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Kaito's hands clenched around slender wrists, and he tugged. One more step. Okay, now one more.
His shirt, already slick with sweat, had been cast aside. He squinted through his haze of dizzying exhaustion and tugged again, even as his arms buckled. He couldn't recall the last night he'd slept, and even considering it caused the throbbing pain deep between his lungs to pinch, a warning.
Tightening his arms, he tugged again, the sweat spilling down his hands and skittering across Kokichi's milky skin, its once-peachy quality already faded, ashen.
Grunting through his teeth, he muttered, “This might be a little easier for both of us if I carry you, Kichi.”
“Oh my god, Kaito.” Even as he lay there—poisoned, and slowly ebbing away—the little purple gremlin retained a disgusted tremor in his tone, his sidelong grin creeping up the side of his face. “But it's so much more badass if you drag me! Plus, everyone'll think I dragged you after this is all over! Imagine!”
So badly as he considered punting this freaking loon, Kaito knew such an action might actually kill him this time.
Kaito's tongue darted across his lip. The aftertaste of the antidote temporarily froze him.
He couldn't go back now. He... trusted in this bastard and his batshit crazy plan.
Oh, how far had they come.
“Yeah, but it'll all be a wasted effort if you die first, y'know.”
Kichi's head lolled back, his eyes full of Kaito. They momentarily clouded, his breaths raspy as his laugh filtered through. “Nee hee-hee... I'd—Sorry, saw the light for a sec there—I'd never dream of it! But man, you're slow... h-hurry up, wou—ahhhh—”
“K-Kichi—!”
Through his gritted teeth, Kaito let out a warning growl. Kichi's eyes fluttered, mouth splitting into a series of coughs that he poorly disguised with a halfhearted giggle.
Kaito bit his lip. He fought with the gradually increasing weight of Kokichi's poisoned body as legs went slack, and the gremlin squeezed his eyes shut, his thin chest rapidly pumping air. Glancing back, the flutter crawling up his throat, Kaito sighed and threw his arms around Kichi's waist, tugging him into his arms and hoisting him up the staircase he had finally reached. The metal steps tinkled with the trickle of Kokichi's blood between his hoarse gasps of “Stop that—You're supposed to drag me—Dammit, Kaito—”
“Stop screwin' around! I can see through your lies, okay? You're literally dying in my arms!”
Wheezing, Kichi replied, “Really? I so am not.”
He was met with silence.
Kichi held that silence until Kaito's subtly shaking hands overlapped his, placing them against the metal rail at the top of the staircase. This small platform held the control panel for the hydraulic press that loomed ahead, its massive maw still stretched wide open, gaping, inviting.
Once he'd ensured Kokichi could hold himself up, Kaito backed off, palms facing outwards. “There. Now here's that camera you wanted.” He found it where he'd left it, a weird cold shock punching him in the chest. But where could the camera have gone after he turned his back on it?
He couldn't overcome the pulsation of his entire body, the belying question asking whether something was about to go horribly wrong. Like it could somehow get any worse. Or maybe it was his brain rewinding and resetting each time he glanced over at Kichi's shaky form and realized that for the first time in their entire (mostly terrible) relationship, they were working together.
Towards something greater than each of them combined.
“Great, great.” Kichi shrugged him off, his grip sloppy. He found the buttons for Play and Record and jostled them with his thumbs. “Now get under there, if you'd please.”
Sparing another giggle, he turned and watched as Kaito eased around him, his fist tight at the railing. He caught his stumble before it happened, his slippers slick against Kichi's bloodied pools. Swallowing hard, Kaito wandered to the press and slid beneath it, his head pounding. In splashes of moments he lost sight of where he was, the world dimming and refocusing about him.
The sweat trickled down his neck as he held his breath and stared into the shadowy depths of the press's steely overhang. Its clamp began to heave as Kokichi knocked the Down button on the platform and simultaneously turned on the camera.
Kaito thought he wouldn't be able to hold himself still, but he found, as the cold air pushed onto him, as the metal weight threatened to squish him flat, that he almost ached for it to land. His body was falling apart before him, his throat raw with his own blood, his strength waning even as the poison wore off. He... He wouldn't make it much longer than Kokichi.
Laying on the frigid slab of metal, eyes shut, jacket cushioned against him like a comforting final hug... he could feel it.
He jolted when the creeping guttural moan of the hydraulic halted. “What?” piped up Kokichi, just out of sight. “You can't take my place! I already gave you the antidote! I'm the one who gets to die!”
Slowly Kaito rose, his joints screeching for him to stop. His breaths tangled up in his throat as he slid off the press, his nose breadths away from crunching into its sleek, reflective surface. Above him he saw shadowed eyes and cringing lips that couldn't quite close.
Hurriedly he escaped the press, clambering up to the top of the staircase, reaching Kichi's side.
His sneering companion glared up at him through his long, spidery purple hair. “You better drag me this—time.” He'd drawn off, resigned, when Kaito helped him up and carried him down the steps one last time to the press.
Kichi's heart spasmed against his own. He tried not—to think about it, but its frantic pattering caused Kaito's blood to chill.
This really was happening.
Perhaps wholly in spite of his physical condition, Kokichi continued to yammer on about his badly he wanted to be dragged. Glaring at the ceiling, Kaito let him slip through his hands and attempt to stand on the ground on his own. Soon enough he was once again relying on Kaito's strength, fighting to stifle his nearly silent whimpers.
A faint twinge echoed somewhere within Kaito. He shook himself, clamping an arm around Kichi, and eased him up against the press—
—only for legs to lock around his waist and hands to dig into his shoulders.
Their heads were level. With the press as a back support, Kichi managed to tilt his face into Kaito's.
He wheezed out a breath, whispered, “Damn. I just realized I'm gonna die without kissing anyone.”
“Really, man? Right now?”
But Kaito found himself willing to stall. His mouth moved before his hands could seek out the strength to chuck the dying boy into his metal tomb.
Something glinting and dangerous and bright funneled through Kichi's sputtery eyes. “Hey, Kaito.” His voice hovered somewhere distant between its usual snark and something gilded, something foreign, something he'd never heard ventured from Kichi's lips before. “You're not boring... Kiss me. I wanna know what it's like before I go.”
He couldn't begin to follow this little shit's line of thinking. As soon as his guard collapsed, as soon as Kaito was allowed in to see the pain Kichi was incapable of hiding, he said that.
A strange throbbing rewoke in his heart.
Kichi had saved his life. Not only his—Maki's, too, from becoming a blackened, fated to check off another useless death, to play into the mastermind's hands. This ridiculous plan of his—this impossible, unpredictable, miraculous plan of his—might just save everyone else from remaining trapped within the “game”. Those words Kichi had said to him before they agreed to work together—that he had lied to himself about enjoying it—rippled over him, and his wish, too, that nobody's lives would truly end in vain.
...no matter how much of his meager life remained, Kaito knew he'd regret not giving this bastard his last request, whether or not it turned out to be another lie aimed at humiliating him.
He pumped out his exhale slowly. “Okay, Kichi.”
A nearly imperceptible flash across his rival's pale, angular face. The slightest widening in his eye.
“Can't resist me~?”
“Dude, I hate your guts.” The strangest chuckle bloomed in his mouth. “You really piss me off.”
Kichi's brows quirked. “Oh, yeah? Well I hate you so much that I chose to lock you up in the same room with me over any of these other boring students, just to ensure you didn't do anything more stupid than your usual.”
“I”—Why was he laughing?—“I hate you so much that I spent all of this shitty game pretending to ignore you while secretly trying to track your every move! You are... impossible to follow, you little shit!”
A bright smile tore through Kichi's leer. “You'd be surprised how far down the hallways your yells travel, you idiot. Try using your inside voice?” His breaths billowed over Kaito's face as he leaned in close and whispered, “I hate you so much that I considered throwing the antidote at the ground and making you die with me.”
A dangerous lurch sprung from Kaito's waist.
“But I must say,” he murmured, lips tracing his ear, “I didn't give you nearly enough credit, Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars. You might just be the most interesting person I've ever met.”
His eyes squeezed shut, his heart skirting up his throat. Why—Why did this little shit make him feel...
Voice tapering, he rasped, “I hate you so much that I couldn't bear to let Maki waste her life on you.”
Maki... why didn't she cause his heart to stutter—mind to melt—lungs to weaken, like the pain slowly chipping away at him momentarily didn't exist..?
His mouth crumpled. “...My bad. That lie must've been painfully obvious.
“I wasn't ready to watch you die. That's why I stopped her.”
A sharp intake.
Tentative lips brushed upon his. Already he was pulling back, but Kaito hooked a thumb under his chin and yanked their mouths together. His tongue eased into Kichi's as sweet ecstasy spilled through his veins, the breaths of the person he couldn't understand, the only person he could understand, fluttering down his throat.
Damn.
Feathery soft moans escaped him. His fingers slid down Kichi's bare chest, straddling his waist, exploring his warm, resonant skin. Kichi's hands knotted in his hair. His heart pulsated with a new desperation, awakening as it raced against Kaito's. Once-chapped lips now became moist and cushy, plowing again and again together. Hesitant kisses devolved into messy, gasping fits and starts reluctant to release one another from the sparking warmth that now entwined them.
To think he'd spent these past few weeks seething after Kichi, fumbling to protect his sidekick from this loose cannon's unforeseeable actions. To think all this time his rival had been keeping careful track of his lies, building up a steady empire that culminated in this attempt to save everyone from anymore murder. To think it was this shit who had somehow captured his heart the whole time.
To think he could've done this so much sooner if only it hadn't taken imminent death for a chance to peek past Kichi's curtain of trickery to arise.
Their arms instinctively clenched about the other just moments before a bloodcurdling shriek wrenched into Kaito's mouth.
Frantic, spastic breaths passed through Kaito's lips, each more desperate, more ragged than the last. Kichi's hands had fallen to his shoulders, and they clenched and unclenched in an indiscernible pattern until finally he broke away from Kaito to gasp, “Okay, it's gonna fucking happen, let's—”
“Wait,” he murmured, and the boy startled, his glassy purple gaze jolting over to Kaito.
Kichi's heart stumbled against Kaito's chest. His milky expression was unreadable, as always—Wait, no. The slightest downturn at his lip. When Kaito spoke again, that frown flattened. “The cameras are off. I'm the only one who'll know.”
Already Kichi was steps ahead of him. “You'd... lie to them..?”
Anything to keep the wild agony from reappearing in Kichi's wide, wet eyes.
He gazed into Kaito's resolute silence and said, a glimmer of his smirk returning, “Real st-stupid of you... to think... I'd want your s-sympathy...” A frail wince of laughter trailed his words.
Then the tears pooled and dripped, spilling down his cheeks.
Kaito gently laid his hands over Kichi's wet skin, cupping his face.
“No one's... ever lied for me... be-before...” His body was already cooling. Kaito fought to keep the dread from overcoming his complexion. The last thing he wanted was for Kichi to see it—for it to be the last thing Kichi ever saw. “I r-r-really should've paid... more attention to you... K-Kaito... fuck...”
As his grip weakened, arms sapped of their strength, hands slumbering at his sides, Kaito tugged him into an embrace. At some point they'd slid onto the ground, and Kichi curled up in his lap.
He was so cold. Shaking, almost imperceptibly.
His hands stroked along Kichi's trembling back. So small. He could feel the rigid imprint of his bone structure beneath his skin. Now that Kaito thought about it, he wondered if Kichi had eaten properly since Kirumi's execution.
Kichi's head was cushioned by his chest. Cold, rasping breaths passed along his bare skin. The dying boy had his eyes clamped tightly shut, and the misty imprints of tears had given his face a vaguely transparent glow.
Kaito's throat ached, raw with days of coughing. So many things to say. Not nearly enough time to say them. But the thought of letting Kichi pass on in silence...
He tilted in close, nuzzling Kichi's hair. Whispered, “I love—”
“Sh-Sh-Shut up,” hissed Kichi. “Y-You're such a b-b-b-bad liar... makes me sick...
In Kaito's silence, he murmured, “G-Geez... At least pretend... to believe me...” Tucking his chin into Kaito's chest, he strained and fought, fought to look up. His sunken, ashen cheeks belied the very life dwindling within him, threatening to escape with each tease of breath. Paltry hands clawed at Kaito's legs, too tired, too weak to reach any further.
Through gritted teeth he managed it, meeting Kaito's gaze, his lips toying into a friendly grin:
“Don't worry, Kaito... this is what I want...
He exhaled, long and slow, murmured, “what I want is...”
and his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed into Kaito.