trust your partner

     After Sanae retires, I’m turning his dinky coffee shop into a slam cafe.

What a remarkably stupid maneuver, but what’s stupider is Joshua’s obvious failure to warn Neku. By the impudence in Neku’s tone, he’s got no idea. He might as well be Well, he could use a punching bag; he’s been in a rather surly mood as of late. And what better way to punish his counterpart for his oversight than to… humble his boytoy.

But this–this impertinence was inexcusable, and Joshua was already tired of looking at him. Time to knock him off his high horse, which he did effortlessly with a surge of raw energy like that of a bone-rattling gust of wind strong enough to hurl him backwards. Joshua’s frequency wavered for a split second before the soft image Neku knew best reoriented itself into a clear picture. He observed from his lofty position high off the ground, the only sign of sincere emotion betrayed in his scornful tone. There’s a heat in it that alluded to something more intimate.

“I did everything I could for him. What’s your excuse, Neku? Do you have even the slightest idea of what’s going on with him? How come I know more about him than you? How can you claim to love someone unless you’ve danced with their demons? Seen the worst of them? Sometimes, Neku, you will never be ready. Joshua? He will never be ready. So, unless you start pushing, your relationship will stagnate.” He turned his attention away from Neku, abruptly ignoring him for his phone, if only to drive home the point of how little he thought of him. This may be Neku, but without the attachment, he’s nothing but a massive inconvenience.

“Since he probably didn’t tell you this either, he and I settled our differences. What went on between us was buried with ye olde hatchet. Now, will you quit mad-dogging me and ohh, I don’t know, comfort your fiancee?”

He shouldn’t have been so full of himself. Neku had a power that hadn’t escaped him since he had left the Underground; but that supernatural ability did nothing in a territory that wasn’t his own. Not without experimenting, not without practice, and not in the midst of being thrown off his feet. There was no shield he could conjure that had protected him from the Noise. And he most certainly couldn’t stop an unseeable propulsion. 

Not only could he feel the impact against his back, he could hear his body drag against the asphalt before he was able to sit up again. 

The moments after that were almost-- dreamlike as the ringing in his ears drowned out the rest of the city. It wasn’t until his vision had come back into focus that his pain receptors made the connection to his brain, and the man curled into himself as he swallowed down the urge to scream. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck. He had forgotten what this felt like. His back throbbed from his skull down to his tailbone, each pulse making his scraped, bleeding elbows tremble from the smarting.