Chapter Text
Lives fly by.
One moment they’re dancing above the stars, and then everything shatters–
Another they’re winged, they’re intertwined, and then Ranpo hits the ground and there’s a spike through their pretty face–
Once they’re spies, and Fyodor has to watch Nikolai take a bullet for Ranpo a moment before the sacrifice is made null–
They’re back in the water one month, a part of the food chain as tiny things that are barely animals at all, and they learn they were never on top. Fyodor almost saved them then.
When he saves them, it always makes everything worse. They hate him for it. He resents himself for doing so at all.
The game is cheated and played and played and cheated over and over.
A parade, where Oda’s in the masked crowd as it all descends into fiery ruin,
A waltz, in a den of dragons, where Ranpo has scales and Fyodor has nothing but armor and it is not enough because he watches them get shot out of the sky,
A fight, in a bitterly cold wasteland where they have fur to keep warm and paws to claw with and maws to maim with,
An accident, in a fluorescent-lit Hell where Nathaniel hates every second of being there and Ranpo wastes themself away until they choke,
A foolish chance meeting in a land of yokai and vampires, where Dazai hates Fyodor because Lousia told him to and Ranpo dies in the cold alone,
And a refusal to talk. They’d rather eat their own tongues than talk.
Over and over and over again, they live different lives, mold themselves into being someone they are not.
Over and over again, Ranpo dies. Sometimes the scars stay. (Fyodor can tell every time.)
Sometimes Ranpo is there before Fyodor. It makes them no less miserable. Sometimes they arrive at the same time.
Their gazes get duller and they know neither want to keep playing but neither of them do anything–
Ranpo cuts Fyodor’s heart out in a Yokohama alleyway with a sword they stole from their father. He lets them, watches with stupid adoration as they nestle next to him, watching the light fade.
“I win,” they mumble, as they bite into his rotten heart. “I knew you failed.”
They kiss him, and they taste of cement, of their own blood and bitter coffee, of seawater, of flesh, of rusted metal, of whiskey and venom. Of blood and poison.
Fyodor makes a barely audible gasp, his eyes fluttering as Ranpo places his heart back in his chest. They lean down and kiss it, their lips dripping with blood. Nothing stains his shirt.
Fyodor desires them so entirely that he wants them to swallow him whole . They can tell, he knows they can.
But all they do is smirk down at him.
It goes dark. Fyodor’s eyes glaze over.
Crime and Punishment activates.
But Fyodor–Ranpo’s–eyes will never open again.
And he–they–are dragged (together)
Down, through a pyrrhic victory,
Down, as abilities slowly return in the wake of it,
Down into nothingness.