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There was blood on the floor.
Blood on his hands, his jacket, his shirt.
Red covered him in a way that could only remind him of one person. A person who appeared in his thoughts like the sprinkles of pink four-petaled flowers among the splattered blood on the floor. (Aubretias, he’d later find out after a rough google and a post on a flower forum. Faithfullness. Devotion. Perseverance. It made him laugh in a way that left a sour taste in his throat.)
As his wheezing slowed and his breath returned to normal, Murase Takuma spit out the last petals clinging to the sides of his mouth. The sight of his aged body slumped in his exam-room chair over a puddle of blood and flowers was pathetic, degrading for a man who had achieved two degrees in medicine and science.
It was as though nature was mocking him- “Here, that medicine you love? Those illnesses you seek to cure? You can’t save yourself from them.”
But time waited for no one. He was old enough already, old enough to know better than to act like this and keep his feelings bottled up when his own body was screaming at him to speak or die.
He would die. He couldn’t feel anything but disappointment in himself for this twisted love.
A glance at his computer revealed he hadn’t long before his small break between appointments ended, so little time to clean up the mess of his own making.
A final cough squeezed its way out of his throat as he leant forwards, reaching into a drawer and pulling out disinfectant wipes. It gnawed on his conscience to put so little effort into cleaning up blood, it could be so dangerous, but the people of Shinkoumi lived and breathed danger and Murase was a man on a time limit.
He wiped the blood from his lips with a rogue tissue, and got the majority of the blood off his hands first. It was routine now, his hands moved without thinking to cover up the traces of his own indiscretions. A bin bag was next, to contain the flowers and the bloodied tissues and wipes because in the end he was still a doctor who valued proper disposal of biohazards despite how dire (or not, it was a slow, creeping thing) his situation was.
“Hey, Taku, do you-“
Rei’s voice sent a jolt through Murase’s body. He hadn’t even heard the door open.
He was so careless.
Fuck. Was this it?
A light and soft sigh came from the direction of the door, and as Murase slowly turned with an unnatural stiffness, he saw a uniformed Rei wearing an annoyed pout with a hand on his hip.
“Really, I know you’re a doctor but leaving you to clean up this mess- kinda rude.”
Murase was going to keel over. Or throw up. Or die. Maybe all three. The relief that swept through his body sent his stomach tumbling and his heart racing as his mind desperately tried to right itself and keep the misconception growing. His lips were stuck pressed together into a fine line no matter how he tried to move them, his hands paused mid-air.
Rei sighed again and shrugged, “I know you want to help people as much as you can, but there’s no need to protect their feelings when they aren’t here you know? Let me get some gloves I’ll give you a hand.” He gave a warm smile before stepping further into the room and rummaging through the trolley left beside the examination bed.
Murase could hear his heart pounding.
He’d escaped - just. The sense of reason buried inside his heart ached. He knew he couldn’t hide it forever. It was more than likely Rei or one of the other nurses would be the one to find him when this damned disease finally took him.
Not Towa.
It would never be Towa.
The child who clung to his coat didn’t exist anymore.
He squeezed his eyes shut and forced his hands to hold the bag steady for Rei as he dumped fistfuls of crushed flowers and crumpled wipes into it, the mess on the floor disappearing as though it never existed.
His throat felt hoarse, “Thank you Rei,” he tried to say more but the words died on his lips. He was lying to them. He was lying and there was no way to escape the fact that one day they’d find out in the worst way possible.
He was hiding his debt too, but at least that could die with him. If he was going to die anyway he’d be damned if he followed Toono’s orders and take more people down with him. It was depressing, that in the end it wasn’t the consequences of his actions that would kill him, not accepting the hand of the devil but rather his inaction that would do him in.
He was too damn old for this.
Rei had said something, and smiled warmly at Murase before taking the bag from him and leaving the room to dispose of it.
He was so fucked.
But he had a patient to see, so he’d think about it later. He slipped the blood-stained white coat off, and resigned himself to finishing his shift as though he couldn’t taste the blood on the edge of his teeth.
- - - - - -
The air was cold by the time he finished, the witching hour soon approaching.
The cold seeped into his being and froze his lungs, and he wished for nothing more than a cigarette to calm him down but he’d stopped buying them for some time. The flowers twisting and writhing in his lungs made breathing difficult enough already without adding smoke and nicotine and whatever else Shinkoumi cigarettes were cut with to the mix.
(For a while he briefly entertained the thought of continued smoking, if it killed his lungs perhaps it would kill those damn flowers too. But the doctor in him knew better. And he couldn’t hate them. Not truly, he didn’t even try.
What right did he have to resentment?)
He checked his phone as he leant outside the clinic’s side entrance, leafing through his notifications (a message from Rei, a few missed calls from Toono, stack tons of dross. His fingers hovered over Towa’s pinned chat, there were no new messages there, the burden of communication always on Murase, but still he hoped) then checking for any notifications of traffic or diversions on the way home. For once things seemed relatively peaceful, and he pulled his van’s keys from his pocket in preparation to leave before the creaking of a door sounded behind him.
There was only one person left in the clinic once Murase was done, and yet his breath still hitched when his eyes caught view of Towa’s messy hair and sharp eye.
A sharp eye that seemed to narrow on him unexpectedly.
(He froze when panicked or scared or surprised, he always had, there was no expression for Towa to catch, yet the boy- the man always seemed to see through him)
A hazel eye burned into him as the other man flicked out a pack of cigarettes and lighter, gesturing to Murase with them.
“Want one?”
“No thanks.” The words felt like sand.
“Suit yourself” He watched Towa’s lithe fingers (scarred, a hundred fine lines covering his fingers and hands that made his heart ache) pulled a cigarette out and lit it before taking a slow drag and returning his loose hand to his pocket.
The night air seemed to freeze solid around Murase, enraptured by the mundane sight infront of him he found himself paralysed. Each breath he took felt like a monumental effort drawn in through stone lips.
Towa’s gaze had a strangeness to it that became most apparent on nights like this - the way he almost seemed to look through you rather than at you. As though there were secrets revealed only to him.
Murase knew there were. He’d cleaned up the aftermath enough times to know. Disinfected and stitched with all the love in his heart and with a sinking in his gut.
If Towa painted him, what would he see?
Would he see the dark and twisted man Murase Takuma knew he was on the inside? The vile obsession with a boy he’d cared for from a tender age. Flashes of that long-gone boy still echoed in his head sometimes, on late nights when he could feel the flowers tighten in himself and the self-hatred consumed him.
He had no right to Towa. Not after what he did. Not after what he pretended not to see.
The current Towa simply stared at him, slowly working through his cigarette, almost looking as though there was the most interesting thing in the world happening. As if. Murase was thinking with his dick.
He coughed, as much to break the tension building in his mind as to give him an excuse to break away from his own enchanted stare.
“Well, I’ll be heading home for the day…” he paused, these days, even normal greetings and farewells seemed to carve themselves into his bones, “If you’re heading out try not to get too drunk.”
Pathetic.
Towa seemed to think so too, blinking and turning away as though he’d lost interest.
“Sure.” Was all Murase heard before Towa turned on his heel and made his way off into the night.
The unsettled feeling in him grew. The irrational part of himself biting and clawing to be let out- to take Towa and capture and keep him. Towa let himself be hurt anyway, he enjoyed it, so what issue would there even be? He felt the urge to vomit.
The mental image of Towa and Haruto overlayed and blurred until Murase felt the edges of his keys dig into his palm and break him from his stupor.
He didn’t love Haruto, no, not in the way he loved Towa. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t guilty. No, Murase was still a sinful man. If he was religious he’d confess and pray for salvation but the doctor had long since given up on any hope of divine intervention.
He’d been human too long to believe in miracles.
Shinkoumi beat the hope out of all except the most depraved and injured. He wondered, sometimes what would have happened if he hadn’t accepted Toono’s offer. If he had never trapped himself as a debtor to the Takasato-Gumi.
If he never met poor Haruto.
If he never met Towa.
Maybe, in that world, Murase didn’t have flowers growing in his lungs and a burning self-loathing threatening to devour him whole if the flowers didn’t kill him first.
The aubretias.
They reminded him of Towa in a way.
But everything did these days.