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The sharp memories of the night in the warehouse, the night he never slept, the one he just passed out after, slither around in his brain like sludge. Enough shitty things have happened to him before now that being torn to shreds by zombies isn’t the most unordinary thing he’s ever experienced (that momentous title belongs to Pochita and his little waggy devil tail and his sharp little devil teeth and the way he’d curl up on Denji’s chest on cold mornings and cry for him like any loved dog would when he’s away from home), and as odd as that sounds, it only means he’s prepared for the whirlwind to come. Pochita was a whirlwind of his own, when they met ages ago at his father’s dirt-and-pine, unsturdy resting place below a cross made of twigs (because who would want to pay for the funeral rights of a man who owed more than he’d ever been due in the first place?), shaking and broken and hungry enough to make a bad deal and pay for it.
Back in the shed, with its leaky roof (tin that would lull him into an uncomfortable slumber every time it’d start raining) and its lack of a fridge (not that they could afford much more than bread and scraps that’d be better off eaten ASAP than set to rot in the cold anyway), they’d split bread and Denji would dream of days like this. A pretty girl by his side, one soft enough to admit he isn’t useless, or perhaps foolish enough to find use in a broken tool. A hearty meal in his bowl, a little cold, but the bread always was, and broth always tastes better than cigarette ash and someone else’s spit even if it's colder. Pochita, right there with him.
The dog isn’t ever gonna be away from his side again. That’s how these things go, when you love a mutt so badly it hurts, and to die side by side is a kinder threat than leaving you behind. Pochita is a special case regardless of this fact, taking to heart the notion of never wanting to leave Denji’s side.
Or his chest.
Maybe Denji will wake up one morning (if he’s allowed to) and wet his cheeks in mourning of his pet. Waterworks never work long with Pochita lying on his chest. Now that he’s a little closer, a little deeper, Denji can’t help but hope for that same comfort to surround him, if not from atop his skin, than from beneath it. The curse of a friend just in reach is usually the threat of them slipping past your fingertips, isn’t it? Maybe with the dog between his ribs, the ripcord jutting out from his skin, he’ll never even get the opportunity to lose this love.
He’d have to dig out his chainsaw heart with his own bleeding fingers for that to happen.
This Makima lady has her driver take him to a restaurant somewhere beside the road. It’s called Family Burger, and Denji reckons that if this is what a real, honest to God family is like, he might have been missing out on some really good grub this entire time on his own. He learned this early, anyway, after weeks without food and measly scraps under the table, but to see where the sausage gets made, so to speak, leaves him speechless.
Spices waft out into the brisk, dawning air around them, when Makima orders for him and sits him down at a table out front. He stares into her eyes and wonders if the rings around her pupils are there because of her genetics, wonders if she had kids, if they’d inherit them too. That probably wouldn't be too bad, being born different in such a visible way. Maybe that’d help him quit coughing up blood so often, if his mother’s disease in his lungs were something tangible, something visible from the outside. Thorns in your side are easier to take out than ones beneath the skin; they’re easier for other people to see, too, and maybe there’s a person kind enough out there to see him for something more than a dog waiting to be put down, for the kid he is, coughing up red and seeing stars every so often.
Maybe if he mattered to someone aside from the mutt beneath his skin, he wouldn’t have to worry about dying anymore, because then, at least, he’d have someone to cry about the life he never got to live. He wouldn’t be able to cry about it himself, anymore, being dead and all. He had been content enough to let Pochita take on that role, to let that little devil snuggle into his skull and turn him into a monster, but that stupid, lovely, little dog wouldn’t let him die.
Unlike everybody else, Pochita had been kind to him.
And, unlike everybody else, Pochita had taken all his pain away. Well, the pain of the moment. He isn’t sure if mitral stenosis can come back in some superhuman, incomprehensible, unheard of way when his heart is gone and in its place is a dog, a devil, really, that loves him for who he is and wants to see his dreams, and nobody ever cared about what Denji wanted or what Denji needed or that Denji wanted to live, didn’t want to die, didn’t want to live out his life paying back a debt he didn’t even accrue in the first place, not even Denji himself, a child of nothing but endless receipts and so little yen in empty pockets he can’t hardly afford to even live anymore, let alone with anybody, not even a poor little shit with four legs and a power cord for a tail, but it isn’t like that really matters anymore.
Because he isn’t alone anymore. He hopes, begs, prays, that that will stay the case forever. That Denji’ll never be alone again.
It might be the people on a too-crowded train, sweating and breathing and pushing his buttons. It might be the backside of a bar, with bricks and blood and a shoe to the teeth. It might be a dog or twenty and a girl he can care for, because if he can’t bear to care for himself some days, the least he could do is make sure somebody else doesn’t end up as fucked up as he is. If he’s lucky, the people that keep him company might even be able to tolerate him.
Hell, if he’s lucky, they won’t up and die the moment he steps foot into their vision. That’s something to wish for, isn’t it? It’s not like it’s happened before, the sudden implosion of a complete and utter stranger at the mere sight of his ugly mug, but there’s a persistent stinging in his chest that makes him wonder if that’s why nobody ever loved him, if he did something horrible upon his birth that made him irreparably replaceable, totally inconsequential. Maybe he killed his mom by being born. Maybe his dad hated him more than life itself. Maybe he loved that nameless, faceless mother more than Denji, more than his sperm in human incarnation, and maybe the debt he grew was a ball-and-chain always destined for Denji, a boy with no love left to cup in shaking hands, a boy with nothing to lose, nothing to gain, and a whole heart full of a lust for life unquenchable by any mortal composition.
Wow, Denji thinks, I’ve never had a meal this rich, this tasty, this warm.
“It’s cold now,” the pretty lady says, stirring the broth with his chopsticks. “It would’ve been better if it were warm.”
She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, he thinks. This is the best meal I’ve ever eaten. This is the best day of my life.
She domesticates him with a stretchy, starchy noodle coated in cold, salty broth. He slurps down the food like the starving boy he’s always been, and watches innocently as the leash tightens around his neck. It's a bunch of funky colors, that lead and collar, like a tapestry to show everybody just how useless and inconsequential he is, that he isn’t capable of pissing on his own, that treats and a scratch behind the ear will make you his whole world, the only thing he orbits around. It makes him feel gross. It makes him feel weak.
Above all else, it makes him feel human.
“‘Woof’ and ‘yes’ are the only words I expect my pets to say,” she tells him, but Denji’s always been a rebellious kid, paying off his father’s debts with a scowl and paying for every meal he can afford to with scrounged-up notes and yen from a city fountain.
“Woof,” he barks anyway, because he’s been a dog for so long he’s forgotten how to be anything else.
“Good boy, Denji.”
He feels like he is, too. But he isn’t used to feeling so compatible with someone else’s idea of him. So many people have treated him like shit, like a mutt on a chain, that not being tugged around leaves him feeling more alien, more inhumanly untouchable, than being treated like something less than human ever has.
A treat and a head-pat sound pretty heavenly right now.
The security of her towering expectations of him is a constant, a comfort. Feeling so inadequately prepared for all the crap God’s green world throws at him is something he’s definitely used to. Like a piece of plain bread after a long, hard day’s work, mostly flavorless and barely attainable, falling to crumbs from Pochita’s mouth onto his wife-beater and graying skin, Denji is good at following the current, rolling with the punches. It’s the only thing he’s good for besides killing devils. He’s pretty good at getting his hands dirty for other peoples’ sake.
He offers Makima a bite because that’s something he would die for someone to offer to him.
She says “no” anyway, and he tries not to grimace at the calmness in her tone, her posture, her everything. She presents herself like the kind of woman who hasn’t had to get along without much, like her word is law and a silver platter is a fixation to her figure, like every whim and beckon that falls from her lips are the only words that matter in the whole entire world, now or ever, and that nothing she says goes without consequence, and that this should matter to him, to Denji with his wandering eyes and his un-unemptied heart full of someone else’s blood, than it does.
Denji feels, suddenly and wholly, grateful to be on her good side. Even as a stranger in a devil’s skin, he can tell she reigns hell too frequently for it to be called anything else.
And when she looks at him, his world feels like it's ripping apart at the seams.
She introduces him to “Aki”, some stick-up-his-ass field operative with a hand that summons his enemies to death’s door, free of charge. His hair is stupid-looking and stupid, and he has this air of superiority around him that leaves Denji’s tongue sweating to expel the putrid taste. He is, very comprehensibly, the type of guy Denji would rather leave alone.
Wholly and endlessly, his new roommate is a jackass with a dick with Denji’s foot’s name on it.
He can’t help but laugh to himself, sharp teeth grinning behind his cheeks, a fist to his lips to muffle the noise. Nuts or nothing.
But, when all is said and done, Aki is the guy with the house, and Denji is the guy without one. When he moves in with nothing in his hands, Aki stares at him like he’s crazy, or Makima’s crazier, but he can’t say anything about it without getting glared at or reprimanded, which is something he’d totally be into, and Denji can tell because the guy just reeks of smoke and bad decisions everywhere he goes. In the end, however, he’s got a fridge stocked with real and actual food, like, produce and shit that usually goes bad long before it ever makes it to Denji’s plate.
So he, like any good dog would, goes running amok around the apartment, acquainting himself with every kitchen appliance and funny smelling bottle under the bathroom sink until his eyes go cross and Aki is chasing him with snapping tongs.
They have to make a compromise. Denji, in return for not pissing everywhere to mark his territory, gets to pick out seven different condiments to try on his toast. Aki, in return for making Denji actual meals when they need them (uh, y’know, like any good host should do in the first place, man, and you are not a guest, you are a pest), won’t kill him for running like a whirlwind through his apartment.
“But I already did that,” Denji complains, “I’m not gonna run around and screw things up anymore. You’re not getting anything out of this.”
“I’ve raised dogs before,” Aki replies sharply. “I know a damn frantic mutt when I see one.”
Power is a word Denji didn’t think he’d ever associate with anything other than old, government geezers with long, white beards wiser than the blended brains in their own inbred skulls, yet here he is.
“Power” isn’t an old man with a long, white beard and mouth rot that stinks like shit and probably tastes worse. “Power” is the name of a fiend with horns and a blood manipulation capability Denji can’t imagine doing anything other than making a mess when it splatters. He knows what that crimson sludge looks like, so believe him when he says it’s a bitch and a half to get out of carpet. He’s had to clean up his own cuts more times than he can count, so you could call him an expert on these things. And Power… Well, he can just tell straight from the get-go that she’s gonna be trouble.
After their horrid debacle of a first patrol, all of which the first seem to go badly for him, what after the “testicle devil went apeshit on Aki’s nutsack” and all, a pattern seems like it’s forming, and Denji isn’t sure he likes the looks of it.
Later on, they bond. It’s a super weird sensation, finding (or building) common ground between an actual fiend, one with inhuman features around the head, but when Power says that she has a pet that she misses, Denji’s heart clenches in empathy. He knows how that feels. Well, that isn’t to say Pochita is completely gone, being trapped in his chest and all, but that mourningful sorrow is a feeling he’s used to.
When Power tells him of a way to save Meowy, he’s sure it’s worth the risk of Makima’s wrath for going past their designated patrol area. He’s sure it’s worth the risk of shoving the stick further up Aki’s ass. And, more than these, he’s sure it’s worth the risk because if he were in her position, if Pochita was being held captive by a damn bat devil stowed away in a half-broken house on the edge of town, he’d be lying if he said he wouldn’t fight tooth and nail to get his dog back.
It’s a set up.
Of course it had been a set up. And of course Denji had been too stupid, too preoccupied by the notion of having a friend (getting to second base) to see it coming, that he had been a sacrifice just like he always is, always has been, all the way back to his father leaving him and his debt behind to up and die and accomplish nothing of substance except leaving another stupid mutt to die on the streets. Denji’s always been stupid. When the chainsaw, jutting and whirring, shoots out from his prefrontal cortex, his tongue lolling and saliva pooling on the ground like an infected dog as he chases after the ugly mammoth and the girl in his gut and the caged cat in her arms, he can’t help but wonder if Pochita’s power isn’t making him stupider.
The hospital he wakes up in comes with the nicest room, the smoothest sheets, he’s ever laid in besides his accommodations in Aki’s apartment. And the man peels him an apple, which is just… Woah. Nobody with two hands, opposable thumbs, the patience to do something that tedious, has ever done so with him in mind.
He pulls the plate away as he speaks, but Denji’s eyes stay glued to the flesh and meat of the fruit for as long as they can.
“Listen to me,” Aki says, with all the gentle kindness of a bitter door being slammed shut, and Denji does listen, he swears! He just doesn’t keep his words in mind forever. They’re important, probably, but… the apples… they’re right there and he’s hungry, damn it, and nobody can blame him, ‘cause he just went through some damn traumatic experience–even lost his hand for it, albeit not for long–and he wants an apple slice. Sue him. He doesn’t have insurance. You won’t be getting anything, and he’ll have a mouthful of fresh (fresh!!!) fruit before you can even cry about it.
Aki sighs and pushes the plate towards him. Denji bites a bunny’s head off and grins with fruit juice in his cheeks.
Power moves in with them after the whole shitshow of the bat devil and his wormy side chick, bringing her shit and her cat and her brash self with her, and at first, Denji is pissed. How dare she disrespect the people already living in this house? How dare she disrespect the place she gets to freeload in, shouting and flinging food without charge? And, more than all of these, how dare she disrespect the hard work of all the farmers who worked so hard, tirelessly, day in and day out, for years on end, mastering their craft, testing methods, breaking ground, suffering out in the heat, bringing home empty jugs and empty wallets to homes of weeping children and a wife with a knowing look in her eyes, a dream on the horizon, a wish in the pond, a bottle on the counter, an empty fridge, by tossing her vegetables and soiling the rug?
Their life together isn’t perfect. Nothing ever is, not when there’s people involved. But when Denji yells at the blood fiend for her stupidity, she yells back for the same reason, and Aki tells them both they’re dumber than rocks, there’s a placid ache in his chest like the first powdering of snow on a riverside bank or the sudden, sparking ember of a long-dead flame.
If Denji gets to die in the presence of these two, giving up his humanity to chase his own dreams might feel like more of a tangible dream than a pipe one. If these are the people he gets to laugh at for the rest of his days, he’ll probably die happy. And if none of them leave him early, like his mom or his dad or Pochita or anyone he doesn’t know the name of but knows they left an impact, he’ll probably be just fine.
He bites into the curry Aki made with tender care and chews slowly.
What toppings will he try on his toast tomorrow morning? He can’t help but find himself wondering. Maybe he’ll stick with plum jam and honey, let the flavors slide along his tongue for a while before swallowing them whole. You can totally have too much of a good thing, and while Denji himself isn’t so sure what that feels like so far, he’s hoping he’ll get to know it some day; maybe even sometime soon, when a girl lights up his world and makes him feel whole again before pulling the pin and wrecking his life.
Denji swallows his bite and scoops up another, grinning at the slice of carrot on his spoon.