Chapter Text
The world ended quietly. There were no sirens, no fire, no screaming, nor panic, only acceptance. Acceptance that this was the way things had to be now. No one had the strength to fight back, to speak up. An apocalypse, the end of the world that everyone knew before, arose like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Green grass turned red, stained with blood and rotten flesh. Every day, one more body dropped, one more neighbor disappeared. The heavy secret soon came to light when half of the population was gone, smothered by higher-ups who saw them as nothing but animals. Maybe that’s what some of them were, but not all.
None of it mattered, because soon enough, there was no one left.
No one except two partners, who had vowed to protect each other. Akito Shinonome, a young, rugged man, had been thrown into the town’s prison, forced into a cell guarded by a single cop. His rough hands clung to the bars which confined him, growling and yelling like it meant something, but Akito was nothing more than a beast in the eyes of his superiors. One night, he had almost escaped, almost, but was caught and dragged back, forced to wear a muzzle for the rest of his pitiful life. It had practically been sewn to his skin, the straps digging into his face as a punishment. He sat in a corner now, unmoving, with messy orange hair covering his dull, olive-green eyes, waiting for his guardian angel to come to his rescue.
Toya, a skilled young man, had barely escaped the captors. All it took was the pair robbing a grocery store, desperate for some food and resources, to send men running after them. They were the only two citizens still alive, after all, and had vowed to protect each other. They were partners, and nothing could come between them, not even the looming threat of death.
Now, Toya operated during the night, weaving through the shadows silently, determined to free his partner. He didn’t have much, only the handmade clothes on his back and a satchel of miscellaneous food and weapons. He kept a dagger at his side in case of emergencies, the armament concealed by a long piece of fabric draped over his belt.
His footsteps were silent, diligent, as he approached the concrete building in the middle of the city. There it stood, like a symbol of the old authority that ended the world, that had caused damnation for all. The prison was the biggest building in town, and the only one still intact after the demolition and rotting of others. Police only worried themselves with its inmate, the muzzled criminal trapped inside. Nothing else was worth worrying about.
Guards surrounded the front, their hands bloody and uniforms ragged. Toya crept behind him like a ghost, unsheathing his dagger with one swift motion before thrusting it into the exposed necks of each guard. One by one, the bodies dropped like flies. Toya’s pale, fair skin reddened with their blood, each splatter and stain serving as a painful reminder of the inhumanity that he had gotten accustomed to.
Several thuds filled the air, but before anyone could process it, Toya had vanished. He ran into the prison, pulling its doors open with bandaged arms. His body moved faster than his mind as he bolted down the hallways, the walls crumbled and peeled like old skin. His boots stomped up the stone stairs, which got chipped away slowly with each step.
“Akito…” Toya let the name roll off his tongue, repeating it like a mantra as he headed upstairs and scanned a row of cells. He noticed there was only one guard in the whole complex, Akito’s guard.
Toya couldn’t have run any faster.
“AKITO!” He shouted, his two-toned blue hair wind-whipped as he sprinted to his partner.
Akito, who had been staring at an ivory wall for God knows how long, blinked twice. He knew that voice, the passionate yet sweet tone that Toya carried. He shot up, the chains on his ankles not standing a chance against him. He leapt to the bars, calloused hands grabbing and shaking them violently.
“TOYA!” He screamed out.
Akito’s guard ran towards the bluenette, a baton in his left hand and a gun in his right. Toya’s silver eyes flashed for a millisecond as the sound of a gunshot pierced the air, his body twisting as the bullet grazed his cheek. With blood dripping down his cheek, Toya dropped down onto the floor, his legs sliding across it and knocking the guard over. Bloodied dagger in hand, Toya lunged over and dug it into the back of the guard’s neck. He dragged it to the left and right, the blade elegantly gliding as it sliced through skin. Toya used his free hand to turn over the guard’s body until the slicing was complete.
Blood erupted in a sudden arc as Toya slashed through muscles. His sharp eyes followed the guard’s head as it rolled across the floor with grotesque grace. It rolled once—no, twice—before coming to rest, eyes wide, lips still twitching as if gasping for a final word. The body remained upright for a heartbeat longer, spasming slightly, then collapsed to its knees, crumpling forward like a puppet with its strings cut.
Warm blood pooled in the cold air, Toya’s already crimson clothes stained with even more of it. He slowly looked up at Akito, with emotionless, unreadable eyes, like they always were.
This is how things always were.
Akito should have been petrified at the sight of his partner decapitating a man. Maybe the superiors were right, maybe they were both just animals, because instead of screaming in horror, Akito smiled.
His sharp canines shone in the dim light of the prison, illuminated by a single flickering lamp. Then he laughed, he laughed like it would kill him. Toya smiled, a smaller one, as he saw Akito. Without hesitation, he grabbed the darkened keys from the guard, thick gore dripping off them, and unlocked the cell.
Akito threw himself into Toya’s arms, despite the reek of the latter’s clothes. Together, they fell back into a puddle of blood, holding each other like they could disappear at any moment.
Toya instinctively cradled Akito’s face, fingers brushing his freckled, bruised skin, but the bluenette realized the straps digging into his partner’s skin. He lifted his hands and looked back, seeing the metal bars in front of the ginger’s mouth.
Toya’s heart ached at the sight. He could see how much closer Akito wanted to get, but how he was restrained from doing so.
“Aki…what did they do to you?” Toya asked, his voice gentle.
“I…tried to escape,” Akito huffed. “Got the muzzle. They think I’m some goddamn animal. Toya, they think I’m an animal .”
“I see…can you eat with that on? Your cheekbones look sunken in. They haven’t been feeding you well, have they?”
Akito shook his head, growling as he rested his head on Toya’s chest. His stomach grumbled, causing the man to lower his head in embarrassment. This feeling of weakness on full display for Toya was what Akito hated most. He was supposed to be the one protecting his partner, not the damsel in distress.
But, oh, how he loved the comfort of Toya’s arms. Nothing compared to it. Despite everything that had happened, despite the fucked-up world they lived in, Toya was constant. He gave the ginger a sense of stability. Akito definitely would have lost his mind if it weren’t for the bluenette.
Toya held Akito for a while. His fingers curled protectively around Akito’s back, the blood between them sticky and warm. His eyes, usually calm and distant, were wide with adrenaline and something close to fear—not for what he did, but for what might’ve happened if he hadn’t.
“I wouldn’t be able to take it off, would I?” Toya asked, looking at Akito’s muzzle after he pulled back. “It looks…” The bluenette tilted Akito’s chin up, getting a better look at the contraption on his face. “...sewn onto your face.”
“There’s a clasp on the back. They cemented it, fuckin’ melted the metal together. Can’t get it off unless ya, I dunno, sawed it or used a hot knife…it was meant to be torture. This whole thing is torture.”
“We’ll find a way to get it off, I promise. I’ll do anything and everything I can to make sure you never have to wear one of those again.”
Akito didn’t reply. He looked around, starting to process that the gentle Toya—stoic, soft-spoken Toya—was covered in blood, body shaking, holding him like nothing else mattered in the world.
Toya’s mind was reeling and still at the same time. He had just killed a man— brutally —like he was a monster, but it was to protect Akito. And to Toya, that man—if he could even be called that—was nothing short of a monster. For locking Akito up, for shoving that muzzle on him, for treating him like an animal. All superiors did that. It was always the same for both Akito and Toya. They might have been alive, but they sure as hell weren’t living.
They were the lucky ones, having escaped alive, having not been slain by the hands of their leaders, by those in power. They only had each other, and for now, that was enough. But things couldn’t be like this forever.
“Toya…” Akito muttered. “...ya killed him. Ya—fuck, didn’t even hesitate, did ya?”
There was no anger in his voice. If anything, there was awe. Fear, too, but not of Toya— never of Toya. He shifted in Toya’s arms, feeling the blood slick between them, warm and terrifyingly real.
“Shit,” Akito whispered, eyes locked with Toya’s. “Ya really came for me.”
He tried to laugh, but it broke halfway into a shaky breath, and his hands curled into Toya’s bloodied shirt. His gruff voice dropped to something fragile.
“…Why would ya do that for someone like me?”
“…Because you matter to me.”
Toya didn’t say I love you, not yet. But it’s in everything—in his voice, his arms, the way he held Akito like he’s the most precious thing in the world.
He’d burn the whole world down if it meant Akito would walk out of the fire.