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He’s sitting on the curb in front of the 24 hour corner store, when he calls him. The call rings without answer. Nikolai counts the shadows in the light filtering out from the store’s windows where it hits white on the cracked pavement, on the metal of Nikolai’s studded cut-off gloves. The unending bounce of his leg ticks up with intensity. He redials.
It takes two rings for Fyodor to pick up. The late answer is normal. Fyodor doesn’t speak first, and this is normal, too.
“Heyyyyy,” Nikolai leads, cheerful, voice lilted so it doesn’t show he’s been crying. Again. He’s cried a dozen times since sunrise and nothing even happened. “What a lovely 1AM it is! Whatever could the hour find you doing on this fine Friday night, I wonder..?~”
There’s a static-filled breath across the line, and then, “Mmm...”
It’s a hum, almost considering. Nikolai prods, “Hm?”
“...With Dazai,” Fyodor gives, voice still that sluggish noncommital. There comes muffled muttering from across the line. Nikolai’s curiosity perks all at once, gnawing.
“Eh?” Nikolai presses his free hand against the lukewarm, sidewalk, feels summer heat curl up his neck, condense under the half loose mess of his hair. “Eh eh ehhh?”
“Oh you know!” Dazai’s voice comes louder, if no less filtered. There’s a static slosh of something wet, and a dull thump, and—“We’re just—ah—Fyodor too much!—just—” her words catch on something breathy, “Fedya’s letting me drown in his tub! He’s about to watch.”
Electric-something jolts from his stomach through his fingertips, a sharp, sinking sting—
“Oh my God,” Nikolai gasps into the phone, because he can’t let there be a pause, because—“you’re killing yourselves and you didn’t even invite me!?”
Yourselves, plural, because if Dazai is doing something then so is Fyodor; if one of them is doing something then the other is, too. That’s just how it is with them. It’s always mutual. Nikolai knows this.
“Not really,” Fyodor says, almost diplomatic, “it’s more like practice.”
“Roleplay, if you will,” Dazai adds enthusiastically, from what must be the bathtub, “but like, irl. And with the potential to get rushed to the hospital.”
Hurt strangles a knot in Nikolai’s chest and jealousy ties it. The sensation is so vivid it crosses into painful and it’s so stupid and groundless. He shouldn’t have called. Why did he call? Right. Well there’s his answer: if Dazai is over and they’re play-drowning in the bathroom, then there’s no way Fyodor’s parents are home. So Nikolai doesn’t have to take off all his make up and become presentable before going over, but actually never fucking mind he’s not gonna crash at Fyodor’s place. He’ll go to Sigma’s! Or Dazai’s sister’s! He could sleep at the library again.
“My oh my,” he’s saying, “enjoy yourselves!~” And then he laughs because, “Wait but like what if you actually did have to go to the ER or something like what if you actually did and you had to like explain what happened—what would you even—”
“No cause like right?” Dazai giggles, “Wouldn’t it be so funny it’d be so funny the current plan is that we’ll say we were experimenting with erotic drowning like can you imagine the look on their faces—ha! Oh my god they’d totally try to give a safe sex talk. You should come..!”
The knot loosens in half and tightens in the other. “Oh? An invitation!?”
“We’ll wait,” Fyodor confirms, halfway a murmur.
“We’re at Fyodor’s place,” Dazai supplies.
Nikolai rolls his eyes. “It’s always Fedya’s place.”
Dazai laughs. “Bring—”
click.
Nikolai hangs up and pockets his phone without letting his gaze linger on its cracked screen. In his head he shoots himself through the skull. He swings to his feet. In the convenience store, he buys snacks and a bruise cream and while the tired girl behind the counter checks him out, he hesitates a moment before throwing in a pack of paperclips, too. It all goes into a cheap plastic bag that swings in his grip when he leaves. It’s a thirty minute walk from here to Fyodor’s but he can make it in ten if he really tries and they’re waiting for him so he really should try even though he just wants to stay here walking in circles around the streetlight and unbending each paperclip and—
he takes a shuddering breath. The churning storm of anxiety doesn’t quell. He starts running just so it can go somewhere, and doesn’t stop.
The city is small but that doesn’t make it safe. The painted nails and long hair and full face of make up paints a target on his back, but Nikolai isn’t fifteen anymore. Seventeen has not only grown him into six feet of height and muscle, but a reputation, too. By the time he gets to the front step of Fyodor’s house, he’s heaving breath and his teeth hurt with breathlessness. He lines his sneakers up in the shoe tray and picks his way through the house’s spotless clean into the first floor master bedroom, where steam is drifting out from the crack of the bathroom door, catching on florescent white light which falls out in a sharp line.
He drops the plastic bag against the wall and slips in.
Hot.
Hot, hot, hot, it’s so hot. It’s thick with steam even though the vent fan is running overtime, and Nikolai’s heart hasn’t calmed from the run, beating hot against his ribcage. Two pairs of eyes flick to him, two smiles. Dazai is in the bathtub, sprawled long and leonine, hair dry. Fyodor is sat on the flat porcelain edge, legs out, hand rested on the rim, carrying his leaned weight. His hair is glossy black with dampness. Water glistens on his lashes. His turn drowning must have been before Nikolai called. Is that okay? Is he okay? He’s so bad with high temperatures. Loose hairs tickle against Nikolai’s collar bones, against the hot pulse of blood in his neck. He could scream.
He grins. “Hiiiii!”
“Omg hiiiii!” Dazai giggles, dips her voice with this play-flirtation. “You’re wearing wayyy too much you know...”
Big words from Dazai. She’s still wearing her compression bandages, shin through thigh, forearm to shoulder. Their stark white disappears under the black of her boxers. They could be two chess pieces, lounging there in near-mist, scantily clad in boxers and bras. Fyodor in white Dazai in black. King and queen. Two halves of a set.
Their reflections catch in the mirror. Through its clouded surface, the three of them make little more than blurred forms. Nikolai’s face is a featureless smear of white and black and red lipstick.
“How embarrassing!” His braid is coming undone. Old makeup. He put it on in the school bathroom this morning. At least the mascara doesn’t smudge when he cries. Dazai picked good. “Are you asking me to strip!? I didn’t know I was attending such a lewd event!”
Dazai snickers. A drop slips down from her collar bone between her breasts, still small. Her family doesn’t give a shit about her gender but that apathy extends to a total unwilling to go through the bureaucratic mess of legal transition. Mori’s too busy fighting a custody battle over Q with Yosano, Dazai complained, fuckers. Nikolai hooked her up with estrogen smugglers a year ago.
The loose fabric of his shirt lifts above his belly button when he shimmies out from his jacket. He discards it with his socks and gloves on the floor.
“Soooo,” he says, settling himself on the tub’s rim, feet in, water halfway up his leg, scalding heat seeping through the fabric of his jeans. He cocks his head at Fyodor. “What’s the plan Mr. Dungeon Master?”
Fyodor’s lips twitch upward. His knife-edge eyes slide leisurely to Dazai. “Love,” he says, “get on your stomach, will you?”
“Bossy,” Dazai grumbles, but turns over so her elbows are resting on the back-end slope of the tub, self propped up on them, head half submerged. She blows bubbles near the surface.
“Our dear Dazai here,” Fyodor says to Nikolai, finally, “is going to hold herself below the water. She will take half a breath, and go under. It’ll all be her, you see? I...oh...neither of us will be touching her in the slightest. When she faints, the air in her mouth will release, and we’ll pull her up. You see?”
Fyodor came to school today. It was only for a scant few hours, to attend a ceremony, and he spent half of it in the nurse’s office, but Nikolai saw him and Dazai whispering to one another in the halls. They must have been whispering about this, planning it, making its rules. Things between them are rarely a complete whim.
“I see!”
“Ahhhh...” Dazai pulls herself up enough to say, pitching her voice high, bringing a hand to her flushed cheek, “I’ve never done this with company before…! I’ve never gone this far!”
“Your first time, oh my,” Nikolai plays. “We’ll be gentle, I promise...”
“Blush blush!”
“It’ll hurt a bit,” Nikolai says, solemnly, “but it’ll feel good after.”
Dazai opens her mouth to reply, but is interrupted by the touch of Fyodor’s fingers on the bump of her spine at the back of her neck. Her mouth snaps shut.
“...Down,” Fyodor murmurs, “go on, darling.” And under the gentle press of his hand, Dazai sinks. His touch withdraws when Dazai submerges in completion.
Nikolai abruptly realizes his leg is bouncing again, disturbing the water, and forcibly stills it, but then he’s feeling so much and none of it has anywhere to go so he drags his nails against his forearm but that’s still not enough. He runs his tongue against his teeth. Not enough. He could scream. The jealousy in his chest coils. It must be his blood. And if jealousy is his blood then want is his heart and inadequacy is his flesh and wrongness is his bones and grief is his head and anxiety is his lungs and love must be his ligaments. The whole of him must be a living horror. The want to die sinks its teeth into him like an animal, and rips.
This is so stupid. They didn’t invite Dazai when he and Fyodor hotboxed a pastor’s office and burned ten bibles. If Dazai and Fyodor didn’t want him here, so what? If no one wants him ever, so what?
“It should only take a couple minutes,” Fyodor tells him, eyes pinned on Dazai’s submerged form, image wavering with the water’s movement. Florescent light refracts on her skin. Nikolai and Fyodor cast rippling shadows.
Nikolai digs through his pocket for a paperclip. It’s already bent out of shape. He strikes its metal tip against his forearm and this time draws blood. It’s shallow, will be scabbed over in the morning and gone without trace within days. He begins etching a chessboard pattern into the skin. It lets him keep Dazai in the center of his focus and corner of his eye.
There ends up no need to keep careful watch for bubble, though. Dazai breaks the surface herself, with a gasping heave.
“A warm up,” she announces. “Just ummm getting the taste of it…!”
That’s the first time.
The second time it’s, “Oh well, y’know, a girl’s gotta breathe! That survival instinct has HANDS.”
And then, “Third time’s the charm!”
Each time, she lasts just shy of the two minute mark. The tick of the clock on the wall beside the mirror rings even through the vent fan’s unending whir. Rippling shadows in the water. Refracted white light on the skin of her back, catching in her waving hair. Each time, she surfaces with one comment or another, voice waning in enthusiasm.
The tenth time, she says nothing at all. The clock reads TWO SIXTEEN. She stares at the tile of the wall around the bathtub, and plunges without a word.
“Little bird,” Fyodor murmurs, this time, “do you remember how to do CPR?”
He eyes him. “Yeah. Why?”
“Mmmm...”
Dazai breaks the surface again, none too gently. A shuddering gasp. The water crashes, and then, she’s under again. Oh, she’s really irritated, huh? Upset.
Tick tick tick. Nighttime summer insect-song filters in from the curtained window. Mechanic whir. The lazy slosh of water in a tub. Beating heart. Breath. Too quiet and too loud. Tick tick tick.
And then—
A head, resting against his shoulder. Fyodor’s voice cuts the noise with the volume of a whisper and clarity of a dagger. “Nikolai.”
Nikolai pauses his etching. His fingers twitch on the thin metal. He swallows. “Yeah?”
Fyodor’s hand trails down his thigh, snaking across his jeans, touch vivid even through the denim barrier. It slips into his pocket, takes his phone and tosses it into the soft bed of Nikolai’s jacket, across the floor. Nikolai barely has time to open his mouth in protest before Fyodor shushes him, fingers returning to trail up his arm, palm settling against his shoulder, against his neck. It presses. He can’t see Fyodor’s face.
“Nikolai,” Fyodor repeats, voice honey thick, slowly drip-fed, softer than velvet, “you trust me, don’t you?”
“...”
“Shove her under.”
And then Dazai’s body begins its violent twist of upwards motion, the same one Nikolai has now seen happen eleven times. Nikolai wrenches forward, crashes through any hesitation, and—
shoves her back under.
Water splashes up his arms, hot burning out into lukewarm on his face. Wet on his cheek He loses balance, slips in, knee knocking against hard porcelain bottom, legs coming to rest on each side, straddling her. Hot water soaks him up to the hips, sloshing up against his stomach. She struggles against him.
“...and hold her down,” Fyodor says.
His hand on the back of her neck. Her body thrashes under him, a frantic, desperate attempt to throw him off, but he’s stronger and taller and heavier and she hasn’t had oxygen for two minutes. Her pulse jackrabbits against his fingers where they press around her neck. Hummingbird heartbeat. Nikolai feels more that sees her choking gasp, the shudder of her neck. Bubbles pop on the surface. Nausea roils within him, and he wants to vomit, he wants to let go, he wants to press harder, he wants to never touch her again. It’s awful. Acid guilt in his throat.
He can barely breathe, suffocated by the stream, by summer heat, beading wetness on his skin, clotting in his lungs. He can see Fyodor, now, still sitting there on the rim, light tracing a line down the skin of his collar bone, breast, stomach, thigh, watching them through half lidded eyes, body lax, looking for all purposes as though he is seeing nothing more than clouds pass. He says nothing. Nikolai can barely breathe.
He holds her down.
Tick tick tick. Slowly, surely, Dazai’s struggle bleeds out. Something in Nikolai’s chest curls, tightens, loosens. His whole being feels unsteady as the water sloshing around them, and just as molten. Something horrible. Every point of contact between their bodies burns. Dazai’s pulse falters once, twice, flags. Fainter and fainter. And then, all at once but not at all,
she goes limp.
Satisfaction seeps through him. It’s colder than terror. Oh, god. Dazai floats lifeless at the bottom, body gently rocking with the water. Oh, god.
“...and done,” Fyodor is saying. “Now, Kolya, quickly...”
Nikolai’s already on it.
He brings her up and flips her over, lays her against the sloped back of the tub. It’s not an ideal surface but it’ll have to do. Her near bareness makes it easy to find the right positioning on her chest. Thank god. He compresses hard. Counts them. Water comes up, but she still isn’t breathing. More water. Still no breath. She can’t have inhaled that much. Nikolai rechecks the pulse. Still there, still weak. He pinches her nose shut and latches their lips together.
Her mouth burns.
One, two. Thirty. One, two. Thirty. One, two—
Dazai jolts awake with a gasp, forehead knocking against Nikolai’s jaw, and then she’s heaving breaths, coughing up water, whole movements which shudder her entire back. She hunches in on herself like a puppet with its strings cut. No expression on her face.
“Good good good love,” Fyodor is cooing, leaning down close, pressing the hair out of Dazai’s face, out of her eyes, “lovely lovely you did very good, so well, can you do just one more thing? Just one more.” He snaps his fingers in front of her. “Tell me something? Anything. Just tell me one thing and you can leave, alright?”
Dazai’s half-there gaze briefly focuses, flicking to Fyodor, and with a trembling hand, she pulls him down. Fyodor falls into her lap, and Dazai whispers something weak into Fyodor’s ear, which makes Fyodor kiss her temple and say, “Good, that’s all, that’s all, you’re done. Lovely...”
and then she’s gone. Any semblance of presentness leaves Dazai. Her face is blank. Her body begins to steady. Her eyes are completely unfocused. Nikolai maneuvers the three of them into a slightly more comfortable tangle of limbs. Fyodor helps. Dazai is little more than a doll. There’s just nothing in her.
Nikolai can’t imagine it.
Nikolai doesn’t drain. He just doesn’t drain. There’s never nothing. He never runs out of pieces of himself. There is always more. There’s always something. He is always so anxious he can’t eat or so angry it makes him hot in the face or so in love he could cry. He would do anything for his emotions to run into thin, colorless lines, do anything for a moment of absence. Even now, envy grows around his heart and lungs and up his throat till it presses between his teeth, so thick he can taste it, bitter and wanting and wanting and wanting, needing. A kind of hopeless knowledge that he’ll never have this and Dazai has it all the time, can get this so easily. He could chew the helpless grief over himself that builds like a wail behind his tongue. There is so much envy, but—
no jealousy.
Oh.
He looks inside himself for jealousy, but all he finds is the phantom sensation of Dazai’s pulse against the pads of his fingers, and, oh.
His head snaps around to look at Fyodor. The other boy is in the front end of the tub, opposite Dazai at the back, and he’s twisted to lean against the tub’s outer edge, arms folded on the porcelain, head rested into their made-nest, eyes half lidded. He opens them just a sliver more, and make the ghost of what could be a head-tilt, but says nothing, eyes drifting fully shut. Nikolai, you trust me, don’t you? Shove her down and hold her under. Nikolai would kill for him, he thinks. Yes, he trusts him. He feels petrified with it. A kind of devotion. Dazai is blank like still water and Nikolai isn’t jealous anymore and he didn’t even realize until minutes after it was made to bleed away, and that’s so much power to hold over someone. He feels gross in himself.
Nikolai sinks down, legs folded. Dazai and Fyodor’s bare skin slides against him.
The water seeps from hot to warm. Their quiet breaths are small against the night. Time passes. Who knows how long. Nikolai spends it in an anxious haze.
Eventually,
Dazai takes a ragged breath and folds her leg up to her chest. She looks at Nikolai, and her face still has nothing on it, but there’s something terrible in her voice when she says,
“Fyodor didn’t struggle.”
Oh, Nikolai thinks.
“...Fyodor didn’t struggle,” Dazai repeats, continues, and then she looks away, head tilting up to the shadowed white ceiling, “do you get it? Fyodor got it first try. I didn’t touch him. He stayed at the bottom completely unmoving but no bubbles came up so I didn’t do anything and between his conscious effort and his fainting there was no visual difference except the release of bubbles, at which point I pulled him out. First try. It barely took more than a minute. Twenty seconds. It took a minute and twenty seconds. Easy. You get it?”
Fyodor was damp when Nikolai arrived. He missed his turn. He can imagine, though. No hesitation. First try.
“I get it,” Nikolai says, because he does.
He and Dazai share a wanting. Trapped in themselves and trapped in life, Dazai has wanted to die for longer than she’s ever wanted anything, and Nikolai wants death so much it physically hurts. And neither of them can kill themselves. Neither of them can bring themselves to end it in reality. It’s frustrating. It’s constant.
And Fyodor got it first try. They’re so certain in their suicidality, calm and quiet, steady. First try, no hesitation, no falter in the face of a survival instinct.
“Fuck,” Dazai mutters.
“...I’d do it for you,” Nikolai finds himself saying. “I’d do it for both of you, if it came down to it.”
And he means it, he realizes, with such intensity that it knocks breath from his lungs. He means it.
The sheer strength of the feeling tightens his chest, burns hot coals in his stomach. The fierce sincerity of it. They have a right to die. They shouldn’t have to do this. They should never have to live if they don’t want to. It’s a right to control oneself. It’s a right to choose to end it. It’s a human right to give up, to quit, to die. They should never be disallowed from that. They should never have to do this. He could scream with the injustice of it.
He wants, wants—
Dazai breathes half a laugh. Fyodor just hums.
“I know it must be a little silly—Fedya you probably already have yours all planned out to look like an accident, and incriminate absolutely no one, least of all me, and probably, like, cure cancer in the process or whatever, but—” his voice cracks, oh that’s awful, he’s showing too much of himself but what does it even fucking matter if they can see it all regardless? “I would. I don’t even care it could be strangling or gun death or drowning and I could do it in your sleep or with you awake or, anything anything, I could do it, I think. I would. If you wanted me or needed me.”
In truth, if one of the three of them were to help the other two with dying, Fyodor would fulfill the role best. He’s not able bodied, he wouldn’t be able to hold someone down in the same way Nikolai can, but he’d find a work around. Nikolai doesn’t want to do that to him, though. And he could never do that to Dazai, he could never let Dazai be the last one left. So it would have to be Nikolai.
He might kill himself after. He would want to.
If he didn’t, he’d be imprisoned. Because society doesn’t recognize the right to die. When someone kills themself, there is no bittersweet recognition that they’ve made their choice. The grief those left behind experience isn’t merely from the absence of the deceased from their lives. Nikolai doesn’t want to hurt anyone but his family with his death. There is no service to help you go out painlessly. Oh, god.
And in that world, in a better world, if all that was true, even if it were all true—
Nikolai did for Dazai what can never be done for Nikolai.
It’s Dazai who once confessed, I could die if only I didn’t have to do it alone. If someone would help. It’s Dazai who wants help and company and someone to press down her neck to take from her the burden of agency. Dazai who can find a peace in that.
If anyone pulled that shit on Nikolai, he may actually kill them trying to escape the hold. He’d do anything to get out, anything, promise anything he could form the words to, use any violence he could think of. They’d be dead.
Quiet.
Steam creates a curtain of mist, turning the bathrooms white light soft, hazy. The entire world is bare of sharp edges, here. Soft shadows and soft light, soft grays, soft whites. Warm water. The monstrous web between the three of them proves itself a pillowed bed. Quilted quiet. A kind of intimacy.
“Fuckkkk,” Dazai groans, “My sister’s gonna kill me if I come back like this. This is her favorite bra. I probably have to get checked for drowning damage, too. Except I’m not going to the hospital so I have to ask her. Ughhhhh...”
Nikolai’s eyes flick to the clock. THREE THIRTY TWO IN THE MORNING. Dazai is drenched with water on a rainless night, and… Nikolai squints, yeah he’s pretty sure that actually is Yosano’s bra.
“You could go to your dad’s flat instead, maybe?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Oh well,” Nikolai says, “she has other bras.”
“Hhhhhhh...”
“You can stay over,” Fyodor says, and his voice is rather weak, but there’s no uncertainty in his offer. “Both of you.”
Dazai frowns, sitting up straight. “What about when your parents? You said they’re getting back in the morning.”
“I’ll say I called you two over to take care of me.”
Nikolai’s halfway to being disowned for painting his nails and liking men but if Fyodor were found as gay and trans there would be no out. He’s halfway to housebound, his bruises take weeks to heal and seconds to form, reliant; his parents wouldn’t throw him out, there would be no violence, but Nikolai has known them long enough to know they’d try to fix Fyodor into something he never can be. It’d be another step of hell.
“Okay,” Dazai says.
They get out of the tub one by one. Nikolai extracts himself, then Dazai, and they both help Fyodor out. Fyodor steadies himself against a wall and shrugs them off, which proves the wrong decision, because Nikolai has barely finished unplugging the tub drain when there’s a crash behind him and he twists around to see Fyodor fallen on the floor having bumped into—probably the sink stool. It’s askew.
“Fedya? You okay?”
“Mnnngh...” Fyodor lays themself flat on the floor head twisted so their cheek presses against the linoleum, and closes their eyes. “Just...sec...”
Dazai frowns from where she’s drying herself with a towel. “I guess the heat was too much. Or the duration of time? Maybe the day in general. Hey hey Fyo blink twice if you’re gonna vomit, ‘kay?”
Dazai stays with Fyodor in the bathroom while Nikolai heads out and prepares saline in the kitchen. When he comes back with the warm glass, Fyodor has been relocated to the bed and Dazai is sat on its edge picking through the snacks Nikolai brought. Fyodor is eyeing potato chips in that particular way that means they’re calculating a mistake, and Nikolai says, “Nuh-uh Fedya I won’t stop you if you really wanna but I did get nori snacks just for you,” because heavy oils and starch is liable to leave Fyodor in hours of agony in a way seaweed isn’t and Nikolai knows this because he knows him.
“How lovely,” Fyodor sighs, and kisses him before accepting the glass. Nikolai tosses a pack of nori to their lap and before Nikolai makes off and shuts the bathroom door behind him.
In the bathroom, the mirror has cleared of fog.
Nikolai sets on removing his makeup, cleaning the cake from his face, the smear of lipstick, the itching layer of a mask. And when he checks and rechecks himself in the mirror, he thinks about assisted suicide, living, dying, a world where Fyodor isn’t stuck in limbo between their family and religion and body, where Nikolai feels less of the wrong things and Dazai feels more of the right ones, where they aren’t a trio of things that want to die. Is the last of his mascara gone from the corner of his lashes?
His own blue eyes peer back at him from the mirror, kept behind pale lashes. No more mascara. If they have the right to die, he thinks, then they should have the right to live, too. They should have the right to live, too. They should be able to live. And he feels the grief of it with such intensity a wail builds an ache in the back of his throat and he watches his own eyes swell with tears before the image blurs into a smear of blue and he has to bite his hand so they don’t hear him from the adjacent room.
When he joins them in bed, his lashes are still wet, but neither of them comment. Dazai makes space for him beside her and he when slips into the cave of the blanket and lays his head against Dazai’s breasts, Fyodor reaches over to stroke a hand through his hand. Their ankles entwine. Warm bodies.
They fall asleep like that.