Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The record skips. Jumps. Cartwheels a tune. The needle trembles trebles and beats out bass, spinning soul-music with frenetic excitement from the smooth, black, tide of the vinyl record’s skin. It plucks out notes, jars human voice from the inanimate. It trips out, scratches out rhythm, makes it seem like anything, anything can create music, art, life beneath a just-right touch and that–that’s not true. It’s simply not true.

Neku knows. He might know better than anyone.

There’s no rhythm in the wet towel he drags across the counter-top or the stingy plastic shuffle of money-on-money in the till. No one stomps their feet to the cha-cha-slide of a mop slapping sopping wet against the linoleum floor or grooves along its chemical snail-trail, there’s no audience in the world that would scream themselves breathless and sweat-slicked and lick their lips and push with gasping adoration from their clutching, heart-beaten throats: “Sakuraba! Sakuraba!”

“Sak–”

He unlocks the door.

“–ur–”

Flips around the sign.

“–ABA!”

And here we go.

CAT Records is open for business.

Neku signs as he stretches his arms over his head, enjoying the sensation of muscle-movement before spending all of his time cooped up in a hole-in-the-wall records shop bending and lifting and never using his knees like he’s supposed to inevitably–as the doctors say–wrecks his shit. Outside, the streets cut close. He can see them wavering in the sticky heat that comes after rainfall; it’s overcast, and all the city is clapped between cloud-cover and steaming puddles that make little harbors out of the curbside. Every car that comes by kicks up a tsunami of this grubby water and Neku can practically taste it, feel the grit slide between his teeth and–

“Ugh.”

The heat is getting to him. Or maybe it’s this place crawling into him–his mouth, his bones. He rubs his eyes and sees records spinning in the sparks behind his eyelids.

It’s not really his fault, though, is it? Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t feel so damn codependent with this place if he wasn’t the only one running it.

“Hiya~☆”

Speak of the devil.

The bell shackled to the top of the door jingles as the human-shaped mass of keychains and jewelry and cotton candy-coloured everything he calls his coworker breezes into the shop, one hand on her phone, the other clutched around a diabolically sugary-looking…he hesitates to even call it coffee. The thing tosses around whipped cream and caramel sauce with her every step. Just looking at it makes Neku’s own heart rate spike, and as if noticing this, and taking it to be a sign of some adolescent lovesickness, Coco Atarashi tips down her pink-shaded sunglasses to toss him a wink and a sharp-looking grin.

“OMG! It’s, like, sooooo good to see you, Nekky. It’s been for-EVS since we worked together!”

“That’s what happens when you call in sick every time you know I’ll cover for you,” Neku thinks, but doesn’t say. Managing Coco in the heat of a sugar-rush is hard enough, it’s even worse when the sweetness turns sour. Instead he mutters something non-committal and continues stretching as she turns and waltzes towards the backroom.

In some ways it’s easier when Coco decides to whittle her shift away “organizing storage.” Neku gets to do what he likes; play whatever he wants on the old-fashioned gramophone he’d found for a steal on eBay, flick through some records, take the sickest, sleekest covers for inspiration, and sketch. Hours can bleed out painlessly beneath the press of a pretty red pen. It’s meditative, he thinks. Zen. It’s “healing his inner child,” or some other health-hack buzzword bullshit. It feels good, he supposes is the best way to put it. Or, at least, it doesn’t feel as pointless as everything else does.

This is where his first customer of the day finds him: so absorbed in his sketch he doesn’t hear the bell ring. He doesn’t seem to mind, though. Most of their clientele is of the type to chin a simple greeting towards the till–a promise they aren’t here to steal or shit-stir–and dive solo into the musty fold of music’s forgotten history. And this one’s a regular, too: a man of indeterminate age with short-cropped hair above a fading buzz, somewhere between mouse-grey and an unflattering wet-cement in colour, always dressed in a professional-looking blazer that today he’s allowed to have a Casiopea shirt poke through like sweet tea filling up a stainless-steel cup…oh! Sakazuki–that’s what his name is.

Sakazuki knows what he likes–jazz fusion, old funk–and he knows where to find it. There’s no need to try and pilot him. The man likes his space, Neku respects that.

Which is a concept lost on some people.

“Hel–loooooooo! Welcome to CAT Records, your one-stop super-shop for rock, sock-hop, and hyper-pop!”

Grinning broadly (Neku can’t help, but notice she’s still got caramel stuck to the tips of her canines), Coco swoons into the room. She’s changed into her work shirt now, or what’s left of it; it’s been torn up and stitched back together with a quiltful of multicolour patches, eye-watering neons that clash viciously against the pastel pattern of her tights: baby-blue with sweet-cream-coloured spots, and the doll-like ruffled tips of her socks. With every step her jewelry rattles out a dozen different chimes. From her star-studded necklace to her earrings, felt-covered cats with bell-collars that ring as if they were mewing, she’s a crescendo, flashing her teeth and her wickedly sharp glitter-drenched nails at the man who can only stand swamped in the abject horror of realizing how very behind on the times he is (or whatever time Coco thinks it is).

“Can I help you?” he says.

Coco laughs–cackles, really. “Erm, no? But I can totes help you!”

She flounces cheerfully around him; Neku’s seen cats do the same thing to a cornered alley rat. In two seconds she has her hands in a vice-like grip around his arm and is dragging him towards the few contemporary records they keep in stock–rounds of bedroom pop and R&B tempting passers-by from the windowsill. In two minutes she has him at the counter. Neku’s familiar with what he’s buying; the prescription-bottle wrap of its cover tips him off. New Drug. A catchy, if unchallenging, line-up of hip hop and rap. He remembers falling asleep to Hyakusenman while studying for a math test in high school.

He’s going to hate it.

“Okie-dokie!” Coco claps her hands together, her nails clattering like claws. With the bony edge of her hip she shoves Neku out of the till and punches in her numbers with a steady click-click-clack. “Let’s get you rung up!”

As soon as Sakazuki leaves the shop–stumbling in a drunk-like stupor–Coco collapses with a sugar-crash groan across the counter-top.

“Yeesh! Wag a pair of tits in front of these freaks and you can sell them anything.”

Neku doesn’t say anything at first. He can tell this is one of those scenarios with no correct reply other than, “Fo sho, girl” and, frankly, he’d rather die. But then he feels Coco’s eyes slide from his face to his hands and sharpen with interest. She leans forward. He pulls his paper closer into himself.

“You didn’t have to get involved,” he says for the sake of saying anything.

Coco scoffs at that. But she leans back into her own space, at least. “Puh-lease. If I let you serve every shoe-gazing neckbeard who walks in here I’d, like, never get a shift again, and you’d miss my cute widdle face too much for that, wouldn’t you?”

That’s not exactly how scheduling works, but Neku knows it’s an argument that’s lost on Coco. Or, if he’s being completely honest with himself, it’s one he just can’t be bothered to have. He’s completely lost on her strange swings from ambitious to ambivalent; what she cares about–or pretends to care about–and what she doesn’t–or pretends she doesn’t–it’s all just paper wrappings on the great mystery that is Coco Atarashi, and he can’t say he’s particularly eager to pull open the string and try to peek inside. It’s not personal. It’s professional–anyone could have walked through those doors on the day they were hiring and feel Neku’s resentment crystallizing over them like the cool cough-out of their busted air conditioner.

He’s too sick of this place, and everyone in it. If he’s going to fight to keep his love of anything it’s going to be the music. People come and go. Music stays.

A good song never dies.

–pop!

Neku glances up just in time to see Coco suck in a wad of bubblegum.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re, like, the worst conversationalist ever?”

Neku drops his gaze back to his drawing. The design’s looking somewhat barren: heavy on the reds on one side and sparse and colourless on the other. He wants to touch it up. Populate the space. His pen touches paper and a shape–vague, yet-formless–slips from the ink.

“That must suck for you.”

Coco makes a small sound–a “hrmph!” of displeasure. “It super does.”

For a few blissful moments her mouth stays clamped shut in a silent revolt. Neku thinks to himself, “She can’t stand to talk to me, but she can’t stand to not talk,” as her cheeks swell and pinken like she’s holding her breath. “It’d be funny if it was anyone else on the receiving end.”

“Sooooo anyways! Dish the tea–-what’s up with Fuzzface? He’s, like, NEVER here! Not what I want to see him; that mustache–yuck!”

Fuzzface, she means their manager, Mr. Hanekoma, he was exactly the kind of man you’d expect to work for at a hole-in-the-wall records shop that’s had its claws sunk stubbornly into the cement since the 90s: passionate, knowledgeable, connected, and shockingly cut-throat when he had to be–with the exception that he hadn’t yet crossed the threshold into his 30s (by his own omission, though Neku had his doubts). It was why, despite his eccentricities, Neku couldn’t help but admire him. That, and the fact that if he hadn’t plucked him, seemingly at random, from the crowd of solicitors with one foot toeing the cracks in the world where the unluckiest bastards slipped through, never to be seen again, and given him his job…best-case scenario he would’ve been chased out of Shibuya with his tail between his legs. Worst-case, well–

The record jumps and doesn’t come back down again. It trips and skids and the music peters out into nothingness.

Coco seizes her chance. Jumping off the counter-top she runs and grabs an album of her choice, finding it immediately despite the fact that she’s called in sick every time he’s asked her to do visuals. She slips it on the turntable. Drops the needle down. Neku expects noise–loud, crass, wrung-through with high-pitched electricity–music that has its place in the world, for sure, but that place is not his eardrums. Instead, there’s softness. A silken voice he doesn’t recognize, percussion like a kiss on the forehead. Coco sways gently to the rhythm with a look on her face approaching thoughtfulness, and Neku wonders if he’s slipped through the cracks after all and found himself in another universe.

Eventually he finds his tongue again, once he realizes Coco wants a real answer. “He’s busy.”

“Too busy to check on the people he literally pays to run the shop that’s literally in his name?”

“Yeah. Literally.”

“Kay, but I know he’s not pulling so like, honestly, what’s his excuse?”

The music hikes with the chorus. On its way up it takes Coco with it; she picks up her feet and twirls with the rhythm in a way Neku almost finds endearing, could have, if he hadn’t turned his head away the moment he felt that sore stirring, old and abandoned mechanisms turning the tired gears in his chest.

“He’s got other projects,” he mutters. “He doesn’t just sell music, he writes and produces it, too.”

It’s not an alibi or an excuse, but it’s the truth. Or part of it, anyway. CAT Records was only one of many passion-slash-vanity projects Hanekoma had situated around Shibuya; everything from cafes to flower boutiques to back-alley graffiti tags ran the chance of sporting his signature starry-eyed cat. He’s a benefactor. He’s eternally bored. What chance did Neku ever have of retaining his attention? Now he’s being booked in at manager's hours with a manager's pay quietly tacked onto his cheques and no reason at all to complain of being left behind, really, besides the fact that he desperately wants to.

“Re-LAX, Nekky,” Coco drawls, still dancing. “He’s not here. You don’t have to dickride.”

“I’m not–”

“You should be celebrating! You’ve got it all set out for you–a cushy ‘lil job in a cushy ‘lil store where you never have to worry about any big scary bills, you can totally just crash here and let the cheques roll in forevs! Isn’t it like a dream come true?” She shoots him a pitying glance over her shoulder. “For you, I mean. Not the rest of us with, like, lives and junk.”

Neku returns her look of pity in equal measure. Coco’s still so new, so loose in the place, she doesn’t understand the kind of hooks that can sink into you, anchor you to a place that will never get better for the fear that everything else could be so much worse.

Manager’s pay. It wasn’t much but damn it, it had taken him three years to get to this point–

Three years.

“Has it already been three years since…?”

“Was that mean?” Coco clicks her tongue in faux-sympathy. “I’m sowwie. It’s cool that you’re so–what do they call it?–career-oriented. It doesn’t make you boring! It makes you…“mature.”

The word practically dribbled out of her mouth, so soaked in sweet mockery he hoped she’d get a cavity. “I’m guessing you’re not as “mature” as I am,” he says, gesturing to her little shimmy-stomps as the track kicks up its bass.

“Um. No.” She giggles with an odd delight. As if it wasn’t obvious enough from every visible part of her, she seems to revel in her overdue adolescence. “Nekky, if I ever get as “mature” as you I’ll blow my brains out.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

Deciding that he’s wasted enough time trying to get a decent conversation out of the human equivalent of the hamster dance, Neku turns his attention back to his drawing. Something recognizable was finally beginning to take shape within the amalgamation of shapes and colours. The sight of it–its rigid contours, the smooth shapeliness of its inner organs– plucks at his memory, makes an electric surge of urgency chord down through his arm into his wrist and fingers and–wait!

This is good. This is bring-to-Hanekoma good. This is up-on-a-wall-drenching-brick good, crowning-his-own-mural good. This is something that can carry his name away, up and onto bigger, better places. This…

“This is it,” he thinks, knows, with a sudden, cool beam of clarity, as for the briefest of moments the fog he didn’t even realize was clouding his mind broke open and he can see, perhaps for the first time in years, clearly through the crack in the haze: his opus. His raison d'etre. It comes to him only in glimpses, half-measures, but he’d be damned if it didn’t recognize it. Doomed if he allowed it to slip through his fingertips.

Sweat breaks through his skin. He shakes.

“If I can get this right it’ll be worth it, all of it.”

There’s a light in his eyes. It’s blinding. It’s the end of the tunnel.

“I have to get it right. For him–”

…

Elbows, then

wrinkles, then

ruin.

“Don’t be mad, okaaay?” Coco’s beside him now, her peach-face squished between her hands and her hands propped up by her elbows and her elbows on his drawing. “You’re not totally doomed yet! “Somebody needs to tell you that it’s ok if you wanna, I ‘unno, jump in your shit-bucket car and just drive and drive and driiiiive–”

She stumbles and lets out a squeak of surprise as Neku tears the paper out from underneath her. His mind blurs like the sweat on his panicked hands has somehow dripped down the back of his eyes, blotting his vision, greasing the wheels of the trap that snaps shut in his head and crushes the last ray of inspiration that dared to slip between its iron teeth. He tries to smooth out the crinkles. Tries to wring out the broken answer. But whatever the shape could have been, whatever it was supposed to be, was gone. The damage had already been done.

“Oopise!” Coco drapes a hand over her mouth, hiding an expression Neku could only guess at (oh, but he had a few ideas). “Aw, don’t look so butthurt, Nekky! You can start again! You’ve got aaaaaaaaaaaaall the time you need~♡”

With that she bounces away, freewheeling from the wreckage of the crash she caused and leaving Neku alone to straighten out his crumpled insides.

He’s been here before, though, hasn’t he? If nothing else, he’s learned how to keep his hands steady.

And he does.

His hands don’t shake–don’t move if not to flick through records, wipe the windows, count change–for the rest of the day. Not until he turns the key in the lock does he finally feel a quiver of, what? Relief? Excitement? More like a simple, base hunger. His brain sags, saddled with exhaustion that eclipses any emotion he might have felt as he lurches out into the streets, all a-lit with neon lights that shimmer above his head and in pretty pools of rainfall under his feet.

Shibuya might have been beautiful. Neku thought it was, at some point, and might still if he could see it, hear it, feel it; if he could reach beyond the perpetual buzz that seems to dull his mind to all pleasures then maybe he could remember the reason why he came here in the first place.

“There is none,” says a voice in his head. “There’s only a reason why we came.”

Neku shrugs off the voice as he turns into the parking lot. It chases after him, but soon enough he’ll be in his car with the radio cranked loud and it will all wash out with the music. He opens the door. Slumps in his seat. Turns the keys in the ignition…

The car makes a choked sound, a putter-putt-putt that’s so cartoonish it’s almost funny. Almost. Neku swears and kicks at the dashboard's underbelly, and like a wounded dog the engine complies. “Good.” He lets his shoulders lax. The last thing he needs is the money-sink of a busted car (or, more busted than it already is). He puts his hands to the wheel and–

Click

Cold metal sinks into the flesh of his skull. A barrel spins. A trigger-finger twitches.

“Drive,” Coco snarls.

So Neku drives.

This fic has been converted for free using AOYeet!

Chapter Text

Keep your hands at ten-and-two. Mind your signals. Check your rear-view mirrors. All passengers should be cautioned to put on their seatbelts–though in an emergency you aren’t liable for harm done to anyone over sixteen. Come to a complete stop at stop signs. Always give the right-of-way.

These are the rules of the road. Follow them, and you should be guaranteed a safe ride home.

Should be.

Neku rearranges his grip on the wheel–actually, didn’t someone tell him the correct position was nine-and-three?–and glances in the rear-view mirror, “Note: Objects in the mirror are more homicidal than they might appear.” Coco hasn’t moved since she repositioned the gun to the back of his headrest. She hasn’t spoken, either, which is somehow even more terrifying. From the corner of his eye he can see her nails digging into the cheap felt of the driver’s seat; one’s chipped down the middle, the nail split and peeling open like a thinly-blooming flower, and that slight unkemptness, the pink puffiness of the nail bed already seeping through the cartilage, drags a cold slither of fear down his spine.

“If she's letting her nails chip then she’s really got nothing left to lose.”

But with the thought comes the immediate realization of how little it’s actually based on. Neku tries to justify it, he runs through everything he can remember of their snatched conversations over the infinite-feeling two weeks they’ve worked together, wrings his brain for the slightest dribble of a hint or a clue that he might’ve soaked up.

Facts I Know About Coco:

• She takes her coffee with four cream, four sugar (REAL sugar, none of that synthetic crap), whipped cream, caramel and chocolate drizzle, shaved mocha chunks, and a vanilla wafer on the side for “snackies”
• Hates her downstairs neighbour, Shimizu, and has been dumping cat litter on his balcony plants for days
• She does not own a cat
• Her new shoes hurt her feet because they were “too adorbz” to not buy even though they’re a size and a half too small.
• She thinks she’s too good for her job
• Seeing how low the bar is, she’s probably right

Or, in other words, nothing.
Or, in other words, he’s totally fucked.

“Alright, bub,” says Coco suddenly, interrupting Neku’s silent doomer-isms. “At the next intersection you’re gonna turn onto the highway and not get off ‘till I tell you to, kay?”

Neku nods. He has to swallow half a dozen comebacks ranging from “lame” to “will probably get him shot,” but he manages.

Coco giggles–“Fuckssake. She knows what I’m thinking.”–and pats his head with her free hand. “Good boy!" Suddenly her voice lilts higher, and she sticks out her pinkie finger on the hand holding the gun as if it were a mere spot of tea. "A most chivalrous knight shall see the princess off to the ball before midnight, wherein he shall then transform back into a totally wanna-be NEBB lol. Sad!"

"NEBB?"

"Not Even Bagging Bitches. Laughing out loud!" A cartoonish grin stretches across her cheeks—Neku can see it in all its tooted glory as she leans in close to him, searching his expression for something he refuses to give her. "Don't worry, Nekky! Coco's taken care of everything; not even you can frick this one up."

He will. But not yet. If he plays it cool, keeps his head down for just a bit longer, he might just be able to get out of this with his brain matter still curled up snug in his skull.

And for an hour that’s exactly what he does. Even as the city starts to slip away from him–first Shibuya, then the whole of Tokyo vanishing like a neon swirl of colour down the drain, like he’s cracked a glow stick in his hands and now has to watch the slimy, bloody brightness slip from his fingers and splatter on the asphalt he’s leaving far behind–he keeps his cool. He keeps his hands at ten-and-two, or, fuck, nine-and-three. He thinks about where she might be taking him. He keeps his cool. Fear balls coldly in his chest and makes his palms slick and his mind fuzz with frost and panic but goddamn it–

“I can't let this oversized Labubu doll get the best of me.” He grinds his teeth hard, sharpening his focus between them. “No, there’s got to be a way out of this. I’ve just gotta be ready for it.”

But the chance doesn’t come before Coco prods him off the highway. His car growls, only as unhappy as Neku is, as it crawls off like an old cat gone to die. Soon the sky darkens beyond the pale, gritty yellow he’s become accustomed to, so accustomed to that he sees the milk-saucer moon and the stars eeking in pretty little pinprick slivers out of clean indigo, and can only think of the darkening of an old bruise that refuses to heal. The now-familiar swaths of cityscape: the great, metallic caterpillar-crawls of bullet trains and lean skyscraper heights, the leathery flap of overhangs billowing with food-smoke and good smells, it’s all gone. The constant pressure of millions upon millions of people crowding all around him begins to unfold and release him and he can’t tell how he feels. Dread and relief stir within him in equal measure.

He’s home. No. That’s not right. He was born and bred in the city before his father’s work took them to the countryside. He was always so out of place there, wasn’t he? This isn’t a return. It’s a relapse.

But, hey. There probably aren’t as many awful things one person can do to another in the country. Probably. Neku doesn’t know of any human trafficking rings that operate out of the countryside–what is he saying? He doesn’t know any human trafficking rings, period.

Somehow, that feels like a fault of his. Especially as Coco directs him to turn onto the darkest, dreariest side road he’s ever seen, and suddenly his headlights are lone twin beams slicing through an otherwise impenetrable darkness.

Maybe this is his chance.

The dimness, the quiet, the rhythmic vibrations from the road beneath them–soon Neku, in spite of the anxiety that still tugs at him, can feel his eyelids start to grow heavy with the want to slide and stay closed. Coco yawns in the backseat.

“This is it,” he thinks wildly. “She can't stay awake forever. The moment she falls asleep I’ll slam the brakes and jump the car–fuck it, she can keep it. Then I–”

Chhk!

There’s the sound of a pop tab cracking open, then a sort of gurgling–a loud, obnoxious slurping that drags Neku’s eyes to the rear-view. Coco’s head is tipped back, but not as if she was sleeping. Her throat spasms as she crushes a Monster with frightening speed; she finishes it, gasps for air with drink and spittle on her lips, reaches under the seat and oh fuck. Shit. Of course. She pulls out a whole damn crate of that godforsaken sugary-pink Ultra Strawberry Dreams Monster she drinks every other day for lunch. Fantastic.

“Maybe this will be the one that finally sends her into cardiac arrest. Then I’ll finally get some damn peace.”

“Mmm, yummers! You, like, got to try this, Nekky.” She jostles the can near his head. He can feel the juice inside splash onto his shoulder and fizz like something vaguely radioactive. “For realz. We can’t have you falling asleep at the wheel and getting us both like totally rekt."

Neku shrugs her off with a now slightly-sticky shoulder. “Forget it. Even with a gun to my head I wouldn’t drink that crap.”

“Srsly?” He can hear the pout in her voice. “Don’t tell me you’re some closet health nut. Laaaaaame.”

“Do I look like a closet health nut?” His hands aren’t free to gesture at himself–the skin that tightens around his bones without any muscle or fat to soften the fastening, the complexion that could be called wintry at best, moleish at worst, the sloped, hunched shoulders, stiff joints, and blood-shot eyes of the desk-bound midnight surfer dulling their fingertips on laptop keys and phone screens–but Coco gets the message. “Nah. I just don’t waste my money on over-hyped, watered-down baby shit like Monster.”

“Okay. Wow. You’re, like, weirdly opinionated about something that literally doesn’t matter. I guess that’s probz why you work at a record store.”

“Fuck off.”

“You fuck off!”

Huffing, her cheeks as pink as the Monster she’s guzzling, Coco rocks back in her seat and kicks Neku under his like a cranky child trapped on the world’s worst private flight. It almost makes him feel better, in an odd way. Sure, every kick up his ass reminds him of the bullet she could pop in his skull at any moment, but as petulant as she’s being it’s hard to imagine anything coming out of that chamber other than a pop and a cartoon Bang! sign.

“Ugh, fine!” She relaxes–kind of–sipping her drink and swirling it thoughtfully between her teeth before swallowing like a damn sommelier. “So what do you drink, mister fancy-pants?”

Neku rolls his eyes. “You wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

“Noooooo. You’re gonna say something totez stupid and, like, pretentious, aren’t you?”

“I only drink CAT Brew 24/7 XXL Energy Macchiato Madness.”

“You’re literally a parody of yourself. You know that, right?”

“No other brand combines the power of undistilled energy with a broad palette of bold and experimental flavours the way CAT Brew does. I’d need to drink at least five Monsters to get even close to the kind of results I get after just one can of CAT Brew.”

Coco goes quiet for a moment, which is possibly the scariest thing she’s done since she first pulled out her gun.

“Then I guess you’d better start drinking~✰!”

This time she comes up over the seat and shoves a can of Monster against Neku’s cheek like a mother bird trying to feed a worm to its stubborn chicklet. It’s a sudden, bulging mass of neon-pink in his vision and it makes him swerve frighteningly close to the curb and the dark valley of grass all around them–and not in the chance-for-escape way, but in the mortifying-death-at-the-hands-of-a-knock-off-Polly-Pocket way. He swears and snaps and shoves her away, but somehow that damned can winds up in his hands and its spilling over his fingers and over the wheel he just wiped down and Coco’s goading him, screaming in his ear and…horror of horrors!

Neku drinks the Monster

…

Three cans later his veins are on fire.

"It's my car, my rules, and we're listening to Akira Jimbo, and I don't care if you have a gun!"

"Omigosh omigosh omigooooosh good golly goddammit!" Coco whines and rubs her temples like she's spooling back a tape recorder; her voice rises, pitching near a screech. "You're like, so totally out-of-touch you're literally floating off the face of the fricken Earth rn, like—gasps!" Air tears through her throat as she lunges over the center consul, dragging her grubby Monster-fingers all over the car's knobs, buttons, and dials until she finds the one controlling the volume. "Oh wily radio gods, you've heard me! Let us feast on this yum-tastic music-y meal amen amen amen 🙏♡."

Neku swats her hands away, but not before she manages to crank up the stereo so loud he feels his blood convulsing in his veins, beating in time with the rhythm of…oh come on.

"Cutie Street? Seriously? What kind of station is this!?"

It's too late. There's no escaping from LOVE TRAIN.

Coco throws back her head and howls along with the lyrics and any snide thoughts Neku had about unchallenging unoriginal popslop fuzz up in his head and slide out of his mouth in nothing more intelligible than a groan of anguish—the anguish of missing Panama Man.

So he reaches for the dial. Coco smacks him away. He tries again, she bites him, he slaps her wrist and she slaps his and they slap each other and then—

—then it catches him in the dark.

An unravelling of white, a feathery rose plucked from the valley of shadows—the flight of a bird in the night. Its massive wings expand full-blooming and its slender beak threatens to puncture the bloat of space and stars that is the sky; it hovers above the watery plane a-beat with seamless motion and all time slackens around it.

Nothing else dares disturb it, dares to even twitch. Neku can only stare—it's captivating.

Captivating enough for Coco to lower the gun.

Neku sees it in the rear view: the metal slant until its nose is to the floor. He doesn't think. Or if he does, it isn't in pictures or words but a series of formless, soundless impulses that wrench his hands sideways. The car obeys. It veers, sharp, Neku can feel half the wheels touch off the ground with the sudden motion then crash, bucking, ripping up grass and waves of water and thickening, sucking mud, thrashing against it until something inside pops and steam falls over the hood in a hot metallic-smelling mass.

The car jerks. It's dead before its belly sinks into the ground, but Neku can't think about that. He fumbles with the seatbelt, hears it click, feels the door fall open beside him and then he's—

—stuck. His foot dives into the murky soup of water and churned mud. He rips it out, ignores the shoe that doesn't come with him, and runs.

But every step feels dreamlike; his limbs refuse to move with him, his arms hang off in strips like anchors on chains and his legs move as if detached from the rest of him, never moving fast enough, never keeping step with the instinct screaming in his brain to get out of the mud. get over that hill. get out of here, before she finds the gun she points the gun she pulls the trigger she—

A shot splits the air. She fired it. "She fired it!"

A part of him was sure she never would. A large enough part that only now does the sick thrill of terror spill over his guts and seeps a jelly-like sensation into his legs like an infection.

"Damn it. Damn it!" Neku sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, hard enough to puncture skin. "Get it together! You can outrun her, you've just got to keep your head."

Still, he can't help but risk a glance over his shoulder. His heart lifts some when he sees that Coco hadn't shot at him, she'd turned the gun skyward and shot off like the ref at a horse derby, and Neku's a glue factory escapee.

They lock eyes. Coco's mouth forms around a word, a distant, desperate, "Wait!" Her strained voice warbles over the field. "Neku! Get back here!"

The sound of his name—his real name—coming from Coco's mouth makes him stumble. But only once.

Overgrown grass cracks against his exposed skin. He stretches his neck above their thin heads, straining his eyes against the dimness of night, the overwhelming silver sting of the moon as it peeps from behind the clouds in time to illuminate a black mass rising up on front of him—a hill, covered in rock and slimy foot-trails. Neku reaches it to it. His hand closes around the bristly head of a cattail; its roots tear quietly as he pulls himself out of the swamp.

The moment his foot touches a semblance of solid ground he seems to snap back awake, back into himself. The reek of his own sweat and fear and adrenaline circles him. His pants are heavy, caked in grime, and there's almost definitely a leech suckling between the toes of his one bare foot.

But he's free.

Sore, exhausted, down a car and up a few demerit points on his licence.

But alive.

He finally lets himself double over. His whole body heaves with the effort of taking in air, and as he pulls it in his spit dripples down over the rocks in long, shiny lines and it's all more than a little pathetic. He licks his lips, tries to swallow the shame and the burning in his throat like he's swallowed a raw shot of vodka, and looks out over the field for Coco.

She might have kidnapped him. She might have shot somewhat in his direction—closer than he ever wanted a shot to be fired at him, anyway—but he still can't leave her here alone.

(Mostly because he refuses to clean out the mess of her locker for her, post-mortem or otherwise)

Luckily she still has her obnoxiously over-patterned work shirt on, otherwise he might have never seen her. All she is is a polka-dotted mass writhing on the ground looking like if a rave could have a seizure. Peering closer, Neku can see the moonlight curve into her sucked-in cheeks as she gasps for a taste of air, her fingers making claws against her neck, pulling red streaks across them. Her eyes roll in a freakishly detached manner in their sockets. When they land on Neku, he feels as though he's staring down a snake eyes on a bet he was never meant to win.

"Nekky…" she moans. "My—my heart. The Monster. Help…me…"

Neku stares at her, then crosses his arms. "She's faking it."

A whiny, rattling sound, like spittle between teeth, leaks from her mouth. A grimace grips her lips hard enough to peel them back, exposing gums and saliva-froth that flies off her lips as she rears up and collapses dramatically back into the muck. Her tongue lolls out like a dead dog's.

Neku just rolls his eyes. "Definitely faking."

…

…

His foot starts to tap (not just because of the leech). He tries to shrug off the feeling of agitation that threatens to crawl up his shoulders and burrow unbearably in his brain, but, shit, she's so quiet, so still…

…

…

"Coco?" he calls to her at last, all the while feeling stupid for even humoring her this much. "C'mon, knock it off already."

…

…

"I've watched you pour so much sugar in your coffee you have to chew through it like a sponge cake. If that hasn't killed you, a couple of Monsters wont."

…

…

"…Damn it."

The whole way down the hill and through the mud, Neku cusses himself out for every step put towards the little idiot. He knows exactly what's going to happen. He's going to get close to her. She's going to spasm a little bit, really sell the whole "heart attack" schick. He'll kneel down close to her, reach to press his fingers to that bead of a pulse in her neck—

"Rawr XD! Eat shit, asshole!!!"

"Ex-fucking-actly."

That he knows whats coming means Neku can go limp as Coco shoots up and at him like a tiny missile and tackles them both into the mud; his head slapping wetly, gently, almost tenderly, against the ground, water swelling up his face and filling his mouth with a gritty film he gags on as Coco shakes him fiercely by the collar as if waiting for his neck to give in and just snap already, geeze-louise! He paws feebly at her. He would've thought it'd be like wrestling a teddy bear possessed by the spirit of a vengeful Victorian toddler—it is, but he's losing to the toddler. He writhes and struggles to knock her off, kicking his feet against the muck, pushing at her shoulders, her face, her—ah!

Sliding his fingers around a handful of mud, he strikes Coco in the side of her jaw. In the heat of the moment he finds his fingers wriggling in past the corner of her lips to shove dirt in her mouth, give her a taste of her own medicine, but even as she recoils from the blow with a "bleugh! ptooey!" the moment she tastes skin she bites down as hard as she can.

Neku screams. He yanks his finger out and feels skin peel off against her teeth. But that sudden bucking away is enough to unsteady Coco; she wobbles, and when she does Neku jerks his whole body to the side and throws her off, and before she can get her bearings back he rolls with the motion hard enough to crash into and wrap around her and pin her down with his arm around her throat and legs hooked around hers.

"Let me go you big bully!" she screeches, squirming uselessly in his hold. "You're taking this waaaay too personally oh my gooooood I'm literally such a sweet 'n adorable 'lil girlypop and you—!"

Then it came again.

The hushed cleaving of a great white bird across the sky, its wings like a breath taken in exaltation. Coco goes limp in his arms at its sight. A soft sound withers in her throat,

"Oh, Crane…"

The sheer sorrow of her voice makes Neku's limbs slacken of their own accord. He lets her go. She pulls away. They lay together, panting in the dark, with only the faraway streetlights to offer any illumination. But even that scant light is enough—filtering greenly through the grass it touches Coco's face, and what Neku saw, he recognizes.

"Coco…who is Crane?"

The whole of her body stiffens. Instead of answering, she gives a fretful little gasp—"The gun!"—and fumbles to her hands and knees to shift through the black muck. She know she wasn't going to find it. She must. That doesn't stop the misery from pervading through her face like a stain under hot water.

Neku sighs.

"Coco, it's alright. You can talk to me. I'm not mad, I just want to understand what's going on."

Is what he means to say. Basically.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

Coco cranes her head towards him. She sniffles miserably, and bats her tear-dipped eyelashes. "Why are you being so mean to me?"

"Mean to you? Me? Mean. To you." Neku drags his palms down his face—as this point not caring what kind of mess he makes of himself—and tries to stifle the urge to argue. He's tired. He's cold. He's probably covered in leeches. He just wants to get this over with. "…Fine. Whatever. I'm sorry—now can you tell me what's going on?"

Coco sticks out her bottom lip—that classic Coco pout—but just as fast she sucks it back in. She's also tired. She's also cold. She's probably also covered in leeches. For the first time this is no easier for her than it is for him.

"It's…um..it's kinda like…" She huffs. "Urgh! You wouldn't get it."

"Try me."

She blinks at him. With her big wet eyes she looks pathetic, like an abandoned Littlest Pet Shop—and not the classically cute ones, either, but the over-designed, bob-headed little freaks that no one ever bought—left to rot for the next thousand years in a ditch in a pool of her own cheap run-off paint. Even if the gun was still to his head it'd be impossible not to feel at least a tiny bit bad for her.

Then she opens her mouth, and like acrylic all that goodwill streams right off him.

"My girlfriend isn't texting me back ☹."

Neku stares at her. He's speechless, or rather there's really nothing to be said in this situation that won't lead to them trying to kill each other again.

Coco at least recognizes his silence for the disbelief it is…sort of. "I, like, stg she's real, Nekky. See, lookie!" She jams her hand into her pocket and, miraculously, her phone is still there, and Neku's eyes are suddenly filled with an eyesore full of light as she sticks it in his face. "That's us at the Uber-Kitty MeowMixer rave last weekend."

At first he has no idea what he's supposed to be looking at. Then he understands it even less. Coco's phone screen is a mishmash of colours, and somewhere in that light swims the shapes of two anthropomorphic animals dressed in loose-hanging neon clothing—a somehow familiar-looking pink-and-purple mouse…and a white, slim-necked bird, arm-in-arm (paw-in-wing?). Neku stares at it, tries to pluck out come concrete meaning. He might as well be trying to read Latin. The symbols pass in front of his eyes, catch on his memory a little, and ultimately mean nothing.

Finally, Coco takes her phone back. "It was a virtual rave, duh. And super romantic." She gazes down at her screen, and the smile on her face brings Neku as close as he's ever come to calling anything about her tender. "She's, like, the coolest, smartest girl I've ever met. And totez adorbs too—not at adorbs as yours truly ofc, but a rlly close second."

"What does this have to do with me, exactly?"

"I'm getting there! Sheesh, don't get your panties in a twist.

She scoots close to Neku, holding her phone out for him to see. The moment she taps the message app the screen explodes into a mass of single-coloured texts.

Craney!!~♡ Good morning my dearest darling little bird ☆⌒ヽ(*'､^*) I betchu slept well!!! You were CRAZAAAY LAST NITE!!! o(>ω<)o LMAO that's ok you know I wuv you ♡♡♡ text me soon kay??? I LITERALLY have nothing to do lolz just my stupid job (＃￣ω￣)

Hiya babes!!!!! (o´▽`o)ﾉ Omigosh it's SOOOO slow here rn and my boss is pissing me off so bad like he won't even let me play ANYTHIIIING cause these noobz can't handle anything with a BMP over like. 2. lolz

JOKEZ ON HIM I FOUND THE BABYMETAL ALBUMS

omigosh when u visit we NEEEEEED to go 2 this smoothie place it is. scrumptious. thats u thats what u would say XD

LOOKIT THIS VID LOOKIT THE KITTIIIIIEEES dont u want one :3c

wish u were here (-_-)

Craney? Helloooooooooooo????

Babe? U ok?

Coco scrolls down, down down. Days worth of unanswered texts lay like beached sea creatures, gasping their last, frantic breathes in the heat of the sun.

"She's never been this quiet for this long. I know you're, like, the cool loner who doesn't need friends and never will or whatevs but for normal people with normal people relationships this is a capital-p Problem!"

Neku stares at the phone and, as the screen goes black, the mirror. His own reflection staring back at him, flecks of water running down like tears on glass.

Why is this so…

Painful?

Familiar.

Suddenly he's on his feet—in the street across from the mural too far to reach close enough to hear the tires squeal the scream the severing of blood and bone and muscle—in the mud. Cold, slimy grass lines his skin, roots him in reality. He tries to look casual as he picks off the tiny threads, but he can feel Coco's eyes on him, feel what's about to leave his mouth and "Damn it. What am I getting myself into?"

"Fine. But you're leaving the gun here."

A manic electricity sparks in Coco's eyes—that's not surprising. What is, is the genuine earnesty that backlights them. "Really?" A giggle spurts between her teeth, the happiest he's ever heard. She lunges at him again and this time her arms come around him in a vice-like hug that lifts him off the ground and spins him around in merry circles. "Oh, thank you, Nekky! Thank you thank you thank you!!"

It's not unpleasant. For a few moments, at least, the dizziness, the laughter, the friendly pressure all around him…it's sudden and newly-unfamiliar, but nice.

Still, he pushes away from her. "Yeah, yeah," he mutters. "Don't get too excited. We'd need a miracle to get my car running again."

Coco pops off him with a mischievous wink. "Pshaw! You know what they say about miracles."

She stares at him. Neku can't tell if what she said was a statement or a question.

"I—"

"They've got nothing against the power of a good ol' fashion freak-o-rama! And lucky for us, I know just the human-shaped oopsie doodle who can help us!"

"Uh-huh. And who would that be?"

A new expression clicks over Coco's face, a hesitancy that feels out-of-place on her features. But it trips off her just as soon as it comes, resolve crystallizing over in its place as she raises her head, sets her chin, and says,

"My brother."

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