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He’s going home today, home, wherever his new safe house is.
The doctor discharged from the hospital, hopefully not from his job. Furuya would like to think he handled the situation fine for someone ran into a corner by some unforeseeable leak from some other organizations that shouldn’t even be in Japan. Really, he’s heard Akai loud and clear the first few hundred times; not your fault, not your mess.
Yeah, it’s his responsibility anyway.
Fortunately, his superior seems to agree with everybody else in the operation, “you need security,” Kuroda says without turning to look at him, “really good security, we will figure out our next move in the meantime.”
Kuroda looks like an anomaly amongst the white of the hospital.
There isn’t a compliment, but there is no reprimand either. Kuroda doesn’t say anything else, but he also doesn’t leave the moment he’s done saying what he came here to say.
Furuya doesn’t think of his boss as an awkward person, but he certainly looks awkward, standing stiffly in a mostly empty hospital room.
He decides to spare the old man, “understood, sir.”
Kuroda leaves.
0
Furuya doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he does anyway. The last of the heavy-duty painkillers they pumped into him makes everything feel soft and fuzzy, even the sharp edges of the pain are dulled, and it’s hard to cling onto consciousness when every single sensations feel so slippery.
Someone taps a finger on a side of his pillow. It’s Akai.
“Let’s go,” he says, and Furuya is confused for a second until he sees a backpack and a rifle case sitting on the floor.
He blinks, his tongue feels too big in his mouth when he says, “are you kidding me?”
Really Good security, Kuroda said. Good security his fucking ass.
Akai doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t have to for Furuya to know he’s enjoying this, “I am your security, Furuya-kun.”
Furuya pinches his eyes, “I’m pretty sure this is against some sort of protocols.”
“It’s not against any protocol, though,” Akai helps him sit up. His hands are not soft, but his touches are. Furuya still flinches, though. Half of it is that his mind still expects the contact to hurt, another half is that any contact does in fact hurt. Pretty unavoidable, actually, especially when eighty percent of his skin is made up by bruises and open wounds.
Akai pulled back, too, but he doesn’t seem to be offended. Sorry , he mutters underneath his breath and Furuya mutely nods.
“As I was saying,” Akai waits until Furuya settles again to continue, “it’s not against any protocols because you said yourself that we’re not together and have never been together.”
Furuya remembers what he said was, “we’re not together. We have never been together. We will never fucking be together.”
He’s also pretty sure Akai doesn’t forget.
0
It’s not a rerun of Bourbon-and-Rye. Furuya swears to himself it’s not even going to be a sequel.
Life goes on. The painkillers wore off. His body feels like one big bruise that screams at being breathed on. Furuya doesn’t leave his room, but keep all the windows open and all the lights on. Akai doesn’t complain about the electricity bill. In fact, he doesn’t say much at all. The silence in the safe house creeps into Furuya bones, so he starting counting his breathe again. One, two, three, four, five. The light flickers. It always flickers at five. Furuya doesn’t close his eyes. He glares at the light fixture on the ceiling, watching a spider crawl in and out of it. A little black dot scampering around for reasons that escape him. Furuya lays on his too-warm bed. The cotton of the cover feels too rough on his skin, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t.
Akai doesn’t say much, these days. Maybe it’s because he knows Furuya won’t actually be listening. Maybe he simply doesn’t have anything to say. Maybe. Furuya doesn’t know. Akai keeps his mouth shut, but he doesn’t let the apartment go silent. There’s always something playing in the background. A movie. A random video. A song. There’s always something because Akai understands this in the way nobody else does. He understands the open windows, the locked door and the never-off lights. He knows to turn down the water temperature when taking a shower after Furuya. Akai brings him protein bar every morning and watches Furuya nibble at it with careful eyes. It’s nice. Gentle.
Soft.
Furuya doesn’t really have nightmares, but then again, he doesn’t really sleep.
“You should go to bed,” Akai says, one day. The mattress dips beneath his weight and Furuya is terribly aware of the heat radiating off of Akai’s skin.
“I’m already in bed.”
Akai doesn’t laugh, “like actually sleeping, I mean.”
The sky is clear. Furuya closes his eyes, traces the faint whispers of the wind on his skin with his mind.
“I don’t want to.”
Usually, Akai will drop it if Furuya says that , but this time he doesn’t.
“You should.”
Furuya ignores him, “you know,” the spider is doing its silly little dance on the ceiling again, “the worst of it,” Furuya isn’t talking, but it’s his voice, “the worst part of it isn’t even the—,” he grins, mostly because he doesn’t know what kind of expression he should put on, “the stomping part.”
It’s hard to pick out the worst physical part of the ordeal. It hurts when Gin shoved a needle underneath his fingernails, one by one. He remember how the pain came like a shock that made all other pains fade for a moment before it got worse. Stinging, aching, throbbing, and he couldn’t get away from it because there were needles stuck underneath his nails. It also definitely hurts when Vodka pulled his right leg taut, and Gin stomped his knee in. Furuya’s list consisted of that hurts, that hurts worse, that fucking hurts , so redundant to the point that it feels useless to keep it, but he does anyway.
“The worst part of it is that they made me participate,” Furuya doesn’t move because moving hurts, but not moving hurts too. Akai brushing his hair away from his face also hurts, but Furuya says nothing about it. He flinches, though, “it’s really fucked. It’s really smart.”
Akai hums, noncommittal.
In the background, a pop song is playing. It’s something cheerful about a girl with a crush as big as the moon. Pining, anticipating, hoping. Must be nice to have crushes be the worst of your problems.
“It’s—,” he starts, then gasps because his chest feels too tight. He coughs. Akai doesn’t hold him because he knows he can’t stand it, but he puts a careful hand on his good shoulder, tethering him to earth, “fuck,” Furuya swears.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Akai scratches his scalp lightly, like he’s petting a rabid, frighten animal, “you don’t have to.”
Furuya counts his breathe out loud.
0
Furuya does want to talk about it.
It’s what they used to do. Bourbon and Rye. Although this is not a rerun and it will not be a sequel, he does crave the familiarity of putting unspeakable violence into plain, harmless words. It makes things easier to think about.
After a week, Akai decides he’s done with Furuya pretending to be a rock and coaxes him out of his room.
“I’ll make you curry,” he offers.
“Curry is the only thing you know how to make.”
“Come on, Furuya-kun,” Akai starts, and Furuya thinks of Gin. Gin who’s still alive and is probably absolutely livid. Come on, Bourbon, he remembers Gin saying. Remembers the electricity. The way his muscles keeps twitching uncontrollably like his body isn’t his own. He also remembers that Rye was the one who started saying this to him first, Come on, Bourbon, he would say. It doesn’t matter who says it first, though, it doesn’t fucking matter because he can’t control his fucking emotions.
“Don’t say that.”
Akai startles, but he doesn’t ask why, “alright,” he concedes easier than Furuya expects him to, “just come out, Furuya-kun.”
It’s raining today. Furuya has been watching grey clouds build and build until the last of the blue sky is swallowed. The air feels humid, the air conditioner is on, it’s raining—pouring. Still, Furuya keeps his windows open and Akai says nothing about it.
“We can watch something,” Akai’s gaze prickles at his sensitive skin, “your pick.”
0
Furuya leaves his room the third time Akai asks. And by leaving he means struggling to get up with two hands that hurt to touch and be touched by anything. By leaving, he means stumbling out with one functional leg and a crutch, Akai trailing behind him like some overly concerned guard dog.
“Do you want help?” Akai asks for what feels like the hundredth time.
“No.”
Really, the living room isn’t that far away. It’s a safe house, not a luxury apartment.
Akai makes sure he’s fine on the couch before he leaves to get them food from the kitchen, then comes back with two steaming plates of curry.
Furuya knows this isn’t the most relatable thing to say, but it’s really difficult to hold the spoon when most of your fingernails are gone. It’s not like a protein bar that you can sort of hold with your knuckles. He tells Akai that, and the other pulls a face Furuya has never seen on him before.
“I didn’t think about that.”
“I didn’t tell you.”
Well, everything between them does boil down to that.
Just a very simple, I didn’t tell you.
0
For people who talked to each other about the most horrible things known to mankind, Bourbon and Rye sure didn’t tell each other much.
Bourbon just sort of stared at Rye really hard and hoped that he’d get it.
That has always been the thing that fucks them up, hasn’t it?
Hope.
0
He fell asleep on the couch during the movie, his body giving into exhaustion.
That is the first time he doesn’t wake up before the nightmare starts.
What an empty nightmare.
It’s just a room, a dark room with no sound. An empty body with no feelings. Furuya dreams of being stuck inside his own corpse with a dislocated shoulder and a knee stomped inside-out. Nothing hurts. Everything hurts. It’s just a room with nothing to see and nothing to hear. Nothing is moving. He can’t move. Time is simultaneously crawling and rushing by. Furuya remembers thinking he would let Gin crush his other knee if that means he can get out of that pitch black room.
He has never been afraid of the dark before.
0
Furuya doesn’t wake up screaming. He wakes up mutely, suddenly like a switch has been flipped. He can’t find his voice. He forgets where he is. He doesn’t know how to breathe. He counts them, though, the trembling one, two, three, of breaths that refuse to come.
The light is on.
He doesn’t go back to sleep.
0
He ends up talking about it over a dinner where Akai eats and he watches.
“There was this room,” he starts, and Akai just nods like he doesn’t know where this is going, “they put me there when they don’t have anything to do with me.”
Akai keeps up the guise of eating, but Furuya notices he’s just pushing food around in his plate. He doesn’t call him out on it, “it’s just a room that’s so dark I can’t even see my own hand.”
Not that he wanted to see it, but whatever.
He chews on his lips, pondering on how to word this; there was nothing, I can hear nothing, I can see nothing, I felt like I was going insane even though I knew there was nothing. It’s like my mind was trying to fill in the blanks. The pain felt sharper. The ache burned worse.
All he ends up saying is, “you get it, right?”
Akai’s voice is rough when he says, “I do.”
0
His nails start growing back. Furuya has even more nightmares because he starts to actually sleep. Sometimes he wakes up screaming. Akai calls it improvement.
“It’s better than the if I don’t move, I don’t exist thing you were doing,” he says, not unkindly. Furuya doesn’t entirely agree because waking up screaming is fine, but realizing that he woke up screaming is humiliating. The sting of humiliation makes him think of rotten food on the floor, a boot on his neck and the crunch of concrete against his forehead. It makes him think of Gin saying, “what does a dog do when it gets fed?” That’s the worst part of it all. The part that he was hungry, desperate, in pain, and the shadows of the black room was sticking to his tender skin. Furuya remembers feeling like he’d do just about anything to not be thrown back in there. He remembers getting on his knees, putting his head on the ground, barking. God, the fucking barking, the way they fucking laughed.
The next time Furuya wakes up screaming, the light is on and Akai is there.
“Hey,” his voice is still thick with sleep, but it doesn’t help with the shame. It doesn’t make the taste of his own vomit in his mouth go away, either, “you’re not there, Furuya-kun.”
Akai doesn’t touch him because he gets it. He understands this like nobody does, but he hovers close enough that Furuya can feel him breathe, close enough that his brain is convinced this is real and that is not.
“You lasted,” Akai tells him, over and over again.
He doesn’t say “you’re okay” because he’s not, and both of them are professional enough to recognize that.
0
Akai starts making him a cup of tea every morning.
It doesn’t help, but it’s the thought that counts.