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Rye had called him out on it once upon a time. Just a thing that came up during one of their conversations on one of the filthy rooftops of Tokyo. I can punch you in the face, he had said, voice low enough Bourbon can drown in it if he so wishes, loud enough that the words stung, and it will hurt less than me calling you incompetent.
Fragile pride, Bourbon is self-aware of that. A Prince Rupert’s drop, squeeze that one spot hard enough and everything else will explode with it. Fragile fucking pride, it’s such a stupid thing to hold on to when he is this deep under. Rye took one look at him and know how to break him, but he didn’t. Perhaps that’s what matters, he didn’t.
Once upon a time, Bourbon had believed he wouldn’t.
It feels stupid to think about Rye now. Rye and his stupid little transgressions that damaged nothing more than his feelings. Now when he can barely hold his head up and just about everything in his body burns. His lungs are screaming, his throat is on fire. This is why I don’t smoke, an awfully calm echo of himself in his brain jested, but it’s gone as soon as it came. As soon as his head is pushed under water again. It’s fine. Hold, hold, don’t breathe, Bourbon knows how this goes. Keep your tempo, don’t breathe in the water. When, and not if, when he started choking, it will all go downhill from there, so for this part just hold on as long as you can. Conserve your stamina. Bourbon is not an amateur. He knows. He knows.
Vodka finally pulls him up, and he gasps, heaving in precious air that tastes like smoke.
“Feel like talking yet? “
Bourbon stopped quipping back an hour ago. He focuses on breathing; in, out, in, out, his body is so hungry for oxygen he feels like he’s been running for miles. Exhaustion is throbbing in his bones. He wants to pant but forces himself to keep the tempo. In, hold, out.
It almost sounds like Rye is in his ears, breathe, he whispered, calm and collected, in on four, out on five. Come on, Bourbon. Bourbon doesn’t remember when Rye said that, he doesn’t remember from what fucking memory his brain pulled those lines from. Hell, his addled mind might have just made them up because Bourbon doesn’t just forget. God, maybe he’s starting to, maybe he’s just that tired.
“You were so talkative,” Gin drawls, “why the silent treatment, all the sudden?”
Bourbon steels himself, a sentence ready on the tip of his tongue. He isn’t thinking clearly, no, not after they passed an hour mark.
When he pulls in a breath to start talking, Vodka pushes him down. Not being able to breathe hurts, but water gushing into his lungs burns even worse. His body seizes. It’s all downhill from here, he knows.
Bourbon, after all, is a professional.
“We can make this so much easier,” and God, Gin talks so much. Bourbon starts hacking the moment vodka pulled him up. The seizing doesn’t stop, the rushing of blood in his ears drown out his thoughts. His body wants to survive, it doesn’t care about much else, “come on, bourbon. Do you think I enjoy this?”
He cackles, bile burning in the back of his throat, “you fucking love this.”
Gin sighs, and this time Bourbon braces himself for it.
Bourbon is a professional, he knows the script word for word.
The first hours don’t really mean anything.
0
Gin is stupidly traditional, and if Bourbon isn’t on the wrong side of it, he might have laughed.
It’s water, then punches. The punches upgraded to sticks, knives. Bourbon can almost guess the trajectory of where this is going to.
When the next logical step is a gun, Gin flips the table on him.
He brings out electricity. Five hours mark is when people start to get impatient, when they start to get creative. Bourbon has been in Gin’s chair. He knows how this goes.
Knowing doesn’t save him from hurting, though.
“Come on, bourbon,” Gin has been saying that a lot, his voice mostly cold, but there’s amusement lurking beneath it. Come on, he said like he’s chastising a child who is being unruly; patronizing. His tone grates on him. Gin sounds kinder than Bourbon has ever heard him, and it leaves a foul taste inside his mouth, “you know I’ve got other things to do.”
“Go, then,” Bourbon grins. All muscles in his body are still twitching, the scent of blood is clogging up his throat. Bourbon counts each throb of pain and cling onto it with an iron grip, “it’s not like I’m holding you captive.”
Gin doesn’t smile, “hilarious.”
0
Bourbon is many things; a delusional man isn’t one of them. Eventually, he will crack. The only question is when.
Gin is also many things, a stupid man isn’t one of them. Eventually, someone will come. The only question is when.
When.
The clock keeps ticking. His heart races against its tempo. Pains are distant, but stubbornly there. Bourbon grabs at them, at sensations that will keep him sane. He counts the tick of the clock, the throbbing of his pulse. Time feels like loose sand between his fingers.
Bourbon clings onto them.
You just have to last, Rye had said. It’s not a promise because Rye doesn’t do promises and neither does Bourbon. They are professionals. Promises are anything but that. You just have to last, Rye had said, but Bourbon doesn’t know if the echo of a man who never existed means anything anymore.
Turns out, Gin really has other things to do and other places to be.
“The conversation isn’t over, Bourbon,” Vodka threw him in a dark room when Gin got up and left. He can feel the creak of the chair vibrating through the concrete floor, and he chases the sound with his mind until the echo dies out, then he’s got nothing left for company except the sound of his breath, the beating of his heart, and the pulse of pains aching deep inside his bones.
The ticks of the clock are gone, smothered into silence by the big, heavy door he can’t even see in this darkness.
Bourbon counts his breaths.
It’s just the matter of when he will start losing time.
0
Here’s a thing.
Bourbon doesn’t operate in the safest way possible. By any means necessary, that is his modus operandi. Anything for everything. There’s no such thing as too risky in his book.
Everything in this line of business is always going to be too risky anyway if you don’t have someone to fall back onto; a lifeline, a safety net. And well, it’s kind of difficult to be saved by people who are long gone. Dead; wasn’t able to be saved by anyone then and cannot save anyone now.
Bourbon lost count of his breaths at three thousand.
He sits there in the dark and thinks about Matsuda in the Ferris wheel, taking his last breath and knowing it.
0
The thing about Rye is that he was sweet in the most bizarre way.
There was no promises, no vows, but he was sweet, nonetheless. Cold, unfeeling, but sweet in the way that makes your bones ache, sweet in the way that will rot your soul.
Rye was the sweetest when they got stuck together in an enemy’s basement. Half of Bourbon’s bones are broken. He was cold. He coughed and coughed but his lungs still felt wet. There was probably something wrong with his fingers. There was something wrong with everything in his body, like his flesh were a mass of pains stuck to his thin, sickly bones.
Rye didn’t promise anything. He didn’t say, “we will get out of here and we will be fine.” But his hands were gentle when he wrapped them around his throat, promising, “if you want to go,” Bourbon remembers the way Rye’s voice cracked, the way he took a breath, then swallowed it, “just say the word.”
I’ll kill you.
Rye didn’t say that, but Bourbon heard it anyway.
It was sweet.
0
At the end of it, it isn’t even the physical pains that did him in. Rye was right, after all; it’s your pride, your fragile goddamn pride.
They stopped feeding him at one point in the interrogation. No, that’s wrong. They still do because they need him alive, Bourbon can see that clearly even with his muddled mind. They need him, so they don’t stop feeding him, they don’t stop hurting him either. They just poured everything on the dirty concrete for and made him lick it up because they can and because they know the humiliation fucking stings.
Bourbon will get over it, or he won’t. It doesn’t matter now.
Anything for everything.
Bourbon isn’t even sure if Rye ever said that, but it’s the ghost of him that keeps him sane, “you just have to last.”
When they tell him to bark like a dog he is, Bourbon does.
0
Nobody comes.
Bourbon got himself into this mess, and he will get himself out of it. He got himself out of it.
He took the gun from Vodka, shot him once in the head, then got away. It sounds simple when he recounts it now, but it wasn’t, and Bourbon doesn’t want to think about it. He stumbles into a phone booth, hesitating only for a moment before punching in the numbers.
The sky is clear. Bourbon glares at every empty rooftop, something bitter festering in his chest. It tastes like unjustifiable disappointment.
“Hey, Kazami.”
0
Hope is fucking gross. Bourbon lasted and Rye isn’t here. He shouldn’t feel disappointed because Rye might have said, “you just have to last,” but he promised nothing.
Bourbon feels like an idiot for hoping anyway.
He wasn’t with the cavalry that came to pick him up because he’s a stupid FBI. He wasn’t at the hospital because he’s legally dead, and a dead man doesn’t show up at a hospital just because his sometimes-friend-sometimes-enemy-sometimes-something-else is a little bit closer to death than he ever was before.
Furuya hates himself for wanting him there, but he wants him there anyway. It’s less because of Akai being here will make everything hurt less (it would not), and more of the fact that nobody understands this. Nobody else. Nobody else understands the numbness that dark room leaves behind, nobody else understands the way the sound of his own breath haunts him.
Akai shows up on a quiet Monday morning.
He’s so quiet Furuya doesn’t notice his presence, at first. He wakes up slow, painkillers and leftover sleep hangs heavy on his lids, Furuya only realizes Akai is there when a cold glass of water is pressed to his lips.
Akai doesn’t say anything. He watches him drink, waits until he’s done to take the glass back. The silence between them is oppressing, but nothing as bad as that dark room.
“You lasted,” Akai says, eventually, and Furuya can hear a million different things echoing between his words. Well done, I’m sorry, God, I’m so fucking sorry.
Furuya smiles, “no thanks to you.”
Maybe it’s just the lighting, but Akai looks exhausted.
“Furuya-kun, you can’t―” he takes a deep breath, clicking his tongue the same way Rye did when he’s frustrated, but was trying not to be, “you can’t not call me, and expect me to show up anyway.”
Akai is so bad at reading him when it counts. He’s so accurate at times like this, though, and Furuya can’t say he likes that.
“I’m not upset with you,” outside the window, a storm is brewing,” “I got myself into a mess, I got myself out of it,” he counts his breath the same way he did when Vodka was dunking his head into a bucket of water, “It’s not even about you.”
“It’s not about me,” Akai agrees, “but I’d like to know that you’re not dead.”
Oh, does Furuya not have a response for that? He bites his tongue, though, because he is still tired and doesn’t feel like having another shouting match over this.
“I’m not dead.”
Akai sighs, “I can see that.”
“So what’s the issue?” Furuya stares at a spot on a flower in a vase next to his bed, “like I said, I got myself into a mess, I got myself out of it.”
He doesn’t know what kind of face Akai is making, but he sounds irritated.
Akai is never irritated.
“It’s not even your mess,” his voice is low enough that it buzzes on his skin, oddly comforting, “you didn’t get yourself into a mess. It was our leak,” Akai isn’t the type to raise his voice when he’s angry. He’s the type to bury it deep in his chest, but if you know how to listen, you will hear it rumbling beneath his syllables anyway, “we got you into this mess.”
So that’s why he’s upset.
“It’s a part of the job.”
“Furuya-kun.”
“See, Akai,” he turns to look at him, “I’d rather not do this now,” the hospital light casts a ghastly glow onto Akai’s skin, and he looks more like a ghost than Rye in his imagination, “I don’t want to argue with you after a talk with Gin.”
Both of them went quiet for a while, then Akai sighs, leaning a little into Furuya’s stiff shoulders.
“Do you want to talk about it, instead?”
The touch burns. It’s almost like his skin doesn’t understand that touches aren’t meant to hurt anymore. Furuya presses himself back into Akai out of sheer spite. The burn doesn’t fade, but he tolerates it, hoping for the heat to burn his frozen insides up.
“Do you want second-handed suffering, Akai?”
Akai’s eyes are so green.
“I want yours.”