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Yoshida reminded Denji of Makima.
Or rather, they were similar in that they looked at Denji with the same look of simultaneous interest and disinterest, as if keeping Denji on a leash, only for them to let go, just to see what he'd do. They both looked like they could see through Denji from the inside out and granted, Denji was not a creature that thought a lot and was quite easy to glance over like an open book.
Makima's eyes were like a never ending spiral, the deeper you look, the more entranced Denji became, unable to look away. Makima's entire body was melded in a way to attract people, like her whole being was one big spiral to draw people in, and Denji was just another one of her helpless victims.
In contrast, Yoshida's eyes were like staring off into nothingness, into a black hole, into an abyss. There were no joy or sadness in those eyes and Denji couldn't quite read his eyes, but he felt as if he were being swallowed completely by them.
They were so familiar, alike to each another, but the feeling they each gave Denji couldn't be more different, clashing each other in complete opposites.
Makima was who Denji loved.
He desperately wanted her attention, her care, her love.
Yoshida was met with Denji's indifference.
***
When Yoshida slides into a seat across Denji as Denji was eating grilled meat, he couldn't be more displeased.
"Hello, Denji," Yoshida greets him while smiling his same smile that Denji has never seen him without and the same smile that Denji cannot decipher.
"What do you want?" Denji comments, raising a brow. He quickly shovels as much meat as he could possibly in his mouth before Yoshida could steal any from him, if that were his plans.
"I was assigned to look after you."
"Did Makima assign you?" He halts eating as he looks upwards at Yoshida with hopeful look on his face, imaging Makima assigning Yoshida to Denji because she cared about him. Was Makima worried about him, he wonders. He imagines how she cared about Denji so much that she, personally, chose someone for him.
"No."
The delusion completely shatters and grumbling, Denji went back to his meal, a lot more disinterested. He haphazardly comments midway into a bite, "Why'd they assign you anyways?"
Yoshida does not pull any punches as he bluntly replies, "They want me to check your condition after the death of your teammate."
Freezing, Denji feels that the meal that he previously shoveled in his mouth tasted quite awful. It feels like the taste of copper blood and rubber. "How about you fuck off, you're really ruining my meal."
Yoshida tilts his head. "Would you have preferred if I said it was Makima that assigned me?"
Denji bites into the meat again, feeling the juices and oil drip out of the meat in his mouth.
"Then, Makima assigned me to you, Denji," Yoshida admends, cheerily enough that it sets Denji off in all the wrong ways.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Denji makes a face at Yoshida in distaste.
"Well, Makima did talk to me separately about you."
Briefly, Denji feels a twinge of excitement at Makima having enough of a interest in him to be talking about him. He imagines Makima and Yoshida together, talking about him, but the fact that these two are next to each in just his imagination sets off his annoyance. "Why is Makima talking to some like you in the first place?"
Resting his face on his hands, Yoshida comments casually. "We're quite friendly, if I say so myself."
"You like Makima or something?"
"Does it look like I do?"
"Even if you did, you don't stand a chance. Makima hates people like you." Probably. Denji likes to imagine Makima's type being someone with blonde hair, jagged teeth, their names starting with D and ending with I. Completely the opposite of what Yoshida was.
"Like me?" Yoshida responses and even his look of interest looks completely fake.
"Y'know, all smirky or whatnot." Denji projects his biggest gripe about Yoshida and pretends that Makima thought the same.
"You seem to know Makima well."
"I do," Denji lies. He didn't need to know Makima that well. What he knew about her was enough, he figured. Not that a jerk like Yoshida needed to know.
"Then what about you? Do you like Makima? What do you want from her?"
"I want to be Makima's..." What did he want to be, Denj briefly wonders trailing off.
"Can't say?"
In the end, Denji decides ignores Yoshida, and goes back to angrily chomping on his meal. It is not tasty, nor did he particularly want it, but his body is on auto-pilot and his entire being always craves food.
Chuckling, Yoshida does not acknowledge Denji's silence and simply flags down the waiter. He orders alcohol and the waiter just nods their head without asking Yoshida for any sort of identification whatsoever. Yoshida indeed had a face that looked as if one were unable to properly decipher anything about him, much less his age.
There's irritation in Denji about Yoshida so casually sitting at his table and when he sees the waiter put the alcohol down with only one cup in front of him, he briefly wonders if the alcohol would get added to Denji's own bill. That ends his petty silent treatment and Denji finally breaks his silence.
"I'm not paying for that," Denji retorts.
In lieu of a response, Yoshida pours the drink into the cup silently and when it's filled halfway, instead of bringing it to his own mouth, it goes straight towards Denji's lips. Yoshida instantly tips the cup, triggering Denji's reflex and he swallows the liquid instantly as soon as it reaches inside his mouth.
"Now it's apart of your meal," Yoshida comments with his usual smile.
Angrily, Denji shoots upwards, stealing the entire bottle from Yoshida's hands, who lets go of it easily, and almost completely downs it, leaving only a quarter of the amount left. "Since I'm paying for it, you don't get a single damn drop."
"Oh my," Yoshida mocks surprise as his hands fall below his lips.
Denji was not usually the type to think before he acts, but he must say, this was not particularly smart. He instantly feels the wave of nausea overcome him.
Across from his, Yoshida does not say anything, content to merely watch Denji and if anything, his smile was bigger than it was previously. It's absolutely mocking and Denji almost says nothing, if not to lose, but his insides feel like it's being grilled alive.
"I think... I'm going to hurl."
Yoshida laughs as his own hands flit towards his pockets and he easily takes out a crisp, unmarred hundred dollar bill on the table.
When Yoshida drags him outside to the cold, crisp night, Denji instantly vomits in the trash can in front of the restaurant. Despite the temperature, Denji breaks out in a cold sweat and he cannot stop vomiting out his entire meal.
Denji cries tears and drips snot that mingle with his vomit and admits that this was quite stupid of him.
By the time he's finished, he doesn't know if he's dizzy from vomiting so much or from being drunk. Or was he drunk? He really didn't know.
The moments after that feel like a blur and in a small moment of vague clarity, Denji is briefly aware that he is brought to a house that isn't his. It's cleaner than his own and for one, doesn't smell like his usual dwelling.
He's laid gently on a couch and Yoshida is besides him, occasionally placing a glass to his lips and making him drink water after Denji was particularly parched vomiting his entire meal out and it almost feels like being cared for by a lover.
He thinks back to the question that Yoshida said before. What did he want to be to Makima? If he were asked this any other time before, Denji would loudly proclaim he wanted to be Makima's lover. That he'd want to kiss her, hold her hand, and even touch her breasts.
Now, Denji thinks that even touching breasts won't do much to him. Even if they were Makima's.
Yoshida wipes the tear tracks on his face with a tissue and Denji feels his tears starting back up again.
"I wish I could just be Makima's mindless dog," Denji answers aloud, in his drunken stupor, staring at the ceiling.
He thought of the way Makima cared for her dogs, the way she would laugh as they were allowed to crowd around her and indulge themselves in her existence, merely following her order without much thought and were rewarded for it. They didn't think about death nor did they think about pain, all they thought about was pleasing Makima, getting rewarded by Makima. Their whole lives revolved around Makima.
Would being Makima's dog mean being treatly as gently as he currently was by Yoshida constantly?
He wasn't sure what part of Makima made him love her so much. Was it her looks? Was it her personality? Was it her self-confidence? Or was it her absolute hold on control that Denji could never dream of obtaining?
Makima was important. Makima was popular. Everyone listened to Makima, everyone loved Makima, everyone crowded after her like one of Makima's dogs.
Denji wants to be with Makima. Denji wants to be like Makima.
Or perhaps he had given up.
Denji does not want any of his dreams of the past. He does not want to think, he just wants to be Makima's mindless dog. He doesn't care if he has to share the spot with a bunch of other dogs, he just wants to be one of them.
He wants others to decide everything for him so he had no repercussions for any of his actions. Any wrong that Denji does, any guilt that Denji feels, that is all someone else's to bear and Denji is just a mere outlet.
He wants to be wanted. He wants to be happy.
Denji curls his fingers into the couch and tries not to think. He cannot become a dog, but he pretends he is one, mindlessly following orders for the answer to happiness. He'd bark like a dog, performs tricks like one, and be loved like one.
And then he thinks about Aki and his illusion is shattered.
Yoshida, who had been quiet for the entire time, leans forward and finally speaks. "Do you want to be Makima's mindless dog or just a mindless dog?"
"What?"
"You can be mine."
"Your what?" When Denji looks towards Yoshida, there is no fluctuation in his expression to make Denji think what he heard was correctly.
"My mindless dog. I'll take care of you, give you attention, make you feel loved. Don't you want that, Denji?"
That is all Denji wants. He thinks about it in his drunkenly hazy mind. He imagines Makima petting him with a soft smile. Then Makima's figure disappears and meddles into Yoshida, still petting him with that soft smile.
It feels nice.
Denji nods.
A hand lands on his cheek and Denji, drunkenly leans into it, closing his eyes as he leans into the touch.
***
There is a suspicious inkling that rather than checking up on Denji, Yoshida was assigned to him to spy on him. He follows him everywhere without fail, much to Denji's displeasure, and when Denji gets his mission to kill a rampaging demon, Yoshida merely watches with his pitch black eyes, not lifting a single finger as Denji hacks and slacks the demon into pieces.
When he glances over towards Yoshida in his bloodied state, completely dripping blood from head to toe, Yoshida still has that stupid grin on his face as he meets Denji's eyes.
"Nice job," Yoshida comments, and he offers Denji a handkerchief, fishing it out of his pockets.
Denji feels a faint tinge of warmth. He had never been praised before, at least not so openly, not so easily without anything else attached behind it. Denji takes the handkerchief, staining it red with his fingers.
He completely soaks the handkerchief in blood as he wipes his face and the handkerchief is of no use to any other part of his body. He throws the bloodied handkerchief back towards Yoshida, who pockets it easily as if it weren't completely soiled in the demon and Denji's own blood.
"You're quite a mess," Yoshida observes.
"Obviously."
No matter how much rough remarks Denji tosses at Yoshida, he takes it all in stride and his grin stays in place. "Take a bath in my house. It's closer."
Denji doesn't think much about it and merely nods. He is used to being absolutely bloody after every mission, but it didn't erase the unpleasant feeling.
Besides, he's already been in Yoshida's house before.
Yoshida offers him a change of clothes that Denji knows will be loose on him, pointing him towards the bathroom that looked fancier than Denji's ever seen, and when Denji enters the bathroom, he instantly smells of jasmine. The smell of jasmine clung onto Yoshida everyday, despite the time or place, so it was no wonder that his house smelled like it to the point of suffocation.
Denji easily strips to his boxers, throwing his clothes into a messy pile on the floor without a regard for etiquette, also staining Yoshida's floor with blood, and just when he is about to pull down his boxers completely too, Yoshida enters the bathroom as well.
"Why are you coming in too?!" Denji shouts, instantly snapping the boxers back upwards in his shock.
"I'm going to bathe you," Yoshida says, matter of factly.
"Are you crazy? No way, get out."
"Relax, Denji." Yoshida looks like he's playing with his prey.
"Is this about that stupid shit you said last night," Denji says. He had opted not to think nor mention it today, but it was coming back to bite him in the weirdest of ways.
"I said I'll take care of you."
Baffled, Denji backs away slightly from the other. "So what you're going to bathe me because of that?"
"Owners bathe their dogs, don't they?" Yoshida takes one step forward.
"Stop calling me a dog, I'm not a damned dog."
"I'll make you into one, just like you wanted."
Baffled, Denji stared at the other for a few beats, before giving up. If there was one word used to compliment Denji in most circumstances, it was that he was adaptable.
"Forget it. I can't get my words through a fucking freak like you."
"Good," Yoshida chuckles.
Denji ends up in the bath, sitting down as Yoshida runs his fingers lathered in shampoo through Denji's hair, his touch being gentle and soft.
It feels like Denji lost very badly, but the feeling of Yoshida's fingers running through his hair does feel nice and the fact that Yoshida is on his knees, acting like a servant to Denji, does amuse him enough to simply let it happen. He closes his eyes and falls asleep like that, to the scent of jasmine and Yoshida.
***
"My dream girl is someone who loves me, who's only good to me, is totally jealous over me, completely obsessed with me, and is extremely hot!"
Yoshida skewers another piece of steak and feeds it to Denji. "That so?"
Denji accepts it easily, chewing on the piece of steak happily. He had been invited for dinner to Yoshida's on multiple occasions. At first, he had simply eaten on his own, messily and disorganized, devouring everything on his plate.
Yoshida had taken his plate then and had begun feeding it to him, stating Denji had made too much of a mess. He didn't particularly agree with it, but Yoshida had promised him more food if he had simply listened, so after some crass shouts and complaints, Denji eventually took the condition.
"That doesn't sound like Makima though," Yoshida comments, with a tinge of amusement in his voice, as he cuts another piece of steak easily and pokes it with the knife, bringing it to Denji's face.
"Makima doesn't count. She's special," Denji grumbles. His bites angrily at the knife, chewing on the steak roughly. "Make the pieces bigger, it's too small and I have to wait every time you cut it."
"How so? What do you like about her?" The chunks of steak being cut instantly became bigger.
Denji cannot answer. He likes many things about Makima, but all of them are superficial as the last.
"I like how nice she is to me," Denji replies.
"Is she the kindest out of everyone you've met?"
"Stop asking me stupid questions already. I just want to eat," Denji grumbles.
Yoshida does not feed him easily like he always does. "Answer it, Denji."
It takes a few more beats before Denji is compliant to Yoshida's demands. The simple reasoning in Denji's head is that he simply wanted to finish the steak before him, in all of it's entirety.
"No, she's not," Denji spits out and it's the honest he's ever been about Makima to Yoshida. Or perhaps to himself too.
It was like imprinting. His first view of Makima had been like an electric shock, the way she drew him in with the spirals of her eyes, the confidence of her smile, the way she looked at him as if he were something worth keeping. It was Makima who had fished him out of his sad existence and it was Makima who had strung Denji along like he was something.
Denji likes what Makima represents to him, but he could not name the individual things that he liked about Makima.
Yoshida smiles at Denji's answer and feeds him the biggest steak piece yet. When he takes a bite, his mouth could barely fit through the piece and Denji's cheeks are bulging at the size of the cut. His taste buds were completely overloaded with the taste of steak, but at the same time, he cannot taste anything as he struggles to chew everything.
"Good," Yoshida comments, smiling as Denji was chewing through the steak.
"Fu' wh'?" Denji asks, confused but pleased.
"For answering all my questions."
In Denji's opinion, he thought Yoshida was strange, but he was good at making steak, his face wasn't so bad to look at, and when Yoshida was happy at what Denji did, he had a small half-smirk on his face with the compliments coming easy and Denji thought that it wasn't so bad to have Yoshida around.
***
"Can't you follow orders, hm?" Yoshida whispers to him.
It was the same question Yoshida had asked him often, to the point Denji was used to hearing it, almost expecting it after everyday when it was just the two of them, with Denji soaking in Yoshida's presence that he's gotten so familiar over.
Despite Yoshida's constant bombardment of questioning, there is something in Denji was reluctant, defiant, and perhaps it was the him that had lived without love and on the streets for so much years. Denji wants to fight, Denji wants to curse out Yoshida, Denji does not want to be the one strung around.
But he's also so tired. He thinks it'd really be preferable if he were to do as Yoshida says thoughtlessly.
Denji has become so used to chasing after other people.
It feels nice to be chased back.
So he says nothing and curls into Yoshida's existence, giving him a slight, hesitant nod.
It was warm.
He had done so much to get any sort of attention from anyone else, but Yoshida gave it to him so easily.
It felt like he was the center of the universe to Yoshida. Denji had wondered what being the center of the entire universe felt like and he had wanted that so desperately, but now, he felt that being only Yoshida's important person was nice. Other people were not so meticulous as Yoshida, they were not gentle as him, and they did not make Denji feel the flush of warmth like Yoshida did.
He thinks that some part of him could make Yoshida his only important person as well, given some time.
Yoshida runs a hand through Denji's hair, petting him gently. He thinks that he won't mind listening to Yoshida's orders if this was the always the response that he'd get.
"Good boy," Yoshida says and it's warm, affectionate, loving, and Denji can't get enough.
Isn't this what he had always wanted, Denji thinks to himself. To become a dog without thought, to become the object of affection, no matter what he did.
Leaning into the other, Denji allows himself to feel cared for. Simultaneously, some part of Denji breaks.
"Do you still want to be Makima's dog?" Yoshida asks.
He stops petting Denji, who was laying his head on Yoshida's lap and Denji knows that Yoshida will not continue until Denji answers.
"No," Denji answers. He thinks that if he were to become Makima's, he'd miss the feeling Yoshida gave him.
"You don't love her anymore?"
"I don't."
"Then you're mine, right Denji?"
"Mhm," Denji hums in agreement.
"You'll listen to any of my orders?"
"Yes."
"Then Denji," Yoshida leans close. "I order you to love me."
Denji thinks that Yoshida did not need to order him to do so, that Denji was already starting to do so.
"Okay," He answers anyways.
Yoshida leans down completely as he kisses him, soft and slow, before pulling backwards and Denji pulls back forwards, giving a tentative lick on Yoshida's lips. He feels hands wrap around his head, pulling him back to meet Yoshida's lips and this time, the kisses Denji gets is rough and all-consuming, greedy to devour him.