Work Text:
1. Violence
From a young age he has known it very well. Nagumo is a man-made weapon ironically using other fucking weapons. Another body’s blood dries between his fingers. Swallowed under the lust for it, murder lingers before it will morph into something monstrous. A man becomes a monster, they say. A beautiful, beautiful one. Well done, beast, they will tell him. The other faces rot underneath him, gleeful in death. The audience will stand and applaud. Nagumo smiles, white fangs and unspoken desperation at praise. He will die a million times for this. He opens a door to the emptiness of a home, and when the surface closes another life shakes free into the world. The audience will continue to applaud.
2. Bees
It’s a blooming May, and Nagumo only knows because of the bees buzzing past them. He, Rion, and Sakamoto are trying to make themselves one with the grass of an unauthorized JCC area. This is always how it is, in the months where Nagumo will decide to let himself feel loved. Smoke continues to filter through and from Rion, and Nagumo looks over to find that she is also a gorgeous creature, one that will take death in her two strong arms. Sakamoto is too much of an anomaly to be a creature, he doesn’t deserve a definition. Nagumo will silently admire the specificity of whatever shapes their boy and girl forms latch onto. Nagumo will pray that both of their souls will make it through.
3. Anger
And when his prayers aren’t answered, Nagumo curses all things god and the universe. All ten, aching fingers of a nineteen-year old monster want to take the world apart and gut it to shreds. Maybe then Rion won’t have to hold all that pain, he thinks. Because she was the kind of person that Nagumo would’ve wanted to simply become one with the Earth’s grass, and sleep peacefully like that. Rion was the only girl that Nagumo would’ve probably taken another dagger for. And if he did, bleeding straight from his guts, Nagumo would let himself be cut and cut and cut. Then they will be the same. A girl and a boy, and their shadow of his grief.
4/5. Ties and Sticks
Come here, Nagumo murmurs to Sakamoto, his lips physically incapable of cracking a smile. Sakamoto can’t fix his tie for shit, and Nagumo has had too much practice in doing so. That’s their difference, the one that they never truly cared to set a boundary by. Things like fear and best friends and death bring them together, now standing over a patch of coarse dirt and finer sticks. This was where Rion’s dead body had been, apparently. Nagumo drops a bouquet of flowers there, and Sakamoto is the first to pull out his gun of mourning. The recoil of shots in the air makes both of their trigger-clumsy feet shift slightly into the ground, almost like they’re sinking. Nagumo thinks for a moment that they should go under too. Sakamoto’s tie slackens at the impact.
6. Unfortunate
Nagumo is awake, creature and all, and he is still alive.
7. Break
Nagumo doesn’t exactly remember when he starts with the random appearances. It just becomes a part of his routine. Now, Sakamoto has a wife, and a daughter. And he is no longer the undefined fit of limbs or nearly as intently deadly as he was before. He’s a husband and a father and Nagumo—only comes during breaks so he can't necessarily be kicked out. Sakamoto gets pissed most times, but that’s okay. This means Nagumo is a living, breathing force. Forces are meant to be felt. So if Nagumo somehow uses his blood-drenched hands to stop time, and then lodges himself into the period of what had been, then there’s no problem with that.
8/9. Tango and Tiny
And for the sake of old times, Nagumo Yoichi would’ve taken Uzuki Kei’s hand like they were something grand. For Rion, for Sakamoto too. He would've danced till the world crashed as he did. The sky would fall. Birds would fly. The intricate wings of butterflies would flutter. Maybe Rion would break away. Her soul deserves that beautiful freedom. To be free. Tango onto death. Then a slash to the chest, where the fluid from organs threaten to spill and splatter. Every minute allows his body to be soaked into blood, for the ground to be stained in it. Nagumo looks up and beyond all the violence there’s a tiny, white light. The ground shakes, Sakamoto falls. Nagumo momentarily closes his eyes, and behind them is peace.
10. Songbirds
The morning that Nagumo wakes up, it’s with the sound of birds chirping through the windows of Granny Miya’s place. The stiffness of bandages cross over him like he’s being mummified, and a laugh beats somewhere in him at the thought. The birds keep chirping. Sakamoto wakes up a day after.