reaching his eyes “- they asked whether I’d ever had a girlfriend.”

John can see where this is going.

“I said I hadn’t. They straight up just called me a fucking faggot and told me it’s pathetic to be this old and not to have gotten any yet.”

Fuuta buries his head in his hands. John feels so much genuine understanding that it hurts. He remembers his years, Mikoto’s years, of having to pretend and clutches at his chest with his fingertips.

“The -” Fuuta laughs again, looking anywhere but John “- the fucking funny thing is, I -”

He’s silent for a long time. He looks up at the ceiling. He says his next words with his voice shaking.

“I did what I did the first time. I downloaded fucking Tapple, I looked at all the girls. I -” he laughs, genuine pain in his voice “- I just can’t do it, man. I can’t bring myself to do it.”

He looks over at John and John stops being able to breathe.

“All I can think of is your stupid ass.”

John blinks. Fuuta looks away, head in hands.

“I just can’t do it. I can’t be the man they want me to be.”

John stands up.

“All I can think of is coming back here and -” Fuuta laughs, hysterical now. “So, I’m just... fucking useless to everybody.”

John walks over to him.

“I’m not a real man. I’m -”

John stands over him. Fuuta looks up. John debates it all for a second before he does the only thing he can think of.

He leans down and kisses him.

Fuuta stops breathing. He freezes completely solid. John pulls away and looks at him. Somehow, in that moment, it’s like neither of them need to say a single goddamn thing. Fuuta grabs him by the shirt and pulls him back down to kiss him again.

It’s everything that either of them have ever wanted. John can’t remember the last time he felt this alive. Fuuta kisses him with a desperation and passion that is genuinely too overwhelming for either of them to feel or process. John kneels down on the edge of the bed and pushes Fuuta down, gently, hands in Fuuta’s hair.

Fuuta moans into his mouth and John forgets how to breathe. Fuuta clings to his shirt like a lifeline before trying to tug it off. John stops thinking. He probably should be thinking. This is undoubtedly an incredibly bad idea, but somehow that makes it even harder not to do it.

Fuuta seems to feel the same, his eyes absolutely burning with life and desire with enough desperation that it hurts to see it. John knows without needing to be told that he looks the exact same way.

They need this. They both need this.

John lets Fuuta pull off his shirt and kisses him like his life depends on it. He wonders if his life really does depend on it. He presses his body against Fuuta, hand in his hair, kissing down his neck and desperately trying to ignore how the sounds coming out of this man’s mouth make him feel like his innards are jelly.

John has never been so turned on in his entire life. He lifts Fuuta’s shirt up and off and sits on top of him, admiring the flush to his face, the desire in his eyes, the scars on his chest and the small tuft of red hair under his belly button.

Somehow, if there needed to be a moment for it, this would be when they stopped... right? This is when they realise they’ll both regret it. Where they consider everything and realise it’s a bad idea. Fuuta and John both realise they stopped giving a damn minutes ago.

Fuuta seems to drink him in, looking at him with so much desire that John can barely hold himself back any more. John leans down and kisses him, hands trailing down to Fuuta’s hips, his ass. Fuuta moans into his mouth and John finds himself smiling.

Fuuta pulls back, cheeks flushed, trying his best to look angry, but instead he looks more attractive than John would ever want to admit.

“What’s...” he’s panting and John wants to kiss him so bad he looks stupid “... your problem, huh?”

John smirks down at him. “No problem, you’re just noisier than I expected.” He pauses then his smirk widens. “Y’know, actually -”

“Shut the fuck up and kiss me, idiot.”

John immediately shuts up, trying to ignore the thrill that went through him. He looks down and takes in every single possible thing that he can: Fuuta’s flushed face, the intense desire in his eyes, the way he’s trembling. John thought he couldn’t get much harder but Fuuta is proving him wrong every second they keep going.

He kisses him. Fuuta shudders under him and John stops having sentient thoughts. John kisses him until the both of them are about as noisy as each other. Fuuta runs his hands down John’s back and moans fuck into John’s mouth when his back arches. They grind into each other, both struggling to manage their level of arousal.

John kisses down Fuuta’s neck, enjoying every noise he makes, the way he’s fidgeting under him. John kisses down Fuuta’s chest, kisses over his scars, takes his nipples into his mouth. Fuuta doesn’t respond and John looks up, a pang of worry flooding through him, before he realises Fuuta is smiling down at him with so much joy and euphoria that John stops breathing.

Fuuta will never know how much John will replay this one moment over and over again in his mind. John closes his eyes and tries to ignore the way he feels. He holds Fuuta’s hips and kisses down to his belly button. Fuuta lets out a groan and buries his fingers in John’s hair.

John starts pulling at Fuuta’s shorts. He manages to get the waistband under Fuuta’s ass before Fuuta grabs his hands. John looks up. Fuuta is looking down at him with so much unbridled terror that John can’t breathe for a second.

Everything slows down. John’s brain starts working again. Fuuta’s breathing too hard and too fast, eyes closed, raising his hands to grip at his head. John pulls Fuuta’s shorts back up. Fuuta seems to calm down. It takes John a few seconds to process that Fuuta is crying.

John stops breathing, eyes widening. He sees the sheer hatred in Fuuta’s eyes and wonders if it’s aimed at him, before he realises with sheer and utter dread that Fuuta hates himself for this. He watches Fuuta wipe away his tears, the way he’s shaking with rage at himself, and feels as if the floor has disappeared beneath him.

“I -” Fuuta sits up, head buried in his hands “- why? Why can’t I just...?”

He’s crying again, voice shaking with anger and disappointment and hatred for himself, and it makes John feel like someone’s ripped his heart out of his chest still beating. John watches as Fuuta seems to calm down before he realises with horror washing through him that he knows exactly what Fuuta will do next.

Fuuta pulls John back down. He tries to take off his shorts himself. John holds his hands still, tucks his head into Fuuta’s shoulder, and tries to ignore the lump in his throat. Fuuta tries to fight back before he realises John is crying.

John doesn’t want to be like this in front of him. He doesn’t want to be vulnerable. He doesn’t want to seem weak. He doesn’t want to lose control. He doesn’t want to be many things, but in that moment all he can think of and process is Fuuta is exactly the same as him, that Fuuta must’ve gone through that one, exact thing that makes someone feel like this about themselves.

John’s entire everything is breaking. Fuuta pushes him up, sees the way he’s sobbing, and feels his heart rip itself apart. John looks at him, just for one moment, and Fuuta feels the world stand still.

He understands everything. He puts it all together, every moment, everything John has ever said, every look and glance and unnamed thing in his eyes that Fuuta hadn’t until now properly understood.

Fuuta’s hands fall down to his sides. John turns away and wipes his eyes. The two of them sit in silence for a while, John sniffing, Fuuta scarcely breathing. Eventually, John turns and hesitates for a moment, genuine fear in his eyes, before he manages to look at Fuuta.

Somehow, despite everything that has just happened, this was the hardest, scariest part. Their eyes meet and for the first time for either of them, they see themself in someone else. John realises that what he saw in Fuuta’s eyes the night he had asked him to take his life was himself. All of his feelings, his emotions, his self-hatred and fear and dread and everything John hadn’t wanted to understand or feel.

In that moment, they feel so intimately connected to each other and deeply, deeply understood that both of them have no idea how they’re supposed to bear it.

It’s the single most vulnerable, terrifying thing that either of them have ever felt. John looks away, head in his hands. Fuuta stares down at their intersecting bodies and wishes he could stop feeling anything at all.

John slowly gets off of him. Fuuta, despite everything, instinctively pulls John back, filled with such a deep, intrinsic fear of the truth: that no matter what he’s told, or how he feels, or how he sees himself, he just can’t do it.

And yet, he has to. He has to be able to do it. If he can’t, then what good is he?

John nearly says something before seeing the hopeless terror and dread and hysteria in Fuuta’s eyes and nearly breaks all over again. He gently pulls Fuuta’s hands off of him. He debates letting go of his hands but finds he can’t. Fuuta is shaking.

“Please.”

John can’t look at him. He shakes his head. Fuuta feels like he’s about to fall off of a cliff into some horrible, endless abyss.

“Please, John, I -”

“No.”

Fuuta freezes. John’s voice is raw, full of every emotion that he’d rather keep to himself except, for the life of him, he cannot seem to put it all back where it belongs. John looks at him, and Fuuta feels the weight of the terror and dread in John’s eyes.

“I -” John laughs and gives Fuuta a look that he’ll never forget until the day he dies. “I’m not gonna do it if you... if you can’t, or don’t want to. Even if you beg, even if you tried to kill me. I’d -” he laughs, bitter, filled with such immense grief that it’s overwhelming. “- I’d literally rather die.”

Fuuta doesn’t know how to respond for a moment, at a loss for words. “I...” he grabs John’s hands tighter, so tight it probably hurts. “John, I want to.”

John looks at him, properly looks at him, and Fuuta shrinks. The truth is in John’s eyes and Fuuta doesn’t want to face it. He desperately clings to John’s hands.

“Look, you need -”

John cuts him off, voice sharp. “Fuuta, I don’t need it, I need...”

He trails off. His eyes widen. He looks at Fuuta and thinks about every single time he has ever been with anyone. He remembers every single agonising moment that he or Mikoto gave themselves to someone, the way it felt. He remembers the stomach twisting anxiety, the physical pleasure, the hollow feeling, the way it feels like watching yourself on a TV screen, or like going through a step-by-step manual. He remembers the way he feels when he’s done, when they’re done, the way he feels like something used and wishes he could forget, or make it different, make it into something good.

He remembers the way it felt to kiss Fuuta and realises he has never felt like this before with anyone. He didn’t need sex right now, he needed... he needed Fuuta.

John starts breathing too fast. It’s all clicking together and he doesn’t want to face it. He looks at Fuuta and sees himself reflected back at him and feels like he’s going crazy. He can’t accept it, not yet. Fuuta clearly can’t either.

John can literally feel a divide coming into existence between them. He doesn’t want it to be there, he knows Fuuta doesn’t either, but he simply can’t do anything else but let it happen.

He gets off of Fuuta. Fuuta lets him go. He goes to the bathroom and closes the door. He slides down the wall and onto the floor. He buries his head in his hands. In the other room, Fuuta lies back down on John’s bed, head in his hands.

John debates between several different things and sighs before dealing with the most... obvious issue first. He reaches down to unbutton his jeans, slipping his hand down between his legs, and bites back any possible noise that he could make. He tries not to think of anything at all, anything but the man in the room next to him, the way he sounded, the way it felt to kiss him. He pretends not to feel anything, eyes fluttering shut.

He has no idea that Fuuta is doing the same, exact thing, that he’s trying to ignore the feeling of John’s hands or the way his back arched against his fingertips. He has no idea that when Fuuta finishes, he’ll feel the exact same mix of relief, pleasure, and shame.

They both feel empty. They both feel like children again. They both feel hollow and dead inside and they both hate it.

John washes his hands and steps out of the bathroom. He sees Fuuta lying on his back, shorts around his legs, and turns back around. He waits, hears Fuuta sniff and shuffle around. When he’s done, he turns and sees that Fuuta is decent.

Fuuta doesn’t look at him. John looks somewhere near his head but not directly at him. They don’t say anything to each other. At some point, Fuuta gets up. John feels like a coward but he can’t bring himself to look at him. All either of them can think of is how it felt to kiss the other, to look into each other’s eyes and see their very soul inside of each other.

Fuuta brushes past him. John feels a shame so intense that he nearly keels over. Fuuta puts on his shoes and coat and leaves without a word. John sits on the floor and wonders what the fuck he’s supposed to do now.

The silence feels like a literal weight on John’s shoulders. He lies down. He remembers the feeling of Fuuta’s lips and buries his face in his hands.