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It starts, as most of Takumi’s problems do, with trying to be nice to Eito.
It’s not that he feels guilty about keeping Eito in the cage, it’s just, you know, not the most normal way to treat your former best friend, even if he did try to murder you and everyone you care about. It just feels weird, so he stops by every now and again. It’s standard practice, probably, to check in on a prisoner regularly.
When Takumi enters the courtyard, he catches a glimpse of Eito unaware that he’s being watched. He looks absurdly peaceful, laid out on the metal cot, one leg languidly propped up with a book spread against it. The fountain twirls and spits, its sounds as soft as gentle forest rainfall, and the entire space is engulfed in an atmosphere of pure tranquility.
It makes Takumi feel a little bad about intruding.
Nevertheless, he heads over to the cage, clearing his throat loudly to avoid startling Eito with his appearance. Eito’s head snaps up at the sound. He inserts a bookmark so as not to lose his page, then stands quickly and approaches the bars of his cage. Takumi gets the impression he doesn’t really like being seen in such a relaxed state.
“Ugly Takumi,” says Eito, with a cheerfulness that doesn’t reach his eyes. Did it ever? Was Takumi always too stupid to notice that? “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Takumi struggles to find an excuse beyond the simple fact that he was drawn here by some invisible tugging string in his chest, that Eito’s death in that other life was still not enough to sever the connection between them, that even knowing what he knows, he still finds himself idiotically missing him on a near hourly basis.
“Uh, just wanted to check on you,” Takumi mumbles, shrugging.
“Well, I’m still locked in a cage,” Eito replies. “Not too many updates to share.”
“Right.” Takumi clears his throat. A stretch of awkward silence follows, and Takumi doesn’t even have to look at Eito’s face to know he’s enjoying it. Still, he does look, catches the nasty little smirk that seems so at odds with Eito’s gentle features, with the soft pliant turn of his lips. He finds himself bringing up the first point of conversation that comes to mind. “I noticed you don’t have a lot of privacy.”
“That is the nature of a cage, yes.”
“That must suck,” Takumi says. “I mean, you’re a guy right?”
Eito squints at him like he’s trying to comprehend the words of a newly formed amoeba that somehow gained the ability to talk. “Oh,” he says after a moment. “You’re talking about jacking off.”
“I mean, not necessarily, but – “ Takumi flushes. “All guys do it. It’s not weird!”
“As much as it disgusts me to contemplate, I think you’ll find everyone does it,” Eito says, with a longsuffering sigh. “Just a heads up, that kind of thing is why it’s so easy for everybody to tell that you’re a virgin.”
“Technically, I’m not, actually, so –” He regrets it the moment the words leave his mouth.
Eito’s eyebrows shoot up, intrigued. “Technically?” He ponders the implication of that for a long moment, before obviously, of course, landing on the correct conclusion. “Ah, because you’re a time traveller.”
Takumi scrunches his eyes closed, shame settling into every pore of his body. He really, really shouldn’t have said that. “Eito, please just forget that I said anything –”
“Oh yes, you definitely ought to keep that one to yourself.” Eito is loving this, his eyes more alive with delight than Takumi has ever seen him. Even back when – God, he really shouldn’t be thinking about that right now. “How violating! Whichever girl it was will be scandalised… I doubt they’ll ever want to be in the same room as you ever again.” Eito’s head tilts, thoughtful, as he observes Takumi’s poorly-concealed reaction. “It was a girl, right?”
Takumi swallows thickly. “I’m not going to talk about this with you.”
“You brought it up!” Eito huffs, folding his arms. “You shouldn't edge me, Takumi, it's cruel. You know nobody’s going to believe anything I have to say anyway. I’m perhaps the only one you can trust with this.”
“You’re actually the one person I really can’t – “ What the hell is his deal? Why does everything spill out of him the moment Eito’s looking at him? It’s like he wants Eito to –
Eito stares at him. All the colour leaves his face, the nasty gleam in his eyes replaced by something hollow, something ill. “You can’t mean…”
“No,” Takumi says, desperately. “No, Eito.”
“Why would I–?” Eito’s chest is moving strangely under his oversized jacket, visibly convulsing as he takes in huge gulping breaths. His eyes are blown out, his pupils huge, his gaze unfocused and shaky. He’s panicking, Takumi realises, his stomach dropping. Of course he'd panic. “I wouldn’t.”
“You didn’t,” Takumi lies. “Obviously. That’s not what I meant –”
“Don’t lie to me, scum,” Eito hisses, and there’s nothing left of the smiling simulacrum of the friend he once thought he had, only something bitter and vengeful. The killer whose chest he ripped open with his blade in that other life. “Tell me what happened.”
“I– I don’t think you want to know.”
“Tell me.”
Takumi swallows. He opens his mouth once, closes it again. After a moment, he asks, “Are you sure?”
“Takumi, you and I both know that I am perfectly capable of finding my way out of this cage and fucking murdering you in your sleep.” Eito’s hands are wrapped around the bars now, his nose peaking out from between them, and he isn’t joking, isn’t affable. This is what lies beneath, what has always lain beneath, all while Takumi stupidly deluded himself into thinking – something else. “Maybe, just maybe, if you do what I tell you, you can avoid that fate.”
“Fine,” Takumi hisses, his own anger bubbling under the surface. “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you about how you were my best friend here, the one I trusted the most. My confidant, right? We were so close, and you came to my room all the time, like, constantly. Always seeking my approval like a puppy.”
“That doesn’t sound like me, but whatever.”
Takumi ignores him. “And one time, we’re hanging out, just you and me, a couple of besties, and we get to talking about—Guy stuff. Our crushes, how far we’ve gone with a girl. You said you’d never done anything, which… No shit. Even then, that much was obvious. I said me too but I’d held hands once. And it was you! You started it! You wanted to hold my hand, so you could know what it felt like.”
“Is that it?” Eito asks. “Holding hands doesn’t make you not a virgin, Takumi –”
“Sure,” Takumi snaps, throwing his hands up, “we can say that was it.”
His thoughts are scattered, scrambling. In his mind, he can vividly feel Eito's gloved hand in his own. The way he'd squeeze Eito's hand to comfort him whenever he thought his sweet, soft-hearted friend might be frightened, the way he'd hold it gently under the cafeteria table so the others wouldn't notice, sharing secret smiles over their meals. And the entire time Eito hated him and wanted him to die. It's far too raw a thing to expose to the person Eito really was. It was humiliating enough to live through it the first time.
“No,” Eito says, like the word hurts him on its way out. “The whole truth.”
“Fine, alright, well – It started like that. Holding hands. It was just a weird thing we did and I didn’t think about it too much, like, it just felt nice. It was kind of comforting. Except, that eventually turned into, uh kissing – “
“How?”
“‘Cause neither of us had ever done it, and we thought we were probably going to die, and obviously none of the girls were gonna kiss us, so –”
Eito's lips under his own, soft and chaste at first, a sweet gentle thing, but then - more, wanting, open -
“You’re avoiding the truth. You tricked me somehow.”
“Nuh-uh! You kissed me first!”
“I highly doubt that!”
“You said, ‘Takumi, let's brush our teeth real good and use lots of mouthwash and floss tonight!’ and I said, ‘Okay, whatever, Eito, weirdass…’, and then, after we did all that, you said you wanted to try something with me, and then… We kissed.” Takumi swallows, his face heating at the memory. “A lot, actually. Every time we hung out, we ended up like that, for a while.”
Eito’s eyes are bugging out in horror. “Okay,” he says. “I suppose… I suppose I must have found that necessary to my plan, for some reason. To manipulate you.”
“It kinda seemed like you liked it, man, I dunno!” Takumi huffs. “Anyway, so basically, if you make out with someone in your bed for a long time, things end up – It wasn’t a big deal. We had, like, most of our clothes on, and your eyes were screwed up the whole time, which I thought was because I’m a guy, but now I know it was… for other reasons…”
The memory unfolds itself like a well-worn blanket. It’s one Takumi has returned to countless times over these past weeks. Eito under him, making desperate noises, clutching at Takumi’s hoodie, whispering, ‘Please’, until Takumi finally got the guts to take him in hand—to take both of them in hand, actually, and after that things went pretty quick and pretty messy and, for fucks sake, even now he can feel himself reacting to the memory. He adjusts his hoodie in a movement he hopes is subtle enough that Eito doesn’t notice.
“My other self…” Eito cuts through Takumi’s spiral. He’s frowning reflectively, eyes closed, unaware of the complete mess he's making of Takumi on the other side of his cage. “I wonder why he decided on that particular tactic…”
“I think you were just horny.”
“Shut up, you foul abomination!” Eito’s breathing gets hard, his face twisting into something that could pass for ugly if he wasn’t always so beautiful. He takes a moment to calm himself, to think, his brows knitting in the way they always used to when he was pretending to come up with a solution for their problems. “Well, you’ll have to make it right.”
Takumi blinks. “Make it right?”
“You’ve seen – me,” Eito gasps out. “So. Show me yours.”
“Huh?!”
“Can’t you understand that this is utter hell for me?” Eito’s hands tighten around the bars of the cage, knuckles flush against skin gone bone white. “You have taken from me something I never intended to give—from some dead version of me in another life, so I don’t even get to know what it’s like. I think the least you can do is show me your dick.”
“Eito, I don’t see how – Won’t it look disgusting and scary to you anyway? Like… a monster’s?”
“Oh, now he’s talking about his monster dong, for fucks sake,” Eito sighs. “Just drop your pants and get this over with, Takumi. Do you think I’m enjoying this?”
“I – I can’t tell,” Takumi grumbles. “Fine, whatever. I saw yours. It was nice, by the way. I liked it.”
“Keep that to yourself, idiot!”
Takumi takes in a deep, shuddering breath. He can’t quite believe he’s doing this. Yet, on some level, he finds himself strangely relieved. After carrying the weight of his past with Eito, of desperately trying to untangle what was real from what was false, there is something freeing about simply revealing himself to the unknown enemy before him.
With little elegance, he drops trou.
“Ewww, why is it hard?”
“Eito, please, god, you don’t have to talk, just look at it.”
Eito’s lip curls. Takumi has never really had his nakedness looked at period, never mind with such visibly repulsed scrutiny. He hopes, faintly, that it doesn’t awaken something in him. Deep down, he knows it’s too late.
Even after everything, just the sight of Eito’s pretty face is enough for the memories to come flooding back, a gasping tidal wave of emotion that Takumi could drown in if he isn’t very, very careful.
Just because he knows now that Eito would find it disgusting, it doesn’t stop the simple truth that all Takumi wants is to unlock the door to his cage, crawl into bed with him, and make out until they can’t resist the pull of one another’s bodies, until the moment twists into something they’ll both regret.
He doesn’t even care that any of the SDU members could come wandering in and see everything, maybe even likes the idea.
Finally, Eito says, “Alright, I’m satisfied,” and Takumi hurries to tuck himself away, stumbling over the legs of his pants as he pulls them up. His face is incredibly hot, his breathing uneven, and he can’t bring himself to look Eito in the face.
There is a thick, gnarled patch of silence growing rapidly between them, like the ivy gone uncut along the buildings in the wastes beyond the school. What the hell do you even say after all that? Nice weather we’re having?
Eito is the one to break it, as is often the case. “You won’t speak a word of this to anyone,” he warns.
“Why the hell would I tell anyone about this?”
Eito’s shoulders raise in a little shrug, the implication being perhaps, I dunno, you’re kind of stupid. “Whatever,” Takumi mutters. “I’ll, uh, see you around, Eito.”
He makes to leave, but when he’s halfway towards the door, he hears Eito’s voice wavering slightly. “Um, Takumi,” he starts.
Takumi twirls, irritated and on edge and with something much darker flaring in his gut that's making it tough for him to think straight. “What is it now?”
“About—that privacy,” Eito says, and it’s only then that Takumi notices how flushed Eito is, how shallow his breathing has grown. Has he looked like that this whole time? “Would you mind telling the others to not come in here for an hour or so?”
Takumi gapes for a moment, his head spinning. He takes a long, shuddering swallow. Eito wants to – Eito – about him? Even after – ? “Yep,” he manages, the words scraping out of his throat like rough-cut granite. “I can do that for you, Eito.”
As soon as he exits, he falls back against the cool metal of the courtyard door behind him, boneless. What the fuck was that?
After a moment of horrified contemplation, he goes out of his way to make good on his promise to Eito. He dashes from room to room like the mission is life and death, gets the others to agree to leave Eito alone for a while despite utterly scrimping on the details to the point that he’s surprised they don’t just tell him to fuck off.
“Ohhh,” says Darumi, the only one to really catch on. “He’s cranking that nasty thang, huh? You’re a really good friend, Takumi!”
After all is said and done, the deep mortified shame really starts to settle in. Takumi runs his hands down his face, faintly horrified. None of that needed to happen. If only he wasn't so obsessed with throwing himself into Eito's field of view, with letting whatever nonsense might burble out of his chest to go unchecked just so he can wrangle the known murderer into a conversation. And beyond that: why the hell did he go in there and start trying to relate to Eito about masturbating? Why was that his angle?
His hopes of fixing things between himself and Eito, of repairing whatever it is that twists that broken mind of his into such endless, unstoppable hatred, have become even fainter than ever before. And chances were already looking pretty goddamn slim.
Still, the shame isn’t enough to stop Takumi from rushing back to his room for some privacy of his own.