Work Text:
“I killed you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I shot you straight in the head,” Daiki says, staring up at the ceiling. He remembers every second. The way his emotions shut down, and his focus turned on, and suddenly, he was right in front of Tsukasa, Driver between Decade’s big green eyes.
(Tsukasa told him Decade was stylized off of the power of his families, and sometimes Daiki still wonders how Tsukasa would look with green eyes.
Handsome, he’s sure. Tsukasa exudes an aura so powerful he’d look like the sexiest man alive no matter what. Even if he was a ghost who had died in a mangling fashion.)
(But Tsukasa didn’t die so violently. The blast left a hole in Decade’s helmet and nothing at all on Tsukasa’s skin.
He died of a clean stab, going limp in Daiki and Natsumi’s arms from her attack, not his. Not even Yuusuke’s.
Natsumi, Daiki suspects, is as touched by fate as Tsukasa himself.)
“It wasn’t very successful, I suspect,” Tsukasa says. He shifts. Turning to Daiki, perhaps? Daiki hopes so. He’s far too in love with Tsukasa - no, more like obsessed with, trapped by, and eternally tied to Tsukasa, but ether way, he clings to his scraps while the others get everything.
Daiki does turn, and finds Tsukasa’s gaze right on him.
“Suspect?”
Tsukasa looks away again.
“I don’t remember that day,” he says. “You could always tell me what happened. I’d believe you even if you lied.”
Daiki hmms, pulls Tsukasa closer to him.
Tsukasa lets him, shifting so his back fits perfectly against Daiki’s chest.
(They do fit together, when they both try. That’s what always kills Daiki the most, is that they can , in fact, fit.)
“Your helmet cracked,” Daiki says. “You were crying as the armor fell away, and everyone else looked so scared. I got pushed back by whatever you did next, and the Riders dragged with you. In the time it took to blink, Natsumelon, the photo studio, and I, were… somewhere else. And you were there.”
“The World or Rider War,” Tsukasa says softly. “A World between worlds, a stage for killing.”
“Watch it,” Daiki snarks. “I’m supposed to be the pessimistic one.”
“You weren’t there,” Tsukasa says. “I think I broke something forever, and I don’t know what it means. What happened after that?”
“Natsumelon and I went inside,” Daiki says. “I remembered what you promised me. Protect her, and I get the world. It worked out for me.”
(He thinks they both knew Tsukasa was his world, his Sun, his everything.)
Tsukasa hmms. Daiki suspects those eyes that reflect like a camera lens are closed, now. Imagining.
Natsumi and Daiki, on the outside of a war between heroes.
“So you stayed?”
“At the beginning,” Daiki says. “Natsumelon…”
Natsumi screamed herself raw, and then she cried, and then she showed nothing at all.
“…Natsumelon had a hard time.”
“And what about you?”
“I didn’t let myself feel it,” Daiki says, shocked at the honesty. “I just wanted you back. You really got me hoping, for a moment there.”
“I really let myself ope, too,” Tsukasa says, turning to meet Daiki’s gaze properly. “But it worked out, in the end.”
Daiki… isn’t so sure. He can see in the tiny things, the way his most precious treasure is broken, and it scares him, sometimes.
“I got you back,” Daiki says, kissing Tsukasa lightly. “That’s enough for me.”
Tsukasa smiles, just slightly.
“If you ever want to feel any of it,” he says. “I’d let you.”
(He still wants to save Daiki’s soul.)
“I’m happy just as I am,” Daiki says, and he means it, mostly. “What interests me more is the future.”
“Oh, and what do you want from that?” Tsukasa asks. Daiki hmms.
“I want you,” he says. “Alive, and here with me.”
Tsukasa laughs.
“Seems simple enough,” he says. “You couldn’t get rid of me if you wanted to.”
“No, I couldn’t,” Daiki says. “I—”
I love you.
But he can’t bring himself to say it.
(Why is death so much easier to face?)