Archive of Our Own

In his second year at Yosen University Tatsuya started staying up too late.

The problem was that it was a small town. There was nothing to do but go to the same two clubs, the same three coffee shops, the same two bookstores. Weekends it was one-off dates or karaoke with some guys from the high school basketball club, or trying to get ahead on his homework while idly browsing the internet.

So that’s when he discovered the ghoul theory forums. And wasn't that a trip. I mean, ok the US had a nice scattering of cryptid variations, but this was something else. People out there seriously believed that Japan had this parallel evolution race that looked like normal people except that a) they were stronger, faster, and grew weird extra limbs out of their body with the help of some kind of ‘special cells’ and b) the only thing they could eat was human flesh.

It was some really dark, trippy shit. Like, points for imagination y’all. Jersey Devil, eat your heart out.

Of course, being born with thrice the usual dose of healthy skepticism, Tatsuya didn’t believe any of it for a second. But he wondered about what could really be behind such a persistent rumor. Unusually brutal yakuza killings? Some kind of neo-pagan meat-eating cult? A coverup for industrial pollution?

Anyway clicking around the forums, trolling for ‘ghoul sightings,’ reading ‘ghoul theories,’ it was kind of a fun way to pass the time.

So sue him he'd always been kind of a fan of weird gothic shit, what could you expect from a guy who was born the night before Halloween? The subreddit was basically a bunch of amateur horror writers trying to see which one could come up with the best ghoul rumors.

Tatsuya’s favorite story that week was a guy who said that a friend of a friend had gotten lost while on a bender in Shinjuku and ended up at a bar where the heavily tattooed bartender had put real toothpick-skewered human eyeballs into her martini instead of olives.

There was this game people on forums would play when they were out at night: people watching, trying to spot someone who could be a ghoul.

The usual suspects were people who wore dark clothes, people who lurked around town at strange hours, people who drank a lot of coffee and didn't seem to eat. And they were supposed to look different somehow, like they were apart from everyone else, like you could see the vague tinge of inhumanity around them like an aura.

What was the ideal ghoul like? Aloof? Standoffish? Sometimes sitting around coffee shops until closing time with a sketchbook on his lap staring at things with a fixed expression while thinking of their brother and the way ten years of friendship and trust had gone down the drain with one unlucky basketball game, one day of him being a total asshole.

Tatsuya figured he'd make a pretty good ‘ghoul candidate’ himself. Some days he scrolled through the forms with half an eye on his six, wondering if someday he’d see himself in a blurry ‘sighting’ photo.

Today's offerings weren't too convincing: An old woman with a lazy eye who just looked sad, a tall guy with green hair and a briefcase looking especially robotic on the subway, some young punk with ugly cornrows glaring sideways at the camera.

I mean, Taiga had forgiven him. Because without Tatsuya’s shitty influence Taiga had grown up to be a really nice guy. But they’d missed years of each other’s life. Now Taiga was happy in Tokyo with his polite little boyfriend and Tatsuya was… coasting, keeping his head above water. Sometimes wondering if this whole ‘swimming’ thing was really all it was cracked up to be.

What he probably needed was therapy. What he had was a resurgent smoking habit and his phone chirping at him that his screen time was awful lately.

And then after karaoke with some vague almost-friends he ended up in an alley behind the little row of mom-and-pop shops, wandering around trying to sober up before he got back to the dorms. Tatsuya had acquired a reputation for ‘elegance’ somewhere in High School, and ridiculous as it was, he kept clinging to it with every finger, tooth, and nail. Staggering around where he could be seen just wouldn’t do.

Unfortunately that’s when he looked up and saw that someone was looking at him through the little window in a heavy iron door. Tatsuya flinched, freaked out, sprinted back twenty feet like it was a floor drill and hid behind a corner.

Then he felt really stupid for doing that and lit up a cigarette, leaning against the brickwork like he’d meant to be doing that all along.

Then he stuck his head out a little, not to be a creeper or anything, he was just curious.

About a minute later the iron door, which apparently belonged to a bakery, opened and the world’s largest Japanese dude, no seriously, he was pushing seven feet and that wasn’t the tequila talking, carefully stepped out of it, hefting like 8 trash bags. He chucked them into the dumpster and made a horrifically cute little ‘whew’ noise when he was done. He was shiny with sweat and had one of those bandannas tied over his head like a middle-aged housewife or a Rosie the Riveter poster, damp wisps of purple hair curling around his slab-like neck.

Tatsuya was frozen to the wall, his cigarette pretty much burning itself out between his fingers.

Wait. What. Ummm…What. Is. Happening? Is this working for me?

Dude, that’s not your usual type. Like, at all.

Usually it was non-threatening shy boys who wore sweaters, when he even bothered to go for boys.

But the rest of his brain was like ‘Ssssshhh! Be quiet, you dumb motherfucker, I’m watching him stretch!’

Meanwhile the guy in the alley did something that took it from ‘unf, break me off a piece of that’ to ‘shot through the heart with a twelve-gauge.’ He pulled a bag of cat treats out of his pocket, bent over(!) and scattered them into a chipped pink bowl that was soon swarmed by fluffy little shapes.

Oh my god, Tatsuya thought I see you! You’re built like an angry god but on the inside you’re a fucking marshmallow!

He must have breathed too hard or something, or maybe it was the aborted squeal because the guy whipped around, clocking Tatsuya immediately, his head snapping up like some forest creature.

Caught, Tatsuya waved at him with his cigarette.

The guy sniffed, gave him the most glorious, pissed-off 'UGH, why are you staring at me? How dare you catch me revealing my true marshmallow-ness?!’ look, and then stomped back into his subterranean baking kingdom, slamming the heavy iron door behind him like it was made of cardboard. A fact which Tatsuya totally did not find weirdly stomach-churning-ly hot.

A few seconds later Tatsuya heard a deadbolt. Like the seven-foot-brick-wall-of-muscle guy thought he needed protection from him.

Tatsuya took a fresh drag of his cigarette.

Oh man. Adorable.

Great alley, A+ views, 10/10. Would loiter in again.

------

It took all of Tatsuya’s patience not to just come back the next night, knock on the door and be like “Hey there mystery man, thanks for making me discover my new type which is apparently ‘brick shithouse, with a bubble butt’. As a reward, I would like to climb you like a tree~ Here’s my number!”

Like, maybe that would be coming on too strong. A dozen roses felt too high school. Maybe he could re-use the ‘flours as flowers’ trick from “Stranger Than Fiction”? I mean the dude baked, right?

The encounter wouldn’t leave his mind, he felt consumed by it. It might have been the ass-end of February but it felt like there was color back in his life again. Sure the color was dark purple but it was a nice change of pace from black.

Tatsuya plotted and schemed all through his afternoon classes and even forgot to check the ghoul forums. By six pm he had a solid plan and a smirk under his striped scarf.

Right on time in the same alleyway the great banded iron door banged open and his adorably ruffled surly-looking prey shuffled out, fresh garbage bags hanging off his corded forearms.

“Seriously.... you again?” he muttered when he spotted Tatsuya. Who was back to lurking in said alleyway, but at least more gracefully and less drunk.

“Hey.”

“...what a pain.”

“Sorry I didn’t mean to bother you. Just thought you could use a little more variety.”

Tatsuya flourished two fresh packets of cat treats. Squinting suspiciously the giant retreated back behind his castle door. Then with a sigh he opened up the delivery window and slowly, tentatively reached his enormous hand through the bars.

Tatsuya shivered when their fingers touched. Suddenly he had this crazy idea. Like, what if this guy was in trouble somehow. Was he trapped down there? Gang shit or maybe human trafficking? Like, maybe he needed Tatsuya’s help.

Some other instinct said ‘go carefully, something’s up.’

The baker’s hand was cold. His nails were a matte, seamless black and when he noticed Tatsuya staring at them he pulled his hand away.

“Look, that was nice of you. But this is a really bad idea and you should go.”

“But, hey I-”

“There’s a reason.”

“If you’d just give me a-”

“...sorry. Bye.”

The window shut.

Tatsuya stood there, feeling a weirdly sharp, middle school-ish sort of rejection.

Right on cue, like this was some melodramatic daytime TV shit, snow began to fall. Eventually he breathed in and then out, told himself to get over it. Eventually, about two minutes of trying-to-get-over-it later, he viciously kicked the wall of the alley, chipping out a piece of brick and scuffing up his steel-toed boots. Because god forbid anything good ever happen to him, right? Then he pulled the fur hood of his jacket up and wandered back to campus, not seeing much of anything.

That night he went to the gym and worked out until his body was telling him in no uncertain terms that he was about to hurt himself. Which would have been nice in a different way but he wasn’t about that anymore so he stopped, then he did a whole bath/epsom salts/ self-care routine.

Extra retinol before bed. I mean, he was twenty two now… maybe his looks were starting to go.

Dammit his approach had been so good. Why had he said that? People usually had to get to know him first to realize that he was bad news.

And why was he even busted up about this? He didn’t even know that guy’s name.

-------

The week after that Tatsuya didn’t even have time to (secretly) mope anymore. He had a whole new problem. Somehow, without even trying, he had developed a stalker.

It all started when this oily-looking guy with cornrows and an obnoxious neck tattoo showed up at the little eatery where he part-timed. When Tatsuya was busing dishes he’d stared at his ass and whistled which was not in itself a murder-able offense, alas. If he was less at the start of an obvious depressive episode Tatsuya might have tried pouring hot coffee on his dick and rolling with the inevitable parking lot fistfight/ probably getting fired/ etc chain of consequences.

But it was Monday and tuition didn’t pay itself and he was tired so he just gave him an icy look. He was great at icy looks.

"Well aren’t you a picture?” Cornrows leered as he paid his check. “I like pretty boys. Like breaking' 'em. mostly. You know you remind me of another guy I used to know back in Tokyo, except you look like you shut your mouth more. I like that."

Then he did that whole Bubba-the-Prison-Rapist licking your lips thing.

Tatsuya, who still carried a switchblade in his pocket, wondered what it would be like to give him a Glasgow smile.

Cornrows seemed vaguely familiar, like he’d seen him somewhere before, but it could just be that the guy was a collection of ugly cliches and 90’s BL dialogue crammed into an even uglier fake-snakeskin jacket.

Honestly, if ghouls ate assholes like that, then Tatsuya devoutly wished they were real.

That should have been that. There was nothing for a spray-tan fake gangster wannabe to do in their little town but unfortunately Cornrows’ busted-up motorcucle (protip: aftermarket pipes that make loud popping sounds and belch smoke all the time are actually fucking up your carefully engineered exhaust system and announcing to all and sundry that you’re shitty in bed) started showing up in random spots around campus.

Tatsuya’s paranoia level rose at an inverse to the temperature. He’d even complained to his manager that 'hey, this one guy's been harassing the waitresses’ because 'this guy’s been harassing me’ wasn't an available option. He started varying his daily routine, avoiding any place that wasn’t public, running his fingers around the cold length of the knife in his pocket.

Unfortunately Cornrows was tall and built under his stupid spray tan and whatever steroid-overuse disease that was turning his nailbeds dark yellow clearly wasn’t killing him fast enough. Just Tatsuya’s shitty luck.

So anyway that was happening and he had finals in under a month and everything was starting to seem gray and not-worth it again. Laughing at himself he bought a dozen roses and a small bag of meow-mix and went to leave it at his favorite alleyway.

When he turned the corner Cornrows was there, sitting on a dumpster with his legs dangling down drinking something dark and syrupy-looking out of an old vodka bottle.

Spotting Tatsuya he threw the bottle down on the sidewalk and leapt into the shards, grinning. An ugly smell bloomed from the stain, like rotting meat.

“Hot damn, my night’s looking up! You tired of dodging destiny yet, baby? And look, you even brought flowers.”

Tatsuya dropped the flowers and subtly put his other hand inside his left jacket pocket, the one with the knife. Right alley, wrong guy. But whatever, the evening was gonna get interesting one way or another.

"Listen, shithead. Whatever you think is going to happen here, isn't. You try and touch me… I'm going to kick your fucking teeth in."

"Haha, a pretty doll like you? Try it. The struggle’s the fun part~"

And then Cornrows threw his head back and laughed and when he turned towards Tatsuya again his previously gray eyes were black and red.

Umm. Wait, forreal?

A dark mass sprouted out from his back, tearing out the shoulder seams of his tacky-ass coat and Tatsuya, as his synapses leapt lightning-quick to: oh shit, he’s a ghoul! That’s a kagune! Fuck my life! Well... Tatsuya was pissed.

Because seriously, how fucking dare an asshole like Cornrows have superpowers!

How dare you - a basic-ass fuckboy like you, be able to fly while I'm stuck on the ground! Goddamn it! This isn't fair!

So while Cornrows, sweeping down on him, powered by rc-cells and other scp bullshit, might have expected terrified screaming, what he got was a bag of meow-mix to the face.

The ghoul leapt back, snarling, his glide going wobbly and taking him into some long-condemned nail parlor’s back wall as Tatsuya dodged out of the way. When he came up, still snarling, lips peeled further from his teeth than they ought to be able to go, Tatsuya had already picked up a rotting two-by-four and was smashing it into the side of his head.

Unfortunately, all it seemed to do was piss him off.

Cornrows reared back, his wings were glowing, razor-edged and shredded Tatsuya’s jacket when he tried to blind him with it and go for a sucker punch.

The forums said ghouls were tougher than people. Faster, stronger, harder to kill. No shit.

They’d traded a dozen blows. The wooden plank was long-broken in Tatsuya’s hands. Kicks that would have put any handsy barfly firmly on their ass didn’t even seem to register.

It was a long forgotten feeling - what it felt like to be in a fight that you were destined to lose.

Cornrows was grinning through his broken nose like he was having the time of his life.

Tatsuya wanted a cigarette. He wanted to cry a little.

It was funny, he always had this weird premonition that he’d never wanted to tell anyone about, not his birth family or even his much better found family because he didn't want to worry them, but somewhere in the back of his mind a voice said that it was pointless; getting too used to things or loving them, even important things like his brother. That he was unlucky in some way, like that stupid urban legend about a having a mole uner your eye meant that you were destined for sorrow. Sorrow like never figuring your life out, like dying pathetically outside your crush’s door.

The immediate problem was that he was losing blood pretty soon he wouldn’t have the strength to stand anymore. Next would be shock, numbness, and the check. Probably better to be dead for the next part. Cornrows seemed like a messy eater and this was already the worst and last first date of his life.

But no. When strength failed you there was always trickery. And, well, ‘fake it til you make it’ had always been something of a personal motto.

Tatsuya dragged his protesting body over to the wall, letting his back catch on the brick. He was so tired, so hurt, and so cold. But he still managed to light up a cigarette.

“Fine, I get it. You got me. Fuck.” he said in a bored tone, wiping his bleeding mouth with the back of his hand. “Let me at least get a smoke in, allright?”

Like a vulture to a feast Cornrows sauntered over, bleeding in as many places as Tatsuya but slower, fuck him. In a grotesque parody of a kabedon he slapped his hand against the wall by his cheek, leaning in, pressing his bloodied nose into Tatsuya’s temple drinking in the smell of sweat and smoke, fear and french conditioner.

“Damn, was that you playing hard to get, baby? I almost gotta respect that… aaalmost. But now you gotta make it up to me.“

His other hand dug a hole into his side. Tatsuya cried out softly and dropped his cigarette, he couldn’t help it, it hurt worse than getting his appendix out, like he was a kid again being bitten by that dog.

He did the hard thing and let himself look scared, and he was scared probably, in some faraway place that wasn't focused on the knife and his plan and the knife and the shrinking distance between them.

Meanwhile the monster made a disgusting sound of satisfaction and started to fumble at his belt with the freshly bloody hand.

That’s when Tatsuya stabbed him through the eye.

Yeah, they were going to split the check on this one. He was going to have to insist.

Cornrows shrieked, louder than his own shitty exhaust pipes. His wings flickered out, he fell over onto the pavement by his feet where Tatsuya managed, through gritted teeth and blurring eyes, to give him one last feeble kick to the face, driving the hilt in deeper.

Things got kind of hazy after that.

The smart thing would have been to try and stagger away and get help. The problem was that Tatsuya had a strict no-staggering policy and also he couldn’t feel his feet anymore.

Luckily someone else’s heavy footfalls were heading in his direction. People usually minded their own business in this neighborhood but Cornrows had kind of screamed like a bitch.

Tatsuya tried to draw the sad remains of his sweater closed around his battered middle.

Oh man, I probably look like such a mess right now. I don’t want anyone to see me like this.

"Hey." Tatsuya whispered feebly at an outline he could barely see.

"Oh crap." said the boy from the bakery.

He was holding four of the ragged roses and the ripped bag of cat food, having probably followed them down the alley like a set of breadcrumbs, and he dropped them all when he saw Tatsuya. In the twilight his expression was easy to read: sadness replacing worry, a flicker of really fantastic rage as he turned Cornrows over with the tip of his boot, and then carelessly stepped on his outflung arm as he leaned down to peel Tatsuya off the wall.

Finally got your attention, huh? Too bad, it’s like this. I could really use a consolation prize for this whole shitty night.

"You're not OK, huh?"

"...think I’m pretty fucked, yeah." Tatsuya wheezed.

“Do you want to live?”

“Don’t lie to me. Hospital’s too far..”

“But do you?”

“....yeah.”

“Hang on then.”

He lifted him so easily.

Tatsuya couldn’t even hold his own head up. Like, all the adrenaline was gone. He thought it was snowing again, like on the first night they’d met, but it was raining instead. Cold rain. Spring always took too long to get up here.

Winter. I’m going to die in winter. Oh. he thought Oh that sucks.

Tatsuya started crying, partially from pain, because there was a lot of it somehow sneaking past the numbness at this point, but also because this was it.

That shitty premonition, he’d almost worn it like a badge of honor, like ‘Look at me, I’m too cool for this lousy world!’

But deep down he really hadn’t wanted to be right.

At least someone was holding him. Effortlessly. With what felt like a boundless gentleness. And in another handful of minutes (maybe hours, if he was really unlucky) he was going to be dead and nobody would ever hold him again.

“Don’t fall asleep.”

“...what’s …your ..na-”

I want to know your name.

The last thing he could see was purple and the graying sky. Then Tatsuya’s world went black.

-----

At least until he woke up.

The ceiling overhead was gray with a blotchy brown water stain in the corner. Like he was back in math class in the public school he used to go to, back in West LA. Maybe he was in hell and Mrs. Simmons would be along in a minute to administer an endless calculus test.

“If this is the afterlife, I fucking want my money back.” Tatsuya said to the room at large.

His voice had that raspy quality from being intubated. Don’t ask Tatsuya how he knew that. But he could feel his toes again. That was a good sign.

“Please speak Japanese and refrain from swearing.”

Tatsuya turned towards the voice. Much to his disappointment it was not his dark knight in shining cargo pants but an almost-as-tall guy with green hair wearing a flawless suit under a white lab coat and over all that - a cute kitchen apron with bears on it that was incongruously covered in blood.

Looking around he found he was on a long metal table with guard rails and a dip in the middle (oh, like an autopsy table? jfc, not cool), his blood-soaked sweater and the sad remains of his jacket were on a rolling cart nearby. A surgical tray held his wallet and his student ID. He was still wearing his skinny jeans but one of those thin hospital scrubs as a top. His whole left side felt weirdly numb.

Was this, like, some kind of organ harvesting clinic?

But no, at his left, folded into a metal chair in the designated ‘yearning girlfriend, waiting for the fair hero to recover’ position was the very tall boy who had saved him. When he caught Tatsuya’s eyes he waved awkwardly and then immediately looked away.

“Look, don’t hate me. You said you wanted to live so I called Mido-chin and...” He shrugged, like the rest was so obvious that it didn’t even bear mentioning.

Glasses-guy wasn’t having it.

“Oh no, I refuse to be involved any further. Now that he’s awake he’s your responsibility and you’re the one who has to explain things.”

Tatsuya’s rescuer sighed heavily and let out a displeased whine, like a kid who’d been assigned homework over summer break. The motion blew a strand of his own hair into his mouth and then one of his enormous hands reached up and tucked it back behind his ear, a terrifically cute gesture, delicate as any girl.

“Ughhh. Fine. So Akachin sent Zaki-chin here to get him to stop making trouble in Tokyo. Zaki-chin was pretty much out of chances so Akachin was probably just going to tell me to kill him later anyway. But now Muro-chin can just take Zaki-chin’s place. I bet he could do Zaki-chin’s job a lot better and the number of ghouls in the territory stays the same.”

Tatsuya suddenly remembered where he’d seen Cornrows before: that one forum post. Come to think of it, the robotic-looking guy on the subway looked a lot like Glasses.

“O-okay. So you’re all… ghouls.“

“As it should be obvious.” Glasses nodded, stripping off a pair of also-bloodied medical gloves. “Anyway, the way you dispatched Haizaki... I ran a background check to make sure you were unaffiliated with the CCG. But I suppose you really are just an art student?”

“I had some martial arts training and I used to get into fights a lot when I was younger. Besides, I just… didn’t feel like dying quietly.“

“It was moderately impressive. He might have recovered after consuming you but he would have lost the eye. Anyway, it’s a moot point now.”

Still from context cues it seemed like Cornrows, Glasses, and Future Husband were all in the same ghoul gang together or something.

“Look, I’m sorry if he was your friend.” Leftover anesthesia and honesty made him add a qualifying “I guess. But to be fair, that guy was a total dick who tried to eat me. ”

Glasses sniffed and made a face, as if the idea of sharing a social circle with Cornrows was like chugging toilet water. Which, fair.

“Don’t misunderstand, Haizaki was more of a distant colleague. Anyway, you should know that I performed a very risky organ transfer. Explicitly at his-” a pissy thumb-jab back at his companion “-request. Therefore you owe Murasakibara your continued existence.

I’m sure you are familiar with the concept of fealty. We are rather old-fashioned about this kind of thing.”

Murasakibara (he had a name, yesss) was busy giving his cohort a gentle eye-roll.

“Don’t listen to him, Mido-chin always likes doing experiments so it wasn't that risky.”

Tatsuya found himself grinning.

“So I owe you my life, huh? I guess now you’ll finally have to let me take you out for coffee.”

The highly dangerous supernatural creatures that he was sharing a sketchy basement with were both giving him a look like he’d lost the plot. Tatsuya was sure that he hadn’t. The forums said ghouls could still drink coffee and they’d been right about everything else so far.

Of course that kind of begged the question…

“So wait, am I a ghoul now?”

“Medically, you’re more of a half-ghoul at present. However, as your body accepts the transfer a process will trigger-”

“-yeah you’re a ghoul and you gotta eat people now.” Muraskibara patted him awkwardly on the knee. “Sorry if it’s gross.”

Tatsuya realized that his hand didn’t feel cold anymore. And that wasn’t black nail polish, they were just very short claws.

“So that part’s really true huh... And I die if I don’t?”

“Uh huh.”

“You will suffer extremely unpleasant metabolic failure and then die, yes.”

“Well, if I have to. I guess I better get used to it.” Tatsuya frowned thoughtfully. “It doesn’t have to be raw, does it?”

Last Halloween’s binge-watch of Hannibal was giving him ideas.

Glasses pushed his glasses up again, frowning.

“That’s… remarkably pragmatic of you. I admit that’s not the answer I expected. Raw is preferred but freeze-dried is another popular option. It’s easier to transport that way.”

“In fall and winter it gets gloomy so a bunch of people kill themselves and stuff. That’s why there’s a lot of ghouls up here.” Murasakibara chimed in. “Especially the ones that don’t mind humans.”

Like me. Was the obvious subtext there.

“Err, yes. This territory is what’s colloquially known as a ‘rabbit colony.’ There’s no active hunting, just recycling. Speaking of-“

Glasses pulled a clear plastic ziploc bag out of his prada-looking leather satchel, and then held it to Tatsuya with a vague air of challenge. It looked like a batch of homemade beef jerky.

Reaching out, gritting his teeth so his hand wouldn’t tremble, Tatsuya took out a strip.

Watch me, celery-top.

Without giving himself too much time to think he bit off the end of it, chewed, swallowed. It was fine. Anticlimactic, really. Like an under seasoned pork slim-jim.

“See, Midochin? It’s fine. He’s great at it.” Murasakibara patted his knee again. “Good job, Murochin.”

Glasses’ ever-present squint got deeper.

"Are you quite sure you’re 100% human? Hybrids are rare but possible and our American genealogy records are a mess.”

Tatsuya ate another strip of suicide jerky and shrugged. Like, whadda you want dude? I had a lot of adverse childhood experiences and I’m actually really good at just rolling with fucked up shit.

“Yeah he really was. He smelled really, really human when I met him.” Murasakibara said, hand still firmly over half of Tatsuya’s thigh. “That’s why I told you to go, you know. That one time.”

He looked away. Tasuya wasn’t sure with the fluorescent lighting but was that a blush? “Not for, like, any other reason."

“Keep an eye on him. Adjustment aside, his mental state is likely fragile. It’s well documented that transferred ghouls suffer psychological distress at the perceived loss of their humanity.”

"Humanity, huh.” Tatsuya looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. Some subtle flavor was unfolding from the unseasoned meat in the back of his mouth. “It’s whatever. I guess I wasn’t really doing anything special with mine."

Glasses, who was not here for any existential nonsense, was already ignoring him, stripping off his bloodied apron with the same fastidiousness of a regular pre med major.

At least until he turned back toward Tatsuya and said “Still, as a doctor, I must say I am pleased that my patient is recovering. Please do your best, Himuro-san. For his sake.”

Then he picked up his clipboard and bustled out, the way super straight-laced people did when they’ve said something even vaguely feelsy.

“So…are you two related?”

“Pfffff. Me and Mido-chin?” Murasakibara seemed to really think about it. “Not really... But sort of.”

For Tatsuya and his patchwork family that kind of answer made perfect sense.

--------

Though now that they were alone in a sketchy murder basement together and Tatsuya was desperate to find something nice to talk about before the mood got awkward.

Considering that what looked like Cornrows’ leg was sticking out of a trash can labeled ‘biohazard’ in the corner, the moment could come any second now.

Luckily he noticed another clear plastic bin where a bunch of reddish lumps floated peacefully in a pinkish soup.

"Hey, are those mine? Were y’all going to just toss them? It seems a little wasteful, doesn’t it?”

“Seemed kinda rude.” Muttered Murasakibara, eyeing the bin with a vague air of longing.

“You can eat them, if you want," Tatsuya said impulsively. “I give you full permission.”

“Ehhhhh? Really?! You’d really let me eat it?”

"What is that, like, second base with you guys?"

On some level he couldn’t believe he was flirting. Like. Serious shit had gone down. Someone had tried to molest/murder/cannibalize him on the way home from work. In whatever order. He had stabbed Cornrows and Cornrows was dead AF. But Tatsuya had survived. Again.

And on the other hand, the flirting was a sure sign that whatever bullshit life had thrown his way again he was going to step over it and keep going.

"That’s like tenth base.” Murasakibara said, blushing heavily and trying to hide it by scratching at his cheek. “Stupid Murochin, doesn’t know what he’s saying. If I ate that much of you, I'd be able to tell where you were and stuff."

"That doesn't sound like the worst thing.” Tatsuya leaned forward strategically, letting the soft teal hospital top slip off his shoulder a little. On the non-gross-and-stitched-up side, obviously. “I’m really new at this whole ghoul thing, you know? I need someone to show me the ropes. You'll keep an eye on me, won't you Murasakibara-kun?"

Oh man, that cutely shy look on his face! It just made Tatsuya want to keep teasing him.

“So what kind of kagune do you have? Pretty please tell me it’s the one with the back tentacles, that would just make my entire life.”

Murasakibara groaned.

"You're horrible. I can’t believe you look so pretty and act so nice and you’re really so awful.”

Tatsuya snickered.

Murasakibara didn’t sound like he minded all that much.

Hands trembling he reached for the dark sloshy container and opened it as reverently as if it held a five-tier wedding cake.

Tatsuya tried to play it cool when the chewing sounds started, I mean, he hated it when other people watched him eat, but in the end he couldn’t help himself, sneaking peeks from under his bangs, watching the ghoul, the other ghoul, take lovely loving bites out of a dark clotty mass that apparently used to be Tatsuya’s liver.

And that should have driven the reality home completely.

Like, wow I’ve crossed over. I have exited ‘normal life’ with extreme prejudice. I’m in some shady-ass underground ghoul clinic. The strange boy I had a crush on is eating the parts of me I’m not using anymore.

But all Tatsuya could really think was: I hope it tastes nice, and feel vaguely self-conscious for the way he’d been drinking too much lately.

So yeah, that happened.

Life certainly wasn't fair.

I mean, did I have to literally lose my humanity to get a steady date in this town? Apparently.

Do I still have finals next month?

Am I going to have a real bad time explaining this to Alex? Am I going to miss Taiga trying to force-feed me those shitty burgers he likes, even though they made me break out?

Yes, yes, and yes.

But this sure as hell beats dying. And I’m pretty sure the terrifyingly cute boy who’s eating my liver likes me back.

~