Work Text:
“Would you mind screaming a little quieter in the future?”
Shuichi stared uncomprehending at the figure crouched at the foot of his bed. His head spun, his thoughts in such disarray that it took him a good ten seconds to stammer, “What … what did I … what happened?”
Kokichi quirked an eyebrow, unimpressed. “What happened? Come on, detective, it’s two in the morning and you sounded like someone put centipedes in your sheets. You good?”
“I … I don’t....” He sat up, leaning his back against the headboard, and rubbed his eyes with still-shaking hands. “Give me a second … to wake up,” he panted.
He waited for his heart to slow down, breathing deeply, and then gave the room a quick once-over. Sterile white walls, the faint smell of rubbing alcohol. Okay, so, a hospital.
Oh.
The hospital, the place they’d been taken after they’d woken up. The place Danganronpa took all its participants at the end of their season. Shuichi exhaled, pushing the images of cackling animatronic bears and blood everywhere to the back of his mind. No more corpses, no more executions, just a too-quiet room in a psychiatric ward.
And Kokichi, sitting cross-legged and impatient a few feet away.
Shuichi didn’t meet his eyes. Even now, so long after it had ended, he couldn’t look at him without remembering what the killing game had done to him. Remembering the Exisal laughing with two different voices, or the white board labeling his picture trustworthy?, or the way he’d wandered back to the hangar after the fifth trial and stood there, staring at nothing, until Maki had tracked him down and dragged him back to his room.
“Sorry,” Shuichi said at last. “Did I wake you up?”
“I’m kind of surprised you didn’t wake the entire building up,” he replied.
If he’s being this snarky, he’s probably not too upset, Shuichi reasoned. “I’ll try and keep it down from now on,” he said anyway.
If only it was that easy.
“Right,” Kokichi intoned, clearly skeptical. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
An unexpected flare of anger simmered in Shuichi’s stomach. “It’s not like I meant to—”
That wasn’t anger, he realized belatedly when the feeling shot to his throat, choking off his words. He clutched at his chest, leaning over and closing his eyes for a moment. Not now, not now—not in front of him—
Kokichi had to call his name several times before he heard it. “Hey,” he was saying when Shuichi looked up again. “Listen. It’s late and we’re both tired. How about you take a quick walk, get a drink, and then go back to sleep? You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
Shuichi felt himself nod. Kokichi offered a “G’night” and shifted toward the edge of the bed.
All at once, the idea of him leaving, of being left alone with the glaring white walls and his own mind, seemed like too much to handle. “Wait,” Shuichi called before he could stop himself.
Kokichi paused with his legs hanging over the side of the bed, giving him a curious look. Shuichi hesitated. “Can I....” He swallowed and blurted, “Can I hold you for a little while? Please?”
Kokichi blinked, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly a few times. “Can you … uh, what?” he finally managed.
Shuichi felt his face grow hot and looked away. “Sorry. Never mind,” he said quickly. “That was stupid.”
Kokichi didn’t say anything, and the silence hung so thick in the air that Shuichi wished he could draw it between them like a curtain and vanish from sight.
The other boy slid off of the bed, and Shuichi felt his heart sink. He kept his gaze riveted on the blankets at his side, though, digging his fingernails into his palms, practically begging his hands to stop trembling. It wasn’t as if he was the only one going through this. Nightmares, panic attacks, insomnia—all of it was par for the course for former Danganronpa contestants. He didn’t have a right to bother the others about his problems when they had so many of their own. Better to suffer through it by himself, to stop being selfish and let Kokichi get some sleep—
He glanced up at the sound of the mattress creaking. Kokichi had walked over to the head of the bed and pulled himself up onto it, crawling over Shuichi’s pillow and into his lap. He didn’t speak, didn’t even make eye contact, just tucked his legs against Shuichi’s side and leaned against him, hands loosely grasping the fabric of his shirt.
Shuichi froze at the contact, suddenly acutely aware of their positions. The two of them had spent time together plenty of times since meeting one another, but never before had Kokichi gotten this close to him, or been this … vulnerable? Honest?
“You have to do it, too,” Kokichi mumbled after a while. “Otherwise I look stupid.”
It hardly felt real, Shuichi thought as he pulled Kokichi close to him, breathing in the scent of hospital soap in his hair. Not long ago, the other boy had been as intangible and incomprehensible as a ghost, a riddle shrouded in false smiles and then crushed into nothing, disappearing along with everyone else who—don’t think about it don’t think about it—
Too late. A shiver coursed through him and he squeezed the ghost tighter, trying not to tremble, trying to forget everything. Still, the traces of the game stalked his every thought—the perverse chords of Der Flohwalzer, the metal reek of gore in the hangar, Kaito’s face growing ashen with pain as his life drained away....
“Hey, Shuichi,” Kokichi finally said. “You’re shaking. Are you okay?”
Shuichi’s voice cracked as the words he’d been trying to gather the courage to tell Kokichi for weeks died in his throat. “Ko … Kokichi, I-I....”
“Shh, shh, don’t.” His arms circled hesitantly around Shuichi’s waist, as if he expected him to shove him away at any moment. “It was a dream, okay?” he murmured, his breath soft against Shuichi’s collar. “You’re safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you here.”
And it felt so, so nice to hear that from somebody other than a doctor in a white coat, or a bored-looking suit holding a clipboard, or a yelling someone flashing a camera in his face—but no, that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say. He’d said it too often during group therapy—I keep dreaming about all of you dying, I can’t stop hearing you screaming—for it to have any meaning anymore.
He shook his head and pressed his face into Kokichi’s hair, not caring anymore that the other boy could feel his violent tremors and probably the tears spilling down his face. Even during the killing game he’d rehearsed what he’d say to his dead classmates if he could, as a kind of coping mechanism, though at the time he hadn’t had any way of knowing that was possible. To Kaede, I wish I could have saved you. To Rantaro, I wish we could have helped each other.
To Kokichi....
The words were gone from him now—What had led him to believe that words could fix people as broken as them?—so he just continued to hold Kokichi too tightly, sobbing as the other’s fingers traced gentle patterns across the small of his back, until finally he couldn’t take it anymore and he whispered a tiny “I’m sorry.”
The tracing stopped. Kokichi let out a short sigh. “Shuichi—”
“I’m sorry,” he choked, and once the words were out, he couldn’t stop saying them any more than he could stop the shivers wracking his body. “I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry....”
“Shh. Breathe.”
He sucked in a deep breath. “It’s—it’s my fault, all of it, I— I-If I was smarter … you … you wouldn’t have died—”
“Don’t do that to yourself, Shuichi.”
“Everyone was dying, and I-I got so scared, and I … and I couldn’t … I couldn’t save anyone, I just … I’m sorry, I never wanted—I’m so sorry....”
“Stop, stop.” Kokichi shook his head. “We can talk about that if you want, but not when you’re upset like this, okay?
Shuichi responded by hiding his face in the crook of Kokichi’s neck and weeping. He cried harder than he had in the killing game itself, for all the things he had and hadn’t said, for all the friends he’d failed to save. He cried for his weakness. He cried out of a desperate, irrational terror that somehow he’d wake up from this reality and into the world of his dreams, where everyone would be gone again, where he’d have to face Danganronpa’s despair on his own again. The real world had broken the moment he’d woken up in that locker, and it seemed to keep breaking, even if the nightmare had long since ended.
Throughout it all, Kokichi remained silent, his arms occasionally tightening around Shuichi as if to reassure him of his presence.
He cried until his sobs faded into dry, trembling gasps for air, until all the panic and anguish bled out of him and exhaustion set in. And then, the two of them just … stayed there, holding each other close in the stillness.
Shuichi kept his eyes shut, focusing on the slow rise and fall of Kokichi’s chest against his and trying to even his breathing to match. His throat ached a little, and his shoulders still shuddered on every other inhale, but his thoughts remained blessedly empty.
Kokichi spoke up at last. “Do you want to talk now?”
Shuichi raised his head slightly and nodded, brushing away residual tears with the back of his hand. Kokichi pulled his arms back, settling into his original position and taking Shuichi’s hand. “What’s bothering you?” he asked, his voice as gentle as his touch.
Shuichi chewed his lip uncertainly. “Probably the same thing that’s bothering everyone else,” he said.
“Details?” When he didn’t respond, Kokichi added, “Just because we were all in the same killing game doesn’t mean we all hurt the same. I promise I’ll listen to anything you have to say, okay?”
His chest felt strained, and a dark part of him admonished that he had no right to burden Kokichi with this—especially Kokichi, especially after all that had happened—but he was too tired to hold it all inside him anymore.
“I … it’s … my fault,” he breathed. “If I’d been able to stop the game sooner, we wouldn’t … if I had tried harder, I could have saved everyone. I just wasn’t … enough.”
“Do you think everyone else thinks that?” Kokichi asked, his thumbs kneading circles into Shuichi’s palm.
“I don’t know,” he muttered.
“They don’t.” His hands moved to Shuichi’s wrist, drawing a figure-eight over his skin. “You did the best you could, Shuichi, and your best was better than anybody else’s. Nobody can expect more than that.”
“Even if it wasn’t good enough?” Shuichi burst out—too loudly, he realized, and both of them shot glances at the door. No footsteps sounded out in the hall, though, so he continued, “I was only good for sending people to their deaths. I’m just as bad as the Blackened—”
“The Blackened were willing to kill everybody else for their own gain. You’re nothing like them.”
“I killed them.”
“You saved everyone. You weren’t in the wrong, Shuichi.” Shuichi opened his mouth to protest, but Kokichi cut him off. “I’ve already talked to the others about this, so don’t even bother fighting me on that.”
“What do you mean?”
Kokichi exhaled, entwining their fingers and leaning his head against Shuichi’s chest. “Do you remember the third trial, when Kiyo tried to make everyone think Kiibo killed Tenko?”
“I … yeah, with his flashlight function.”
“You protected him,” Kokichi said. “Even though you had to lie to do it.”
Shuichi grimaced. “You noticed that, huh?”
“I noticed all of your lies,” Kokichi said. “What about when everyone thought Himiko killed Ryoma?”
“Of course.” He could still hear Tenko’s frantic shouts in her defense.
“All the evidence was pointing to her, but you wouldn’t give up on her,” Kokichi said. “You proved she was innocent, and she hasn’t forgotten that. She cried when she told me.”
Shuichi’s fingers tightened on his hand. “But I....”
“Hush, let me finish. Do you think Kaito could ever find it in him to hate his sidekick? And what about Kaede? Do you think she’d get mad because of a plot twist not even she could see coming? Honestly, I think the only one who’d ever dream of hating you would be Tsumugi. Know why?” He lowered his voice and tipped his chin up to whisper in Shuichi’s ear. “Because you beat her, Shuichi. Because you made it so no one ever has to hurt like this ever again.”
Shuichi looked down, biting his lip. “But what about you?”
Kokichi’s hand gave a barely-noticeable twitch. “Hm? What about me?”
“I wasn’t … I wasn’t....” His voice was shaking again; he took a deep breath and blinked away the tears that had returned to his eyes. “I wasn’t enough to save you,” he said. “You were doing so much on your own, and … I wasn’t enough of a detective to realize it. I should have helped you, I … I wish....”
Kokichi released his hand in favor of sliding his arms up and around Shuichi’s neck. “Hey, hey. No more crying.”
“I’m so sorry, Kokichi,” Shuichi finished in a whisper, hugging him close for the second time that night. “I didn’t want you to die.”
“Shh, come on.” The smaller boy rocked him back and forth, his chin resting on Shuichi’s shoulder. “Listen to me, okay? Are you listening?”
“I—y-yeah.”
“I’m not going to let you beat yourself up about the suicide I’d been planning since the third trial,” Kokichi said. “Okay? You can’t do that. That’s for me to deal with.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You can’t be sorry, either. You did the best you could have done, and you won a game that even I couldn’t win. And I never lose at games,” he added with a note of his usual cockiness.
Despite himself, Shuichi felt a short laugh bubble up in his throat, remembering one game in particular that had ended with Kokichi nearly cutting his finger off. “That’s not how I remember it.”
“Hmph! I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted.
He let himself laugh this time, quiet and drawn-out and still a little shaky, until he couldn’t quite tell whether it was truly a laugh or soft cries of relief.
Kokichi patted his back. “Uh-oh, I broke him,” he muttered. “You need to get some rest, detective. I hear sleep restores sanity points.”
Shuichi sighed. “Yeah....”
Kokichi pulled away to scan his face and frowned. “You really haven’t slept much lately, have you?”
“I … have too many nightmares,” he admitted.
Kokichi nodded. “Well, you can start by lying down,” he said. “I’ll stay here and scare all the bad dream faeries away. Is that okay?”
Another smile. He’d forgotten how easily Kokichi could pull those out of him. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine.”
Kokichi slipped out of his lap and waited while Shuichi lay down again. He pulled the blankets over both of them, then curled up next to him and tucked Shuichi’s head under his chin. His hand brushed over Shuichi’s hair in a gesture so uncharacteristically intimate that Shuichi flinched before he could stop himself.
Kokichi withdrew immediately. “Should I stop?”
He shook his head and folded his arms around Kokichi’s waist with a tired sigh. The other boy smirked audibly and resumed caressing his head in slow, even strokes.
“Go to sleep. Everything’s going to be okay, I promise.”
Shuichi relaxed against the sensation of Kokichi’s fingertips gliding across his scalp, letting his eyes slide closed.