Work Text:
The sound of fingers typing was vaguely comforting to Touko Fukawa.
She’d grown accustomed to how her digits curled themselves out to tap letters, to form words. She didn’t type in the way she’d been taught. No, she’d been taught to keep her fingers on the home row, and to extend each finger gracefully to press each key. Instead, she only used her two index fingers, frantically moving her hands all around the keyboard. Her old teachers used to say that was a sign of throwing herself in too deep, but it worked for her, so that was what she did.
The glare from her laptop screen did not hurt her eyes; she told herself it was her glasses filtering the light, but the little voice inside her head, not the one that cackled with a voice made of rusty scissors, but the one who passed judgements, told her that she was overworking herself and had grown used to the gently pulsating rays. Scrunching her nose every now and again, she violently slammed her fingertips all over her keyboard, slamming out a new phrase, a new sentence, a new metaphor, a new piece of dialogue, new, new, new, new.
Why did everything have to be new? Why did everything have to change? The frail girl looked out her bedroom window. Despite the late hour of the night, she had not bothered to shut her curtains, and there was a dim orange glow, probably from streetlights, furling around the edges of the frame.
Fukawa considered herself lucky, although not Makoto Naegi lucky, that she’d been able to get herself a publishing deal after what had happened at Hope’s Peak. Even though the world had been in disarray, they still had a sense of what was important, and in Fukawa’s opinion, words and stories were extremely important, and evidently other people thought so too.
She’d agreed to write three novels. It was obvious in the publisher’s face, all too obvious to someone who was familiar with judgement, that they wanted to tell her what to write about. A certain look had crossed their eyes though, maybe they’d seen the mutual killing on television and known about her past, or maybe they just pitied the weak, pathetic girl standing in front of them; not the energetic bubbly one who’d gone to work with children who’d lost their family, not the mysterious intelligent one who’d joined the Future Foundation, but the lost ugly one with nowhere to go.
Whatever it was (again, the voice told her, what could it be but the latter?) they had thought better of it, and put on a sugar sweet smile that reminded her of that idol, that Maizani or whatever she’d been called, and they’d calmly told her that she could write about whatever she wanted to.
How fucking patronising.
So there she was, sitting on the bed she’d somehow managed to get in a run down hotel, spinning words about romance and tragedy. There were princes and princesses, witches and vampires, everything a good young adult romance should have, but none of it was good, enough, and none of it was what she wanted to tell.
Fukawa raised a hand to her mouth and gently gnawed at the skin around her fingernails, whilst the other hand shakily moved to cursor up to the ‘new document’ button. She clicked it.
Looking around as though there would be someone there to stop her, she settled her eyes on the screen again, and began to weave a new story, one that made her head spin and her heart burst and her stomach sick.
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She had noticed him the moment she'd first seen him walk in. Some people, she thought, had a certain presence, one that made one want to drink them in, slowly sucking each part of their personality, until all that was left was a shell, a beautiful, beautiful shell. A shell that someone could hang on their wall, and gaze at.
Of course, he hadn’t noticed her. Why would he? She was plain, with long brunette auburn hair, grey eyes and a dirty seifuku skirt and top combo that didn’t compliment her large round square glasses at all.
But oh how she wished he would. As much as she wanted to drink him in, she wanted him to drink her in more, to take her by the chin and gaze sharply into her eyes and say, never whisper, all the things that everyone else had been too ashamed to tell her.
After her chemistry class, she went to her locker to get her sociology books, passing the airhead from her class, the swimmer dancer. As she reached her locker, she noticed someone watching her, analysing her movements. Her eyes flickered from behind her bifocals, searching for the stalker, and that was when she saw him.
Him. Him him him him. With his blond hair and blue eyes and rectangular glasses and long legs and slim frame and broad shoulders and tailored suit and symmetrical perfect face and that smirk, oh that smirk that could make her have a heart attack should he use it against her.
He was looking at her, with a softened, watered down version of his usual glare. He stepped in close to her, so that she was looking directly at his chest and had to crane her head up to look him in the eyes, and oh she didn’t care who was watching, she didn’t care if it was a dare like the ones she’d known before, no, all she wanted was to drink, and be drank in return.
He bent down to speak in her ear, something that sounded like “follow me” but could’ve been “eat trash” for all she cared, and she would’ve done it, and she did, she followed him, she followed him to the supply cupboard where he opened the door, shoved her in and shut it after him, fiddling with something in the pitch black that sounded like it could’ve been a key.
And then the light was on, dim and atmospheric, and he circled her in the confined space, looking her up and down. Drinking her in. She shuddered.
Suddenly she was shoved up against the wall, and he was on her, nose against the line of her jaw, grunting things into her ear, things she no longer could distinguish, regardless of his perfect diction. She sighed and nodded in agreement with each one, and then he pulled back, and looked at her.
And it was not the look of disgust she’d always thought she’d longed for, not the look of disappointment she was comfortable with. It was not a look of hate, and It surprised her because she’d always thought that was what she’d wanted, but now she knew she wanted the look he was giving her now.
A look of pure, undiluted love and adoration.
And she returned it.
And then he was on her again, but it was different, and she was on him, and they kissed and kissed and kissed and nothing else mattered but the two of them holding on to each other, and she knew that if the world were to fall to pieces and she were to lose all recollection of any given time frame that could’ve involved him, she knew she would always get this back, she would always be there for him, she would wear him back down if need be.
Even if monsters lurked beneath her skin, monsters that threatened him, she would protect him.
His hands roamed through her hair, and she was late for sociology class but she couldn’t care less, and then her arms were interlocked behind his neck, and he slowly moved a hand down to lift up her skirt, and she whimpered, and he looked her in the eyes and said so sincerely:
“I love you.”
And although within her mind she contemplated that for years, for millennia, in the true scheme of things she replied without missing a millisecond:
“I love you.”
And so they continued, and he lifted up her skirt further, and whimpering her approval, she allowed him to-
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Fukawa slammed the laptop shut, buried her head in between her knees, clawed at her hair and wailed. She screamed and thrashed and sobbed, muffled broken phrases that sounded vaguely like “I miss you,” and “Why did you leave me” and occasionally even “Why would you go with them and not me.”
The sound of fingers typing was vaguely comforting to Touko Fukawa. The hollow noise reminded her that she was not the only empty one.